1-2. INTRO, COG NEUROSCIENCE

Question 1

What is structuralism?

Answer 1

• description of contents of consciousness
• to find irreducible elements of consciousness
• this is the process of combining + describing basic elements of experience sensations

Question 2

Describe Analytic Introspection.

Answer 2

• partis are trained to describe experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli
• it requires extensive training
• main goal is to describe their experience in terms of elementary mental elements

eg. describe the experience of hearing a 5 note chord played on the piano. what were each of the individual notes that made up the chord

Question 3

What were the main problems with Analytic Introspection?

Answer 3

1. introspection couldn’t come up with good irreducible concepts
2. it only covers conscious processing thoughts, downplays sensory experience
3. poor reliability between subjects (individual variations)
4. results are different to verify (invisible inner mental processes)
5. hard to relate to physiology
6. little progress made understanding the mind

Question 4

What is behaviorism?

Answer 4

John Watson (1913)- ‘a response and reaction to introspection’

1. Focus on observables
   - consciousness, mental states are not observable and shd be ignored
2. Parsimony
   - shared with all sciences
   - parsimony was lacking in introspection
   - this was emphasised in behaviorism
3. Irreducible concepts
   - all sciences have this as their goal
   - introspection couldnt come up with good irreducible concepts, but behaviorism had good candidates (operant and classical conditioning)

Question 5

Describe what is Classical Conditioning (Ivan Pavlov).

Answer 5

CC:
- pairing one stimulus with another, previously neutral stimulus causes changes in the responses to the neutral stimuli

• pavlov’s pairing of food (made dog salivate) with a bell (the initially neutral stimulus) caused the dog to salivate to the sound of the bell

Question 6

Describe John Watson’s Little Albert experiment (Classical Conditioning).

Answer 6

• paired a stimulus (loud noise) which was presented to baby albert with a previously neutral stimulus like a rat
• this is a CC of fear
• overtime, 9 month albert became afraid of any sorts of furry animals

Question 7

Describe what is Operant Conditioning (BF Skinner)

Answer 7

OC:

• behaviour can be shaped by rewards or punishments
• behaviours that are rewarded is more likely to be repeated WHILE behaviours that are punished are less likely to be repeated
• eg. presentation of positive reinforcers can be food or social approval
• eg. withdrawal of negative reinforcers such as shock or social rejection
• he showed that reinforcing a rat with food for pressing a bar maintained or increased a rat’s rate of bar pressing

Question 8

Explain how Edward Tolman (1938) rebutted against Behaviorism.

Answer 8

He was one of the early cog psychologists who used behaviour to infer mental processes.

• he placed a rat in a maze and it ran around
• after this, rat was placed at A and the food was at B
• the rat learnt to turn right at intersection and obtained food
• THIS was exactly what behaviorists would predict as turning right is rewarded with food
• Tolman then placed the rat at C (which was opposite A)
• the rat then turned left at the intersection to reach food at B
• Behaviorists would predict the rat to turn right, but it turned LEFT
• HENCE this shows that there is a cognitive map in the rat’s mind as it had learned the maze’s layout
• Tolman made sure the rat couldnt determine the location based on smelling food etc.

cognitive map- a conception within a person’s mind of some spatial layout

Question 9

Explain how Noam Chomsky (1959) rebutted against Behaviorism.

Answer 9

• Chomsky saw language development as inborn biological program that holds across cultures
• hence language development is not determined via imitation or reinforcement
• Skinner actually produced a book called verbal behaviour which posed that children learnt language through OC
• accord to this, children imitate speech they hear
• they repeat correct speech as it is rewarded
• Chomsky pointed out that children say many sentences that have never been rewarded by parents
• eg. ‘i hate you mommy’
• they also go through a stage in which they use incorrect grammer even though this may never have been reinforced
• eg. ‘the boy hitted the ball’
• THUS, children implicitly learn simple rules in language to create an infinite number of utterances
• they can say things they never learned and not be imitating
• they also say things that are incorrect and have not been rewarded for

Question 10

How can behaviorism and cognitive psych be conceptualized?

Answer 10

behaviorism: observable stimuli -> observable responses

cognitive psych: observable stimuli -> abstract construct (mind/ inner black box) -> observable responses

Question 11

What is Cognitive Science?

Answer 11

• about finding ways to study and understand the inner workings of the mind
• we shd think of the cognitive approach is a reaction to behaviorism

Question 12

What is the Cognitive Approach?

Answer 12

Cognitive Approach:

• focuses on what occurs inside the mind before action
• this has got to do with the flexibility of the mind
• this has also got to do with the information processing approach

Question 13

What is the Information Processing Approach and how does it work?

Answer 13

Information Processing Approach:

• approach that traces sequences of mental operations involved in cognition
• this approach is influenced by emergence of computers
• accord to it, operations of the mind can be described in a no. of stages

Process:

• info goes through a series of processing systems called stages
• processing systems transform or alter the info OR
• alter the info in various systematic ways

Question 14

What is Experimental cognitive psychology?

Answer 14

• this involves experis that measure reaction time, accuracy or other DVs
• it involves a scientific approach which has hypo testing

Question 15

Explain how Donder’s experiment (1868) works.

Answer 15

Reaction time- how long it takes to respond to presentation of stimulus

• measured how long a cognitive process would take through mental chronometry, through reaction time experiment.
• measured the interval between stimulus presentation and person’s response to stimulus
• SIMPLE RT : by asking partis to push a button as fast as possible when lights go on
• presenting a stimulus (light) causes a mental response (perceiving the light)
• this leads to a behavioral response (pushing the button)
• the reaction time is the time betw the presentation of stim and behavioral respponse
• CHOICE RT : by using 2 lights and asking his partis to push the left button when saw left light, and right button when saw right light
• Here the mental response is changed to: perceive left light -> decide which button to choose
• he reasoned that the difference in reaction time between SIMPLE and CHOICE condition would indicate how long it took to make the decision -> push the button
• CHOICE RT took 1/10 of second longer than SIMPLE RT
• HENCE, concluded that decision making process took 1/10 of a second.

Question 16

What is the relevance of Donder’s experiment (1868).

Answer 16

It was one of the first cog psych experiments that illustrated smth extremely sig about studying the mind- cognition must be inferred from behaviour

He did not measure mental responses directly but inferred how long they took from reaction times

Question 17

What are some of the limitations for Experimental Cognitive Psychology?

Answer 17

1. Ecological Validity
   - white room effect: extremely controlled and artificial setting in the lab
   - you can only vary a few variables in such set ups
   - this is simplified from real world situations
2. Provide indirect evidence that may not demonstrate neurological plausibility and computational plausibility
   - means that evi may not be able to be realized neurologically in the brain,
   - or certain calculations and computations made by the brain

Question 18

What are some ways we can counter the limitations for Experimental Cognitive Psychology?

Answer 18

1. Neurophysiology- mainly used animals like monkeys
2. Neuroimaging techniques- like fmri, eeg
3. Neuropsychology- through patients; it is the study of behaviour with people with brain damage
4. Computational modelling- create AI to mimic and explain human behavior

Question 19

Describe the Level of Analysis Theory.

Answer 19

LOAT:

• a topic can be studied in several different ways
• with each approach contributing its own dimensions to our understanding
• we do not examine topics of interest from a single perspective
• BUT rather we look at them from multiple angles and different POVS
• each viewpoint can add small amounts of info -> when considered tgt -> leads to greater understanding

Eg. Gil is talking to Mary in the park and then a few days later he passes and remembers what she was wearing and what they talked about.

1. During initial experience, chemical processes occur in gil’s eyes
2. This creates electrical signals in neurons
3. This then activates individual brain structures
4. Multiple brain structures are activated
5. This leads to gil’s perception of mary as they talk
6. More electrical and chemical processes -> storage of experience in brain

THEN a few days later

1. Passes park -> chemical processes
2. Neurons activated
3. Brain storage
4. Storage activated
5. Memory

Question 20

What are the different types of coding the brain uses?

Answer 20

The brain uses 1/3 of the these ways to encode representation:

1. Specificity Coding
   - an obj can be repre by the firing of a specialized neuron that only responds to that obj
   - (-) unlikely as there are too many faces and objects to have a separate neuron for each
2. Sparse Coding
   - a particular obj is repre by a pattern of firing of only a small grp of neurons, with majority of neurons silent
   - eg. bills face has a pattern of firing for a few neurons
   - eg. marys face has few different neurons with some overlap with bill’s
   - eg. raphael’s face woudl have another pattern
3. Population Coding
   - the repre of a particular obj by the pattern of firing of a large no. of neurons
   - eg. all bill, mary and raphael’s faces are each repre by a diff pattern
   - (+) large no. of stimuli can be repre here as large grps of neurons create huge no. of diff patterns

Question 21

What is the Problem of sensory coding?

Answer 21

This is the problem of neural representation where sensory coding refers to how many neurons represent various characteristics of the environment

Question 22

What is Localization of function?

Answer 22

• specific functions are served by specific areas of the brain
• cognitive functioning breaks down in specific ways when areas of the brain are damaged
• the cerebral cortex (3mm thick layer that covers the brain) contains mechanisms responsible for most of our cog functions
• other functions are served by subcortical areas that are located below the cortex

Question 23

Describe Cortical Equipotentiality and 2 egs. to explain it.

Answer 23

cortical equipotentiality- an idea that the brain operates as an indivisible whole as opposed to speialized areas

1. Broca’s Area
   - area in FL that is damaged by stroke
   - ppl with broca’s aphasia have alow, labored, ungrammatical speech
   - damage to this parti area of the brain is striking evidence against the idea of equipotentiality and localization of function
2. Wernicke’s Area
   - area in TL that is damaged
   - ppl with wernicke’s aphasia have fluent, grammatically correct speech BUT is incoherent

Question 24

What is Double Dissociation?

Answer 24

• occurs when damage to one area of the brain causes function A to be absent and function B to be present, and damage to another area causes function B to be absent while A to be present
• this shows that A and B are served by different mechanisms and operate independently of each other
• to demonstrate DD, you need to find 2 people with brain damage that satisfy the above conditions.

Question 25

Describe the process of Distributed Processing.

Answer 25

• in addition to localization of function, specific functions are processed by many different areas of the brain
• many different areas may contribute to a function
• looking at a face activates many areas of the brain called distributed representation (emotional aspects of the face)