PSY270 - Chapter 1 & 2
What year do scientific historians call "the birthday of cognitive science?"
1956
Who was George Miller?
A Harvard psychologist, who presented a version of a paper "The Magical Number Seven Plus or Minus Two," at the MIT Symposium on Information Conference, which had just been published (Miller, 1956). In that paper, Miller presented the idea that there are limits to the human's ability to process information—that the information processing of the human mind is limited to about seven items (for example, the length of a telephone number).
What is a neurotransmitter?
A chemical released by a nerve when the signals (nerve impulse) reach the synapse at the end of the axon. This neurotransmitter makes it possible for the signal to be transmitted across the gap that separates the end of the axon from the dendrite or cell body of another neuron.
What is a nerve net?
A network that was believed to be continuous, like a highway system in which a one way street connects directly to another. When visualized this way, the nerve net provided a complex pathway for conducting signals uninterrupted through the network. Nerve net theory proposed that signals could be transmitted throughout the net in all directions.
What is the pain matrix?
A neural network that consists of a number of connected structures that are involved in the perception of pain. Thus, one area is involved in determining the location of pain and its sensory aspects (described by words like throbbing, prickly, and intense); some areas are involved in emotional aspects of pain (described by words such as unpleasant, torturing, and frightful); other areas are involved in evaluating the significance of a pain stimulus for ongoing behavior, directing attention to or away from a painful stimulus, and recording memories of the stimulus. All of the structures in this network, working together, determine the nature of the overall experience of pain.
What is analytic introspection?
A technique in which trained subjects described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli. Wundt thought he could use this to achieve a scientific description of the components of experience.
What is magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)?
A technique that uses magnets to create images of structures within the brain. In the 1980s it was introduced for clinical practice and since then it has become a standard for detecting tumours and other brain abnormalities. This technique is excellent for revealing brain structures, but it doesn't indicate neural activity.
Who was John McCarthy?
A young professor of mathematics at Dartmouth College who wondered if it were possible to program computers to mimic the operation of the human mind? Rather than simply asking the question, McCarthy decided to organize a conference at Dartmouth in the summer of 1956 to provide a forum for researchers to discuss ways that computers could be programmed to carry out intelligent behavior. The title of the conference, Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, was the first use of the term artificial intelligence.
What is structuralism?
According to structuralism, our overall experience is determined by combining basic elements of experience that the structuralists called sensations. Just as chem developed a periodic table of the elements, which combine to create molecules, Wundt wanted to create a "periodic table of the mind," which would include all of the basic sensations involved in creating experience.
Who was Camillo Golgi?
An Italian anatomist who in the 1870s developed the staining technique in which a thin slice of brain tissue was immersed in a solution of silver nitrate. This staining technique created pictures in which fewer than 1% of the cells were stained, so they stood out from the rest of the tissue. The cells that were stained were stained completely, so it was possible to see their structure.
What is the information-processing approach to studying the mind?
An approach that traces sequences of mental operations involved in cognition. According to the information-processing approach, the operation of the mind can be described as occurring in a number of stages. Applying this stage approach to the mind led psychologists to ask new questions and to frame their answers to these questions in new ways.
What is prosopagnosia?
An inability to recognize faces. People with prosopagnosia can tell that a face is a face, but can't recognize whose face it is, even for people they know well such as friends and family members. In some cases, people with prosopagnosia look into a mirror and, seeing their own image, wonder who the stranger is looking back at them.
What is the occipital lobe?
Area of our brain where the visual cortex is located. From studying Japanese soldiers in 1904-1905 in WW1 with damage to their occipital lobe, it was discovered that damage to the occipital lobe resulted in blindness, and that there was a connection between the area of the occipital lobe that was damaged and the place in the visual space where the person was blind. For example, damage to the left part of the occipital lobe caused an area of blindness in the upper right part of visual space.
How did McCarthy define the artificial intelligence approach?
As "making a machine behave in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were so behaving" (McCarthy et al., 1955).
Who was John B. Watson?
As a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Watson became dissatisfied with the method of analytic introspection. His problems with this method were (1) it produced extremely variable results from person to person, and (2) these results were difficult to verify because they were interpreted in terms of invisible inner mental processes. In response to what he perceived to be deficiencies in analytic introspection, Watson proposed a new approach called behaviorism. One of Watson's papers, "Psychology As the Behaviorist Views It" (1) Watson rejects introspection as a method, and (2) observable behavior, not consciousness (which would involve unobservable processes such as thinking, emotions, and reasoning), is the main topic of study.
What happens when the neuron's receptor is stimulated so that a nerve impulse is transmitted down the axon?
As the impulse passes the recording electrode, the charge inside the axon rises to +40 millivolts compared to the outside. As the impulse continues past the electrode, the charge inside the fiber reverses course and starts becoming negative again, until it returns to the resting potential. This impulse, which is called the action potential, lasts about 1 millisecond (1/1000 second).
What are axons?
Axons (also called nerve fibers) are usually long processes that transmit signals to other neurons.
What did Ebbinghaus find about memory?
Because forgetting had occurred during the delay, Ebbinghaus made errors when he first tried to remember the list. But because he had retained something from his original learning, he relearned the list more rapidly than when he had learned it for the first time.
Why was the microstructure of the brain described as a continuously interconnected network?
Because the staining techniques and microscopes used during that period could not resolve small details, and without these details, the nerve net appeared to be continuous.
Why did analytic introspection require extensive training?
Because the subjects' goal was to describe their experience in terms of elementary mental elements.
What are voxels?
Brain activity is recorded in voxels, which are small cube-shaped areas of the brain about 2 or 3 mm on a side. Voxels are not brain structures but are simply small units of analysis created by the fMRI scanner. One way to think about voxels is that they are like the small square pixels that make up digital photographs or the image on your computer screen, but since the brain is three-dimensional, voxels are small cubes rather than small squares.
How did Donders measure simple reaction time?
By asking his subjects to push a button as rapidly as possible when they saw a light go on.
How did Donders measure choice reaction time?
By using two lights and asking his subjects to push the left button when they saw the left light go on and the right button when they saw the right light go on. The choice reaction time task added decisions by requiring subjects to decide whether the left or right light was illuminated and then which button to push.
What are neural circuits?
Cajal discovered that neurons are not connected indiscriminately to other neurons, but they form connections only to specific neurons. This forms groups of interconnected neurons, which together form neural circuits.
What did Chomsky believe about how children learn language?
Chomsky saw language development as being determined not by imitation or reinforcement, but by an inborn biological program that holds across cultures. Chomsky's idea that language is a product of the way the mind is constructed led psychologists to reconsider the idea that language and other complex behaviors, such as problem solving and reasoning, can be explained by operant conditioning. Instead, they began to realize that to understand complex cognitive behaviors, it is necessary not only to measure observable behavior but also to consider what this behavior tells us about how the mind works.
What are Watson's ideas associated with?
Classical conditioning—how pairing one stimulus (such as the loud noise presented to Albert) with another, previously neutral stimulus (such as the rat) causes changes in the response to the neutral stimulus. Watson used classical conditioning to argue that behavior can be analyzed without any reference to the mind. For Watson, what was going on inside Albert's head (or inside Pavlov's dog's head!), either physiologically or mentally, was irrelevant. He cared only about how pairing one stimulus with another affected behavior.
On top of studying behavior, what else do cognitive psychologists examine?
Cognitive psychologists also measure physiological processes that underlie that behavior. For example, in addition to considering how memory operates behaviorally, cognitive psychologists are also interested in how memory operates in the brain. In fact, for every behavioral question, there is a physiological question, because the brain is the "machinery" responsible for creating the behavior.
What is a synapse?
Discovered by Cajal. The small gap between the end of a neuron's axon and the dendrites or cell body of another neuron.
Explain Donder's Pioneering experiment?
Donders was interested in determining how long it takes for a person to make a decision. He determined this by measuring reaction time. The two types of reaction time that he measured were simple reaction time and choice reaction time. He reasoned that the difference in reaction time between the simple and choice conditions would indicate how long it took to make the decision that led to pushing the correct button. Because the choice reaction time took one-tenth of a second longer than simple reaction time, Donders concluded that the decision-making process took one-tenth of a second.
What physiological processes are going on in an example where Gil is talking with Mary in the park, and then a few days later he passes the park and remembers what she was wearing and what they talked about?
During the initial experience, in which Gil perceives Mary as he is talking with her, chemical processes occur in Gil's eyes and ears, which create electrical signals in neurons (which we will describe shortly); individual brain structures are activated, then multiple brain structures are activated, all leading to his perception of Mary and what is happening as they talk. Meanwhile, other things are happening, both during Gil's conversation with Mary and after it is over. The electrical signals generated as Gil was talking with Mary trigger chemical and electrical processes that result in the storage of Gil's experiences in his brain. Then, when Gil passes the park a few days later, another sequence of physiological events is triggered that retrieves the information that was stored earlier, which enables him to remember his conversation with Mary.
Who was the first to conduct a cognitive psychology experiment?
Dutch physiologist Franciscus Donders, who in 1868, 11 years before the founding of the first laboratory of scientific psychology, did one of the first experiments that today would be called a cognitive psychology experiment.
Who was Hermann Ebbinghaus?
Ebbinghaus was interested in determining the nature of memory and forgetting—specifically, how rapidly information that is learned is lost over time. Rather than using Wundt's method of analytic introspection, Ebbinghaus used a quan- titative method for measuring memory
What are 3 types of long-term memory and what do they do?
Episodic memory is memory for events in your life (like what you did last weekend). Semantic memory is memory for facts (such as the names of recent US president). Procedural memory is memory for physical actions (such as how to ride a bike or play the piano).
Give an example of distributed representation occurring when somebody watches a red ball rolling?
Even this simple, neutral stimulus causes a wide distribution of activity in the brain, because each of the ball's qualities—color (red), movement (to the right), shape (round), depth, location—is processed in a different area of the brain. The importance of this observation extends beyond perceiving a rolling red ball to other cognitive functions, such as memory, language, making decisions, and solving problems, all of which involve distributed activity in the brain. Recalling a fact or remembering an event not only elicits associations with other facts or events but can also elicit visual, auditory, smell, or taste perceptions associated with the memory; emotions elicited by the memory; and other thought processes as well. Additionally, there are different types of memory—short-term memory, long-term memory, memories about events in a person's life, memories for facts, and so on— all of which activate different, although sometimes partially overlapping, areas of the brain.
What is the fusiform face area (FFA)?
Faces activate a specific area in the brain, the fusiform face area (FFA). It is in the fusiform gyrus on the underside of the temporal lobe and it's the same part of the brain that is damaged in cases of prosopagnosia.
Explain the experiment conducted by Colin Cherry in 1953?
For a starting point he used William James' idea that when we decide to attend to one thing. He presented subjects with two auditory messages, one to the left ear and one to the right ear, and told them to focus their attention on one of the messages (the attended message) and to ignore the other one (the unattended message). For example, the subject might be told to attend to the left-ear message that began "As Susan drove down the road in her new car ..." while simultaneously receiving, but not attending to, the right-ear message "Cognitive psychology, which is the study of mental processes ..." He discovered that when people focused on the attended message, they could hear the sounds of the unattended message but were unaware of the contents of that message.
What did Charles Gross do?
Gross's experiments, in which he recorded from single neurons in the monkey's temporal lobe, on the side of the brain, required a great deal of endurance by the researchers, because the experiments typically lasted 3 or 4 days. In these experiments, Gross's research team presented a variety of different stimuli to anesthetized monkeys. On a projection screen they presented lines, squares, and circles. Some stimuli were light, and some dark.
What are neural networks?
Groups of neurons or structures that are connected together.
What else did Adrian discover about action potential?
He found that each action potential travels all the way down the axon without changing its height or shape. This property makes action potentials ideal for sending signals over a distance, because it means that once an action potential is started at one end of an axon, the signal will still be the same size when it reaches the other end.
What did Donald Broadbent do (1958)?
He proposed the first flow diagram of the mind. This diagram represents what happens in a person's mind when directing attention to one stimulus in the environment. Applied to Cherry's attention experiment, "input" would be the sounds of both the attended and unattended messages; the "filter" lets through the attended message and filters out the unattended message; and the "detector" records the information that gets through the filter. Broadbent's flow diagram provided a way to analyze the operation of the mind in terms of a sequence of processing stages and proposed a model that could be tested by further experiments.
Who was Ulrich Neisser?
He published a textbook in 1967 that coined the term cognitive psychology and emphasized the information-processing approach to studying the mind. He is, in a sense, the grandfather of the book you are now reading.
Who was Carl Wernicke?
He studied another group of patients with damage in an area of the temporal lobe, now called Wernicke's area, whose speech was fluent and grammatically correct but tended to be incoherent.
What is reaction time?
How long it takes to respond to presentation of a stimulus.
Explain the analogy that Adrian made between nerve firing and experience?
If nerve impulses are crowded closely together, the sensation is intense. However, if they are separated by long intervals, the sensation is correspondingly feeble. What Adrian is saying is that electrical signals are representing the intensity of the stimulus, so pressure that generates "crowded" electrical signals feels stronger than pressure that generates signals separated by long intervals.
What is an example of specificity coding?
In figure 2.13, a number of neurons respond to three different faces. Only neuron #4 responds to Bill's face, only #9 responds to Mary's face, and only #6 responds to Raphael's face. Also note that the neuron specialized to respond only to Bill, which we can call a "Bill neuron," does not respond to Mary or Raphael. In addition, other faces or types of objects would not affect this neuron. It fires only to Bill's face.
Explain Tolman's rat experiment?
In one of his experiments, Tolman (1938) placed a rat in a maze like the one in. Initially, the rat explored the maze, running up and down each of the alleys. After this initial period of exploration, the rat was placed at A and food was placed at B, and the rat quickly learned to turn right at the intersection to obtain the food. This is exactly what the behaviorists would predict, because turning right was rewarded with food. However, when Tolman (after taking precautions to be sure the rat couldn't determine the location of the food based on smell) placed the rat at C, something interesting happened. The rat turned left at the intersection to reach the food at B.
Who was Edgar Adrian?
In the 1920s, Edgar Adrian was able to record electrical signals from single sensory neurons, an achievement for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1932 (Adrian, 1928, 1932). He recorded action potentials from single neurons.
Who were David Hubel and Thorsten Wiesel?
In the 1960s, they started a series of experiments in which they presented visual stimuli to cats and determined which stimuli caused specific neurons to fire. They found that each neuron in the visual area of the cortex responded to a specific type of stimulation presented to a small area of the retina. The neurons that fired are called feature detectors?
How is Broadbent's filter model of attention an example of a process model?
In this model, the box representing the "filter" represents the process that separates the attended message from other messages. This process is not necessarily located in one particular place in thebrain, so the boxes do not necessarily represent specific structures; rather, they indicate a process that could be carried outby a number of different structures working together.
Why is the savings curve important?
It demonstrated that memory could be quantified and that functions like the savings curve could be used to describe a property of the mind—in this case, the ability to retain information.
What is the somatosensory cortex?
It is in the parietal lobe. It receives signals from the skin and is responsible for perception of touch, pressure, and pain.
What is a double dissociation?
It occurs if damage to one area of the brain causes function A to be absent while function B is present, and damage to another area causes function B to be absent while function A is present. To demonstrate a double dissociation, it is necessary to find two people with brain damage that satisfy the above conditions. Double dissociations have been demonstrated for face recognition and object recognition, by finding patients who can't recognize faces (Function A) but who can recognize objects (Function B), and other patients, with damage in a different area, who can't recognize objects (Function B) but who can recognize faces (Function A). The importance of demonstrating a double dissociation is that it enables us to conclude that functions A and B are served by different mechanisms, which operate independently of one another.
What did Ebbinghaus believe about the reduction in savings with longer delays?
It provided a measure of forgetting, with smaller savings meaning more forgetting.
What is the frontal lobe?
It receives signals from all of the senses and is responsible for coordi- nation of the senses, as well as higher cognitive functions like thinking and problem solving.
What is the sensory code?
It refers to how neurons represent various characteristics of the environment.
What is the principle of neural representation?
It states that everything a person experiences is based not on direct contact with stimuli, but on representations in the persons nervous system.
What is functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)?
It takes advantage of the fact that blood flow increases in areas of the brain activated by a cognitive task. The measurement of blood flow is based on the fact that hemoglobin, which carries oxygen in the blood, contains a ferrous (iron) molecule and therefore has magnetic properties. If a magnetic field is presented to the brain, the hemoglobin molecules line up like tiny magnets. fMRI indicates the presence of brain activity because the hemoglobin molecules in areas of high brain activity lose some of the oxygen they are transporting. This makes the hemoglobin more magnetic, so these molecules respond more strongly to the magnetic field. The fMRI apparatus determines the relative activity of various areas of the brain by detecting changes in the magnetic response of the hemoglobin.
What measure did Ebbinghaus use?
It was called "savings" He used it to determine how much was forgotten after a particular delay. Longer delays result in smaller savings.
Who was Watson's inspiration for the "Little Albert" experiment?
Ivan Pavlov's research, begun in the 1890s, that demonstrated classical conditioning in dogs. In these experiments, Pavlov's pairing of food (which made the dog salivate) with a bell (the initially neutral stimulus) caused the dog to salivate to the sound of the bell.
What were James' observations based on?
James's observations were based not on the results of experiments but on observations about the operation of his own mind.
Explain how the principle of neural representation occurs when two people encounter each other.
Let's return to Gil's conversation with Mary. Gil sees Mary because light reflected from Mary enters Gil's eyes and Mary's image is focused onto his retina, the layer of neurons that lines the back of the eye. The important word here is image, because it is the image created by light reflected by Mary that gets into Gil's eye, not Mary herself. The idea of Mary not getting into the eye may seem silly because it is so obvious, but the point is an important one: What enters the eye is a representation of Mary—something that stands for her—and one property of this representation is that although it may look like Mary, it is also different from her. It is not only two-dimensional and smaller, but may be distorted or blurred because of the optics of the eye. The difference between Mary and her representationon the retina becomes more dramatic a few thousandthsof a second later when receptors in the retina transformher image into electrical signals, which then travel throughthe retina, leave the back of the eye in the optic nerve, andeventually reach the visual cortex, the area at the back of thebrain that receives signals from the eye. Gil's perception ofMary is therefore based not on direct contact with Mary, but on the way she is represented by action potentials in the brain.
What is the idea of levels of analysis?
Levels of analysisrefers to the idea that a topic can be studied in a number of different ways, with each approach contributing its own dimension to our understanding.
How does research in cognitive psychology work?
Like research in science in general, it begins with what is known about a problem. From that starting point, researchers ask questions, design experiments, and obtain and interpret results. These findings then become the basis for new questions, experiments, and results. We can thus think of the process of research in terms of following a trail in which one thing leads to another. As with many trails, there are places where it is necessary to choose one path or another. In terms of research, the pathway taken is determined by the questions that are asked. The biggest challenge of research is, therefore, not doing the experiments, but picking the right questions.
Who was Paul Broca?
Made one of the earliest reports of localization of function by studying a stroke patient. He proposed that an area in the left frontal lobe, now called Broca's area, is specialized for speech. His proposal was based on his study of a patient who had suffered damage to his frontal lobe and was called "Tan" because this was the only word he could say.
What is episodic memory?
Memory for personal experiences. Your memory for your trip to New York City and the things you did there would be episodic memories.
What interesting thing did Donder's experiment illustrate about studying the mind?
Mental responses (perceiving the light and deciding which button to push, in this example) cannot be measured directly, but must be inferred from behavior. When he measured reaction time, he was measuring the relationship between presentation of the stimulus and the subject's response. He did not measure mental responses directly, but inferred how long they took from the reaction times. The fact that mental responses cannot be measured directly, but must be inferred from observing behavior, is a principle that holds not only for Donders's experiment but for all research in cognitive psychology.
What is the role of models in cognitive psych?
Models are representations of structures or processes that help us visualize or explain the structure or process. Models are not identical replicas of the real thing. They are simplifications that don't contain as much detail, but do contain important information about the structures being represented.
What are process models?
Models that illustrate how a process operates. Process models represent the processes that are involved in cognitive mechanisms, with boxes usually representing specific processes and arrows indicating connections between processes. Process models make complicated systems easier to understand and also provide a starting point for research.
What are structural models?
Models that represent structures in the brain that are involved in specific functions. Plastic models have been used to illustrate the locations of different structures of the brain. Structures can also be represented by diagrams that don't resemble the structure but that instead indicate how different areas of the brain are connected.
What is the cerebral cortex?
Most of the cognitive functions are served by the cerebral cortex. It is a layer of tissue about 3 mm thick that covers the brain. The cortex is the wrinkled covering do you see when you look at an intact brain.
What are feature detectors?
Nerve cells in the brain that respond to specific features of the stimulus, such as shape, orientation, length and movement.
What is hierarchical processing?
Neurons in the visual cortex that respond to relatively simple stimuli send their axons to higher levels of the visual system, where signals from many neurons combine and interact; neurons at this higher level, which respond to more complex stimuli such as geometrical objects, then send signals to higher areas, combining and interacting further and creating neurons that respond to even more complex stimuli such as faces. This progression from lower to higher areas of the brain is called hierarchical processing.
What are receptors?
Neurons that are specialized to pick up information from the environment, such as the neurons in the eye, ear, and skin. They are similar to brain neurons in that they have an axon, but they have specialized recep- tors that pick up information from the environment.
Why did Noam Chomsky argue SKinner's theory about how children learn language?
Noam published a scathing review of Skinner's book, in which he pointed out that children say many sentences that have never been rewarded by parents ("I hate you, Mommy," for example), and that during the normal course of language development, they go through a stage in which they use incorrect grammar, such as "the boy hitted the ball," even though this incorrect grammar may never have been reinforced.
What is sparse coding?
Occurs when a particular object is represented by a pattern of firing of only a small group of neurons, with the majority of neurons remaining silent. There is also other evidence that the code for representing objects in the visual system, tones in the auditory system, and odors in the olfactory system may involve the pattern of activity across a relatively small number of neurons, as sparse coding suggests
What is localization of function?
One of the basic principles of brain organization. It is when specific functions are served by specific areas of the brain.
How did the invention of digital computers help psychology?
One of the characteristics of computers that captured the attention of psychologists in the 1950s was that they processed information in stages. In this diagram, information is first received by an "input processor." It is then stored in a "memory unit" before it is processed by an "arithmetic unit," which then creates the computer's output. Using this stage approach as their inspiration, some psychologists proposed the information-processing approach to studying the mind.
Who was William James?
One of the early American psychologists who taught Harvard's first psychology course and made significant observations about the mind in his textbook, Principles of Psychology (1890).
What activates the parahippocampal place area (PPA)?
Perceiving pictures representing indoor and outdoor scenes. Apparently, what is important for this area is information about spatial layout, because increased activation occurs when viewing pictures both of empty rooms and of rooms that are completely furnished
What activates the extrastriate body area (EBA)?
Pictures of bodies and parts of bodies (but not by faces).
How does nerve firing and experience relate to vision and light intensity?
Presenting high-intensity light generates a high rate of nerve firing and the light appears bright; presenting lower intensity light generates a lower rate of nerve firing and the light appears dimmer. Thus, the rate of neural firing is related to the intensity of stimulation, which, in turn, is related to the magnitude of an experience, such as feeling pressure on the skin or experiencing the brightness of a light.
What were the steps that occurred in the simple reaction time experiment?
Presenting the stimulus (the light) causes a mental response (perceiving the light), which leads to a behavioral response (pushing the button). The reaction time (dashed line) is the time between the presentation of the stimulus and the behavioral response.
What is Behaviourism?
Psychology as the Behaviorist sees it is a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness.... What we need to do is start work upon psychology making behavior, not consciousness, the objective point of our attack.
What colours in an fMRI image indicate increases or decreases in brain activity?
Red and yellow indicate increases in brain activity; and blue and green indicate decreases. These colored areas don't appear as the brain is being scanned. They are determined by a calculation in which brain activity that occurred during the cognitive task is compared to baseline activity that was recorded prior to the task. The results of this calculation, which indicate increases or decreases in activity in specific areas of the brain, are then converted into colored displays
What is the formula to calculate savings?
Savings = Original time to learn the list - Time to relearn the list after the delay. Thus, if it took 1,000 seconds to learn the list the first time and 400 seconds to relearn the list after the delay, the savings would be 1,000 - 400 = 600 seconds.
What types of stimuli do neurons in the visual cortex respond to?
Simple stimuli like oriented bars.
What did Skinner believe about children and language?
Skinner argued that children learn language through operant conditioning. According to this idea, children imitate speech that they hear, and repeat correct speech because it is rewarded.
Who was B.F. Skinner?
Skinner introduced operant conditioning, which focused on how behavior is strengthened by the presentation of positive reinforcers, such as food or social approval (or withdrawal of negative reinforcers, such as a shock or social rejection).
Explain SKinner's rat experiment?
Skinner showed that reinforcing a rat with food for pressing a bar maintained or increased the rat's rate of bar pressing. Like Watson, Skinner was not interested in what was happening in the mind, but focused solely on determining how behavior was controlled by stimuli.
What are microelectrodes?
Small shafts of hollow glass filled with a conductive salt solution that can pick up electrical signals at the electrode tip and conduct these signals back to a recording device. Modern physiologists use metal microelectrodes.
What types of stimuli do neurons in the temporal lobe respond to?
Some neurons in the temporal lobe respond to complex geometrical stimuli, and some neurons in another area of the temporal lobe respond to faces.
Who was Ramon y Cajal?
Spanish physiologist who was interested in investigating the nature of the nerve net. Cajal cleverly used two techniques to achieve his goal. First, he used the Golgi stain, which stained only some of the cells in a slice of brain tissue. Second, he decided to study tissue from the brains of newborn animals, because the density of cells in the newborn brain is small compared to the density in the adult brain. This property of the newborn brain, combined with the fact that the Golgi stain affects less than 1 percent of the neurons, made it possible for Cajal to clearly see that the nerve net was not continuous, but was instead made up of individual units connected together. Cajal's discovery that individual units called neurons were the basic building blocks of the brain was the centerpiece of neuron doctrine.
What is semantic memory?
Stored knowledge and memory for facts. Your knowledge that New York City is in New York State, that throngs of people converge on Times Square every New Year's Eve, and the layout of the New York City subway map are examples of semantic memories.
What was Wundt's approach to psychology?
Structuralism, which dominated psychology in the late 1800's and early 1900's.
What is an advantage with population coding?
That a large number of stimuli can be represented, because large groups of neurons can create a huge number of different patterns. There is good evidence for population coding in the senses and for other cognitive functions as well.
What is Wernicke's area?
The area in our brain for comprehending language. In the temporal lobe
What is Broca's area?
The area in our brain for producing language. In the frontal lobe
What is the auditory cortex?
The area of the brain that receives signals from the ears and is in the upper temporal lobe. It is responsible for hearing.
What are the three basic parts of a neuron?
The cell body, dendrites, and axons.
What was the cognitive revolution?
The decade of the 1950s is generally recognized as the beginning of the cognitive revolution— a shift in psychology from the behaviorist's stimulus-response relationships to an approach whose main thrust was to understand the operation of the mind.
What are the steps involved in snoozing an alarm clock?
The first step in hearing the alarm occurs when sound waves from the alarm enter Juan's ears and stimulate receptors that change the sound energy into electrical signals. These signals then reach the auditory area of Juan's brain, which causes him to hear the ringing of the bell. Then signals are sent from a number of places in the brain to the motor area, which controls movement. The motor area sends signals to the muscles of Juan's hand and arm, which carry out the movement that turns off the alarm. But there is more to the story than this sequence of events. For one thing, Juan's decision to hit the snooze button of his alarm is based on his knowledge that this will silence the alarm temporarily, and that the alarm will sound again in 10 minutes. He also knows that if he stays in bed for 10 more minutes, he will still have time to get to his class. A more complete picture of what's happening in Juan's brain when the alarm rings would therefore have to include processes involved in retrieving knowledge from memory and making decisions based on that knowledge.
What is the function of dendrites?
The function of dendrites that branch out from the cell body is to receive signals from other neurons.
What is specificity coding?
The idea that an object could be represented by the firing of a specialized neuron that responds only to that object.
What was the neuron doctrine?
The idea that individual cells transmit signals in the nervous system, and that these cells are not continuous with other cells as proposed by nerve net theory.
What is distributed representation?
The idea that specific cognitive functions activate many areas of the brain. Consider, for example, the localization of face perception in the brain. We saw that brain imaging experiments have identified an area called the FFA that is strongly activated by faces and responds more weakly to other types of stimuli. But just because there is an area that is specialized to respond to faces doesn't mean that faces activate only that area. Faces strongly activate the FFA, plus other areas as well. Looking at a face thus activates a number of areas involved in perceiving the face, plus other areas associated with reactions elicited by the face.
What is the cell body?
The metabolic center of the neuron; it contains mechanisms to keep the cell alive.
What definition of the mind focuses on the mind's role in memory, problem solving, and making decisions?
The mind creates and controls mental functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, and reasoning.
What is one of the best known of James's observations?
The nature of attention: Millions of items . . . are present to my senses which never properly enter my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. . . . Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. . . . It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.
How does a neuron firing with respect to remembering memories incorporate sparse coding and population coding?
The neural firing associated with experiencing a perception is associated with what is happening as perception is occurring. EX: When Gil is looking at Mary. Firing associated with memory is associated with information about the past that has been stored in the brain, as when Gil remembers seeing Mary. We know less about the actual form of this stored information for memory, but it is likely that the basic principles of population and sparse coding also operate for memory, with specific memories being represented by particular patterns of stored information that result in a particular pattern of nerve firing when we experience the memory.
What is a savings curve?
The plot of percent savings versus time. It shows that memory drops rapidly for the first 2 days after the initial learning and then levels off.
What is population coding?
The representation of a particular object by the pattern of firing of a large number of neurons. According to this idea, Bill's face might be represented by its own unique pattern of firing, Mary's face might be represented by its own unique pattern of firing, etc. See figure 2.14
What is neuropsychology?
The study of behaviour of people with brain damage. Early evidence for localization of function came from neuropsychology.
Explain the typical setup used for recording a single neuron?
There are two electrodes: a recording electrode, shown with its recording tip inside the neuron, and a reference electrode, located some distance away so it is not affected by the electrical signals. The difference in charge between the recording and reference electrodes is fed into a computer and displayed on the computer's screen.
What did Simon and Newell do?
They created a computer program that could create proofs for problems in logic—something that up until then had only been achieved by humans. They called the program the logic theorist. They demonstrated this at the conference and it was revolutionary, because the logic theorist program was able to create proofs of mathematical theorems that involve principles of logic. This program, although primitive compared to modern artificial intelligence programs, was a real "thinking machine" because it did more than simply process numbers—it used humanlike reasoning processes to solve problems.
What findings did Gross's experiment yield?
They discovered that neurons in the temporal lobe respond to complex stimuli. They found this because one neuron refused to respond to any of the standard stimuli like oriented lines or circles or squares, until one of the experimenters pointed at something in the room, casting a shadow of his hand on the screen. When this hand shadow caused a burst of firing, the experimenters knew they were onto something and began testing the neuron with a variety of stimuli, including cutouts of a monkey's hand. After a great deal of testing, they determined that this neuron responded to a handlike shape with fingers pointing up. After expanding the types of stimuli presented, they also found some neurons that responded best to faces; later researchers extended these results and provided many examples of neurons that respond to faces but don't respond to other types of stimuli
What did Doris Tsao and coworkers discover about monkeys brains?
They found that 97 percent of neurons within a small area in the lower part of a monkey's temporal lobe responded to pictures of faces but not to pictures of other types of objects. This "face area," as it turns out, is located near the area in humans that is associated with prosopagnosia. The idea that our perception of faces is associated with a specific area of the brain is also supported by research using a technique called brain imaging, which makes it possible to determine which areas of the brains of humans are activated by different cognitions.
What cognitive topics did James consider?
Thinking, consciousness, attention, memory, perception, imagination, and reasoning.
Explain what Beilock and Thomas Carr discovered about chocking under pressure?
To look for a link between working memory and choking, Beilock and Carr (2004) did an experiment in which they presented subjects with math problems and asked them to indicate whether the result had a remainder (ex: 32 - 8 divided by 4 = ? or 32 - 6 divided by 4 = ?) When Beilock presented problems such as these to subjects under low-pressure conditions ("Here's a problem") and high-pressure conditions ("You will be videotaped and need to do well to receive a cash payment"), she found that performance decreased (choking occurred) for problems that were more difficult and so depended more on working memory. The reason for this finding, Beilock hypothesized, was that pressure caused subjects to worry, and this worry used up some of their working memory capacity. Meredyth Daneman and Patricia Carpenter (1980) had developed a test to measure working memory capacity and found that, based on this test, they could divide their subjects into two groups: low working memory (LWM) subjects and high working memory (HWM) subjects. With this division of subjects into LWM and HWM in mind, Beilock used the experimental design, in which LWM and HWM subjects did the math problems under either low-pressure or high-pressure conditions. They found that under low pressure conditions, HWM subjects performed much better; however, in high pressure situations, both types of subjects performed the same. This was because HWM subjects were more likely to choke under high pressure.
What was Watson's goal?
To replace the mind as a topic of study in psychology with the study of directly observable behavior.
What was Tolman's explanation for the rat's behaviour?
Tolman's explanation of this result was that when the rat initially experienced the maze it was developing a cognitive map—a conception within the rat's mind of the maze's layout. Thus, even though the rat had previously been rewarded for turning right, its mental map indicated that it should turn left to reach the food. Tolman's use of the word cognitive, and the idea that something other than stimulus-response connections might be occurring in the rat's mind, placed Tolman outside of mainstream behaviorism.
Who was Edward Chance Tolman?
Tolman, who from 1918 to 1954 was at the University of California at Berkeley, called himself a behaviorist because his focus was on measuring behavior. But in reality he was one of the early cognitive psychologists, because he used behavior to infer mental processes.
What is diffusion tensor imaging?
Traces the pathways of the nerve fibers that create communication between different structures. It is based on detection of how water diffuses along the length of nerve fibers.
How dud Ebbinghaus measure memory?
Using himself as the subject, he repeated lists of 13 nonsense syllables such as DAX, QEH, LUH, and ZIF to himself one at a time at a constant rate. He used nonsense syllables so that his memory would not be influenced by the meaning of a particular word. Ebbinghaus determined how long it took to learn a list for the first time. He then waited for a specific amount of time (the delay) and then determined how long it took to relearn the list.
How did Adrian record electrical signals from single neurons?
Using microelectrodes
What was the "Little Albert" experiment?
Watson and Rosalie Rayner (1920) subjected Albert, a 9-month-old-boy, to a loud noise every time a rat (which Albert had originally liked) came close to the child. After a few pairings of the noise with the rat, Albert reacted to the rat by crawling away as rapidly as possible.
Explain what was discovered when Adrian studied the relation 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?
What he found was that the shape and height of the action potential remained the same as he increased the pressure, but the rate of nerve firing—that is, the number of action potentials that traveled down the axon per second—increased. From this result, Adrian drew a connection between nerve firing and experience.
What were the different strategies that HWM and LWM subjects used to solve problems?
When Beilock and Marci DeCaro (2007) asked their subjects to solve problems and then describe how they had solved them, they foundthat in low-pressure situations, the HWM subjects were more likely to arrive attheir answer by doing the calculation. Thus, in our first example, on page 16, theywould subtract 8 from 32 and divide the result by 4. This method always resultsin the correct answer but places a heavy load on working memory. In contrast,the LWM subjects were more likely to use a "short cut" that states that if all of the numbers are even, the answer is "no." This strategy works for many problems (likethe first one), but not for all (like the second one). This short-cut strategy places a low load on working memory, but doesn't always result in the correct answer. But increasing the pressure increased the likelihood that HWM subjects would shift to the short-cut strategy. When they did this, their performance dropped to the level of the LWM subjects. Meanwhile, the LWM subjects continued using the short- cut strategy, which, because it didn't use much working memory, wasn't affected by the pressure.
What is resting potential?
When the nerve is at rest, there is a difference in charge, called the resting potential, of -70 millivolts (mV) between the inside and outside of the axon. The inside of the neuron has a charge that is 70 mV more negative than the outside, and this difference con- tinues as long as the neuron is at rest.
Who founded the first laboratory of scientific psychology in 1879?
Wilhelm Wundt
Explain Wundt's piano experiment?
Wundt asked participants to describe their experience of hearing a five-note chord played on the piano. One of the questions Wundt hoped to answer was whether his subjects were able to hear each of the individual notes that made up the chord.
Asides from structuralism, which was abandoned in the early 1900's because it wasn't a useful approach, what else did Wundt contribute to psychology?
Wundt made a substantial contribution to psychology by his commitment to studying behavior and the mind under controlled conditions. In addition, he trained many PhDs who estab- lished psychology departments at other universities, including many in the United States.
Explain the Steve Carell neuron?
a neuron that responded to pictures of the actor Steve Carell and not to other people's faces (Quiroga et al., 2007). However, the researchers who discovered this neuron (as well as other neurons that responded to other people) point out that they had only 30 minutes to record from these neurons and that if more time were available, it is likely that they would have found other faces that would cause this neuron to fire. Given the likelihood that even these special neurons are likely to fire to more than one stimulus, Quiroga and coworkers (2008) suggested that their neurons are probably an example of sparse coding.
Explain the car analogy used to understand the levels of analysis?
could determine its acceleration, its braking, how well it corners, and its gas mileage. When we have measured these things, which come under the heading of "performance," we will know a lot about the particular car we are testing. But to learn more, we can consider another level of analysis: what is going on under the hood. This would involve looking at the mechanisms responsible for the car's performance: the motor and the braking and steering systems. For example, we can describe the car as being powered by a 4-cylinder 250 HP internal combustion engine and having independent suspension and disc brakes. But we can look even deeper into the operation of the car by considering another level of analysis designed to help us understand how the car's engine works. One approach would be to look at what happens inside a cylinder. When we do this, we see that when vaporized gas enters the cylinder and is ignited by the spark plug, an explosion occurs that pushes the cylinder down and sends power to the crankshaft and then to the wheels. Clearly, considering the automobile from the different levels of driving the car, describing the motor, and observing what happens inside a cylinder provides more information about cars than simply measuring the car's performance. Applying this idea of levels of analysis to cognition, we can consider measuring behavior to be analogous to measuring the car's performance, and measuring the physiological processes behind the behavior as analogous to what we learned by looking under the hood. And just as we can study what is happening under a car's hood at different levels, we can study the physiology of cognition at levels ranging from the whole brain, to structures within the brain, to chemicals that create electrical signals within these structures.
What is the problem with specificity coding?
it is unlikely to be correct. Even though there are neurons that respond to faces, these neurons usually respond to a number of different faces (not just Bill's). There are just too many different faces and other objects (and colors, tastes, smells, and sounds) in the world to have a separate neuron dedicated to each object. An alternative to the idea of specificity coding is that a number of neurons are involved in representing an object.