Principles of Cognitive Science
Modularity
Language
Innateness
Bayes Theorem
100
This term is used to describe functional specialization in the brain, it's also one of the topics on the Jeopardy board.
What is modularity?
100
As I read this answer aloud, you can't help but interpret the words I am saying. This characteristic of modular systems is responsible for the inability of conscious control systems to inhibit things like language processing or three dimensional shape interpretation.
What is mandatory operation?
100
This account of language, argued against by Chomsky (1959), proposes that language is nothing more than associations between specific verbal actions and specific situations.
What is the Associationist Account of Language?
100
This hidden assumption of the perceptual system results in us perceiving square B as being a different shade than square A when they are in fact the same color.
What is things that are in shadow are really lighter than what my sensors currently detect?
100
While forward optics can help us determine what patterns of light will end up on the retina given a light source and objects in an environment, Bayesian inference helps us solve this problem which determines the 3-D mental representation one perceives based on retinal patterns.
What is inverse optics?
200
In Vision (1982), David Marr proposed these three levels of explanation. One that targets what is being computed, one that targets how computations take place, and one that targets the physical realizations of computational systems.
What are computational (functional), algorithmic, and implementational levels?
200
XM37 vs. Carding Beer Drinkers was an example of cheater detection which is argued to be an example of this characteristic of modular systems where a module only operates on a limited range of inputs.
What is domain specificity?
200
The fact that you can understand sentences that you've never encountered before (e.g. I ran over Fidel's ham sandwich after it fell out of the bed of his Toyota Tacoma) is an example of this feature of language.
What is novelty?
200
Infants appear to be conscious of this example of intuitive physics displayed in the image above.
What is cohesiveness?
200
This value P(hi) is an unconditional probability that expresses how much we believe a hypothesis before observing any data.
What is the prior?
300
Knowing that *"Kim's happier than Tim's" is ungrammatical in English is an example of this knowledge which is something you ✨know✨ but can't readily articulate.
What is tacit knowledge?
300
The Müller-Lyer illusion is an example of this characteristic of modular systems which prevents a module from accessing information in central cognition.
What is information encapsulation?
300
This feature of language is exemplified when there is no upper bound on the number of sentences a language can express.
What is productivity?
300
This hypothesis states that all languages have a shared innate template that allows for locally specified variation.
What is Universal Grammar?
300
One powerful aspect of Bayes Theorem is when this is used as this to serve as an update to belief after seeing data.
What is using a posterior as a prior?
400
While there might not be a consensus definition for this term, it refers to the mental capabilities that appear to be 'programmed' in to the mind.
What is innateness?
400
While many modular systems lack this characterization of modularity, Motor cortex, Broca's area, Auditory cortex, and Wernicke's area are all examples of it.
What is discrete neural localization?
400
The combinatoric rules that generate syntactic structures like the one above are argued to be evidence for this feature of language which asserts that when a person knows a language, they reliably know 'groups' of expressions at the same time.
What is systematicity?
400
Experimental results have suggested that infants have a concept of this which is tested via the image above.
What is arithmetic?
400
This value P(d|hi) is a conditional probability that expresses the probability with which we would expect to observe data (d) if (hi) were true.
What is the likelihood?
500
While psychology and cognitive science might both be concerned with knowledge states and the brain, cognitive science pays particular attention towards this, the procedural characterization of mental processes.
What is computation?
500
The Interrogative Rule (e.g. Take the auxiliary verb from the main verb phrase and move it in front of the noun phrase) is an example of this characteristic of modularity the characteristic that central cognition only has limited access to the information in a module.
What is inaccessibility?
500
This feature of language is exemplified when a speaker of a language can generate utterances in contexts that are independent of the contexts in which those utterances were learned.
What is stimulus independence?
500
This hidden assumption of the perceptual system results in the dot at the center middle being perceived as being a three dimensional object.
What is the existence of a single overhead light source?
500
This value P(hi|d) is the probability of hypothesis hi given the observed data d.
What is the posterior?