Lecture 7: Cognition (Part II)

Question 1

Executive functions are responsible for selecting and ______ responses

Answer 1

Inhibiting

Question 2

Staying on task, planning and sequencing, shifting

and evaluating outcomes (reward) are all _______ behaviours.

Answer 2

Goal-directed behaviours

Question 3

Verbal list learning task looks at whether _______

Answer 3

people are able to learn

Question 4

Explain the verbal list task

Answer 4

• The tester reads Word lists (15) in a fixed order
• The person recall (3-5 times) as many words as they remember
  -There is a second list that is used (Interference list)
• The person only recalls it once.
  Then the experimenter asks two questions:
  1) Recognition – did you hear it before?
  2) Source – which list was it on? [source memory]

Question 5

What is the most consistent finding on people with SZ?

Answer 5

• they have Impaired learning.

Important:
Greater interference - intrusions (from the second list)
Source memory impaired (make mistakes on which list the words came from)
People with SZ Mix up lists

Less important:

Slower, fewer words (over time they learn fewer words)
Poor recall [at recall trial]
Recognition less impaired (usually this is easier, but people with SZ will have problems - lesions in the temporal lobe lesions will show similar problems)

Question 6

These results tell us that people with SZ have ______

Answer 6

deficits or difficulties in many aspects of learning and memory

Question 7

There is a variation of the verbal learning task where subjects are given to strategies, what are they? (Guo, 2019)

Answer 7

1) Item-level encoding (starting with living or non-living?, consonant or vowel?)
2) Relational encoding (ex: group together items that are associated with food).

Question 8

What are the results of the task when subjects are given strategies?

Overall, patients with SZ perform less well for ______ regardless of the strategy. And less well for recall than __________.

Answer 8

Overall, patients with SZ perform less well for recall regardless of the strategy. And less well for recall than recognition.

Question 9

What were the conclusions that were made from the study (Guo, 2019) where they were given two levels of encoding?

• Deficits in memory related to __________
• Relational encoding related to ______

Answer 9

• poor encoding

- to frontal lobe function

Question 10

Define working memory

Answer 10

Not just retrieving an item from memory
Holding in mind to:
- Make a decision
- Manipulate information
- Remember a rule

Question 11

The Wisconsin card sorting task is related to which type of memory?

Answer 11

Working memory

Question 12

Theory of mind (ToM) measures the ability to _________

Answer 12

infer another person’s mental state

Question 13

People with SZ might also have difficulty with theory or mind, particularly those with ________________

Answer 13

paranoid delusions

Question 14

The Reward-based learning (Nestor, 2014), Iowa Gambling Task goal was to _________

Answer 14

Try to win money by picking the best deck

Question 15

What were the results of this study (Nestor, 2014) Iowa Gambling Task?

Patients with lesions to _________ do poorly

Answer 15

reward-related regions

Question 16

What were the Contour processing in vision (Feigenson, 2014) results?

Answer 16

• 1st episode and chronic perform more poorly at time 1

- 1st episode improve at discharge, chronic do not

Question 17

Auditory change detection (Umbricht, 2006) with pitch change detection and duration change detection showed that only ______________ show automatic change response

Answer 17

controls

Question 18

We can conclude from all these studies that widespread changes in cognitive function in SZ appear _____ in the disorder and __________________

Answer 18

Appear early in the disorder

Do not improve with time or medication

Question 19

Most prominent deficits occur in ________ and _______

Answer 19

executive function and memory

Question 20

Most prominent deficits in executive function and memory but also in __________________

Answer 20

But, also in learning, especially reward-based