Psych 256 exam 1
Reaction time (RT)
A measure of how long it takes to process a stimulus and carry out a task
The time course of forgetting
13 nonsense syllables such as DAX, QEH, LUH, and ZIF to himself one at a time at a constant rate. Memory processes operate on different timescales. You relearn information more rapidly at shorter intervals.
Why do we need attention after all?
Improve our ability to process information, given that our brain/mental resources is limited filters out irrelevant information allows in relevant information
Equipotentiality
In the most extreme, any part of the brain can support any cognitive function
Gavagai
Indeterminancy of translation.
Why study the brain?
Insight into potential mechanisms underlying cognitive function
Distraction caused by mind wandering
Killingsworth and Gilberts (2010) claim that people are mind wandering about half the time when they are awake.
John Watson
Study of the mind (e.g., analytic introspection) is flawed, subjective, biased. We should start focusing on human behavior.
Tresiman & Gelade (1980): Conjunction
Target is defined by conjunction of features
Tresiman & Gelade (1980): Single feature
Target is different from distractors by a single feature
Attenuation Model of Attention
The attenuator analyzes the incoming message in terms of (1) its physical; (2) its language; and (3) its meaning. The dictionary unit contains words, stored in memory, each of which has a threshold for being activated. Words that are common or familiar, like your name, have a very low threshold for being activated.
Broadbent's Filter Model
The filter identifies the message that is being attended to based on its physical characteristics...and lets only this attended message pass through to the detector. The detector processes the information from the attended message to determine higher-level characteristics of the message, such as its meaning. The output of the detector is sent to short-term memory, which holds information for 10-15 seconds and also transfers information into long-term memory, which can hold information indefinitely.
neuron doctrine
The hypothesis that the brain is composed of separate cells that are distinct structurally, metabolically, and functionally.
Bayesian inference
The idea that our estimate of the probability of an outcome is determined by the prior probability (our initial belief) and the likelihood (the extent to which the available evidence is consistent with the outcome).
The inverse projection problem
The retinal image created by the rectangular page could have also been created by a number of other objects, including a tilted trapezoid, a much larger rectangle, and an infinite number of other objects, located at different distances.
Grandmother cell hypothesis
There should be a single cell in the human brain that codes for your grandmother Also known as specificity coding
travel of a neuron
Travel from axon to dendrite or cell body across the synapse
Locked in syndrome
Typically caused by stroke Essentially full cognitive functioning Motor functioning limited to eye movements
The Mackworth Clock Test
Used to determine the vigilance in British Air Force radar operators during World War II. Participants had to monitor for "skips" in the path of a dot around a circle. Developed in response to the observation that operators' performance decreased substantially overtime. Mackworth found that the first large performance dip (10-15%) occurred after 30 mins on task, and continued to decline with time.
Implicit learning
Weather Prediction Task Suggests that learning can happen below the level of conscious awareness.
Take- away from Bayesian inference:
What we perceive is what is most likely to have created the stimulation we have received
Selective attention
attending to one things while ignoring others
Drew and colleagues (2014) were interested in whether expert searchers (like radiologists) were still vulnerable to inattentional blindness. To test this, they examined whether doctors would notice which object in CT scans of the lung? a. A banana. b. A gorilla. c. A blue dot. d. A hemorrhage.
b. A gorilla.
The "Little Albert" experiment involving the rat and the loud noise is an example of which of the following types of experiments? a. Unconscious inference b. Classical conditioning c. Reaction time d. Operant conditioning
b. Classical conditioning
Which of the following is an experimental procedure used to study how attention affects the processing of competing stimuli? a. Filtering b. Dichotic listening c. Early selection d. Channeling
b. Dichotic listening
n Bayesian inference, the prior refers to: a. The extent to which available evidence is consistent with an outcome b. Our initial belief about how probable an outcome is c. The forward probability of an event d. Evidence of sampling bias
b. Our initial belief about how probable an outcome is
Wundt's procedure in which trained participants describe their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli presented under controlled conditions is known as a. functional analysis b. analytic introspection c. information processing d. behavioral analysis
b. analytic introspection
Because of the feature detector work of Hubel and Wiesel, we have evidence that visual cortex is organized according to a. spheres b. columns c. rows d. Circuits
b. columns
Your text describes the occurrence of a "cognitive revolution" during which dramatic changes took place in the way psychology was studied. This so-called revolution occurred parallel to (and, in part, because of) the introduction of a. cognitive psychology textbooks b. computers c. Skinner boxes d. analytic introspection
b. computers
Which of the following word strings all refer to the same pathway? a. what, action, dorsal b. dorsal, where, action c. where, ventral, perception d. perception, dorsal, what
b. dorsal, where, action
You look at a rope coiled on a beach and are able to perceive it as a single strand because of the law of a. simplicity b. good continuation c. familiarity d. good figure
b. good continuation
A bottom-up process is involved in fixating on an area of a scene that a. fits with the observer's interests b. has high stimulus salience c. is familiar d. carries meaning for the observer
b. has high stimulus salience
A schema is a. short pauses of the eyes on points of interest in a scene b. knowledge about what is contained in a typical scene c. how attention is distributed throughout a static scene d. rapid movements of the eyes from one place to another in a scene
b. knowledge about what is contained in a typical scene
Broadbent's Filter Model is called an early selection model because a. incoming information is selected by the detector b. the filter eliminates unattended information at the beginning of the information flow c. the filtering step occurs before the information enters the sensory memory d. only a select set of environmental information enters the system
b. the filter eliminates unattended information at the beginning of the information flow
What do we learn from Balint's syndrome? A.an object can be perceived without knowing its specific features (color, shape,..) b.features of an object floats independently before they reach into perceptual level C. patients with Balint's syndrome have a very fragile short-term memory D. studying patients with Balint's syndrome helped to confirm Broadbent's model
b.features of an object floats independently before they reach into perceptual level
Thresholds from Treisman's Model
basically weird words are higher
Capgras
belief that someone you know has been replaced by a double
Double dissociation
between production and comprehension
Specificity coding is most closely associated with the concept of a. The Jennifer Aniston Neuron b. The Grandmother Cell Hypothesis c. Experience-Dependent Plasticity d. A and B
c. Experience-Dependent Plasticity
Which of the following terms refers to neurons that respond similarly whether a monkey is carrying out an action itself or it is watching a human carry out that same action? a. Premotor neurons b. Haptic neurons c. Mirror neurons d. Sparse neurons
c. Mirror neurons
Which of the following reinforcement patterns in rats is unlearned most slowly? a. Fixed ratio b. Behavioral ratio c. Variable ratio d. Thresholded ratio
c. Variable ratio
Brain imaging techniques like fMRI have made it possible to a. view individual neurons in the brain b. view propagation of action potentials c. determine which areas of the brain are involved in different cognitive processes d. show how environmental energy is transformed into neural energy
c. determine which areas of the brain are involved in different cognitive processes
David Marr argued that the brain/ cognition should be studied at the computational, algorithmic, and ______________ levels. a. circuit b. statistical c. implementational d. observational
c. implementational
Statistical learning experiments show that humans use peaks and dips in _________________ to segment words from continuous speech. a. pitch b. Bayesian statistics c. transition probabilities d. single syllable frequency
c. transition probabilities
Nerve net hypothesis
nerves are collective
If kittens are raised in an environment that contains only verticals, you would predict that most of the neurons in their visual cortex would respond best to the visual presentation of a a. face b. brick wall c. pointillist painting d. picket fence (upright fence posts)
d. picket fence (upright fence posts)
Hebbian learning
neurons that fire together wire together
Distraction
one stimulus interfering with the processing of another stimulus
BF Skinner
operant conditioning
information-processing approach
operation of the mind follows a series of stages, much like a computer.
The prior
our initial belief about how probable an outcome is
Divided attention
paying attention to more than one thing at a time
unconscious inference
perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions, or inferences, that we make about the environment
Choice RT
press a button when a stimulus appears in a specific position.
Simple RT
press a button when a stimulus appears.
The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli is called a. code-switching b. sensory memory c. repetition suppression d. the cocktail party effect
d. the cocktail party effect
Edgar Adrian studied the relationship between nerve firing and sensory experience by measuring how the firing of a neuron from a receptor in the skin changed as he applied more pressure to the skin. He found that a. the rate of nerve firing decreased as he increased the pressure b. the shape and height of the action potential increased as he increased the pressure c. the shape and height of the action potential decreased as he increased the pressure d. the rate of nerve firing increased as he increased the pressure
d. the rate of nerve firing increased as he increased the pressure
David Marr
define problem, look for solution, look for implementation
Factors influencing visual search
display size feature search conjunction search similarity
Tulving
episodic- life events semantic -- facts procedural-- physical actions
intentional blindness
failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere gorilla experiments
Attentional network- top down- dorsal
finding something in a grocery isle
Selective attention
gives rise to inattentional blindness (gorilla video)
neural circuit
group of neurons acting towards a common purpose
Sensory memory
holds all of the incoming information for a fraction of a second and then transfers all of it to the filter.
oblique effect
humans tend to be more sensitive to vertically and horizontally distributed visual information
prosopagnosia
inability to recognize faces
Noam Chomsky
language development; disagreed with Skinner about language acquisition, stated there is an infinite # of sentences in a language, humans have an inborn native ability to develop language
Wernicke's Aphasia
lesions to the posterior portion of the superior temporal gyrus resulted in poor comprehension, but perfectly fluent (though error-filled) speech
Functional Near-InfraRed Spectroscopy (fNIRS)
measuring hemodynamic response
Nim Chimpsky
monkey that learned words
Scanning
movements of the eyes from one location or object to another
Positron emission tomography
radioactive tracer, measure the effect of the radioisotope decay
Phineas Gage
railroad construction worker changed his whole way of life
Donders
reaction time
Perceptual load
related to how difficult a task is
Gestalt principle of simplicity/
stimuli are organized in the simplest way possible
Hubel & Wiesel
studied feature detection in visual cortex and discovered simple, complex, and hypercomplex cells
Attention
the ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations
viewpoint invariance
the ability to recognize an object seen from different viewpoints
Processing capacity
the amount of incoming information people the brain can handle.
Bottom-up processing
the analysis of the smaller features to build up to a complete perception
dendrites
the branches out of the cell body that receive signals from other neurons
Phrenology
the detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities.
The likelihood
the extent to which available evidence is consistent with the outcome
Cell body
the metabolic center of the neuron
dorsal pathway
Pathway of visual processing. The "where" pathway.
The function of the mind
Perceives Pays attention Remembers Predicts Feels
The Ebbinghaus Effect
Perceptual illusions
Gestalt Principles
Principles that describe the brain's organization of sensory information into meaningful units and patterns.
Watson's Behaviorist "Manifesto"
Psychology is purely objective Goal of psychology is to predict and control behavior Introspection has no essential part in its method Behaviorists see no differences between people and animals Marks the official beginning of behaviorism
ablation
Removed portions of monkey brains
Fixed ratio
Reward occurs after a certain number of trials
Variable ratio
Reward occurs after an unpredictable number of times
Stroop Effect
Sometimes it is very difficult to ignore the task-irrelevant stimuli
artificial intelligence
"making a machine behave in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were so behaving" (McCarthy et al., 1955).
Signal detection theory
(Vigilance and sustained attention)
anterograde amnesia
(inability to form new explicit memories).
Emberson & Amso
Asked participants to color each shape with a different color. our visual systems are malleable! Lifelong learning plays a key role in shaping perception
How is blood flow measured
By its magnetic properties Oxygenated blood is less magnetic than de-oxygenated blood. The difference in magnetization levels as oxygenated blood flows into an area is what we use as a proxy for neuronal activity.
Which of the following is involved in the attentional salience? a. P: parietal cortex B. DFC: Dorsal Frontal Cortex C. TP: Temporo-Parietal Junction D. none
C. TP: Temporo-Parietal Junction
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)
Change polarization of neurons using magnetic field
Pavlov
Classical conditioning: dogs and salvation
Localization
Cognitive functions are specifically linked to certain areas of the brain
schemas
Concepts or mental frameworks that organize and interpret information.
Brain areas involved in attentional networks
DFC- Dorsal Frontal Cortex P- Parietal Cortex VFC- Ventral frontal Cortex TP- Temporo-Parietal Junction V- Visual Cortex
Broca's Aphasia
Damage to the left inferior frontal gyrus ("Broca's area") Good comprehension, but speech was slow and contained many errors
Critical period for visual development
Deprived kittens of visual input in one eye and later tested firing rate in visual cortex
functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
Examine oxygen levels in blood
Four types of behavior
Explicit learned (e.g., talking, writing) Implicit learned (e.g., rapid heartbeat when in dentist office) Explicit unlearned (e.g., blinking) Implicit unlearned (e.g., sweating)
James
Father of functionalism (along with Titchener) Focused on adaptation to the environment- why humans perceive and behave the way they do Clearly acknowledged the limitations of conscious awareness
Wundt
Father of structuralism
Neuropsychology
Field is concerned with collecting evidence for the link between the human brain and human cognition, emotion, and behavior.
What the brain must do for object recognition
Figure out what it is Figure out where it is. Figure out how to interact with it.
White matter vs. gray matter
Gray matter = neurons White matter = myelinated axons
Why is Bayesian inference useful?
Helmholtz proposed that the ambiguity of a retinal image is resolved by the perceiver inferring the most LIKELY cause of that image
Stucturalism
Human experience is determined by combining basic elements called sensations
Marrs argument
Level 1 - computational - whats the problem level 2 - algorithmic - what are the rules level 3- implementational- hardware
Electroencephalograph (EEG)
Measure electrical activity across the scalp
The where pathway
Neural pathway, extending from the occipital lobe to the parietal lobe, that is associated with neural processing that occurs when people locate objects in space. Roughly corresponds to the action pathway.
The what pathway
Neural pathway, extending from the occipital lobe to the temporal lobe, that is associated with perceiving or recognizing objects. Corresponds to the perception pathway.
Building blocks of the brain
Neurons
Mirror neurons
Neurons that respond similarly whether a monkey is carrying out an action OR a monkey is watching a human carry out that same action
transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS)
Non-invasive, commercially available method of brain stimulation
Child acquisition data
Not merely imitation Not merely memorized
Gestalt principle of common fate
Objects moving together at the same rate appear to form a unified whole.
Four methods
Observation (naturalistic or experimental) Conditioned reflex (like Pavlov) Testing (taking behavior samples) Verbal reports
Greeble experiment
Observed inversion effects. Concluded that there was some sort of expertise in facial recognition.;, Visual neurons can be shaped by experience
goals of attention
Our perception need not be a mirror image of the world around us What we need to do is gather information rapidly and appropriately given the context at hand We "fill in the blanks" to give our perceptions a sense of continuity (see: the panda) The goal of attention is to narrow in on what is important
dichotic listening
Participants presented with two different auditory stimuli simultaneously played in each ear. They must then report the stimulus played in only one of their ears.
ventral pathway
Pathway of visual processing. The "what" pathway.
principle of neural representation
Your experience of the world is tied to coding patterns in your brain
Attentional network: salience- ventral
a bird
Specificity coding
a given object is represented by the firing of a specialized neuron that responds only to that object.
Population coding
a given object is represented by the firing of many distributed neurons.
Sparse coding
a given object is represented by the firing of only a small subset of neurons
D-prime
a mathematical measure of sensitivity Hit rate and false alarm rates are used to compute D-prime
cognitive maps
a mental representation of the layout of one's environment
Bayes Theorem
a method used to compute posterior probabilities
action potentional
a neural impulse; a brief electrical charge that travels down an axon all action potentials are the same, and fire at the same rate
analytic introspection
a technique in which trained participants described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli.
According to signal detection theory, which of the following would be classified as a hit? a. A TSA agent notices a weapon in the screen in front of her, and then confirms its presence when the bag is checked by hand. b. A TSA agent notices a weapon in the screen in front of her, but no weapon is found when the bag is checked by hand. c. A TSA agent sees no weapon in the screen in front of her, but her colleague happens to find a weapon when he does a random search of the bag by hand. d. A TSA agent sees no weapon in the screen in front of her, and her colleague does not find a weapon when he does a random search of the bag by hand.
a. A TSA agent notices a weapon in the screen in front of her, and then confirms its presence when the bag is checked by hand.
Which of the following is a key criticism of Gestalt principles? a. They are mostly descriptive, providing little insight into underlying mechanisms b. They have been disproven by recent laboratory experiments c. They do not explain human empathy d. They rely on the notion that sensations can be added up to create an experience
a. They are mostly descriptive, providing little insight into underlying mechanisms
A computational model trained to recognize objects based on input from a camera mounted to a toddler's head performed _________________ a model trained on input from a camera mounted to a parent's head (Bambach and colleagues, 2017). a. better than b. worse than c. the same as d. worse, then better than
a. better than
Early studies of brain tissue that used staining techniques and microscopes from the 19th century described the "nerve net." These early understandings were in error in the sense that the nerve net was believed to be a. continuous b. composed of cell bodies, axons, and dendrites c. composed of neurotransmitters rather than neurons d. composed of discrete individual units
a. continuous
What does feature integration theory (FIT) suggest? a. features are processed independently in the first stage, then attention integrate them in the second stage B.attention is deployed to an object in the first stage, then features become disintegrated in the second stage C.information is filtered out at the binging of the processing D.information is filtered out at the end of the processing
a. features are processed independently in the first stage, then attention integrate them in the second stage
People perceive vertical and horizontal orientations more easily than other orientations according to the a. oblique effect b. law of good continuation c. law of pragnanz d. principle of size constancy
a. oblique effect
The likelihood principle states that a. we perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the pattern of stimuli we have received b. we perceive size to remain the same size even when objects move to different distances c. it is easier to perceive vertical and horizontal orientations d. feature detectors are likely to create a clear perception of an object
a. we perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the pattern of stimuli we have received
Cocktail Party Effect
ability to attend to only one voice among many
semantic regularities
characteristics associated with the functions carried out in different types of scenes
Little Albert experiments
classical conditioning
Visual cortex organized
column
Gestalt principle of good continuation
components that appear to follow in the same pathway tend to be grouped together; abrupt changes in form are less likely than continuation of the same pattern
Divided Attention
concentrating on more than one activity at the same time
How light enters the eye
cornea, pupil, lens, retina
how to neurons learn
creation, elimination, or modification of connections between neurons
You are at a parade where there are a number of marching bands mixed together in a huge group. You perceive the bands that are all in the same uniforms as being grouped together. The red uniforms are one band, the green uniforms another, and so forth. You have this perceptual experience because of the principle of a. pragnanz b. simplicity c. familiarity d. Similarity
d. Similarity
According to Treisman's attenuation model, which of the following would you expect to have the highest threshold for most people? a. The word "home" b. Their child's first name c. The word "money" d. The word "platypus"
d. The word "platypus"
The results of Gauthier's "Greeble" experiment (in which she trained participants to discriminate novel, face-like objects) illustrate a. that training a monkey to recognize the difference between common objects can influence how the monkey's neurons fire to these objects b. that neurons specialized to respond to faces are present in our brains when we are born c. that our nervous systems remain fairly stable in different environments d. an effect of experience-dependent plasticity
d. an effect of experience-dependent plasticity
Regarding children's language development, Noam Chomsky noted that children generate many sentences they have never heard before. From this, he concluded that language development is driven largely by a. cultural influences b. classical conditioning c. operant conditioning d. an inborn biological program
d. an inborn biological program
axons
the nerve fibers that transmit signals to other neurons
Attentional network
the neural circuitry involved in various aspects of executive control processes
Synapse
the small gap between the end of a neuron's axon and the dendrites or cell body of another neuron
top-down processing
the use of preexisting knowledge to organize individual features into a unified whole
signal detection theory
theory regarding how stimuli are detected under different conditions
Hodgkin & Huxley
used the giant squid axon to test how nerve impulses traveled along the axon; determined that axon firing is electrochemical, involving sodium entering the axon and potassium leaving it
operant conditioning
voluntary behavior is the product of actions and their observed consequences (punishment, reward). skinner box
The light from above assumption
we are used to light coming from the sky or from the ceiling, which strongly influences how our brains interpret shadows.
Gestalt principle of closure
we fill in gaps to create a complete, whole object
Gestalt principle of proximity
we group nearby figures together
Gestalt principle of similarity
we group similar figures together
