Fiona-cognition

Question 1

Cognition definition

Answer 1

The ability to process and understand, store and retrieve info, make decisions and produce appropriate responses
E.g. sensation, perception, learning, reasoning, remembering and decision making

Question 2

Behaviourism and William James

Answer 2

The father of psych. Wrote principles of psych and said everything we know comes from experience (empiricist tradition). Born tabula rasa. Alternative would be nativism/genetic predisposition. Wanted to work scientifically by observation, laws of learning to predict behaviour

Question 3

Associationism

Answer 3

Learn info by making associations between things, has 2 laws: learning on the basic of contiguity (co occurrence of things in space and time) and learning on the basic of frequency (how often things co occur). Allow to predict and control behaviour

Question 4

Edward thorndike- behaviourist

Answer 4

Mechanical/phys explanation for changes in animal behaviour. Law of effect: animals learn responses to things which are rewarded and drop things which are punished. Informed operant conditioning as the animal must do something. Happens due to strengthening and weakening of stimulus response bonds

Question 5

JB Watson- behaviourist

Answer 5

Behavioural analysis can be used for all aspects of mental functioning. Science of behaviour should be limited to discussion of stim responses and physical data-only measurable things

Question 6

Behaviourist laws of learning

Answer 6

The law of effect/reinforcement, law of exercise (more often situation is followed by a response, stronger the bond is/ thorndike). Rote learning (repetition to learn)

Question 7

BF skinner -behaviourist

Answer 7

All explanations of behaviour are descriptions of environmental histories
Operant conditioning shapes behaviour
Wait for response and reinforce if appropriate
Worked with pigeons - peck for treats, play ping pong

Question 8

Principles of cog psych

Answer 8

We are just deterministic systems/machines. Explains observable behaviour (only way for real science) but anything can be studied scientifically if statements are testable. Constructivism is when ppl construct their own understanding and knowledge via experience and their reflections

Question 9

Edward tolman background

Answer 9

First to study animal cog, explained their behaviour in terms of mental systems and processes, focused on behaviour that was goal directed. Critique of behaviourist is that you can do things without conditioning. Emphasis on molar achievements (end goal) not molecular achievements (each step to get there). Learning doesn’t need stim-response bonds and reinforcement not needed for learning as latent learning is learning from exposure

Question 10

Edward tolman- latent learning with rats

Answer 10

Rat has an understanding of a maze just from being in it- measures how many times rat took dead end (errors) and had food in some trials. With food every time, errors decreased, when reward from day 3, there was a reduction before the food and then decreased quickly and when reward on day 7, had reduction before food. Learned maze without reward so not conditioning, latent learning as formed cog maps

Question 11

Other examples of cog maps- tolman

Answer 11

Trained rat to turn left in a t maze for food, offered a shortcut and the rat took it, not the conditioned path. In maze with diff paths to food, all equally rewarded but when placed block, took correct path to avoid. Rats had knowledge of maze, problem solving and made cog maps which are a cog construct, abstract but has explanatory power

Question 12

Diffs between types of psychology

Answer 12

In experimental psych: IV- intervening variables- DV
In behaviourism: causes- outcomes
In cog psych: bio and environmental conditions- psychological states and traits-behavioural manifestations

Question 13

Chomsky

Answer 13

Poverty of stimulus language as children are exposed to a finite of info about sentences and the lang environment is noisy (given not a lot of info but understand many new sentences). As shown can learn lang from association. Grammar is a system of rules for sentences, assumption of a lang acquisition device (universal grammar) which means we are predisposed to acquire any natural lang (not through teaching or learning) generative grammar is when you know the rules you can make anything, it is abstract and part of genetic code. Measure performance to test understanding

Question 14

Key events in cog psych

Answer 14

Miller 19956: the magical number 7+-2 (the amount of numbers you can hold in the short term memory capacity). Newell and simon 58,60: general problems solver GPS- computer simulations of mental processes- see how we process info. Broadbent- info processing theory: how info flows between processes . Flow diagrams of perceptual memory and attentional processes. Neisser 67: first text book on cog psych

Question 15

Stage models of human info processing

Answer 15

Stages where operations take place, each stage represented W a box in a flow and the arrows connect boxes for flow of info. Can be used to identity learning problems. Known as modular approach. Models assume human cog is based on modular sub systems, breakdown in intellectual abilities

Question 16

Descartes

Answer 16

I think therefore i am - all we can be certain of is that we are thinking
Alternative view is naive realism: things exist because we can see them, what we see is accurate

Question 17

Neisser

Answer 17

Naive realism. 3 principles: visual experienced Morris the external stim but W:hallucinations, visual experiences start and end with the onset and offset of external stim but W: visual persist and and visual memory (remembering things), visual experiences based on passive copies of outside world which could be described using verbal reports

Question 18

Passive bottom up processes - selfridge

Answer 18

Selfridges 59: model of visual letter recognition via the oandemonium model: demons project letter, recognise features, match and make decision. Bottom up as all info from the stim. Distal stim worked out from the proximal stim at the senses. Impoverished stim (don’t know) so have to work out from proximal.

Question 19

Passive: Fodor

Answer 19

the modularity of mind hypothesis: each sense has input modules and each works on a diff feature of a sense e.g. colour, patterns.. Info passed for central processors to create thought, separation from perception to cognition

Question 20

Challenge of neisser third law: gestalt

Answer 20

Group of psych wanted to know how we perceive objects as different, created laws of perceptual organisation: random have no principle dominants, columns and rows an example of grouping by proximity, by similarity or common fate (two intersection lines not 2 vs). Bottom up. Palmer 92 found line boundaries dominate out just grouping. Disproves neisser as interpreting objects as something not just a mental copy- don’t need other knowledge

Question 21

Gestalt innate evidence studies

Answer 21

Quinn, Burke and rush 93: 3 month old infants do grouping so innate and not top down (babies fixed on new presentation of line diff from dotted groups in a line formation) contradicts neisser as sensory info due to coding principles to facilitate recognition

Question 22

Old vs new look

Answer 22

Gestalt is old look- passive coding accounts, bottom up and stim driven. New look is top down and knowledge driven

Question 23

New look- Bruner and postman 49

Answer 23

Cards presented and id threshold computed. Normal cards more accurately recognised than incongruent (e.g. a black heart card)
Seems to be an effect of expectation on perception

Question 24

New look example from pandemonium

Answer 24

present single letters and masked, ps say what they see (present stim in middle of another) found common letters better reported than rare ones, have long term memory of letters so top down

Question 25

Mental schemas

Answer 25

Shapes are interpreted as objects, harder to describe unequal objects as can’t draw on past knowledge. Hard to go back to shapes once interpret something from ambiguous. Diff between seeing and seeing as as seeing the same for familiar and un but other processes for familiar

Question 26

Epstein and rock 1960

Answer 26

Wanted to see if recency or expectancy was most important for perception. Ps presented W sequence of unambiguous stim from an ambiguous image old, young, old, young and then an ambiguous one. If expectancy: see young as next in sequence if old: recency. More people saw old

Question 27

Minksy 1975

Answer 27

Frame theory and expectancy. Based on knowledge of the world we generate expectations of what will happen (compare what we see with what we expected) an example of an active process

Question 28

Bruner perceptual readiness theory

Answer 28

Need and value determine out perceptions of the world. Ps told to alter size fo light to match the comparison disc. Good when neutral but when disc replaced W coins found an overestimation of coin size as made light bigger. Poor 10 year olds estimates were more extreme than rich and overestimates increased more W value. Top down

Question 29

Simplicity vs likelihood

Answer 29

Hochberg: The minimum principle: we perceive whatever object or scene would be most simply or economically fit the sensory pattern . The likelihood principle: we perceive whatever object or scene would most likely fit the sensory pattern ,

Question 30

Examples of simplicity bs likelihood

Answer 30

See two squares overlapping not one cut out (simple) . Light seen to come from above so see stim as dimples and bumps but one not simpler than the other. Peterson and hochberg: interpretation depends on where ps fixate on Becker’s cube

Question 31

Crude to fine distinction

Answer 31

Global to local processing e.g. see person first then see he is made of fruit. Big letters made up of tiny same or diff letters - RT shorter when saying global than local (doesn’t matter what small is). There is global local interference as rt slowed when asked to point out small letter, faster at congruent but not local to global interference, this is because we take in global info faster so have more info.

Question 32

Crude to fine examples

Answer 32

visual system distinguishes from crude to fine levels of analysis
Two diff accounts: modularity of mind and interactive hypothesis generation and testing

Question 33

Info processing theory

Answer 33

Input, ,storage and processing, output

Question 34

Visual processing

Answer 34

Display-iconic memory- fast route is visual code, slow route in name code. Created by Micheal posner. Presented pairs of letters on a screen, recorded RT, letters identical (visual code), DP letters have same name, are they vowels or not (name code). Fasted for visual code, longer for no, vowel and cons had longest, feel shorter tho. Physical recalled first, then name then semantic categorisation (temporal hierarchy

Question 35

Visual code nature

Answer 35

Two hyps: contains mental images, analogical rep or non pictorial representation/language like left line, diagonal… mental transformations: Cooper and Shepard 73, letter R rotates and done in mirror image, takes ps longer to describe if more tiled, correlated to time it would take physically , argued analogue operations took place

Question 36

More analogue evidence

Answer 36

if you would have to move shapes further to match another one, it would take longer mentally
Shepard and fen- mental origami experiment, number of folds related to the time it would take to do the mental task

Question 37

Kosslyns cathode ray tube model

Answer 37

Tubes used to make tv screens. Spatial display/surface representation is mental copy goes to minds eye interpretive function (image in mental display) and LTM.

Question 38

Evidence for analogical - kosslyn

Answer 38

K, ball and reside 78: ps had to learn shape of map and features until drawn from memory, formed mental image and told to focus on a location then asked whether another location was on the map (told to mentally scan)- scanning time proportional to the distance between them- conc that mental images have spatial properties but ps were instructed to scan

Question 39

Evidence for analogical-plyshyn 1981

Answer 39

Had to visual inspection (replicate map), create mental image and told to imagine one location signalled by a light and when switched off, another turns on and press key when see new location (no scanning) and switched around order. Given two named locations and asked to give compass direction. Found relationship between RT and distance but not for other conditions so scanning may have nothing to do with manta, image

Question 40

Evidence continued

Answer 40

Physical rotations can reveal more than mentally rotating it (don’t hold images in our mind), when reasoning visually, humans adopt mental simulation, see how objects behave and how they appear to us.

Question 41

Structural descriptions

Answer 41

Reed 74: showed ps shapes and a,see if another shape was within them, took longer to see hidden shapes- visual based on description of stim rather than copy. Palmer 77: mental synthesis (brining together to items mentally), found preference for some combinations so natural way to break down image, not copy. Sutherland 68: structural descriptions specific salient parts of image and relations between them

Question 42

Conc

Answer 42

Dual format of representation-Images coded in images and words