CogPsych Chap 1-4
Terms
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- cognitive psychology
- the study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information
- rationalist
- someone who believes that the route to knowledge is through logical analysis
- empiricist
- someone who believes that we acquire knowledge via experience and observaction
- structuralism
- seeks to understand the structure of the mind and perceptions by analyzing those perceptions into their constituent components
- introspection
- looking inward at pieces of information passing through consciousness
- funtionalism
- seeks to understand what people do and why they do it
- pragmatists
- people who believe that knowledge is validated by its usefulness
- behaviorism
- theoretical outlook that psychology should focus only on the relation between observable behavior and environmental events or stimuli
- gestalt psychology
- states that we best understand psychological phenomena when we view them as organized structured wholes
- artificial intelligence
- the attempt by humans to construct systems that show intelligence and, particularly, the intelligent processing of information
- theory
- organized body of general explanatory principles regarding a phenomenon, usually based on observations
- hypotheses
- tentative proposals regarding expected empirical consequences of the theory, such as the outcomes of research
- statistical significance
- indicates the likelihood that a given set of results would be obtained if only chance factors were in operation
- independent variables
- aspects of an investigation that are individually manipulated, or carefully regulated, by the experimenter, while other aspects of the investigation are held constant
- dependent variables
- outcome responses, the values of which depend on how one or more independent variables influcence or affect the participants in the experiment
- ecological validity
- the degree to which particular findings in one environmental context may be considered relevant outside of that context
- cognitive science
- cross-disciplinary field that uses ideas and methods from cognitive psychology, psychobiology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, linguistics, and anthropology
- associationism
- examines how events or ideas can become associated with one another in the mind to result in a form of learning
- cognitivism
- the belief that much of human behavior can be understood in terms of how people think
- brain
- the organ in our bodies that most directly controls our thoughts, emotions, and motivations
- localization of function
- refers to the specific areas of the brain that control specific skills or behaviors
- nervous system
- the basis for our ability to perceive, adapt to, and interact with the world around us
- neurons
- transmit electrical signals from one location to another in the nervous system
- soma
- contains the nucleus of the cell and is responsible for the life of the neuron and connects the dendrites to the axon
- dendrites
- branchlike structures that receive information from other neurons, and the soma integrates the information
- axon
- long, thin tube that extends from the soma and responds to the information, when appropriate, by transmitting an electrochemical signal, which travels to the terminus, where the signal can be transmitted to other neurons
- myelin
- white fatty substance that surrounds some of the axons of the nervous system, which accounts for some of the whiteness of the white matter of the brain
- nodes of ranvier
- small gaps in the myelin coating along the axon, which serve to increase conduction speed even more
- terminal buttons
- small knobs found at the ends of the branches of an axon that do not directly touch the dendrites of the next neuron
- synapse
- serves as a juncture between the terminal buttons of one or more neurons and the dendrites of one or more other neurons
- neurotransmitters
- serve as chemical messengers for transmission of information across the synaptic gap to the receiving dendrites of the next neuron
- EEGs
- Electroencephalograms - recordings of the electrical frequences and intensities of the living brain, typically recorded over relatively long periods
- ERPs
- event-related potential - record of a small change in the brain's electrical activity in response to a stimulating event
- MRI
- magnetic resonance imaging - a technique for revealing high resolution images of the structure of the living breain by computering and analyzing magnetic changes in the energy of the orbits of nuclear particles in the molecules of the body
- PET
- positron emission tomography - measure increases in oxygen consumption in active brain areas during particular kinds of information processing
- fMRI
- functional magnetic resonance imaging - neuroimaging technique that uses magnetic fields to construct a detailed representation in three dimensions of level of activity in various parts of the brain at a given moment in time
- TMS
- transcranial magnetic stimulation - temporarily disrupts the normal activity of the brain in a limited area
- MEG
- magnetoencephalography - measures activity of the brain from outside the head by picking up magnetic fields emitted by changes in brain activity
- limbic system
- important to emotion, motivation, memory, and learning
- amygdala
- imporant role in emotion, especially in anger and agression
- septum
- involved in anger and fear
- hippocampus
- essential role in memory formation
- korsakoff's syndrome
- produces loss of memory function
- thalamus
- relays incoming sensory information through groups of neurons that project to the appropriate region in the coretex
- hypothalamus
- regulates behavior related to species survival: fighting, feeding, fleeing, and mating
- RAS
- reticular activating system - a network of neurons essential to the regulation of consciousness
- brainstem
- connects the forebrain to the spinal cord
- medulla oblongata
- controls heart activity and largely controls breathing, swallowing, and digestion
- pons
- serves as a kind of relay station because it contains neural fibers that pass signals from one part of the brain to another
- cerebellum
- controls bodily cordination, balance, and muscle tone, a well as some aspects of memory involving procedure-related movements
- contralateral
- from one side to another
- ipsilateral
- on the same side
- corpus callosum
- dense aggregate of neural fibers connection two cerebral hemispheres
- cerebral hemispheres
- the two halves of the brain
- Split-brain patients
- people who have undergone operations severing the corupus callosum
- frontal lobe
- toward the front of the brain - associated with motor processing and higher thought processes, such as abstract reasoning, problem solving, planing and judgment
- parietal lobe
- upper back portion of the brain - associated with somatosensory processing.
- temporal lobe
- directly under your temples - associated with auditor processing and comprehending language
- occipital lobe
- associated with visual proessing
- primary motor cortex
- specializes in the planning, control, and execution of movement, particularly of movement involving any kind of delayed response
- primary somatosensory cortex
- receives information from the senses about pressure, texture, temperature, and pain
- Perception
- the set of processes by which we recognize, organize, and make sense of the sensations we receive from environmental stimuli
- retina
- a network of neurons extending over most of the back surface of the interior of the eye
- ganglion cells
- neuronal tissue closest to the front, outward-facing surface of the eye
- optic nerve
- axons of the ganglion cells
- amacrine cells and horizontal cells
- make single lateral connections among adjacent ares of the retina in the middle layer of cells
- bipolar cells
- make dual connections forward and outward to the ganglion cells, as well as backward and inward to the third layer f retinal cells
- photoreceptors
- which transduce light energy into electrochemical energy
- photopigments
- chemical substances that react to light
- perceptual constancy
- occurs when our perception of an object remains the same even when our proximal sensation of the distal object changes
- Depth
- the distance from a surface, usually using your own body as the reference surface when speaking in terms of depth perception
- monocular depth cues
- can be represented in just two dimensions and observed with just one eye
- viewer-centered representation
- the individual stores the way the object looks to him or her
- object-centered representation
- the individual stores a represenation of the object, independent of its appearance to the viewer
- gestalt approach to form perception
- based on the notion that the whole differs from the sum of its individual parts
- law of pragnanz
- we tend to perceive any given visual array in a way that most simply organizes the disparate elements into a stable and coherent form
- figure-ground
- what stands out from versus what recedes into the background
- direct perception
- the array of information in our sensory receptors, including the sensory context, is all we need to perceive anything
- bottom-up theories
- data-driven theories
- top-down theories
- driven by high-level cognitive processes, existing knowledge, and prior expectations that influence perception
- templates
- highly detailed models for patterns we potentially might recognize
- prototype
- sort of average of a class of related objects or pattersn, which integrates all the most typical features of the class
- recognition-by-components (RBC theory
- we quickly recognize objects by observing the edges of them and then decomposing the objects into geons
- constructive perception
- the perceiver builds a cognitive understanding of a stimulus
- context effects
- the influences of the surrounding environment of perception
- agnosia
- a severe deficit in the ability to perceive sensory information
- optic ataxia
- an impairment in the ability to use the visual system to guide movement
- rods
- long and thing photoreceptors
- cones
- short and thick photoreceptors
- fovea
- a small, thin region of the retina, the size of the head of a pin that is most directly in the light of sight
- binocular depth cues
- based on the receipt of sensory information in three dimensions from both eyes
- Consciousness
- includes both the feeling of awareness and the content of awareness, some of which may be under the focus of attention
- priming
- occurs when recognition of certain stimuli is affected by prior presentation of the same or similar stimuli
- tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
- we try to remember something that is known to be stored in memory but that cannot readily be retrieved
- blindsight
- traces of visual perceptual ability in blind areas
- automatic processes
- involve no conscious control
- controlled processes
- accessible to conscious control and even require it
- automatization
- the process by which a procedue changes from being highly conscious to being relatively automatic
- habituation
- involves our becoming accustomed to a stimulus so that we gradually pay less and less attention to it
- dishabituation
- change in a familiar stimulus prompts us to start noticing the stimulus again
- sensory adaptation
- a lessening of attention to a stimulus that is not subject to conscious control
- arousal
- a degree of physiological excitation, responsivity, and readiness for action, relative to baseline
- signal detection
- detect the appearance of a particular stimulus
- selective attention
- choose to attend to some stimuli and to ignore others
- divided attention
- prudently allocate our available attentional resources to coordinate our performance of more than one task at a time
- signal-detection theory (SDT)
- involves four possible outcomes of the presence or absense of a stimulus and our detection or nondetection of a stimulus
- signal
- a target stimulus
- vigilance
- refers to a persons' ability to attend to a field of stimulation over a prolonged period, during which the person seeks to detect the appearance of a particular target stimulus of interest
- search
- refers to a scan of the environment for particular features
- distracters
- nontarget stimuli that divert our attention away from the target stimulus
- feature search
- which we simply scan the environment for that feature of those features
- conjuction search
- we look for a particular combination of features
- feature-integration theory
- explains the relative ease of conducting feature searches and the relative difficulty of conducting conjunction searches
- cocktail party problem
- the process of tracking one conversation in the face of the distraction of other conversations
- binaural presentation
- presenting the same two messages or sometimes just one message to both ears simultaneously
- dichotic presentation
- presenting a different message to each ear
- multimode theory
- proposes that attention is flexible
- stroop effect
- demonstrates the psychological difficulty in selectively attending to the color of the ink and trying to ignore the word that is printed with the ink of that color