Intro lecture (1)

Question 1

Cognitive function

Answer 1

• Thoughts and actions
• Regulated by brain activity
• Emerges from the connection of neurons
• rimarily concerned with understanding the processes that produce complex behaviors even though separate abilities are studied (ex. memory, language, perception)
• Cog. abilities are studied separately but aren’t separable in reality

Question 2

Basic vs. applied research

Answer 2

• Basic research: try to understand the world and its phenomena without regard to a specific end-use of this knowledge + how we perceive information, remember, reason and solve problems
• Applied research: with the end-goal of developing a solution to a problem, like understanding changes to the mind from diseases and disorders

Question 3

Hypothesis-guided research

Answer 3

• Have a theory
• From this theory, develop a hypothesis, a certain guess about the link between variables under study
• A hypothesis must be testable against evidence

Question 4

Phenomenon-based research

Answer 4

When an “effect” is discovered, and follow-up research examines the nature of the effect. Historical examples: placebo and bystander effects

Question 5

Placebo effect

Answer 5

• Fake treatments lead to improvements in people’s symptoms and functioning (Sugar pill that lacks active medicine improve conditions)
• Long history (1799) - tested the effects of disease reduction from Perkins tractors, metal “disease extractors” & placebo wooden tractors - found no difference!
• Current research designed to learn: How does it work?

Question 6

General approaches to study cognition

Answer 6

• Cognitive psychology: Study of behavior to understand the mind (mental processing)
• Neuroscience: Study of the brain and linking it to the mind (What parts of the brain carry out functions we see behaviorally?)
• Computational modeling (Building and modelling the mind-brain connection)

Question 7

Emotional enhancement effect

Answer 7

Emotional (esp. negative) stimuli are more easily
attended to, remembered than neutral stimuli. We have a poorer memory of someone’s face if they’re holding a gun than if they’re holding a drink (because our attention goes to the gun). Amygdala activity predicts memory for emotional but not
neutral images.

Question 8

Advent of AI

Answer 8

• ChatGPT is an example of a large language model (An algorithm trained on human data to predict how we use
  language)
• it’s effective at mimicking human behaviour (write essays, emails, movies)
• Not sentient (yet?)