Psych 120A Final - Rissman

Utilization Behavior & Imitation Behavior

*2 problems of cognitive control for patients with brain damage to the VMPFC & DLPFC* Utilization - automatic response to use an object if seen Imitation - copying others' behaviors with an object

Mental Sets (in problem-solving)

*A frame of mind involving a certain representation of a problem, its context or procedure for solving it* -May cause to adopt ineffective way to solve problem, have wrongful assumption (unaware), and hard to find new approach to the problem (some problems require a different mental set/new way to look at the problem)

The Means-End Heuristic Strategy

*Best known problem-solving theory* Divide goal into subgoals, then solve for each subgoal

Basic Level of Cateogorization

*Eleanor Rosch* argued that there is a basic level of categorization: nothing too specific and nothing too general and typically use when speaking/reasoning about these categories (Subordinate, Basic, Subordinate). It is easier to explain what features are common to members of basic-level categories than for other levels

Family Resemblance

*Lugwig Wittenberg* proposed that members of a category have a family resemblance to each other such that there are typical features within a family but not all members display those features, but are still related.

Insight [Problems] (Wolfgang Kohler)

*Occurs when the solution to a problem seems to come suddenly in mind, first identified by Wolfgang Kohler in his study with chimps* (ex: the bronze coin problem)

Extralinguistic Context

*Prosody & Pragmatics* Refers to factors outside of language itself; context information aids in sentence parsing

The Hill-Climbing Heuristic Strategy (problem solving)

*The heuristic to choose an option that moves you in the direction of the goal, however, many problems require to you step away from the goal first* -Find some measure of the distance between your present state and goal state, then take the step in the direction that most reduces that distance

Functional Fixedness

*The inability to realize that something that has a certain use might also be used for performing other functions* -People fixate on the states of the material that will help solve the problem (Ex: two strings problem & candle match box)

Syntactic Ambiguity

*The way you parse a sentence as you hear it based on its syntactic role can lead to misinterpretation of a sentence* Garden Path Sentences - reading a sentence that can invoke an interpretation that isn't correct until the rest of the sentence is read or if the sentence is read in a specific manner (background knowledge can help)

Recognition Memory Task (for color)

*blue-green & nor-wol* Subjects were given a specific color chip to remember and after a 30 second delay, were given 2 color chips (one old and one new) and asked to identify original chip Results: Both english and berinmo speaker showed better performance when the two test colors were associated with different color words in their respective language=

What counts as a game?

-*Lugwig Wittenberg*'s famous critique: says that there are defining features of what counts as a game but there are games that do not have these features and are still considered games, like solitaire -Key insight: many categories don't have defining features, members might share features, but theres no single necessary feature

Where do categories come from?

-A rationalist view: we are born with them (Kant/ Plato) -A Empiricist view: we learn them (Locke, Hume) -A Middle Road: we learn categories but the kinds we learn are constrained

Problems with Prototype Theory

-Assumes that information about individual instances is not stored and is not used to guide categorization, but people do store this kind of information of specific exemplars and can be influenced by them -Doesn't account for the variance within the category

Categorical Perception of Phonemes

-Continuous = actual sounds (what actually happens) -Discrete = actual perception (what we think happens) -Voice Onset Time (VOT): the time between the beginning of a pronunciation of the world and the onset of the vibration of the vocal cords *our categorization of phonemes show abrupt boundaries even when there is no corresponding abrupt change in the stimuli themselves (variations within a category)*

Criticisms of the Classical Theory

-Defined features can't always be found: can remove a particular feature but can still be considered a member of a category -Non-necessary features affect categorization -Violation of any one defining features doesn't affect categorization (ex: penguins are still birds)

Lera Boroditsky (linguisitc determinism/relativity)

-Experimented with grammatical gendered languages to see if said language actually affects how people interpret the world.

"Feeling of Warmth" (Metcalfe & Wiebe)

-Gave subjects the bronze coin problem and complex algebra problem then subjects made "feeling of warmth" ratings every 15 seconds before they arrived at the solution *HOWEVER, no subjective sense of getting closer to the solution and it doesn't predict the accuracy of the solution.* -the "aha!" moment is only when you found a new approach to the problem, not necessarily the solution

Prototype Theory

-Having an idealistic example of a member in a category and compare others to this example to determine whether it belongs in the category -However, no such things as ideal member in the real world -Category is abstract because doesn't store information about specific instances

Confirmation Bias

-People are more responsive to evidence that confirms one's beliefs and essentially ignore disconfirming evidence, which can lead to unfounded stereotypes (biased attention/memory), superstitions, conspiracy theories

Problem Solving by Analogy

-Sometimes people need a hint in order to solve a problem -Analogies depend on the similarities in the structure of problems because of the tendency to focus on the surface features and can be superficial in solving problems -Analogy use depends on the expertise of the problem because experts will look at the deep structure of the problem; also understanding the problem is more effective than memorizing the solution

The Prefrontal Cortex & Cognitive Control (Phineas Cage)

-The famous case of Phineas Gage (1848) in which rod was shot through this prefrontal cortex -Recovered but had personality changes due to the damage (aggressive, couldn't keep long term goals, rude, and impatient)

Four components to problem solving (4)

1) *Initial state* - what resources are available for you 2) *Goal State* - the desired end product 3) *Operators* - what course of actions to take to reach goal state 4) *Path Constraints* - what rules/limitations can't be violated

Attribute Substitution (2)

1) Availability Heuristics 2) Representativeness Heurisitcs

Types of Phrase Structure Rules (2):

1) Descriptive rules 2) Prescriptive rules

Types of Reasoning (2)

1) Inductive 2) Deductive

What are some of the putative (commonly accepted) cognitive control functions? (5)

1) Inhibition of prepotent responses (ex: UK and driving) 2) Selection of target representations/responses 3) Retrieval of information from LTM 4) Shifting of attention and task switching 5) Coordination and monitoring of working memory

What are the cognitive processes that are associated with the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task? (4)

1) Internally engage goal 2) Selection attention is high in demand 3) Flexibility required to shift current goal 4) Inhibit previously relevant information

Types of Categories (4)

1) Natural: grouping things together that are natural in the world (animals and plants) 2) Artifact: groups of designed and invented things (cars and computers) 3) Stable: natural and artificial things that people know what goes in them and its criteria of inclusion 4) Ad-Hoc: unstable categories defined for a special purpose or within a specific context

Properties of Language (5)

1) Symbolic: make use of arbitrary relation between sounds and reasoning (dialects, use different words for the same thing) 2) Discrete Infinity: Can use a finite amount of words to create infinite amounts of meanings (generativity) 3) Structure Dependence: meaning is conveyed their a specific arrangement of symbols; language is governed by rules that impart meaning & define which combinations of elements are acceptable (has to do with syntax) 4) Displacement: language allows referring to ideas/elements that re not "there"; language allows us to think and communicate about something that is not immediately present (being able to talk about abstract/conceptual things) 5) Organized at multiple levels: sounds, words, sentences, paragraphs, and texts

Two kinds of information when making a decision

1) Utility/expected value 2) Probability

Types of Problems (2)

1) Well-defined: all 4 components of solving a problem are present in the situation - there is a clear way to solve the problem (ex: 4oz water jug) 2) Ill-defined: 1 or more components not present in the situation - no clear way to solve the problem (ex: achieve world peace)

Sequence of Phonemes (2)

1) only some sequences of phonemes are acceptable in some languages (ex: english doesn't allow tj) 2) Adjustments for certain phoneme sequences (ex: bags - s turns into a z sound)

Language & Thought: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (2)

2 Interpretations: 1) Strong Interpretation (deterministic): thoughts and behavior are *determined* by language; the language you speak determines the concepts and categories that you use, and as results, shapes what you can think about (no solid evidence) - *Benjamin Lee Whorf* 2) Milder Interpretation (linguistic relativity): thoughts and behaviors and *influenced* by language; language influences what we pay attention to, and this shapes experience and later influences how we think *Examples: Eskimo snow, timeless hopi, color terms (Berinmo Tribe), russian blues, grammatical gender, spatial language

Heuristics

A "rule of thumb: or mental shortcuts often based on past experiences and is does a correct/good job majority of the time but can sometimes led us to errors in judgements. These errors can sometimes tell us something important

Prospect Theory (Kahnmen & Tversky)

A behavioral model that shows how people decide between alternatives that involve risk and uncertainty (e.g. % likelihood of gains or losses), demonstrates that people think in terms of expected utility relative to a reference point (e.g. current wealth) rather than absolute outcomes. *Don't take risks when gaining, take risk to avoid loss*

Arculate Fasciculus

A bundle of nerves that connect Broca's area and Wernicke's area -If there is damage, causes conduction aphasia

Classical Theory (of categories)

A category is defined in terms of the necessary and sufficient features of an object. Things that have these features is considered apart of the category (if it has xyz, then it is in this category) -This representation is abstract and doesn't store any information about specific exemplars

Phrase Structure Rule

A constraint that governs the pattern of branching in a phrase-structure tree; rules that specify that a sentence must contain a noun phrase and a verb phrase

Utility Theory

A rational person should try to calculate the expected utility/expected value of each option and choose the option that maximizes this (expected value = [probability of a particular outcome] x [value of the outcome])

Problem Space

All the possible options/ways to solve a particular problem

Denial of the Antecedent

An 'if, then' statement in which if the former isn't present then the latter isn't present; However, this view is invalid, just because the former doesn't exist doesn't mean there isn't another reason for the latter to exist *(If R then W. Not W, therefore not R) -INVALID*

Affirmation of the Consequent

An 'if, then' statement in which if the latter is present then the former is present; However, this view is invalid because A->B, but not B->A *(If R then W. W, therefore R) -INVALID*

Framing Effects

An example of cognitive bias, in which people react to a particular choice in different ways depending on how it is presented; e.g. as a loss or as a gain. People tend to avoid risk when a positive frame is presented but seek risks when a negative frame is presented (ex: organ donors)

Problems with Exemplar Theory

Assumes that many individual exemplars are stored in memory without "blending" (remember everything separately) and has trouble accounting for people's ability to extract general properties of categories so as to allow classification of new instances

The Atmosphere Effect

Being influenced by the global impression or 'feel' of the premises (if other people think it's right, then it "should" be right)

Problems with both Prototype & Exemplar

Both rely too heavily on similarity but similarity is always *relative* -There are infinite ways for two things to be similar and it requires some way of knowing what features are being compared (how do you know what features are relevant to compare?)

Global Aphasia

Brain lesions to multiple parts of the language area of brain; Nearly complete loss of comprehension and production of speech, but some single stereotyped words might still be retained

Broca's Area/Aphasia

Brain lesions/damage to the left frontal lobe; caused impaired speech production but intact speech comprehension (double dissociation with wernicke's area) - can understand what is being said but can't say

Wernicke's Area/Apashia

Brain lesions/damage to the left temporal lobe; caused impaired speech comprehension intact speech production (double dissociation with Broca's area)

Category and Concept

Category - a set of things are grouped together on some similar aspect Concept - the mental representation of a category

How are categories stored in memories? (4)

Classical Theory (rules), Probability Theory: Prototype (ideal examples) & exemplar (individual instances), theory-based theory

Exemplar Theory

Concepts are represented by all exemplars that have been experienced ("Bird" is represented by past experiences with birds) -When trying to categorize something, compare it to all other experiences of exemplars from memory and decide which category it belongs to by the similarity

Syllogism (logic to make deduction)

Consists of 2 premises followed by a conclusion

Conduction Aphasia

Damage to arcuate fasciculus; Preserved comprehension, spontaneous speech has proper syntax & semantics, impaired repetition & paraphrasic errors (phonemes & syllables will be dropped or misplaced) *can still understand but has speech problems*

Aristotelian Categories (Classical Theory)

Defined by necessary/sufficient conditions with crisp boundary conditions and equivalence with all members (ex: triangle are 3-sided polygons)

The Conjunction Fallacy (Kahnmen & Tversky)

Description represents one's stereotypes and ignore basic probability principles (Is Linda a bank teller? Lawyer or engineer?)

Crucial distinction between semantics and syntax

Even though a sentence can be syntactically correct, does not mean the sentence can convey meaning (colorless green ideas sleep furiously)

Rise to Probabilistic Theories of Categorization

Failure of classical theory led to proposal of category representation as probabilistic rather than deterministic (ruled-based). -*Prototype vs. Exemplar Theory: both based on ideas of similarity*

Conditional Statement

Has a format of "if X, then Y" -First part (antecedent) provides a condition under which the second part (consequent) is guaranteed to be true

Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) & Prefrontal Cortex

Helps monitor cognitive conflict and gives more control and awareness to conflict (ACC takes context into consideration) -fMRI shows there is a functional dissociated between the two.

Neurobiology of Cognitive Control: The Prefrontal Cortex

Humans have the biggest and most advanced prefrontal cortex compared to other similarly related animals because expansion of forehead gave rise to PFC growth

Language Acquisition (in children, 4 stages)

Humans past through stages when learning a language 1) Cooing (utter wide range of sounds - vowels) 2) Babbling (utter small set of phonemes - vowels + consonant) 3) One-word (speak out words or morphemes) 4) Two-word (production of 2-word sentences - word pairings)

Typicality and Generalization

If one member in a category can display a certain something, then other members of the same category can display the same something

Belief Bias

Involves the tendency to accept invalid conclusions if they are believable and reject valid conclusions when they are unbelievable

Availability Heuristics

Judged probability of an event is related to how easily that event can be brought to mind (when high availability cues guide our judgements; more available, more prevalent) -Judgements are clearly influenced by how often each factor appears in media

Manipulation by Liberman (VOT)

Manipulated the VOT in systematic increments and showed that we don't report "blending", sounds are discrete/distinct -Key Insight: our categorization of phonemes show abrupt boundaries even when there is no corresponding abrupt change in the stimuli themselves (this is called *Categorical Perception*)

Gambler's Fallacy

Misconception of chance; believes that chance is a self-correcting system ("Something is due to happen...")

Upregulating Cognitive Control: How do we alter the degree of control?

Need a mechanism that monitor or detects cognitive conflict (ACC)

What is the 'format' of human thought?

People have thoughts that can be difficult to express in words. If our thoughts are just purely words, words expressing new concepts could never be coined because there would be no way of imagining their meanings (need images). We can think about things without language, so words aren't completely necessary for thoughts

Representative Heuristics

People judge probabilities based on the degree that the situation is similar to, or *representative* of, their stereotypes/knowledge (even do this when there is other information that a rational person would use to make the best possible decision) -Often assume that what is true for one instance in a category must be true for the category as a whole

What is the major challenge for speech recognition?

Phoneme segmentation (the ability to break words down into individual sounds)

Levels of Language Representation

Phonemes, then morphemes, then words, then syntactical level (sentences), then discourse level (proposition and inference)

Cognitive Control (Executive Function)

Processes that flexibly shape and constrain our thoughts, memories, and actions to allow us to accomplish our behavioral goals

Inductive Reasoning

Reasoning that constructs or evaluates general propositions that are derived from specific examples, probable guesses made on the basis of prior experience, not guaranteed to be correct (specific instances to general principles)

Prosody

Refers to the pattens of pauses and pitch changes that characterize speech production: emphasize elements of a sentence, highlight the sentence's intended structure, and signal difference between a statement and a question

Error Commission

Remembering an action that needed to be done and initiated it but failed to complete the task (error related negativity)

Recursive

Repeated application of a rule or word in syntax (noun + verb + sentence)

Descriptive Rules (Phrase structure)

Rules of characterizing the language as it is ordinarily used by fluent speakers and listeners. Linguistic aims to provide a descriptive grammar of language (how a language is structured, which makes the language, the language)

Prescriptive Rules (Phrase Structure)

Rules that describe how the language is "suppose" to be; words that don't follow are improper (should remain skeptic of this rule)

Morphemes

Smallest unit of meaning within a language and is divided by roots and affixes (prefix and suffix)

Phonemes

Smallest unit of speech that can be used to distinguish one utterance from another (in given language); produced by modulating the flow of air in the lungs to the nose and mouth and can be classified according to specific features (voicing, manner of production, place of articulation)

Typicality Effects

Some members of a family/category is more "typical" than others and are verified more quickly but these differentiating features mostly consist of non-necessary features, which isn't included in the classical theory

A period of "incubation"

Sometimes to solve a problem, you have to step away from the problem first, then the solution can suddenly come to mind (because you're subconsciously thinking about the problem)

The Wisconsin Card Sorting Task

Subject is given cards with shapes of 3 dimensions: shape, color, and number -Subject is told to sort the cards into 2 piles and the experimenter will give feedback on whether it is is correct after each card. Then the rules of the sorting task will suddenly change and subjects must adapt. -Patients with lesions to the PFC are impaired at this task and will show perseverance (following the first set of rules even if it is explicit that new rules were implemented)

Two Systems of Judgement (Kahnmen & Tversky)

System 1) intuitive, automatic, immediate, most heuristics based off this system System 2) analytical, controlled, consciously monitored, rule-governed, serial and more cognitively demanding, flexible *System 1 rapidly generates intuitive answers and can be monitored and evaluated by System 2, but rarely happens)

Base-rate Neglect

Tendency to ignore the "prior probability" of an event (people make incorrect judgement even when they are explicitly informed about the base rates)

Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex (VMPFC)

The area right under the prefrontal lobe - helps control selection and inhibition in social and emotional contexts (includes orbitofrontal region)

Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC)

The area right under the temporal lobe (?) - Regulation of non-social cognitive functions and has executive control over working memory

Decision Making

The goal of most decision making is to get the most/best stuff as often as possible

The Prefrontal Cortex & Cognitive Control (of behavioral plans)

The more behavioral plans are performed, the less prefrontal cortex is needed to execute plan. Therefore the behavioral plan is more like an automatic process. *If there is damage to the prefrontal cortex, could cause inappropriate behavioral plans* and have hard time overriding the competition of automatically retrieved information (The stroop effect)

Deductive Reasoning

The process of reasoning from one or more general statements (premises) to reach a logically certain conclusion, conclusions follow directly from premises using rules of logic, guaranteed to be correct if the rules are followed (general principles to specific instances)

Coarticulation

The pronunciation of a phoneme is changed by the following phoneme (ex: st or sp)

Modus Ponens

The rule of logic stating that if a conditional statement ("if p then q ") is accepted, and the antecedent ( p ) holds, then the consequent ( q ) may be inferred. *(If R then W. R, therefore W) -VALID*

Modus Tollens

The rule of logic stating that if a conditional statement ("if p then q ") is accepted, and the consequent does not hold ( not-q ), then the negation of the antecedent ( not-p ) can be inferred. *(If R then W. Not R, there not W) -VALID*

Syntax

The systematic way in which words or category of meaning can be combined and sequenced to generate meaningful phrases and sentences; rules that apply to grammatical categories (nouns, verbs, etc) *Related to structure dependence*

Voicing

The vocal cords vibrating when pronouncing certain letter (z, d, b, v)

Category Hierarchy

There are multiple levels of a category such that there is an umbrella term and more specifics as you go down the hierarchy (ex: Animal --> birds, mammals, fish--> parrot, monkey, salmon)

Critical Period of Language Development

There is a critical period of learning language, and if a child does not learn language within this time frame, have a hard time developing language later (ex: wild children and Genie; also shown through fMRI of damage to the language area of brain (kids vs. adults) and learning a second language)

Typicality and Attractiveness

Typicality influences attractiveness such that those who look more like a member of the category of interest, then more attractive; but there's more context to this, like facial symmetry

Fluency guides judgements

We assume that if we encode or process something quickly, we will remember it well -Ease of processing influences judgements of learning because we often mistake our sense of fluency for a sense that we have learned something well (not usually aware of this) (Ex: stock performance, familiar and unfamiliar currencies)

Theory-Based Categorization

We know more about categories than just a list of features and values, categories provide explanations for how things work in the real world - helps us see the causal relationships between things in the world and also leads us to believe what features are important and what are not (ex: someone with clothes on in the pool, maybe drunk)

Graded Membership

When an object has a certain degree of "something": this fruit is fruiter than that fruit -Typicality ratings are based on the total number of typical features -If two things seem to share the same number of matching features, then they are most likely related *This can also lead to frequency errors: whale = fish*

Segmentation Errors

When words sound alike and hard to differentiate because how you process phonemes need context (mistaken lyrics)

Place of Articulation

Where the air flow is restricted in the mouth like closing the lips to create a ba or a pa sound

Manner of Production

Whether the air is fully stopped or merely restricted (p, f, d, t)

Pragmatics

how we use words, context in which we say them, and what's left unsaid (extralinguistic context to better understand garden path sentences)

The problem with induction

induction is only guaranteed if we have experienced all possible instances (ex: all swans are white, but there are black swans in Australia) -Can lead to confirmation bias