COGS 1
Modularity
"the components of a system can be categorized according to their functions" •a property of a system that can be decomposed into subcomponents or 'modules', which can perform unique functions and can adapt or evolve to external demands. -separate based on functions
Talking and driving
- More likely to miss traffic signals - Slower reactions to traffic signals - More accidents • Using the device itself - Handling and looking at a device interferes with vision and manual motor control - Laws prohibiting driving while talking on handheld device in at least eight states -No laws against using hands-free devices • But its not just the handset: -Telephone conversation impairs driving even when the driver uses a hands-free device -So the interference isn't just mechanical—it's also cognitive -There must be something about the conversation itself that interferes with driving -If mental simulation is (in part) responsible for driving distraction, then motor and visual language should impair driving more severely than abstract language
Radiolab
- babies and rats know direction and color but the cannot associate the two together (do not understand left after the blue) -at age 6, kids can then make these associations because they begin to use spatial language (ex: turn left at blue wall)
Jam experiment
- two stands: one with a lot of different jams and one with few -more people went to stand with more choices but were less likely to actually purchase a jam and if they did they were also less likely to be satisfied with that purchase -people more satisfied if they are given a jam with no choice in matter at all -"Sixty percent of customers were drawn to the large assortment, while only 40 percent stopped by the small one. But 30 percent of the people who had sampled from the small assortment decided to buy jam, while only 3 percent of those confronted with the two dozen jams purchased a jar."
The KE family
-3 generations -30 family members -15 afflicted members that could not speak properly -gene they all had in common was damage to FoxP2 -FoxP2 gene creates basal ganglia which controls fast complex motor skills -Chimpanzees cannot voluntarily control vocalizations, language depends on rapid and complex vocal movements, a very small change in FOXp2 makes this possible
Shift workers are more prone to developing metabolic disorders
-40% more likely to have cardiovascular disease -higher incidence of type II diabetes -high risk of cancer-melatonin disruption
Distributed Cognition
-A theoretical framework -Describes division and integration of cognitive work -Explores information flows, representation, and transformation -A fundamental feature of cognition at any scale
Recordings of monkey calls during dominance interactions
-A>B>C>D>E -so, DomA:SubB, DomB:SubC, etc -during playbacks, real and fabricated (DomC:SubB, etc) were used -await opportunity when group (not including individuals recorded) are present -no reaction to real interactions, but big reactions to fabricated interactions
Signifiers
-Affordances determine what actions are possible. Signifiers communicate where the action should take place. We need both -refers to any mark or sound, any perceivable indicator that communicates appropriate behavior to a person. -Signifiers are signals. Some signifiers are signs, labels, and drawings placed in the world, such as the signs labeled "push," "pull," or "exit" on doors, or arrows and diagrams indicating what is to be acted upon, or in which direction to gesture, or other instructions
Taste aversion learning
-Animals eat new food and see if they digest it well -if they do not, they will not eat again -with rats, this temporal contiguity does not occur -they only learn association if the sickness occurs with a greater then one hour delay -this is because of normal food was poison, it would normally take over an hour to affect rats
Prospective encoding
-First train: see blue, pick horizontal see red, pick vertical -pause after colors before chance to pick lines -color interferes early in delay because animal is retaining mental image of color stimulus -lines interfere late in delay because animal is making mental image of the types of lines it is looking for
Opening the Black Box of Educational Reform
-National agenda: to expand and broaden participation in computer science -what?: Get more students by offering more classes -Why?: To benefit society and to create opportunities for all and Social justice in educational access -How?:
The mind
-Neuroscience -Philosophy -computer science -linguisitcs
Testing talking and driving theory
-People drove through a 15-min scenario in a simulator in each of four conditions METHOD -Followed a lead car at a safe distance, while answering (one of four types of) true-false questions. -Four language conditions (within participants) Stimuli normed to be equally difficult and to take equally long to answer • Motor: To open a jar, you turn the lid counter-clockwise. • Visual: The horizontal lines of the capital leker E point to the right. • Abstract: The First Amendment protects the freedom of speech. • Control: Say the word "true". -Dependent Measures: • Braking time: time to brake when the lead car brakes • Following distance: mean distance behind lead car (increased distance reflects greater distraction) -breaking reaction time was worse for all types of questions besides control -Visual caused the farthest following distance -Summary of results: • Any meaningful language impedes tactical control of a vehicle • Beyond this, motor and visual language interfere significantly with strategic control of a vehicle • Language impairs driving not just because of the handheld device, or auditory processing alone, but because of processes of language comprehension, both content- general and content-specific • Simulation is a viable candidate explanation for the latter
Broca's Area
-Producing speech
Types of emergence
-Substance: a baby emerges from a mother -Conjunction: two parts can perform a different function than either part separately -Property: wetness is not a property of a molecule but of a group of molecules -Structural: three lines make a triangle -Functional: letters from words -Real: a cell is alive unlike the molecules of which it is made
why are cetacean brains so large?
-The cetacean neocortex is also characterized by a high ratio of glial cells to neurons, consistent with the general pattern found in other mammals, where neuron density decreases with absolute brain size, probably to maintain certain properties of neural transmission. -the expansion of the insular and cingulate cortices in cetaceans is consistent with high-level cognitive functions—such as attention, judgment, intuition, and social awareness—known to be associated with these regions in primates. a high glia cell/ neuron ratio is consistent with the increased needs of complex brains for rapid communication and synaptic efficiency.
Cyanobacteria
-a photoautotropic organism that has a self-sustained circadian rhythm -during daylight: harvest energy -during night: repairs DNA -Our metabolic clocks are based on the diurnal rhythm, it is in our genes.
Learning as _______
-a product----->conceptual knowledge -a process-----> adaptation and use
Types of speech exhibited
-abstract -social -concrete -concrete/abstract: representational
McGurk effect
-ba ba ba.... ba ba da -both visual and auditory used to process language
The Hongerwinter
-began late in 1944 towards the end of the Second World War. Food supplies in the northern and western regions of Nazi-occupied Holland became increasingly limited as the Germans halted overland transport of goods into Amsterdam and nearby cities. -Rations in cities dropped to as few as 500 calories per day -Many children conceived during the Hongerwinter were small and underweight. What's more, certain health problems have persisted long into their adult lives, such as increased risk for obesity -below-average methylation of the insulin-like growth factor II gene (IGF2), which codes for a growth hormone critical to gestation. Decreasing the methylation of IGF2 should increase the expression of the hormone. In contrast, later studies in this cohort found increased methylation of five other genes, among them genes associated with choles- terol transport and ageing, as well as the gene that produces IL-10, which has been linked with schizophrenia.
to study cognition in nonhuman animals:
-begin by assessing species-specific sensory-motor constraints -consider general learning principles -include ecological demands on cognition -examine implications for understanding human cognition
Infants that have strokes close to or after birth
-brain damage that occurs early in life is not as troubling as damage later in life -this is because of brain plasticity: other parts of brain take over jobs of damaged brain
Greedy Giveaway task
-chimp 1: reach to one of two piles of M&Ms (one large pile and one small pile) -chimp 2: eats piles of M&Ms other chimp picks -these chimps are number trained -Chimp 1 inevitable reaches for larger pile and then must watch Chimp 2 get the large pile and Chimp 1 is left with the pile they did not pick -Chimp 1 still continues to pick larger pile and continues to be upset by results -HOWEVER, if the piles are replaced with the associated numbers to each pile, Chimp 1 will reach for smaller number ("respond rationally") and gain the larger reward -even after symbol use, if presented with piles again, Chimp 1 reverts to reaching for larger pile -only succeed when symbol intercedes
Cogniton
-communication + computation + reasoning/interference + memory + planning/decidion making +.... -crows, octopuses, toddlers, slime molds
Gibsonian psychology
-created by JJ Gibson -He argued that the world contained the clues and that people simply picked them up through "direct perception."
Epigenetic processes
-deals with the environment's influences on genes and interactions in gene expressions -occur during learning, stress, and physical exercise -seem to be important regulators of cellular processes throughout the whole life of an organism -was first coined by Waddington in 1968, as a way to describe the ordered interactions in the development of an embryo with genetics -defined epigenetics as 'those genetic mechanisms that create phenotypic variation without altering the base-pair nucleotide sequence of the genes' -Two regions in the brain are of special interest: the hippocampus, which is critical for memory consolidation but not essential for long-term memory storage, and the cortex, the site for long-term memory storage -it was shown that unresolved loss or other trauma was correlated with a changed DNA methylation pattern. -exercise=better academia -It has become apparent that the same epigenetic mechanisms are found in the processes of stress, physical exercise, learning, and memory formation
Slime mold
-exhibit emergence -exhibit self sacrifice - put in maze that was the same layout as Tokyo, found optimal paths to food
Clustering Coefficent
-expresses the extent to which a node's topological neighbors are connected among themselves
Emergence
-fundamental property of brain -occurs between physical and functional levels of the brain •the manner in which complex phenomena arise from a collection of relatively simple interactions between system components.
Basic network metrics
-has edges and nodes
Time of eating has a huge effect on the liver and insulin efficacy
-high blood glucose-->beta cells release insulin from pancreas-->stimulates liver to remove glucose from blood and store it as glycogen (can be stored in liver or tissues) -tissue is diurnal so it can't absorb glucose at night -low blood glucose-->alpha cells release glucagon from pancreas--> stimulates conversion of stored glycogen in liver to glucose in blood -Insulin-sensitivity is dependent on the peripheral clock in muscle cells -Glucose uptake in muscle is dependent on the circadian rhythm
The motor strip
-in the frontal cortex -foot, hand, mouth -these motor places in brain light up while listening to sentences about an action being done with that body part
Node Degree
-is simply the number of edges attached to a given node.
Main order of communication of kids
-look, touch, talk, gesture
Brain of Leborgne
-man fell out of bed and broke hip -could only speak one syllable -during autopsy, hole in brain on left hemisphere so must be language organ -called broca's area ever since -was associated with language dysfunction - one Broca's patient could still speak in patterns that have been persevered (1,2,3,... stops at 11)
If the sleep wake cycle is disrupted it can cause:
-metabolic dysregulation -weight gain, obesity -impaired immunity -cognitive malfunction ex) shift workers, jet lag, sleep disorders, poor sleep hygiene, all nighters
Multimodal analysis of children at museums
-multiple modalities: look, touch, manipulate, talk, gesture, read -multiple individuals: children and adults -multiple time scales: attention (<1 second), talk and gesture (1-5 seconds), interactions (5-300 seconds)
cake of fruit experiment
-must memorize 4 or 9 numbers -on way to test, there was a booth with free fruit or cake -people with 9 numbers were more likely to pick cake while people with 4 numbers were more likely to pick fruit
some animals have been tested for their ability to do more complex reasoning such as involving symbols
-parrots -once chimps are number trained, they briefly see a series of numbers and must touch the squares in order -chimps perform better then college students
Primate (including humans) cognition is constrained
-primates have forward facing eyes for hunting and good depth perception for arboreal locomotion -have opposable thumbs and can see own hands (hand eye coordination) -hand eye coordination leads to tool use -rats also have dexterous hands with opposable thumbs, but they cannot see their own hands -elephants have trunk eye coordination -birds have eye beak foot coordination
Behaviorism:
-rat in maze -given stimulus (food) of maze, rat has learned a response (go forward, turn right) -rat will continue to do this even if there is no food, until reinforcement of food tells rat to do something else
How is information processed
-reasoning -memory -perception -emotion -language
General learning principles
-some general learning principles apply to all -animals in general tend to detect and use event correlations -when events reliably co-occur, with experience, animals will use Event 1 to predict Event 2 -Pavlov dogs: temporal contiguity-bell and food must occur close in time for animal to learn correlation -win stay/lose shift: if birds win (get reward) then stay (continue same response), BUT if rules change, and pecking white-on-black NOT rewarded (=lose), animal will shift its strategy to peck white-on-white -hummingbirds do win stay/lose shift poorly because they drain the nectar from a flower at each visit so win shift is smart for them
Reductionism
-system phenomena -reducing the system down to smallest particle •in philosophy, a view that a complex system can be modeled and understood simply by reducing the examination to a study of the system's constituent parts.
if you don't know a language, __________________________
-then its hard to distinguish where words start and end -babies learn to do this very quickly
Wernicke's Area
-understand language -superior temporal lobe on left hemisphere
Kanzi
-woman talked to her constantly while growing up -called enculturation -understands specific words and hand motions -doesn't know "not"
what a mutation does
-wrong nucleotide appear in one more positions in the DNA, which can result either in the production of structurally aberrant protein, which behaves abnormally if it functions at all, or in the over-or under-production of the protein
Social complexity
1. Power=rank -A>B>C>D>E -in a simple hierarchical society, C only needs to track its own dyadic relationships (its relation to others) 2. Power= not rank -coalitions between lower ranking individuals can out-compete higher ranking individuals -So, C must track not just its own dyadic relations, but also the relationship between others
Cannot always trust sense
1. filtered speech: couldn't understand 2. unfiltered speech 3. filtered speech: could understand -also video w/ person with fly mask in middle of room
Networks
1.connect levels of organization in the brain 2. help link structure to function
Turing test:
If computer can fool someone to think it is an actual persons through its answers, it passes the test
Discoverability
Is it possible to even figure out what actions are possible and where and how to perform them?
How many people were born in Great Britain on September 10, 1752?
It was impossible for any citizen of the British Empire to have been born between September 3 and September 13 (inclusive) 1752. This is because the Empire adopted the Gregorian Calendar after having been on the Julian. By decree of the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, September 2, 1752 was followed by September 14, 1752.
TMS
Magnetic stimulation to certain part of the brain
Motifs
Networks can be uniquely decomposed into subgraphs of motifs. -different ways a certain number of nodes can be connected
___________ in the brain is the "master clock" used to coordinate and synchronize most of the body clocks in the periphery.
Superchiasmatic Nucleus -light is processed by this nucleus
Interaction design
The focus is upon how people interact with technology. The goal is to enhance people's understanding of what can be done, what is happening, and what has just occurred. Interaction design draws upon principles of psychology, design, art, and emotion to ensure a positive, enjoyable experience.
Path Length and Distance
The length of the shortest path corresponds to the (topological, not metric) distance between two nodes.
Experience design
The practice of designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed
Industrial design
The professional service of creating and developing concepts and specifications that optimize the function, value and appearance of products and systems for the mutual benefit of both user and manufacturer
Core
The same network as shown in a rich club, but now shown after core decomposition, (ie, the iterative removal of low degree). This procedure results in a core network comprising 4 nodes with a minimal degree of 3
Visual Cortex
V1: processing light and dark V5: responds to motion
Understanding
What does it all mean? How is the product supposed to be used? What do all the different controls and settings mean?
Human-Centered Design (HCD)
an approach that puts human needs, capabilities, and behavior first, then designs to accommodate those needs, capabilities, and ways of behaving. Good design starts with an understanding of psychology and technology. Good design requires good communication, especially from machine to person, indicating what actions are possible, what is happening, and what is about to happen.
Conceptual model
an explanation, usually highly simplified, of how something works. It doesn't have to be complete or even accurate as long as it is useful. -Conceptual models are valuable in providing understanding, in predicting how things will behave, and in figuring out what to do when things do not go as planned. A good conceptual model allows us to predict the effects of our actions.
Superior Longitudinal Fasciculus
bidirectional bundle that allows connection from front to back
Brain-Computer interface
bionic hand music through brain rat brain in robot
Dolphins
cannot distinguish color at all -their vision is sensitive to motion and high contrast
Secondary data of kids at museums:
coding schemes of videos -software: ELAN -look, touch, talk, gesture
Hub
connects 2 modules or clusters -high degree and connectivity -A schematic network composed of four modules that are linked by hub nodes -"Recent evidence suggests that some brain areas act as hubs interconnecting distinct, functionally specialized systems. Prominent hubs were located within posterior cingulate, lateral temporal, lateral parietal, and medial/lateral prefrontal cortices." -Cortical hubs seem to be where Amyloid beta build up occurs. Those regions showing high functional connectivity primarily overlap those regions showing Aβ deposition.
Split brain
corpus callosum is cut, two hemispheres are not connected
Zeitgeber
cues for body if its light or dark -ex) food is zeitgeber for stomach bc you should eat when its light out -intestinal activity and its ability to absorb nutrients are dependent on the time of day -SCN is not the only clock in the body
Benefits of cognitive science films
encouraging public funding for research
protective coloration
ex) butterflies with wings that look like eyes ex) bees dancing to tell others if food is good or not ex)vervet alarm calls: to warn off predators
Seagulls
have UV coloring that humans can't see
Parts of brain most affected by Alzheimers
high modularity with low connectivity
what epigenetic marks do
influence how tightly the spools are packed in any given region of chromatin and, in so doing, affect the activity level of the genes within that region -methyl groups lead to tightly packing which tends to inhibit gene transcription -acetyl groups tend to unfurl the chromatin and thereby foster gene transcription
Irrational decision making
judges are less lenient before lunch and dinner and more lenient after they eat
Mentalese
language of thought -in Wernicke's area
what are the two most influential external cues that synchronize the circadian rhythm?
light and melatonin -Sleep wake cycle is regulated by the circadian system -Melatonin is released when it gets dark and makes you sleepy -melatonin supplements can disrupt hormones such as testosterone
rich club
multiple connections among hubs -With the addition of further intermodule connections hub nodes now form a densely interconnected rich club, consisting of 5 nodes with a degree of 4 or higher
Electrocorticography
patients who might be epileptic and have seizures have their brains opened and electrodes placed on brain, can locate where misbehaved electrodes are
Affordance
refers to the relationship between a physical object and a person (or for that matter, any interacting agent, whether animal or human, or even machines and robots). An affordance is a relationship between the properties of an object and the capabilities of the agent that determine just how the object could possibly be used. -if an affordance or anti-affordance cannot be perceived, some means of signaling its presence is required: I call this property a "signifier"
Cognitive ethnography
study of how people think and behave -focuses on interactions around elements in cognitive ecosystems, both human and environmental, and bounds units of analysis based on cognitive tasks
what epigenetics marks are
the DNA in our cells is wrapped around complexes of proteins called histones, like thread around a spool; the combination of DNA and histone protein is known as chromatin. Epigenetic marks are chemical groups of various sorts that decorate the histones and DNA; they can be added or subtracted in response to environmental factors and experience
Cognitive Science
the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes
CS10K
• A national initiative • Funded by National Science Foundation • Train 10,000 teachers for 10,000 schools • Support curriculum development • Launch AP Computer Science Principles
Computer Science: Creating a Village for Educators (CS_CaVE)
• Built on previous project (ComPASS) focused on training teachers • Partnership: UCSD and 3 school districts • Establish,scale up, and sustain K12 CS Ed • Research how districts do this work -district needs the most help
How does one solve the mind‐body problem?
• Start small. • Look at relationships between different areas in the brain. • "Connect the dots." • Model it.
COMPLEXITY AND MULTISCALE ORGANIZATION
• The human brain is complex! • It has 100 billion neurons. • One neuron has 10,000 synapses! • At the cellular level: one thousand trillion components. • Complexity is a characteristic of biological systems. • Use mathematical tools and concepts to understand the system.
Wiring diagram
• a map of the hard‐wired connectivity of a system. In neuroscience, the term is usually used to refer to the map of connections (e.g. synapses) between neurons specifically but can also be used to refer to the map of larger scale white matter connections between brain regions
Complex network theory
• a modeling framework that defines a complex system in terms of its subcomponents and their interactions, which together form a network.
Connectome
•a complete connectivity map of a system. In neuroscience, the structural connectome is defined by the anatomical connections between subunits of the brain whereas the functional connectome is defined by the functional relations between those subunits.
Ising model
•a historically important mathematical model of a phenomenon in physics known as ferromagnetism that displays several characteristics of complex systems including phase transitions and the emergence of collective phenomena.
Complex System
•a system whose overall behavior can be characterized as more than the sum of its parts.
Nonfundamental causality
•the concept that parts of a system that are not its smallest parts (i.e. nonfundamental) can have significant causal power in terms of system function, facilitating mutual manipulability between multiple levels of the system and multiple realizability of system function.
Scaling
•the term scaling indicates a similarity of some organizational structure of phenomenon across multiple scales of a system. Spatial scaling therefore indicates that a principle or phenomenon is consistently displayed at multiple spatial resolutions. Temporal scaling indicates that a principle or phenomenon is consistently displayed at multiple temporal resolutions. *Temporal Scaling: "...evident across the inherent rhythms of brain activity that vary in frequency and relate to different cognitive capacities." -Self-similarity of spatial distribution of highly connected network nodes or "hubs" in the frequency range