Chapter 1 Science of the mind

Question 1

What is introspection and who used it to study mental processes?

Answer 1

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) they started with the fact that there is no way to experience my thoughts and, or i yours. therefore the only way to study thoughts is through introspection- “looking within,: to observe and record the content of our own mental lives and the sequence of our own experiences.

Question 2

What are the two main problems with introspection?

Answer 2

they had to acknowledge some thoughts are unconscious, and as it is a tool to measure consciousness it is not useful and we now know that unconscious thought play a huge role in our mental lives.
the other problems for science to proceed, there must be some way to test its claims, otherwise we do not know correct assertions from false ones. with introspection the testability of claims is is often unattainable. people experience things differently.
pg9

Question 3

Who was the most prominent behaviorist?

Answer 3

John B. Watson (1878-1958)

Question 4

What sort of data did behaviorists examine?

Answer 4

data around environmental influences, how behaviour changes in response to various stimuli (including rewards and punishments)

Question 5

What is the main problem with using a behaviorist approach to studying mental processes?

Answer 5

the main problem is that, the ways people act, and the ways they feel, are guided by how they understand and interpret the situation, and not by the objective situation itself.
so.. the behaviorist perspective demands that we not talk about mental entities such as beliefs, memories, and so on, because these things cannot be studied directly and so cannot be studied scientifically. yet is seems that these subjective entities play a pivotal role in guiding behaviour, and so we must consider them if we want to understand behaviour.
12

Question 6

Explain Kant’s transcendental method and give an example

Answer 6

it is the idea that mental process and observable behaviours are combined. you begin with the observable facts and then work backwards from these observations. you ask how could these observable traits come about? what must be the underlying causes that led to these effects?

we know that we need to study mental processed thats what we learned from behaviorism, but also know that mental process cannot be directly observed. therefore the mental process had to be observed indirectly, the processes themselves are invisible, but have visible concequences; such as measureabe delays in processing, performances that can be assessed for accuracy, errors that can be scrutunized and catagorised.

Question 7

Explain why the development of computers was important to the cognitive revolution

Answer 7

computers were capable of immensely efficent information storage and retrieval “memory” as well as performance that seemed to involve decision making and problem-solving. they thought the human mind might follow similar processing, and started researching, and explained data in similar terms as a computer. pg17 for more

Question 8

What do ambiguous or reversible figures (such as the Necker cube) tell us about perception?

Answer 8

that people can perceive things in different ways, neither is wrong and the Necker cube is not an illusion you can just perceive it differently. Your perception goes beyond the information given in the drawing, by specifying an arrangement in depth.

you perception “goes beyond the information given” ( the banana continues in the fruit bowl but you cant actually see it)

Question 9

Describe the Gestalt approach and the following concepts: figure/ground, similarity, proximity, good continuation, closure, and simplicity

Answer 9

proximity and similarity: if within the visual scene, you see elements that are close to each other, or elements that resemble each other, you assume these elements are parts of the same object. you also tend to assume that contours are smooth, not jagged, and avoid interpretations that involve coincidence.

similarity- we tend to group the dots into rows, grouping dots of similar colour
proximity- we tend to perceive groups, linking dots that are close together.
good continuation- we tend to see a continuous green bar rather than tow smaller rectangles
closure- we tend to perceive an intact triangle, reflecting our bias toward perceiving closed figures rather that incomplete ones
Simplicity- we tent to interpret a form in the simplest way possible. we would see the form on the left as two intersecting rectangles (as shown on the right) rather than as a single 12 sided irregular polygon.
see pg 84 for pictures

Question 10

Explain how we know that two types of processing occur at the same time: perception of features and an analysis of the object’s configuration

Answer 10

1st you collect information about the stimulus, so that you know (for example) what the corners or angles or curves are in view- is is the visual features contain in the input.
Then once you have gathered the raw data you interpret the information. thats when you go “beyond the information given”

Question 11

Explain how we know that two types of processing occur at the same time: perception of features and an analysis of the object’s configuration

Answer 11

collect information about the stimulus, so that you know (for example) what the corners or angles or curves are in view- is the visual features contain in the input.
you interpret the information. Thats when you go “beyond the information given”
this happens at the same time, through parallel processing, different brain areas all doing their work at the same time. also different brain areas all influence one another, so that what’s going on in one brain region is shaped by what`s going in elsewhere.

so the brain areas that analyze pattern basic features do their work at the same time as the brain areas that analyze the patterns large-scale configuration, and these brain areas that analyse the pattern large scale configuration, and these brain areas interact so that the perception of the features is the features. so no processing “goes first”, neither has priority as they work together.

Question 12

Explain unconscious inference

Answer 12

there is an inverse relationship between distance and retinal image size.: If an object doubles its distance from the viewer, the size of the image is reduced by half. These are not conscious calculations, but we are calculating nonetheless- referring to this as unconscious inference.

Question 13

6. Explain how constancy can cause perceptual illusions to occur

Answer 13

so distance, in order to judge size, viewing angle to judge shape, or illumination to judge brightness is crucial for achieving consistency.
different cues can cause you to perceive what you see and you can misinterpret visual information that creates an illusion

Question 14

Describe bottom-up and top-down processes

Answer 14

Bottom-up processing- influenced by the stimulus itself, the features that are in view.
Top-down- is the influence of one’s knowledge and expectations.

Question 15

How do visual features contribute to object recognition?

Answer 15

there are specialized cells in the visual system that acts as feature detectors, firing (producing an action potential) whenever the relevant input (ie the appropriate feature) in in view. the visual features, are the vertical lines, curves diagonals etc.

Question 16

What is the experimental technique used to study word recognition?

Answer 16

They have used technique where they apply a stimulus for 20 or 30 ms and measure how well the stimulus was detected, Usually with words.

Question 17

How does word frequency affect word recognition?

Answer 17

in the study words that were presented more frequently were recognised better. Recognition was much more likely for words appearing often in front, in comparison to words appearing only rarely- an effect of frequency. 113

Question 18

How does recency of view affect word recognition?

Answer 18

words that had been viewed recently were more often recognized, an effect of recency that in this case creates a benefit called “repetition priming”.

also if a participant sees a word and then a little later they see the word again, they will recognise the work more readily the second time, the first exposure primes the participant for the second exposure, more specifically, this is a case of repetition priming.

Question 19

Define the word superiority effect and describe the technique used to establish it

Answer 19

the recognition of a letter depends on its context and so an ambiguous letter is read as an A in one setting but an H in another setting. recognising an entire word is easier than recognizing a single letter, the advantage for preserving letters-in-context is called the word-superiority effect.

performance on in studies is much better if the target letter is shown in context-within an entire word-than if it is shown on its own.

Question 20

Why are degrees of well-formedness important in word recognition?

Answer 20

the well-formedness of words (how the letter sequence conforms to the usual spelling patterns of English, is a good predictor of word recognition. the more english like the strings are, the easier it will be to recognise that string, and also the greater the context benefit the string will produce.

so it is easier to recognize in well formed sequences, but not if it appears in a random sequences. well -formed strings are, overall, easier to perceive than ill-formed strings, this advantage remains even if the well-formed strings are made-up ones that you’ve never seen before. all of these facts suggest that you somehow are using your knowledge of spelling patterns when you look at and recognize the words you encounter.

Question 21

Describe the layout of a feature net and explain how word recognition occurs

Answer 21

it is a bottom up process, a network of detector, organized in layers. the bottom player is connected with features, as you work up the network, each layer is concerned with larger scale objects. each detector has an activation level (similar to action potential), this reflects the status of the detector at that moment- when a detector receives some input its activation level increases, a strong input will increase the activation a lot and so will a series of small inputs, once it reaches a threshold it fires and send a signal to the other detectors its connected to.

soeme detectors will be easier to activate them others (some requiring a strong input to make fire and some only need weak). recency and frequency impact the activation. so when the detectors fire the letters and then words can be detected.
pg119

Question 22

How do bigram detectors account for well-formedness?

Answer 22

the Bigram detectors, find the pairs of letters in words, these are between the letter detectors and the words detectors. Pairs of words that are common like HI or CE have higher activation levels at the start and so they don`t require as much input to reach the threshold. these common pairs are what make up well-formed word sequences that are easier to recognise as they are seen more often.

Question 23

How do we recover from the confusion that results from briefly presented stimuli?

Answer 23

at the bottom level their is very brief information recieved by the detectors however there are several options the letter could be, at the letter detection area. however when the letters are paired it becomes easier to detect the word as the common letter pairs are more likely then the non common pairs and therefore the words can be worked out. pg 122

Question 24

How can we explain the word superiority effect using a feature net?

Answer 24

the eg. when at the bigram level the two inputs of letter choose the ones that are most common. so say you briefly see AT but the A could be interpreted as A, F,H and say you saw the T then at the bigram level FT, HT, AT the AT is most common word creation therefore you would be with that.

Question 25

How do recognition errors occur for input like “CQRN”?

Answer 25

in this case at the bigram level the CQ would be interpreted as CO as that is more common then CQ, the input becomes more regular then it really is, the network is bias favouring frequent letter combinations over infrequent ones. the network operated on the basis of “when in doubt, assume that the input falls into the frequent pattern”. the reason, of course, is simply that the detectors for the frequent pattern are well primed and therefore easier to trigger.

Question 26

What role does distributed knowledge play in the feature net?

Answer 26

looking at the whole system, not just individual word sets. look at the relationship between these priming levels, and look at how at hoe this relationship will lead to one detector being more influential then the other. in this way, the knowledge about bigram frequencies is contained within the network via a distributed representation; its knowledge, in other words, that’s represented by a pattern of activations that’s distributed across the network and detectable only if we consider how the entire network functions.

Question 27

Describe the three main descendants from the original feature net model

Answer 27

• inhibitory connections among detectors
• recognition of complex three dementinal objects
• your ability to recognise objects may depend on your viewing perspective when you encounter those objects.

Question 28

How does the McClelland and Rumelhart (1981) model accomplish string recognition without bigram detectors?

Answer 28

-with excitatory and inhibitory signals, so for example T excitatory signals would trigger TRIP but if their was a G too then that would inhibit TRIP
-the other models it was a one way street, this model though higher-level detectors (word detectors) can influence lower level detectors and detectors at any level can also influence other detectors at the same level.
128

Question 29

How do people recognise objects in the recognition by components (RBC) model?

Answer 29

same as the words.
geons, the alphabet from which all objects are constructed, they might serve as the basic building blocks of all the objects we recognize.
Geons are simple shapes, such as cylinders, cones, and blocks, apparently only need 30 or so different geons to describe every object in the world.
similar to the other networks their is a hierarchy of detectors. the lowest level detectors are feature detectors, which respond to edges, curves angles et. these detectors then activate the goen detectors, then high lever geons are assembles into complex arrangements called “gein assemblies,” which explicitly represent the relations between geons. then the assemblies activate the object model, a representation of the complete recognizable object.
-geons can be identified from virtually any angle, no matter what you position id relative to a cat, you’ll be able to identify its geons and identify the cat, also most geons are recognizable from just a few geons.

Question 30

Why is recognition viewpoint-dependent in the recognition by multiple views model?

Answer 30

this model purposed that people have stored in memory a number of different views of each object they can recognize; an image of what a cat looks like when viewed head on, an image of what it looks like from the left, and so on. So you’ll recognize Felix as a cat only if you can match you current view of Felix with one of these remembered views. but the number of views in memory is limited, maybe half a dozen,, and so your current view wont line up with any of the available images in that situation you need to “rotate” the current view to bring it into alignment with one of the views in memory, and this mental rotation will cause a slight delay in the recognition.
therefore the speed of recognition will be viewpoint-dependent.
132

Question 31

Why do we think that there is a special recognition system for faces?

Answer 31

people who suffer from prosopagnosia generally have normal vision. they can look at faces and decide if its a man or woman etc but they cannot recognise individual faces, not even of their family, not even themselves (when looking in a mirror they sometimes think they are looking at a stranger). this therefore shows their is special neural structures involved almost exclusively in the recognition and discrimination of faces. some people are also the opposite of prosopagnosia, where they seem to be “super recognisers”

Question 32

What is the evidence for holistic processing of faces?

Answer 32

Holistic perception, face recognition depends on the face`s overall configuration, the spacng of the etes relative to the length of the nose, the height of the forehead relative to width of face etc. its the relationship of the features that matter, not the indepented features.

in a study they found that peoples memory for faces is quite good, when compared with memory for other pictures (in this case, pictures of houses). However, performance is very much disrupted when the pictures of faces are inverted. Performance with houses is also worse with inverted pictures, but the effect of inversion is much smaller.
also the upside down face, not actually the right way features 136.

Question 33

Give a priming example to show how our knowledge about the world influences object recognition

Answer 33

priming; examples of “top down” effects, effects driven by you knowledge and expectations.
The word example again of flashing something on the screen quickly. if the participant is told that they are going to see a word they can eat then the person will be primed to think of words that are relative to food you can eat.
so external knowledge about what to expect can influence what we see and how we interpret things.