Cognitive Psych
What are the three mental processes associated with memory?
acquisition (or encoding), retention, and retrieval
Describe the structures of a neuron and their function.
Cell body: biological activity of the cell is regulated
Dendrites: branchlike features that receive the neural impulses from other neurons
Myelin sheath: insulation that allows the electrical impulses travel faster down the axon
Axon: the long tube-like structure that carries the electrical impulse to the terminal buttons
What are the elements of the connectionist model.
Parallel distributed processing, three unit levels (input, hidden, and output), positive and negative weights,
The basic process of getting sensory information into the cognitive system is called what?
Input attention
Visual search patterns show evidence of what two types of searches? Describe these.
Feature search: pop-out effect
Conjunction search: unique combination of features
Describe the difference between sequential and serial stages of processing.
Sequential: stages of processing occur in a fixed order.
Serial: two or more processes occur simultaneously.
Describe two techniques to view brain structures.
CT: x-rays to view slices of the brain
MRI: using magnetic field to observe the distributions of a certain molecule
Define agnosia and give an example of a specific type of agnosia.
Disruption in the ability to recognize objects (prosopagnosia)
Describe different types of attention and give an example.
Controlled attention: Deliberately attending to stimuli (paying attention to a baseball game instead of thinking about a movie you just watched)
Selective attention: ability to attend to one source of stimuli while ignoring another (paying attention to one conversation while ignoring other conversations going on around you)
Inattentional blindness: failure to attend to information, even if you are looking directly at it, because you are attending to something else (driving while talking on the cell phone)
What is the difference between iconic and echoic memory?
Iconic memory is visual and echoic memory is auditory.
What are the two most prominent behavioral measures studied?
RT and accuracy
What are four subcortical brain structures? Choose two and describe their function.
Thalamus: relay station for sensory system to the cortex
Corpus callosum: fiber or neurons that connect the LH and RH
Hippocampus: storing new information into LT memory
Amygdala: emotion processing
Describe recognition by component theory and give an example.
Recognition of objects by breaking them down into parts and recalling the combination of parts in memory
Describe the difference between implicit and explicit memory and give one example of each.
Implicit: no conscience awareness (tying your shoe)
Explicit: conscience awareness (asking to recall a list of words you were just shown)
What are the four lobes of the brain and their main function?
Temporal: auditory, language, and memory
Parietal: sensory and spatial processing
Frontal: cognitive control
generalizability to real-world situations
Describe the dorsal and ventral pathways.
Dorsal: across the top of the cortex, responsible for processing where things are in the world
Ventral: across the bottom of the cortex, responsible for processing what things are in the world.
Describe and give an example of the three ideas about pattern recognition associated with Selfridge's Pandemonium model?
Feature detection: reporting elementary features (a vertical line)
Parallel processing: working at the same time to match features
Problem solving: visual system putting the pieces together to make a decision about what object it is
Improved attention in video game players, larger attentional spotlight, faster EMs, visual attention (focus on local or global processing); does not have strong or lasting effect on attention
What is reductionism?
Understanding complex events by breaking them down into their components.
Of the seven themes of cognition, choose three and describe them.
Data-driven vs. conceptually-driven processing: information from the environment (data-driven or bottom-up processing); existing knowledge (conceptually-driven or top-down processing)
Representation: how information is mentally represented
Implicit vs. explicit memory: unconscious awareness ( vs. conscious and direct awareness of a memory (walking to class this morning)
Metacognition: own awareness of thoughts, cognition, knowledge, and how the system works
Brain: understanding how the neural processing works, kind of thinking we are capable of, and what its limitations are
Embodiment: how we think and represent information and how we interact physically with the world
Future orientation: predict what happens next or soon in the future; plan actions and anticipate outcomes
What is consolidation?
making memories more permanent over time
What are the Gestalt principles? Describe three and give an example for each.
Figure ground: what part of the image is treated as the object and what part is treated as the background
Closure: closing up an image that has missing parts or gaps
Proximity: elements that are near one another are grouped together
Similarity: visually similar objects are grouped together
Good continuation: when the edge of an object is disrupted, it tends to continue on its path
Common fate: objects that move together are grouped together
Describe alertness and arousal.
The NS must be awake and responsive, and able to interact with the environment.
What is contralaterality? Give an example.
Receptive and control centers for one side of the body are located on the opposite hemisphere (eg. The left hand is controlled by the right hemisphere)