Minds/Attention
This is the mechanism of continued cognitive processing/encoding
What is attention?
How many types of photoreceptors do we have and what are they called?
What are rods and cones (S, M, L)?
This view states that there is a biological basis for the human ability to acquire langauge.
What is Universal Grammar (Chomsky)?
This is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, or decision
What is the availability heuristic?
This viewpoint stated that we couldn't study the mind scientificially because internal mental processes and consciousness cannot be observed, measured, or tested objectivel
What is behaviorism
Why did people historically believe the heart to be the seat of the mind?
Likely because of our everyday experiences and feelings; view reflected in language to this day
This view states the human mind represents visual relationships using abstract, language-like symbols rather than actual internal pictures. Also include one piece of evidence that is cited to support this view.
What is the propositional view?
What is a "chunk"? What part of memory is this most relevant for?
Chunking (WM) the process of grouping individual pieces of information into larger, meaningful units to bypass short-term memory limits.
This is a mental shortcut that people use to judge the probability of an event or object by comparing it to an existing mental prototype or stereotype.
What is the representativeness heuristic?
Tolman's experiments on cognitive maps and rewards taught us that this can happen
What is latent learning?
What are a few of the types of problems that the mind needs to "solve" (Pinker reading)
What are engineering problems - locomotion, vision, arm and hand movements, thinking about people and objects, planning
What is the basic path of a photon on it's way to the transduced, and then where does that signal go (mostly)
Photon passes through cornea, pupil, lens, retina - transduction by rods and cones! Signals pass to RGCs, optic nerve, re-bundled at optic chiasm, optic tracts based on visual field, LGN (90%), V1 (on contralateral side)
These are the two main components of language. Briefly define each
What are syntax (structure of words and sentences) and semantics (meaning of words and sentences)?
This "system" is slower, serial, effortful, controlled, flexible, and rule-governed.
What is System 2?
This is the basic idea of the modern cognitive science program (for most people)
What is "The mind as a (computing) machine" metaphor
What are bottom-up and top-down processing?
Bottom-up processing is data-driven; it starts with small sensory details from the environment and builds up to a complete perception;
Top-down processing is knowledge-driven; it starts in the brain using prior knowledge, memories, and expectations to interpret incoming sensory information
Very briefly, what do the results of the mental rotation experiment show for stimuli that are the same versus those that are different than the standard?
When they are different, RTs are flat, when they are they same they increase based on degree of rotation
What is the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammar?
Descriptive describes what people so with language; prescriptive are more arbitrary rules made up about how it "should" be
Framing effects are a cognitive bias where people make different choices depending on how logically equivalent information is presented - what is an example of this?
Organ donation (opt-in or opt-out; default option); Program A, B, C, D in pandemic example, others
These are general purpose, and can instantiate multiple different algorithms - they perform logical operations by manipulating symbols
What is the Turing machine?
What's the difference in early vs late selection models; how does the load theory of attention correspond to these?
Most likely, this is the difference between visual perception and visual imagery (in terms of what the brain does)
Vision uses bottom-up and top-down processing, imagery is only top-down, may be why it is more "fragile"
What are the 3 main types of memory that we talked about in lecture? Very briefly describe the capacity and duration of each
Sensory memory (very brief, can hold LOTS), then some information goes to WM (aka STM), can hold 7+/-2 "items" for maybe 30 seconds, and LTM (no known duration/capacity limits)
Prospect theory states what?
Prospect theory is a behavioral economic theory stating that people evaluate gains and losses asymmetrically; feeling the psychological pain of a loss more than the pleasure of an equivalent gain
This states that anything that can be done in mathematics by an algorithm can be done by a Turing machine.
What is the Church-Turing thesis?