A CogSci Potpourri
The position that human beings are born with innate, pre-wired cognitive structures, modules, or knowledge, rather than being a blank slate (tabula rasa) at birth.
What is nativism?
The Inverse Optics Problem
What is how we get a representation of a 3D scene from a 2D retinal image?
This term in Bayes' Theorem is the probability of a given hypothesis before updating on the data.
What is a prior?
Face blindness/a condition that leaves your vision intact except you cannot identify faces.
What is prosopagnosia?
This principle of (intuitive) physics that babies know says that objects are single, integrated entities.
What is cohesion?
According to Scholl, the things that unites the brain's hidden assumptions in vision.
What is the brain not liking coincidences?
(1) Why the Inverse Optics Problem is so hard and (2) how the brain solves it.
What is (1) underdetermination/a one-to-many mapping/the fact that multiple 3D scenes and (2) by probabilistic inference/making hidden assumptions.
This "likelihood" in Bayes' Theorem corresponds to the following probability (in terms of data and hypothesis).
The area of the brain important for recognizing faces.
What is the fusiform face area?
The Poverty of Stimulus Argument posits innate structures to explain the following.
What is the mismatch between meager learning input that children receive and the comparatively rich output (i.e. what they know, and what they can do)?
Marr's three levels of explanation and what they refer to
What are
functional – what the capacity is supposed to solve
algorithmic – procedures that enable the problem to be solved
physical – the neural/chemical substrates in which the procedures are implemented?
When considering vision as a form of Bayesian inference, the posterior probability in Bayes' Theorem corresponds to this probability (in terms of a 3D scene and 2D retinal pattern).
What is the probability of the (3D) scene given the (2D) retinal pattern / P(scene|retinal pattern)?
Modularity
What is the idea that the mind is – at least in part – composed of specialized modules that evolved to solve specific problems faced by our ancestors?
This is Alison Gopnik's "hybrid" position in the Nature vs. Nurture debate with respect to infants.
What is "babies are designed to learn" (or any longer equivalent answer)?
A point in the brainstem near the midline is (1) dorsal vs. ventral and (2) lateral vs. medial
What is ventral and medial?
Before going to the visual cortex, visual information gets processed in this part of the brain for initial, superficial processing.
What is the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (also acceptable: Superior Colliculus)?
When considering vision as a form of Bayesian inference, the likelihood in Bayes' Theorem corresponds to this probability (in terms of a 3D scene and 2D retinal pattern).
What is the probability of a (2D) retinal pattern conditional on a given (3D) scene / P(retinal pattern|scene)?
What we the Sugita study suggests/concludes.
What is "the existence of an experience-independent ability for face processing as well as an apparent sensitive period" during which humans/monkeys concretize their ability to identify faces?
(A) This is the method that experimenters most often use to learn about infant cognition (involving the looking time of infants).
(B) This is some empirical support for the method in question.
(A) What is the violation-of-expectation method?
(B) What is “Error-related negativity” (ERN) (When people detect an error, their brains exhibit a characteristic pattern of activity detectable by EEG)?
The main problem with the "inner picture"/"homunculus" view of perception.
What is an infinite regress/needing to continuously posit a homunculus inside the homunculus?
The five hidden assumptions the brain makes when processing visual information.
What are (1) There is a single overhead light source, (2) Inferring color from shadowing (things in shadow are actually lighter than they appear), (3) Things tend to move in a straight line, (4) Rigidity: all points on a moving object move together, and (5) Occlusion: A moving object will progressively cover and uncover portions of a persisting background?
This term in Bayes' Theorem ensures that the probability assigned to all hypotheses sum to one.
What is the Normalizing Term/Total Probability of the Evidence?
What we CANNOT conclude from the Sugita study (and other studies) about face perception.
What are (1) What, exactly, is innately-specified about face processing, (2) What, exactly, is the adaptive function of the innately-specified face processing, and (3) How faces are processed?
The 8 skills and principles of (intuitive) physics that infants learn at a young age.
What are (1) basic arithmetic, (2) continuity, (3) solidity, (4) cohesion, (5) contact, (6) gravity/support, (7) reasoning about other minds, (8) probabilistic reasoning?