PSYCH C120

What is introspectionism, and who were key introspectionists? - Psychology emerged as a science

Introspectionism - The process through which you "look within," to observe and record the contents of your own mental life. (pg 10) - Mentalism (consciousness)
Key Introspectionists - Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and his student Edward Bradford Titchener (18

Started the new enterprise of research psychology

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and his student Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927)

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

- performed first psych experiment (Leipzig) - seeking to understand conscious experiences and measure it
- substructures and subsections

What were the
primary methods of introspectionism?

- highly trained subjects observed and recorded the content and sequence of their thoughts

Edward B Titchener

Psychology that studied the structure of the mind
- established rigorous procedures for understanding sensations

What are the central problems with introspectionism as an approach to explaining cognition?

Central Problem - Introspections are subjective - no objective way of understanding different introspections

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Sigmund Freud - mind is an ice berg - one-seventh of mind above water
- unconscious: motives, desires, aggression, sexual desires
- indirect techniques (dream - analysis)

Why was psychoanalysis important in terms of the history of cognitive psychology?

Much of human cognition is unconscious
- techniques to access material indirectly

How did Hermann von Helmholtz's demonstration of unconscious inferrence
foreshadow the cognitive approach to cognition?

Unconscious inference, also referred to as unconscious conclusion, is a term of perceptual psychology coined in 1867 by the German physicist and polymath Hermann von Helmholtz to describe an involuntary, pre-rational and reflex-like mechanism which is par

What is behaviorism, and who were key behaviorists?

Behaviorist Agenda
- Psychology should formulate laws about relationship between environment (stimulus) and behavior (response)
-Examined how behavior changes in response to environmental stimuli - reward or punishment.
Key behaviorists-
John B. Watson (1

What are the primary
theoretical claims and methods of behaviorism?

Primary Theoretical claims and methods of behaviorism -
- promoted psychology as a science
- psychological constructs should have been operational definitions in terms of observable behavior

Legacy of Behaviorism

- Promoted psychology as a science
- Psychological constructs should have operational de?nitions in terms of observable behavior.
-Classical (Pavlovian) Conditioning (Ivan Pavlov (1849-??1936))
(pair ucs with cs to form an ucr)
-Operant Conditioning
- sti

What are the central problems with
behaviorism as an approach to explaining psychological phenomena?

No room for internal, mental processes and representations.

What is cognitive psychology and its scope?

is the scientific study of mind and mental function, including learning, memory, attention, perception, reasoning, language, conceptual development, and decision making. The modern study of cognition rests on the premise that the brain can be understood a

What was the cognitive revolution?

People

What were some of the key influences that led to cognitive psychology's rise?

Immanuel Kant - Transcendentalism (method) - begin with observable facts and then work backward from these observations (what are the underlying causes that led to these effects)
- "inference to best explanation"
- visible effects rom an invisible cause

cognitive psychology refers to

the study of human mental processes and their role in thinking, feeling, and behaving.
Cognitive psychology is also a reductionist approach. This means that all behaviour, no matter how complex can be reduced to simple cognitive processes, like memory or

What
is information processing, and why is it important in cognitive psychology?

The information processing approach is based on a number of assumptions, including:
Information made available from the environment is processed by a series of processing systems (e.g. attention, perception, short-term memory);
These processing systems tr

The Cognitive Approach to Cognition

- Structure of Mental Representation
- Underlying Mental Processes

Structure of Mental Representation

- The form information is represented in ...in the human mind.Example - Campanile. Image, but also verbal representation - what Campanile means, what it sounds like.Cognitive map of the campus or or Berkeley - a spatial representation.Underlying processes

What is
the computer metaphor of cognition?

Human information processing - information storage, manipulation, transformation, retrieval
- the hardware matters more - cognitive models neurally inspired
The birth of computer science provided further conceptual tools to cognitive psychology, and led t

In what ways is cognitive psychology similar
and different to introspectionism and behaviorism?

Cognitive Psychology is similar to introspectionism and behaviorism in that they both use mechanism as a fundamental assumption. Both view human action, mental or otherwise, as determined by physical laws. Cognitivism goes beyond behaviorism in that it ex

Who were central figures early in cognitive psychology's history?

Immanuel Kant (transcendentalism)

Who was Donald
Broadbent, and how was his work central to the development of cognitive
psychology?

A Shifting Zeitgeist, Post WWII
- Broadbent's theory
- the filter model
senses -> short-term store -> filter -> limited capacity channel -> long term memory (back to filter)
A Shifting Zeitgeist
The decline of behaviorism, then, began around the time of W

How was Allen Newell and Herbert Simon's Logic Theorist central?

Logic Theorist is a computer program written in 1955 and 1956 by Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon and Cliff Shaw. It was the first program deliberately engineered to mimic the problem solving skills of a human being and is called "the first artificial intel

What is meant by George Miller's "magical number seven, plus or minus two," and
why was it a challenge to behaviorism?

- Capacity limit in short-??term memory - Chunking
- bringing the mathematical theory of information and communication into psychology; capacity limitations in cognitive processing; chunking;
Another influential psychologist was George Miller, also 1956 -

What is the difference between how
behaviorists and cognitivists such as Noam Chomsky view language?

Behaviorists (Skinner) see language learning as positive reinforcement "I wanna cookie!" - reinforcement = getting cookie.
Chomsky: "Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are ?xed, but the manner in which the principles of genera

Behavior uses -

the stimulus and response metaphor to interpret exhibited behavior in the world and sets its inquiry according to the affordances of the metaphor

Cognitivism uses

information processing as a way to explain how humans perceive, remember, and understand the world around them. Because cognitive science bases its inquiry within the information processing metaphor, the conclusions about mental Evans 458 are only as obje

What are the three themes of the course outlined in lecture? Why are they important
in understanding cognition? What are some ways that knowledge and memory are
important for cognition?

three themes:
1)understanding human cognition, such as the role of conscious and unconscious processes;
2) the nature and structure of mental representation;
3) and the relation between mind and brain.
They are important as they all interact with each oth

Transformational Grammar

Surface Structure
- "The jock pursued the sorority girl."
- "The sorority girl was pursued by the jock."
Deep Structure -
The meaning
Transformational Rule

Controlled Laboratory Experiment

A procedure where a researcher systematically manipulates and observes elements of a situation in order to answer a speci?c question.

Theory and Hypothesis

Theory - Organized body of general explanatory principles regarding a phenonomenon
Hypothesis - Tentative proposal regarding expected empirical consequences of the theory derived from the theory

How do cognitive psychologists study the mind? What are two of their chief
concerns?

Cognitive psychologists study the mind using the scientific method and the informational theory. WHAT ARE 2 CHIEF CONCERNS

� What is Kant's transcendental method? How does research on working memory
illustrate Kantian logic?

begin with observable facts and then work backward from these observations (what are the underlying causes that led to these effects)
- research on working memory illustrates that there are "effects" for which we need to seek a "cause" and so we need to m

What are the components of a controlled laboratory study on cognition? What are
some examples? What kinds of dependent measures do cognitive psychologists
use?

Components of a controlled laboratory study on cognition:
-Experimental Group - group that receives a particular treatment
-Control Group - group that doesn't receive a treatment, or comparison group
-Independent Variable - the variable the experimenter m

How does the levels of processing example described in lecture illustrate the
components of a controlled laboratory study?

Theory - Memory varies along a continuous dimension in terms of depth of processing
Hypothesis - Recall following deep processing better than shallow
Independent variable - level of processing (deep vs shallow)
Dependent variable - percentage of words rec

What is Baddeley and Hitch's theory of working memory, and what is evidence in
support of it? Is the evidence useful and accurate?

Building on this research, Baddeley and Hitch (1974) developed an alternative model of short-term memory which they called working memory (see fig 1).
Working memory is short-term memory. Instead of all information going into one single store, there are d

What is the distinction between software and hardware when it comes to studying cognition?
What are problems with just looking at the software? Is the computer a good metaphor for
cognition?

Hardware is neural and software is cognitive.

Cognitive Neuroscience

Intersection of neuroscience and cognitive psychology
0Guiding idea -??-?? the mind is what the brain does -Understanding what di?erent parts of the brain do, and how they interact

� What is converging evidence, and why is it important?

- Results from studies using di?erent methodologies pointing to the same conclusion
- they provide a strong bases of support

What is neuropsychology? What can the study of patients with brain damage tell us about
normal cognition? What is localization of function? What disorders can emerge from
lesions in association areas of the cerebral cortex?

The study of the brain's structures and how they relate to psychological functions
- Patients with brain damage allow inferences about the neural basis of normal cognition
What can the study of patients with brain damage tell us about
normal cognition?
--

What is Capgras Syndrome, and what can it tell us about the
processes involved in face recognition?

-The delusion that signi?cant others have been replaced by impostors, robots or aliens
what can it tell us about the
processes involved in face recognition?
- it tells us that the temporable lobe (amygdala) is the emotional hub , this lesions causes the f

Who was H.M., and what does his case
tell us about normal memory?

Anterograde amnesia - inability to remember events since the onset of injury
Temporally-??graded retrograde amnesia -??-?? inability to remember events prior to injury, with events closest to injury more a?ected than remote events
Why was his case importa

What is neuroimaging? How can studies employing fMRI or PET inform us about the
processes involved in cognition? What is a key limitation of functional neuroimaging?

neuroimaging allows us to take precise three-dimensional pictures of the brain.
Studies such as fMRI and PET inform us about the process involved in cognition by tracking fueled used by the brain (either glucose (pet) or oxygen (fMRI)) as the move to diff

What are electrophysiological approaches to studying cognition, and what is a key
advantage they have over fMRI and PET? What is a key advantage fMRI and PET have
over EEG and ERPs?

Electrophysiological approaches to studying cognition include electroencephalograph and event related potentials. ANDMEG
- a recording of voltage changes occuring at the scalp that reflect activity in the brain underneath. The key advantage over fMRI and

� What is TMS, and how is it useful for studying cognition? What key advantage does it have
over fMRI and PET?

TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation)TMS) is a noninvasive method used to stimulate small regions of the brain. During a TMS procedure, a magnetic field generator, or "coil", is placed near the head of the person receiving the treatment. :
It is useful

What is the goal of vision? What are bottom-up and top-down processes, and what
role do they play in visual perception? What are challenges to visual perception?

Overarching Goal � To have a sense of the three-dimensional structure of the outside world, so we can navigate through it and interact with it
In a Particular Context
- What are the individual objects?
- Where are they located?
-What are they doing?
What

What are the distal stimulus, proximal stimulus, and transduction? How does this
relate to the task of perception?

Distal Stimulus - Object or event that is in the environment
Proximal Stimulus - Pattern of energy produced by the distal stimulus that falls on our sensory receptors
Transduction - Conversion of the proximal stimulus into a neural impulse
The Task of Per

Sensation

The process of stimulating the sensory organ receptor cells and relaying their initial information to higher centers for further processing

Perception

process by which we select organize, and interpret sensory input -> Forming a mental representation

What are the components of the visual system? What is parallel processing in vision?

Parallel processing is the ability of the brain to simultaneously process incoming stimuli of differing quality.

What are the "what" and "where" pathways?

What is in the inferotemporal lobe
where is in the posterior parietal cortex

Explain the early stages of object recognition. What neural and behavioral evidence
is there for the detection of visual features? What is the "binding problem"?

Receptor fields that respond to specific orientations.
- Form Perception
- The process through which we see the basic shape, size, and position of an object
Feature detection is a process by which the nervous system sorts or filters complex natural stimul

Who were the
Gestalt psychologists and what did they argue about perception?

Early in the 20th century a group called called the "Gestalt Psychologists" noted that our perception of the visual world is organized in ways that the stimulus input is not. They argued that the organization of stimulus must be contributed by the perceiv

What did Jerome
Bruner mean by "beyond the information given"?

Similar to Gestalt Psychologists, he said this to describe some of the ways that our perception of a stimulus differs from (and goes beyond) the stimulus itself.

What is form perception?

Form Perception - the process through which people see the basic shape, size, and position of an object

What are size and shape constancy?

is the tendency to see familiar objects as having standard shape, size, color, or location, regardless of changes in the angle of perspective, distance, or lighting. The impression tends to conform to the object as it is assumed to be, rather than to the

What are figure-ground relations?

the determination of what is the figure (the depicted object, displayed against a background and what is the ground)

What do ambiguous (reversible) figures tell us about the role of the perceiver?

Reversible figure are called that because people routinely perceive it first one way, and then another. Eit

What is object recognition? What are the advantages and disadvantages of
different models of object recognition?

Object recognition - the steps or processes through which people identify the objects they encounter in the world around them.
Challenges to Object recognition
1) Viewpoint Dependence -An object can be viewed from an in?nite combination of possible angles

� What is visual object agnosia? Which visual pathway is compromised?

- Inability to recognize familiar objects, even though there is no sensory de?cit
-Spared ability to recognize visual orientation, or reach for an object

Recognition via Multiple Views

- We have stored in memory a number of di?erent views of each object
- Recognition involves matching the current view of an object with one of the views in memory
- If doesn't match, rotate the current view to bring it into alignment with one of the views

� Is face recognition special? What kind of theory is needed to account for findings on
face recognition, such as the inversion effect?

YES, two characteristics are needed. The task has to involve recognizing specific individuals within a category, and the category has to be an extremely familiar one.
Prospagnosia is the inability to recognize faces - not strictly a face recognition disor

recognition-by-components theory

viewpoint independence is a blessing and a curse. It was initially thought to be a good thing that the theory was not dependent on viewpoint, but there has been growing evidence in recent years that object recognition can be viewpoint-dependent, and hence

Do models of object recognition
provide a good account of face recognition?

No they do not since they are processed in different areas of the brain

What is a holistic account of face
recognition?

The face is viewed as a whole

What did the Yin (1969) study investigate? What are the implications
of the results for our understanding of face recognition?

Yin (1969) -- Inverted faces are harder to recognize than upright; houses,airplanes, and men in motion a smaller difference.

What are challenges to word recognition? What is the role of prior knowledge and
context in word recognition?

Exemplar Variation
- Many di?erent instances of each printed word
Spatial Variation
- Variation in the location of letters

What is the
word superiority effect and degrees of well-formedness? How can these kinds of
effects be explained?

...

What factors influence word recognition?

Degrees of well formedness (how wordlike a letter string is), word frequency (high/low), and pattern of errors- comform to spelling hours

What is priming, and why does it improve recognition of lowfrequency
words? What do errors tell us about how words are recognized?

They warm up certain neurons to fire. Another reliable pattern is that recognition errors, when they occur, are quite systematic, with the input typically perceived as being more regular than it actually is. These findings together indicate that recogniti

What is a feature net, and what is the Pandemonium model? What are the different
layers in the network?

Pandemonium Model
- feature detectors
- cognitive detectors
- decision detectors...
Feature net - The initial layer, at the bottom, comprises detectors for features.
- Subsequent layers detect more complex patterns like letters, and then words.

What are
bigram detectors, and how can including a layer of bigram detectors account for
degrees of well-formedness? How does the network recover from confusion to
avoid errors? How are ambiguous inputs resolved? How can recognition errors be
explained? W

Bigram Detectors: A pair of letters.
- recovering from errors - network of these detectors can accomplish a great deal; for example, it can interpret ambiguous inputs, recover from its own errors, and make inferences about barely viewed stimuli.
- The fea

McClelland & Rumelhart (1981) Model

The model contains 3 levels: the feature level, the letter level L, and the word level. At each level, there are nodes (the circles in figure 3.16 of Reisberg) that stand for particular features, letters, or words.Nodes have levels of activation. The acti

How does McClelland and Rumelhart's (1981) PDP model resemble and differ from
Pandemonium and other early feature nets? What are excitatory and inhibitory
connections? Why is it important to have inhibitory connections? What is the role of top-down proces

The McClelland and Rumelhart model differs from others as it shows back and forth signaling toward and away from the brain.

The model contains 3 levels: the feature level, the letter level L, and the word level. At each level, there are nodes (the circles in figure 3.16 of Reisberg) that stand for particular features, letters, or words.Nodes have levels of activation. The acti

...

Association cortex

These areas perform the task of associating simple ideas and sensations in order to form more complex thoughts and behaviors

Apraxias

Some lesions in the frontal lobe produce apraxias which are disturbances in the initiation or organization of voluntary action.

Agnosias

disruptions in the ability to identify familiar objects

Aphasia

Damage near the lateral fissure can result in disruption to language capacities

What is selective attention, and what is its purpose? What are some examples of selective attention?

Selecting a limit number of items in the environment for further processing, and ignoring the others
So ATTENTION can be seen then as a gatekeeper - we SELECT certain items to receive further processing.For example - At a party, if you're having a convers

Word Superiority Effect

� The ?nding that letters are more easily read when they are in words than when they are presented either in isolation or in nonwords

Degrees of Well-??Formedness

How wordlike a letter string is
pseudoword - ZORK, MURE illegal nonword - BTCX, HJMR

Pandemonium: Selfridge (1959)

a pattern is first perceived in its parts before the "whole".

Pure Alexia

Word blindness" -??-?? Di?culty recognizing written sequences of letters, in the absence of other language-related impairments -> Letter-by-letter reading
-Lesions in the visual word form area in leo occipito-temporal cortex ("what" pathway)
- Dedicated

What is the dichotic listening task? What are the attended and unattended channels, and what is shadowing?

So, in the case of the dichotic listening task, then, Broadbent assumed that the messages to both ears were registered but that at some point the subjects selected one ear to listen with.
Attended channels - At this point, a person SELECT which message to

What are early- and late-selection theories of attention? What is the attenuator theory? What is the evidence for and against each?

Different theories about when that selection occurs are referred to as early selection or late selection theories depending on how early or late they think the bottleneck is.!
-----Early Selection
-The bottleneck is before we perceive the stimulus ! Certa

What is the cocktail party phenomenon, and how can it be explained? According to Wood & Cowan, what are the limitations of Moray's (1959) demonstration of the cocktail party effect? How did Wood & Cowan address these limitations, and what were their findi

One of the first demonstrations of this was a study by Moray (1959) on what became known as the cocktail party phenomenon. Subjects shadowed a short prose passage recorded in a male voice in one ear, while ignoring another, similar passage played to the o

What is spatial attention? What is the spotlight metaphor? What evidence is there for an attentional spotlight?

The ability to focus on a particular position in space and in turn be prepared for a stimulus. The spotlight metaphor is the idea that directing our visual attention can be compared to a spotlight. Evidence for an attentional spotlight was shown was havin

What is divided attention, and what are some examples?

Divided Attention & Different Tasks
This shows the results of a dichotic listening study where subjects heard a list of words in one ear and shadowed them.In one condition, subjects heard another word list in the other ear, and were supposed to memorize t

A Limitation or Bottleneck

Our information-processing capacity can't make sense of the constant input from many sources all at once. In other words, we have a LIMITATION, or BOTTLENECK, in our ability to deal with multiple inputs.

The First Early-Selection Filter Theory: Broadbent (1958)

The first early-selection theory was Donald Broadbent's Filter Theory, which we talked about back in Lecture 4, when we were discussing the early stages of cognitive psychology.
According to this theory, we have a central processing system - or limited ca

Challenge to Early-Selection Theories

Now a challenge to early-selection theories comes from findings indicating that we can select messages to process on the basis of their semantic content, not just physical characteristics.