PSYC 309 - Final Exam (Cumulative)

Cognition - The Early Days

Behaviourism - focus on concrete observable behaviour John Watson, B.F. Skinner - influenced by Pavlov (animal learning) - classical conditioning: try to associate a condition with an observable behaviour

Capgras Delusion

Belief that significant others have been replaced by imposters, robots, or aliens - the specific replacement has varied to match technology Delusion: an incorrect belief Unlike prosopagnosia, can recognize familiar faces but do not show typical emotional reactions Damage to the visual pathway of the brain to the amygdala - never had the problem over the phone, only in person - separate pathway from the auditory pathway to amygdala

Intermediate State

Conditions after each step is made toward solving a problem Ex. after the smallest disc is moved to the right peg, the two larger discs are on the left peg and the smallest one is on the right

Initial State

Conditions at the beginning of a problem Ex. all three discs are on the left peg

Facial Prototypes

Faces are highly varied and, except in rare circumstances, no two are alike Yet they share significant similarities: - always contain the same set of parts (e.g., eyes, nose, mouth, etc.) - always appear in the same basic configuration (e.g., nose centered below the eyes and above the mouth) We're better at recognizing faces when they are right side up and looking forward then when upside down - we have only developed a prototype for right-side-up faces - the fact that we are poor at recognizing upside-down faces suggests that we don't have practice seeing faces in that position because we usually only see people when they're right-side-up

Analogical Problem Solving

Using an analogy, using the solution to a similar problem to guide solutions of a new problem Ex. using the Russian marriage problem to help solve the mutilated checkerboard problem

Eidetic Imagery

"Photographic memory" Ability to maintain seemingly clear mental image of an earlier perceptual event Ex. man who could draw exact replication of London from when he was in a helicopter over London Incidence is higher in children than adults: - young children don't know how to read, more likely to rely on analog codes - you get better at using verbal codes as you age to deal with abstract concepts

Heuristics

"Rules of thumb" Mental shortcuts that sometimes lead to the incorrect answer Likely to provide the correct answer to a problem but are not foolproof Other sources of error: people make the wrong assumption about the relationship among events - assumptions are based on certain reasoning fallacies (e.g., sunk cost fallacy)

Amygdala

"Salience" Perception Learning Memory What "stands out" in our environment

Sarcasm using contextual cues

"The weather sure looks great today" 1. Interpret the literal meaning of the statement (language-relevant areas) - the person is making a positive comment about the weather 2. Assess the intentional, social, and emotional context (frontal lobes, right hemisphere) - it's raining 3. Integrate the information provided by the previous steps (ventromedial prefrontal cortex) - mismatch between emotion expressed and likely meaning intended

Types of Consolidation

1. Synaptic - occurs at synapses - happens over minutes or hours - synapses: gap where neurotransmitters are required to continue the message on - Long Term Potentiation - enhanced firing of neurons after repeated stimulation (ex. experience causes neurotransmitters to go from synapse to synapse, the more you think of this experience, you get structural changes) 2. Systems - reorganization of brain circuits - happens gradually - Standard model of consolidation

Four Mandatory Components of Language

1. A message (conveying the idea) 2. A medium of communication (verbally, gestures, writing) 3. Rules or physical constraints (order) 4. Social constraints (what relationship do i have/dictates how you speak (ex. f word) All humans with normal capacities develop a language and learn to follow its complex rules

Creativity, Mental Illness, and the Open Mind

1. A recent study found that individuals in creative professions were not more likely than the general population to suffer from psychiatric disorders 2. Close relatives of people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, who themselves were not diagnosed, were more likely to be in a creative profession 3. Latent Inhibition: the capacity to screen out stimuli that are considered irrelevant - reduced LI is associated both with mental illness and enhanced creativity - reduced LI is associated with being more open to stimuli that would ordinarily be ignored and is often associated with the personality trait "openness to experience" 4. Deactivating the anterior temporal lobe (like that of savant syndrome) allows 40% to be able to complete the 9 dot 4 line question

How are images represented?

1. Analog/Depictive Code: - preserve the relationship between the elements - as if the person is experiencing them directly - ex. visualizing your house, know where the windows are, couch etc. - as if you're recreating it in the first person 2. Propositional Code: - relationships are represented by abstract symbols or words - describes with words rather than as a first person kind of experience - images are not perception, this is all in your mind, you create the image - ex. the dark beige sofa is in front of the window

History of Language Research

1. B. F. Skinner - language is learned through reinforcement - rewarded for correct language 2. Noam Chomsky - human language is coded in genes - genetically programmed to acquire and use language - study the properties of the mind -

Imagery and Brain Imaging

1. Both perception and imagery activate the visual cortex 2. Actvity in the striate cortex increased both when a person observed presentations of actual visual stimuli and when the person was imagining the stimulus 3. When subjects created small visual images, activity was centered near the back of the brain (circles), but as the size of the mental image increased, activation moved toward the front of the visual cortex (squares and triangles), just as it does for perception 4. Both imagery and perception result in topographically organized brain activation 5. Perception and imagery both activate the same areas in the frontal lobe 6. Perception activates much more of the occipital lobe than imagery 7. When subjects were using visual imagery, some areas associated with nonvisual stimuli, such as hearing and touch, were deactivated (visual images are more fragile than real perception and this deactivation helps quiet down irrelevant activity that might interfere with the mental image)

How Emotions Affect Decisions

1. Brain Damage - prefrontal cortex damage: flattened emotions, inability to respond to emotional events, have impaired decision making 2. Personal Qualities - anxious people tend to avoid making decisions that could potentially lead to large negative consequences, a response called risk avoidance - optimism: more likely to ignore negative information and focus on positive information causing them to base their decisions on incomplete information 3. People inaccurately predict their emotions - expected emotions: emotions that people predict they will feel for a particular outcome - expected emotions are one of the determinants of risk aversion - the tendency to avoid taking risks - if a particular loss will have a greater impact than a gain of the same size; they won't do it 4. Incidental Emotions Affect Decisions - Emotions that are not caused by having to make a decision (could be the person's general disposition, what happened earlier, or the general environment) - ex. uni admissions: academic attributes were more heavily weighted on cloudy days than on sunny days (nonacademic attributes won)

Hindbrain

1. Brainstem 2. Cerebellum

Basic Parts of a Neuron

1. Cell body - the metabolic center of the neuron; it contains mechanisms to keep the cell alive 2. Dendrites - branch out from the cell body to receive signals from other neurons 3. Axons (nerve fibers) - long processes that transmit signals to other neurons 4. Synapse - small gap between the end of a neuron's axon and the dendrites or cell body of another neuron

Pegword Technique

1. Create a list of nouns - ex. one-bun, two-shoe, three-tree 2. Pair each of the things to be remembered with a pegword by creating a vivid image of your item-to-be remembered together with the object represented by the word

Types of Reasoning

1. Deduction 2. Induction

Two Streams of Recognition

1. Dorsal Stream - goes dorsally - "where" pathway - ex. someone throws something towards you, this stream is more important 2. Ventral Stream - goes ventrally - "what" pathway - conscious recognition

Stages of Memory

1. Encoding - initial perception of the event (includes attention and pattern recognition) - you have to take it in and perceive it 2. Consolidation - laying down and strengthening over time - strengthen it, maybe for short-term or long-term 3. Retrieval - calling it back up later 4. Reconsolidation - adaptive update mechanism allowing new information to be integrated into the initial memory representation - ex. update memory of first class; can attach name to face from original memory

Differences between how experts and novices solve problems

1. Experts possess more knowledge about their fields - chess experts were only better than beginners when the chess pieces were arranged in actual game positions but not when arranged randomly - because the familiar patterns were destroyed, and the chess masters' advantage vanished 2. Experts' knowledge is organized differently than novices' - novice sorted problems based on surface characteristics such as how similar the objects in the problem were - expert sorted problems based on structural features, such as general principles of physics and their deep structure (the underlying principles involved) - organizing based on principles results in more effective problem solving 3. Experts spend more time analyzing problems - spend time trying to understand the problem rather than immediately trying to solve it - more effective approach

2 Main Systems of Long Term Memory

1. Explicit/Declarative Memory: - includes all memories that we consciously seek to store and retrieve - the things that we are aware we remember - Semantic: retains conceptual knowledge - ex. capital of Australia - all the facts you could know - Episodic: connects the specific times, places, and events in an individual's life 2. Implicit Memory: - to learn without being aware that we are doing so - mental functions that can be performed automatically in the background - unconscious - 3 kinds: 1. Procedural: stored knowledge that allows us to behave skillfully - engage in a procedure - cannot remember learning the individual skills needed to perform a particular task - sometimes unable to give a complete account of how the task should be performed -ex. tying your shoes, playing an instrument 2. Priming: previous experience changes response without conscious awareness - ex. name 5 pieces of furniture, think of a word that starts with C; couch was most accessible 3. Conditioning: pairing a neutral stimulus with a reflexive response - ex. Pavlov's dogs and bell

From Eye to Cortex

1. Eye 2. Optic Nerve 3. Lateral Geniculate Nucleus - in thalamus; sensory relay 4. VIsual cortex - 1st cortical structure processing visual information

Cognition - information processing

1. Gestalt psychology - emphasis on perceiving the whole rather than the sum of its parts 2. Human factors - understanding what makes people perform tasks efficiently and safely (WWII) 3. Computers = brains? 4. Cognitive neuroscience - relationship between brain structures, brain activity, and cognitive functions

Structure of Language

1. Hierarchal - consists of a series of small components that can be combined to form larger units - ex. words can be combined to create phrases, which can create sentences 2. Governed by rules - components can be arranged in certain ways

What is being done for lineups?

1. Inform witness that perpetrator might not be in lineup - don't feel like you have to pick someone 2. Use "fillers" in lineup similar to suspect - even though police know it's not them 3. Sequential (not simultaneous) presentation - rather than showing everyone at once, go one at a time and decide "yes" or "no" before seeing the next 4. "Blind" administrator - in the past, arresting officers were in the room, which influences the witness - blind = a neutral person

Modal Model of Memory - Atkinson and Shiffrin

1. Input 2. Sensory Memory 3. Short-term Memory 4. Output (retrieve some info) or 4. Long-Term Memory Rehearsal (a control process) occurs between STM and LTM

Types of Rehearsal

1. Maintenance Rehearsal - rote rehearsal that maintains items in STM - just repeat 2. Elaborative Rehearsal - thinking about meaningful relationships among the items you're encoding - ex. trying to remember rocketship and birthday cake; recall friend's birthday was on the day the rocket exploded - concept maps: how do things relate - good for retention/recall

How to Enhance Analogical Transfer

1. Making surface features more problem - 81% who knew about the radiation problem solved the lightbulb problem 2. Varying the structural features - presented two versions of the lightbulb problem - one with same structural features and other with different - 69% solved radiation problem when the structural features were the same

Cognitive Skills in Problem Solving

1. Metacognition - self-monitoring - "thinking about thinking" - not specific to problem solving 2. Epistemic Monitoring - legitimate representation: am i thinking about the problem in the right way? - correct understanding of the problem:? - methods are appropriate: am i following the rules? do i know the rules? 3. Insight: perceiving the solution to a problem at an unexpected time or in an unanticipated way (aha) - to achieve insight means to overcome an impasse and to understand the basic structure of a problem (overcome the "traditional idea", have to stop thinking about it a certain way - insight problems generate different feelings than non-insight problems 4. Creativity: reflects the solver's willingness to discard assumptions and produce new ideas or actions

What can sarcasm tell us about language?

1. Need to combine multiple sources of information - literal meaning of words - situation, knowledge of person's intent 2. Requires appropriate integration of information for correct understanding 3. Choice of language can affect subsequent cognitive processing - sarcastic = more creative

Gick and Holyoak's Steps in the Process of Analogical Problem Solving

1. Noticing that there is an analogous relationship between the source problem and the target problem - most subjects need prompting before they notice the connection between the source problem and the target problem - the most difficult step 2. Mapping the correspondence between the source story and the target problem - the subject has to map corresponding parts of the story onto the test problem by connecting elements of the source problem (ex. the fortress) to elements of the target problem (ex. the tumor) 3. Applying the mapping to generate a parallel solution to the target problem - ex. generalizing from the many small groups of soldiers approaching the fortress from different directions to the idea of using many weaker rays that would approach the tumor from different directions

Analogical Reasoning

1. Noticing the analogous relationship - ex. military problem and radiation problem have similarities 2. Mapping the correspondence - what corresponds to what? 3. Applying the mapping

Dissociating Perception and Imagery: Case Studies

1. Patient R.M. - damage to occipital and parietal lobes - was able to draw pictures of objects in front of him - Deficit: couldn't draw pictures of objects from memory (using imagery) - Problems with imagery, not perception 2. Patient C.K. - diffuse cortical damage from car accident - Deficit: couldn't name pictures of objects in front of him - Could draw pictures of objects from memory (using imagery) - Problems with perception, not imagery

Classical Decision Theory

1. People are fully informed regarding all possible options for their decisions and of all possible outcomes of their decision options - anytime you make a decision you have everything you need and know all of the consequences 2. They are infinitely sensitive to the subtle distinctions among decision options - ex. it matters to you whether you gett $100.01 vs. $100.02 3. The full rational in regard to their choice of options - fully rational: you're going to make the logical choice

Using Imagery to Improve Memory

1. Placing Images at Locations - Method of Loci: things to be remembered are placed at different locations in a mental image of a spatial layout 2. Associating Images with Words - Pegword Technique

Making Inferences

1. Pragmatic - based on knowledge gained through experience - ex. do you remember how we submitted the class discussion responses? - but because you know we use canvas, you say canvas because that's what we usually do (experience-based) 2. Schema - knowledge about some aspect of the environment - ex. you know what a post office is supposed to look like - ex. asked where TA stood during discussion, you guess front of class because you have a knowledge about what a class looks like, but you're wrong because she wasn't there last class 3. Script - conception of sequence of actions that usually occurs during a particular experience - ex. what i do every Tuesday - ex. if asked what you did last Tuesday, you may just rely on your script, not on actual knowledge

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and Imagery

1. Presented transcranial magnetic stimulation to the visual cortex while subjects were carrying out either a perception task or an imagery task 2. For the perception task, subjects briefly viewed a display like the one and were asked to make a judgment about the stripes in two of the quadrants - ex. might be asked to indicate whether the stripes in quadrant 3 were longer than the stripes in quadrant 2 3. The imagery task was the same, but instead of actually looking at the stripes while answering, the subjects closed their eyes and based their judgements on their mental image of the display Results: - Stimulation caused subjects to respond more slowly, and that this slowing effect occurred for both for perception and for imagery - brain activation that occurs in response to imagery is not an epiphenomenon and that brain activity in the visual cortex plays a causal role in both perception and imagery

Decision Making: Ultimatum Game

1. Proposer gets all the money 2. Makes an offer to responder 3. Responder can accept or decline - if they decline, no one gets the money Classical Decision Theory: you should accept any offer greater than zero because some $ is better than no $ Results: 1. If playing with a human, they start rejecting when it becomes unfair 2. If playing with a computer, people don't reject as much because they think it's preprogrammed, not trying to enact justice

Brain Damage and Imagery

1. Removing part of the visual cortex decreases image size - before surgery she felt she was about 15 feet from an imaginary horse before its image overflowed - after, she felt 35 feet away 2. Perceptual problems are accompanied by problems with imagery - ex. people who have lost the ability to see colour also are unable to create colours through imagery - people with neglect also neglect their mental images 3. Dissociations between imagery and perception - ex. a patient whose brain damage had little effect on his ability to perceive but caused neglect in his mental images (his mental images were limited to only one side) - ex. could recognize objects and draw pictures, but couldn't draw from memory or answer questions based on imagery - ex. perception can be impaired but imagery is relatively normal (can't recognize objects, but can draw objects from memory) 4. Making Sense of these Results - the mechanisms of perception and imagery overlap only partially, with the mechanism for perception being located at both lower and higher visual centers and the mechanism for imagery before located mainly in higher visual centers - visual perception necessarily involves bottom-up processing - imagery originates as a top-down process, in higher brain areas that are responsible for memory

Factors that contribute to the strength of an inductive argument

1. Representativeness of Observations - how well do the observations about a particular category represent all of the members of that category? - ex. crows from other countries are not observed 2. Number of Observations - the more observations the stronger 3. Quality of the Evidence - stronger evidence results in stronger conclusions

The Gestalt Approach to Problem Solving

1. Representing a problem in the mind - how problems are presented 2. Restructuring and Insight - restructuring: the process of changing the problem's representation - insight: the sudden realization of a problem's solution (aha moment) - believed restructuring was usually involved in solving insight problems 3. Obstacles to Problem Solving - Fixation: people's tendency to focus on a specific characteristic of the problem that keeps them from arriving at a solution - functional fixedness:

Contralateral Control

1. Right hemisphere controls left side of body, and vice versa 2. Localization of function is the hypothesis that different functions of thought are performed in different locations in the brain 3. Some processes are lateralized - dominant in one hemisphere (e.g., language production is left)

Short Term Memory Systems

1. Short-term Memory: the memory system holding moment-to-moment thoughts and perceptions in mind - seconds to minutes 2. Working Memory: allows manipulation of information in STM and is key for encoding of long-term memory - not own type of memory, component of STM - used in STM to do stuff - working with memory

Gestalt Principles

1. Similarity - elements that look similar will be perceived as part of the same form or group - ex. more likely to group same colour column; rather than alternating coloured row 2. Proximity - elements that are close together will be perceived as a coherent group 3. Closure - humans tend to enclose spaces by completing a contour and ignoring gaps in a picture - ex. 3 black circles/ white triangle in front, but there is no triangle, we just visualize it that way 4. Common Fate - if two or more objects are moving in the same direction and at the same speed, they will tend to be perceived as a group - ex. can easily tell who is walking together on campus 5. Symmetry - images that are perceived as symmetrical are experienced as belonging together 6. Good Continuation - people tend to connect elements in a way that makes the elements seem continuous or flowing in a particular direction

Individual Differences in Visual Imagery

1. Spatial Imagery: ability to image spatial relations - Paper Folding Test (PFT): a paper is folded then a hole is created, what does the unfolded paper look like? 2. Object Imagery: ability to image details, features, or objects - Vividness of visual imagery: imagine item prompts, how vivid is the image? Study looked at differences in spatial and object imagery 1. Mental Rotation Task: people who scored high on spatial imagery did better at this task 2. Degraded Pictures Task (image of object but taken out a lot of detail and added a lot of noise): people who scored high on object imagery did better at this

Midbrain

1. Superior and inferior colliculus - shallow layers: relay centers for sensory information entering the brain - deep layers: motor activity, including eye movement - damage: can cause problems in hearing, seeing and motor control

Process of Accessing the Meaning of a Word Depends On

1. The frequency of a word determines how long it takes to process its meaning 2. The context of the sentence determines which meaning we access, if a word has more than one meaning 3. Our ability to access the correct meaning of a word depends on both the word's frequency and, for words with more than one meaning, a combination of meaning dominance and context

Why use heuristics at all?

1. They are fast - short cuts and some of the time they are right 2. Require little working memory capacity 3. Rational inferences that are the result of using system 2 are not automatic and require effort

Two Attention Systems

1. Top-Down (Controlled) - deliberate - conscious - towards our goal 2. Bottom-Up (automatic) - attention is captured by things - involuntary - captures attention - despite our goals - happens even if you are trying to pay attention to something else Not the same as visual processing streams (perception)

Other Types of Emotional Sparing

1. Undergraduates with a genetic variation influencing norepinephrine levels show more sparing for negative words - get more correct when T2 was negative 2. Combat veterans with PTSD: - greater sparing for combat words than veterans without PTSD - words relating to war really captured the attention for PTSD veterans 3. UBC undergrads show sparing for words related to climate change - and deniers show a larger blink effect than normal

Can perception and imagery be dissociated? Study

1. Visual perception involves bottom-up processing; located at lower and higher visual centers 2. Imagery is a top-down process; located at higher visual centers Depending on what pathway you're damaging, could result in deficits to one but not the other

Understanding Sentences

1. Words in a sentence can affect processing of an ambiguous sentence - ex. "the spy saw the man with the binoculars" vs. "the bird saw the man with the binoculars" - semantics can affect sentence processing 2. Information in a visual scene can affect processing of an ambiguous sentence - different scenes cause different processing of the same sentence 3. Temporary ambiguity can be caused by expectations and can be changed by experience - less likely sentence construction creates more ambiguity, but effect decreases with experience - past experience with statistics of a language plus ongoing experience affects sentence processing

Early Ideas About Imagery

1. Wundt proposed that images were one of the three basic elements of consciousness, along with sensations and feelings. 2. Imageless Thought Debate - Wundt proposed that because images accompany thought, studying images was a way of studying thinking 3. Francis Galton found that imagery was not required for thinking -people had trouble forming visual images but could still think 4. Debate ended with behaviourism - John Watson described images as "unproven" and "mythological" and therefore not worthy of study

Spatial Cueing Task (Posner precueing)

2 trials: 1. Valid trials - get an arrow to attend to a side and then the stimulus appears on that side 2. Invalid Trials - stimulus comes up on side opposite to cue According to Posner, reaction times are longest in invalid trials because of difficulty disengaging attention from cued area of space What you have to do: 1. Orient your attention in direction of cue 2. Disengage when there is no stimulus on that side (cue side) 3. Shift attention 4. Engage in stimulus on other side - to let go of invalid side takes time

How to test merits of unconscious thinking

1. You give people a set of facts to assimilate and to consider - Ex: participants given 12 pieces of information about four cars - quality cars: 4 important positive qualities and 8 unimportant negative qualities - Frequency cars: 8 unimportant positive qualities and 4 important negative qualities 2. You have them think about something else for a few minutes - distractor (so thinking occurs unconsciously) - unconscious thought condition - participants either assigned to either immediate decision (conscious thought) or unconscious thought condition 3. You ask for their judgement about the problem at hand Results: 1. Unconscious thought group gave the quality cars a consistently higher rating than the conscious thought group 2. Unconscious thought allows decision makers to weigh the evidence and make the best choice, even though they are not consciously aware of doing it For really complex decisions, engage in unconscious thought - couldn't be replicated!

The Titchener Illusion

2 black circles, each one surrounded by either large circles or smaller circles, you feel like the one surrounded by small circles is bigger

Amnesia: 2 categories

2 broad categories: 1. Retrograde Amnesia - people cannot recall events or facts in their lives that occurred prior to some critical event that affected their brain (e.g., an accident or stroke) - forget everything before the accident/stroke/etc. 2. Anterograde Amnesia - a failure to add to memory after a critical event

Change Blindness Experiment

50% get it wrong when a man asking for directions was switched behind a door Attentional spotlight is focused on the task of giving directions - everything you're attending to relates to the task of giving directions, not who you're giving it to May be some sense that something has changed but are unable to consciously report what has changed Smaller effect: - perceived race, gender or occupation changes Bigger effect: - inanimate objects (doesn't matter as much)

STM Capacity

7 +/- 2 items You get better at holding things in mind as you develop

Why are we so fast at feature search and not conjunction?

=Feature Integration Theory 1. Object 2. Preattentive Stage (visual search) - start analyzing the object; where something will pop out - ability to hone in on a relevant event to the exclusion of all else so rapidly that you may be unaware of all the stimuli that have been excluded 3. Focused Attention Stage - deliberate search - combine features (conjunction) - attention plays key role, features are combined - you need attention to combine features - if you don't use attention = illusory conjunctions 4. Perception After both stages you get a fully formed perception - feature search is quick because you just do stage 1 - conjunction search takes more effort and time because 2 stages

Episodic Buffer

A component of Baddeley's model of working memory Can store information (thereby providing extra capacity) and is connected to long-term memory (thereby making interchange between working memory and long-term memory possible) Roles: 1. Extra capacity - stores information, supplements phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad - has some communication with LTM 2. Integrative System - putting events into a coherent order - keeping track of memory episodes, ordering helps us remember things - was added to model later Puts the element of time or temporal order into working memory model - a third "assistant" system in Baddeley model - combines information from other subsystems, and long-term memory into sequences or episodes Ex. remembering a sentence that is 15-16 words long vs. a random list of 5-9 words - more likely to remember a long sequence of words that have meaning than a shorter list of nonsense words because of the buffer

Central Executive

A control system NOT a memory store: - coordinates activities of the other subsystems - guides attention and allocates resources to maximize performance - coordinates, manipulates, and updates the content of the subsystsems - key for laying down long-term memory Where the major work of working memory occurs Attention controller -determines how attention is focused on a specific task, how it is divided between two tasks, and how it is switched between tasks Phonological loop and the visuospatial sketch pad are attached It pulls information from long-term memory and coordinates the activity of the phonological loop and visuospatial sketch pad by focusing on specific parts of a task and deciding how to divide attention between different tasks

Imagery Debate

A debate about whether imagery is based on spatial mechanisms, such as those involved in perception, or on mechanisms related to language, called propositional mechanisms

Restructuring

A gestalt principle for problem solving The process of changing the problem's representation

Insight

A gestalt principle for problem solving The sudden realization of a problem's solution Perceiving the solution to a problem at an unexpected time or in an unanticipated way

Mental Model Approach of Deductive Reasoning

A mental model is a specific situation represented in a person's mind that can be used to help determine the validity of syllogisms in deductive reasoning The basic principle behind mental models is that people create a model, or representation of the situation, for a reasoning problem

Situation Model

A mental representation of what a text is about This approach proposes that the mental representation people form as they read a story does not consist of information about phrases, sentences, or paragraphs; instead, it is a representation of the situation in terms of the people, objects, locations, and events being described in the story Includes the idea that a reader or listener simulates the motor characteristics of the objects in a story - brain is activated (to a lesser degree) when reading words to do with actions in the same way as when you actually perform the action

Contingency

A negotiating strategy in which a person gets what they want if something else happens Ex. author wants 18% royalties, but publisher wants to pay only 12% - they settle on "you can have 18% if sales are high, but less if sales are low"

Neuroeconomics

A new approach to studying decision making Combines research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and economics to study how brain activation is related to decisions that involve potential gains or losses Outcome: Has identified areas of the brain that are activated as people make decisions while playing economic games Shows that decisions are often influenced by emotions, and that these emotions are associated with activity in specific areas of the brain

Lexicon

A person's knowledge of what words mean, how they sound, and how they are used in relation to other words

Mental Set

A preconceived notion about how to approach a problem, which is determined by a person's experience or what has worked in the past. - ex. created by people's knowledge about the usual uses of objects

Optic Ataxia

A problem with "visually-guided" behaviour stemming from impaired representations in the "where/how" pathway Normal: she has depth perception, can name objects, she can grab things with right-hand Problem: reaching with left-hand, might reach too far Because she had damage to dorsal stream, she couldn't use the where information - not using visual information to help her with motor movements

Spatial Representation

A representation in which different parts of an image can be described as corresponding to specific locations in space

Given-New Contract

A speaker should construct sentences so that they include two kinds of information: 1. Given information: information that the listener already knows 2. New information: information that the listener is hearing for the first time Ex. takes longer to comprehend: We checked the picnic supplies. The beer was warm. then We got some beer out of the trunk. The beer was warm.

Validity and Truth in Syllogisms

A syllogism is valid when the form of the syllogism indicates that its conclusion follows logically from its two premises Doesn't mean it is true; may be false but still valid Good reasoning and truth are not the same thing

Language

A system of communication using sounds or symbols that enables us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences

Creative Cognition

A technique developed by Finke to train people to think creatively. Pick three objects and create an object with them Called these inventions preinventive forms: because they are ideas that precede the creation of a finished creative product

Means-End Analysis

A way of solving a problem in which the goal is to reduce the difference between the initial and goal states Ex. establishing subgoals, each of which moves the solution closer to the goal state

Associative Agnosia

Able to perform the action of the object, but can't name the object He can identify the object when he picks it up or smells it - he knows implicitly that this is an easy task if he picks it up He does have perceived object knowledge - easily accessed through dorsal stream (intact) - ventral stream is damaged

Source Monitoring Study

Acquisition: participants saw a list of nonfamous names 2 Conditions: 1. Immediate test 2. Delayed test (24 hours) Had to identify what names were famous out of a list of famous and nonfamous names After 24 hours, some non-famous names were misidentified as famous Some non-famous names were familiar, and the participants misattributed the source of the familiarity

Basal Ganglia

Action, skill, motivation, reward Thalamus, globus pallidus, caudate nucleus, putamen, amygdala Nucleus Accumbens (Nac) is a collection of neurons where the head of the caudate and the anterior portion of the putamen meet -> important for cation, motivation, reward

Operators

Actions that take the problem from one state to another Usually governed by rules Rule: A larger disc can't be placed on a smaller one

Racially Ambiguous Faces Experiment

Add top-down factors (like stereotypes) to influence our perception - stereotypically latino hairstyle and black hairstyle - answers influenced by the hairstyle How expectations (a top-down factor) influence the perception of faces)

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Study: Is the difference in Reaction Time actually due to language?

Added an interference task: 1. Spatial interference: dot matrix, etc. - maintain spatial pattern - nothing to do with language (using cognitive resources but no language) 2. Verbal interference: rehearse digit strings - eating up language resources (equally difficult, but uses language) Results: - verbal interferences task made effect go away for Russian blue effect - spatial interference keeps effect More confident that language causes differences in perception

Perception: Top-Down Processing

Aka constructive perception Using knowledge stored in long-term memory to analyze incoming information in order to complete the identification Use knowledge you already have to skip steps and narrow down what you will perceive Using knowledge stored in long-term memory to further analyze incoming information in order to complete the identification We have knowledge going into things Expectations Context Interpretations Biases

Perception: Bottom-up Processing

Aka direct perception It proceeds from basic elements and create a higher level of understanding What are the basic elements of something to create the larger picture

Problem Space

All possible states that could occur when solving a problem

Social Exchange Theory

An important aspect of human behaviour is the ability for two people to cooperate in a way that is beneficial to both people Only works if people don't cheat

Stereotype

An oversimplified generalization about a group or class of people May lead people to pay particular attention to behaviours associated with that stereotype, and this attention creates an illusory correlation that reinforces the stereotype

Source Problem

Another problem that shares some similarities with the target problem and that illustrates a way to solve the target problem

Creativity

Anything made by people that is in some way novel and has potential value or ability Can be divergent thinking

Routine Problem Solving

Apply learned knowledge or techniques to solve Applying what you already know Ex. solve for x, as long as rule is applied right, you'll get it right

Broca's Area

Area in the frontal lobe Linked to syntax (the structure of sentences) Perform syntactic analyses on the incoming stream of words and communicates this back to Wernicke's area Activate the motor areas of the cortex that are involved in speech production

Wernicke's Area

Area in the temporal lobe Linked to semantics (understanding meaning)

Kosslyn's Mental Scanning Experiments

Asked subjects to memorize a picture of an object and then to create the image of that object in their mind and to focus on one part of the object, such as the anchor They were then asked to look for another part of the boat, such as the motor, and to press the "true" button when they found this part or the "false" button when they couldn't find it If imagery, like perception, is spatial, then it should take longer for subjects to find parts that are located farther from the initial point of focus because they would be scanning across the image of the object Took longer to scan between greater distances on the image, a result that supports the idea that visual imagery is spatial in nature

Expected Utility Theory

Assumes that people are basically rational If people have all of the relevant information, they will make a decision that results in the maximum expected utility, where utility refers to outcomes that achieve a person's goals Advantage: - it specifies procedures that make it possible to determine which choice would result in the highest monetary value - ex. if we know the odds of winning when playing a slot machine in a casino and also know the cost of playing and the size of the payoff, it is possible to determine that, in the long run, playing slot machines is a losing proposition

Interaction Models of Speech Perception: TRACE Model

Assumes the listener will use all the information at their disposal, all at once (in parallel) to identify what is being said Forward and backward process: - People not only identify initial speech sounds, but when words are guessed at, they then are used to correct the initial identification of speech sounds Works even if you didn't hear first syllable

Interaction Models of Speech Perception: Cohort Model

At the word level, there are 2 stages Stage 1: Detect the component sounds at the beginning of a word - Activates all of the possible words in long-term memory that have a similar set of sounds Stage 2: All other possible sources of information are brought in to help eliminate words that are not the target word Hear the first sound of the word, eliminate options based on situation Flaw: if you didn't hear the first syllable

Dichotic Listening Task

Attention is a filter? Two different messages, one in each ear Shadow one ear (pay attention to that ear and repeat what you hear) Attention is directed towards one message only Attention is filtering which information is being processed - then they might change things in the other ear What changes would the participant notice? (physical properties) - change in volume - change in gender of speaker - listener's name: cocktail party phenomenon Wouldn't notice change in language or nonsense words (farther along cognitive processing route)

Event-related Potentials (ERP)

Averaged wave time-locked to a stimulus or response which can be compared between groups and conditions - more complicated than ECG t and q waves since you need to record a baseline activity to the condition as a control as well as testing a response Averaging of multiple trials allows "zeroing out" of brain activity unrelated to task of interest ERP Components: peaks and valleys associated with specific cognitive processes

Behaviourism

B. F. Skinner: Radical Behaviourism Free will an illusion: behaviour determined by genes and environment Actions with bad consequences not repeated Actions with good consequences reinforced Wrote a book on parenting Couldn't explain all differences in behaviour No focus on internal/mental processes

Study on Face Recognition Ability in Babies

Babies were able to copy tongue protrusions when adult did it and they did mouth opening more when experimenter did it - must be something innate? Failure to replicate this experiment - only tongue protrusions reliable, but infants stick out their tongue for lots of things Effect goes away after 2-3 months, if it was innate why would it go away? Reliable voluntary imitation at 1 year

Hindbrain: Cerebellum

Balance and coordination of voluntary movements Damage makes it difficult to coordinate movements, such as walking, playing piano Also plays an important role in the ability to perform high-level cognitive tasks (learning, memory, etc.)

Limbic System

Basal ganglia, thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala, and hippocampus Involved in: - motivation - learning - emotion - memory

Code Switching

Bilinguals often switch languages between sentences or even mid-sentence - Je préfère les chaussures vertes because it's my favourite colour Bilinguals are not confused when they code-switch: - they may prefer to code-switch - adults around them code-switch - younger bilinguals may not have translation equivalents for all words

Ventral Attention Network

Bottom-up Temporal and frontal lobes (but further down)

Distinctive Features Theory

Bottom-up perception theory All complex perceptual stimuli are composed of distinctive and separable attributes called features - allow observers to distinguish one object/person from another Pattern recognition is accomplished by mentally assessing the presence of absence of a checklist of critical features Ex. how can you tell the difference between 2 people that are the same age/gender - checklist of features: doesn't have glasses, hair colour, height, weight

Recognition by Components Theory

Bottom-up perception theory Describes the pattern recognition process in terms of how people recognize 3-D objects - by identifying the building blocks that make up the objects Basic elements are composed of an alphabet of 36 primitive shapes, called geons (alphabet of perception) - geometric icons - building blocks for identifying 3D objects Constituent geons - go together to make the perceived object - if it matches memory, you've seen it before - if it doesn't, you have to learn something new - can rotate in three dimensions and create an unlimited number of impressions on the retina

Prototype Theory

Bottom-up perception theory Template is not a literal match with an object, but is an average or typical instance of the many different views of that object This average is called a prototype and the theory that uses them for pattern recognition is called prototype theory Pattern recognition occurs when the features of the object to be recognized overlap in some way with the features of the prototype It does not require... - an exact match between the object and the prototype - the storage of patterns for every possible view of an object Ex. what is typical of a car? = 4 wheels, window, doors, lights - see something that matches the car prototype, can identify it - more efficient than template matching theory

Template Matching Theory

Bottom-up perception theory We store an unlimited number of patterns, literal copies corresponding to every object that we have experienced These patterns are labeled with the name of the object New instance matched to stored template - informs us of the name It is highly impractical when the set of possible patterns is very large Inefficient and fails to account for our ability to recognize new objects - Ex. how do we manage to read the handwriting of a person we just met? Problem: impractical, a lot of possible patterns

How do people accomplish these feats of perception and identify what they are experiencing?

Bottom-up processing (or bottom-up analysis) Top-down processing (or top-down analysis)

Confirmation Bias

Broader than the myside bias because it holds for any situation (not just for opinions or attitudes) in which information is favoured that confirms a hypothesis Acts like a pair of blinders - we see the world according to the rules we think are correct and are never dissuaded from this view because we seek out only evidence that confirms our rule Error occurs when: There is a narrow focus only on confirming information

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS)

Can temporarily disrupt or enhance brain activity - repeated magnetic pulses over an area of the participant's head - causes increase or decrease in activity in underlying cortex - measure changes in behaviour due to more or less activity in region

Decision-Making

Choosing between alternatives Ex: which courses? which sandwich?

Attention is a spotlight?

Cognitive ability to focus in or sharpen attention toward one thing or one location Can refer to visual or auditory stimuli Takes time to shift spotlight from one thing to another Brightness over one set of stimuli and darkness everywhere else Can't move the spotlight all the time

Cross Talk Hypothesis for Synaesthesia

Colour-number synaesthesia results from an abnormally high number of connections between certain areas in the cortex Too much cross activation between the V4 colour area (occipital lobe) and the number recognition area (fusiform gyrus) which are next to each other - so if you stimulate one, the other gets activated Looked at macaque monkeys: - many more connections from V4 to inferior temporal regions in prenatal macaque brains than mature adult macaque brains - lots of neural pruning occurs around the V4 area between childhood and adulthood - if this neural pruning did not occur, the excessive connections between the V4 colour area and other sensory areas in the cortex would persist into adulthood - the excess of connections would likely cause synesthetic colour perception upon the activation of other areas to which V4 maintained abnormal excitatory connections Outcomes: colour could cue your memory to help your learning

Satisficing

Combination of "satisfactory" and "sufficient" A person who satisfices is one who chooses a path or goal that is good enough, rather than searching endlessly for the one that is the best or optimal Optimizers tend to have worse decision outcomes than satisficers - most people do a mixture of both Optimizers keep searching and searching - ex. if watching tv, they keep changing the channel - more likely to get divorced - more likely to lose their keys or lock themselves out - if you keep optimizing, it clouds out some important things

How do we go from 2D space to 3D objects?

Common to many theories: - we reconstruct representations, or structural descriptions, of objects and match them to some kind of template - we see something, get characteristics and search our memory to see if we know something that matches

Conceptual Peg Hypothesis

Concrete nouns create images that other words can "hang onto" Ex. if presenting the pair boat-hat creates an image of a boat, then presenting the word boat later will bring back the boat image, which provides a number of places on which subjects can place the hat in their mind

Split Brain

Corpus callosum severed to reduce the effects of severe epilepsy

Syllogism

Consists of two premises followed by a third statement called a conclusion An argument in which the conclusion follows from the premises Aristotle introduced this

Individual Differences in Visual Short Term Memory

Correlate with measures of fluid intelligence and scholastic aptitude Fluid intelligence = think abstract, use knowledge in novel situations 2 views of visual short term memory capacity: 1. Slot Model: number of slots (space in a nightclub) 2. Vogel Model: efficiency of selective attention (effectiveness of bouncer)

Are we born with face recognition ability? Correspondence Problem

Correspondence Problem: 1. For imitation you need to know which parts of your body correspond to the body of the other 2. That's not hard if you can see the body part 3. But if you can't see it (e.g., the tongue) you need to already know that you have a tongue that matches and can move like the one you see 4. If newborns can imitate face movements, that must mean that we have a special innate body map for faces

Sarcasm

Contradiction between expression and intended meaning using paralinguistic or contextual cues What I'm saying isn't what I mean Usually a negative remark or insult Can be understood by children as young as 5 years old Before 5, people will take you very seriously

Hindbrain: Brainstem

Controls automatic processes that regulate basic life-support functions - breathing - heart rate - swallowing - sleep cycles Damage can result in coma or death Produces neuromodulators: - Contains regions that produce serotonin, norepinephrine, etc.

What does attention do?

Controls our mental environment by choosing the events that will enter our consciousness = the events that we will become aware of Limited -able to focus on a limited number of activities for a fixed period of time Selective-we must be selective in our attention by focusing on some events to the detriment of others

Anomia

Damage to angular gyrus Difficulty retrieving instances of categories, such as the name of vegetables individuals sound inarticulate, as if they can't complete sentences and use the right nouns Category word problem Trouble with retrieving names of a category Shown a picture of saw, can describe how to use it, know what it is, but doesn't know the name of it Usually a problem when you're trying to actively/consciously retrieve the word on cue Can't find the exact word, so trouble producing complete sentences, but they know what they want to say

Wernicke's Aphasia

Damage to temporal lobe Fluent (sound like normal) but meaningless phrases Individuals produce effortless speech, but with ill-chosen words and phrases Not getting pauses between words, typical flow but nothing makes sense, gibberish Produced speech that was fluent and grammatically correct but tended to be incoherent Not only produce meaningless speech but are unable to understand speech and writing

Unilateral Neglect

Damage to the parietal lobes The patient ignores objects in one half of the visual field, even to the extent of shaving just on side of their face or eating only food on the one side of their plate

Case of Clive Wearing

Damage: 1. Retrograde (recalling memories laid down before illness) - no episodic recall - does have some semantic recall 2. Anterograde (laying down new memories) - no encoding of episodic memory - some slight encoding of new semantic information (ex. he knew the new British Prime Minister) - appears to be able to acquire procedural memory Affected Brain Regions: 1. Hippocampus 2. Temporal Lobes: medial on right and medial and lateral on left 3. Ventral Prefrontal Cortex 4. Amygdala 5. Fornix (white matter - myelinated axons connecting memory regions)

Framing Effect

Decisions are influenced by how the choices are stated, or framed

Representativeness Heuristic Study

Description of Jack makes it seem like he is an engineer High engineer group: description was pulled from group was 70% engineers/30% businessman Low engineer group: 30% engineers/70% businessman Results: In both groups, they rated the likelihood that Jack an engineer to be greater than 90% - they ignored the base rate - in high = 70% - in low = 30% Based their judgements solely on how representative the profile was of an engineer, rather than taking into consideration the proportion of engineers in the sample

Flashbulb Memories

Detailed, (seemingly) perfect memories of a learning about a significant event (e.g., Sept. 11) Experienced as if someone had taken a photograph of an event and stored it away in LTM A person's memory for the circumstances surrounding shocking, highly charged events Refers to memory for the circumstances surrounding how a person heard about an event, not memory for the event itself Ex. where a person was and what they were doing when they found out about 9/11 Not like photographs, people's memories for how they heard about flashbulb events change over time

Mental Chronometry

Determining the amount of time needed to carry out various cognitive tasks Inferred cognitive process by using this Subjects saw pictures of blocks put together and their task was to indicate as quickly as possible whether the two pictures were of the same object or different The time it took to decide was directly related to how different the angles were between the two views

What Real-World Versions of the Wason Task Tell Us

Easier in real-life scenarios, for ex. beer/drinking-age version - easier because it involves regulations people are familiar with

Decisions Can Depend on How Choices Are Presented

Differences between opt-in and opt-out procedures People are likely to stay with the status quo bias - they won't do anything Framing Effect: decisions are influenced by how the choices are stated, or framed - the way a problem is stated can highlight some features and deemphasize other - the way a problem is stated cna influence our ability to solve it

Broca's Aphasia

Difficulty in speaking in complete sentences Often words that would normally appear at the beginning of a sentence are eliminated from speech Wouldn't be able to describe a picture Can point things out, but lack of narrative Patients have slow, laboured, ungrammatical speech caused by damage to Broca's area Not only have difficulty forming complete sentences, they also have difficulty understanding some types of sentences - have difficulty processing connecting words such as "was" and "by"

Aphasia

Difficulty in using language Comprehension or production

Controlled Attention

Disengaging and Shifting require effortful attentional override of habitual response to the cue - requires controlled attention Controlled attention = "top-down" attention - resource limited Such a habit to look where people are pointing, takes effort to break that Important when you need to override habit - why it's really hard to not pay attention to your phone, need to use controlled attention not to

Well-Defined/Well-Structured Problems

Distinctive properties Clearly described goals Specify all relevant information - have all of the information you need to solve it Have an obvious clear ending (stop rule) - obvious what the right answer should look like Ex. Truth/liar problems - go through the logic to see who's lying Ex. Move problems - have to get chickens across without getting eaten by fox Still have to think

Non-Linear Problem

Does a man have the right to marry the sister of his widow? His widow (means he's dead) - not a nice problem

Control Processes

Dynamic processes associated with the structural features that can be controlled by the person and may differ from one task to another - ex rehearsal Active processes that can be controlled by the person - strategies used to make a stimulus more memorable - strategies of attention that help you focus on specific stimuli - narrow down what you want to go into your memory

Broadbent's Filter Model

Early selection model - filters message before incoming information is analyzed for meaning Inputs to Sensory Memory to Filter to Detector to Memory 1. Sensory Memory - holds all incoming information for a fraction of a second and then transfers everything to next stage 2. Filter - identifies attended message based on physical characteristics - only attended message is passed on to the next stage - ex. in class listening for prof's female voice 3. Detector - processes all information to determine higher-level characteristics of the message Problem: Cocktail Party Phenomenon - this model can't explain that because it says that only physical characteristics we're attending to get through

Vogel et al. Efficiency

Efficiency of selective attention varies substantially across individuals High efficiency individuals filter out irrelevant information so it does not enter working memory Low efficiency individuals don't filter out distractors so WM is holding a higher load Individual differences in working memory result from individual differences in selective attention

Early Selection Filter

Eliminate information early Ex. Broadbent's Filter Model

Late Selection Filter

Eliminate information later - Corteen and Woods

The Emotional Attentional Blink

Emotional Sparing: reduced blink when T2 is high in emotional arousal T1 is neutral, but T2 is a very emotional word All neutral words- low proportion correct T2 word = positive accuracy is much higher than neutral T2 word = negative accuracy is even higher than positive

Incidental Emotions

Emotions that are not caused by having to make a decision Can be related to a person's general disposition (the person is naturally happy), something that happened earlier in the day, or the general environment such as background music being played in a game show or the yells of the game show audience

Expected Emotions

Emotions that people predict they will feel for a particular outcome Ex. Deal or No Deal contestant might think about a choice in terms of how good she will feel if she wins the $500,000, but also how bad she will feel if there is only $10 in her briefcase

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

Enabled researchers to determine how various types of cognition activate different areas of the brain 1. Brain region is active 2. Blood flow increases 3. Amount of oxygen increases 4. Alteration of oxygen content affects the blood's magnetic properties 5. Brain's magnetic signal is affected Doesn't directly measure neuronal activity

Perception: Bottom-Up Processing Theories

Extract basic features from a stimulus and compare to known patterns of stimulus features stored in long-term memory There are many different descriptions of how we employ basic bottom-up processes: 1. Distinctive Features Theory 2. Recognition by Components Theory 3. Template-Matching Theory 4. Prototype Theory

Corteen and Woods (1972)

Even supposedly unattended stimuli are (at least partially) processed and are only filtered out late in processing if not relevant Study: - people came in and listened to random words being spoken - some of the words were paired with a shock - after the task, gave participants a dichotomous listening task - had to listen to one ear and in the other ear they would just list words (some of the words were the ones paired with a shock earlier) - people showed skin conductance when those words came up even though they weren't supposed to be listening to that ear - but the words were very meaningful, which means everything did get processed

Availability Heuristic

Events that are more easily remembered are judged as being more probable than events that are less easily remembered Use of ease of retrieval as the basis for judging frequency Can mislead us into reaching the wrong conclusion when less frequently occurring events stand out in our memory Errors occur when: easily remembered event is less probable Example: Are there more words in English that begin with a k or are there more words that have k as their third letter - usually people pick that there are more words that have k as first letter - but right answer is b It is much easier to think of words that begin with a given letter (k) than words that have a given letter in another position Gives you the false impression that there are many more words with k as the first letter, when in fact there are more words with k as the third letter

Why might it be important to not pay attention to everything?

Everything is too much, not everything is important, our energy is infinite, we need to prioritize the important stuff

Decisions Can Depend on the Context Within Which They Are Made

Ex. being faced with a more difficult decision can lead to making no decision at all Ex. Doctor's medical decisions may depend on the doctor's immediately prior experiences

Opt-Out Procedure

Ex. everyone is a potential organ donor unless they request not to be

Abstract Syllogisms

Example: All P are B All C are P Therefore, all C are B Space-related Right-hemisphere

Concrete Syllogisms

Example: All dogs are pets All poodles are dogs Therefore, all poodles are pets Language-Related Left-hemisphere

Prospect Theory

Example: Imagine that Canada is preparing for the outbreak of an unusal disease that is expected to kill 600 people Program A: 200 people will be saved Program B: 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved; 2/3 probability that no people will be saved or Program A: 400 people will die Program B: 1/3 probability that no one will die; 2/3 probability that 600 people will die How it's framed like 400 people will die vs. 200 people will be saved

Conjunction Fallacy

Example: Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations Which is more probable? 1. Linda is a bank teller 2. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement p(A and B) </= p(A) Conjunction fallacy: If you chose Linda is a feminist activist over just a bank teller - the description of Linda is so representative of what we know of feminists, but the rules of probability say you should pick just bank teller

Sunk Cost Fallacy

Example: You go to all you can eat sushi with your friends. After eating only a little bit, you feel full. However, you think about eating more because you've already chosen the all you can eat option - you can't get your money back, the cost of choosing all you can eat is a sunk cost Options: 1. Continue eating even though you are full - you are committing more of your (digestive) resources towards an action that won't make you happier and might make you feel gross - it is a fallacy because additional resources put into an initial failing investment may simply increase the cost without increasing the likelihood of a positive outcome 2. Stop eating because you are full Example Dating: - dating for over a year, think they're not great - your time is a sunk cost - if you stay with time over your time invested are you adding resources into something that's not going to have a positive outcome

Expected Emotions Study

Expected emotions: emotions that people predict they will feel concerning an outcome - a determinant of risk aversion (not wanting to take a risk) Kermer et al gave participants $5 - win $5 or lose $3 based on coin flip - measured predicted happiness (before flip) and actual happiness (after flip) Participants expect greater change in happiness for losses than gains Results: - participants greatly overestimate the negative effect of losing - people don't feel that bad after losing - expected emotions aren't very accurate

Images

Experience of perceptual-like information in the absence of an external source for the perception - Visual - Motoric - Haptic (involving touch) Ex. visualize your house, "created an image" without actually being there - something like perception, but not getting information in front of you

Illusory Conjunctions

Features no longer free-floating during focused attention - if you don't use attention Pick up on certain features/shapes, unless you were paying attention, you might have miscombined features - ex. see a red triangle and a blue square but thought you saw a blue triangle

Feature Search

Find a target by looking for a single feature (colour, shape, orientation, intensity) For ex. find the horizontal line Targets found fast and automatically: "pop-out" Engage your attention, there is a target that is different in only one way You're engaging in parallel search, analyzing all stimuli at the same time, looking for 1 feature Preattentive

Analogical Reasoning: Gick and Holyoak's Study

First gave students a military problem: he divided his army into small groups and dispatched each to the head of a different road and then gave them a similar problem (Radiation Problem): patient has tumor, if you zap it at full strength might kill healthy tumor, but weak, might not get all the tumor Had to use analogical reasoning; had to notice the military problem was an analog to this one - use a bunch of zappers at lower radiation from different locations Results: 20% solved the problem with the help of the analogy

Role of Prefrontal Cortex in Working Memory

Flexibly combine: - sensory information - long-term memory - goals Distinct regions of PFC activated by: 1. Verbal (Maintenance and WM) = Left Ventral Lateral PFC 2 Spatial (Maintenance and WM) = Right Ventral Lateral PFC - where should something go? = need this

Bilingualism

Fluently speaking or writing in 2 different languages Prevalence in French/English in Canada: 18% Children growing up bilingual reach developmental language milestones at roughly the same time as monolingual kids do: 1. Onset of speaking 2. Vocabulary size 3. Word choice

How can anchoring and adjustment be used for good?

Food bank donations Circle one: - $25 - $35 - $45 or fill in $___

Prototype Theory Experiment

For each prototype, they created individuals that varied in their degree of similarity to the prototype (from 75% down to 0% similar) Later, they had to judge whether new and some old faces had been seen before Never saw the prototype Results: - old items: had seen them before - confident that they have seen similar items - not confident they had seen items that weren't similar - if shown the prototype, they should have said no they haven't seen it because they hadn't, but they were super confident that they had seen it - when they were exposed to the similar faces, the brain made up a prototype

Causal Inference

Inferences that the events described in one clause or sentence were caused by events that occurred in a previous sentence Ex. "Sharon took an aspirin. Her headache went away." - causal inference that the aspirin caused the headache to go away

Major Divisions of the Brain

Forebrain, Midbrain, Hindbrain

Availability Heuristic Study

Frequency of death reports in newspapers Ordinary people's estimates of the frequency of those deaths, and actual morality rates Results: People's estimates were far more correlated with newspaper reports than actual mortality rates - if you read about it a lot, it must happen more = FALSE IMPRESSION - we don't think about what actually endangers us Makes us fear events that are rare (plane crashes) and fail to anticipate and therefore prevent more frequent dangers like the development of alcohol poisoning

Inferotemporal Cortex (IT)

Front end of ventral stream Tip of temporal lobe, front end of ventral stream Important for recognition of whole objects Cells selective for object categories - will fire when a certain category is activated Some regions selective for faces "View Invariant" - the ability to recognize something, even at different angles

Cortex

Frontal Lobe: - Planning - Short-term memory - Strategic thinking - judgement - social cognition - movement Parietal Lobe: - processing touch information - complex sensory information Occipital Lobe: - visual processing - visual pattern recognition Temporal Lobe: - hearing language - long-term memory - susceptible to seizures

Fixation

Gestalt psychologist's obstacle to problem solving

Gestures

Gesture reveals understanding not found in speech Conservation of number - young child might think that the bottom row has more because they don't have conservation of number - just see that it's wider - Mismatchers (partial conservers) were more likely to benefit from conservation explanations than non-mismathcers = the one that thought they moved up were more likely to benefit (gesture was used to get false eye witness reports about a hat)

Transivity

Given 3 items, if a relation (e.g., heavier) holds between the first two items and also between the second and the third items, it must hold between the first and third items Example: Sarah is shorter than Kevin Kevin is shorter than James Therefore, Sarah is shorter than James Not all relationships have transivity - height and weight do - but liking for instance does not (not necessarily that Sarah likes James because Sarah likes Kevin)

The Aglioti Experiment

Gives the Titchener Illusion to participants He put sensors on their hands, allowed him to measure the distance between their fingers 1 condition: got them to visually match the size of the subjectively bigger one 2nd condition: had to actually grab the "bigger" circle Illusion worked on both conditions, but it worked better when they had to match the size - illustrates the difference between the "where" and "what" pathways

Computer Simulation

Goal: have a computer respond to a problem by producing an output that matches the behaviour of a real person confronted with the same problem Pros: - non-invasive - no people needed Concerns: - ecological validity - motivation and emotion - human development

Common Types of Synaesthesia

Graphemes (letters or numbers) to colour Days of week/months of year to colour Time units to spatial location Sounds to colour Smells to colour Words to tastes Vision to sounds

Brain Surface Features

Gyrus - ridge on the cerebral cortex Sulcus - groove on the cerebral cortex

War of the Ghosts Experiment

Had participants attempt to remember a story from a different culture (Indigenous) and then asked participants to rewrite the story and then days, months, years later to rewrite - Repeated reproduction Was pretty accurate at first Over time: - Omissions: ghosts omitted early, wound was fleshy (not spiritual) - Rationalizations: details were "Westernized", became more consistent with participants' culture Memory for the story changed to fit more closely with participants' understanding of the world When we have memory distortions, those forgettings, mistakes are not random

Candle Problem

Have to mount a candle on the corkboard, presented with a matchbox, candles, and some tacks The matchbox can be used as a support rather than a container When a group is given the materials with the matchbox already emptied found the question easier (twice as likely to solve the problem) An example of functional fixedness - the fact that seeing the boxes as containers inhibited using them as supports

Conditional Syllogisms

Have two premises and a conclusion like categorical syllogisms, but the first premise has the form "If.. then" This kind of deductive reasoning is common in everyday life

Temporal Lobe Functions

Hearing Language Long-term memory

Syntactic Priming

Hearing a statement with a particular syntactic construction increases the chances that a sentence will be produced with the same construction Important because it can lead people to coordinate the grammatical form of their statements during a conversation Using a specific grammatical construction by one person increases the chances other person will use that construction Example: 1. "when i was a child, I loved reading books about space travel" 2. "When i was a child, I loved building houses made of LEGO blocks"

(Cumulative) Prospect Theory

How a situation is framed can affect how information is used to make decisions Loss: more willing to take risks to avoid a loss Gain: less willing to take risks to keep a gain Losses are weighed more heavily than numerically identical gains

Image Scanning Study

How are images different than something you're seeing? Participants study the map, take the map away, then visualize the map and go from one landmark to the other Participants did mental image scan If mental images contain analog info, you should be able to scan mental image in the same way as a photograph If you're not moving your eyeballs, shouldn't you be the same time at seeing Results: - the bigger the distance, the longer it took you to scan - mental scanning looks very similar to real scanning even though our eyeballs don't need to move

Speech Processing

How do we figure out what fast talkers are saying How do you know when one word starts and when one ends Tape recordings of natural speech show that the transition from one word to another is not filled with silence The average conversational speech rate is approximately 2.5 words per second, with few or no "silences" between the words We are not always perfect in our ability to segment the speech sounds into words or larger collections of words, called clauses Sounds of speech differ depending on age, gender, and emotion of speaker

Size Constancy

How do we know something is the same size at different distances, since when it's further away it is smaller on our retina? How do we know that it didn't change size it just moved

Anchoring and Adjustment Study

How long is the Mississippi River? Group 1: Is it longer or shorter than 500 miles? Group 2: Is it longer or shorter than 5000 miles? After giving their responses, the participants were also asked to guess the actual length of the river Group 1: ~1000 miles Group 2: ~2000 miles It is 2348 miles long When you get preliminary question, that number was an anchor, your guess gets pulled closer to that number

How can you tell when someone is being sarcastic?

Paralinguistic features and sarcastic prosody - lower pitch, louder intensity, slower tempo - lengthening of syllables

Base Rate

Prevalence of an event or characteristic within its population of events or characteristics Example: A doctor is told a 10 year old boy is suffering chest pains. How worried should she be that this boy is suffering from a heart attack? The relative proportion of different classes in the population Error occurs when: Base rate information is not taken into account

Searching a Problem Space

Problem Space: initial state, intermediate states, goal state - every possible state Process of searching the problem space is called means-ends analysis Means-ends Analysis: Reduce the difference between initial and goal states by creating subgoals (intermediate states that are closer to the goal) Subgoal: move large disk to third peg

Semantic Satiation

If you repeat the word once a second for about five or six times, it loses all meaning

Event-Related Potential and Language

Illustrate different physiological responses to syntax and semantics N400 response is associated with structures in the temporal lobe - damage to temporal lobe reduces the larger N400 response that occurs when meanings don't fit in a sentence P600 response is associated with structures in the frontal lobe - damage to areas in the frontal lobe reduces the larger P600 response that occurs when the form of a sentence is incorrect

Cognitive/Mental Map

Imaginal representation of the world/environment You can use either a physical map or a cognitive map to navigate an environment If you're familiar with an area, don't need a real map

Prefrontal Cortex (PFC)

Important for taking context into account in top-down influences on face and object processing

How synaesthesia influences learning

In every case where synesthetes have been tested on the class of stimuli for which they actually claim to use synesthesia as a memory aid, they have shown advantages on non-declarative learning (might not say you learned anything) Study: - passively view a stream of slides that were either pure colour patches or letters on a white background - conditioning phase: slides of one colour were presented simultaneously with a startling sound - eventually developed skin conductance response to colour that co-occured with sound Test Phase: - passively view a stream of letters - included letters that were synaesthetically matched to colours for the participants (ex. red associated with H, E associated with blue) - seeing the matched letter produced a skin conductance response without any colour shown on screen - no letters had ever been presented together with the sound - conditioned responses to colours transferred to graphemes! - saw H, which made you feel red, which gave you the skin conductance

Anaphoric Inference

Inferences that connect an object or person in one sentence to an object or person in another sentence Ex. Riffifi, the famous poodle, won the dog show. She has now won the last three shows she has entered. - occurs when we infer that "She" refers to Riffifi Readers are capable of creating these inferences even under adverse conditions because they add information from their knowledge of the world to the information provided in the text

Patient with Balint's Syndrome

Inability to focus attention on individual objects High number of illusory conjunctions reported

Prosopagnosia

Inability to recognize familiar faces (face blindness) Not a result of visual, intellectual, or memory difficulties Damage to the temporal lobe on the lower right side of the brain Rely on voices, superficial features (eg., hair colour) Rely on featural processing - looking at one thing, not using Gestalt (holistic) processing Paintings with faces made out of different objects - person with prosopagnosia would name all the objects they see, but they would not see the whole face

Incidental Emotions Study

Incidental Emotions: emotions that are not specifically related to decision-making - general disposition, recent experiences, environment Participants watched films that elicited emotions: - sadness (about dying) - disgust (about dirty toilets) - neutral (about fish) Participants were given sets of highlighters Participants were asked 1 of 2 questions: 1. what price would you be willing to sell this for? 2. What price would you be willing to pay for this (buy)? Results: - prices are significantly lower in sell condition - disgust is telling you to get rid of things - sadness is associated with thoughts of change - sadness willing to pay more

Standard Model of Consolidation

Incoming information activates many areas in the cortex Cortex communicates with the hippocampus - strong connection between the two Retrieval depends on hippocampus during consolidation - hippocampus coordinates what areas of cortex should be activated when you think of a memory Reactivation: hippocampus "replays" neural activity associated with the memory - helps form direct connections between the various cortical areas Eventually, the hippocampus is no longer needed for remote memories; can just play the memory with the cortex

Instrument Inference

Inferences about tools or methods Ex. "William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet while he was sitting at his desk" - we infer from what we know about the time Shakespeare lived that he was probably using a quill pen and that his desk was made of wood

Corpus of a Language

Indicates the frequency with which different words are used and the frequency of different meanings and grammatical constructions in that language How people typically use their language

Learning a Language

Infants (less than 1 year old) can discriminate between sounds that adults cannot = "universal listener" Biologically prepared to sense the speech sounds of any language - even languages they have never heard By 10 months lose the "universal listener" - unable to distinguish their normal language Older babies did not look towards the bunny when sound changed to "da" Can no longer detect the difference between Hindi sounds because difference is not emphasized at home

Treisman's Attenuation Theory

Intermediate-selection model - attended message can be separated from unattended message early in the information-processing system - selection can also occur later - can come back around, not a one shot Attenuator: - analyzes incoming message in terms of physical characteristics, language, and meaning - separates attended message from unattended message - attended to message = full strength - unattended message = much weaker strength Dictionary Unit: - contains words, each of which have thresholds for being activated - if it's an important word = low threshold (easy to activate) - ex. exam is an important word (easy to activate) - "leaky filter model" (not very strong filter, a lot can get through)

Cognitive Interview

Interview process for eyewitnesses 1. Interview the observers at the crime scene or have them imagine that they are back at the crime scene witnessing the event - context dependent encoding specificity 2. Have witnesses report everything that they can recall, even aspects that are incomplete or don't make sense - trying to prevent the use of schema 3. Have the observer recount the events in different sequences: "what happened next?", but also, "what happened just before that?" - prevent the use of scripts - ideas/expectations of order

Cognition - the really early days

Introspection - the study of conscious mental events by looking within - late 19th century - Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener - didn't take into account implicit or non-conscious processes - no way to test claims, hard to replicated, different descriptions of same processes by different subjects

Visual World Paradigm

Involves determining how subjects process information as they are observing a visual scene

The Lexical Decision Task

Involves reading a list that consists of words and nonwords Task is to indicate as quickly as possible whether each entry in the two lists below is a word Had to decide whether each group of letters was a word in your lexicon

Words isolated from conversational speech

It is difficult to perceive the isolated words The context provided by the surrounding words aids in the perception of a word

Fusiform Face Area (FFA)

It is in the fusiform gyrus on the underside of the temporal lobe Important part of the face network The same part of the brain that is damaged in cases of prosopagnosia

Slot Model

Items retained in working memory are held in three or four independent object 'slots', one for each item stored Working memory is all or none - an object either gets into a memory slot (and is remembered accurately) or it does not (not remembered at all) You see decreases in VSTM task because you ran out of slots - either goes in slot or not (remember or don't)

Neuropsychology of Linear Reasoning

Key to linear reasoning: spatial ability Left-hemisphere is more active when engaging in concrete linear reasoning - ex. Kevin is shorter than James Right-hemisphere is more active when engaging in abstract linear reasoning - ex. X is longer than Y

Language is Universal

Language is a system of communication using sounds or symbols that enables us to express feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences 6500 languages spoken in the world 50% word's adult population speaks more than one language

Synaesthesia and Learning

Learned first order mappings: first letters of common colour names tend to be associated with the corresponding colour (e.g., p for purple) - varies depending on language Learned second order mappings: letters that have similar shapes (e.g., E and F) tend to have similar colours Letters that are earlier in an alphabet tend to have less similar colours than later letters (at least in English and Japanese) - first letters are really distinct from each other and then less distinct later because we learn the alphabet, we start at the beginning and then we run out of main colours later on

Lesion Patients

Lesion - abnormality or injury to any part of the brain - may be caused by: - congenital abnormalities (present from birth) - epilepsy/surgery - stroke - injury - disease

Word Superiority Effect

Letters are easier to recognize when they are contained in a word than when they appear alone or are contained in a nonword The more rapid processing of letters within a word Letters in words are not processed one by one but that each letter is affected by the context within which it appears Letters presented visually are easier to recognize when in a word Letters are affected by their surroundings

Working Memory - Baddeley and Hitch

Limited capacity system that allows us to store and manipulate information temporarily so that we can perform everyday tasks Temporary memory system that you use to do more complicated cognitive tasks: - learning, reasoning, comprehension - ACTIVE rather than passive (need to work at it) - key for laying down long term memories Model: 1. Central Executive (in middle) 2. Verbal Short Term Memory (control processes) - phonological loop 3. Visuospatial Short Term Memory (control processes) - visuospatial scratchpad 4. Episodic Buffer Everything works together to help us with visual and verbal LTM

Motor Theory of Speech Perception

Listeners try to mentally simulate the creation of the speech sounds they hear You get auditory information, mentally simulate it (not speak it out loud) - seeing the lips helps simulation process If the sound they simulate matches the sound that their brains have registered, then they are able to identify the speech sound they heard Fluent adult speakers spend a substantial amount of time in a speaker's presence looking at the speaker's mouth Seeing the lips of the speaker helps the simulation process, sometimes called analysis by synthesis Typically a speaker's articulation and the sounds we hear are coordinated - surprised when: 1. Sound lags visual experience 2. Voices are dubbed in a different language

Eye Movements in Reading

Measured subjects' eye movements as they read sentences that contained either a high or low frequency target word Participants looked at low-frequency words about 40 ms longer than high frequency words One reason could be that readers needed more time to access the meaning of the low-frequency words

Autobiographical Memory

Memory for specific experiences from our life Can include both episodic and semantic components Mental time travel Multidimensional because they consist of spatial, emotional, and sensory components Ex. remember day of first date (semantic and episodic) Patients who had lost their ability to recognize objects or to visualize objects, because of damage to visual areas of the cortex, also experienced a loss of AM

Distortions in Mental Maps

Mental maps are not organized as a true picture - ex. thought Seattle was further south than Montreal because Canada is up north Employ a heuristic of making irregular geographic boundaries fit into a kind of grid - Cost = loss of information - heuristic: make it so we just picture Canada all above USA We do this because it's faster and usually right

Attention as a Filter: Attentional Sets

Mental templates that allow us to selectively attend to a certain category of stimulus before it appears Involve holding in mind features or location of the object you're expecting Ex. looking for keys, hold mental template of what your keys look like before you search, where they usually are Certain stimuli tend to elicit attentional sets = emotional stimuli

Isomorphic Rotation

Mentally rotate 2D figures continuously in a manner that is similar to the way we physically rotate 2D objects (like pictures) Like scanning, the more we have to rotate the longer it takes us

Medium of Communication

Messages can be: 1. Spoken 2. Written 3. Gestured Two recognized universal language media: 1. Voice 2. Gesture

Mind Wandering - Unusual Uses Task

Mind wandering can facilitate creative thinking - "what can you do with a brick" Participant given UUT prompts than put in 1 of 4 conditions: 1. Demanding task - hard, a lot of attention needed 2. Undemanding task - boring, easy task; causes mind wandering 3. Rest - take a break 4. No break - went straight into answering question Demanding, rest, no break -> all gave same amount of answers Undemanding condition thought of significantly more

Opt-In Procedure

Requires the person to take an active step Ex. signing of the donor card after you have approved to be an organ donor

Gambler's Fallacy

Mistaken belief that the probability of a given random event is influenced by previous random events Ex. after 5 coin flips, all ending in tails, are you "due" for a heads outcome - example of representativeness heuristic problem - it's a mistake to think you're due - logically, they are independent flips, no influence - mistakenly believing there's influence

State Dependent Learning

Mood (mental state) can function as an encoding specific cue Study with mood: learned while sad or happy - recall was highest when mood during test matches mood during studying Physical State and Memory - Study with alcohol - students were either sober or intoxicated during studying and test - intoxicated learners made more mistakes than sober learners - made fewer mistakes when there was a match - intoxicated learning only made more mistakes than when intoxicated both times

Brain Activation with Ultimatum Game

More activation of right anterior insula (connected with emotional states), participants more likely to reject more offers - insula is your meter for judging how unfair something is Replication of 2003 behavioural findings Same pattern of results during third party trials - played also on behalf of 3rd party (the recipient of the money is someone else, you make decisions on their behalf) - make the same decisions Anterior insula is involved when observing unfair offers (to you or to your third party) Medial Prefrontal Cortex only activated when you personally receive unfair offers

Creativity and the Brain: Dopaminergic Theory of Positive Affect

More creative if you're happy 1. When you are happy, dopamine increases in your system 2. Prefrontal Cortex: dopamine acts on PFC - useful for working memory 3. Anterior Cingulate: have connections between this and PFC (greater communication) - helping you engage in cognitive flexibility, allowing you to think of things in a number of different ways - more likely to generate a creative response

Visual Short Term Memory: Change Detection

Most people drop off in accuracy after 4 items But there are variation Shows the individual differences in visual STM

How can images be used to aid survival?

Navigating and finding your way back to your starting point by recalling: - images of your current location - some of the landmarks you have passed along the way

Ultimatum Game

Neuroeconomics Game Involves two players, one designated as the proposer and the other as the responder The proposer is given a sum of money, say $10, and makes an offer to the responder as to how much this money should be split If the responder accepts the offer, than the money is split according to the proposal If the responder rejects the offer, neither player receives anything Either way, the game is over after the responder makes their decision According to utility theory, the responder should accept the proposer's offer no matter what it is - rational: if you accept the proposer's offer you get something, but if you refuse you get nothing But people reject low offers because they are unfair - they do this less often with computers though Results: - the right anterior insula was activated about three times more strongly when responders rejected an offer than when they accepted it - and higher activation rejected a higher proportion of offers - this area is connected with negative emotional states, including pain, distress, hunger, anger, and disgust - PFC was activated, but was the same for offers that were rejected and accepted - function of PFC may be to deal with the cognitive demands of the task, which involves the goal of accumulating as much money as possible - the emotional goal of resenting unfairness is handled by the anterior insula - the cognitive goal of accumulating money is handled by the PFC

Imagery Neurons

Neurons that respond to some objects but not to others Ex. a neuron that fired in response to a baseball but not a face - fired in the same way when the person imagined a picture of a baseball

Can we pay attention to everything?

No Ex. change blindness to the bush changing into a rock

Study with Insight and Non-Insight Problems

Non-insight problem was algebra question Report how close you feel (warm to cold) to getting the answer Results: - Non-insight problem: gradually getting warmer (you feel like you're getting closer) as the question goes on - Insight problem: it's a flat line even though you are getting closer to the answer - don't feel like you're getting close until you're there

Ill-Defined/Ill-Structured Problems

Not clear what the question really is Not clear how to arrive at the solution Not clear what solution looks like Examples: 1. What career should i pursue? - how do you know if you reached the end? 2. Is honesty the right action if it hurts someone's feelings? 3. Nine Dot Problem - draw a line through each of the dots by drawing no more than 4 straight lines without retracing a line or lifting the pencil from the paper - not all of the constraints are fully specified - classic solution: you have to assume you can go outside the grid (takes advantage of unstated permission to have goes beyond the boundaries of the grid)

Memory is "Constructed"

Not pure recall, build memory with experiences, expectations, knowledge Advantages: 1. Allows us to perceive coherent memories - things make narrative sense, sequence, coherence 2. Allow us to update older memories - ex. live on residence and met a bunch of people first day but as you got to know people, you update memory to know exact names and how you feel about these people Disadvantages: 1. Sometimes we make errors 2. Sometimes we misattribute the source of information - was it actually presented, or did we infer it?

Problem

Obstacle between present state and goal state, not immediately obvious how to get around the obstacle

Illusory Correlations

Occur when a correlation between two events appears to exist, but in reality there is no correlation or it is much weaker than it is assumed to be Can occur when we expect two things to be related, so we fool ourselves into thinking they are related even when they are not May be a stereotype Related to availability heuristic because selective attention to the stereotypical behaviours makes these behaviours more "available" Error occurs when: there is no correlation, or it is weaker than it appears to be

Phonemic Restoration Effect

Occurs when phonemes are perceived in speech when the sound of the phoneme is covered up by an extraneous noise A phoneme in a spoken word in a sentence can be perceived even if it is obscured by noise Knowledge of meaning helps "fill in the blanks" Study: replaced the first s in "legislatures" with the sound of a cough and asked his subjects to indicate where in the sentence the cough occurred - no subject identified the correct position of the cough, and none of them noticed that the s in legislatures was missing This "filling in" of the missing phoneme based on the context produced by the sentence and the word containing the phoneme is an example of top-down processing Also influenced by the meaning of the word, people filled in "there was time to *ave" with wave when the rest of the sentence had to do with saying bye to a friend

What is a Problem?

Occurs when there is an obstacle between a present state and a goal and it is not immediately obvious how to get around the obstacle Difficult and the solution is not immediately obvious

Electroencephalography (EEG)

Oldest imaging method of those currently employed - electrodes on the scalp record the electrical activity of the brain - the EEG waves (brain waves) reflect the total electrical output of columns of cortical neurons

Neural Circuitry for Face Recognition

One area is the Fusiform Face Area which is located in the fusiform gyrus which is inside the inferotemporal cortex But it is just a part of face-selective network Functioning imaging in monkeys has revealed nine face-selective patches in temporal and prefrontal cortex

Utility

Outcomes that achieve a person's goals Ex: money, happiness, furthering career path, etc.

Emotions during mind wandering vs. on task

Overall: more positive mood when on task If mind wandering episode was interesting and useful, then mind wandering mood not worse than on task mood

Phonological Store (inner ear)

Part of Baddeley and Hitch's Model of Working Memory Component of the Phonological Loop Linked to speech perception Holds spoken words in mind for 1-2 seconds Called inner ear because it is like internally hearing words Written words -> spoken words -> phonological store Passive; taking in verbal info Written words get converted into spoken words in mind and that's what goes into store Goes away after 1-2 seconds unless it goes to articulatory control process

Articulatory Control Process (inner voice)

Part of Baddeley and Hitch's Model of Working Memory Component of the Phonological Loop Linked to speech production Used to rehearse and maintain verbal information from the phonological store (keep it refreshed!) As long as we keep repeating it, we can retain the information in working memory Subvocal - no sound is actually made Refreshes information Plays it over Active process

Inner Scribe

Part of Baddeley and Hitch's Model of Working Memory Part of Visuospatial Scratchpad Refreshes all of the stored information contained in the visuospatial scratchpad (computer screen) Briefly stores spatial relationships associated with bodily movement Visual equivalent of articulatory control process Active; refreshes

Visual Cache

Part of Baddeley and Hitch's Model of Working Memory Part of Visuospatial Scratchpad Temporarily stores visual information that comes from perceptual experience and contains information about the form and colour of what we perceive Visual equivalent of phonological store Passive Comes from perception (colour, shape, size) Just holds information for a little bit

Phonological Loop

Part of Baddeley and Hitch's Model of Working Memory Verbal Short Term Memory The subsystem dedicated to the temporary storage of spoken and written material Contains two components: - phonological store (inner ear) - articulatory control process (inner voice)

Visuospatial Scratchpad (inner eye)

Part of Baddeley and Hitch's Model of Working Memory Visual Short Term Memory Maintains visually presented information - drawings - remembering kinesthetic (motor) movements Contains two structures: - visual cache - inner scribe

Study to Support Bouncer Model

Participants did VSTM task X -axis is time, y-axis is voltage (electrical activity) - looks different depending on how many items - 1 item is a relatively straight line and gets bigger with more items - bump = Contralateral Delay Activity - the more objects in memory the bigger the CDA - until you hit the limit of items you can hold in VSTM are relevant, some are not

Is sarcasm useful in any way? Study

Participants engaged in either simulated sarcastic, sincere, or neutral dialogue Participants tested for creativity (Remote Associations Test) - identification of novel and meaningful connections among seemingly unrelated stimuli Being sarcastic made you better at Remote Associations Test - sarcastic primes you to think about multiple interpretations

Context Dependent Study on Memory

Participants had a list of words to remember 1 condition: learned words underwater Other condition: learned words on land Participants who learned underwater performed best underwater and vice versa; environment helped recreate learning experience

Imagery and the Brain

Participants imagined small and large letters during a PET scan Cerebral blood flow in occipital lobe (back of the brain) varied as a function of letter size - more blood flow when the letter was bigger Study 2: Put in scanner, either shown picture or they had to visualize the image - ex. think of that dog you saw earlier, visualize it - results: imagery block still shows substantial spike in brain activation, not as large as perception, but still activity in occipital lobe - suggests they are related to each other - overlap in brain activation between perception of objects and imagery of objects

Study of Autobiographical Memory

Participants viewed photos taken by: - themselves (autobiographical) - someone else (non-autobiographical) Viewed again days later (along with new photos) in the MRI scanner Results: - both types of photos activated similar brain structures : - medial temporal lobe (episodic) - parietal cortex (processing of scenes) - autobiographical photos activated more of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex - PFC is involved in self-referential processing (thinking of yourself)

Dual Code Hypothesis and the Brain Study

Participants viewed: 1. Words (depends on the word, but propositional or both) 2. Line Drawings of Objects (both analog and propositional) 3. Unfamiliar Faces (analog code) If dual code hypothesis is correct, expect more activation when stimulus can be encoded as word and image Results: 1. For words: a lot of left-hemisphere activation (language here) 2. For images: lots of left and right hemisphere activation 3. For unfamiliar faces: a lot of right hemisphere activation Supports dual code hypothesis - links to memory; more likely to remember things when visual imagery

Study on Flashbulb Memories

Participants were asked questions about the 9/11 attacks or an everyday event on September 12 and many weeks after Results: - both memories of everyday events and flashbulb got worse with time; we don't remember quite as many details as we move further away from the event - but everyday and flashbulb are not that different in accuracy even though flashbulb seems so vivid - over time people become less confident in everyday events, but for flashbulb memories stay high in confidence for how well you remember it over time (Even though accuracy goes down, belief stays high)

Mental Walk Task

Participants were told to imagine that they were walking toward their mental image of an animal Their task was to estimate how far away they were from the animal when they began to experience "overflow" - when the image filled the visual field or when its edges started becoming fuzzy The result was that subjects had to move closer for small animals (less than a foot away for a mouse) than for larger animals (about 11 feet away for an elephant) just as they would have to do if they were walking toward actual animals Further evidence for the idea that images are spatial, just like perception

Vogel et al. Study

Pay attention to red Get a cue telling you to pay attention to side Presented with red and blue rectangles on both sides But you just want to pay attention to side with cue Blank screen with cross shown - forces you to remember what's going on Then shown set of boxes and asked for the side you were supposed to focus on to see if boxes are same or different - varied how many items Results: - high efficiency: CDA 2 red 2 blue look like 2 items - for 2 red and 2 blue items CDA looks more similar to the 2 item CDA than the 4 item CDA - they are only processing 2 relevant things - low efficiency: CDA 2 red 2 blue look like 4 items - 2 items with 2 distracters looks more like 4 item CDA - meaning they are processing all 4 items even though they only need to know 2 things (keeping irrelevant information)

Anchoring and Adjustment

People adjust their evaluations of things by means of certain reference points called anchors Effects occurs even when participants: 1. Know that the starting number is false 2. Believe that the starting number is randomly selected 3. Are experts Doesn't occur if you know the exact number

Mental Rotation

People need approximately 60 degrees per second to mentally rotate an image of a 3D object

Experts

People who, by devoting a large amount of time to learning about a field and practicing and applying that learning, have become acknowledged as being extremely knowledgeable or skilled in that particular field

Imagery vs. Perception

Perception is automatic and stable Imagery takes effort and is fragile

Recognizing Patterns - Perception

Perception: - the act of becoming aware of something through our senses = what am I actually looking at/hearing? - Pattern recognition: ability to detect meaningful patterns in the environment (faces, objects, etc.)

Infants and Prototypes Study

Presented babies with face shape and presented squares (one appearing like 2 eyes and a mouth and one flipped so it didn't look like a face) - found that newborns look significantly longer at what we'd consider upright faces We might be born with a preference for face-like configurations

Frontal Lobe Functions

Planning Short-term memory Strategic thinking Judgement Social cognition Movement

Attentional Blink (Task)

Press a button if you see B or X We can vary the lag - lag: the number of stimuli (or time elapsed) between the first target and the second target Accuracy is very high at getting first target (T1) Accuracy is pretty good for T2 But right after shortest lag, the accuracy drops for T2 - your attention is metaphorically blinking; attention is stuck on T1 So why is first T2 not suffering? You're just starting to blink so you can still attend to it - blink effect isn't instantaneous

Confidence in your own memory

Post-identification feedback effect: increase in confidence after making an identification 1. View video of crime 2. Pick prep from photo spread (asked who did it) 3. One of three conditions - no feedback, went to next task - confirming feedback ("oh good, you identified the suspect" - even if wrong) - disconfirming feedback - told wrong, even if right The highest confidence was seen after they were told it was right, even if it was wrong People believe really confident witnesses - confidence (like flashbulb memories) can dissociated from accuracy

Representativeness Heuristic

Problem solvers will judge the likelihood of an event - not by the standard methods for calculating probabilities - but rather by how similar that event is to another event of known probability States that the probability that A is a member of class B can be determined by how well the properties of A resembles the properties we usually associate with class B Difficult for the solver to get a sense of the base rates and make the necessary calculations - largely reflects how the problems are presented and not a lack of competence - people are significantly better at computing the rational choice when given percentages rather than probabilities Sometimes you do acknowledge there is this base rate information, but if you don't know it, you can't use it Ex. thought Robert was a librarian by how he dressed and acted - they were ignoring the base rate of farmers and librarians in the population - so if Robert was chosen from random, it is much more likely that he is a farmer Error occurs when: Presence of similar properties doesn't predict membership in class B

Reasoning and Logic

Process by which we draw conclusions from given information called premises Benefits: 1. See overall pattern 2. Find a theme 3. See the plan or create a plan 4. Test our hypotheses Helps us go beyond a single situation

Source Monitoring

Process of determining the origins of our memories, knowledge, or beliefs - can we tell the difference between something we actually observed or just heard about? Source Monitoring Error - misidentifying the source of a memory (aka source misattribution) - ex. forgetting you saw a meme from a friend and then showing them it

Primary Visual Cortex

Processes a lot: - brightness - colour - size - orientation - texture Starts process of motion perception Helps to know what a stimulus is

Parietal Lobe Functions

Processing touch information Complex sensory integration

Prototype Theory and the Cross-Race Effect

Prototype Theory: - as we have experiences with our own-race faces, we develop an expectation of what the configuration of a face is supposed to look like This is another aspect of the development of facial prototypes Cross-Race Effect: - although our ability to recognize faces is incredibly sophisticated, people have difficulty recognizing the faces of people from a different race - this bias towards our own race appears over the first year of life (not born with it, but learned quickly)

How they test Dual Processing Theory: Dual Task Methodology

Purposely pick topic or issues where your gut will give you the wrong answer - Reasoning task in which belief should cause errors Example: Major Premise: All fruits can be eaten Minor Premise: Bananas can be eaten Conclusion: Bananas are fruits While the conclusion is true, it does NOT follow from the premises They also give you a spatial working memory task - ex. dot matrix - high load: hold arrangement of dots in mind (but all over) - low load: dots are in an easier arrangement - no load condition While they are holding the dot matrix, they solve a reasoning problem, then have to reproduce matrix Results: 1. The greater the load, the poorer the performance 2. Do best with no load Reasoning: the cognitive load drains your working memory, hinders system 2 (which needs working memory), but you need system 2 for reasoning

Importance of Representation

Quantifiers: all, some, few Effort needed to interpret quantified sentence Usually multiple ways of representing a particular statement All A are B: circle of A inside circle of B No A are B: two separate circles Some A are B: A and B circles overlap slightly Some A are not B: Circle of B inside larger circle of A

Cognitive Variables - reaction time

Reaction time (response time or response latency) measures the amount of time a participant takes to make a response - assumed to be filled with specific cognitive processes (like mental finger counting)

Making Inferences from Text/Stories

Readers create information during reading not explicitly stated in the text 1. Anaphoric - connecting objects/people - "I take the kids out and we fish. And then, of course, we grill them" - we concluded the fish were grilled, not the children! 2. Instrumental - tools or methods - "William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet while he was sitting at his desk" - infer that William Shakespeare used a quill not a laptop because that's what people did back then (but it didn't actually say it) 3. Causal - events in one clause caused by events in previous sentence - "She took an aspirin. Her headache went away" - infer that aspirin caused her headache to go away - it doesn't explicitly say it, but infer the causal link

Inductive Reasoning

Reasoning based on observations, or reaching conclusions from evidence Anytime we are making a prediction about what will happen based on our observations about what has happened in the past Ex. sitting on a chair

Deduction Reasoning

Reasoning from generalities to specifics Deductions from true statements result in true conclusions Example: All psych students take research methods Kyle was a psych student Therefore, Kyle took research methods

Induction Reasoning

Reasoning from specific facts to generalities Inductions from true statements do not necessarily result in true generalities Example: Kyle took research methods Kyle was a psych student Therefore, all psych students take research methods

Can we reduce mind wandering?

Recognize when mind wandering and come out of it 1. Mind wandering 2. Awareness of mind wandering 3. Shift attention 4. Sustained focus - better to come aware faster, sustained focus longer, mind wandering shorters Focused attention models of meditation discuss the shift from a state of mind wandering back to focused attention - meditation makes you mindful, mindfulness makes you more aware, awareness makes you snap back

Hemispheres

Right and left hemispheres are connected by giant collections of fibers called commissures

Word Frequency Effect

Refers to the fact that we respond more rapidly to high frequency words like home than to low-frequency words like hike Demonstrates how our past experience with words influences our ability to access their meaning Demonstrated in the lexical decision task

Propositional Representation

Relationships can be represented by abstract symbols, such as an equation, or a statement such as "the cat is under the table" Uses words like behind, bottom of, in front of

Serial Position Effect

Remembering a list of items - items at the beginning and the end are more likely to be remembered Primacy Effect - more time to rehearse, less competition of other info Recency Effect - things newer in STM, usually recalled first - if there is a delay, there is no recency effect Rehearsal may play a bigger role, more likely to be remembered

Depictive Representations

Representations that are like realistic pictures of an object, so that parts of the representation correspond to parts of the object

Conditional Reasoning: Wason Four-Card Problem

Research shows that people are often better at judging the validity of syllogisms when real-world examples are substituted for abstract symbols Each card has a letter on one side and a number on the other Your task is to indicate which cards you would need to turn over to test the following rule: - If there is a vowel on one side then there is an even number on the other side Looking for an example of the rule not working - falsification principle

Cognitive Variables - response accuracy

Response accuracy measures whether or not a participant makes a correct response in a specified period of time when placed in a challenging situation

Tower of Hanoi

Rule 1: Move 1 disk at a time from one peg to another Rule 2: Can move disk only when no disks are on top of it Rule 3: Larger disk cannot be put on top of smaller disk Operators: actions that take the problem from one state to another Start at initial state, use operator, takes us out of initial state and into intermediate state

Newell and Simon's Approach to Problem Solving

Saw problems in terms of an initial state (conditions at the beginning of the problem) and a goal state (the solution of the problem) Introduced the idea of operators - actions that take the problems from one state to another Problem solving is a sequence of choices of steps, with each action creating an intermediate state Thus, a problem starts with an initial state, continues through a number of intermediate states, and finally reaches the goal state

Conjunction Search

Search for a combination of two or more features in the same stimulus Ex. "horizontal" and "green" Targets found slowly Search is serial (one at a time) Requires conscious and effortful attention (focused or controlled processing) - doesn't just pop-out

Visual Imagery

Seeing in the absence of a visual stimulus

Garden Path Sentences

Sentences which begin appearing to mean one thing but then end up meaning something else Ex. "After the musician played the piano was wheeled off the stage" Illustrate temporary ambiguity because the initial words of the sentence are ambiguous - they can lead to more than one meaning - but the meaning is made clear by the end of the sentence

What is Attention?

Set of cognitive processes that allow us to concentrate on one set of events in our environment while ignoring other events

Categorical Syllogisms

Set-inclusion describes the relationship among categories of objects (all, some, none) Example: All UBC students are humans All humans live on Earth Therefore, all UBC students live on earth

Levels of Processing (in Encoding)

Shallow Processing: focusing on physical features - ex. how many letters are in the word Deep Processing: focusing on meaning - ex. when have I last seen this word? - leads to better recall Aids to Encoding: 1. Visual imagery: create a picture in your mind 2. Self-reference Effect: ex. say stimulus is boat, have i ever seen a boat 3. Generation Effect: ex. saddle, associate a word with it = horse 4. Relating to survival value: how could the stimulus help me survive - ex. flashlight = could help me look for food

Mind Wandering

Shift of attention away from external environment to internal thoughts "Decoupling" - unhooking where your attention is going to where it's supposed to be When people study mind wandering, compare brain activity/ behaviour compared to "on task" 50% of the day, somewhere else mentally Content tends to be future-oriented and usually related to individual current concerns - potentially used for autobiographical planning - ex. what's coming up in the future? - functional value to mind wandering

Overt Attention

Shifting attention from one place to another by moving the eyes The eye moves to focus on the object of attention

Covert Attention

Shifting attention from one place to another while keeping the eyes stationary You attend to an area of space but the eye does not move Object of attention is in your peripheral vision Move attention with the mind

Loftus and Palmer Study on False Memories

Showed people simulated accidents and depending on the words used in leading questions, the responses differed - heard "smashed" or "hit" in description of car accident If asked if they saw a yield sign, they'll say they did even if it was a stop sign - when people read "smashed" they reported seeing broken glass, and higher speed of cars

Eyewitness Memories

Similar to flashbulb memory - often associated with emotional events such as crimes Prosecutors may put in leading questions which may make them answer in a particular way - ex. "tell me about the problems you're having with your boss" very different from "tell me about your relationship with your boss" Leading Questions: - can influence eyewitness recollections - can also affect how people will guess when they aren't really sure of the answer (could take your guess and push it in a particular direction) - may include misleading post-event information Misleading Postevent Information (MPI) - presented after a person witnesses an event - can charge how that person describes the event later - source monitoring error: failure to identify the source of information - might forget where you got information and think you experienced it

Subgoals

Small goals that help create intermediate states that are closer to the goal Occasionally, a subgoal may appear to increase the distance to the goal state but in the long run can result in the shortest path to the goal Ex. Subgoal 4: to free up the medium-sized disc, need to move the small disc from the middle peg back to the peg on the left

Goal State

Solution to the problem All three discs are on the right peg

Helmholtz's Theory of Unconscious Inference - Likelihood Principle

Some of our perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions we make about the environment Likelihood Principle - we perceive the world in the way that is "most likely" based on our past experiences

Epiphenomenon

Something that accompanies the real mechanism but is not actually part of the mechanism Ex. lights flashing as a mainframe computer carries out its calculations - the lights may indicate that something is going on inside the computer, but they don't necessarily tell us what is actually happening (indicate that something is happening in the mind, but don't tell us how it is happening)

Proactive Interference

Something that you have already learned interferes with your ability to recall more recent information - ex. trying to learn Portugese verb conjugations, but French verb conjugations are getting in the way

Spatial Attention vs. Feature-Based Attention

Spatial Attention: - selective attention to an area of space - where should i pay attention to? Feature-based Attention: - selective attention to the features of an object - ex. looking for keys? metallic looking, connected - what should i pay attention to?

Hippocampus

Spatial navigation and perception Memory - creating new memories, integration of new memories with existing memories

Surface Features

Specific elements of the problem such as the rays and the tumor

Syntax

Specifies the rules for combining words into sentences Order: like physical constraints/rules Different order of same words can drastically alter meaning The arrangement of words Identical words can convey different meanings: - the dog bit the man - the man bit the dog Changing the sentence "the cats won't eat" into "the cats won't eating" is an error of syntax because the grammar is not correct Some combinations are observed more often: - Common: I can (subject) help (verb) you (object) - YODA: help (verb) you (object) I can (subject) Missing from animal communication systems

Problem Solving as a Process

Stage 1: Problem Generalization - problem finding - fact finding Stage 2: Problem Formulation - problem definition - idea finding Stage 3: Problem Solving - evaluation and selection - planning Stage 4: Solution Implemention - selling idea - taking action

Development of Reasoning

Stage 1: Starting to understand relationships - "go to bed or you will be in trouble" - key word is "or": not one must be the other - Example: - We will play basketball or soccer - We will not play basketball - Therefore, we will play soccer - Age 5-6: typical children can solve these types of problems as well as adults Stage 2: Realization that a single conclusion may not be the only possibility (ages 6-10) - Example: - You will get either an A, B, or C on this test - You did not get an A - Therefore, did you get a B? - Beginning of personal awareness of own thoughts (metacognition), can tell if conclusion is plausible or likely -thinking about thinking - kids start to be aware of their own thoughts Stage 3: Ability to reason about statements that one knows are false = counterfactual reasoning - difficult to reason using assertions you disbelieve - not everyone can engage in counterfactual reasoning - Example: - Dolphins live in the water or on the land - Dolphins do not live in the water - Therefore, dolphins live on the land - Evaluating whether a conclusion must definitely follow (whether it has validity) even though it is not true - validity is separate from truth (you know dolphins don't live on land, but it's a valid statement given other information)

Mental Rotation in the Brain Study

Standard letter rotation task given to split brain patients (corpus callosum severed) Results: 1. Faster and more accurate at doing the rotation when the letter is presented to the right hemisphere than when it is presented to the left hemisphere 2. Visual imagery is more heavily related to right hemisphere functioning - hemisphere difference: if you're better on right-hemisphere, visual imagery is more heavily related to this hemisphere

Syntax-First Approach to Parsing

States that as people read a sentence, their grouping of words into phrases is governed by a number of rules that are based on syntax If, along the way, readers realize there is something wrong with their parsing then they take other information into account in order to reinterpret the sentence

Permission Schema

States that if a person satisfies a specific condition (being of legal drinking age) then they get to carry out an action (being served alcohol)

Late Closure

States that when a person encounters a new word, the person's parsing mechanism assumes that this word is part of the current phrase, so each new word is added to the current phrase for as long as possible Often leads to correct parsing

Synaesthesia

Stimulation in one sensory modality triggers simultaneous and involuntary sensory experiences in another unrelated modality - see a colour, a letter appears in your mind - or hear music and see a colour Automatic, involuntary; don't try to make it happen Prevalence: ~4% (across all types) Self-reported prevalence is consistently higher than verified prevalence

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths: - can manipulate brain activity directly to see its influence on cognition - can infer causality - non-invasive Weaknesses: - relatively poor spatial resolution - can't measure activity in deeper structures

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths: - good spatial precision - non-invasive Weaknesses: - doesn't directly measure neuronal activity - expensive - poor temporal precision - correlational: can't infer that activity causes behaviour - indirect measure of brain activity

Electroencephalography/Event-related Potentials Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths: - Good temporal resolution (records in milliseconds) - inexpensive - non-invasive - direct measure of brain activity Weaknesses: - poor spatial resolution - correlational: can't infer that activity causes behaviour

Neuropsychology/Lesion Patients Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths: - can demonstrate a region is necessary for a particular function (and not for another) Weaknesses: - patients in short supply - damage not neatly limited to one region - damage to region itself or connections to other regions responsible to the deficit (region or network?)

Interaction Models of Speech Perception Study

Students heard recorded sentences in which a critical sound was replaced with a cough - The *eel was on the shoe Students perceived the word heel and said that the cough was just background noise (phonemic restoration effect) Two prominent interaction models: cohort, TRACE

Think-Aloud Protocol

Subjects are asked to say out loud what they are thinking while solving a problem They are instructed not to describe what they are doing, but to verbalize nw thoughts as they occur One goal is to determine what information the person is attending to while solving a problem Reveals a shift in how a person perceives elements of the problem

Paired-Associate Learning

Subjects are presented with pairs of words, like boat-hat or car-house, during a study period. They are then presented, during the test period, with the first word from each pair. Their task is to recall the word that was paired with it during the study period. Thus, if they were presented with the word boat, the correct response would be hat.

Mental Scanning

Subjects create mental images and then scan them in their minds

Tacit Knowledge Explanation

Subjects unconsciously use knowledge about the world in making their judgements

Picture Superiority Effect Study

Supports Dual Code Hypothesis Pictures are easier to recognize than words View more than 600 pictures, able to recognize 98% of them immediately after (63% accurate after 1 year) Requires visually distinctive pictures (ex. can't have 3 apples)

Motor Theory of Speech Perception: McGurk Effect

Supports motor theory What you see overrides what you hear When you close your eyes you are hearing the true sound Inability to hear sounds correctly when a speaker's utterances and lip movements do not match When lips and sounds do not match, the listener hears something that is neither in the mouth movements of the speaker nor in the auditory signal

What increases likelihood of using analogical reasoning?

Surface Features: specific elements of a given problem - ex. zapper Structural Features: underlying principles that govern the solution to a problem - ex. idea that you should split up attack If you make it obvious that there are surface or structural similarities people are most likely to solve Study: Presented radiation problem and then the lightbulb problem - Fragile Glass Version: similar (high structural similarity, similar principle) - Insufficient Intensity Version - different (low beams that aren't strong enough, the other one the beams were too high)

Forebrain

Surrounds the midbrain and contains the cerebral cortex Regulates higher mental processes and enables people to engage in complex learning, memory, thought, and language Wrinkled outer portion is the cortex Limbic System - "emotional brain"

Linear Syllogisms

Syllogism: an argument in which the conclusion follows from the premises Contains 2 explicit relations, asks for conclusion Or given a conclusion and asked if it's an appropriate conclusion University students can do this - make more errors - need more time to answer correctly - performance usually improves with age Example: A is brighter than B; B is brighter than C Who is the brightest? Reasoning is fast and accurate when information is presented in an idealized or canonical form - left-to-right, top-to-bottom Non-Canonical Form: D is colder than E; D is warmer than F Which is warmest?

Neuronal Transmission

Synapse Neurotransmitters - dopamine - GABA - glutamate - acetylcholine - serotonin - norepinephrine Bundles of neurons form a nerve Brain regions contains thousands of nerves

Default-Interventionist Processing

System 2 competes with and can override system 1 System 1: heuristic processing, fast, automatic System 2: Analytic, controlled Study: Participants solved problems like the engineer problem during fMRI scanning - Anterior Cingulate detects the conflict between system 1 and 2 To reach a correct decision: they must engage system 2 and their right prefrontal cortex must inhibit activation of system 1 (left temporal lobe)

Categorical Syllogisms

THe premises and conclusion are statements that begin with All, No, or Some Ex. Premise 1: All birds are animals (All A are B) Premise 2: All animals eat food (All B are C) Conclusion: Therefore, all birds eat food (All A are C)

What is emotionally relevant to most of us? Study with Temporal Order Judgement Task

TOJ: - 2 stimuli presented offset in time (one stimulus appears before the other) - participant must judge which stimulus came first - more likely to say angry face came first, even when it is presented simultaneously or presented second - attention goes to emotional faces first, will make you subjectively perceive the angry face came before neutral faces From an evolutionary perspective: it is more important to pay attention to emotional things than getting the order right

Apperceptive Agnosia

Task 1: Hold card and orient hand in a particular way to "mail" card - took her performance and compared to researchers - DF had a lot of trouble orienting Task 2: tiles vary in dimensions, show using fingers the width of the tile - results show that DF didn't show much change with the width change Task 3: Take card and try to put it in the slot, but don't actually - similar to task 1 but instead of reporting, she had to perform the action - results were identical to healthy controls Task 4: The different width tiles were back, but she had to go to pick them up, but don't actually pick up - results: identical to controls We're seeing normal performance if she has to use visual information for movement Impaired perception if it's just the conscious reporting Damage to "what" pathway

Two-String Problem

Task: to tie together two strings that were hanging from the ceiling - strings were too far apart to reach both of them at the same time Other objects available were a chair and a pair of pliers To solve: need the pliers on the string to create a pendulum Pendulum Solution: one of the strings is held and the other is swung - the participant ties the pliers to the string so it can swing far enough to be reached Example of functional fixedness - people usually think of pliers as a tool, not a weight at the end of a pendulum - 37 of 60 subjects did not solve the problem because they focused on the usual function of pliers

Diencephalon

Thalamus: "salience", sensory relay Hypothalamus: body regulation (body temperature, hunger, thirst, sexual behaviour), arousal "flight flee, feed, family" (4 Fs)

Detecting difficulties with sarcasm

The Awareness of Social Inference Test - video exchanges which seem non-sarcastic on paper Deficits found in people with: 1. Damage to the vmPFC or right hemisphere 2. Mild Alzheimer's Disease 3. Semantic dementia (forgetting words and their meanings) General language skills may be preserved despite deficits in understanding sarcasm - with deficits, you just perceive sarcasm as literal

Synaesthesia Battery

The Synesthesia Battery is an online test for synesthesia developed by Dr. David Eagleman Develops slowly, into late childhood Give you a letter and they give you a huge colour pallette and then people choose what colour they see, the it sees the consistency of your answers

Linear Reasoning

The ability to draw conclusions from pairs of relationships based on some dimension Example: Lily scored higher than Simon Simon scored higher than Mark Therefore, Lily scored higher than Mark

Speech Segmentation

The ability to perceive individual words even thought there are often no pauses between words in the sound signal Individual words are perceived in spoken sentences even though there are usually no breaks between words in the speech stimulus Knowledge of the meanings of words in a language and knowledge of other characteristics of speech, such as sounds that usually go together in a word, help create speech segmentation

Seriation

The ability to place objects in a series or order Most 7 year olds can do this (e.g., organize blocks by weight when all blocks look the same) Often used in the past as indicator of intelligence For adults, seriation is aided by transivity - but not all problems have this

Mental Imagery

The ability to recreate the sensory world in the absence of physical stimuli Occurs in senses other than vision - ex. hear songs in your head

Long-Term Memory

The aspect of our memory system that consists of all the experiences and knowledge we gather throughout our lifetime Without it you don't have an identity Responsible for storing information for long periods of time - which can extend from minutes to a lifetime Ex. something from 5 minutes ago; something from 10 years ago Recent memories tend to be more detailed - much of this detail fade with the passage of time and as other experiences accumulate

Coherence

The representation of the text in a person's mind so that information in one part of the text is related to information in another part of the text

The Nature of Inductive Reasoning

The basis of scientific investigations in which observations are made, data are collected, and conclusions are drawn The conclusions we reach are probably, but not definitely, true - ex. concluding that Jon cares about the environment based on the observation that he is wearing a Sierra Club jacket makes sense, but it is also possible that he bought the jacket because he liked its style or colour

Word Frequency

The frequency with which a word appears in a language

What Has the Wason Problem Taught Us?

The context within which conditional reasoning occurs makes a big difference

Change Blindness

The difficulty in detecting changes in scenes Rarely notice continuity errors in movies The typical person requires many such flashes to spot the change - when they are side-by-side, the changes take only a few seconds to identify - the changes are easier to identify when they are central to the attentional spotlight Not a problem in visual perception

Lexical Ambiguity

The existence of multiple word meanings Ex. the word bug can refer to an insect, a hidden listening device, or being annoying Some meanings of words are more likely than others

Meaning Dominance

The fact that some meanings of words occur more frequently than others Ex. tin (metal) is high dominance because it occurs more frequently than tin (small metal container of food) which has low dominance

Imagery and Food Craving

The group that imagined their favourite food had a large increase in craving, but the holiday imagery task had no effect The effect of imagery was greater in women who were dieting, although the increase in craving occurred in nondieters as well Craving can be reduced by engaging in visual and auditory imaging of other objects - effect was larger for the visual group - nonfood visual imagery uses some of the capacity of the visuospatial sketchpad so food-related imagery is reduced

Parsing

The grouping of words into phrases A central process for determining the meaning of a sentence

Interactionist Approach to Parsing

The idea that information provided by both syntax and semantics is taken into account simultaneously as we read or listen to a sentence

Dual Systems Approach to Thinking

The idea that there are two mental systems 1. A fast, automatic, intuitive system: System 1 - usually running the show 2. A slower, more deliberative, thoughtful system: System 2 System 1 is linked to many of the errors we make System 2 can intervene - taking some time to step back and think logically about the situation gives system 2 time to operate

Law of Large Numbers

The larger the number of individuals drawn from a population, the more representative the group will be of the entire population People assume that small samples should accurately represent the entire population - thrown off by clusters of events that deviate from expectations

The Law of Large Numbers

The larger the number of individuals that are randomly drawn from a population, the more representative the resulting group will be of the entire population Samples of small numbers of individuals will be less representative of the population Ex. smaller hospital will have a higher percentage of girls/boys born in a day Error occurs when: It is assumed that a small number of individuals accurately represents the entire population

Semantics

The meanings of words and sentences Changing the sentence "the cats won't eat" into "the cats won't bake" is an error of semantics because the meaning doesn't make sense

What is cognition?

The mental processes, such as perception, attention, and memory, that are what the mind does Inputs -> ??? -> Outputs 1. Problem-solving 2. Decision-Making 3. Reasoning 4. Attention 5. Perception 6. Learning 7. Memory 8. Language

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The nature of a culture's language can affect the way people think Language shapes your thinking about the world - "Linguistic Reality" If different number of words, phenomenon may be understood differently If number of words are the same, phenomenon is the same Ex. English = aunt and uncle - Chinese = depends side of family and age relative to your parent Study compared how Russian and English speakers discriminated between different shades of blue Does the existence of two blue words in Russian (versus only 1 word in English) affect the perception of the colour blue? Results: - not statistically different for English speakers depending on type of blue - Russians responded faster when blues were across categories (the difference in blues mattered to them) - Russians responded faster when light blue and dark blue were presented (because they have different words for each of these) - learning the different labels makes it more likely that the colours will be perceived as different, and this makes it easier to quickly determine which square matches the one on the top - doesn't occur for english speakers because all the colours are simply called blue When the language hemisphere is activated, a category effect does occur, but when the nonlanguage hemisphere is activated, no category effect occurs

Conjunction Rule

The probability of a conjunction of two events (A and B) cannot be higher than the probability of the single constituents (A alone or B alone) Ex. because there are more bank tellers (A) than feminist bank tellers (B), stating that Linda is a bank teller includes the possibility that she is a feminist bank teller Usually violate this rule because of representativeness heuristic Error occurs when: Higher probability is assigned to the conjunction

Target Problem

The problem the subject is trying to solve

Syntactic Coordination

The process by which people use similar grammatical constructions A person's speech patterns are influenced by the grammatical constructions used by the other person in a conversation

Analogical Encoding

The process by which two problems are compared and similarities between them are determined

Memory

The process involved in retaining, retrieving and using information about stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer present Active any time some past experience has an effect on the way you think or behave now or in the future The mechanism that allows us to retain and retrieve information over time

Consolidation

The process that transforms new memories from a fragile state, in which they can be disrupted, to a more permanent state, in which they are resistant to disruption

Psycholinguistics

The psychological study of language Four major concerns: 1. Comprehension: how do people understand spoken and written language? 2. Speech Production: how do people produce language? 3. Representation: how is language represented in the mind and in the brain? 4. Acquisition: how do people learn language?

Group Brainstorming

The purpose of this technique is to encourage people to freely express ideas that might be useful in solving a particular problem But it results in fewer ideas than adding up the ideas generated by the same number of people asked to think of ideas individually

Sensory Memory

The retention, for brief periods of time, of the effects of sensory stimulation - capacity large but information decays very quickly Persistence of vision - retention of the perception of light (e.g., Sparkler's trail of light) - memory is holding on to the location of light just long enough to get an overall stimulus of it

Phonemes

The shortest segment of speech that, if changed, changes the meaning of a word Ex. bit contains the phonemes, b, i, t, because we can change bit to pit or bat or bid Refer to sounds, not the same as letters

Morphemes

The smallest units of language that have a definable meaning or a grammatical function Ex. "truck" consists of a number of phonemes, but only one morpheme because none of the components that create the word truck mean anything Ex. bedroom has two morphemes because "bed" and "room" have meanings Endings such as "s" and "ed" have no meaning in themselves, they are considered morphemes because they change the meaning of the word

Common Ground

The speakers' mutual knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions For a conversation to be successful, each person needs to understand the knowledge that the other person brings to the conversation Determined both by people's expertise and by the exchange of information during the conversation

Synesthetic Inducers

The stimuli that evoke these unusual experiences - often involve the perception of complex properties learned in early childhood Learned inducers are not arbitrary, but are strongly influenced by the structure of the learned domain "Natural" Inducers (sounds, pain, odors) are: - harder to identify and name - assisted by contextual cues - ex. if it is a food smell that activates a colour, easier to tell if you're in a restaurant - harder to discriminate

Farah's Letter Visualization Experiment

The subject visualizes H or T on the screen Then two squares flash, one after the other, on the same screen The subject's task is to determine whether the test letter was flashed into the first or the second square Results: Accuracy was higher when the letter was the same as the one that had been imagined

Inverse Projection Problem

The task of determining the object responsible for a particular image on the retina It involves starting with the retinal image and extending rays out from the eye Objects can be hidden or blurred What thing is causing this particular pattern of stimulation on the retina? How do we go from this 2 dimensional picture to the experience of 3 dimensions?

Myside Bias

The tendency for people to generate and evaluate evidence and test their hypotheses in a way that is biased toward their own opinions Error occurs when: People let their own opinions and attitudes influence how they evaluate evidence needed to make decisions

Risk Aversion

The tendency to avoid taking risks One thing that increases the chance of this is the tendency to believe that a particular loss will have a greater impact than a gain of the same size

Status Quo Bias

The tendency to do nothing when faced with making a decision Ex. given a cheap insurance plan and can upgrade, will just stay with cheap plan

Belief Bias

The tendency to think a syllogism is valid if its conclusion is believable Ex. some of the students are tired; seems true but because of the two premises before it isn't valid

Analogical Transfer

The transfer of experience of solving one problem to solving another, similar problem Two key terms that are used in research on this are: 1. Target problem 2. Source Problem Ex. For the mutilated checkerboard problem, the checkerboard problem is the target problem and the russian marriage problem is the source problem

Structural Features

The underlying principle that governs the solution Ex. strong ray destroys tissue and strong laser breaks lightbulb

Dual Processing (Dual Systems)

Theory that high-level cognition reflects the operation of two basic systems System 1: set of unconscious processes, automatic, rapid, able to accommodate many activities at once System 2: Processes that are more deliberate, conscious, slow, rely heavily on working memory 2 systems are giving you answers, sometimes the same answer, sometimes in conflict, one wins out (you hope system 2 wins)

Brain Imaging Methods

There are many ways to get an image They vary in invasiveness, expense, and temporal and spatial resolution The technology is rapidly advancing, especially in MRI and fMRI These methods along with lesion studies, nonhuman animal studies, and computational modeling, allow us to zoom in on neural underpinnings of human cognition

Evolutionary Perspective On Cognition

They argue that we can trace many properties of our minds to the evolutionary principles of natural selection According to natural selection, adaptive characteristics - characteristics that help organisms survive to pass on their genes - will, over time, become basic characteristics of the organism It follows that a highly adaptive feature of the mind would, through the course of evolution, become a basic characteristics of the mind People have a better chance of surviving if they can detect cheating - that's why people do better at the Wason problem when this schema is activated

Remember/Know Procedure - Petrican et al. (2010)

Think of a big event that occurred Remember: if the stimulus is familiar and encountered before - can you go back and your memory and experience it Know: if the stimulus seems familiar but don't remember experiencing it earlier - don't remember the experience, but what you know - ex. I must have moved in, but no mental memory of it Petrican et al. looked for public events that happened 10-50 years ago and asked remember/know Results: - for 40-50 years ago events, memory fades, what you remember goes down by a lot more than "know" responses - semanticization of remote memories: loss of episodic detail over time, whilst maintaining most of semantic memories - ex. if you think back to high school and what you learned, you can remember topics, but not the experience of learning them

Divergent Thinking

Thinking that is open-ended, involving a large number of potential solutions Cornerstone of creativity

Mind Wandering and Meditation Study

Time 1: measured performance and mind wandering on 2 tasks Participants completed a 2-week training session in: - mindfulness training or nutrition science and strategies Time 2: tested performance and mind wandering in 2 tasks - results: less mind wandering during two tasks after mindfulness training and improved reading comprehension and enhanced performance on working memory measure

Temporal Distinctions of Long-Term Memory

Time-line: we're in the present Going back = Retrospective - Semantic Memory: facts - Episodic Memory: events Going forward: Prospective - performance of future action - ex. remember to pay my friend back tomorrow

Chunking and Short Term Memory

To be a chunk, something needs to fit together readily as a pattern distinct from the things around it For words or pictures to be a chunk, they need to be familiar and available in long-term memory This illustrates that STM overlaps with - and relies upon - LTM to function efficiently Memory span is influenced by preexisting knowledge Use prior knowledge to remember numbers or whatever it may be - ex. learning cranial nerves using mnemonic - use LTM to help you learn new things

Falsification Principle

To test a rule, it is necessary to look for situations that would falsify the rule

Dorsal Attention Network

Top-down Found at top of brain Parietal and frontal lobe

Problem Solving

Transforming current state into goal state Current state = situation at the present time Goal State = a desired condition to be achieved

Conversations

Two or more people talking together Given-New Contract: speaker constructs sentences so they include: 1. Given information 2. New information New can then become given information once it's learned

Study with US Military on False Memories

US military training for if they are ever captured - often unable to remember actual person interrogating them depending on question being asked

Who coined "cognition" as a term?

Ulric Neisser

Unconscious Thought Theory

Unconscious: 1. Low Capacity Requirement: don't need much brain power 2. Bottom-up Process: slow integration of info to form an objective summary judgement 3. Naturally weighs the relative importance of various attributes Conscious: 1. High Capacity Requirement: need a lot of brain power 2. Top-down Process: Tends to be guided by expectation and schemas; coming in with biases 3. Because you have expectations, leads to biased weighing of various attributes In favour of unconscious thought

Outcomes of Bilingualism

Unique issue of attentional control - must express intended ideas in target language and not competing language Poorer Outcomes (Mixed Evidence): 1. More "tip of the tongue" experiences 2. Poorer word identification through noise Possible explanations for poorer outcomes: 1. Bilinguals use each of their languages less often than monolinguals creating weaker links 2. Competition between languages for lexical access Better Outcomes: 1. Better performance on metalinguistic tasks ("Apples grow on noses") - grammatically correct but anomalous 2. More accurate and faster responses during Simon Task which requires executive control and conflict resolution - word may appear on left, but you need to press key on right Possible Explanations for Better Outcomes: 1. Constant practice at appropriate language selection may generalize to other attention-heavy tasks

Neuropsychology

Use laboratory tasks to measure behaviour that indicates cognitive impairment - can reveal normal cognitive processes that require the damaged region

Non-Routine Problem Solving

Use of procedures or strategies that do not guarantee a solution to a problem but offer the possibility of success No guarantee of a solution Have strategies, but not necessarily going to get you to the end Ex. Kohler's Circle Problem: if the length of the circle's radius is 5cm, what is the length of the line - find length, had to restructure the problem

Top-Down Processing Frontal Lobes Skip Step Experiment

Using fMRI and MEG to determine when and where in the brain object recognition occurred Split up objects that people could recognize and couldn't recognize - found that for the objects people could recognize got to the frontal lobes before inferotemporal cortex (IT) Conclusion: the frontal lobes predict and object's identity and help fine tune the representation in inferotemporal cortex

Bouncer Model (Vogel et al.)

VSTM capacity is limited (3-4 objects simultaneously) So efficient mechanisms are required to: - select only the most relevant objects from the environment to be represented in memory - restrict irrelevant items from taking up capacity Because VSTM is limited you need mechanisms to select only the most relevant objects/items Choosy, only want certain things in and keep the rest out "bouncer" VSTM Capacity varies between individuals So does the efficiency of selective attention - capacity varies between individuals/different CDAs - efficiency also varies; some people are more efficient (efficiency = how well you choose what goes in; how relevant the stuff you let in is) Low VSTM = some things The bouncer model claims that: - high VSTM capacity individuals filter out irrelevant information so it does not enter working memory (snobby bouncer) - low VSTM capacity individuals let everything in (democratic bouncer)

Occipital Lobe Functions

Visual processing Visual pattern recognition

Working Memory and Stress

WM gets worse above a certain level of stress Effective management techniques include meditation, exercise, and sleep Individual differences in working memory capacity

View Invariance

Want to be able to recognize objects no matter what angle they're at How do we know what an object looks like from other angles if we have never seen this? - computers have problems with this

Deductive Reasoning

We determine whether a conclusion logically follows from statements called premises Aristotle introduced the basic form called syllogism

Imagery and Dual Codes

We don't experience everything as either an image- or a word-based proposition Sometimes words evoke images; sometimes seeing an object causes us to store an image as well as a verbal description of it We can have both image and word (analog and propositional code) Ex. semantic satiation: subjective perception loses meaning, fatigued propositional code, but you didn't fatigue analog code (could still visualize gold fish, but saying it feels like its lost meaning)

Face Recognition

We see faces in everything

Errors due to Attention and Arousal

Weapon Focus: attention can be narrowed by specific stimuli Study: watch a video of crime with a weapon - perpetrator wither shot or didn't shoot (just held gun) - information was remembered better in no shoot condition - when someone fires a gun, all of your attention goes to that and you fail to attend to other things in the situation

Base Rates and Truth

What 90% accurate means to a typical person: 1. Test says disease present - Number of people who have the disease = 90 - Number of people who do not have it = 90 - Total = 180 2. Test says disease absent - Number of people who have the disease = 10 - Number of people who do not have it = 810 - Total = 820 3. Total error - Number of people who have the disease = 10 - Number of people who do not have it = 90 - Total = 100 This also represents being 90% accurate: 1. Test says disease present: - number of people who have the disease = 0 - number of people who do not have the disease = 0 - total = 0 2. Test says disease absent - Number of people who have it = 100 - Number of people who don't = 900 - Total = 1000 3. Total Error: - number of people who have it = 100 - number of people who don't = 0 - total number of people = 100

Representation of a Problem

What facts are specified What is being asked of problem solver The methods you can you to solve it

Retroactive Interference

What you know now makes it difficult to recall something that you learned previously Stuff in past what you're having trouble with - ex. thinking of current phone number is easy, but harder to remember old phone number

Mental Rotation Study

When we manipulate an object mentally, do we do it in a way that is similar to the way we manipulate real objects, or do we act more like a computer program? Mentally rotate the letter "R" until it's upright - the more participants had to rotate it, the longer it took them to come up with an answer for what was the same

Balanced Dominance

When a word has more than one meaning but the meanings are equally likely Ex. cast (members of a play) and cast (plaster cast) are equally likely

Emotional Attentional Bias

When emotionally relevant information captures attention more readily than neutral information Emotionally salient: pops out because of emotional relevance or meaning - ex. seeing childhood teddy bear immediately when you go back to old room - associated with strong emotional response

What is a feedback process?

When signal or information gets passed backward from a higher level (further from V1) area to a lower level one Feedback processes are important for top-down influences on face and object recognition PFC to IT to V2 to V1 Information gets passed down the chain Important for top-down

What is a feedforward process?

When signal or information gets passed forward from one area to the next Bottom up processing involves mostly feed-forward processes as information gets passed on from V1 forward

Biased Dominances

When words have two or more meanings with different dominances Tin with high dominance Tin with low dominance

The Thatcher Illusion

When upright - we look at the whole (Gestalt-like) Typical face processing: gestalt-like manner, using spatial relations among the face parts to construct a holistic view When it was upside down, we didn't notice it was wrong because we were just looking at the components - when the face is rotated, we switch to noticing the individual facial features - the component information (more common for non-faces)

Functional Fixedness

When we fail to see a new function for an object Ex. in the two-string problem, the string can be more than just something to be tied, it can be a pendulum

Context Dependent Retrieval

When we learn something for the first time, we associate the entire environment with our learning experience Ex. learning in class is associated with our room, my prof, people beside me, my mood, the spot I'm in Encoding Specificity: when a retrieval cue helps re-create the specific way an experience was initially encoded - ex. on test day, I want to sit in same spot to be able to recreate learning environment

Primary Visual Cortex (V1)

Where information from the eyes reach the cortex sand the beginning of both dorsal and ventral visual streams

Belief Bias Effect

Where people are said to allow their personal knowledge and beliefs to affect their decision as to whether or not a conclusion is logically valid The greater the belief that the conclusion is true, the more likely you are to say it is logically valid If you think it's true, you think it's valid (even if it's not) - if we believe it's true, we don't want to test other conclusions Our belief in conclusions affects our willingness to test them When a conclusion is believable, the reasoner is biased toward finding a way to integrate it Example: - No addictive things are inexpensive - Some cigarettes are inexpensive - Therefore, some cigarettes are not addictive Operation of 2 cognitive systems? 1. Responds at an emotional, heuristic level 2. Responds at a deliberate, rational level Can have conflict between the 2

Attention as a Filter Example

Where's Waldo - doing a visual search - using feature-based (Waldo looks a certain way) and spatial attention (scanning portions)

Analogical Paradox

While it is difficult to apply analogies in laboratory research, people routinely use analogies in real-world settings

Dual Code Hypothesis (Dual Coding Theory)

Words can have multiple codes The more codes stimulus has, the more likely it will be remembered Some concepts are primarily represented verbally and not with a visual image - Abstract ideas: love, liberty, fairness, power (easier to represent verbally and not visually) - Concrete ideas (ex. tree) can be represented by imaginal and verbal strategies Assign imagery value to any word - ex. pink unicorn has high imagery value - concrete has higher imagery value than abstract - imagery value is a good predictor of memory, would remember pink unicorn easier than hectic

Droodles

Work of abstract art or random line drawing Single pictorial/analog code Less likely to be remembered because only one code Because they're abstract, they don't come with a word - has an analog code, but no propositional code

Basic idea of Baddeley's Working Memory Model

Working memory is composed of 4 subtypes: 1. Central executive 2. Verbal Short-term Memory 3. Visuospatial Short Term Memory 4. Episodic Buffer

Means-Ends Analysis

You want to reach the box on the highest shelf but you are too short 1. You must be aware of a difference between the current state and the goal state - The height i can reach currently is not high enough! 2. Find an operator to reduce the difference, perhaps creating a subgoal - I can use a step ladder to stand at a higher height 3. Make sure you can apply the operator - Do I have a working step ladder?

Neuropsychology of Categorical Reasoning

fMRI scanning of participants while they are solving categorical syllogisms Concrete Syllogisms: left-hemisphere especially in language-related areas was active Abstract Syllogisms: space-related areas in right-hemisphere were active

Bilingualism in the Brain Study

fNIRS (functional near infrared spectroscopy) brain scanning Participants read sentences: are they plausible? - Sentence Judgement Task Examples: 1. The light-house guided the sailor that piloted the boat 2. The light-house that the sailor guided piloted the boat Conditions: 1. Early Exposed Bilinguals: two languages from birth 2. Late-Exposed Bilinguals: second language between 4-6 years 3. Monolinguals Results: 1. Bilingual children and adults showed greater neural activation in left-hemisphere classic language areas 2. Later-exposed bilinguals showed greater recruitment of the prefrontal cortex relative to early-exposed bilinguals and monolinguals - maybe because you really have to choose what language you're using

In Vivo Problem-Solving Research

involves observing people to determine how they solve problems in real-world situations Ex. used to study the use of analogy in laboratory meetings Advantage: Captures thinking in naturalistic settings Disadvantage: time-consuming and difficult to isolate and control specific variables