Missed on Practice Problems Cogsci MT1

Association Cortex

- part of the cerebral cortex not associated with motor and sensory tasks - 75% of the human cerebral cortex

Feature Integration Theory

1. Pre-attentive stage where parallel processing of stimulus occurs 2. Focused attention stage where expectation based priming creates processing advantages for the stimulus

Midbrain

A small part of the brain above the pons that integrates sensory information and relays it upward.

How does the biased competition theory explain why people sometimes fail to perceive stimuli that are clearly right in front of them?

Attention can make neurons more sensitive to attended stimuli and less responsive to distractors, and this can prevent a distractor from being processed even if it's in clear view.

Introspection and training

Introspectors were highly trained

Kareena has undergone a split-brain procedure. Her doctor briefly presents the word "hammer" to only her left visual field and then asks her what she saw. Which response (or set of responses) is Kareena most likely to give?

She will say she doesn't know what word appeared, but she will be able to draw a picture of the object with her left hand.

Evidence from single-cell recording experiments suggests that we might have a cell that responds to pictures of a specific person. Which of the following statements about that experiment is true?

The cell responded to pictures of the person across a range of views, and even to the person's name.

Which of the following statements most accurately represents the order of events involved in interpreting a visual stimulus?

You perceive the components and interpret the stimulus in a parallel fashion.

The lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN)

acts as a way station in the thalamus between the eye and the occipital cortex.

Sadiq has a significantly difficult time sustaining attention and completing projects that require sustained effort. These experiences are likely associated with functioning of which system?

alerting

A researcher has identified the receptive field for a neuron and has determined that the receptive field has a center-surround organization. If the researcher were to shine light into the entire receptive field, including both the center and the surrounding areas, we would expect the neuron to

continue firing at its resting rate.

If Sheila says, "Pass the salt, please," you are likely to pass her the salt. You'll probably respond in the same way if Sheila (a chemistry major) instead asks, "Could you please hand me the sodium chloride crystals?" This observation seems to indicate that our behavior is

determined by what the stimuli we encounter mean to us.

Imagine that researchers have developed a drug that (temporarily) disrupts a person's ability to focus his or her attention. Let's say that we give this drug to someone, and then ask that person to search through various displays, looking for certain targets. We would expect the drug to

disrupt the search for a target defined by a conjunction of features (e.g., "Find the shape that is red and round")

when are binocular cues most useful

for objects that are close

geons is short for

geometric ions

What's interesting about unilateral neglect syndrome

if a patient is focused on an object in the visual field that is normal and the object is moved into the usually ignored visual field, the patient can still attend to it

Introspection was employed as a research tool in the late 1800s because

it was regarded as the only way to observe the mind's contents directly.

word-superiority effect

it's easier to recognize a letter within the context of a word than it is to recognize a letter presented by itself.

Participants' recognition thresholds are

lower for frequently seen words

Lisa has recently suffered a brain injury. Her symptoms include deficits in coordination and interpretation of pain. Which structure is most likely damaged?

midbrain

Recordings of electrical activity in the brain show that the neurons are

more responsive to attended inputs than unattended input

Attention and brain mechanisms

multiple brain mechanisms are responsible for the control of attention

Do neurons throughout the body have reasonably consistent shape?

no

can practicing certain skills increase our "cognitive budget"?

no! it can only decrease the amount of cognitive expendature used on practiced tasks

alerting system

responsible for achieving and maintaining an alert state in the brain

Different forms of priming can be distinguished in several ways. For example, the effects of __________ priming can be observed more immediately after the relevant cue is provided than can the effects of __________ priming.

stimulus-based; expectation-based

fovea

the central focal point in the retina, around which the eye's cones cluster - does NOT include area of retina far out in the periphery

brightness constancy

the tendency to perceive the apparent brightness of an object as the same even when the light conditions change

Capgras and the amygdala

they have nothing to do with each other

what can be noticed in the unattended channel

whether or not its a human voice, musical instruments, or silence, - if a person, can report male or female, voice pitch, and volume