final Flashcards
1
Q
What is cognition?
A
The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.
2
Q
What does ‘cogni-‘ mean?
A
‘To know things.’
3
Q
What is behaviorism?
A
The study of observable human behavior through stimulus-response actions.
4
Q
What is classical conditioning and who pioneered it?
A
A learning process in which an association is formed between two stimuli; pioneered by Ivan Pavlov.
5
Q
What is sensation?
A
The detection of raw stimuli through sensory organs.
6
Q
What is perception?
A
The brain’s process of giving meaning to sensory information.
7
Q
What does the dorsal stream (‘where’) process?
A
Spatial awareness and motor actions.
8
Q
What does the ventral stream (‘what’) process?
A
Object identification and memory.
9
Q
What are the stages of Marr’s visual processing theory?
A
- Raw primal sketch, 2. Complete primal sketch, 3. 2.5D sketch, 4. Full 3D representation.
10
Q
What is Biederman’s Recognition-by-Components theory?
A
Objects are recognized by their geons and spatial organization.
11
Q
What is the Müller-Lyer illusion evidence of?
A
That perception is influenced by experience and environment.
12
Q
What are the types of attention?
A
- Endogenous (goal-directed)
- Exogenous (stimulus-driven)
13
Q
What is the Early Selective Model of Attention?
A
Information is filtered before being processed for meaning (Broadbent, 1954).
14
Q
What is the Cocktail Party Effect?
A
The ability to focus on a single conversation in a noisy environment.
15
Q
What is Treisman’s Attenuation Model?
A
Information isn’t completely filtered out; unimportant input is downregulated.
16
Q
What is the Pop-out Effect?
A
A distinct visual target is noticed automatically due to unique features.
17
Q
What is a conjunction visual search?
A
Requires combining features (e.g., color + shape); processed serially.
18
Q
What is visual agnosia?
A
Difficulty recognizing objects despite intact vision.
19
Q
What is form agnosia?
A
Inability to perceive basic object features like shape or color.
20
Q
What is integrative agnosia?
A
Inability to integrate features into a whole object.
21
Q
What is the Dual-Store Theory of Memory?
A
A model suggesting memory has two components: short-term and long-term (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968).
22
Q
What is the phonological loop?
A
A component of working memory that stores auditory/verbal information using an ‘inner ear’ and ‘inner voice.’
23
Q
What is the visuospatial sketchpad?
A
A working memory component that handles visual and spatial information (‘inner eye’).
24
Q
What is the central executive?
A
The control system that manages attention and coordinates the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad.
25
What is the episodic buffer?
A component that integrates info across working memory and long-term memory to create coherent episodes.
26
What are the three types of long-term memory?
* Episodic (personal experiences)
* Semantic (facts)
* Procedural (skills and habits)
27
28
What is long-term memory?
Memory storage that retains information for days to a lifetime, available for retrieval.
29
What is encoding?
Converting information into a form that can be stored in the brain
30
What is retrieval?
Accessing stored information and bringing it into conscious awareness.
31
What are the three levels in the Levels of Processing theory?
Structural (shallow), acoustic (intermediate), and semantic (deep).
32
Who proposed the Levels of Processing Theory?
Craik & Lockhart (1972).
33
What level of processing leads to better memory?
Semantic (deep) processing
34
What is context-dependent memory?
Retrieval is better when the environment at recall matches the environment at encoding.
35
What did Godden & Baddeley (1975) demonstrate?
People recall words better when the learning and recall environments match (e.g., land/underwater).
36
What is declarative (explicit) memory?
Memory involving conscious recall, including semantic and episodic memory.
37
What is semantic memory?
General knowledge and facts without reference to personal experience
38
What is episodic memory?
Memory of specific personal events tied to time and place.
39
What is the Theory of Disuse?
Memory decays over time if not retrieved ("use it or lose it").
40
What is anterograde amnesia?
Inability to form new memories after the onset of injury.
41
What is retrograde amnesia?
Loss of memories from before the injury.
42
What is Ribot’s Law (temporal gradient)?
Older memories are less likely to be lost than recent ones after brain injury
43
What is the encoding deficit theory of amnesia?
Amnesia is due to inability to encode/consolidate new memories (e.g., H.M.).
44
What is the retrieval deficit theory of amnesia?
Amnesia results from the inability to access stored memories.
45
What are the components of a problem?
Initial state, goal state, givens, obstacles, and means.
46
What are the four common problem-solving strategies?
Trial and error, algorithm, heuristic, incubation
47
What is a heuristic?
A mental shortcut used to reduce the problem space efficiently, though not always accurate.
48
What is an algorithm?
A step-by-step method that guarantees a solution if followed correctly.
49
What is the incubation effect?
The phenomenon where stepping away from a problem leads to sudden insight
50
Who proposed the problem space theory?
Newell & Simon (1972).
51
What is a phoneme?
The smallest unit of sound in a language.
52
What is the Word Superiority Effect?
Real words are recognized faster than random letter strings.
53
Q: What is the Typoglycemia Effect?
Words can be recognized even when letters are scrambled as long as the first and last are intact.
54
What is phonological decoding?
Sounding out a word by its parts (common in early reading).
55
What is a morpheme?
The smallest unit of meaning (e.g. "un-"
56
What is holistic word recognition?
Recognizing whole words without sounding them out.
57
What is Broca’s aphasia?
Difficulty producing speech; comprehension mostly intact.
58
Q: What is the difference between a free and bound morpheme?
A: Free morphemes stand alone ("happy"); bound must attach to others ("un-" "-s").
59
What is Wernicke’s aphasia?
Fluent but nonsensical speech and poor comprehension.
60
What is conduction aphasia?
Inability to repeat words despite understanding and speaking ability.
61
What does the arcuate fasciculus connect?
Wernicke’s area (comprehension) and Broca’s area (production).
62
What is Broca’s aphasia?
A non-fluent speech disorder with preserved comprehension and poor repetition. Speech is effortful, and patients are aware of their impairment.
63
What area is affected in Broca’s aphasia?
The motor center (Broca’s area)
64
What are common symptoms of Broca’s aphasia?
Slow, labored speech, use of gestures, frustration due to awareness of impairment.
65
What is Wernicke’s aphasia?
A fluent speech disorder with poor comprehension and nonsensical speech. Repetition is also impaired, and patients are often unaware of their deficit.
66
What area is affected in Wernicke’s aphasia?
The auditory center (Wernicke’s area).
67
What is conduction aphasia?
Fluent speech and comprehension are preserved, but repetition is impaired and phonemic errors are common.
68
What causes conduction aphasia?
Damage to the arcuate fasciculus, which connects Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas.
69
What is Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)?
A condition where children show delayed or impaired language production or comprehension, not due to other causes like low IQ or hearing loss.
70
What is the prevalence of DLD?
Around 7% of children.
71
What are the common language trajectories in DLD?
Early start-up → Rapid growth → Plateau, unlike typical development which continues upward.
72
What is the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (PDH)?
A theory that DLD is caused by impairments in the procedural memory system, especially in brain areas like the basal ganglia.
73
What types of language are affected in DLD according to PDH?
Rule-based grammar, such as verb conjugations and inflectional morphology (e.g., "-ed" for past tense).
74
What is the role of procedural memory in language?
Supports grammar and rule-based operations like sentence structure and verb tenses.
75
76
What is a domain-general process?
A cognitive function used across multiple areas (e.g., attention, working memory).
77
What is a domain-specific process?
A process tailored to one area, like face recognition or language syntax.
78
What is joint attention?
Shared focus on an object between two individuals, which supports language learning by aligning visual and auditory input.
79
Why is joint attention important for word learning?
It helps children associate words they hear with the objects they see.
80
How is joint attention affected in autism?
Often reduced, leading to difficulties in associating words with objects.
81
What is the difference between sensation and perception?
Sensation is the detection of stimuli by sensory organs perception is the interpretation of those sensory signals by the brain.
82
What does the dorsal stream process?
The 'where' pathway processes spatial location and motion.
83
What does the ventral stream process?
The 'what' pathway processes object identification and recognition.
84
What is Gibson’s Ecological Theory of Perception?
It proposes that perception is direct and based on affordances—opportunities for action provided by the environment.
85
What is an affordance in perception?
A cue in the environment that indicates possible actions (e.g., a chair affords sitting).
86
What is perception for action?
The idea that we perceive the world in terms of how we can interact with it
87
What is Marr’s computational theory?
A theory that visual processing occurs in stages: primal sketch → 2.5D sketch → 3D model.
88
What is Recognition-by-Components (RBC)?
A theory that objects are recognized by identifying basic 3D shapes (geons).
89
What is template matching theory?
We compare incoming stimuli to stored templates in memory to identify them.
90
What does constructivist theory say about perception?
Perception is an active, constructive process influenced by prior knowledge and expectations.
91
What is sensory conspicuity?
How much a stimulus stands out due to its sensory features (e.g., brightness).
92
What is attentional conspicuity?
How noticeable a stimulus is based on current goals or expectations.
93
What is the McGurk effect?
A phenomenon where visual and auditory information are integrated, changing perception (e.g., hearing 'ba' but seeing 'ga' → perceiving 'da').
94
What is the function of attention?
To focus cognitive resources on relevant stimuli while ignoring others.
95
Why is attention considered a limited resource?
Because we can only process a small amount of information at one time.
96
How do eye movements guide attention?
They help shift focus to areas of interest or importance in the visual field.
97
: What is exogenous attention?
Attention drawn automatically by external stimuli (bottom-up).
98
What is endogenous attention?
Attention directed voluntarily according to goals or expectations (top-down).
99
What is the late selection model of attention?
All information is processed for meaning, and selection happens later.
100
101
102
22. Q: What is the attenuator model of attention (Treisman)?
Unattended info is not blocked but weakened some gets through based on meaning.
103
What is Feature Integration Theory (FIT)?
Attention binds individual features (color, shape, etc.) into coherent objects.
104
What is blindsight?
The ability to respond to visual stimuli without conscious awareness due to damage in visual cortex.
105
What is spatial neglect?
Failure to attend to one side of space, usually after right parietal damage.
106
What is anopia?
Loss of vision due to damage in the visual pathway.
107
What is integrative agnosia?
Difficulty integrating parts into wholes, leading to object recognition issues.
108
What is prosopagnosia?
inability to recognize faces, also known as face blindness.
109
How is autism related to face processing?
Individuals may show reduced focus on faces and impaired facial recognition.
110
31. Q: What is bottom-up processing?
Processing driven by external stimuli starts with sensory input.
111
What is top-down processing?
Processing guided by knowledge, experience, and expectations.
112
What are automatic processes?
Fast, unconscious, and require little attention (e.g., reading).
113
What are controlled processes?
Slow, effortful, and require attention (e.g., learning to drive).
114
What are Gestalt principles?
Rules like proximity, similarity, closure, and continuity that help us perceive whole forms.
115
What is behaviorism?
A theory that focuses on observable behavior and the effects of the environment (stimulus-response).
116
What is classical conditioning?
Learning by association (e.g., Pavlov’s dogs).
117
What is operant conditioning?
Learning through consequences—reinforcement and punishment (e.g., Skinner box).
118
What did the Phineas Gage case teach us about cognition?
Damage to the frontal lobe affects personality and decision-making.
119
What did the HM case teach us about memory?
The hippocampus is critical for forming new long-term memories.
