Cognitive Psychology Review Exam

[Chapter 1 -- The Science of the Mind] ================================================== - Cognition - Definition of cognition and cognitive psychology - Cognition describes how we acquire, store, transform and use our knowledge - Cognitive psychology can...

[Chapter 1 -- The Science of the Mind] ================================================== - Cognition - Definition of cognition and cognitive psychology - Cognition describes how we acquire, store, transform and use our knowledge - Cognitive psychology can refer to cognitive and is a specific approach we use in psychology called the cognitive approach. -- Which emphasizes mental processes and knowledge. - We study it because everything you do requires you to perceive, remember, communicate and think. It includes interdisciplinary areas (political, legal) - How we use cognition in very day life? Planning my route, in driving -- memorizing your route, figuring out how to get to your destination if a road is closed, Seeing its cold outside and grabbing a jacket for the day. - Cognition starts with the sensations, taking in info from out 5 senses and then they get interpreted into perception. - Importance of knowledge - H.M. - H.M had epilepsy and had come through many treatments. Seizures were happening. Henry could no longer make new memories, couldn't recall information since the surgery. Central to push forward what that area of the brain did - Wundt and Titchener - Introspection - Wundt was interested in the structure of consciousness, so his way of using introspection was to get participants to think aloud and say what they were doing as they were doing it. -- started with sensation. And how sensations together structured consciousness and influenced how we thought - criticisms of introspection - **Importance of 1879** - **The first lab created by Wundt that established psychology as a science** - Hermann Ebbinghaus - Studied forgetting. He wanted to know once new info , how quickly we forgot that info - He was his own subject and studied a list of nonsense syllables (NIV -- not a word but could be a word, follows the structure of language) would study them until he knew them 100%. He would distract himself and test himself at intervals to see how much he had forgotten. - Purpose of studying nonsense syllables -- since our experiences and our previous knowledge influences our thoughts, if we knew the words (had heard them before) we would store them and study them differently. - He found out that we quickly forgot the information but then it would level off, so after 30 days you remember 20% then test in a year, you'll still remember about 20%. - We have sharp decline and then a steady encoding/remembering of words. - It applies to us by, example -- prerequisites in classes to help us with future classes so we carry some knowledge. - "The forgetting curve" only when you don't rehearse the information. Example -- iforgetting curve is different like for people with photographic memory would have a smaller curve - William James - Founding father of American psychology (brought psychology to America) - He coitized wundt and Ebbinghaus for lacking the ability to study memory - James cared more about the function - Tip of the tongue phenomenon - Emergence of Behaviorism - Criticized the previous psychologists that were looking at things that couldn't be observed , we weren't advancing psychology as a science because we weren't observing things directly (so rat labs were introduced) - Centered around stimulus and responses (punishments and rewards) - Believed we didn't have free will, so as long as we have the right rewards people will behave how we want - Skinner, Watson - Skinner box - BUT -- cognitive pscyhologstis were saying that even though you can observe it, beajvior still has a mental pause, theres still a thought process behind behavior. A stimulus responses theory cannot explain all human behavior -- it wasn't complex enough to explain ALL we do. - Sp cognitive were trying to slowly bring back in study of thoughts and how they influence behavior - Cognitive Revolution - We saw a shift from behaviorism to cognition - Cognitive psychologists study mental events but do so indirectly - Emmanuel Kant - transcendental method - Solving problems by looking at the end point and working our way backwards to get all the pieces of the puzzle to figure out what's happening or what's behind the behavior. We look behavior that's the end point and work our way backward to identify the mental events that were occurring to make that behavior happen. - Example analogy-- like police work, looking at clues to find perpetrator. - We study mental events in an indirect way. Studied responses by stimuli that were given along with developing hypothesis about mental events and designing experiments based on those hypotheses. So it followed the scientific method and advanced psychology as a science. - - Ulric Neisser -- father of cognitive psychology - Wrote a book and first time anyone has put a name to the research that was being done. Book cemented the cognitive revolution - Overcoming behaviorism - Tolman - Tolman had a group of rats (like a lot of behaviorists) he was looking to see how quickly rats could learn to run a maze and how many errors they make, when they are reinforced or not - Group one was motivated - Group two was never rewarded so they didn't do so well (behaviorists saw that If they got rewarded they would reach their end goal very quickly) - Group 3 -- day 11 they took rats who were never rewarded. Since they got rewarded and indicated they made a lot less errors a lot faster - It wasn't that they weren't getting through the maze because they didn't know what they were doing but instead they weren't making it through the maze because they weren't getting a reward. - This was the first study to report that there is a mental activity happening behind our behaviors and its not just reinforcement, we are learning but we dint want to demonstrate that until we get rewarded. - Noam Chomsky -- was in psycholinguistics - Studied language and language acquisition - Argued that behaviorism can account how we can acquire language (mimicking) it can't explain the creativity that we develop in language. We can convey the same meaning, but we do it in different ways that can stress different things - Argued that there is a mental event occurring when we are trying to figure out what to say and how to say it to get the meaning across - European Roots (at the same time) - Gestalt Psychology - In Europe they were looking at how mental processes and behavior could not be understood without understanding the whole picture - "The whole Is different than the sum of its parts" - Bartlett (within the European model) he was trying to understand how we form schemas (schemas) -- are our scripts. And based on previous experiences that can turn into expectations - How we use schemas to interpret our experiences and aid in memory - Computers How computers are similar to our brains, pushed forward the interest - Helped psychology come to the forefront. How do we study and store info? How is it similar to a computer? Explained cognitive events using computer terminology (buffering, storage, memory) - How are we different from a computer? We have more individual differences, different pieces of info based on emotions (emotion isn't something computers have, and emotion affects our memory) - Diversity in Research Methods -- How we started with introspection and observation tasks and then we see how the short-term memory was tested. - Performance of accuracy measures - Response time (RT) measures - Neuroimaging techniques - Cognitive Neuroscience - Study of the brain and nervous system to understand mental functioning - Combine fields of cognitive psych and neuroscience - Clinical neuropsychology - Study of brain function based on damaged brain structures - Case studies - Take what we know from these case studies and apply to others that have TBI - Example -- patient H.M **[Chapter 2 - Neural Basis for Cognition]** - What is Capgras syndrome and how do we study it? - Capgras syndrome is when we have broken connections in our memories. - Rare misidentification disorder that is most common in patients with schizophrenia and dementia or other neuropsychiatric conditions but can also be driven by seizures, drug use or TBIs - They can recognize physical appearances and voices and even detailed memories of loved ones but are convinced that they've been replaced with a fake -- an imposter - The undamaged part of the brain tries to understand why the person that they used to associate positive feelings with now elicit zero emotional response - In Capgras syndrome, emotional processing is disrupted. Memories are stored in the hippocampus- and it sits right on top of the amygdala, so theres a strong connection between your hippocampus and your amygdala -- hence why there's a strong connection between your feelings for those memories. In there somewhere there's a broken connection and that's Capgras. - Its not very common -- hence the rare- but we want to understand it and want to understand why and how it happens - Don't experience Capgras syndrome with strangers because theres no connection, so this happens with people who are clostes to us so if that connection is broken and we no longer feel anything for them, that's why there's that feeling of anxiety and fear and paranoia because we now think they are an imposter or a fake in place of our loved one. - In Capgras syndrome we don't have a good connection between intact perceptual recognition and appropriate emotional reaction, instead theres a conflict with intact perceptual recognition and absence of emotion. - We study it by - The effects are that we have two systems - 1, cognitive appraisal -- our memory, experiences, knowledge - 2\. Emotional appraisal -- how do they make us feel, strong connections with people we know the best and are closest too. - What have we learned from research - Amygdala (responsible for regulating your emotions, also fear response) linked to emotional processing so there's a break in the amygdala , or a dissociation. As well as a break in the prefrontal cortex, that damage can impair logical reasoning. - Feelings of familiarity - Memory for emotional events - Emotional decision making (lack of emotion leads to thinking they are an imposter) - Even simple processing in the brain involves multiple regions - What regions are necessary for Capgras syndrome to occur? - Data from these different regions must be assembled or connected - Why do people go as far as being violent and taking violent measures if they feel someone is an imposter? Not necessarily paranoia but more the inability to tell yourself that this person is who they say they are. - When it comes to imposter animals and objects we aren't as threaten compared to "imposter humans" - 3 parts of the brain - - - Movement and balance - Spatial reasoning - When people have too much to drink and decide to get behind the wheel, the alcohol goes to the hippocampus and your cerebellum and affects both- that's why you can blackout- and it affects your movement hence sobriety tests - - - - Coordinating precise eye movement - Relaying auditory information from ears to forebrain - Regulating pain experiences - - - Divided into 2 cerebral hemispheres, left and right that are separated by the longitudinal fissure - - - - - - Amygdala- Emotional processing - Hippocampus - Learning and memory -- long term memories - 4 lobes of the brain (function and location) - - Frontal lobe -- attention (front of the brain) - Parietal lobe -- Spatial awareness, sensory processing, information, (behind the frontal lobe but above the occipital lobe) - Temporal lobe- Auditory information, speech comprehension, language processing (located on your temples) - Occipital lobe -- vision (very back of the brain) - Lateralization -- idea that the left and right hemispheres differ in their function ( brain is divided into roughly symmetrical hemispheres and connected by commissures (thick bundles of fibers)) - Corpus callosum (is the largest) major band going between the left and right and allows them to communicate with one another - Split-brain Patient research - Severed corpus callosum - Was a last-resort treatment for severe epilepsy (to help reduce the seizure activity) - Severely limits communication between the left and right hemispheres - Cutting the corpus callosum can result in contralaterization -- when you are presented information to the left visual field, it goes to the right. And when you are presented with info to the right it goes to the left. Example -- joe from the video, its like he has two brains. One side isn't allowing him to name it but he can draw it (visual side of the brain) once he draws it and sees it, he can name it. Communication between the hemispheres is cut. - Hemispheric specialization of functions - **Neuroscience techniques (pros and cons, what they can and can't do)** - - **CT (older version)** - **Look at brain structures** - **Not good at looking at activity or timing** - **Like an x ray** - **MRI (newer more detailed version)** - **Detect brain structures, not activity** - **Like an x ray** - **fMRI** - **strength -- spatially locating neural activity (where)** - **weakness -- temporally location neural activity (when) not good at looking at the timing** - **can get series of views, the axial view (top of the brain), the coronal view (from the front), sagittal l view (from the side)** - **Can see how the brain is functioning when giving stimuli to look at or fixate on and see that parts of the brain are lighting up** - **PET (functional)** - **Works like a fMRI (but is the older version)** - **Looking into how much glucose (brain food) is being used (red being most glucose consumption)** - **Good at activity not timing** - **EEG** - **Recording of the electrical communication within neurons** - **Used to study bread rhythms (eg, sleep stages) and event-related potentials (ERPs)** - **Looking at activity within his brain** - **Can look at precise timing but we don't get a picture if the function of the brain, just getting the brain waves** - **TMS** - **Magnetic pulses activate neurons** - **Produces temporary excitation or inhibition or stimulation** - **Can produce temporary lesions similar to neuropsychology -- provides casual data** - **Can be used to treat depression or anxiety or OCD by stimulating the neuron transmitters so there's more of them in the brain** - **Help stimulate dopamine pathways (dopamine makes us feel good)** - **In labs it's used to temporally disrupt signals to certain areas of the brain and look to see what results from that** - **Importance of combining techniques** - **Researchers can overcome limitations by combining to get us a full picture** - **That's why doctors order more than one scan** - **They can all lead to come to conclusions about correlations or relationships (looking into patterns)** - **Association areas** - **Motor areas** - **Primary sensory projection areas: arrival points in the motor cortex for signals from the sensory** - **Where the motor projection and the somatic sensory projection meet together, so the back of your frontal lobe and the front of your parietal lobe have this communication in the sensory projection area, that's the arrival point in the motor cortex for your sensory signals.** - **Primary motor projection areas: departure points in the motor cortex for signals that control muscle movement** - **Contralateral control** - **Info coming in through the left is going to the right and vice versa** - **More cortical coverage reflects greater motor precision** - **Sensory areas** - **Parietal lobe -- skin sensations** - **Temporal lobe -- auditory sensations** - **Occipital lobe -- visual sensations** - **Contralateral organization** - **Map of the sensory environment** - **Cortical space assigned based on acuity** - **Proximal body regions also represented proximally in the brain** - **Apraxia, agnosia, aphasia, neglect syndrome, prefrontal damage** - **Apraxia -- movement -- could be speech or physical movements. speech apraxia -- cant move mouth to produce appropriate sound** - **Agnosia -- inability to recognize, identifying objects** - **Aphasia -- ability to produce language** - **Neglect syndrome -- can't see half of our world, usually the left half isn't processed into consciousness** - **Prefrontal damage (won't be on our exam)** - Neurons and Glia - Functions of Glia (white matter) - Maintaining the life of the neuron to protect it - Guide development of nervous system - Repair damage in the nervous system - Control nutrient flow to neurons - Electrical insulation (myelin sheath -- allows us to protect the axon from breaking down and also allows us to transmit info faster) - Basic Parts of a neuron - Dendrites -- detect incoming signals from other neurons (fingers, taking in info, branch-like structure that are coming out from the soma, and receive the info into the neuron - Cell body -- contains the nucleus and cellular machinery (info comes through my fingers into my body -cell body, then is able to decide what kind if info this is, if we need to pass it on or what we need to do. Decides that this info needs to be transmitted - Axon -- transmits signals to other neurons (info goes down the axon) - Neurotransmitters - Synapse - Synaptic transmission - Travel across the synapse slows transmission but allows a single neuron to receive info from many other neurons - Connections are adjustable (i.e learning and plasticisty) - Coding All or none law - An action potential (when we decide to send a message) is always of the same magnitude , its either all or nothing. needs to reach a threshold and when it does its transmitted the exact same way - Electrical signal is always the same magnitude - Signal frequency can differ depending on the stimulus - Example -- like a sneeze -- you either sneeze all the way or don't **[Chapter 3 Visual Perception]** 1. Define perception a. Visual perception i. Akinetopsia -- unable to sense motion 1. Patient L.M 2. See "nothing between" location changes 3. Trouble with motion of cars, crossing the street, watching a movie, 2. Visual system b. Photoreceptors ii. Light cornea lens retina (the cornea and lens focus the light on the retina) iii. Rods and cones 4. The two types of photoreceptors 5. Rods -- sensitive to low levels of light , lower acuity, color-blind, none in the fovea. Rods are for your black, white , grey tones and located in the periphery 6. Cones -- cannot function in dim light , higher acuity, color-sensitive, mostly in or near the fovea; none in the periphery. Cones are for your color vision and are located in the center c. info transfer from eye (photoreceptors bipolar cells ganglion cells LGN V1) iv. A series of neurons and pathways communicate info from the retina to the visual cortex v. From the eye (photoreceptors bipolar cells ganglion cells ) vi. To the thalamus via the optic nerve 7. Lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) vii. Then to the occipital lobe 8. Area V1, the primary visual projection area , or primary located in the occipital lobe. where the visual info goes to be translated d. Lateral inhibition -- have diff neurons firing and inhibiting the neuron in the middle (due to visual coding) viii. When cells are stimulated, they inhibit the activity of neighboring cells ix. Results in edge enhancement x. Example -- simulated cell A , stimulated ell B and stimulated cell C, they're all stimulated and firing but A and C are going to inhibit B, prevent B from processing as much information because both if its neighbors are excited and active so it prevents activity for that cell in the middle e. Visual Coding : A relationship between the activity and the nervous system , so the sensation and the stimulus is somehow represented. What our perception of this sensation. xi. Single-cell recordings 9. What we are seeing comes from these single cells and how these single cells are being influenced by other surrounding cells. Each cell has a receptive field xii. Types of receptive fields (center-surround, edges, angles, motion, corners) 10. Center-surround ("dot detectors") a. A stimulus in the center of the receptive field leads to faster firing rates b. A stimulus in the surrounding areas of the receptive field leads to slower, below-baseline firing rates c. A stimulus covering the entire receptive field has the same effect as no stimulus 11. Edges d. Orientation 12. Angles 13. Motion e. And direction ("movement detectors") 14. Corners f. Parallel processing (everything is done at the same time) xiii. Advantages (speed, influence across multiple systems) 15. Allows for Speed and efficiency 16. Mutual influence among multiple systems -- resolves contradictory demands 17. Allows multiple systems to communicate and process info quickly xiv. What System (inferotemporal cortex) (the info enters the occipital lobe and exits the inferotemporal cortex- this pathway tells us what something is) (happens at the same time as the where system) 18. Identification 19. Pathway connecting the occipital lobe and inferotemporal cortex 20. Aids in identification of visual objects f. Damage leads to visual agnosia (or ability to recognize objects) xv. Where System (posterior parietal cortex) (info goes through occipital lobe and our the parietal cortex) 21. Location (helps us identify location) 22. Pathway connecting the occipital lobe and posterior parietal cortex 23. Aids in perception of an object's location g. Damage leads to difficulties reaching for objects (because we cant identify WHERE the location of the object is) The what and where system helps us identify and respond xvi. Binding problem between what and where systems (because it happens in a parallel fashion) -- we take some elements of the stimulus, and we may bind it with other elements of stimulus that we are seeing in close proximity and process at the same time. In other words, "The task of reuniting elements of stimulus that were addressed by different systems in different brain regions. h. An example of this would be if you're staring at a computer screen and I'm showing you red triangles and blue squares and you later report seeing a red square although you never saw it, you are taking different stimulus and bind them together. 24. Spatial position, neural synchrony and attention decrease binding errors i. Spatial position: overlay map of "which forms are where" with map of "which colors are where" , "which motions are where" etc. All the process at the same time, the more they overlap j. Neural synchrony: attributes are registered as belonging to the same objects if the neurons detecting these attributes fire in synchrony. k. Attention decreases binding errors: with insufficient attention, conjunction errors are common 3. Form Perception g. **Gestalt Psychologists -- the perceptual whole is often different than the sum of its parts** xvii. **Ambiguous images** 25. **where there's one set of visual features with two possible interpretations (can only see one angle at a time)** 26. **Example -- the Necker** xviii. **Figure/ground relationships -- figure is what you're looking at (in focus) and ground is what's in the background** xix. **Gestalt Principles (similarity, proximity, good continuation, closure, simplicity)** 27. **Closure -- brain closes the incomplete info ( closes the gaps )** 28. **Similarity -- we tend to group things together when they are similar (biases IRL like racism or naturally grouping things together because they look alike)** 29. **Proximity -- we tend to group things together that are close together** 30. **Good continuation -- we tend to see continuous paths rather than abrupt changes** 31. **Simplicity -- people naturally perceive complex images in the simplest possible form** h. Illusory contour xx. Is when we see edges even though they do not exist because we are trying to make sense of the image by filling in the blanks , so we use previous knowledge and experience to fill in those blanks 32. It can lead to perceptual errors i. Parallel processing xxi. Information gathering and interpretation j. Perceptual Constancy (brightness, size, shape) -- we perceive constant object properties even though sensory information about these attributes changes when viewing circumstances change xxii. Brightness constancy -- color is the same even though brightness is darker or lighter xxiii. Size constancy -- knowing objects are the same size by unconscious comparing to objects around xxiv. Shape constancy - correct perception of an object shape despite changes in its shape on the retina k. Depth perception -- we need to know distance to be successful at size judgements and to interact successfully with the surrounding world. Perception of distance depends on various distance cues (binocular, monocular, motion) xxv. Binocular cues -- two eyes working together 33. Binocular disparity: the difference between each eye's view of a stimulus l. Can lead to perception of depth even in the absence of other distance cues m. Retinal convergence -- how inward your eyes re focused towards on another also influence your distance judgement. So the closer something is the less convergence the farther away it is n. The farther out the object is the less disparity between eyes and when objects are closer the less xxvi. Monocular cues: (one eye) depth cues that depend only on one what each eye sees by itself 34. Lens adjustment -- allows the image to focus and there's muscles around the lends that adjust to be able to focus, the closer the object is the more adjustment is needed 35. Interposition -- pictorial cues, looking at the overlap of objects 36. Linear perspective -- the more converging lines are, the farther away they appear (ponzo illusion) 37. Texture gradients -- texture that you can see xxvii. Motion cues (for judging distance and depth) 38. Motion parallax -- things that are closer are often moving faster, we judge distance based on speed (often works with optic flow) 39. Optic flow -- how the sensations and images in your eye are moving and changes **[Chapter 4 Object Recognition]** 1. What is apperceptive agnosia? a. Patients with this can perceive an object's features but not the object in its entirety, so they can see the pieces but they can't out the whole picture together 2. **Influences on object recognition** b. **Bottom-up processing: processes that are directly shaped by the stimulus** i. **Data driven (looking at individual stimuli and putting them together to come to a conclusion)** ii. **Think of young children using this technique, individual features become building blocks and then we look at common objects and out those building blocks together to recognize** c. **Top-down processing: concept driven processing based on expectations and previous knowledge** iii. **Knowledge- or expectation-driven effects** iv. **Our concepts, expectations and memory influence our higher-level processes** v. **This form of processing is especially evident when the stimuli we are presented with is incomplete** 3. Object Recognition -- important because d. Visual search vi. Triesman and Gelade (1980) 1. Isolated feature/combined feature effect a. Search for a vertical like among horizontal lines , search for a green line among red lines.- Target differs from all other items b. Search for a red vertical line among red horizontal lines and green vertical lines -- reaction time depends on amount of stimuli present (serial processing -- going one by one, even though its fast, will always take longer than something we can process all at once) vii. Tachistoscope -- presented information very quickly and is a way to viii. Masking -- Mask showing the static image, it takes image out of the visual system so it cant be held there to be visually processed. ix. Factors affecting word recognition 2. Familiarity c. Frequently used words were recognized more 3. Priming d. Been exposed to this information beforehand or its recent e. Will recognize that word much between when exposed to it again x. word-superiority effect -- identify individual words better. It is easier to perceive and recognize letters-in-context than if they appear in isolation 4. Degree of well-formedness : how closely a letter sequence conforms to the typical patterns of spelling in the language f. The more well formed a letter sequence, the easier it is ti recognize the sequence, the greater the context effects produced by thr sequence on recognition i. Example -- HZYQ vs FIKE vs HIKE e. Recognizing 2-D images xi. Feature nets (series of steps that we go through in order to read a word) (mainly bottom up processing) 5. Feature detectors (starting here) g. Curves, see what features are present to recognize letters 6. Letter detectors (2^nd^ step) h. Putting the feature detectors to create letters 7. Bigram detectors (3^rd^ step) 8. Word detectors (4^th^ step) i. We put everything together and recognize the word 9. Understand overregularization errors xii. Recognition by components model (3-D images) -- applies the feature net model to recognition of 3 dimensional objects 10. Geons 11. Viewpoint invariant xiii. **Are faces special?** 12. **Prosopagnosia** j. **A type of Agnosia also known as face blindness** 13. **FFA vs PPA** 14. **Inversion Effect** 15. **Composite effect** 16. **Own-race bias (cross race effect)** 17. **Holistic vs Featural recognition** 18. **Viewpoint dependent** **Example of top down processing** **Based on knowledge and experience, when given incomplete info** - **Going into a bar seeing a mug of yellow liquid, don't say that's apple juice, instead knowing its beer because of prior knowledge and expectation** **Bottom up** **When we have very little experience and are trying to make a complete picture with bits and pieces (individual features)**