4 Cognition, consciousness, and language

Question 1

What are the four key components/pillars of the information processing model?

Answer 1

• Thinking requires sensation, encoding, and storage of stimuli
• Stimuli must be analyzed by the brain (rather than responded to automatically to be useful in decision making)
• Decisions made in one situation can be extrapolated and adjusted to help solve new problems (also called situational modification)
• Problem solving is dependent not only on the person’s cognitive level, but also on the context and complexity of the problem

Question 2

Give Piaget’s stages of development in order

Answer 2

• Sensorimotor stage (ended with object permanence)
• Preoperational stage (symbolic thinking, egocentrism, centration/unable to understand conservation)
• Concrete operational stage (cannot think abstractly yet)
• Formal operational stage (can think abstractly and apply logic)

Question 3

Give four types of problem solving

Answer 3

• Trial and error
• Algorithms (formula or procedure to automatically produce desired solution)
• Deductive reasoning (Top-down, solution deduced from info given)
• Inductive reasoning (bottom-up, creating a theory by generalizing)

Question 4

What is the availability heuristic and representativeness heuristic?

While heuristics can lead us astray, they are important for speedy and effective decision making.

Answer 4

Availability heuristic: a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision.

Representativeness heuristic:used when making judgments about the probability of an event under uncertainty. It is one of a group of heuristics (simple rules governing judgment or decision-making) proposed by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the early 1970s. (e.g. ignoring statistical likelihood of plane crash - base rate fallacy)

Question 5

Intuition can be more accurately described by the recognition-primed decision model, what is this?

Answer 5

Sorting through a wide variety of information to match a pattern. Over time, people become experts and can access experience without awareness of doing so.

Question 6

Give the two types of insomnia

Answer 6

Dyssomnia (trouble falling asleep)

Parasomnias (abnormal movements/behaviours during sleep e.g. night terrors, somnambulism etc.)

Question 7

Which neurotransmitter receptor do depressants (barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and alcohol) act on?

Answer 7

GABA receptors (inhibitory in the CNS)

Question 8

Drug addiction is highly related to the mesolimbic reward pathway. Give the areas involved in this pathway (3)

Answer 8

• Nucleus accumbens (NAc)
• Ventral tegmental area (VTA)
• Medial forebrain bundle (MFB)

This addiction pathway is activated by all the substances that produce psychological dependence. Gambling and falling in love also activate this pathway.

Question 9

Give the five components of language

Answer 9

• Phonology (phonemes/sounds, distinction between pronounced words is categorical perception and an auditory example of constancy)
• Morphology (structure of words, building blocks of words are morphemes e.g. redesigned = re + design + ed)
• Semantics (meaning of words)
• Syntax (stringing words together to make sentences)
• Pragmatics (dependence of language on context and pre-existing knowledge). Pragmatics also affected by prosody - the rhythm, cadence, and inflection of our voices.

Question 10

Give the three theories for language acquisition

Answer 10

• Nativist (biologial) theory: Chomsky. innate ability. Language acquisition device/pathway in brain. Critical period for learning language before puberty (later learning is ineffective)
• Learning (behaviourist) theory: Skinner. Learning language by operant conditioning.

Social interactionist theory: Language acuqisition is driven by child’s desire to communicate and behave in a social manner

Question 11

What is the Whorfian hypothesis (aka the linguistic relativity hypothesis)

Answer 11

Suggests that our perception of reality is determined by content of language. Language effects the way we think, not the other way around.

Question 12

Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area are connected by ______

Answer 12

The arcuate fasciculus, a bundle of axons that allows appropriate associations between language comprehension and speech production.

Question 13

What is aphasia?

Answer 13

Deficit in language production or comprehension