Cognitive Psychology Exam 1

What is the mind? What is consciousness? Discuss the 'Alfred Hitchcock' study that attempted to answer this question.

- The mind is a system that creates representations of the word so we can act within it to achieve our goals - Consciousness is a higher level of thinking beyond physiological processes that the brain controls - in the Alfred Hitchcock experiment, patients in a coma were shown a movie that included a little boy running around with a fake gun that was actually replaced with a real, loaded gun. The boy, not knowing the gun is real and loaded, starts pointing the gun at people and shooting. - Comatose patients responded to the suspense and violence in the movie since the consciousness of the brain was still active as seen on a functional MRI, which shows blood flow. The functional MRI showed activation of the amygdala, which controls fear. This proved that consciousness is distinct from responsiveness.

What is persistence of vision? Explain how this phenomenon is at work whenever one watches a film displayed through a projector or follows a sparkler's trail. Lastly, explain how Sperling's whole and partial report methods helped to further inform what cognitive psychologists now know about persistence of vision and iconic sensory memory.

- The persistence of vision refers to the concept of continually perceiving a visual stimulus even when the stimulus is no longer present. - When a projector is displaying film or a sparkler is rapidly moved through the air, the eyes are continuing to process the stimulus even after the stimulus has been quickly removed. The light is moving so rapidly that the mind is story the light being processed in the sensory memory. When a person is watching a movie from a projector, they are actually registering many different frames of an image projected per minute that is being registered in the sensory memory. - Sperling wanted to test his hypothesis that the minds registers more than it can report. In his experiment, he showed subjects a block of letters for a brief time period before asking them what they saw. In the whole report method, subjects were asked to recall all they saw on the block. Only 38% of the letters were reported back. In the partial report method, the same block of letters was shown, but this time they were asked to recall what they saw from a specific row or column after the image had disappeared. Using this method, about 75% of the letters from the row were recalled. This information proves that the mind has access to the whole image in sensory memory but there is a temporary iconic sensory registration of the entire image that is lacking if the subject was only able to report half the image. In other words, the entire image is still present in the sensory memory after it is no longer present, proving persistence of vision.

What is Wilder Penfield's Montreal Procedure? Why was Penfield's work critical to the development of cognitive neuroscience?

- Wilder Penfield's procedure was used to treat over 400 epilepsy patients. Epilepsy patients experience a "aura" right before the onset of a seizure. This aura can vary from a certain smell, taste, or sensation. During the open brain surgery, Penfield would stimulate different areas of the brain and ask the conscious patient what they feel. By doing this, Penfield was able to find the specific area of the brain responsible for the seizures because he was able to recreate the aura that specific patient experiences before a seizure just by touching that region of the brain. - By performing these procedures, he was able to map about the sensory homunculus, which identifies the distribution of body sensory in the cerebral cortex.

Describe Tolman (1931)'s seminal maze study. What hypothesis did he set out to test? How did his theory differ from the perspective of other prominent behaviorists? What were the results? Implications?

-Tolman's maze study consisted of rats, a maze, and food. The hypothesis was that a rat could still find food if it started from a different point in the maze, proving a mouse could create a cognitive map. -During the study, a rat was placed in a maze and allowed to explore it. Afterwards, a piece of food was placed somewhere in the maze and the rat was put at start A. The rat could not smell the food, but after exploring the maze once it was able to find the food relatively easy. Once the mouse had found the food, it was then placed at start B to determine if it could still find its way directly to the food even though it started somewhere different. The mouse was able to find its way directly to the food even though it started from a different starting point, proving mice can create a cognitive map. -This study implied that behaviorism is much more complicated than Skinner and Watson suggested

Beverley is 78 years old and recently suffered a stroke. Since then, she has struggled to speak normally. She can generate lengthy, complex sentences but they are incomprehensible to most people. What has happened to Beverley? Discuss her diagnosis and treatment options, as well as the areas of her brain that are likely impacted.

Beverley suffers from fluent aphasia. Fluent aphasia occurs when damage has occurred in Wernicke's area, the region responsible for comprehension of speech. This area is located in the left temporal lobe. Due to her damage, Beverley is able to produce speech but cannot make sense of the meaning behind it. Treatment options include speech therapy. During speech therapy for fluent aphasia patients, they will learn to repeat words to say them correctly, identify words on paper and say them aloud, as well as putting together sentences.

What does distributed representation mean? What are some everyday cognitive processes that arise as a result of distributed representation in the brain?

Distributed representation is a process that occurs when multiple brain regions are a part of a particular brain function. In other words, some cognitive processes occur in multiple regions of the brain rather than just one, which is localization. Thinking and remembering are two cognitive processes that occur in multiple regions of the brain. Majority of high order cognitive processes do occur through distributed representation.

What was the cognitive revolution? Discuss three critical events that ushered in this important period in psychology's history.

The cognitive revolution was the shift from the behaviorist's stimulus-response relationship to an approach that attempts to explain behavior in terms of the mind. - One critical event that ushered this period in psychology was the information-processing approach. It is a way to study the mind created from insights associated with digital computers. This includes input, input processor, memory unit, arithmetic unit, and output. - The second critical event was the invention of Artificial Intelligence. It is a program that strives to make a computer system behave like a human, being able to carry on social conversations with real humans without being detected as a computer. In order for a computer system to be considered intelligent, it must first pass the Turing test, which tests the computer's ability to have a conversation with a human and not be detected. - The third critical event is tied to the publication of a book by the father of cognitive psychology, Ulrich Neisser. He argued that there are two different types f environments in which studies can be conducted. One is mundane realism, which is a natural environment setting in the real world where thinking processes can be conducted. Then there is psychological realism, which is a laboratory experiment in which cognitive processes that occur in the real world can be tapped into.

A clinical psychologist is interested in developing an artificially intelligent entity that can serve as a social companion for elderly patients with dementia, engaging them in conversation, reminding them to take their medication, etc. Given what you have learned about artificial intelligence, what advice would you give to this psychologist with respect to how they might go about designing such a program effectively?

The first step would be to pass the Turing test by having a conversation with someone without them detecting its a robot. Then I would include information specific to the dementia patient into the program, such as family relatives, hobbies, when they need to take their medicine, and schedule. Knowing this information will help the AI communicate with the patient about his or her interests and relatives, as well as remind them about events they have and when to take their medicine so they do not forget.

Tom is 51 years old and has been a lead guitarist and vocalist in a band for over 20 years. After Tom developed a cancerous tumor in his lateral frontal lobe, upon having the tumor resected his oncologist recommended melodic intonation therapy (MIT). What is Tom likely suffering from? What are his symptoms? What is MIT? How does it work? Why is it an effective treatment for Tom's disorder?

Tom is suffering from non-fluent aphasia, indicating he has had damage to the Broca's area. His symptoms are being able to understand speech but not able to produce it. MIT is the use of melody and rhythm to create speech. During MIT, the patient listens repeatedly to a melody and rhythm while simultaneously tapping his left hand to the beat. He then uses the beat to say a word in syllabus form, such as "din-ner". This is an effective treatment because it engages the right hemisphere, hence the tapping of left hand, that is unaffected by the aphasia to stimulate those parts of the brain to produce speech.

Describe "psychology as the behaviorist views it." That is, what are the central tenants or assumptions of behaviorism? Cite two experimental findings that at least appear to corroborate these assumptions.

- Behaviorism largely focuses on observable behavior and the connection between stimulus and behavior. Behaviorism did not believe in making inferences to any mental processes. They did believe though that by controlling the environment, almost any behavior can be learned Behaviorism follows the rules that reinforcements encourage behavior while punishments stop behaviors. - In the Little Albert experiment, young infants were classically conditioned to fear a rabbit. A young infant boy is able to interact with multiple different animals, including a rat. Whenever little Albert goes to pet the rat, a loud sound is produced, scaring the boy. After repeating this a few times, the young boy no longer wants to touch or be near the rat. - Another experiment that supports behaviorism is B.F. Skinner's Operant Conditioning. During this experiment, Skinner used reinforcers and punishments to teach a rat to pull a lever. Whenever the rat pulled the lever, he gave it food. After a while of doing this, the rat would constantly pull the lever. Eventually, Skinner switched to shocking the rat whenever it pulled to lever, teaching the rat to not pull it.

Describe Chomsky's theory of language acquisition. How did it differ from Skinner's perspective? Cite three experimental findings that support Chomsky's theory.

- Chomsky's theory of language acquisition argued that language must be determined by an inborn biological program that holds true across all cultures. He believed there is a universal grammar that children can pick up on and learn. - Skinner argued that language is learned through operant conditioning. This means that he believed a child would learn language through imitation and would be rewarded for being correct and punished for being wrong. - There are three experimental findings that support Chomsky's theory; the universal sequence of language, infant-directed speech, and vocabulary explosion. The universal sequence of language breaks down the different levels of speaking. The first is cooing, when a baby makes vowel- like sounds but not words. The next is babbling, where the baby is trying to form words but they come out as baba and gaga. Lastly, there is telegraphic speech, when the baby is able to say words correctly and combine them with a want, such a "want cookie". - Infant-directed speech is best explained as when people talk to babies in a "baby voice". A baby voice is when one raises the pitch of their voice, repeats words, and annunciates vowels when talking. - Vocabulary Explosion is what it sounds like; a baby learns multiple words at a time and is able to start forming comprehendible sentences and phrases.

Explain how Donders' and Ebbinghaus' pioneering methods, though very different from each other, allowed for behavior to determine a property of the mind.

- Donders' Mental Chronometry (1868) was one of the first psychology experiments and tested how long it took for the brain to make a decision. His experiment consisted of subjects signaling when a stimulus was perceived. Through signaling when a stimulus was perceived, a subject's behavior demonstrated how quickly the subject can recognize a stimulus and make a decision. - Ebbinghaus' Memory Experiment measured the properties of the mind. Using himself as the subject, he tried to determine the rate of forgetting by randomly assigning a list of non-sense words to memorize. After a certain amount of time later, Ebbinghaus would return to see how much he could remember. As the amount of time between learning and recalling increased, the amount of words remembered decreases. By being able to recall information, Ebbinghaus demonstrated the plasticity of memory - These two experiments helped explain that mental responses cannot be measured directly but can be inferred from the participant's behavior. Thus, behavior helps determine a property of the mind, such as memory and decision time.

Sam has an extensive vocabulary because she is actively learning new words all the time. When Sam reads a word she does not recognize, she repeats its spelling until she looks it up in a dictionary. When she sees the word again on subsequent pages, she remembers the meaning. Describe the structural features of the modal model and control processes involved in the above example. Be sure to explain how the information is processed through each of the memory stores, and describe each store's respective features.

- First step is repetition of the spelling of the word, moving it from sensory memory to short term memory. Sensory memory is very short storage of information from the senses; visual, auditory, and touch. Without control processes, such as repetition, sensory memory only lasts for a few seconds. With the addition of control processes, information can be transferred to short term memory. Short term memory is the capacity for holding but not manipulating a small amount of information in the mind for a short period of time. - The second step is remembering the definition of the word since it has been transferred to long term memory. Long term memory is where all information can ultimately go with no limits as to how much information can be held. Rehearsal is a big part of moving information from STM to LTM. Repeating the spelling of the word not only helped move the word from sensory memory to STM, but it also helped the definition looked up to be identified with the repeated word, moving it to LTM. This is why Sam is able to remember the definition on subsequent pages.

Explain how individual neurons and various structures of the brain are specialized to allow for recognition of both simple and complex stimuli in the environment. Be sure to include mention of at least three of the experiments discussed in class in your answer.

- Hubel and Wiesel cat experiment: Projected image on cat's eye and recorded what stimuli caused specific neurons to fire Found specific neurons fire for specific stimuli based on orientation, movement, and length (feature detectors) - Experience- Dependent policy with kittens Only have feature detectors and were put in environment with vertical stripes Behavioral response was swatting at vertical strips Neurons in visual cortex only responded to verticals - Complex Stimuli with Monkeys Anesthesia monkeys presented with variety of different stimuli, but neuron only fired when researchers hand moved in front of projector Discovered that specific neurons only respond to faces and not other stimuli

Describe introspection. Give an experimental example. Also, discuss two limitations of introspection as a method of scientific inquiry.

- Introspection uses self-report of sensations, feelings, and awareness to gather data on a stimulus. Those who report have to first undergo extensive training. -An example of introspection in an experimental setting is giving a reporter with training a rose, which most associate with love, and asking them to report what they were feeling after receiving the rose as well as what they were thinking. - Though introspection can be useful at gathering information regarding the inner thoughts and feelings of someone, it does have some limitations. First of all, it is can be very biased. Since introspection focuses on self-report, it is easy for a subject to lie or falsify information. It is also subjective. For the rose example, experimenters would assume all would have the same feelings and thoughts about a rose since it is associated with love. However, not everyone feels the same about roses, or other stimuli. A person may associate a rose with something tragic that happened to them, meaning their feelings and thoughts in being handed a rose would differ from what introspection has found.

Discuss the multifaceted nature of memory. That is, how is our memory system organized? Define and describe each type of memory, and include a new (not discussed in class) example for each type. Lastly, propose a metaphor that explains how the entire memory system functions.

- Memory is the process involved in retaining, retrieving, using and manipulating information when it is no longer present. Information organized can include, stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills. - First step in the memory system is sensory memory. Sensory memory is when information is first received and retained for only a half second when no longer present. An example of sensory memory is online shopping. While browsing, you see a shirt you really like but you scroll too fast and only remember what it looks like for 1/2 second. - The second step is short term memory. STM lasts for about 30 seconds if we do not do anything to increase that time. An example of STM is when reading a book for class, and the professor asks you to report what you just read and you are able to recall the information without looking. - The last step is long term memory. LTM is permanent and unlimited in space. An example of LTM is remembering your license plate number after having to recall it so many times. - A metaphor that can explain the memory system and its functions is cooking a meal. Sensory is the ingredients, short-term is the prepping, and long term is the final dish.

What is observational learning? How did Bandura investigate this phenomenon? Describe the results of these experiments, as well as the cognitivist theory Bandura formulated to explain them.

- Observational Learning is the process of watching, memorizing, and mimicking the behavior of others. - Bandura investigated this phenomenon with the Bobo Doll Study. There were three different experiments that occurred for the study. In experiment 1, kids watched a live model play aggressively with a Bobo doll. In experiment 2 and 3, the kids watched a recording of a model playing aggressively with the doll but the consequences were changed, being either a punishment or reinforcement. After watching a model or video, the kids were then allowed to play with the bobo doll themselves. The study revealed that children can learn a behavior, in this case aggression, through observational learning. - Bandura's theory is that behavior is learned in social environments, and the environment and interactions occurring with people in the environment affect the learned behaviors.

What are two limitations of the Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968) information processing model of memory?

- One limitation of the information processing model is that it proposed there was no processing power in the STM, meaning only one piece of information can be held in the STM at a time. This was proven wrong by Baddley when he discovered subjects were able to simultaneously read while remembering numbers. - Another limitation is that Atkinson and Shiffrin believed only one part of memory can be used at a time. For example, when solving a math problem, it requires not only long term memory but also active information processes to be used at the same time. According the the information processing model this is unable to occur, yet it is the only way to solve a math problem.

Distinguish between retroactive and proactive interference and provide a new example (not discussed in class) for each.

- Proactive is when old info gets in the way of new info. In other words, old information has been encoded into the long term memory making it easier to recall than the new information with is still encoding. Example is getting a new credit card and when online shopping putting in the old card info instead of the new. - Retroactive is when new information gets in the way of old information. in other words new learned information prohibits one from recalling old information. This usually occurs when the old information has not been recalled in a long time. An example of this is moving into a new house and forgetting the address of old house after one year.

2019 USA Memory Championships winner Lance Tschirhart was able to learn a deck of 52 shuffled cards in 29 seconds and reassemble a new deck of cards in perfect order from memory. Explain how Tschirhart was able to do this. In your answer, be sure to include discussion of (a) the normal capacity of short-term memory, (b) methods to increase said capacity with mention of at least two experiments, (c) how information is represented in short-term memory, with mention of at least two experiments.

- Short term memory is often referred to as the primary or immediate memory. Short-term memory can usually only hold a limited amount of information for a short period of time, but Miller came up with the idea of "chunking", a method that lets you remember information is sets of 5-9. - Similar to Tschirhart's ability to reassemble a deck of cards quickly, Chase and Simon conducted an experiment in which professional chess players were shown an image of the placement of pieces for five seconds before they were asked to recreate it. When the set up of the pieces was an actual pattern of the game, the player could easily recreate the image almost perfectly. However, when the set up was completely random, the professional was not able to recreate the image. This is because the random assignment of pieces could not be tied to any previous knowledge, and not available in the STM. - S.F. learned to associate numbers with other information. For example, instead of just remembering 1943, S.F. would associate it with being a year near the end of WWII. - experiment that looked at how info is represented was Conrad who briefly presented letters and the subjects were told to write them down. These letters consisted on ones that look alike (V and X) as well as ones that sound similar (V and C). The results indicated that people are more likely to confuse letters that sound alike, meaning STM is auditory encoding. - similar experiment was conducted by Baddeley who gave a list of words for the subjects to learn. These words either sounded alike, had similar meanings, or were unrelated. Like Conrad, he found that the words that sound similar are confused the most further proving the STM uses acoustic encoding.