History&Methods
You and your friend are trying to describe a glass of lemonade with adjectives (ex. sweet, acidic). They point out: "I can't check whether your sweet is the same as my sweet." What problem with introspection are they identifying?
What is subjectivity / are subjective experiences?
Director Peter Jackson needed Gandalf to look giant next to Frodo in Lord of the Rings. He used forced perspective to put Gandalf closer to the camera and Frodo far away. Which depth cue does Jackson's trick exploit?
What is relative size (or relative distance)?
True or False: As light from the outside word enters your eye, it goes through the retina, into the V1, and ends at the LGN
False: Outside world → Retina → LGN → V1
Hailey Bieber is shown a red word that spells the word “Green” and tasked with reading the word aloud. Instinctively, Hailey says “Green”. What effect is Hailey demonstrating?
Stroop Effect
With a damaged ____ lobe, the opposite half of the visual field is neglected
parietal
Pavlov trains dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. Another prominent behaviorist reads this and says: 'We don't need to talk about what the dog is thinking or wanting, only the bell and the drool matter.' Which scientist from lecture would this most likely be?
Who is Skinner?
You're watching Coachella's livestream and Justin Bieber walks into a dark, moody spotlight. You can see people moving in the dark crowd but can't tell what color their outfits are. Which photoreceptor is doing the work in the dim crowd and which one is failing?
Rods are working, cones are failing
A particular neuron has a high firing rate when stimulated at a 90 degree angle. Would the firing rate increase, decrease, or stay the same when presented with a 45 degree angle?
Decrease. Akin to edge detectors, neurons have specific receptive fields. In this case, its receptive field is a 90 degree angle (combination of edges). Since 45 degrees is not quite in its receptive field, the firing rate would decrease.
In the visual search study examining participant reaction time searching for various red bars in a sea of green bars, which of the following results were seen?
A. Response time increased with parallel search as stimuli increased
B. Response time decreased with parallel search as stimuli increased
C. Response time increased with serial search as stimuli increased
D. Response time decreased with serial search s stimuli increased
C. Response time increased with serial search as stimuli increased
A ____ is a set of stimuli that make a cell fire
Receptive field
Tolman puts rats in a maze for 10 days with no food. On day 11, food is added, and by day 12 the rats navigate as efficiently as rats trained with food from day 1. What does this display, and why does it challenge behaviorism?
Cognitive maps; learning can occur without changes in behavior
You're camping trying to spot a very faint star. Your friend tells you to look slightly to the side to see better. Why does this work? Hint: mention retinal cell types and specific areas
Rods work better in dim light, and a faint star produces very little light, so it can't activate cones in the fovea. By looking slightly off to the side, you use peripheral rods to detect the star better.
Select All That Apply: Which of the following are strengths of the Recognition by Components Model
A. Viewpoint Invariant: can recognize the object from any angle/perspective
B. Offers subtle metric differences in representation
C. Can distinguish between individual objects, such as my computer vs. Kaavya’s computer
D. Represents a 3D structure
A and D
In the dichotic listening task, individuals were presented with one message in each ear. Which of the following changes to the unattended message was noticed by the participants? (Select all that apply)
A. Language
B. Loudness
C. Pitch
D. Meaning
B and C
A classic example of _____ blindness comes from the invisible gorilla study
inattention
Which of the following are reasons behaviorism was replaced by modern cognitive psychology? Select all that apply.
A) It couldn't explain how different stimuli produce the same response
B) It relied too heavily on introspective reports
C) It had no account of delayed, goal-directed behavior
D) It was way too focused on animal subjects to ever generalize
E) It refused to explain behavior, only describe it
What are A, C, E?
You have a hole in your retina with zero photoreceptors where your optic nerve exits. What would be true of your visual experience if perception were simply passive recording of retinal input, without our brain "filling in the blanks"?
You'd likely see something like a permanent black void in your visual field!
Mach bands, an optical illusion in which the eye perceives nonexistent boundaries between shades of gray, illustrates what theory?
Lateral Inhibition: excited neurons inhibit their neighbors resulting in exaggerated differences in intensity
Correctly order the components of Broadbent’s Filter Theory of Early Selection Theory (Semantic processing, perceptual processing, sensory processing, filter)
Sensory Processing → Perceptual Processing → Filter → Semantic Processing
In Avatar, the 3D version works because each eye receives a slightly different image of the same scene. Your brain reads the difference between the two, or ________, as a cue for depth. This cue is most effective for objects that are ________ to you.
Retinal disparity, CLOSE
Method actors often report 'becoming' their character and feeling their emotions, not just performing them. A behaviorist would say actors are just producing trained stimulus-response outputs. What does this model not account for?
Answers will vary!
- Behaviorism provides no theory of cognition
- Method acting involves internal mental states shaping behavior from the inside out
- The same behavior (ex. crying on stage) can come from totally different internal states, just as different stimuli can produce the same response (behaviorism can't distinguish)
You stare at a bright green square for 30 seconds, then look at a white wall and see a red square. What underlying mechanism is at play?
Afterimages or color opponency
Colors are encoded in opponent pairs, for ex. red vs. green and blue vs. yellow. Staring at green fatigues the green channel, so when you look at white, the red side dominates and produces a red afterimage.
Justin Bieber was tasked with remembering pictures of upright or inverted houses and faces. When remembering the inverted group, which category did JB make more errors on and why?
Since faces are particularly hurt by inversion, JB made more errors when remembering inverted faces rather than house
In a spatial cueing task, participants are asked to stare at a target location and press a button when a target appears. However, when the target appears in an unexpected location, the response time is dramatically increased. According to what you know about attention, which of the following is true about the experiment?
A. The participants show change blindness as they do not react to the unexpected change of the target being in an unexpected location
B. The participants show excessive cognitive resources and are unaware of where to allocate them.
C. The participant’s limited cognitive resources are exerted towards the target location, imposing a cost upon any new location where the target might be
D. The participants use of overt attention increases the reaction time as they move their eyes from one location to another
C. The participant’s limited cognitive resources are exerted towards the target location, imposing a cost upon any new location where the target might be
Wundt's participants couldn't report mental processes that were ________, and your brain fills in the blind spot using surrounding context rather than actual retinal input. Both reveal that conscious experience is not a passive recording but an active ________. This is the core logic behind ________ inference, how the visual system solves impossible problems.
Unconscious, construction, unconscious