PSY270 midterm

How did behaviourism evolve?

- As a reaction of introspectionism. - Started by Skinner and Watson. - They were concerned with observable (the stimulus and the response). - Don't care what happens in the mind (it's a black box)

What is Overt stimulus driven (bottom-up) attention?

- Attention is automatically driven to salient stimulus, or things that stand out from others (i.e. a loud noise in a quiet room). In a field full of purple flowers and ONE single red flower, your eyes are almost immediately drawn to the red flower. This is an example of salient stimuli. - Tracking eye movements (while participants watch a movie) enables us to monitor where overt attention is directed. - When something stands out. - Example: a loud noise in a quiet room. - Example from movie clip: train track scene, when people notices that something is moving, attention is automatically moved to the moving objects (not a train). Attention is direct to the moving vehicle when it is salient enough.

What are the 2 types of overt attention?

- Bottom-up attention, referring to attentional guidance purely by externally driven factors to stimuli that are salient because of their inherent properties relative to the background. - Top-down attention, referring to internal guidance of attention based on prior knowledge, willful plans, and current goals.

What is a neutron composed of?

- Cell body: The metabolic center of the neuron; it contains mechanisms to keep the cell alive. - Dendrites: The function of dendrites that branch out from the cell body is to receive signals from other neurons. - Axon: a tube filled with fluid (also called nerve fibers) that are usually long processes that transmit electrical signals to other neurons.

What is conjunction search?

- Combine feature to define the target. - Number of objects increases =reaction time increases. - Combine popping out features = you can see items easily. Participants are shown trials with a target (a red bar oriented to the left). Some trials will have this red bar in it and others will not, but there will be distractor targets (a red bar oriented to the right). With conjunction search reaction time increases at a higher rate as the number of objects in the search display increase.

What happened with the case with D.F.?

- Damage to temporal lobe (i.e., part of "what" pathway). - unable to match the orientation of a card to the orientation of the slot. - accurate performance on "mailing" the card to the slot. - Related video: Object agnosia. - Action pathway intact so can recognize it

How can you make multiple object tracking easier?

- Flashing the objects - Less distractions - Narrow the visual field - Make targets larger - Density = super crowded (pass each other) - Number of target = 3 things to be tacked

What is the thatcher effect?

- Higher sensitivity to process upright face than inverted face. - PICTURE in upright position (lower right) does not look that weird = sensitivity lost so changes are unrecognizable. - We tend to see faces in upright positions all the time so it is more sensitivity if we see faces upright.This is related to the fusiform face area (FFA) and how it functions; when the FFA is damaged, it can cause prosopagnosia (i.e. visual agnosia). There are many ways that the brain can try to compensate for this. - This is dictated by 1) our constant experience of seeing upright faces, there may be stimulus specificity for processing faces in our brains: there could be a fixed set of stimuli that must be present for this area (i.e. a set of to how normal mouths and normal eyes looks) to fire and for you to be able to recognize a face.

See Green image in notes

- If you take away the green, the pinks are exactly the same. - Difference: the brighter pink - the pixels around it are white, the dark one - the pixels around it are green. - Using introspectionism: which one is the mind truly experience. - Some part of our mind is objectively perceiving them. - We only have a certain part of what our mind is capable of.

Does training help with multitasking?

- Nope. - Frequent media multi-taskers show larger task-switching costs as those who rarely do it. - In fact, those who do it frequently are abnormally distractible and have difficulty ignoring irrelevant information.

Are perceptual biases hardwired?

- Not all! - Past experience and surrounding contexts are the keys to form perceptual biases! - Example: 12, 13,14, A, B, C - Is it something we are born with or did we acquire it through experience?

What is multitasking?

- Performing multiple tasks concurrently (e.g., calling while driving). - Performance for both tasks deteriorate when compared to when performing just one of the tasks.

Where does overt attention take place in the brain?

- Retina --> LGN (relay station) --> V1 (edge detection, etc.) --> V4 (colour, form) --> Infero-temporal cortex (shape, object) --> parietal cortex (location, reach). - Early visual areas are retinotopically organized. - V4, ITC, parietal cortex --> believed to be the "smart" part of the brain, and responsible for attention. - Recent studies show that the "smart" part of the brain is actually coming closer and closer to the retina and LGN. - If you drop an electrode into V1, you can know which part of the retina that the brain is responsible for seeing. - Scientists (Datta & DeYoe, 2009) tried to reconstruct the visual field based on what the eyes (V1 activity) were seeing. - Found that attention was driving the activity of V1, which showed us what part of the visual field people are paying attention. - Given the idea of the map of the V1, scientist can know where participants are paying attention to. - The higher up you go in the visual process, the harder it is to break down what you are seeing and how your mind maps it out.

What is the light-from-above assumption?

- The tendency to assume that the light source is above us. - Which part looks protruding out? - Exactly the same image then flipped it but the mind perceives it as different images. - Light source and shadow information are used We usually assume that light is coming from above, because light in our environment, including the sun and most artificial light, usually comes from above.

What is the adaptation effect?

- Your eyes are always moving, even when "fixated."· Adaption is important because neurons, like muscles, need to rest before they can act and fire optimal. Your eyes are always moving, even when "fixated" (= micro saccades). But if an image is kept completely still on the retina, it will slowly fade from view. - It is suggested that this happens because individual feature detectors become habituated or fatigued with prolonged firing. - Example: your neurons that fire for a slightly slanted line get tired after staring at it for a long time, and when you look at a straight line (where you need to balance both a left and right slanted angles), you see the straight lines to be shifted to the opposite side you were initially looking at. - Micro saccades: the eye is changing the position of the retina second by second, so a particular neuron doesn't get tired, and different neurons fire at different angles of the same object. - This is done to avoid adaptation. Ex: Circle example in slides

What are problems with the template theory?

1. A massive number of templates are necessary. 2. Predicts no transfer to novel views of the same object. > Consider different retinal positions. > You have to have a separate template for every different angle, shape, and size of an object you will see. 3. Objects are often obstructed

Evidence against the early selection model?

1. Cocktail party 2. Moray's experiment (1959) 3. McKay's experiment (1973)

What are the problems with introspection?

1. Individual differences 2. Variability 3. Verification 4. Reliance on consciousness 5. Impossible to access the processesthat produce the thoughts. - Introspectionism can only get us up to consciousness

What are problems with behaviourism?

1. It doesn't account for creativity and diversity of human behaviour. » Understanding of a statement requires a previous encounter with an exact stimulus » Even if we have seen the individual words before, we have never seen that particular sentence so behaviourism cannot explain how we are able to do so » According to behaviourism, you can only come up with sentences or understand sentences that we have seen before » Behaviourism cannot explain an individual's ability to understand sentences that they have never seen before. 2. We don't all response to the same positive and negative reinforcement 3. Limiting science to observable things - Who's ever seen an electron?, we know it exists but we've never seen one

What are 5 reasons why object recognition is hard?

1. Object boundaries are not easily determined. 2. Objects may appear anywhere on the retina in any size or orientation. 3. Objects may be occluded by other objects. 4. Same objects may have different shapes. 5. Perceptual consistency

What are the 6 Gestalt principles of perceptual organization?

1. Proximity 2. Similarity 3. Closure 4. Good continuation 5. Common fate 6. Pragnanz

What are 2 theories to explain how we are able to recognize objects?

1. Template theory 2. Feature analysis theory

What is the cocktail party example of evidence against the early selection model?

> When you are filtering out all the other information that you notice in busy environment (example: a party). > But when someone calls out your name, you will still be able to comprehend it even if you weren't paying attention to the source where your name came from. > According to Broadbent's model, in order to comprehend that someone called out you name, you must already be paying attention to that person.

Who was DF?

A 34-year-old woman who suffered damage to her temporal lobe from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a gas leak in her home. One result of the brain damage was revealed when D.F. was asked to rotate a card held in her hand to match different orientations of a slot. She was unable to do this. But when D.F. was asked to "mail" the card through the slot, she could do it. Even though D.F. could not turn the card to match the slot's orientation, once she started moving the card toward the slot, she was able to rotate it to match the orientation of the slot. Thus, D.F. performed poorly in the static orientation matching task but did well as soon as action was involved. Milner and Goodale interpreted D.F.'s behavior as showing that there is one mechanism for judging orientation and another for coordinating vision and action.

What is a cognitive map?

A conception within the rat's mind of the maze's layout.

What is meant by "same objects might have different shapes?"

A cup, for example, comes in many different shapes, sizes, colours, materials etc., but we are still able to tell that it is a cup

What is a Electroencephalogram (EEGs)?

A way to measure brain waves by wearing a cap and observing electrical signals that produce a brain wave graph.

How are structuralism and introspection related?

According to structuralism, our overall experience is determined by combining basic elements of experience, which the structuralists called sensations. Wundt thought he could achieve this scientific description of the components of experience by using analytic introspection, a technique in which trained subjects described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli.

What evidence against the early selection model was discovered in McKay's experiment in 1973?

Ambiguous sentences, sentences that can be interpreted in multiple ways. » Example: they were throwing stones at the bank (riverbank versus money bank). » How does this anchor word change people's interpretation of the sentence? » The anchor word may create a bias. Attended ear: shadow ambiguous sentences. Ignored ear: "anchor word". - Measured how people's perceptions were changed based on what was said on the unintended channel (non-listening ear). If they were completely shut off, then what they heard won't matter. But in reality, there was some level of listening and detection for the unintended year. -Which sentence is closer in meaning to what you hear? » They threw stones at the BMO » They threw stones toward the side of the credit river

What is the information processing approach to studying the mind?

An approach that traces sequences of mental operations involved in cognition. According to the information-processing approach, the operation of the mind can be described as occurring in a number of stages. Applying this stage approach to the mind led psychologists to ask new questions and to frame their answers to these questions in new ways. - Flow diagrams are useful to describe the flow of information processes. - E.g. what did you do at the New Year's Eve party? In computer: HDD -> RAM -> display pictures on the monitor. In mind: Long term memory -> working memory -> "oh that party..."

What is prospagnosia?

An inability to recognize faces (but can identify objects). People with prosopagnosia can tell that a face is a face, but can't recognize whose face it is, even for people they know well such as friends and family members. In some cases, people with prosopagnosia look into a mirror and, seeing their own image, wonder who the stranger is looking back at them.

What is bottom-up processing?

Analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information. Ex: Mary is represented in Gil's eye by an image on the retina, by electrical signals that are transmitted through the retina, and by signals transmitted out the back of the eye to the visual receiving area of the brain. This information from the light entering the eye and the electrical signals in the brain is crucial for perceiving Mary, because without it, Mary will not be represented in Gil's nervous system. This sequence of events from eye to brain is called bottom-up processing, because it starts at the "bottom" or beginning of the system, when environmental energy stimulates the receptors.

Can you multitask with your phone while driving?

As dangerous as drunk driving! Hands-free was no better. Texting while Driving: even worse!! Let's listen to the leading researcher (Dr. David Strayer).

What evidence against the early selection model was discovered in Moray's experiment in 1973?

Attended ear: shadow what you hear. Ignored ear: unexpected instruction to stop with/without name. » Without name: 6% noticed. » With name: 33% noticed. According to Broadbent's model. If Broadbent's model is correct, they no one should be able to recognize it. · Participants were told to listen to only one ear and repeat what they hear, but on the opposite year the instructions "you may stop now" were played and only 6% of people noticed and stop, and 33% of people stopped when they heard their NAME.

What is covert attention?

Attention can be shifted without eye movements. We do not need to look directly at something in order to pay attention to it; your gaze is not always a good indicator of what you are paying attention to. Example: athlete use gaze to trick components as they pretend to look at something that actually isn't there. - We should be able to measure this by directly looking at the brain signals.

What is overt attention?

Attention that correlates with where you are looking.

What is one reason why humans are able to perceive and recognize objects and scenes so much better than computer guy did robots?

Because our system is adapted to respond to the physical characteristics of our environment, such as the orientations of objects and the direction of light.

What are Watson's ideas associated with?

Classical conditioning—how pairing one stimulus (such as the loud noise presented to Albert) with another, previously neutral stimulus (such as the rat) causes changes in the response to the neutral stimulus. Watson used classical conditioning to argue that behavior can be analyzed without any reference to the mind. For Watson, what was going on inside Albert's head (or inside Pavlov's dog's head!), either physiologically or mentally, was irrelevant. He cared only about how pairing one stimulus with another affected behavior.

What is the template theory?

Comparison of perceived representation and memory representation. - Match what you see with the template in your head. According to the template theory, the fact that you are able to identify objects means that you have an exact template stored in your memory for objects. Involves: - Perceived representation: what you are seeing. - Memory representation: what you remember from the past. When you compare what you are currently seeing to what you remember about the object, you will be able to figure out what the object is.

What does damage to the action (or "where") pathway do?

Damage along this pathway (parietal lobe) leads to impaired object localization performance. Guide your action = action or "where" pathway = parietal lobe. - Ability to localized or reach out object is impaired - Balint's syndrome

What does damage to the perception (or "what") pathway do?

Damage along this pathway (temporal lobe) leads to impaired object identification performance. - One key function of perception = to guide action or behaviour. - Occipital cortex = vision - To be able to recognize what you are seeing = temporal lobe. Ex: Visual agnosia

What causes prosopagnosia?

Damage to the FFA causes prosopagnosia.> Individuals affected by prosopagnosia are able to see the face, but they have trouble identify the who the person is (including themselves).> They can use certain strategies in order to identify individuals such a look at clothing or hair.

What is the process model of the mind?

Describe the processes with which information is processed in the mind (how information flows through different processes). Models that illustrate how a process operates. Process models represent the processes that are involved in cognitive mechanisms, with boxes usually representing specific processes and arrows indicating connections between processes. Process models make complicated systems easier to understand and also provide a starting point for research.

What is happening in the brain during object-based attention?

Difference wave = contralateral amplitude - ipsilateral amplitude. N2pc and CDA reflect the number of tracked objects and predict individual differences. - N2PC = sensitive to your ability to select an item. - There is a limit of how much you can track at any given time. - There is a marginal improvement of training for tracking, but there was not much transferability for tracking things in general.

Explain Donder's Reaction time experiment?

Donders was interested in determining how long it takes for a person to make a decision. He determined this by measuring reaction time. The two types of reaction time that he measured were simple reaction time and choice reaction time. He reasoned that the difference in reaction time between the simple and choice conditions would indicate how long it took to make the decision that led to pushing the correct button. Because the choice reaction time took one-tenth of a second longer than simple reaction time, Donders concluded that the decision-making process took one-tenth of a second.

What is cognitive neuroscience?

Due to technological advances, we can now study what is going on in the brain. - Studying the mind by examining its biological structures and processes of the mind. - Constrains cognitive models by biological plausibility. - Provides a direct look inside the black box. - Allows us to look at particular parts of the brain and see which parts of the brain are being affected. - Allows observation of the mind without necessitating behavioural output -->Bypasses the problem of introspection -->We can directly observe the brain. - Insight as to how the mind is processing all these information

Who was the first to conduct a cognitive psychology experiment?

Dutch physiologist Franciscus Donders, who in 1868, 11 years before the founding of the first laboratory of scientific psychology, did one of the first experiments that today would be called a cognitive psychology experiment.

What are pros of EEGs?

EEG has a superior temporal resolution among all non-invasive neural recoding techniques. It can differentiate the neural activities that are separated by as short as tens of milliseconds. Great for temporal investigations: - Some researchers developed a way to detect lies based on EEGs by examining subtle changes in neural activities.

What is population coding?

Each stimulus is "represented" by differential firing of a large group of neurons. - Every neuron participates in representing the stimulus, but to varying degree. - Pattern of activity varies from individual to individual. - A group of neurons are responsible for multiple stimulus, the degree of firing is different. - Even if 1 neuron is damaged or dies, the other neurons of the group are still able to perceive and code information.

What is sparse coding?

Each stimulus is represented by a selective pattern of firing of a small group of neurons while the majority of neurons remaining silent. - Not all neurons participation in the participation. - Certain neurons are more active than others. - Similar to population coding but with lesser neurons. - Happens in hippocampus and other brain areas. There is also other evidence that the code for representing objects in the visual system, tones in the auditory system, and odors in the olfactory system may involve the pattern of activity across a relatively small number of neurons, as sparse coding suggests

What is an ECoG?

Electrocochleography (ECoG) tests are objective assessments used in the diagnosis of Meniere's disease and other disorders. ECoG tests measure electrical potentials generated in the cochlea, a part of the inner ear, in response to audio stimulation.

What is an EEG?

Electroencephalography (EEG): measures the fluctuation of voltages induced by neural activities of brain by electrodes placed on the study of the scalp. A test that detects electrical activity in your brain using small, metal discs (electrodes) attached to your scalp. - Your brain cells communicate via electrical impulses and are active all the time, even when you're asleep. - This activity shows up as wavy lines on an EEG recording. Voltage graph: - Shows electrical activity for different electrodes

What are examples of types of perceptual mistakes computers make?

Evencomputervisionprogramsthatareabletorecognizeobjects fairly accurately make mistakes, such as confusing objects that share features. In this example, the lens cover and the top of the teapot are erroneously. A computer or a person can determine whether the two straight-on views in (a) and (b) are the same person, but the person outperforms the computer for faces at an angle.

What is perception?

Experiences resulting from stimulation of the senses.

What did introspection require?

Extensive training because the subjects' goal was to describe their experience in terms of elementary mental elements.

What is perceptual representation?

Extract key components of the objects and based on the key components you can infer what you are seeing provides you with a lot of invariance. Ex: Perceptual representation is when you have an idea of what something is in your head (an E = 3 horizontal lines, 1 vertical line and 4 right angles). Memory Representation: When we are seeing the letter E and F, we refer back to our perceptual representation of what an E looks like to distinguish between the two. An F has 2 horizontal lines, 1 vertical line, 3 right angles). - Does this align to what I am seeing at this moment?

What is the fusiform face area (FFA)?

Faces activate a specific area in the brain, the fusiform face area (FFA). It is in the fusiform gyrus on the underside of the temporal lobe and it's the same part of the brain that is damaged in cases of prosopagnosia.

What is inattentional blindness?

Failure to recognize and memorize information due to lack of attention. Example: gorilla and basketball video

What are Greebles?

Families of computer-generated "beings" that all have thesame basic configuration but differ in the shapes of their parts(just like faces).

What are hypercomplex cells?

Fire maximally to more complicated sets of specific features (e.g., Steve Carrell neuron).

What are complex cells?

Fires maximally to lines and angles without respect to location. They often also have preference for stimuli moving in certain directions.

What is the feature analysis theory?

Fixed set of elementary properties analyzed independently in parallel across visual field. Objects can be broken down into a fixed set of elementary properties, which can then be independently processed. Possible examples: - Free line ending - Line orientations - Different sizes - Curvature - Colours

Explain the experiment conducted by Colin Cherry in 1953?

For a starting point he used William James' idea that when we decide to attend to one thing. He presented subjects with two auditory messages, one to the left ear and one to the right ear, and told them to focus their attention on one of the messages (the attended message) and to ignore the other one (the unattended message). For example, the subject might be told to attend to the left-ear message that began "As Susan drove down the road in her new car ..." while simultaneously receiving, but not attending to, the right-ear message "Cognitive psychology, which is the study of mental processes ..." He discovered that when people focused on the attended message, they could hear the sounds of the unattended message but were unaware of the contents of that message. » Results shows that ability to repeat is generally not interfered with the other side. » Shows that the mind is capable of ignoring certain information. - Has been explained by the early selection model

What are fMRIs?

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): creates images of neural activities based on the consumption by tracking the consumption of oxygen in the blood. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area of the brain is in use, blood flow to that region also increases. It takes advantage of the fact that blood flow increases in areas of the brain activated by a cognitive task. The measurement of blood flow is based on the fact that hemoglobin, which carries oxygen in the blood, contains a ferrous (iron) molecule and therefore has magnetic properties. If a magnetic field is presented to the brain, the hemoglobin molecules line up like tiny magnets. fMRI indicates the presence of brain activity because the hemoglobin molecules in areas of high brain activity lose some of the oxygen they are transporting. This makes the hemoglobin more magnetic, so these molecules respond more strongly to the magnetic field. The fMRI apparatus determines the relative activity of various areas of the brain by detecting changes in the magnetic response of the hemoglobin. - Oxygenated blood concentration. - Measures the amount of oxygen that is surrounding a particular part of the brain. - Areas that are using more brain power are using more oxygen. - Areas where deoxygenated blood is present show that activity was recently present there.

What did the detection part of Donder;s experiment entail?

He asked participants to push a button when you see a light (on a screen)- Screen flashes a light, you hit the button when you see it. It measured how long it took to press the button after each flash. It takes usually 300 millisecond

What did Donald Broadbent do (1958)?

He proposed the first flow diagram of the mind. This diagram represents what happens in a person's mind when directing attention to one stimulus in the environment. Applied to Cherry's attention experiment, "input" would be the sounds of both the attended and unattended messages; the "filter" lets through the attended message and filters out the unattended message; and the "detector" records the information that gets through the filter. Broadbent's flow diagram provided a way to analyze the operation of the mind in terms of a sequence of processing stages and proposed a model that could be tested by further experiments.

What did the reaction part of Donder;s experiment entail?

He repeated the same idea with a light that flashes on the screen, but this time the light would appear on a certain side of the screen.· If they saw the light on the left they needed to hit the corresponding button to the left side· Found that reaction time increased for the Response Selection task because the process of the mind detecting and selecting are different (discovered that selection adds extra time, i.e. the mind works harder to select)- Reaction time was longer-Took 400 millisecond- Mind had to work harder to do the extra processing in selection- Helps us figure out how long it takes the mind to decide- Measure how long it takes to select a response by careful experimental manipulationThis experiment allowed us to measure which processes are more difficult for the mind to undergo and how long it takes for the mind to accomplish particular tasks or varying difficulties.

What is an example of perceptual biases?

Helmholtz's theory of unconscious inference

What is the late selection model?

How is information "filtered" by attention? - Attentional filtering occurs after all stimuli including irrelevant information are analyzed to the point of recognition. - After that, only relevant information is notices and remembered. Explains for cocktail party effect

What is Ann Treismans's attenuation model?

How is information filtered by attention? Ann Treisman's attenuation model. - Irrelevant information is not completely blocked out but "attenuated" prior to detection and recognition. - However, some irrelevant information that are significant to the participant or related to the task at hand might reach detection threshold despite attenuation. --> Sensory input --> detection --> recognition.

What types of questions does cognitive neuroscience ask?

How is information representedin brain? How is information flow controlledin brain? How does a region of brain communicate with other regions of brain? - Many parts of the brain is involved in doing a specific brain activity

What is reaction time?

How long it takes to respond to presentation of a stimulus.

What was the breakthrough with Tolman's rat maze?

If learning is done strictly through a behaviouralist approach, the rat will turn right and go to interaction D (where there is no food). This did not happen; rat turned left, and went to intersection C (where there is food). This shows that the rat higher level understanding of how the maze is constructed. - Behaviourism can't account for this. - Breakthrough: We can study what we can infer

Explain the analogy that Adrian made between nerve firing and experience?

If nerve impulses are crowded closely together, the sensation is intense. However, if they are separated by long intervals, the sensation is correspondingly feeble. What Adrian is saying is that electrical signals are representing the intensity of the stimulus, so pressure that generates "crowded" electrical signals feels stronger than pressure that generates signals separated by long intervals.

How is Broadbent's filter model of attention an example of a process model?

In this model, the box representing the "filter" represents the process that separates the attended message from other messages. This process is not necessarily located in one particular place in thebrain, so the boxes do not necessarily represent specific structures; rather, they indicate a process that could be carried outby a number of different structures working together.

What was the greeble study?

Isabel Gauthier and coworkers showed that experience-dependent plasticity may play a role in determining these neurons' response to (a) faces by measuring the level of activity in the FFA in response to faces and also to objects called Greeble . Gree-bles are families of computer-generated "beings" that all have thesame basic configuration but differ in the shapes of their parts (just like faces). For "Greeble novices" (people who have had little experience in perceiving Greebles), the faces cause more FFA activity than the Greebles.Gauthier then gave her subjects extensive training over a 4-day period in "Greeble recognition." These training sessions, which required that each Greeble be labeled with a specific name, turned the participants into "Greeble experts." After the training, the FFA responded almost as well to Greebles as to faces. Apparently, the FFA contains neurons that respond not just to faces but to other complex objects as well. The particular objects to which the neurons respond best are established by experience with the objects. In fact, Gauthier has also shown that neurons in the FFA of people who are experts in recognizing cars and birds respond well not only to human faces but to cars (for the car experts) and to birds (for the bird experts). Just as rearing kittens in a vertical environment increased the number of neurons that responded to verticals, training humans to recognize Greebles, cars, or birds causes the FFA to respond more strongly to these objects. These results support the idea that neurons in the FFA respond strongly to faces because we have a lifetime of experience perceiving faces.

Why is "individual differences" a problem with introspection?

It does not allow for objectivity; people differ from their experiences and impressions. Ex: Colour-blind people have a different number of sensations

What are cons with EEGs?

It has limited spatial resolution because of non-invasive recording sites. - Because we are measuring brain activity above the skull, we won't know where in the brain that activity is being generated (what part of the brain is causing that activity).

What are cons with fMRIs?

It has limited temporal resolution because it is measuring blood flow that is sluggish. - Not useful for knowing when certain activity is occurring. - More useful for where certain activity is occurring.

What is Spike Testing?

It is defined as a type of performance testing in which application is tested with extreme increment and decrements in the load.It is performed to estimate the weakness of an application.It helps to evaluate the behavior of the software system under sudden increment or decrements in user load

Why is "Verification" a problem with introspection?

It is impossible for others to access one's introspection. - No way to verify that we're experiencing the same thing. - E.g. see a strawberry, know that we call it "red" but there's no way of knowing if we see the same "red"

What is significant about Donder's Reaction Time Experiment (1868)?

It is the birth of the scientific study of cognitive psychology.- It's a method that we still use in modern day psychology

What are problems with specificity coding?

It is unlikely to be correct. It states that each stimulus is "represented" by firing a unique neuron, this means that each neuron codes for a specific stimulus so damage to this neuron can affect the ability to remember that stimulus. Risky because if you lose a neuron, you will lose the ability to recognize/represent a particular thing. Another problem is that you could run out of neurons, I.e. it's limited by the # of neurones you have. Even though there are neurons that respond to faces, these neurons usually respond to a number of different faces (not just Bill's). There are just too many different faces and other objects (and colors, tastes, smells, and sounds) in the world to have a separate neuron dedicated to each object. An alternative to the idea of specificity coding is that a number of neurons are involved in representing an object.

What is a double dissociation?

It occurs if damage to one area of the brain causes function A to be absent while function B is present, and damage to another area causes function B to be absent while function A is present. To demonstrate a double dissociation, it is necessary to find two people with brain damage that satisfy the above conditions. Double dissociations have been demonstrated for face recognition and object recognition, by finding patients who can't recognize faces (Function A) but who can recognize objects (Function B), and other patients, with damage in a different area, who can't recognize objects (Function B) but who can recognize faces (Function A). The importance of demonstrating a double dissociation is that it enables us to conclude that functions A and B are served by different mechanisms, which operate independently of one another.

How did the Gestalt approach to perception originate?

It originated as a reaction to Wilhelm Wundt's structuralism, which proposed that our overall experience could be understood by combining basic elements of experience called sensations. The Gestalt psychologists rejected the idea that perceptions were formed by "adding up" sensations.

Is FFA "the face area" or "a expertise area"?

It was initially thought that the FFA was a face area as it was most active with a face was seen.Later, research by Gaultier at al., 1999, showed that the FFA is an expertise area on faces (grebe study)

What is sustained mental effort?

Limited ability to engage in protracted thought, especially on the same subject. - Vigilance or sustained attention - Cherry's dichotic listening task (1953) > Prose A in right ear, Prose B in left ear > Can you keep listening to it forever? > Probably not - mind wanders after a long period of sustained attention

What are capacity limitations?

Limited ability to handle different tasks or stimuli at one. - Divided attention - Cherry's dichotic listening task (1953) > Prose A in right ear, Prose B in left ear > Can you listen to both at the same time? > No - divided attention reduces our information processing ability

What is electrophysiology?

Listening to communicating neurons. - Drop a very small electrode near the axon and record electrical discharge of the neuron (action potentials). - Each neuron has very specific likes. > Neuron will fire when it receives information that it likes, and will not fire when it receives information that it does not like. > Neurons codes information by selectively firing to very specific stimuli. There is a specific match between the neuron and the stimulus (if compatible = neuron will fire a lot).

What is a LFP?

Liver function tests (LFTs or LFs), also referred to as a hepatic panel, are groups of blood tests that provide information about the state of a patient's liver.

What is a MEG?

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a non-invasive medical test that measures the magnetic fields produced by your brain's electrical currents. It is performed to map brain function and to identify the exact location of the source of epileptic seizures.

What is the brain composed of?

Many functionally distinct areas. Many neurons (86 +/- billion)

Why is "Reliance on consciousness" a problem with introspection?

Many internal events are unconscious (e.g. implicit biases)

Give an example of Bayesian interference?

Mary believes that having a cold or heartburn is likely to occur, but having lung disease is unlikely. With these priors in her head (along with lots of other beliefs about health-related matters), Mary notices that her friend Charles has a bad cough. She guesses that three possible causes could be a cold, heartburn, or lung disease. Looking further into possible causes, she does some research and finds that coughing is often associated with having either a cold or lung disease, but isn't associated with heartburn. This additional information, which is the likelihood, is combined with Mary's prior to produce the conclusion that Charles probably has a cold.

What interesting thing did Donder's experiment illustrate about studying the mind?

Mental responses (perceiving the light and deciding which button to push, in this example) cannot be measured directly, but must be inferred from behavior. When he measured reaction time, he was measuring the relationship between presentation of the stimulus and the subject's response. He did not measure mental responses directly, but inferred how long they took from the reaction times. The fact that mental responses cannot be measured directly, but must be inferred from observing behavior, is a principle that holds not only for Donders's experiment but for all research in cognitive psychology.

What is the early selection model?

Model of attention that explains selective attention by early filtering out of the unattended message. In Broadbent's early selection model, the filtering step occurs before the message is analyzed to determine its meaning. Input > filter > detector > to memory. > A type of processing model > Selection information ("attended message") will be sent further for more sophisticated processing (example: compression), but only a selected amount of input will be sent further into the system. > If you are instructed to listen to input going into the left ear, the input going in you left ear get filter out before detection and does not get recognized > Unselected information ("irrelevant message") will be completely filtered out, and thus will not be processed at all

What is the role of models in cognitive psych?

Models are representations of structures or processes that help us visualize or explain the structure or process. Models are not identical replicas of the real thing. They are simplifications that don't contain as much detail, but do contain important information about the structures being represented.

What is the structural model of the mind?

Models that represent structures in the brain that are involved in specific functions. - Describe the physical structure with which information is processed. - Focus on what hardware of the mind is used to make that decision possible. Plastic models have been used to illustrate the locations of different structures of the brain. Structures can also be represented by diagrams that don't resemble the structure but that instead indicate how different areas of the brain are connected.

What is object-based attention?

Multiple object tracking. - Refers to when you are paying attention to a specific area rather the whole visual field. - Example: when driving, you cannot pay attention to just one area but must consider the whole visual field.

What is Bayesian interference?

Named after Thomas Bayes (1701-1761), who proposed that our estimate of the probability of an outcome is determined by two factors: (1) the prior probability, or simply the prior, which is our initial belief about the probability of an outcome, and (2) the extent to which the available evidence is consistent with the outcome. This second factor is called the likelihood of the outcome.

What are feature detectors?

Nerve cells in the brain that respond to specific features of the stimulus, such as shape, orientation, length and movement.

What is hierarchical processing?

Neurons in the visual cortex that respond to relatively simple stimuli send their axons to higher levels of the visual system, where signals from many neurons combine and interact; neurons at this higher level, which respond to more complex stimuli such as geometrical objects, then send signals to higher areas, combining and interacting further and creating neurons that respond to even more complex stimuli such as faces. This progression from lower to higher areas of the brain is called hierarchical processing.

What is evidence against the late selection model?

Not every irrelevant information seems to be detected and recognized. > There seems to be a certain type of information that gets more or less filtered (instruction to stop) Precisely, information that is particularly significant to the participant (example: participant's name) or to the attended information (example: anchor words) gets detected and recognized. This suggests that irrelevant information is "attenuated" prior to detection and recognition

What makes object-based attention difficult?

Number of objects. - Target/distractor -> Object spacing/speed

Think back to the family in a boat example...What are: - Object identities? - Scene layouts? - Property of surfaces?

Object identities: - What were in the picture- Man, woman, baby, boat, oar. Scene layouts: - What scene is the picture depicting - Lake, calm day, spring, fall Property of surfaces? - What colours were used? Was the water choppy? - Blue (lake), yellow (boat and oar), black (man's clothes)- Smooth water

What is proximity?

Objects that are close to one another appear to form a group.

What is similarity?

Objects that are similar appear to form a group. Grouping can occur because of things such as color, shape, size, or orientation.

What is localization of function?

One of the basic principles of brain organization. It is when specific functions are served by specific areas of the brain.

How did the invention of digital computers help psychology?

One of the characteristics of computers that captured the attention of psychologists in the 1950s was that they processed information in stages. In this diagram, information is first received by an "input processor." It is then stored in a "memory unit" before it is processed by an "arithmetic unit," which then creates the computer's output. Using this stage approach as their inspiration, some psychologists proposed the information-processing approach to studying the mind.

What is selectivity?

Only aware of a subset of stimuli. - Selective attention. - Cherry's dichotic listening task (1953). > Prose A in right ear, Prose B in left ear. > Can you listen to just one at the same time? > Yes - little to no information is comprehended from the other channel (unattended ear).

What is the oblique effect?

Our heightened sensitivity in discriminating orientations near vertical or horizontal. The fact that people can perceive horizontals and verticals more easily than other orientations. - We have really strong sensitivity in judging whether a line is horizontal or vertical, but when that line becomes slanted, that sensitivity decreases and our ability to determine whether the lines are parallel decreases. In our environment and nature, most of the things we encounter tend to be either straight horizontally or vertically, rather than angled. = like trees, buildings

What is the Top-down control of overt attention?

Our mind can also control where we direct our attention. When we choose where to direct/control our attention. - Attention to a task is driven by what task you want to complete and what steps you need to do. - Example: when making a sandwich, I know I must first open the bread bag, so my attention is drawn to the bread bag, then to the jar of peanut butter, then to the lid, then to the knife etc. - How we control our top-down control is heavily influenced by what you know or knowledge about previous process (i.e. I've made a sandwich before, so I know what I need to do first). Example from movie clip: attention is directed to the actor who is talking among other potentially interesting objects. > Another example: when the vehicle is traveling and a building comes, the eyes still move in the direction that the car is going (where it should be) even when it is behind the building and cannot be seen. In fact, bottom-up and top-down control of attention work in tandem to determine where our attention is allocated.

What is Helmholtz's theory of unconscious inference?

Our perception is biased by unconscious assumption about "what is likely happening". - Likelihood principle: our innate tendency to assume that a specific occurrence is taking place as opposed to. - You unconsciously determine what different components create a particular object. - Such assumptions are caused by everyday life and previous experiences. - Has to do with memory, schema and expectations - Ex: Man teacup video. He was a physicist who made important contributions to fields as diverse as thermodynamics, nerve physiology, visual perception, and aesthetics. One of Helmholtz's contributions to perception was based on his realization that the image on the retina is ambiguous. We have seen that ambiguity means that a particular pattern of stim- ulation on the retina can be caused by a large number of objects in the environment. For example, what does the pattern of stimulation in Figure 3.14a represent? For most people, this pattern on the retina results in the perception of a blue rectangle in front of a red rectangle, as shown in Figure 3.14b. But as Figure 3.14c indicates, this display could also have been caused by a six-sided red shape positioned in front of, behind, or right next to the blue rectangle.

What is the contralateral organization of our visual system?

Our visual system is contralaterally organized. - Contralaterally: right to left and left to right. - Visual information in the right hemifield is mainly processed in the left visual cortex. - Visual information in the left hemifield is mainly processed in the right visual cortex. - Not about the eyes, it's about the visual field. The stimulus that is attended that gets the sensory processing and attention; the stimulus that is unattended gets only the sensory processing. - P1 attention effect - When you pay attention to something, the contralateral P1 becomes larger than the ipsilateral P1 > Contralateral P1 becomes larger than ipsilateral P1 > One of the attention effects with the earliest onset observed in human ERPs Attended stimulus induces much larger firing rate of action potentials than when it is unattended. Attention effect Does attention also affect earlier visual areas? - Early visual areas are retinotopically organized - Early visual areas (V1/V2) also show attention effect

What is an example of Classical Conditioning?

Pavlov's dog: - Pairing a neutral "conditioned" stimulus A (bell) and a "unconditioned" stimulus B (dog food) that naturally produces a "unconditioned" response (saliva) will make the conditioned stimulus A become a trigger of the unconditioned response without "unconditioned" stimulus B Classical conditioning was the basis of Watson's Little Albert experiment

What activates the parahippocampal place area (PPA)?

Perceiving pictures representing indoor and outdoor scenes. Apparently, what is important for this area is information about spatial layout, because increased activation occurs when viewing pictures both of empty rooms and of rooms that are completely furnished

What is meant by "Objects may appear anywhere on the retina in any size or orientation?"

Perhaps the brain is able to represent these objects in a way that is "translationally invariant" and "size invariant". Invariant = means you do not care. Ex: We are still able to distinguish that a shape is the letter A, even when it's presented at many different orientations in many different sizes. Another problem facing any perceiving machine is that objects are often viewed from different angles. This means that the images of objects are continually changing, depending on the angle from which they are viewed.

Is the feature analysis theory plausible?

Physiological Evidence: - Individual neurons are shown to respond preferentially to different kinds and combination of simple featuresDifferent neurons are: 1. Simple cells 2. Complex cells 3. Hypercomplex cells

What is feature search?

Pop out target task = there is a single target, happens when a target is defined by a single feature. When the number of objects in the search display increase, the reaction time increases very gradually. See slides. Ex: participants will be asked to find a red bar among blue ones. So render a set of 40 displays, placing the red bar randomly in each, and randomly placing either 3, 6, 9, or 12 blue bars as well. The number of blue bars is the distractor load. There will be equal numbers of trials (10 in this case) for each load.

Is there a temporal limitation in information processing?

Potter's rapid serial visual presentation (1976). - Good performance over all at slow presentation rate. - Severe impairment of recognition performance sped up. - Relatively preserved detection performance even for the fastest presentation. - Attentional bottleneck at "storing" information in memory? 3 tasks with RSVP - Try to remember all of the pictures, and test recognition memory for one picture. - Detect one target picture based on active image. - Detect one target picture based on generic name of scene.

How does nerve firing and experience relate to vision and light intensity?

Presenting high-intensity light generates a high rate of nerve firing and the light appears bright; presenting lower intensity light generates a lower rate of nerve firing and the light appears dimmer. Thus, the rate of neural firing is related to the intensity of stimulation, which, in turn, is related to the magnitude of an experience, such as feeling pressure on the skin or experiencing the brightness of a light.

What is behaviourism?

Psychology as the Behaviorist sees it is a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness.... What we need to do is start work upon psychology making behavior, not consciousness, the objective point of our attack. Emphasis on what can be directly observed: - Stimulus - Response - Positive and negative reinforcement Mind is unobservable, ignore it. - Goal: predict and shape behaviour

What does negatively reinforced mean?

Punished behaviours are less likely to be repeated

What are the 3 RSVP tasks?

RSVP task #1: presented with pictures, one at a time, and asked to remember all the pictures. - Testing how many pictures you can remember at any given time. RSVP task #2: remember the target picture based on an actual image. RSVP task #3: remember the target picture based on a generic name of an object. - Findings: many participants were able to do better on the second task than the first task. - This meant that remembering the pictures is harder than detecting one picture. - The biggest limitation is on how you need to remember the options. - Temporal attention is limited at the MEMORY / encoding stage not the DETECTION stage. - It's easy to detect but not remember.

What is Event-related protentional (ERPs)?

Record brainwaves while participants repeat the same experimental task hundreds of times, and calculate the average response to a specific event of interest. Look at the average response: - Negative is above axis, positive is below axis. > P1: first positive peak that is observed after the event > N1: first negative peak that is observed after the event. > N2: second negative peak that is observed after the event. > The straight-line right before P1 is the precise point where attention was first directed to the stimuli (example: told to pay attention). - 0 means that there is no activity, anything that is away from zero indicates some sort of neuron activity. - Positive and negative do not mean good/bad activity. - Positive/negative could be driven by ion charges and the sign (positive/negative) of the electrical discharge. - Don't judge by the positive/negative value. - Changes in voltage fluctuation is related to the changes in electrical ionic activity. - Positive charges do not indicate if more or less action potentials are being conducts and neuron firings.

What is the attentional blink paradigm?

Referring to an experiment that required you to report if there was 1) a white letter and 2) if there was an X present in the list. Findings: the accuracy for people getting task 2 correct if they got task 1 correct: - If task 2 (the X) was close (right after) to the task 1, then you increase your accuracy of getting it right. This is because the X slipped in just before your attention "blinked" and you didn't miss it. - If task 2 (the X) was the last thing you saw, you also are more likely to remember it. - HOWEVER, if the X was shown after a short delay (2-4 places after the white letter) then you can't remember or correctly complete the second task as well. - Shows us that your ability to find X is not consistent over time.

What are simple cells?

Respond best to lines or angles of a specific orientation and retinal position. - At a specific location. - Need because we have to be able to see specific combination of the features.

What does positively reinforced mean?

Rewarded behaviours are more likely to be repeated.

What types of stimuli do neurons in the visual cortex respond to?

Simple stimuli like oriented bars.

Who was B.F. Skinner?

Skinner introduced operant conditioning, which focused on how behavior is strengthened by the presentation of positive reinforcers, such as food or social approval (or withdrawal of negative reinforcers, such as a shock or social rejection).

What is an example of Operant Conditioning?

Skinner's box: - Mouse is put in a box - When the mouse pumps the response lever, food comes out (reward) - The mouse does this enough time then starts to intentionally press the level to produce food - Pushing level is positively reinforced by the food - Then the pushes are negatively reinforced by a loud sand - We don't know what happens in the mouse's mine, but we don't care - We're shaping behaviour. Behaviours can be shaped by positive and negative reinforcement! By changing the reward (positive or negative) you are shaping the behaviour of the animal. - Pair up what you want the mouse to behave to the reward and the negative behaviour to the punishment.

What is Switch cost?

Slower response time and lower accuracy when switching from one task to another and back again.

What are microelectrodes?

Small shafts of hollow glass filled with a conductive salt solution that can pick up electrical signals at the electrode tip and conduct these signals back to a recording device. Modern physiologists use metal microelectrodes.

What is process facilitation?

So far, we have considered attention as a filter or a suppressor or irrelevant information. - Does attention also facilitate processing of selected information? - Posner's cueing experiment (1980) Hit a button as soon as you see the dot. When cue was valid > Flashing cue coincides with dot, location where cue is present, the target will also be present there. > People responded really fast. » Seeing something flashy enhances. > Process facilitation: faster at detecting target at cued location than neutral When cue was invalid > Flashing cue occurs in the opposite box in comparison to where the dot will be present. > People responded slower. » When your attention is diverted from where you should be looking, you will have to bring you attention back, and you end up taking longer to detect the dot. > Involuntary attentional capture: still a bit faster at detecting target at the cues location even though it is counterproductive.

What types of stimuli do neurons in the temporal lobe respond to?

Some neurons in the temporal lobe respond to complex geometrical stimuli, and some neurons in another area of the temporal lobe respond to faces.

What is an advantage with population coding?

That a large number of stimuli can be represented, because large groups of neurons can create a huge number of different patterns. There is good evidence for population coding in the senses and for other cognitive functions as well.

What does perceptual consistency mean?

That the same objects could take on different states. Ex: we can see 5 different photos of hilary clinton, in different outfits, with different hairstyles, and at different ages, but we still know that it's hilary clinton. - The invariance of our perception is very hard to implement into technology

What did Gestalt psychologists believe?

The Gestalt psychologists rejected the idea that perceptions were formed by "adding up" sensations. This is because Max Wertheimer bought a stroboscope (mechanical device that created an illusion of movement by rapidly alternating two slightly different pictures) and wondered how the structuralists idea that experience is created from sensations could explain the illusion of movement he observed. The stroboscope shows apparent movement because although movement is perceived, nothing is actually moving.

What is viewpoint invariance?

The ability to recognize an object seen from different viewpoints.

What is Wernicke's area?

The area in our brain for comprehending language. In the temporal lobe

What is Broca's area?

The area in our brain for producing language. In the frontal lobe

What was the cognitive revolution?

The decade of the 1950s is generally recognized as the beginning of the cognitive revolution—a shift in psychology from the behaviorist's stimulus-response relationships to an approach whose main thrust was to understand the operation of the mind. Modern cognitive psychology began to emerge in the year 2000, making inferences about the "black box" that was our mind.

What are micro saccades?

The eye is changing the position of the retina second by second, so a particular neuron doesn't get tired, and different neurons fire at different angles of the same object.

What is specificity coding?

The idea that an object could be represented by the firing of a specialized neuron that responds only to that object. Each stimulus is represented by firing a unique neuron. - Each type of stimulus is coded by a single neuron. - For example: each individual is represented by a different neuron. Example: Steve Carell neuron. > Found that this patient had a neuron when the individual saw a picture of Steve Carell in any form. > The same neuron does not fire for other individuals, only for Carell.

What is a similarity between the approaches of Helmholtz, regularities, and Bayes?

The idea that we use data about the environment, gathered through our past experiences in perceiving, to determine what is out there. Top-down processing is therefore an important part of these approaches.

What is Balint's syndrome?

The inability to navigate and reach. - Issues with depth perception. - Preserved ability to recognize objects. - Damage to parietal areas. They cannot reach or interact with the object, but they know what it is. The disconnect between being able to recognize objects but cannot interact with it (or vice versa), the logic suggests that the brain has different parts that are responsible for each of these tasks. - there is a high level of specificity within the human brain that separates different types of tasks and different parts of the brain.

What is visual agnosia?

The loss of ability to recognize objects. - Individuals can see the pieces and parts of an object, but they cannot see it as a whole. - Individual may still be able to recognize faces. - Preserved ability to navigate and reach. - Bilateral damage to occipital and/or temporal lobes.

What definition of the mind focuses on the mind's role in memory, problem solving, and making decisions?

The mind creates and controls mental functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, and reasoning.

How does a neuron firing with respect to remembering memories incorporate sparse coding and population coding?

The neural firing associated with experiencing a perception is associated with what is happening as perception is occurring. EX: When Gil is looking at Mary. Firing associated with memory is associated with information about the past that has been stored in the brain, as when Gil remembers seeing Mary. We know less about the actual form of this stored information for memory, but it is likely that the basic principles of population and sparse coding also operate for memory, with specific memories being represented by particular patterns of stored information that result in a particular pattern of nerve firing when we experience the memory.

What is the action pathway?

The pathway from the visual cortex to the parietal lobe. "where" pathway

What is the perception pathway?

The pathway from the visual cortex to the temporal lobe. "what" pathway

What is temporal attention?

The prioritization of information at a specific point in time, improves visual performance, but it is unknown whether it does so to the same extent across the visual field

What is a visual search?

The process of directing visual attention to locate relevant information in the environment. - Participations looks for pre-defined target among distractors. Example: Where's Waldo

What is unconscious interference?

The process that makes us able to make a judgement of what is most likely to occur, in which our perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions, or inferences, that we make about the environment. This process occurs rapidly and unconsciously. Thus, we infer that it is likely that Figure 3.14 a is a rectangle covering another rectangle because of experiences we have had with similar situations in the past.

What is introspection?

The study of conscious mental events by introspecting or "looking within" - Part of structuralism - Introspection involves the observation and recording of own thoughts and experiences by trained observers. - Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Tichener did this and came up with 38850 sensations that the "eye" has. - Ear: 11550 - Sex organs: 1

What is the inverse projection problem?

The task of determining the object responsible for a particular image on the retina is called the inverse projection problem, because it involves starting with the retinal image and extending rays out from the eye. When we do this, as shown by extending the lines in Figure 3.6 out from the eye, we see that the retinal image created by the rectangular page could have also been created by a number of other objects, including a tilted trapezoid, a much larger rectangle, and an infinite number of other objects, located at different distances. When we consider that a particular image on the retina can be created by many different objects in the environment, it is easy to see why we say that the image on the retina is ambiguous. Nonetheless, humans typically solve the inverse projection prob- lem easily, even though it poses serious challenges to computer vision systems.

What is good continuation?

The tendency to assume the continuation of objects behind occlusion. Ex PICTURE: assume that the objects in picture are connected (i.e. not seeing the full image of a person but knowing that they are not actually separate body parts but a full body).

What is closure?

The tendency to perceive a complete figure even if it's incomplete. - PICTURE: circle and rectangle is recognized even though the shapes are not complete. - This can be an advantage or disadvantage

What is common fate?

The tendency to perceive a mass of individual objects with the same movement as a unified whole

What is Pragnanz or "Good shape/figure?"

The tendency to reduce complex patterns into "good shapes" (= simple, easy-to-perceive forms). PICTURE: symbol for the Olympics. - 5 circles = easy to perceive It states that every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as possible.

What is optical imaging?

The use of light as an investigational imaging technique for medical applications.

What is meant by "Object boundaries are not easily determined?"

The visual system must carry out the process of "image segmentation" - In the boat picture we did not see the full boat, but we were still able to tell that it was a complete boat.

Explain the typical setup used for recording a single neuron?

There are two electrodes: a recording electrode, shown with its recording tip inside the neuron, and a reference electrode, located some distance away so it is not affected by the electrical signals. The difference in charge between the recording and reference electrodes is fed into a computer and displayed on the computer's screen.

What is different between the approaches of the Gestalt psychologists, as opposed to the approaches of Helmholtz, regularities, and Bayes?

They emphasized the idea that the principles of organization are built in. They acknowledged that perception is affected by experience, but argued that built-in principles can override experience, thereby assigning bottom-up processing a central role in perception.

What is meant by "Objects may be occluded by other objects?"

This problem of hidden objects occurs any time one object obscures part of another object. This occurs frequently in the environment, but people easily understand that the part of an object that is covered continues to exist, and they are able to use their knowledge of the environment to determine what is likely to be present. When we see a person with their arm around a baby, we don't freak out because the arm is covering the baby's stomach and we think the baby is cut in two. We are able to tell that just because an arm is covering the baby's stomach, it does not mean that the baby is cut in 2.

What was Tolman's rat maze (1938)?

Tolman placed a rat in a maze. Initially, the rat explored the maze, running up and down each of the alleys. After this initial period of exploration, the rat was placed at A and food was placed at B, and the rat quickly learned to turn right at the intersection to obtain the food. This is exactly what the behaviorists would predict, because turning right was rewarded with food. However, when Tolman (after taking precautions to be sure the rat couldn't determine the location of the food based on smell) placed the rat at C, something interesting happened. The rat turned left at the intersection to reach the food at B. Tolman's explanation of this result was that when the rat initially experienced the maze it was developing a cognitive map—a conception within the rat's mind of the maze's layout. Thus, even though the rat had previously been rewarded for turning right, its mental map indicated that it should turn left to reach the food. Tolman's use of the word cognitive, and the idea that something other than stimulus-response connections might be occurring in the rat's mind, placed Tolman outside of mainstream behaviorism.

Differences between top-down and bottom up processing?

Top-down: The sequence of events from eye to brain. Bottom-up: Processing that originates in the brain, at the "top" of the perceptual system.

What is a saliency map?

Tracking eye movement enables us to monitor where overt attention is directed. - Shows where you are paying attention in a particular moment. - Tracks where people look. - What is salient is inferred by where people look the most.

What is M.C. Escher's "Impossible Construction?"

Visual illusion highlights how our brain works

What is the likelihood principle?

We perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the pattern of stimuli we have received. This judgement of "what is most likely" occurs by a process called unconscious interference.

How is top-down processing involved in perceiving objects?

What we expect to see in different contexts influences our interpretation of the identity of the "unknown object."

Do neurones get tired?

When a neuron likes a particular image, it will continue to fire eventually tiring out. - But if an image is kept completely still on the retina, it will slowly fade from view .- This is due to the face that the neuron has stopper firing and has become less reactive. - We believe this happens because individual feature detectors become habituated, or fatigued with prolonged firing.

When are targets harder to detect?

When they are defined on the basis of combination of basic visual features: - A conjunction search - Typical finding: as the number of distractors increase, the reaction time also increases. - Because there are different distractors (colour and orientation), finding the pre-defined target it harder resulting in a greater reaction time.

When are targets easier to detect?

When they can be defined by a single feature: - Pop-put search task - Typical finding: as the number of distractors increase, the reaction time doesn't not greatly increase. - Because there is one distinct feature (colour), it pops-put to you, so the number of distractors doesn't not seem to make a big difference in reaction time. This suggests that the easily detected features are elementary units of visual perception.

What is attention?

When you're told to pay attention to something, you are re-orienting your attention back to something particular that you had diverted from. You are selecting what stimuli to prioritize. Whatever you were told you pay attention to, you become consciously aware of that thing.

What are the pros of fMRIs?

fMRI has a superior spatial resolution among all non-invasive neural recoding techniques. It can differentiate the neural activation generated by two brain tissues that are as close as a few mm apart. You know what part of the brain is tuned to comprehend certain stimuli. Great of localization (where in the brain a certain activity is taking place): - The para-hippocampal place area (PPA) responds to places and the extra striate body areas (EBA) responds to body parts. - EBA uses a lot of oxygen when presented with certain stimuli.

What is top-down processing?

information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations. But perception involves information in addition to the foundation provided by activation of the receptors and bottom- up processing. Perception also involves factors such as a person's knowledge of the environment, the expectations people bring to the perceptual situation, and their attention to specific stimuli. This additional information is the basis of top-down processing—processing that originates in the brain, at the "top" of the perceptual system.

How does perception interact with action?

· Perception is critical in guiding our actions. · Perception and actions are processed in two pathways of information processing.

What is the Hubel and Wisel cat experiment?

» Cat presented with different visual stimuli. » Dropped an electrode into the cat, presented visual stimulus to the cat and observed which visual stimulus cause the electrode to burst or fire. » The electrode will fire when it likes the visual stimuli. » The experiment found that the particular neuron that was dropped into the cat likes a diagonal line produced when slipping a glass slide into the projector. » The neuron was specific not only to the orientation but also to the motion. They found that each neuron in the visual area of the cortex responded to a specific type of stimulation presented to a small area of the retina. They called these neurons feature detectors because they responded to specific stimulus features such as orientation, movement, and length.