Cog Exam 1

Behaviorism

"The conscious aspect of behavior is undoubtedly most interesting. But we are unable to deal directly with this by the methods of observation and experiment." "The ideal of most scientific [people] is to explain behavior in terms of matter and energy, so that the introduction of psychic implications is considered superfluous" According to the principles of behaviorism, psychology must focus on objective, observable reactions to stimuli in the environment, rather than on subjective processes such as introspection The most prominent early behaviorist was the U.S. psychologist John B. Watson - Watson and other behaviorists emphasized observable behavior - Most behaviorists believed that it was inappropriate to theorize and speculate about unobservable components of mental life. - As a result, the behaviorists did not study concepts such as a mental image, an idea, or a thought - Instead, the behaviorists focused heavily on learning. That is, they were particularly interested in quantifying the manner in which changes in an organism's environment produced changes in its behavior. The lack of a willingness to acknowledge that information about one's environment is stored and can be accessed at some later point in time led to a reaction against strong versions of behaviorist doctrine. - In fact, examples of "pure behaviorism" are now difficult to locate.

Speech isn't special

(book: general mechanisms) Some animals can perceive sounds categorically - Chinchillas and Japanese Quail do categorical perception

William James

- Central figure in the history of cognitive psychology - Was not impressed with Wundt's introspection technique or Ebbinghaus's research with nonsense syllables - Preferred to theorize about our everyday psychological experiences - Human mind is active and inquiring - Foreshadowed topics in modern day cognitive psychology such as perception, attention, memory, understanding, and reasoning

Four tasks that demonstrate different aspects of selective attention

- Dichotic Listening A laboratory technique in which one message is presented to the left ear and a different message is presented to the right ear. - Stroop Task When people are instructed to name the ink color of words that could have strong emotional significance to them, they often require more time to name the color of the stimuli, presumably because they have trouble ignoring their emotional reactions to the words. - Visual Search A task requiring the observer to find a target in a visual display that has numerous distractors. - Saccadic Eye-movements While Reading Small changes in eye position during reading, in order to bring the center of the retina into position over the words currently being read.

Chomsky

- Emphasized that the structure of language was too complex to be explained in behaviorist terms - Chomsky and other linguists argued that humans have an inborn ability to master all the complicated and varied aspects of language - This perspective clearly contradicted the behaviorist perspective that language acquisition can be entirely explained by the same kinds of learning principles that apply to laboratory animals. - The growing support for the cognitive approach is often referred to as the "cognitive revolution"

William Wundt

- Father of experimental psychology - Proposed that psychology should study mental processes through introspection - Today we know that introspections are sometimes inaccurate

Mary Whiton Calkins

- Memory phenomenon called recency effect (our recall is especially accurate for the final items in a series of stimuli) - Emphasized that psychologists should study how real people use their cognitive processes in the real world - First woman to be president of the APA

Jean Piaget

- Research on children's thought processes. - According to Piaget, children actively explore their world in order to understand important concepts - Children's cognitive strategies change as they mature, and adolescents often use sophisticated strategies in order to conduct their own personal experiments about how the world works.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

-One of the earliest systematic investigations of a cognitive process -Interested in human memory -Examined a variety of factors that might influence performance on memory tasks (time's influence how many words you can recall from a list)

Know the key players to early psychology and their contributions

1) Aristotle (also Descartes, Hume, Kant, Spinoza, Locke) 2) Wilhelm Wundt 3) Hermann Ebbinghaus 4) Mary Whiton Calkins 5) William James 6) Turing 7) Chomsky

Problems of Speech

1) Lack of Invariance: Reliable and constant relations between a phoneme (a basic sound in a language) and the acoustic manifestation are hard to find - Could also be called "The Presence of Variability" Sources: -Context-induced: "don't" vs "middle" (co-articulation) -Differing speech conditions: speech rate, precision -Speaker Identity: age, sex, regional dialect Solution: 1) We rely heavily on our knowledge about words and meaning to fill in the blanks (another context effect) Phonemic restoration: fill in a missing phoneme using contextual cue to meaning: - It was found that the *eel was on the axle. - It was found that the *eel was on the shoe. - It was found that the *eel was on the orange. 2) Audio-Visual Integration McGurk Effect: The auditory component of one sound is paired with the visual component of another, thus changing our perception of the auditory input - We use visual information that co-occurs with speech to help our interpretation of the spoken input - Is this another example of a top-down influence on perception? - It is definitely an example of multi-modal sensory integration 3) Categorical Speech Perception VOT (Voice Onset Time): time difference between when you push air through your mouth and when your vocal cords start vibrating (applies to certain consonants) Can you see the phonetic category boundary? - Everything to the left = ba - Everything to the right = pa - How does this help us solve the Lack of Invariance Problem?

Information-Processing Approach

1) Our mental processes are similar to the operations of a computer 2) Information progresses through our cognitive system in a series of stages, one step at a time 3) Information processing models of cognitive processes such as memory, visual object recognition, or language comprehension, share a series of general assumptions: - Stimuli (word) occur or are present in one's environment. Information about those stimuli is transported to your sensory receptors (ears) through physical medium (sound waves) and processed - Brain decodes information (what word is being said) - Decision is made about how to respond to the stimulus - Motor command is sent and response action is initiated.

Cognitive Revolution (which fields contributed)

1) Psychology 2) Computer science 3) Linguistics 4) Neuroscience 5) Philosophy Contributions from other fields around the same time: 1) Turing and algorithms 2) Chomsky and his critique of Skinner' s Verbal Behavior 3) A new focus on information processing 4) The publication of Ulric Neisser' s Cognitive Psychology (1967)

Central/Foundational Assumptions of Behaviorism

1) There is no mind/body dualism - Everything we do is related to behavior not the mind. 2) Reactions are observable and measurable. 3) Discovering stimuli that cause behavior (associations between stimulus and response) will allow us to predict/control behavior. 4) Learners are not passive; they take an active role in their environment (learn by doing, experiencing, and engaging in trial and error). 5) Responses are the result of our experiences - they are not innate.

Blindsight

A condition in which an individual with a damaged visual cortex claims not to see an object; however, he or she can accurately report some characteristics of this object, such as its location. (unusual kind of vision without awareness) Here is one possible explanation for this phenomenon. Most of the information that is registered on the retina travels to the visual cortex. However, a small portion of this retinal information travels to other locations in the cerebral cortex that are located outside the visual cortex - A person with blindsight can therefore identify some characteristics of the visual stimulus—even with a damaged primary visual cortex—based on information registered in those other cortical locations.

Consciousness

A person's awareness of the external world and of her or his own perceptions, images, thoughts, memories, and feelings.

Visual Search

A task requiring the observer to find a target in a visual display that has numerous distractors. Within general area of selective attention. The observer must find a target in a visual display that has numerous distractors. - In some cases, our lives may depend on accurate visual searches. For instance, airport security officers search travelers' luggage for possible weapons, and radiologists search a mammogram to detect a tumor that could indicate breast cancer. - In these examples, trained experts must visually inspect a complicated image in order to detect a very specific set of visual features that could be indicative of danger. But, visual search is something that everyone does on a daily basis. - For example, my desk is currently very messy (it's the end of the semester), but I needed to find a pen. - I had to create a mental image of the pen, and then allocate my attention to specific areas of my desk until I found the object that I was looking for. Researchers have identified an impressive number of variables that influence visual searches. - For example, Jeremy Wolfe and his colleagues (2005) found that people are much more accurate in identifying a target if it appears frequently. - If the target appears—in a visually complex background—on 50% of the trials, participants missed the target 7% of the time. - When the same target appeared in this same complex background on only 1% of the trials, participants missed the target 30% of the time.

Computer Metaphor of The Mind

AI-Inspired Model of Human Information Processing Input --> Cognition --> Output 1) Information taken in through senses and algorithmically transformed across a series of processing stages 2) "Lower-level" (closer to sensory processes) to "higher-levels" (progressively more abstract / removed from senses) 3) Information "feeds-forward" in a series of "stages" According to the computer metaphor, our cognitive processes work like a computer. - Computers and human minds are both examples of complex, multipurpose machinery - Both human brains and computers operate according to similar general principles. (i.e. both humans and computers can compare symbols and can make choices according to the results of the comparison) - Computers have a processing mechanism with a limited capacity. Humans also have limited attention and short-term memory capacities.

Turing: Algorithms and why they're interesting for cognitive psych

Algorithm: a finite set of unambiguous rules that can be systematically applied to an object or set of objects to transform it or them in definite ways in a finite amount of time An algorithm is a procedure that: - can be specified in a finite number of steps - can be unambiguously followed by a human or mechanical computer - will always yield a correct output for any input that the function is designed to operate on Mind's operations conceptualized as algorithms

V1 (Striate Cortex)

Also called primary visual cortex What it does Area V1 contains a complete map of the visual field covered by the eyes. Cells respond selectively (i.e. vertical vs horizonal line) What its sensitive to: Cells are sensitive to -Orientation -Direction -Color -Spatial Frequency Evidence for orientation sensitivity

Introspection

An early approach to studying mental activity, in which carefully trained observers systematically analyzed their own sensations and reported them as objectively as possible, under standardized conditions. (Examination of one's own thoughts and feelings)

Chomsky and transformations

An example of what? Transformational Grammar: a theoretical account of the rules governing how sentences can be transformed in order to convey a different meaning -Transformational Rules = Algorithms -Critique of Verbal Behavior oft-cited as a strong contribution to the "Cognitive Revolution" A typical transformation in TG is the operation of subject-auxiliary inversion (SAI). - That rule takes as its input a declarative sentence with an auxiliary: "John has eaten all the heirloom tomatoes." and transforms it into "Has John eaten all the heirloom tomatoes?" - In the original formulation (Chomsky 1957), those rules were stated as rules that held over strings off terminals, constituent symbols or both. X NP AUX Y --> X AUX NP Y (NP = Noun Phrase and AUX = Auxiliary)

Cognitive Revolution (who was involved)

An intellectual movement 1) Fostered weakening of the behaviorist strong-hold 2) New-found focus on internally stored knowledge Lots of unrest in the behaviorist camp, and increasing focus on mental representations of knowledge Psychologists were not satisfied with behaviorism - It was difficult to explain complex human behavior using only behaviorist concepts such as observable stimuli, responses, and reinforcement Research in human memory began to blossom at the end of the 1950s, further increasing the disenchantment with behaviorism. - Psychologists proposed models of human memory instead of focusing only on models of animal learning (The behaviorist approach tells us little about numerous psychologically interesting processes, such as the thoughts and strategies that people use when they try to solve a problem or how people access their stored knowledge about language in order to produce a sentence.)

Attentional Bias

Attentional Bias: When people pay extra attention to some stimuli or features that are meaningful to them. Attentional bias refers to how a person's perception is affected by selective factors in their attention. Attentional biases may explain an individual's failure to consider alternative possibilities when occupied with an existing train of thought.

Behavioral Testing

Behavioral Testing: Measuring overt behavior (physical action) to provide information about underlying process - Typically Reaction Time (RTs) .. In milliseconds - We've already seen some examples: Detection Task, Recognition Task, etc. - Assumption: The higher (longer) the RT, the more difficult the task: Index of Processing Difficulty - Often used to determine what factors (Independent Variables) influence processing difficulty

How does Cognitive Psychology contrast with Behaviorism?

Behaviorism: 1) Focus instead on changes in behavior as a result of learning (Behavior is observable) 2) Concepts such as memory, knowledge, attention, and reasoning were largely avoided 3) A lack of appeal to the internal - Attention is not a mental act of focusing on part of the perceptual field (a cognitive psychology definition) - Attention is an organism's response to one stimulus when there are several stimuli present

Classical Conditioning / Pavlovian Conditioning

Behaviorist definition of "learning" Depends on an unlearned association between stimulus and response Certain stimulus-response pairings are inborn and reflexive - Basic reflex responses are unconditionally elicited by certain types of stimuli [e.g. salivation on presentation of food] These basic responses can come to be elicited by other stimuli through conditioning Behaviorism is based on the assumption that: 1) All learning occurs through interactions with the environment 2) The environment shapes behavior Classical conditioning relies on reflexive (automatic) stimulus-response pairings See lecture 2 for example

Bottom-Up vs Top-Down

Bottom-up processing emphasizes that the stimulus characteristics are important when you recognize an object. - Specifically, the physical stimuli from the environment are registered on the sensory receptors. - This information is then passed on to higher, more sophisticated levels in the perceptual system Top-down processing emphasizes how a person's concepts, expectations, and memory can influence object recognition. - In more detail, these higher-level mental processes all help in identifying objects. - Based on many years of learning about how the world works, you expect certain shapes to be found in certain locations, and you expect to encounter these shapes because of your past experiences. - These expectations help you recognize objects very rapidly. In other words, your expectations at the higher (or top) level of visual processing will work their way down and guide our early processing of the visual stimulus

Higher-level vs Lower-level

Bottom-up processing emphasizes the importance of information from the stimuli registered on your sensory receptors. Bottom-up processing uses only a low-level sensory analysis of the stimulus. Top-down processing emphasizes how our concepts, expectations, and memory influence our cognitive processes. Top-down processing requires higher-level cognition. Both bottom-up processing and top-down processing work simultaneously to ensure that our cognitive processes are typically fast and accurate.

Bottom-up vs Top-down

Bottom-up refers to the way it is built up from the smallest pieces of sensory information. - perceive the individual parts and organize them into a whole - information available in the stimulus itself Top-down processing, on the other hand, refers to perception that is driven by cognition. - perceive the whole and then individual parts as needed - experience driven Your brain applies what it knows and what it expects to perceive and fills in the blanks, so to speak.

Differences between Classical and Operant Conditioning

Classical Conditioning: - First described by Ivan Pavlov - Focuses on involuntary, automatic behaviors - Involves placing a neutral signal before a reflex Operant Conditioning - First described by B. F. Skinner - Involves applying reinforcement or punishment after a behavior - Focuses on strengthening or weakening voluntary behaviors

What is Cognition?

Co: "to" Gnosis: "knowledge" -Cogitate (think deeply about something) -Cognizant (to be fully informed) -Recognize (identify) -Cogent (appealing to the intellect or reason) -Cognoscente (someone with expert knowledge) The term cognition refers to the acquisition, storage, transformation, and use of knowledge. -Cognition is inescapable -Grants you ability to recognize and interpret stimuli in your environment and react strategically -Afford you the ability to plan, create, interact with others, and to process thoughts, sensations, and emotions

Idealized stages of information processing

Cognitive psychology sees the individual as a processor of information, in much the same way that a computer takes in information and follows a program to produce an output. When we are selectively attending to one activity, we tend to ignore other stimulation, although our attention can be distracted by something else, like the telephone ringing or someone using our name. Psychologists are interested in: - what makes us attend to one thing rather than another (selective attention) - why we sometimes switch our attention to something that was previously unattended (e.g. Cocktail Party Syndrome) - and how many things we can attend to at the same time (attentional capacity) One way of conceptualizing attention is to think of humans as information processors who can only process a limited amount of information at a time without becoming overloaded. Broadbent and others in the 1950's adopted a model of the brain as a limited capacity information processing system, through which external input is transmitted. and what a task might look like to study each one (detection, recognition, response selection) Reaction Time Tasks 1) Detection Task: "when the letter X appears, respond" 2) Recognition Task: "If the letter 'X' appears, respond. If any other letter appears, don't respond" 3) Response Selection Task: "If the letter 'X' appears, respond w/left hand. If the letter 'O' appears, respond w/right hand"

What is Cognitive Psychology?

Definitions: 1) The study of the (human) mind 2) The study of mental processes 3) The study of how humans acquire, store, transform, and use knowledge 4) Sometimes a synonym for the word cognition Cognitive Approach: emphasizes people's thought processes and their knowledge Topics in Cognitive Psychology: 1) Perception 2) Attention 3) Memory 4) Language 5) Action = Consciousness Real-World Application: 1) Design of human-machine interfaces: (Human Factors Engineering) 2) Development of machines that can perceive and act intelligently: (Artificial Intelligence) 3) Improving learning in humans: (Educational Psychology) 4) Understanding and remediating brain damage: (Cognitive Neuropsychology) 5) Understanding cognitive deficits in psychopathology: (Cognitive Approaches in Abnormal) Cognitive Psychology grew (partially) from observations that organisms pick up and store information, and access it at later points in time (memory)

Attention: Early selection vs Late Selection

Early Selection: - Broadbent (1958): Attention operates as a peripheral gate - People are limited in the amount of information they can process at once The first approaches to attention emphasized that people are extremely limited in the amount of information that they can process at any given time. - Bottleneck Theories (match introspections about attention): In attention, the proposal that a narrow passageway in human information processing limits the quantity of information to which one can pay attention. So, when one message is currently flowing through a bottleneck, the other messages must be left behind. Researchers rejected the template theory because it was not flexible enough. Late Selection: - Attention operates after perception is complete, controlling access to awareness and memory. - Late selection minimizes overloading of memory, decision, and response systems

How can stroop be modified to study things like phobias and addiction

Emotional Stroop Task: Stroop task with words that could have strong emotional significance to the participants (e.g. It takes longer for people with anorexia to name the ink of the word thin than the word ruler) Attentional Bias: - Suicide - Depression - Addiction - Phobias - Eating disorders

Chomsky and phrase structure rules

Emphasized that the structure of language was too complex to be explained in behaviorist terms - Chomsky and other linguists argued that humans have an inborn ability to master all the complicated and varied aspects of language - This perspective clearly contradicted the behaviorist perspective that language acquisition can be entirely explained by the same kinds of learning principles that apply to laboratory animals. What do they represent? "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" -Is it grammatical? -What does it mean? 1) Syntax is separable from semantics 2) Structure is separable from content Phrase Structure Rules: 1) Describes the syntactic structure of a sentence in terms of syntactic categories (Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, etc.) 2) Phrase structure rules denote permissible combinations of syntactic categories 3) A description (or, theory) of the Internal Knowledge we have stored in our brains (long-term memories) about language Phrase Structure Rules interpreted as: a description of the internal knowledge people access during language use Chomsky assumes the existence of two levels in grammar, the deep grammar and the surface structure. - The deep structure of a sentence is mostly related to its meaning. It is based on phrase structure rules. - The surface structure is the actual arrangement of constituent when written or spoken.

Which theory of attention falls under early or late attention

Evidence for Early Selection: Dichotic Listening Evidence for Late Selection: Stroop task Evidence for Flexible Selection: Visual Search

Aristotle

Examined topics such as perception, memory, and mental imagery. He also discussed how humans acquire knowledge through experience and observation. Aristotle emphasized the importance of empirical evidence, or scientific evidence obtained by careful observation and experimentation. - His emphasis on empirical evidence and many of the topics he studied are consistent with 21st-century cognitive psychology. In fact, Aristotle can reasonably be called the first cognitive psychologist

When are people insensitive to the number of things in a scene that must be searched

Eye movements during reading ... perceptual span, When people look to objects in a visual display while hearing spoken language, their patterns of looking behavior provide invaluable data regarding the types of information people use to understand the spoken linguistic signal The term perceptual span refers to the number of letters and spaces that we perceive during a fixation - Researchers have found large individual differences in the size of the perceptual span. When you read English, this perceptual span normally includes letters lying about four positions to the left of the letter you are directly looking at, as well as the letters up to about 15 positions to the right of that central letter - Notice that this perceptual span for English is definitely lopsided. After all, when we read English, we are looking for visual information in the text that lies to the right. parafoveal preview In reading, the information that readers can access about upcoming text while that are currently fixated on a word appearing before that information in text. Know different types of DVs interesting when looking at eye movements while reading - when we are looking at a scene or searching for a visual target - when we are driving - when we are speaking (examine which objects people look at in a visual scene as they hear spoken language) - reading Other research has demonstrated that saccadic eye movements show several predictable patterns. - For example, when the eye jumps forward in a saccadic movement, it usually moves toward the center of a word, rather than to a blank space between words or between sentences - The eye also jumps past short words, words that appear frequently in a language, and words that are highly predictable in a sentence. - In contrast, the size of the saccadic movement is small if the next word in a sentence is misspelled or if it is unusual Properties of the written language system can influence the general pattern of eye movements discussed above. For example, researchers have determined that Chinese readers move their eyes only two to three characters in a saccade. This makes sense because each character in the Chinese written language is more densely packed with information, compared to each letter in written English

Face Recognition

Face recognition, deficits in face recognition ability, individual differences in face recognition ability

Feature Present vs Feature Absent

Feature-present/feature-absent effect: In visual search research, the finding that people can typically locate a feature that is present more quickly than a feature that is absent. Cognitive processes handle positive information better than negative information. - In this case, "positive" means that a feature is present, whereas "negative" means that a feature is missing. Search time increases dramatically as the number of irrelevant items increased. - When people search for a feature that is absent, they typically examine every item, one item at a time. - They therefore must use a kind of attention that emphasizes both bottom-up processing and top-down processing. - This task is substantially more challenging, as Wolfe has also found in his extensive research on the feature-present/feature-absent effect Additional example: it's easier to spot a movement-present object than a movement-absent object.

Good Readers versus Bad Readers

Good readers differ from poor readers with respect to their saccadic eye movements. 1) Good readers make larger jumps. 2) They are also less likely to make regressions, by moving their eyes backward to earlier material in the sentence. - People often make regressions when they realize that they have not understood the passage they are reading 3) The good reader also has shorter pauses before moving onward. It is quite possible that differences in attentional abilities can provide one explanation for this and many other documented differences between good and poor readers.

Why are visual and auditory perception so amazing (why are the problems so complex ... what's different between seeing and hearing) - AUDITION

Hearing is fundamental for: - localizing events. - Recognizing objects/events - Music / Affect - Language / Social Development Unlike vision, audition is ... - Not inherently localized - Not directed or limited—we hear all sounds that are present. - Always a temporal (time-based) component

Definition of attention and what the multiple attention systems are

How do we typically use the word "attention" in everyday life? Implies that "attention" is a unitary phenomenon Attention is not unitary, it has multiple components - Orienting and Arousal system (early in development, bottom-up) - Inhibition / Cognitive Control (protracted development, top-down) Attention: a concentration of mental activity allowing one to take in a limited portion of the vast stream of information available from the sensory world and memory

IVs and DVs

How to identify and graph them Dependent Variables: Operationalized experimental measure (what's being measured) - always graphed on the y-axis - reaction time is big example of DV in cognitive psychology Independent Variables: Experimental Conditions / Manipulations (what's being systematically manipulated) -always graphed on the x-axis

Four Lobes of Brain

Identify and know function of each: Study Picture Cerebral Cortex: 2 hemispheres, 4 lobes 1) Occipital Lobe: vision 2) Temporal Lobe: memory, speech, audition 3) Parietal Lobe: orientation, attention, perception, spatial representation 4) Frontal Lobe: movement, planning, language processing, decision making Orienting System: Occipital lobe, reallocates attention, when you have to move eyes around a lot Executive System/Cog Control System: Frontal lobe

Turing

In Turing's time, behaviorism was the dominant psychological framework. - Focus was on observable behavior, which meant that a psychologist's job was to explain how stimuli evoked responses from an organism (Pavlov), and how behavior is modified by its consequences (Thorndike and Skinner). If machines an be described as purposive and goal-seeking rather than mindlessly responding to stimuli, why couldn't animals be described this way?

What do RT measures index

In cognitive psychology, reaction time (RT) is used to measure the amount of time that it takes an individual to process information. It is the duration of the interval between presentation of a stimulus (e.g., a word on a computer monitor) and the participant's response to the stimulus.

CHAPTER ONE

Lectures 1-3

CHAPTER 2

Lectures 4 & 5

CHAPTER 3

Lectures 6 & 7

Mindless Reading and Mind Wandering

Mindless Reading: A situation that occurs when a person's eyes may move forward, but they do not process the meaning of the material being read. Mind Wandering: A situation that occurs when a person's thoughts shift away from the external environment, and the person begins thinking about another topic.

Structual-Description Theories

Objects are represented abstractly as parts and relations - Recognition consists of forming a structural description of the input and comparing it with descriptions in memory Book talks about two: 1) Feature-analysis theory 2) Recognition-by-components theory

General flow of info from environment through visual pathway into brain

Our brain (including visual system) is not a camera We don't code up our visual world in a series of highly detailed, perfectly stored snapshots How does information from the environment make it to occipital lobe? 1) Pupil: The opening through which light enters the eye 2) Iris: The colored aperture that controls the amount of light entering the eye 3) Cornea: Accounts for 2/3 of eye's refraction (light-focusing) 4) Lens: Adjustable light refraction on the retina. 5) Retina: The lining of the back of the eye containing photoreceptors and neurons. 6) Optic nerve: Connects retina to the brain Lateral Geniculate Nucleus: -Part of the Thalamus -Can be thought of as a switchboard -Its functional role in vision is still mostly unknown Visual information that is registered on the retina (the proximal stimulus) must make its way through the visual pathway, a set of neurons between the retina and the primary visual cortex. The primary visual cortex is located in the occipital lobe of the brain; it is the portion of your cerebral cortex that is concerned with basic processing of visual stimuli.

Eating disorders and performance on stroop

People with eating disorders take longer than other people to report the ink color of words related to body shape.

Distal vs. proximal

Psychologists have developed two terms to refer to perceptual stimuli. 1) The distal stimulus is the actual object that is "out there" in the environment—for example, the pen on your desk. 2) The proximal stimulus is the information registered on your sensory receptors—for example, the image that your pen creates on your retina. (Your retina covers the inside back portion of your eye; it contains millions of neurons that register and transmit visual information from the outside world.) When we recognize an object, we manage to figure out the identity of the distal stimulus, even when the information available in the proximal stimulus is far from perfect. - For example, you recognized the human face even though the face lacks a nose, mouth, and ears. Gazzaniga and his colleagues (2009) point out that object recognition depends primarily on shape, rather than on color or texture. You recognized this human face, even though it was blue.

Introspection: Wundt

Psychology: Study of conscious mental events - Thoughts, Feelings, Perceptions, Recollections But it's the 1800s Introspection: "Looking within" to observe and record our own mental lives - No interpretation (only reporting) Problems? Wundt proposed that psychology should study mental processes, and advocated the use of a technique called introspection in order to do so. - For example, observers might be asked to objectively report their reactions to a specific musical chord, and to do so without relying on their previous knowledge about music. 1) Wundt's introspection technique sounds subjective, not objective, to most current cognitive psychologists. - As you'll see throughout this textbook, our introspections are sometimes inaccurate (eyes not actually moving smoothly when reading)

Don't forget Neisser

Published a booked called Cognitive Psychology. - The publication of this book served as one of the first comprehensive treatments of cognitive processing. - It is seen as one of the most important factors contributing to the emergence of cognitive psychology as a field. In fact, because Neisser was the first person to use the term "Cognitive Psychology," he has often been called "the father of cognitive psychology"

Pure vs Complex Tones

Pure Tone: regardless of amplitude and phase, a tone with a waveform consisting of only one frequency Complex Tone: sinewaves can combine (additively) to create complex tones A pure tone has one frequency present, and a complex tone has a fundamental pitch and the additional frequencies are the harmonics.

What happens during object recognition

Recognition is the process of linking a sensory input to a representation stored in memory - Seeing a horse not just as a particular combination of shape, color, and texture, but as a mammal that is a relative of the zebra, is ridden by people, and is called a "horse" We do not yet have a single, widely accepted theory of object recognition - Template Theories (template matching theory) - Structural Description Theories (Feature Analysis Theory, Recognition-by-Components Theory) During object recognition you identify a complex arrangement of sensory stimuli, and you perceive that this pattern is separate from its background. - When you recognize an object, your sensory processes transform and organize the raw information provided by your sensory receptors. - You also compare the sensory stimuli with information that you have stored in your memory.

When are people insensitive to the number of things in a scene that must be searched: Eye-Movements During Reading

Saccades: Discontinuous ballastic eye-movements, fast (up to 500 degrees /second, usually 2 degrees, 7-9 letters) - very rapid movement of the eyes from one spot to the next is known as saccadic saccadic eye movement: Small changes in eye position during reading, in order to bring the center of the retina into position over the words currently being read. The purpose of a saccadic eye movement during reading is to bring the center of your retina into position over the words you want to read. A very small region in the center of the retina, known as the fovea, has better acuity than other retinal regions. Therefore, the eye must be moved so that new words can be registered on the fovea Fixations: Brief pauses occurring between saccadic eye movements, in which the visual system acquires information that is useful for reading and other visual tasks. 200- 250 ms duration in English - Perceptual span: ~4 characters to left, up to 15 to right - Perceptual span provides parafoveal preview benefits During each fixation, your visual system pauses briefly in order to acquire information that is useful for comprehending the written text. - The duration of a fixation in English typically ranges from 200 to 250 milliseconds, although many factors influence precisely how long an individual fixation will last - A large amount of research demonstrates that when people are highly certain of the identity of an upcoming word, there is a much higher probability that they will skip it, relative to a context in which the word is not predictable. And, if a highly predictable word is not skipped, it is usually fixated for only a short amount of time Regressions: In reading, moving one's eyes backward to words that appear earlier in a sentence. 10-15% of saccades are regressive (leftward) - More regressions on harder texts and in poorer readers Attention needed to inform decision about when and where to move while reading

What kind of attentional system would stroop engage?

Selective-attention

When is search serial (one by one) vs parallel (everything searched at once)

Serial search assumes that items in a search display are attended to one by one and each examined as to whether it constitutes the target. - When people search for a feature that is absent, they typically examine every item, one item at a time. (Finding one circle with line easier than finding one circle without line) - Combined feature (finding blue X distracted by blue and gray Xs and Os harder than finding blue X distracted by only gray Xs and Os) In parallel search, all items are examined in parallel as to whether they are the target. - Feature present - Isolated feature

Principles of Operant Conditioning

Skinner Box Positive Reinforcement: indicates a process that strengthens a behavior - Pleasant stimulus added to reinforce desired response Skinner showed how positive reinforcement worked by placing a hungry rat in his Skinner box. - The box contained a lever on the side, and as the rat moved about the box, it would accidentally knock the lever. Immediately it did so a food pellet would drop into a container next to the lever. The rats quickly learned to go straight to the lever after a few times of being put in the box. The consequence of receiving food if they pressed the lever ensured that they would repeat the action again and again. - Positive reinforcement strengthens a behavior by providing a consequence an individual finds rewarding. - For example, if your teacher gives you $5 each time you complete your homework (i.e., a reward) you will be more likely to repeat this behavior in the future, thus strengthening the behavior of completing your homework. Negative Reinforcement: indicates a process that strengthens a behavior - Negative/Aversive stimulus removed to reinforce desired response Skinner showed how negative reinforcement worked by placing a rat in his Skinner box and then subjecting it to an unpleasant electric current which caused it some discomfort. - As the rat moved about the box it would accidentally knock the lever. Immediately it did so the electric current would be switched off. The rats quickly learned to go straight to the lever after a few times of being put in the box. The consequence of escaping the electric current ensured that they would repeat the action again and again. - In fact Skinner even taught the rats to avoid the electric current by turning on a light just before the electric current came on. The rats soon learned to press the lever when the light came on because they knew that this would stop the electric current being switched on.

Co-articulation

Sound will be pronounced differently based on context

Sound

Sound: Periodic changes in air pressure. These changes have - Frequency or pitch: Number of occurrences over time - Amplitude: How much the pressure changes - Phase: Relative onset of the wave The basilar membrane in the cochlea is organized tonotopically—it performs a rough fourier analysis on incoming sound - Most of the auditory system is tonotopically organized too The Fourier transform allows us to recover the frequency and amplitude of each of the sine waves in a complex tone. Book: During speech perception, your auditory system must record the sound vibrations generated by someone talking. The system must then translate these vibrations into a sequence of sounds that you perceive to be speech. - In order to perceive a word, you must distinguish the sound pattern of one word from the tens of thousands of irrelevant words that are stored in your memory. - And—as if these tasks are not challenging enough—you must separate the voice of the speaker from the irrelevant background noises. A phoneme is the basic unit of spoken language, such as the sounds a, k, and th. Variability: 1) Inter-speaker variability is the term used to refer to the observation that different speakers of the same language produce the same sound differently. 2) A second source of variability is that speakers often fail to produce phonemes in a precise fashion. For instance, did the speaker omit some portion of a word (e.g., sposed instead of supposed)? Did he or she pronounce consonants such as k or p precisely? 3) A third source of variability is called coarticulation: When you are pronouncing a particular phoneme, your mouth remains in somewhat the same shape it was when you pronounced the previous phoneme; in addition, your mouth is preparing to pronounce the next phoneme. As a result, the phoneme you produce varies slightly from time to time, depending upon the surrounding phonemes People are active listeners, consistent with Theme 1. Instead of passively receiving speech sounds, we can use context as a cue to help us figure out a sound or a word People tend to show phonemic restoration: They can fill in a missing phoneme, using contextual meaning as a cue Notice that phonemic restoration is a kind of illusion. People think they hear a phoneme, even though the correct sound vibrations never reach their ears. Phonemic restoration is a well-documented phenomenon, and it has been demonstrated in numerous studies. Our ability to perceive a word on the basis of context also allows us to overcome a speaker's sloppy pronunciations, the problem we mentioned earlier. One important explanation for the influence of context on perception is top-down processing - The top-down processing approach argues that we use our knowledge about language to facilitate recognition, whether we are looking at objects or listening to speech. According to the special mechanism approach (also called the speech-is-special approach), humans are born with a specialized device that allows us to decode speech stimuli. As a result, we process speech sounds more quickly and accurately than other auditory stimuli, such as instrumental music. - Supporters of the special mechanism approach argue that humans possess a phonetic module (or a speech module), a special-purpose neural mechanism that specifically processes all aspects of speech perception; it cannot handle other kinds of auditory perception. This phonetic module would presumably enable listeners to perceive ambiguous phonemes accurately. - One argument in favor of the phonetic module was thought to be categorical perception. Early researchers asked people to listen to a series of ambiguous sounds, such as a sound halfway between a b and a p. People who heard these sounds typically showed categorical perception; they heard either a clear-cut b or a clear-cut p, rather than a sound partway between a b and a p - However, research shows that humans also exhibit categorical perception for some complex nonspeech sounds

Thought Suppression

The attempt, usually unsuccessful, to push an undesirable idea out of consciousness.

Memory capacity effects on dichotic listening

The capacity of a person's working memory could help to explain why some people hear their name, but others do not. Working memory is the brief, immediate memory for material that we are currently processing. Conway and his coauthors (2001) found that students who had a high working-memory capacity noticed their name only 20% of the time. In contrast, students with a low working-memory capacity noticed their name 65% of the time on the same dichotic-listening task. Apparently, people with a relatively low capacity have difficulty blocking out the irrelevant information such as their name. - In other words, they are easily distracted from the task they are supposed to be completing

Isolated/Combined Feature Search

The isolated-feature/combined-feature effect: In visual-search studies, the finding that people can typically locate an isolated feature more quickly than a combined feature. If the target differed from the irrelevant items in the display with respect to a simple feature such as color, observers could quickly detect the target. - In fact, people can detect this target just as fast when it is presented in an array of 24 items as when it is presented in an array of only 3 items

Definitely know Word Superiority Effect and evidence in support of it

The observation that a single letter is more accurately and rapidly recognized when it appears in a meaningful word, rather than when it appears alone or in a meaningless string of unrelated letters. For instance, you can recognize the letter p more easily if it appears in a word such as plan than if it appears in a nonword such as pnla. In fact, dozens of studies have confirmed the importance of top-down processing in letter recognition. - For example, the letter s is quickly recognized in the word island, even though the s is not pronounced in this word Researchers have also shown that the context of a sentence facilitates the recognition of a word in a sentence. For example, people quickly recognize the word juice in the sentence, "Mary drank her orange juice," relative to a word that is possible but not expected, such as water Rueckl and Oden (1986): demonstrated that both the features of the stimulus and the nature of the context influence word recognition. - In other words, both bottom-up and top-down processing operate in a coordinated fashion. - These researchers used stimuli that were either letters or letter-like characters. - For example, one set of stimuli consisted of a perfectly formed letter n, a perfectly formed letter r, and three symbols that were intermediate between those two letters. - In each case, this particular stimulus was embedded in the letter sequence "bea-s." As a result, the study included five stimuli that ranged between "beans" and "bears." (In other words, this variable tested the effects of bottom-up processing.) - The nature of the context was also varied by using the sentence frame, "The _____ raised (bears/beans) to supplement his income." The researchers constructed four sentences by filling the blank with a carefully selected term: "lion tamer," "zookeeper," "botanist," and "dairy farmer." You'll notice that a lion tamer and a zookeeper are more likely to raise bears, whereas the botanist and the dairy farmer are more likely to raise beans. - Other similar ambiguous letters and sentence frames were also constructed, each using four different nouns or noun phrases. (In other words, this second variable tested the effects of top-down processing.) - As you can see, people were definitely more likely to choose the "bears" response when the line segment on the right side of the letter was short, rather than long: The features of the stimulus are extremely important because word recognition operates partly in a bottom-up fashion. -You'll also notice, however, that people were somewhat more likely to choose the "bears" response in the lion tamer and zookeeper sentences than in the botanist and dairy farmer sentences: The context is important because word recognition also operates partly in a top-down fashion. Specifically, our knowledge about the world leads us to expect that lion tamers and zookeepers would be more likely to raise bears than beans.

Ironic Effects of Mental Control

The observation that people's efforts often backfire when they attempt to control the contents of consciousness; as a result, people are even more likely to think about the topic that they are trying to avoid.

Why is the notion of template matching somewhat problematic when considering object recognition

This theory is largely considered too simplistic, because 1) the same stimulus can be viewed from multiple perspectives, thereby altering the input pattern 2) a particular stimulus can have many different variations (e.g., a letter of the alphabet can be printed in numerous styles, sizes, orientations) - it is impossible to store a template for each specific perspective or variation.

Bear/bean experiment conditions and results

Thought Suppression: When people engage in thought suppression, they try to eliminate the thoughts, ideas, and images that are related to an undesirable stimulus. This demonstration requires you to take a break from your reading and just relax for 5 minutes. Take a sheet of paper and a pen or pencil to record your thoughts as you simply let your mind wander. Your thoughts can include cognitive psychology, but they do not need to. Just jot down a brief note about each topic you think about as your mind wanders. One final instruction: During this exercise, do not think about a white bear! Wegner uses the phrase ironic effects of mental control to describe how our efforts can backfire when we attempt to control the contents of our consciousness. - Suppose that you try valiantly to banish a particular thought. Ironically, that same thought is especially likely to creep back into consciousness. In other words, you have trouble suppressing certain thoughts.

Tolman Experiment (with three conditions)

Tolman coined the term cognitive map, which is an internal representation (or image) of external environmental feature or landmark. - He thought that individuals acquire large numbers of cues (i.e. signals) from the environment and could use these to build a mental image of an environment (i.e. a cognitive map). - By using this internal representation of a physical space they could get to the goal by knowing where it is in a complex of environmental features. In their famous experiments Tolman and Honzik (1930) built a maze to investigate latent learning in rats. The study also shows that rats actively process information rather than operating on a stimulus response relationship. Three conditions: 1) Immediate reward every time maze successfully completed 2) No reward 3) No reward initially, but rewards started halfway through Results: 1) Group 3: storing information about the maze to use when needed (when the reward was introduced) 2) Evidence for representation: knowledge stored in (longterm) memory The delayed reward group learned the route on days 1 to 10 and formed a cognitive map of the maze. - They took longer to reach the end of the maze because there was no motivation for them to perform. - From day 11 onwards they had a motivation to perform (i.e. food) and reached the end before the reward group. This shows that between stimulus (the maze) and response (reaching the end of the maze) a mediational process was occurring the rats were actively processing information in their brains by mentally using their cognitive map (which they had latently learned). Edward Tolman (1948) challenged behaviorist assumptions by proposing that people and animals are active information processes and not passive learners as Behaviorism had suggested. - Tolman developed a cognitive view of learning that has become popular in modern psychology. - Tolman believed individuals do more than merely respond to stimuli; they act on beliefs, attitudes, changing conditions, and they strive toward goals.

Top-Down Influences/Context Effects in Visual Recognition

Top down relies on context Visual processing involves both bottom-up & top-down processing Top-down information exerts a strong influence - Especially when you have only brief exposure - And when there is ambiguity about identify Bottom-up processing emphasizes that the stimulus characteristics are important when you recognize an object. Specifically, the physical stimuli from the environment are registered on the sensory receptors. This information is then passed on to higher, more sophisticated levels in the perceptual system. The very first part of visual processing may be bottom-up (Palmer, 2002). An instant later, however, the second process begins. This second process in object recognition is top-down processing. Top-down processing emphasizes how a person's concepts, expectations, and memory can influence object recognition. In more detail, these higher-level mental processes all help in identifying objects. Based on many years of learning about how the world works, you expect certain shapes to be found in certain locations, and you expect to encounter these shapes because of your past experiences. These expectations help you recognize objects very rapidly. In other words, your expectations at the higher (or top) level of visual processing will work their way down and guide our early processing of the visual stimulus

Definition of Perception

Using (previous) knowledge to gather and interpret the stimuli registered by the senses Definition applies to vision, and audition (and olfaction, taste, etc.) categorical perception A phenomenon in which people report hearing a clear-cut phoneme (e.g., a clear-cut b or a clear-cut p) even though they actually heard an ambiguous sound, between the two phonemes (e.g., a sound partway between a b and a p). During Perception: You combined (1) information registered by your eyes, (2) your previous knowledge about the shape of the letters of the alphabet, and (3) your previous knowledge about what to expect when your visual system has already processed the fragment perceptio-. - Notice that perception combines aspects of both the outside world (the visual stimuli) and your own inner world (your previous knowledge).

Why are visual and auditory perception so amazing (why are the problems so complex ... what's different between seeing and hearing) - VISION

Vision: - It's a huge part of our sensory experience - We do it quickly, accurately, and effortlessly - It's a very difficult information processing problem - We have many good answers Our brain (including visual system) is not a camera - We don't code up our visual world in a series of snapshots - We code the information that is important, salient, or relevant ... assuming we attend to it Book: Face recognition: - How do you manage to recognize a friend by simply looking at their face? The task ought to be challenging, because all faces have the same general shape. A further complication is that you can recognize the face of your friend Monica, even when you see her face from a different angle, in an unusual setting, and wearing an unexpected frowning expression. Impressively, you manage to overcome all these sources of variation. Almost instantly, you perceive that this person is indeed Monica. Notice how important face recognition abilities are for your social life (and think about how strange life would be if you weren't able to recognize individual faces). We recognize most objects by identifying the individualized features that combine together to create these objects. Researchers emphasize, however, that most people perceive faces in a different fashion from other stimuli. Tanaka and Farah (1993), for example, found that research participants were significantly more accurate in recognizing a facial feature when it appeared within the context of a whole face, rather than in isolation. For example, they recognized a nose in the context of a whole face much more accurately than an isolated nose. The same participants also judged parts of a house. In this "house condition," they were equally accurate in recognizing a house feature (such as a window) within the context of a complete house versus recognizing that window in isolation. Other research has demonstrated that young infants track the movement of a photographed human face more than any other similar stimuli Taken together, this research suggests that face perception is somehow "special" in the sense that *faces apparently have a special, privileged status in our perceptual system* We recognize faces on a holistic (recognition) basis—that is, in terms of their overall shape and structure. - In other words, we perceive a face in terms of its gestalt, or overall quality that transcends its individual elements. It makes sense that face perception has a special status given the importance of faces in our social interactions. Prosopagnosia: person cannot recognize human faces, though they perceive other objects relatively normally - The presence of this disorder is often taken as additional evidence that special mechanisms underlie face processing. The location most responsible for face recognition is the temporal cortex, at the side of your brain. The specific location that some think to be specialized for face recognition is known as the fusiform face area. - Studies have demonstrated that the fusiform face area is more activated when an individual is exposed to images of faces. - They have shown that the brain responds more quickly to faces presented in the normal, upright position, in comparison to faces presented upside-down - Similarly, behavioral research shows that people are much more accurate in identifying upright faces compared to upside-down faces, a phenomenon called the face-inversion effect. - This research is far from complete, but it may explain why face perception seems to follow different rules, emphasizing holistic processing rather than isolated components.

Operant/Instrumental Conditioning

Watson, Skinner How are voluntary responses learned? Operant conditioning: connecting certain responses with certain stimuli Operant conditioning (or instrumental conditioning) focuses on using either reinforcement or punishment to increase or decrease a behavior. - Through this process, an association is formed between the behavior and the consequences for that behavior. Imagine that a trainer is trying to teach a dog to fetch a ball. When the dog successfully chases and picks up the ball, the dog receives praise as a reward. When the animal fails to retrieve the ball, the trainer withholds the praise. Eventually, the dog forms an association between his behavior of fetching the ball and receiving the desired reward.

Cocktail Party Effect

We do a pretty good job of filtering out chatter around us... - However, sometimes another conversation can grab your attention (e.g., if you hear your name) The phenomenon of noticing one's own name, when it is mentioned in a nearby conversation, even when paying close attention to another conversation. In one study, for example, Wood and Cowan (1995) found that about one-third of the participants reported hearing their name in the message that they were supposed to ignore. - But why did the participants ignore their own name about two-thirds of the time? One possible explanation is that the Wood and Cowan study was conducted in a laboratory, so this research may not have high ecological validity. - In an unstructured social setting, your attention may easily wander to other intriguing conversations. - Furthermore, the capacity of a person's working memory could help to explain why some people hear their name, but others do not.

Dichotic Listening: When do people notice or not notice in the unattended channel

What do subjects know about the "unattended" channel? They know surprisingly little: • Fail to notice when a single word is repeated over and over • Don't notice if the language spoken changes! (didn't notice switch from english words to german words) Did notice: - When the voice switched from male to female

Recognition by Components Theory

What it is: In the recognition-by-components theory, the parts are geometric shapes called "geons" (geometrical ions) - Cubes - Cones - Etc What the nature of the stored knowledge is: Recognition-by components proposes that objects are represented as geons and their relations Experimental Evidence in support: Problem: - Movement distortion Book: Irving Biederman and his colleagues developed a theory to explain how humans recognize three-dimensional shapes. The basic assumption of their recognition-by-components theory is that a specific view of an object can be represented as an arrangement of simple 3-D shapes called geons. - Just as the letters of the alphabet can be combined into words, geons can be combined to form meaningful objects - In general, an arrangement of three geons gives people enough information to classify an object. - Notice, then, that Biederman's recognition-by-components theory is essentially a feature-analysis theory that explains how we recognize three-dimensional objects. The recognition-by-components theory does, however, require an important modification, largely as a result of the observation that people recognize objects more quickly when those objects are seen from a standard viewpoint, rather than a much different viewpoint - Notice, for instance, how your own hand would be somewhat difficult to recognize if you look at it from an unusual perspective. One modification of the recognition-by-components theory is called the viewer-centered approach; this approach proposes that we store a small number of views of three-dimensional objects rather than just one view - Suppose that we see an object from an unusual angle, and this object does not match any object shape we have stored in memory. We must then mentally rotate the image of that object until it matches one of the views that are stored in memory. This mental rotation may require an additional second or two, and we may not even recognize the object.

Template Theory

What it is: Template-Matching Theory - Pictures in memory of previously perceived objects - We match the incoming input to those stored mental images (templates) What the nature of the stored knowledge is: Experimental Evidence in support: Problems: 1) The letter A doesn't always look the same (A, A, A, A) - Solution: Templates can still work even if they don't match 100% - Solution: It is possible to have several templates for a given object 2) An object casts a different image on the retina depending on the distance and viewpoint of the observer - Solution: We mentally adjust the size and rotation of the image so that it can be matched against the template Book: According to one early theory, your visual system compares a stimulus with a set of templates or, specific patterns that you have stored in memory. It then notes which template matches the stimulus. - Note, however, that every day, you manage to recognize letters that differ substantially from the classic version of a letter, especially in handwritten text. - The template approach fares even worse in recognizing the more complex objects that occupy your visual world. Perception requires a more flexible system than matching a pattern against a specific, stored template

Feature-Analysis Theory

What it is: We have a list of Distinctive Features for recognition What the nature of the stored knowledge is: -Visual system notes the presence or absence of each distinctive feature -Compare to list of features stored in memory Experimental Evidence in support: Eleanor Gibson's work on letter recognition - Time required to decide if two letters are different Problem: - Moving away from letter and number recognition, lists of distinctive features become very complex very quickly Book: Several feature-analysis theories propose a relatively flexible approach in which a visual stimulus is composed of a small number of characteristics or components - Each visual characteristic is called a distinctive feature. - Consider, for example, how feature-analysis theorists might explain the way that we recognize letters of the alphabet. They argue that we store a list of distinctive features for each letter. (For example, the distinctive features for the letter R include a curved component, a vertical line, and a diagonal line. When you look at a new letter, your visual system notes the presence or absence of the various features. It then compares this list with the features stored in memory for each letter of the alphabet. People's handwriting may differ, but each of their printed Rs will include these three features.) Feature-analysis theories are consistent with the psychological research. For example, the psychological research by Eleanor Gibson (1969) demonstrated that people require a relatively long time to decide whether one letter is different from a second letter when those two letters share a large number of critical features. The feature-analysis theories are also compatible with evidence from neuroscience Problem: 1) The feature-analysis theories were constructed to explain the relatively simple recognition of letters. In contrast, the shapes that occur in nature are much more complex. - How can you recognize a horse? Do you analyze the stimulus into features such as its mane, its head, and its hooves? Wouldn't any important perceptual features be distorted as soon as the horse moved—or as soon as you moved? Horses and other objects in our environment contain far too many lines and curved segments. Recognizing these objects is far more complex than recognizing letters

When are people able to successfully attend to just one channel

What properties do the channels need to have for subjects to be successful in the task? Speakers over the two channels need to have voices which differ strongly along physical dimensions - Very hard to ignore a similar-sounding voice - Easiest when difference is obvious, e.g. male vs. female People are more likely to process the unattended message when: 1) both messages are presented slowly 2) the main task is not challenging 3) the meaning of the unattended message is immediately relevant 4) they sometimes notice when their name is inserted in the unattended message (cocktail party effect)

The meaning of the term "representation"

You have knowledge stored about something in your long term memory (you can picture a pen even if not right in front of you)

Conditioned Response (CR)

a learned reaction to a conditioned stimulus that occurs because of prior conditioning The conditioned stimulus is previously neutral stimulus that, after becoming associated with the unconditioned stimulus, eventually comes to trigger a conditioned response. - In our earlier example, suppose that when you smelled your favorite food, you also heard the sound of a whistle. While the whistle is unrelated to the smell of the food, if the sound of the whistle was paired multiple times with the smell, the sound would eventually trigger the conditioned response. - In this case, the sound of the whistle is the conditioned stimulus.

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

a previously neutral stimulus that, through conditioning, can evoke a conditioned response (produces no effect - yet)

Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)

a stimulus that evokes a response without prior conditioning (no learning needed to elicit response) The unconditioned stimulus is one that unconditionally, naturally, and automatically triggers a response. - For example, when you smell one of your favorite foods, you may immediately feel very hungry. In this example, the smell of the food is the unconditioned stimulus.

Unconditioned Response (UCR)

an unlearned reaction/response to an unconditioned stimulus that occurs without prior conditioning The unconditioned response is the unlearned response that occurs naturally in response to the unconditioned stimulus. - In our example, the feeling of hunger in response to the smell of food is the unconditioned response.

Speech is special

evidence for and evidence against speech is special Human, and only humans, have evolved specialized mechanisms for speech processing. Special part of brain (phonetic module) -ex: Categorical Speech Perception Understanding speech is a fundamentally different process than understanding other sounds But, how "special" is speech? - Chinchillas and Japanese Quail do categorical perception - McGurk Effect - Make sure to read about "General Mechanisms Approaches"

Phonemic Restoration

evidence for it

Smart Mistakes

examples, and what the term means our cognitive processes are remarkably efficient and accurate. However, when we occasionally do make a mistake, that error can often be traced to a "smart mistake" such as overusing the strategy of top-down processing. - Because we overuse top-down processing, we sometimes demonstrate change blindness (we fail to detect a change in an object or a scene.) - Overusing top-down processing can also lead us to demonstrate a second mistake, called inattentional blindness (when we are paying attention to some events in a scene, we may fail to notice when an unexpected but completely visible object suddenly appears)

Consciousness Section

know the basic definition, and know each bold-faced word in the consciousness section, along with some basic information associated with each bold-faced word

Change Blindness

know what it is and what it demonstrates in the context of the textbook and lecture Change Blindness: fail to detect a change in an object or other part of scene (man with map) Change blindness is a perceptual phenomenon that occurs when a change in a visual stimulus is introduced and the observer does not notice it. - For example, observers often fail to notice major differences introduced into an image while it flickers off and on again. Top-down knowledge makes us assume that the visual world will be relatively stable in many contexts Another example of the notion that we have a "gist" representation of environment, not a detailed snapshot Book: Imagine that you are walking along a sidewalk near your college campus. During your stroll, a stranger then approaches you and asks for directions to a particular building. While this conversation is occurring, two people—who are carrying a wooden door sideways—walk between you and this stranger. When they have passed by, the original stranger has been replaced by one of the door-holding strangers. (The door was blocking your vision, so you could not directly see the strangers switching places.) Would you notice that you are no longer talking with the same individual?

Inattentional Blindness

know what it is and what it demonstrates in the context of the textbook and lecture Inattentional Blindness: Fail to notice when an unexpected but completely visible object suddenly appears (moonwalking bear) Top-down expectations (and cognitive demand) cause us to miss out on perceptually salient objects/events As a result, when an object appears that is not consistent with their concepts, expectations, and memory, people often fail to recognize this changed object (change blindness) or the introduction of a new object (inattentional blindness). As you might imagine, people are more likely to experience inattentional blindness when the primary task is cognitively demanding Change blindness and inattentional blindness illustrate a point we made in connection with Theme 2: Our cognitive errors can often be traced to a rational strategy.

Neutral Stimulus (NS)

may help orient attention, but does not produce UCR

Neuroscience of Attention

multiple networks ... what does each do ... which attention task would be done by which attentional network (region) Orienting Attention Network: (Parietal Lobe) A system responsible for the kind of attention required for visual search, in which a person must shift attention around to various spatial locations. - shifts of attention (e.g. visual search) - Imagine that you are searching the area around your bathroom sink for a lost contact lens. When you are selecting information from sensory input, your orienting attention network is activated. Executive Attention Network: (Prefrontal) A cognitive system that is responsible for the kind of attention one uses when a task focuses on conflict. - focus of attention, inhibition of irrelevant information (e.g. Stroop task) - More generally, the executive attention network inhibits your automatic responses to stimuli - The executive attention network is primarily involved during top-down control of attention - Executive attention also helps you learn new ideas

Locus Of Selection

point at which some material is accepted or selected for further processing, and some material is rejected and no longer processed

Categorical Speech Perception

what does it help us do Speech perception requires the auditory system to: 1) record sound vibrations of someone talking 2) translate vibrations into a sequence of sounds that you perceive to be speech 3) distinguish the sound pattern of one word from all other irrelevant words 4) separate voice of speaker from background noise, including other conversations 15 sounds per second = 900 sounds per minutes when hearing someone talk

Dichotic Listening

what happens in a typical task Task: subject is instructed to monitor either channel A or B and ignore the other In the laboratory, dichotic listening is studied by asking people to wear earphones; one message is presented to the left ear, and a different message is presented to the right ear. - Typically, the research participants are asked to shadow the message in one ear. That is, they listen to that message and repeat it after the speaker. If the listener makes mistakes in shadowing, then the researcher knows that the listener is not paying appropriate attention to that specified message

Selective attention

what is it Selective Attention: Attending to some information while ignoring others. As you've just read, a divided-attention task requires people to try to pay equal attention to two or more kinds of information. - In contrast, a selective-attention task requires people to pay attention to certain kinds of information while ignoring other ongoing information. You might sometimes wish that you could follow two conversations simultaneously. However, imagine the chaos you would experience if you simultaneously paid attention to all the information registered by your senses. - You would notice hundreds of simultaneous sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and touch sensations. You could not focus your mental activity enough to respond appropriately to just a few of these sensations. - Fortunately, then, selective attention actually simplifies our lives. As Theme 2 suggests, our cognitive apparatus is impressively well designed. Features such as selective attention—which could at face value seem to be drawbacks—may actually be beneficial

Divided Attention

what is it ... how good are we at it ... cell phones Divided Attention: Trying to focus ~equal attention on two or more simultaneous messages Examples: - Walking and Talking - Reading and IMing (or texting) - Etc. Multitasking: People think they can do it, but research shows that performance suffers on one or both tasks - People work faster and more accurately if they perform one task at a time Talking on the cell-phone while driving experiments 1) Collet et al. - Handheld cellphone while driving (simulated) - Reaction Times 20% slower than without cell phone 2) Strayer et al. - Hands-free cellphone in heavy traffic (simulated) - Took longer to deploy brakes then without cellphone - More inattentional blindness 3) Emberson et al. - Even hearing someone else have a cellphone conversation decreases perforamance - "Half-alogue" Divided Attention: Attending to two or more simultaneous messages equally - Multitasking (e.g. driving and talking on the phone)

Bottleneck Theory

what is it ... why is it not in favor anymore Early theory of attention The bottleneck limits the amount of information we can pay attention to It minimizes overloading of perceptual systems Sensory input Attentional filter Evidence against the bottleneck: 1) Subjects sometimes detect their own names in the unattended ear in the dichotic listening task. 2) Stroop task - Ignored features of a stimulus can interfere with processing of attended features The first approaches to attention emphasized that people are extremely limited in the amount of information that they can process at any given time. - Bottleneck Theories (match introspections about attention): In attention, the proposal that a narrow passageway in human information processing limits the quantity of information to which one can pay attention. So, when one message is currently flowing through a bottleneck, the other messages must be left behind. Researchers rejected the template theory because it was not flexible enough.

Stroop Effect

what is it, why does it occur ... how does it produce "interference" Hard to name the ink color when the meaning of the word is incongruent with the ink color. Easy naming of the same ink color when it appears as a solid patch of color. Automatic Processing: highly practiced / familiar tasks that don't require a lot of flexibility (reading the word) Controlled Processing: tasks that require flexibility and more conscious, focused processing (reading ink color) The automatic process interferes with the less automatic process—this necessitates greater controlled processing to inhibit the word meaning and respond with the color of the ink. Imagine a situation in which you are presented with a series of colored squares (red, green, blue, etc.) and are asked to name the color of each square. Now, imagine a different situation in which you are presented with a series of words for colors (the words "RED", "GREEN", "BLUE", etc.). In this situation, however, the color-based meanings of the words are incongruent with the ink colors in which the words are printed (for example, the word "RED" printed in yellow ink). In either condition, your task is to say out loud the names of the ink colors as quickly as possible. For example, in the colored-square condition, your task would be to say "blue" if the color of the square is indeed blue, whereas in the incongruent word condition discussed above, the correct response would be "yellow." Do you think it would take you longer to name the ink color of the colored square or the ink color of the incongruent word? The task described above is designed to illuminate what is now famously known as the Stroop effect According to the Stroop effect, people take a long time to name the ink color when that color is used in printing an incongruent word. In contrast, they can they can quickly name that same ink color when it appears as a solid patch of color. Notice why the Stroop effect demonstrates selective attention: - People take longer to pay attention to a color when they are distracted by another feature of the stimulus—namely, the meaning of the name itself One popular explanation for the Stroop effect is that adults have had much more practice in reading words than in naming colors - The more automatic process (reading the word) interferes with the less automatic process (naming the color of the ink). - As a result, we automatically—and involuntarily—read the printed words. In fact, it's difficult to prevent yourself from reading those words, even if you want to! Many clinical psychologists have used a related technique called the emotional Stroop task - On the emotional Stroop task, people are instructed to name the ink color of words that could have strong emotional significance to them. These individuals often require more time to name the color of the stimuli, presumably because they have trouble ignoring their emotional reactions to the words themselves - The Stroop Task has also been used in research on eating disorders.

McGurk Effect

what is it, why important, what does it tell us, what is it evidence for?