core concepts

Question 1

what is cognitive psychology? (three answers)

Answer 1

the scientific study of the mind
the scientific study of mental, internal processes
the scientific study of behaviour and brain activity/structures

Question 2

what does cognitive psychology help us understand?

Answer 2

human cognition (thinking)

Question 3

how do we come to understand cognitive psychology? (two answers)

Answer 3

by observing individuals’ behaviour when doing cognitive tasks
observing brain activity

Question 4

what are some examples of mental processes?

Answer 4

attention
perception
learning
memory
language
problem-solving
reasoning
thinking

Question 5

what is cognitive neuroscience? (two answers)

Answer 5

studies the influence of brain structures and functions on internal processes
shows the brain areas that are responsible for different cognitive processes

Question 6

how do we get evidence for cognitive neuroscience? (three answers)

Answer 6

fMRI
EEG
brain damage

Question 7

what is the main assumption of cognitive neuroscience?

Answer 7

functional specialisation

Question 8

what is functional specialisation?

Answer 8

are there areas of the brain that are specialised to do specific functions?

Question 9

what processes are specialised?

Answer 9

low-level processes (e.g. primary visual cortex - sight)

Question 10

are higher-level processes specialised? and why?

Answer 10

evidence is less clear

behaviour is so complex that there is a high likelihood there is more than one area of the brain helps its function

Question 11

how could functional specialisation be distributed?

Answer 11

distributed patterns of activity across networks

Question 12

what is cognitive neuropsychology?

Answer 12

studying the impact on mental processes in brain-damaged patients

Question 13

what are the assumptions of cognitive neuropsychology? (three answers)

Answer 13

modularity
dissociation
double dissociation

Question 14

what is modularity?

Answer 14

each cognitive process is separated into modules

Question 15

what is dissociation?

Answer 15

damaging a specific area of your brain and that being responsible for losing a particular function

Question 16

what is double dissociation?

Answer 16

two related mental processes function independently of each other shown in two case studies

Question 17

what two famous case studies show double dissociation?

Answer 17

‘HM’: scoville & milner (1957)
- epilepsy -> seizures -> removed hippocampus
- couldn’t form long term memories
- stm was intact

‘KF’: shallice & wallington (1970)
- motorcycle accident -> damaged parietal lobe
- could not form short term memories (poor digit span - 2)
- ltm was intact

Question 18

what does these case studies show?

Answer 18

that STM and LTM are supported by different areas of the brain

Question 19

what are the advantages of cognitive neuropsychology? (two answers)

Answer 19

double dissociation gives good evidence to the theory of modularity

identify brain areas for specific cognitive tasks

Question 20

what are the disadvantages of cognitive neuropsychology? (two answers)

Answer 20

hard to make comparisons with damaged patients as no ones injury is the same (case studies)

damage normally affects more than one module

Question 21

what are the two components that make up computational cognitive science?

Answer 21

computational modelling
artificial intelligence

Question 22

what is computational modelling?

Answer 22

a computer model that helps us understand cognitive processes

Question 23

what is artificial intelligence?

Answer 23

produces outcome to mimic human behaviour but internal processes may not resemble behaviour

Question 24

what is the connectionist network?

Answer 24

the idea that the brain is a big network that is made up of neurons and units that are all connected to each other

Question 25

what are the four properties of the connectionist model?

Answer 25

a set of units activation state weighting of connections learning rules

Question 26

what is a set of units?

Answer 26

different parts of the brain

Question 27

what is the activation state?

Answer 27

how quickly neurones are firing (whether the networks are 'busy')

Question 28

what are the weighting of connections?

Answer 28

how big are the connections between two places in the brain depending on the amount of activity

Question 29

what are the learning rules?

Answer 29

adding and linking new pieces of information together

Question 30

what are the advantages of computational cognitive science? (three answers)

Answer 30

theoretical assumptions are clear and explicit models can resemble human behaviour If we can recreate processes, we can damage it to understand how damage may impact human processing

Question 31

what are the disadvantages of computational cognitive science? (two answers)

Answer 31

mathematically and computationally complex don't recognise emotional and social factors

Question 32

what are the three core concepts of cognitive processes? Is it... (three answers)

Answer 32

serial or parallel? automatic or controlled? top-down or bottom-up?

Question 33

what is serial processing?

Answer 33

one process is completed before the next one (sequential)

Question 34

what is parallel processing?

Answer 34

more than one process occurs at the same time (simultaneous)

Question 35

who provided evidence for serial and parallel processing? what did he research?

Answer 35

sternberg (1966) - visual short term memory

Question 36

what was sternberg's experiment?

Answer 36

- Participants given list of words (2, 4, or 6 words). - Had a small intermission - Given a word and participants had to decide if it was in their list of study words

Question 37

what did sternberg predict?

Answer 37

parallel processing -> wouldn't change reaction time: If we could look at all words at once, wouldn’t matter if we have 2, 4, or 6 words serial processing -> reaction time is longer for more words

Question 38

what were sternberg's results? (two answers)

Answer 38

supported serial processing reaction time increased by 38ms per additional word

Question 39

who conducted a study on how we read words?

Answer 39

weekes (1997)

Question 40

what was weekes' study?

Answer 40

had to decide whether a word (3-7 letters) was a real or non-word

Question 41

what was weekes' results?

Answer 41

parallel processing -> if it was a real world, it didn't matter on the length in reaction time serial processing -> if it was a non-word, reaction time would be slower

Question 42

what is an automatic process? (four answers)

Answer 42

activated automatically no active control or attention needed unlimited capacity no conscious guidance

Question 43

what is a controlled process? (five answers)

Answer 43

intentionally activated slow response needs attention easily disruptive limited capacity

Question 44

example of automatic processing?

Answer 44

face recognition

Question 45

example of controlled processing?

Answer 45

focused attention in a busy environment

Question 46

what is bottom-up processing?

Answer 46

processing that is directly influenced by environmental stimuli (data driven)

Question 47

what is top-down processing?

Answer 47

processing that is influenced by factors, such as an individuals' experiences and knowledge

Question 48

example of bottom-up processing?

Answer 48

prosopagnosia (face blindness)

Question 49

example of top-down processing?

Answer 49

recognising your house

Question 50

who created the lexical decision task?

Answer 50

meyer and schvaneveldt (1971)

Question 51

what are the four things in a word?

Answer 51

its meaning (semantic info) the way it looks (orthographic info) the way it sounds (phonological info) how it should be used (syntactical info)

Question 52

what does the lexical decision task test?

Answer 52

how are words stored and accessed in the mind?

Question 53

LDT experiment?

Answer 53

12 high school students within-subjects design 48 related pairs/48 non-related/ 96 non-word pairs

Question 54

what were the ldt results?

Answer 54

related pairs had faster reaction times it did not affect accuracy results

Question 55

what does the ldt explain? (two answers)

Answer 55

the decision for related words are primed (made easier/faster) due to semantic relatedness of the two the decision-making process of one word influenced the process for the other word

Question 56

what is spreading activation?

Answer 56

a node gets excited and activates semantically related words in the network (connectionist network) e.g. (fire engine -> ambulance -> red)

Question 57

what is priming?

Answer 57

exposure to a stimulus triggers related nodes = faster responses e.g. bread and butter