Cognition Exam 1

Who conducted studies of the cognitive approach?

Donders (1868)

The measurement of the cognitive approach is:

Reaction time

The use of introspection was a hallmark method of which school of psychology?

Structuralism

True or False: The school of behavioralism did not focus on beliefs, planning, and goals.

True

Computer:

a model for human mental processing

Why did the idea of introspection fail?

1) data can be studied by one individual (problem arises bc people describe things different ways) 2) data is not measurable- cant be replicated (experiments using the same methods should get the same verifiable results) 3) only accesses mental activity that is available to conscious awareness and much of our brain activity takes place outside of awareness (ex, people with cortical blindness can guess where the visual field is although it is a guess

What was a limitation on behaviorism?

1. Cant account for new intelligence 2. latent learning

How many neurons is the brain estimated to have?

100 billion, 7000 connections each

What is physicalism/materialism?

A type of monism with beliefs that only physical matter exists

What is idealism?

A type of monism with beliefs that only the mind exists

What is the contemporary scientific thought?

An Intelligent behavior, a product of the brain, may be understood in the terms of workings of the physical brain (ex, neural monism)

Consider the following scenario. An intergalactic team of psychologists discovers a planet with robot-like androids and is trying to understand them. Which school of psychology does a researcher probably belong to if he/she uses the following research method? Method 1: Determine the action responses of the robots in response to specific kinds of stimulation

Behaviorist

Two parts of nervous system?

CNS and PNS

Consider the following scenario. An intergalactic team of psychologists discovers a planet with robot-like androids and is trying to understand them. Which school of psychology does a researcher probably belong to if he/she uses the following research method? Method 3: Using the response of the robot to specific kinds of stimulation in order to infer its internal mental processes

Cognitive

Descartes articulated the perspective of ______________

Dualism

What belief did the Mind-Body Problem influence people to believe?

Dualsim

True or False: Pavlov's experiment required attribution of mental states of the dog, like it thing about food.

False, entirely based on stimulus (food + bell) and response (salvation)

True or False: According to dualism, the mind and the body are no longer separate kinds of entities and the nature of their interaction is not well explained.

False, the bind and body are still believed to be separate entities by dualists

True or False: In the nature vs nurture debate, behaviorists such as Watson were strongly on the nature side.

False, they were on the nurture side because they believed behavior was learned and caould be modified

Sulcus/Sulci is...

Groove sinking in

Who founded the school of behaviorism?

John B. Watson

How do we study the brain on a macroscopic level? And microscopic level?

Macroscopic- what parts make up the brain Microscopic- understanding how neurons compute function

Why not study neuroscience to understand cognition?

Multiple reasons being 1) the brain is too complex to measure 2) neuroscience studies the physical and nervous system and 3) cognitive psychology studies the OUTCOME of the nervous system (aka behavior)

How did Pavlov study classical conditioning?

Noticed that dogs salivated at the sight of food. By stimultaneously ring a bell while the dog salivated, the dog eventually responded by salivating to the bell in the absence of food since it was conditioned.

What was the main idea of Structuralism?

Observing the mind directly

What experiment gave rise to the idea of behaviorism?

Pavlov's classical conditioning

Who articulated the idea of dualism?

Plato (350 BC), who argued that the mind was based off the immortal soul

What are the three pillars (aka aims of research) of studying cognition?

Psychology, Neuroscience, and Artificial Intelligence

What did Tolman propose from his latent learning experiment with rats?

Rats formed an internal cognitive map of the maze the initial exploration of thew maze that was accessed later for reward

Wernicke's aphasia...

Receptive aphasia -affects comprehension, not production

What type of learning did the Skinner box portray?

Reinforcement learning

Who proposed the idea that the mind and body form two different types of substances that could interact with one another?

Rene Descartes

Gyrus/Gyri is....

Ridge sticking out

What were the historical approaches to studying the brain?

Structuralism, Behaviorism, and Cognitive Approach "cognitivism"

Consider the following scenario. An intergalactic team of psychologists discovers a planet with robot-like androids and is trying to understand them. Which school of psychology does a researcher probably belong to if he/she uses the following research method? Method 2: Asking the robots to verbally report on their internal processes

Structuralist

What experiment did Watson perform?

The Little Albert Experiment

What is the most extraordinary/sophisticated computing device in the world?

The brain!

What is the largest part of the brain and what is it responsible for?

The cerebrum which is responsible for Thought, Language, Senses Memory, Voluntary movement

What is neural monism?

The idea that the mind and body are the same thing

What is dualism?

The idea that the mind and body consists of fundamentally different kinds of substances or properties. In this view the mind was NOT made of physical material

What is monism and what subsets does it contain?

The idea that there is only one kind of basic "substance" in the world. The subsets are physicalism/materialism, idealism, or neural monism.

The puzzle of how the physical body is related to mental activity is called:

The mind-body problem

Who was accountable for the latent learning example?

Tolman

True or False: An important idea of these conditioning experiments is that behavior is learned rather than depending on inborn

True

True or False: Looking within oneself to assess one's mental activity was the idea behind the school of structuralism.

True

True or False: Much recent progress has been based on computer programs modeled on the brain, known as artificial brains or neural networks, because they are based on learning rather than being programmed.

True

True or False: Skinner claimed ALL behaviors could be explained based on the combination of classical and operant conditioning.

True, in other words people learn which behaviors to produce in any situation based on the reinforcement they received for producing those behaviors in the past

Who founded the school of structuralism?

Wilhelm Wundt

What was the idea behind the Little Albert Experiment?

a young child could be classically conditioned to respond to something with great fear and anxiety after experiments, even if the child initially had no fear

What is Cognition?

acquiring and processing information about the world in order to make behavioral decisions

What is Classical Conditioning?

an involuntary behavior can be induced by a stimulus that wouldn't normally cause a reaction which changes the involuntary behavior based on feedback

What is the Cognitive approach method?

based on ideas we can measure objective behavior in order to test theories of underlying mental processes "Study behavior to make inferences about the mind"

fmri

better spatial -measures blood flow

EEG...

better temporal, bad spatial -measures electrical activity

What approaches were tested/thought of when studying cognition?

brain, behavior, and mental states (aka subjective experiences)

How did Donders carry out his study?

by comparing the time to detect a signal vs the time to decide between two signals

What is operant conditioning?

change voluntary behavior based on stimuls- response feedback

What field of science served as an inspiration to the Structuralist school?

chemistry

The Little Albert experiment was an example of...

classical conditioning

What is the idea of Cognitive Revolution:

cognition can be viewed as an input with sensory information serving as the input and a decision or behavior serving as the output (information processing happens between)

What are everyday examples of AI that we use or come in contact with?

computer vision, speech recognition, and autonomous control

Two hemispheres connected by....

corpus callosum

The underlying process of the cognitive approach is:

decision (ex- detection conditioning, discrimination condition, and choice condition)

Positive punishment example:

electric shock for lever push

What parts does the PNS contain?

everything other than the retina, spinal cord, and brain

Brocas Aphasia is....

expressive aphasia -affects production, not comprehension

Which of these methods is NOT currently considered a scientifically valid form of data for the study of cognition?

introspection

What is unique about the stimulus and response method from the school of behavioralist?

it almost completely lacked the understanding of how the brain functioned because only the stimulus and response were worthy of studying

What is latent learning? Example?

learning in the absence of any conditioning (ex- rat placed in maze to explore then placed in different start area to find hidden food)

Function:

mapping between one set of objects and another

Algorithim:

method for producing the correct output from the inout

What is the artificial intelligence arm of cognition concerned with?

models and simulations with developments that allow comoputers to be programmed to learn via artificial neural networks

What is the nervous system?

nerves and cells throughout the body whose job is to receive and transmit information from one part of the body to another (gather--> send info---->execute decision)

Teaching a dog to 'shake hands' on command using a food reward is an example of:

operant conditioning

How did Skinner test his theory of operant conditioning?

placing a mouse within a "Skinner box" which included a lever which could dispense food (reinforcement) or charged electric grid (punishment) when they pressed it. Over time, the lat learned which behaviors were rewarded and punished and chooses actions accordingly.

What was the method of structuralism?

practitioners were trained to carefully consider and describe their own internal experiences in the term of basic "elements" of consciousness

What did the school of behavioralism focus on?

reaction against the unobservable results from introspection by using stimulus and response experiments

Postive reinforcement example:

release of a food pellet

Negative Punishment example:

removal of pleasant stimulus

Negative reinforcement example:

removal of unpleasant sound

What does the central nervous system contain

retina, spinal cord, and brain

What is a stimulus?

something that stimulates the senses of the experimental subject (ex- picture, smell, or entire room that the subject is exposed to)

What is the psychology arm of cognition concerned with?

study of human behavior using experiments in order to determine how the mind works

What is the neuroscience arm of cognition concerned with?

studying the brain itself (sometimes, with scientific tools for precise measurement) and physiological measures

Like a computer, the states of our brain can be ______________ for properties of the world. Processes over these ________________ can lead to intelligent behavior.

symbols, symbols

What tasks are included as intelligent behavior?

talking, listening, navigating, remembering, playing, working, etc

Why was Skinner important in the school of behaviorism?

tested if voluntary behaviors could be changed by conditioning by teaching things to engage in behavior or reinforcing that behavior

What is response?

the behavior that the subject engages in after the stimulus is presented

What was the Mind-Body Problem?

the question of how mental e vents, such as thoughts, beliefs and sensations are related to, or caused by, physical mechanisms taking place in the body, such as cellular or molecular processes in the brain

What is Cognitive psychology?

the study of mental processes underlying intelligent behavior