Term
-Scientific Method...
Consists of what? |
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Definition
Emperical Validation
Falsification
Methodological Naturalism
Experimental Control
Occam's Razor
Peer Review
Replication |
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Definition
Ideas that are tested with observations.
*Objectivity= The test results of the tests can be demonstrated to anybody. |
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Definition
| Ideas that cannot be clearly tested are rejected. |
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| Methodological Naturalism |
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Definition
Elements of theories must be natural (part of the physical world)
*Limited to the study of natural causes |
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Definition
| The part of the experiment left untouched (The CONTROL GROUP) |
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Definition
Simple accounts are preferred to complex ones.
*theories should not be able to predict lots of different outcomes. do NOT make unnecessary assumptions. |
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Definition
| Results must be savagely criticized by other scientists |
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Definition
| Results must be verified independently |
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Definition
| The study of mental processes and their role in thinking, feeling, and behaving. |
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Term
Cognitive Science ...
consists of what? |
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Definition
The integration of: cognitive psychology, biology, anthropology, computer science, linguistics
and philosophy |
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Term
| Cognitive Science VS. Cognitive Psychology. |
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Definition
Cognitive Science - Is mostly concerned with gathering data through research. It has a much broader scope than cognitive psychology since it has links to philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience, anthropology, biology, linguistics etcetera.
Cognitive Psychology - Cognitive psychologists run psychological experiments that involve human participants, and the goal of these experiments is to gather information that have to do with how the human mind takes it in processes it and acts upon the inputs it receives from the outside world. |
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Term
| “(Mental) Representation” |
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Definition
- An internal code that is linked to an external input
- Code can produce some of the same effects as the true external event.
- You can “hear” your thoughts - internal events replicate effect of sound.
- Mental images are another kind of mental representation. |
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Term
“Cognitive Architecture."...
Consists of what two models? |
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Definition
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Term
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Definition
| Elements are abstract modules for storing or manipulating information! |
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Definition
| Elements of the model are comparable to neurons or populations of neurons. Elements can excite each other through a web of connections that link input to output. |
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Term
| Distributed representations —> (in connectionist models) |
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Definition
Stimuli are represented as a pattern over many neural units.
- not a single unit represents a stimulus by itself
- A given unit can be part of the representation of many different stimuli
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Term
| Serial VS. Parallel Processing |
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Definition
Serial - Cognitive processes go in order, the next one does not begin until the previous one ends/finishes. Parallel- Multiple processes going on at the same time.
i.e. visual search (think highlights) serial processing - looking for little pieces at a time vs. parallel - look for red X |
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Term
| What are the three aspects of consciousness? |
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Definition
Self knowledge — (an introspective knowledge into one’s own memory capabilities —> meta-memory AND meta cognition —> one’s one awareness and understanding of their though processes.)
*Applying knowledge about our own cognitive processes.
- Informational access — Our capacity/ability to report on mental representations and processes - Sentience — Our Capacity/ability for raw sensations, feelings and subjective experience. |
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Term
| how many neurons does the brain have? |
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Definition
| Brain has just under 100 billion (10^11) neurons |
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Term
| how many synaptic connections in the brain? |
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Definition
| with about 100 trillion synaptic connections |
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Term
| A single neuron in the brain may receive as many as 10,000 synaptic connections with other neurons. ! |
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Definition
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Term
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Definition
| The junction between two neurons |
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Term
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Definition
| Chemicals released by one neuron that stimulate action potential in another by attaching to receptors. |
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Definition
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Term
| FOREBRAIN consist of ? ... |
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Definition
| cerebral cortex, basal ganglia, limbic system, thalamus, hypothalamus, corpus callosum |
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Term
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Definition
| frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital |
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Term
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Definition
| — Decsion making, inhibitory control, planning, movement (primary motor cortex) |
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Term
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Definition
| — Body sensations (primary somatosensory cortex) spatial processing, sensory integration. |
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Term
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Definition
| — Auditory perception, memory, processing of meaning (semantics), object perception. |
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Definition
| — Visual perception (primary visual cortex) |
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Term
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Definition
— Suite of forebrain structures and substantia nigra - one big function is choosing among potential actions.
- reward-based learning
** “Pleasure Center” |
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Definition
— (Hippocampus and amygdala and others...)
Suite of structures involved in emotion and motivation. |
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Definition
| - emotion regulation and emotional enhancement of memory |
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Term
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Definition
| - formation of long-term memory for events. |
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Definition
— Sensory relay to the cortex; regulation of sleep/alertness.
LGN in Thalamus! |
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Term
| Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN) |
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Definition
| - region of thalamus that relays visual info. |
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Term
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Definition
| — Link between brain and pituitary gland. hunger, thirst, body temperature etc. |
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Term
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Definition
| — Connection b/w hemispheres |
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Term
| MIDBRAIN consists of? ... |
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Definition
| Substantia nigra & tectum |
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Term
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Definition
| — Movement, reward/addction |
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Term
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Definition
— Auditory and visual reflexes
Also has: superior/inferior colloculi.. |
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Term
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Definition
| — visual, especially eye movements. |
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Term
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Definition
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Term
| HINDBRAIN consists of? ... |
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Definition
| Cerebellum & Pons/Medulla Oblongata |
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Term
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Definition
| — Movement, timing, and classical conditioning |
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Term
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Definition
| — basic life functions: repsiration, hear rate, sleep etc. ! |
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Term
| What does the brainstem consist of? |
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Definition
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Term
| What are the 4 lobes in the CEREBRAL CORTEX? |
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Definition
| frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital |
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Term
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Definition
| fighting, fleeing, feeding and fucking |
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Term
| Components of Limbic system? (again)... |
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Definition
Hippocampus —Formation of long-term memory for events
Amygdala — emotion regulation and emotional enhancement of memory |
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Term
| What are the standard behavioral dependent variables used to study cognition ? |
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Definition
Accuracy/ proportion of errors
Response time
Number of items recalled
Rating scales
Think-aloud protocols/ VERBAL PROTOCOLS |
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Term
| Know the standard physiological dependent variables used to study cognition? |
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Definition
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Term
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Definition
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
-magnetic field used to align nuclei of water molecules
- field is perturbed at resonant frequency of nuclei, which start to “wobble”
- nuclei emit radio waves as they wobble
- signal is turned off and nuclei return to aligned state
- radio wave signal varies by location, and different types of tissue return to aligned state at different rates
- so scanner can recover what type of tissue is where |
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Term
| what does the "f" in front of MRI stand for? |
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Definition
functional ...
added f is for “functiontal” relies on the fact that blood becomes less magnetic with higher oxygen levels. |
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Term
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Definition
Measures nerual activity indiretly (via blood oxegenation)
- has low temporal resolution (in seconds)
- subtraction logic may not always be sound
! |
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Term
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Definition
high spatial resolution (millimeters)
NOT invasive |
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Term
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Definition
Electroencephalogram
- electrodes on the scalp measure voltage changes from neural activity |
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Term
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Definition
| ERP - Event.Related.Potential. - Change in EEG signal generated by performing a cognitive function |
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Term
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Definition
| Great temporal resolution (miliseconds) |
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Definition
| Very poor spatial resolution |
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Term
| What is the method of subtraction? |
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Definition
- USED TO ISOLATE the properties of a single cognitive process relative to a baseline.
- Baseline should have all of the characteristics of target task except the critical process (challenging) - Must assume that adding the new prcosesses doesnt affect the other processes.
**A technique for estimating the duration of a psychological process bgy measuring the reaction time for a task that incorportaates the psychological process in question. Then the reaction time for a task that does not incorporate it and subtract that from the first one (incorportaing the psychological process in question) |
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Term
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Definition
| damage has different effects separate cognitive tasks. |
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Term
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Definition
IV #1 -> (affects) DV #1 BUT NOT DV #2
&
IV #2 affects DV #2 BUT NOT DV #1 |
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Term
| colors in the visible spectrum are... |
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Definition
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Term
| Types of photoreceptors are... |
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Definition
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Term
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Definition
| — Sensitive to low levels of light, low contrast, and no color vision |
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Term
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Definition
- need more light, but there are 3 type...
which are maximally responsive to different wavelengths, producing color vision. |
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Term
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Definition
central area of high density cones. Supports most acute vision. the areas outside of the
fovea contain rods and more sparely distributed cones. |
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Term
| In addition to the “five” senses.... |
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Definition
| touch can be divided into separate senses for temperature, pain, and pressure. |
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Term
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Definition
| Sensors in your joints and muscles tell you how your body is configured. |
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Term
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Definition
| — fluid in your inner ear tells you which way is down and controls balance and also lets you sense acceleration. |
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Term
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Definition
- Interpreting sensory information in a meaningful way (recognizing objects, hearing words etc.)
- Perception is... a guess that your brain makes about what is in the world based on the activity of your sensors. |
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Term
| basic components of the visual system .... |
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Definition
| Retina, Superior Colliculus, Optic Nerve, Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN), Occipital Lobe, and Dorsal and Ventral Pathways. |
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Term
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Definition
| — retina to superior colliculus ( part of the tectum in the midbrain) **key function is controlling eye movements. |
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Term
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Definition
| — visual, especially eye movements. |
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Term
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Definition
| — tact of axons from retina |
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Term
| Lateral Geniculate Nucleus |
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Definition
| (in the thalamus) — Region of thalamus. relays visual info to cortex. role in attention. |
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Term
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Definition
| (Primary Visual Cortex)—processes basic info i.e.: orientation, size, location, color, direction, patterns. |
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Term
| Dorsal and Ventral pathways |
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Definition
dorsal - from occipital to parietal lobes — location and movement (the “where” pathway)
ventral - from occipital to temporal — object recognition (“what” pathway) |
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Term
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Definition
| - Phase of life cycles when neurons need input to appropriately organize themselves. |
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Term
Blakemore and Cooper (1970)
* critical period experiment |
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Definition
| — kittens raised for 5 months in an environment with no vertical or horizontal lines. kittens showed evidence that they could not see the orientation they were not exposed to. |
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Term
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Definition
— Damage to primary visual cortex (occipital lobe) eliminates visual consciousness in segment of the visual field.
- intact pathways, such as superior colliculus, support performance. |
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Term
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Definition
| —parsing visual input into meaningful objects. ! |
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Term
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Definition
| — Failure of pattern recognition caused by brain lesions along the ventral stream. |
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Term
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Definition
| — Difficulty combining basic features into object representations i.e. making errors identifying objects from different angles |
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Term
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Definition
— Difficulty linking object representations to knowledge (i.e. meanign or
function) |
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Term
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Definition
| — Mental representation that organizes knowledge about related concepts. |
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Term
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Definition
perception is contracted by cognition
i.e. walking around all willy-nilly in dark because you perceive things around you from previous knowledge |
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Term
| bottom-up perceptual processing |
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Definition
perception directs cognition
using what you perceive ... senses |
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Term
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Definition
| —and understand its significance for top-down processing. |
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Term
| Hubel and Wiesel’s (1959) |
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Definition
work on feature detectors.)
Feature detectors —> Primary visual cortex breaks visual input into features (lines of particular orientation, particular directions of movements, colors, etc.)
EXPERIMENT= Single cell recofing in kitties’ visual cortex.
Monocular deprivation! - sewed 1 eye shut at various stages of developlment. deprevation before 3 months = permanent deficits, and after 3 months not permanent. |
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Term
RELATIONAL PROCESSING
consists of ... |
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Definition
| holistic and analytical processing |
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Term
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Definition
— Focus on relations among features.
facial recognition relies on this ^^ |
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Term
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Definition
— focus on features
people are good at recognizing houses by individual parts but not faces |
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Term
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Definition
— automated, fast processes that are encapsulated from other cognitive systems
we believe we have a “face recognition module" |
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Term
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Definition
- selective loss of face recognition due to damage to the face module
**Farah (1990) – face recognition for people with temporal/occipital damage versus normal controls
Controls – better at upright (94%) than inverted (82%)
Patients – worse at upright (58%) than inverted (72%) |
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Term
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Definition
— selective loss of face recognition due to damage to the face module
and recognize the deficits associated with this disorder. |
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Term
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Definition
| — smallest units of speech sounds that can change meaning. *normal* speech - about 12 phonemes/second |
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Term
| phoneme restoration effect. |
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Definition
— hear speech with one phoneme spliced out and replaced with noise or a cough

- participants report hearing the missing phoneme, and have trouble distinguishing speech wit missing phonemes from speech without them.
- perceptual system restores the phoneme using context - another example of top - down processing.
RELATES TO TOP-DOWN PROCESSING... cuz : perceptual system restores the phoneme using context |
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Term
| categorical perception means |
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Definition
categorical perception - Subtle variations are ignored unless they fall ay phoneme boundaries.
better at detecting the same difference in sound if it makes a different phoneme. |
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Term
| Segmentation problem (for language learning) |
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Definition
— how do infants learn which parts of speech are individual words?
often basic auditory cues give away word onsets. i.e. most words in English begin with a stressed syllable.
also have statistical cues - sound transitions within words are more common |
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Term
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Definition
Saffran et al. (1996) – 8 month olds hear continuous stream of fake 3-syllable words.
e.g., “bidaku”, “padoti”, “golabu”
Actually heard no breaks: bidakugolabupadoti...
Transition probabilities from one syllable to the next high within words, but not between.! “bi” always followed by “da”
“ku” has equal chance of being followed by “pa” and!
“go”
This is also true of natural language.!
Babies looked longer at the non-words, showing a novelty preference.
Thus, they must have segmented the stream based on statistical learning, with high transition probabilities grouped together as words.
! |
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Term
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Definition
| — Selecting a subset of available input for further processing |
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Term
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Definition
| — Process one stimulus while ignoring another |
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Term
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Definition
| — Process both stimuli by giving some attention to each |
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Term
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Definition
—> Failure to notice changes in the visual environment.
*partly a function of top - down processing: when you have a strong expectation of consistency, you are unlikely to perceive changes.
also attention... obviously! |
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Term
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Definition
— different streams of audio input played to each ear simultaneously (through headphones)
participants must attend to one while ignoring the other |
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Term
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Definition
| input from one ear is repeated aloud to ensure its attended |
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Term
| Broadbent’s early-selection model |
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Definition
| Early Selection - Attentional filter operates after sensory processing but prior to meaningful semantic (language) processing |
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Term
| EVIDENCE for early selection... |
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Definition
gnored messages in shadowing task cant be remembered
- People don't notice shifts in topic or even language (i.e. english to german) in the unattended channel.
- People DO notice changes in low-level sensory features of the ignored message (i.e. a change in pitch from one speaker to the next) |
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Term
| EVIDENCE against early selection ... |
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Definition
- People will notice some meaningful stimuli in the unattended channel i.e. their name
- Treisman, 1960 - people accidentally switch attention to the unattended channel when it fits with the meaningful content of the attended channel.
- Priming - effect of past experience on how a stimulus is processed or the availability of a concept.
- content of unattended channel influences (primes) interpretation of attended material
i.e. “bank” in attended channel with either “river” or “money” in unattended channel. |
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Term
| key experimental results that led to the rejection of the early-selection model were? ... |
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Definition
*cocktail-party effect
*the fact that semantic cues can make participants shift attention to the unattended channel

*the fact that sematic content in the unattended channel can influence participants’ interpretation of
the attended information |
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Term
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Definition
- an attenuation filter lowers the strength of the sensory signal in the ignored message, but does not block it out completely.
- Concepts enter attention if they reach a threshold level of stimulation. more familiar concepts have a lower threshold (are easier to activate).
- The weakened input may still be sufficient to activate concepts with low thresholds (i.e. your name) |
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Term
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Definition
| late selection cannot explain the results that supported early selection. |
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Term
| capacity theories of attention |
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Definition
— multiple resources, assumes there are multiple attentional
capacities.
- more interference when primary and secondary tasks tax the same resource pool
- i.e. should do worse if you have to monitor 2 verbal streams for target words rather than if you have to monitor 1 verbal and 1 visual stream. |
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Term
| describe the basic principles of capacity theories |
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Definition
- Capacity theories drop filters and assume attention is limited in overall capacity.
-“Pool” of resources for further processing that can be allocated to different tasks/inputs.
-Mental effort: the proportion of available attentional capacity given to a task. |
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Term
| EVIDENCE FOR CAPACITY THEORIES.. |
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Definition
- capacity notion could explain why results sometimes support an early filter and other times a late filter.
- Extremely demanding primary tasks will leave few resources for secondary, appearing to be an early filter.!
- less demanding tasks leave enough resources for conceptual processing of the unattended stream.
> Johnston & Heinz (1978)
attend to one of two auditory streams
attended stream distinguished either by perceptual info (different speakers) or conceptual info (different topics)
also have to press a key when they see a light
Slower to press key with conceptual than
perceptual distinction.
Harder primary task (conceptual) left less capacity for light-detection.
Mental effort: the proportion of available attentional capacity given to a task. |
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Term
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Definition
unintentional, unconscious, effortless (don't use up capacity)
- pre programmed by evolution
- perceptual processes (i.e. facial recognition)
- many motor skills (walking, eye tracking)
- you can also establish automaticity through extensive practice
- playing an instrument, driving (whoops), typing |
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Term
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Definition
| Intentional, conscious, effortful (steal capacity from other tasks |
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Term
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Definition
| - input from one sensory system produces percepts in another. |
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Term
| Visual attention consists of ... |
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Definition
—> 3 networks of attention:
Orienting
Alerting
Executive Attention |
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Term
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Definition
- Aligns attention with the visual field
- spatial neglect - ignoring stimuli in the visual field opposite a lesion in one hemisphere
- usually right-side parietal damage.
- does not have to involve eye movements |
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Term
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Definition
- Alerting increases sensitivity to incoming stimuli and maintains a state of readiness

- increases vigilance - not specific to a particular location. |
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Term
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Definition
| - Monitors and resolves conflicts among thoughts feelings and actions. |
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Term
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Definition
| —>ignoring stimuli in the visual field opposite a lesion in one hemisphere. ! |
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Term
key brain regions associated with...
Orienting |
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Definition
| orienting: temporal and parietal lobes, frontal lobe, superior colliculus |
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Term
key brain regions associated with...
Alerting |
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Definition
| alerting: parietal lobe, thalamus, right frontal lobe |
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Term
key brain regions associated with...
Executive Attention |
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Definition
| executive: cingulate gyrus, basal ganglia, lateral pre-frontal lobe |
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Term
| describe the feature integration theory |
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Definition
(Treisman & Gelade, 1980).
—>Perceptual Binding
Feature Integration Theory - Visual attention is needed for integrating stimulus features (e.g., color, shape, and location) in perception.
I.E. Find the red X... |
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Term
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Definition
- Describes the influence of stimuli that failed to reach the threshold for conscious detection.
- Not processed in depth, but you do get features, and there can be conceptual influences as well (think about the dichotic listening work).
- People have more positive emotional reactions to subliminally exposed stimuli.
Think backwards lyrics! |
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