Chapter 5 Flashcards
PoHCI, week 8 (28 cards)
What is cognition?
Mental activities involved in thinking and understanding - how people process information in their
mind; how they perceive, learn, remember, reason about, and utilize knowledge
What are the elementary cognitive abilities?
Control
Memory
Attention
Reasoning
Decision-making
Name some general findings about cognition
Cognition helps set goals and maintain focus on them
Cognition is limited
Cognition reasons based on internal models of reality
Cognition is necessary for learning and adaptation
Cognition requires energy and effort
What is inattentional blindness?
If users are given a goal related to one part of a user interface, they recall features related to that part
and forget the other parts
What is cognitive control
Our ability to direct thinking and action toward some goal
Briefly explain the goal activation model
Cognitive control is needed to activate the right subgoals at the right time. Faced with a complex task with multiple goals, cognition must break it down into simpler, better manageable parts.
In this model, contextual cues prime subgoals.
Example: When we see a familiar intersection on the way home, it subconsciously activates the next
sub-goal
What is postcompletion error?
When a user forgets to carry out an action that should be taken after achieving a goal.
Example: Forgetting to take the credit card out of the ATM after receiving cash
What is activation and inhibition (of return) in terms of cognition
Activation:
When a task is performed, cognition needs to make relevant task representations available.
This can be done through activation of relevant representations in memory and inhibition of
irrelevant representations
Inhibition of return:
Inhibiting that you are revisiting locations (information) you have already visited
Explain multitasking
Multitasking is a resource-sharing problem
Some resources can be shared, some cannot
Multiple resource theory provides heuristics for understanding cognitive bounds
Task switching is costly
Explain cognitive workload and how its measured
Having to think while doing causes fatigue
Learning leads to automatisation that frees up resources
Cognitive workload can be measured with the NASA-TLX (Task Load Index) questionaire
Explain working memory (wm)
Refers to temporary maintenance and manipulation of representations in mind needed for action.
The WM can is limited to only 2-6 items at a time
Explain long term memory (ltm)
Refers to memory systems that are responsible for exploiting past experiences.
Declarative memory refers to long-term memories that can be consciously experienced, or explicit memory, while non-declarative memory are implicit memories. They affect our behavior without
conscious recollection
Explain the two types of declarative memory; semantic and episodic
Semantic memory is responsible for propositional knowledge (Folders contain documents)
Episodic memory can be thought as mental time travel, allowing us to re-experience past events
(What did I do last time I wanted to print in A3 size?)
Explain the four types of non-declarative memory; non-associative learning, procedural, priming and
conditioning
Non-associative learning refers to reflexes, such as drawing the hand away from a hot stove
Procedural memory refers to learned sequences of actions and thoughts
Priming refers to an unconscious effect of previously seen stimuli on responses to a subsequent
stimulus (preparing us to respond appropriately)
Conditioning refers to learning of actions that are triggered (conditioned) by the environment
What are the three stages of storing in long-term memory?
Encoding:
Memory traces are formed during interaction
Storage:
The traces are retained in-between encoding and retrieval, some are forgotten
Retrieval:
The traces are retrieved at later stage, for example when using the same user interface
again
How do we forget?
Memory traces lose activation or strength over time (decay theory)
Memory traces gets mixed up (interference theory)
The probability of recalling something is proportional to the probability of encountering
How does learning over time function?
We learn through practice
Fast in the beginning, then it slows down
The practice gives diminishing returns
But extensive practive leads to automaticity
Explain reasoning including prediction
Reasoning is about thought processes that allow us to conclude something that we do not already know. Reasoning forms new beliefs from old rules via some rules or mechanisms
Prediction is a special kind of reasoning that is needed to act in a dynamic and changing environment.
Predictions are reasoning about the future
Explain decision-making including Kahneman’s two systems
Decision-making refers to any situation in which a number of options is given and one or a subset
must be chosen
Kahneman’s two systems:
- System 1 is fast and driven by intuition, emotion, and associative memory (uses cognitive heuristics)
- System 2 is slow and monitors system 1 and intervenes
Explain the cognitive heuristics; anchoring, decoying, availability, status quo and bandwagon
Anchoring occurs, when we center our choice around a known reference solution
Decoying occurs, when a reference point we have prevents us from seeing another one ‘behind’ it
Availability heuristic refers to people’s estimates of the probability of an event. Similar to the
anchoring, the availability of a memory makes it more likely to be entered as a solution
Status quo bias refers to the prevailing solution, such as a famous or popular option
The bandwagon bias occurs when we see our peers following an option
What is cognitive models?
Models that describle formally what happens in a person’s mind during an interactive task
Explain the model human processor (MHP)
A model to describe human performance in terms of time needed for different stages of information
processing
The user is modelled as a computer; eyes and ears for input, arm-hand-finger for output, brain with
processors and memories - each with performance parameters and connections
Has three interacting subsystems: perceptual system (coding of sensory information), cognitive
system (recognition and decision-making), and motor system (action)
Explain the perceptual system in MHP
Responsible for transforming external environment into a form that the cognitive system can process
Composed of perceptual memory and processor
Takes around 100ms to process “sensor data input” in the processor
Explain the cognitive system in MHP
Responsible for processing perceived information and deciding how to act upon it
Composed of working memory, long-term memory and the cognitive processor
Uses the recognize-act cycle
