Lesson 3 & 4 Cognitive Psychology PDF

LESSON 3: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE - research suggests that the mind is a product of the brain. COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE - all of our thoughts and behaviors result from - F...

LESSON 3: COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE - research suggests that the mind is a product of the brain. COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE - all of our thoughts and behaviors result from - Field of study linking the brain and other the interactions of the physical parts of the brain. aspects of the nervous system to cognitive processing and, ultimately, to behavior. FROM NEURON TO THE BRAIN: STRUCTURE OF THE NEURONS LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION NEURONS - Whether specific areas of the brain control specific abilities or behaviors. Individual neural cell Transmit electrical signals from one THE MISSION OF COGNITIVE location to another in the nervous system NEUROSCIENCE SOMA - determine how the brain processes information, builds memories, and makes Responsible for the life of the neuron decisions. Connects the dendrites to the axon - figure out what makes us who we are. DENDRITES NEUROSCIENCE IS A RELATIVELY NEW Receives information from other neurons FIELD AXON - combines biology and psychology to connect neural functions to behaviors. Long, thin tube that extends from the soma and responds to the information, - “Neuroscience” was first used in the 1960s when appropriate WHICH PARTS MATTER? MYELIN - explanations in cognitive neuroscience can be White fatty substance which insulates at the level of individual molecules or at the level and protects axons and speeds up the of systems or neurons. conduction of information - all thoughts, memories, moods, and decisions NODES OF RANVIER are brought about by the physical substance of the brain. Small gaps in the myelin coating along the axon, which serve to increase - alterations to the anatomy or chemistry of the conduction speed even more brain result in changes to behavior. TERMINAL BUTTONS - the brain and therefore our thoughts and behaviors are shaped by evolution. Small knobs found at the ends of the branches of an axon Adaptation SYPNASE Mechanisms such as behaviors or physical traits that enhance the Small gaps, which serve as a juncture reproductive success of organisms that between the terminal buttons of neurons possess them. and dendrites Our current thoughts or behaviors are adaptations that benefitted our FROM NEURON TO THE BRAIN: ancestors. ORGANIZATION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM - the “mind” seems separate from the brain, PERIPHERAL NERVOUS SYSTEM (PNS) apparently non-physical. - all of the nerve cells except those of the brain and the spinal cord Consists of: 3. ELECTRICAL RECORDINGS Somatic voluntary part (sensory and EEG motor nerves) Recording of electrical activity in the Autonomic involuntary part brain, which appears as waves of Sympathetic (activated under stress) various widths and heights Parasympathetic (maintains body functions) ERP CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM EEG waves associated with a particular event or task averaged over Consists of: a large number of trials Brain – most directly controls our ADVANTAGE thoughts, emotions, and motivations Spinal Cord Very good temporal resolution METHODS OF COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE 4. STATIC IMAGING TECHNIQUES NEURONS - allow for the observation of large abnormalities of the brain, such as damage resulting from - individual neural cell strokes and tumors - transmits electrical signals from one location to Examples: another in the nervous system CT: computerized axial tomography 1. POSTMORTEM STUDIES MRI: magnetic resonance imaging Characterization - A strong magnetic field is passed through the brain of a patient and Researchers look carefully at the a rotating scanner detects various behavior of people who show signs of patterns of electromagnetic brain damage while they are alive changes in the molecules of the After the patients die, the researchers brain examine the patient’s brains for lesions. 5. METABOLIC IMAGING Examples - relies on changes that take place within the Paul Broca’s patient Tan brain as a result of increased consumption of Speech problems, linked to lesions in glucose or oxygen in active areas of the brain an area of the frontal lobe now called Broca’s area Examples: 2. ANIMAL STUDIES PET: positron emission tomography - Increased glucose consumption in Single-cell recordings active brain areas Microelectrodes are inserted into the fMRI: functional magnetic resonance brain of an animal to measure the imaging activity of a single neuron - increased oxygen consumption in active brain areas Selective lesioning Surgically removing or damaging part of the brain to observe resulting functional deficits CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE BRAIN - Experiments are repeated and extended to show they are reproducible. - Results are subjected to independent peer IS THE BRAIN EQUIPPED TO UNDERSTAND review to reduce the biases that may have been ITSELF? introduced by the experimenter. The brain has evolved to control three specific THE PAYOFFS OF COGNITIVE classes of behaviors: NEUROSCIENCE Homeostatic behaviors – which maintain a HEALING DISORDERED normal range of survival parameter - Depression affects as many as 1 in 10 Agonistic behaviors – which defends against individuals. rivals - Techniques such as rTMS and deep brain Reproductive behaviors – which promote the stimulation have been identified that can help continuation of the species. alleviate the symptoms of conditions such as BIASES AND PITFALLS IN HUMAN depression, Parkinson’s disease, and COGNITION obsessive-compulsive disorder. - the anchoring bias refers to the tendency to be ENHANCING HUMAN ABILITIES overly influenced by a single observation, - Understanding how humans make decisions typically the first observation can provide insight into how to encourage us to - the confirmation bias is the tendency to seek make better decisions. out and emphasize information that matches our - Brain interface devices, such as cochlear existing beliefs implants and implanted electrodes to enable - there is a long list of biases and heuristics that paralyzed patients to move devices outside their adversely affect our ability to observe and draw own body, can restore lost functions to accurate conclusions about our own brain individuals Availability heuristic BLUEPRINTS FOR ARTIFICIAL COGNITION Affect heuristic - Researchers are learning from the brain to illusory correlation improve the abilities of our computing devices, belief bias such as speech recognition, locomotion, and A TOOLBOX OF CRITICAL-THINKING object recognition. TECHNIQUES - Such artificial “neural networks” are now being The scientific method provides a systematic way used to recognize patterns of brain activity in to study a process and avoid biases and brain imaging studies. heuristics. - Much remains to be done to find artificial - Make observations about the world. equivalents to much human cognition - Eyewitnesses are very compelling in the Develop a hypothesis to explain the courtroom, but are notoriously unreliable. observations. Generate testable predictions about the - Cognitive neuroscience can help understand hypothesis. and explain the factors that influence the Perform experiments to test the memory of such witnesses predictions BRAIN-COMPATIBLE SOCIAL POLICIES - The results of one experiment help to refine the hypotheses for the next experiment. - our policies regarding punishment and treatment of addicts. - Such research suggests ways to attack the REALTIONSHIP BETWEEN ATTENTION AND demand for the drugs within the reward system CONSCIOUSNESS of the brain. ATTENTION + CONSCIOUSNESS - Modern neuroscientific research has important implications for criminal punishment and NO ATTENTION + NO CONSCIOUSNESS rehabilitation. ATTENTION + NO CONSCIOUSNESS - It is estimated that about 25% of the American NO ATTENTION + CONSCIOUSNESS prison population has a mental illness, so providing appropriate care is important. CONCEPTS OF ATTENTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS LESSON 4: ATTENTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS PRECONCIOUS PROCESSING ATTENTION - information that is available for cognitive processing but that currently lies outside of - is the means by which we actively process a conscious awareness exists at the preconscious limited amount of information from the level of awareness enormous amount of information available through our senses, our stored memories, and PRIMING our other cognitive process. - processing of certain stimuli is facilitated by CONCIOUSNESS prior presentation of the same or similar stimuli. Sometimes we are aware of the prime - more directly concerned with awareness – it sometimes we are not. Even when we are not includes both the feeling of awareness and the aware of the prime, the prime will influence the content of awareness, some of which may be processing of the target. under the focus of attention. ANTONY MARCEL (1983) THE NATURE OF ATTENTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS - participants had to classify series of words into various categories (e.g. pine-plant) DIFFERENT CONCEPTIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS - primes where words with two meanings such as palm followed by target word (tree or hand) BIOPSYCHOLOGICAL Is this a plant? - different levels of arousal (sleep, coma, hyperactivity) Prime – PALM METACOGNITIVE Target – TREE - reflection on your own cognitive process - if the participant was consciously aware of seeing the word “palm”, the mental pathway for - being aware of cognitive processes only one meaning was activated PSYCHOANALYTIC - if the word “palm” was presented so briefly that - Unconscious information – we do not have the person was unaware of seeing the word, access to it in normal awakened state both meanings of the word appeared to be activated. PHENOMENOLOGICAL TIP-OF-THE-TONGUE PHENOMENON - what it is like to have an experience of something - we try to remember something that is known to be stored in memory but that cannot quite be - individual, subjective aspects of experience retrieved - people who can not come up with the word, but ATTENTION who thought they knew it, could identify the first letter, indicate the number of syllables, or 1. VIGILANCE AND SIGNAL DETECTION approximate the word’s sounds - we vigilantly try to detect whether we did or did BLINDSIGHT not sense a signal (a particular target stimulus of interest) - lesions in some areas of the visual cortex VIGILANCE - patients claim to be blind - a person’s ability to attend to a field of - when forced to guess about a stimulus in the stimulation over a prolonged period, during “blind” region, they correctly guess locations which the person seeks to detect the and orientations of objects at above-chance appearance of a particular target stimulus levels EXAMPLE: - (Mackworth, 1948) CONTROLLED VERSUS AUTOMATIC PROCESSES - participants were watching a clock hand took a double step CONTROLLED PROCESS - substantial deterioration after half an hour of - require intentional effort; full conscious observation awareness; consume many attentional resources; performed serially; relatively slow - vigilance can be increased with training AUTOMATIC PROCESS 2. SEARCH - little or no intention or effort; occur outside of SEARCH conscious awareness; do not require a lot of - scan the environment for particular features attention, performed by parallel processing; fast - whereas vigilance involves passively waiting - many tasks that start off as controlled for a signal stimulus to appear, search involves processes eventually become automatic ones actively seeking out the target AUTOMATIZATION DISTRACTERS - the process by which a procedure changes - nontarget stimuli that divert our attention away from being highly conscious to being relatively from the target stimuli automatic - can cause false alarm HABITUATION 2 KINDS OF SEARCH: - we become accustomed to a stimulus, we gradually notice it less and less (e.g. music and FEATURE SEARCH studying) - when we can look for some distinctive features DISHABITUATION of a target we simply scan the environment for those features - a change in a familiar stimulus prompts us to start noticing the stimulus again CONJUCTION SEARCH SENSORY ADAPTATION - we look for a particular combination of features - physiological phenomenon; not subject to conscious control; occurs directly in the sense of organ, not the brain SEARCH:THEORY trying to ignore the word that is printed with the ink of that color FEATURE-INTEGRATION THEORY (ANNE TREISMAN) - since reading is an automatic process (not - Each of us has mental map for representing readily subject to your conscious control) you the given set of features for a particular item find it difficult intentionally to refrain from reading (shape, size, color features) and instead to concentrate on identifying the color of the ink - During feature searches we monitor the relevant feature map for the presence of any THE COCKTAIL PARTY PROBLEM (CHERRY, activation in the visual field 1953) - During conjunction searches, we can simply - the process of tracking one conversation in the use the map of features, we must conjoin two or face of the distraction of other conversations more features into an object representation at a particular location SHADOWING SIMILARITY THEORY (DUNCAN AND - listening to two different messages and HUMPHREYS) repeating back only one of the messages as soon as possible after you hear it - As the similarity between target and distracter increases, so does the difficulty in detecting the DICHOTIC PRESENTATION target stimuli - listening to two different messages (presenting - Factors influencing search a different message to each ear) and attending - Similarity between the target and the to only one of them distracters SELECTIVE ATTENTION: FILTER AND - Similarity among distracters (p. 86, 87) BOTTLENECK THEORIES GUIDED SEARCH THEORY (CAVE AND WOLFE) BROADBENT’S MODEL - all searches involve two consecutive stages - we filter information right after it is registered at the sensory level - Parallel Stage – simultaneous activation of all the potential targets MORAY’S SELECTIVE FILTER MODEL - Serial Stage – sequential evaluation of - selective filter blocks out most information at each of the activated elements the sensory level, but some highly salient MOVEMENT-FILTER THEORY (MCLEOD ET messages are so powerful that they burst AL.) through the filtering mechanism (e.g. your - Movement-filter – can direct attention to name) stimuli with a common movement TREISMAN’S ATTENUATION MODEL characteristics 1. We preattentively analyze the physical - movement can both enhance and inhibit visual properties of a stimulus (stimuli with search target properties) 3. SELECTIVE ATTENTION 2. We analyze whether a given stimulus has a pattern, such as speech or music STROOP EFFECT (STROOP, 1935) 3. We sequentially evaluate the incoming - demonstrates the psychological difficulty in messages, assigning appropriate selectively attending to the color of the ink and meanings to the selected stimuli messages DEUTSCH AND DEUTSCH’S LATE FILTER MODEL - placed the signal-blocking filter later in the process, after sensory analysis and also after some perceptual and conceptual analysis of input had taken place NEISSER’S SYNTHESIS - two processes governing attention - Preattentive Processes (rapid, automatic, parallel) - Attentive Processes (controlled, occur later, serial) SELECTIVE ATTENTION: ATTENTIONAL- RESOURCE THEORIES - we have attentional resources specific to a given modality explains why we can study and listen to a music but not listen to news 4. DIVIDED ATTENTION - the attentional system must perform two or more discrete tasks at the same time Much better performance at two or more automatic tasks (driving a car and speaking) than controlled tasks (wring and comprehending read text)