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uploaded by user lizard8 Class: Lecture/Exam: School: Semester: Professor: Cognition (340-080) Chapters 1-5 UDEL Spring 2014 N/A

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2/18/2014 10:32:00 AM February 18th Chapter 1: The Science of the Mind The scope of cognitive psychology Attention Memory Knowledge Perception Problem solving Language Imagery Neuro-cognition A brief history The first cognitive psychologists o Donders (1868): Mental chronometry: how long a cognitive process takes (ex: decision making) Test (test reaction time) = stimulusmental responsebehavioral response Metal chronometry (reaction time) simple reaction time: one flashing light choice reaction time: light is either on left or right difference between simple reaction time and choice reaction time is the time it takes to make a decision The years of introspection o Structuralism: overall experience is determined by combining sensations Wundt and Titchner Structuralists were interested in breaking down sensations into individual elements and components o Introspection: research technique where trained participants describe their experiences and thoughts in response to the presented stimuli

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Example: rose - pretty, smells good, delicate, thorns,

romantic, the bachelor, beauty and the beast, red and green, leaves, flower Problems with introspection Results vary from one participant to the next Results could not be verified Cant tell us anything about unconscious events Participants were trained (created bias/socially desired responding) The years of behaviorism o Psychologists should only study directly observable behaviors o Behaviors, stimuli and learning history are all objective o Operant conditioning (reward and punishment) and classical conditioning (Pavlovian conditioning) o Limitations of problems: beliefs, memories, values, etc. do seem to influence behavior and interpretation of stimuli Different stimuli can elicit the same behavior o BF Skinners Verbal Behavior o Breland and Brelands the misbehavior of organisms Pigs/piggy bank experiment, pigs reverted back to previous behavior (argument is that sometimes biology is more powerful and learning) The roots of the cognitive revolution o Kants transcendental method: begin with observable fact and then work backwards to infer causes Use scientific method in psychological research o Influence of the digital computer o Inputmemory unitarithmetic unitoutput o Outputs are observable behaviors

Textbook Notes H.M: patient that suffered from amnesia (could not remember new information) The Years of Introspection
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Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Bradford Titchner launched the new enterprise of research psychology Psychology needed to be concerned largely with the study of conscious mental events (feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and recollections) The only way to study thoughts is to introspect (look within) to observe and record the content of our own mental lives and the sequence of our own experiences Introspectors must be meticulously trained These practices were soon abandoned because of the idea that

some thoughts are unconscious as well as the fact that introspection could not be tested The Years of Behaviorism Behaviors can be observed and tested as opposed to introspection Behaviors can be recorded to test for patterns Learning history: how the pattern of behaviors changes with the passage of time and with the accumulation of experience, can be objectively recorded and scientifically studied Beliefs, wishes, goals, and expectations=mentalistic notions and cannot be objectively recorded Behaviorist movement: concerned with how behavior changes in response to various stimuli Cannot be entirely objective because behaviors are guided by how the person understands and interprets the situation Meaning effects behavior (ex: many ways to say pass the salt) The Roots of the Cognitive Revolution Transcendental method: developed by Immanuel Kant, begin with the observable facts and then work backwards from these observations Study mental processes indirectly because the invisible processes have visible consequences Working Memory: Some Initial Observations Working memory: the memory you use for information that you are actively working on, holds information in an easily accessible form, small capacity so its easier to locate information that you are trying to recall
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Span test: a way to test working memory where you read a list of

letters to a person and they have to keep repeating the list back as it gets longer, people tend to make more sound errors than sight errors for this test Working Memory: A Proposal Working memory is not a single entity, it has many different parts (working memory system) Central executive: heart of the working memory system, runs the show and does the real work Assistants to the central executive provide storage (specifically for information that will soon be needed but isnt needed right now) Articulatory rehearsal loop: one of the most important assistants, this is what is in charge when you are repeating things in your head, requires two elements (subvocalization and phonological buffer) working in tandem o Subvocalization : silent speech, relied on to launch the rehearsal loop, the inner voice o Phonological buffer: the inner ear, subvocalization produces an auditory image here, this is why people make more sound errors on the span test

Evidence for the Working Memory System Concurrent articulation task: performing the span task while repeating tah-tah-tah out loud, forces the working memory system to function without the rehearsal loop and as a result our memory span is cut drastically The Nature of the Working-Memory Evidence Anarthria: an inability to produce overt speech, used to show that muscle movements are not needed for subvocalization Neuropsychology: how various forms of brain dysfunction influence observed performance Chapter 2: The Neural Basis for Cognition Information from eyes is processed in thalamus first and then the occipital lobe

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Many structures are involved in one process and if anything is messed up, the entire process is messed up (one rod messes up all of your vision) Disorders with cognitive components: Aphasias, Agnosia, Prosopagnosia, Dyslexia, Alzheimers Disorder, ADHD, Capgras, Autism spectrum disorders, Anxiety Disorders, Depressive Disorders, Schizophrenia Principle structures of the brain Structure and function of the neuron o Cell body (soma): controls and maintains neuronal structure o Dendrites: feathery extensions that branch into immediate neighborhood of cell body (recipients of information) o Axon: long tails that comes off cell body; transmits electrochemical information away from the cell body and towards the next neuron in the sequence; has a semipermeable membrane Myelin Sheath: facilitates the transmission of the action potential (multiple sclerosis results from breakdown in myelin) February 20th Principle structures of the brain Structure and function of the neurons o Types of neurons Motor neurons: cause muscle contractions and change in activity of glands; your output neurons; terminate in some sort of action; connected to muscles, glands, or organs Sensory neurons: respond to changes in light, touch, temperature, etc.; your input neurons; located anywhere related to your senses; take information from the external environment and bring it into the body so you know how to react to your environment Interneuron: connections between other neurons; communication in specific brain region; all of the other neurons; located throughout the nervous system and in the brain (whole brain is interneurons)

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Sensory NeuronsInterneuronMotor Neurons

o Action potential Signal transmitted within the neuron Electrical charge Started in dendrites, passes through cell body and down the axon When a neuron is at rest it has a net negative charge on the inside and a net positive charge on the outside Positively charged ions flow in which depolarizes the cell o Neurotransmitters Axon of neuron 1 meets with neuron 2 at the synapse (synaptic cleft, synaptic gap) Neurotransmitters: chemicals that are responsible for relaying information from one neuron to the second neuron Action potential tells vesicles to release neurotransmitter Through exocytosis, vesicles release neurotransmitter into the synapse Neurotransmitters travel across the synapse and attach to the postsynaptic neuron Not all neurotransmitters are the same Excitatory (fast) and Inhibitory (slow) Neurons have their own rate of firing Excitation in target neuron fluctuates until it reaches the threshold (minimum amount of stimulation that a neuron needs in order to fire) For most threshold is -50microvolts (baseline is -70microvolts)

o All-or-none law: the firing of a neuron is either all or none o Refractory period: there is a brief period of time after the action potential called the refractory period where the neuron is at rest and cannot fire Membrane goes back to resting potential (negative on inside and positive on the outside)

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Reuptake: presynaptic neuron reabsorbs

neurotransmitters Nervous system is both electrical and chemical (electrical within the cell and chemical between cells) With changes in the intensity of the stimulus, come changes in firing rate of a neuron or changes in the amount of neurons that are activated Neurons have favorite stimuli (size)

Feature detectors: cells that respond optimally to a specific stimulus Simple cell: line or an edge in a particular orientation (vertical or horizontal) Complex cell: particular orientation and movement in specific direction

End-stopped cell: bar of light of particular length moving in particular direction Single Cell Recording: method in which microelectrodes are used to record the electrical signals (action potentials) to better understand cognitive processes Glial cells:

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 Brain is

Outnumber neurons 10 to 1 Helper cells/support neurons by separating them from each other Supply nutrients and oxygen to neurons Remove and metabolize damaged or dead neurons Form myelin sheath (myelin sheath is made up of glial cells) divided into 3 categories: hindbrain, midbrain, and forebrain Hindbrain is the oldest from an evolutionary perspective as well as an individual one (even slugs have hindbrains; hindbrain is first to develop when you are a baby

February 25th Principle structures of the brain Hindbrain: o Cerebellum: movement coordination, balance, spatial reasoning, sensory integration Midbrain: movement coordination, relays information to forebrain, regulate pain experience Forebrain: visible cortex Convolutions: wrinkles on the brains outer surface Sulci (valleys *think sulk*) Gyri (hills) Fissures: really pronounced sulci o Longitudinal fissure: divides brain into left and right side o Lateral/sylvian fissure: runs horizontally 4 main lobes Frontal: logical reasoning, (what makes us human compared to other animals), problem solving, memory, decision making, primary motor cortex (controls voluntary motor movements) Parietal: somatosensory cortex (touch senses: pain, temperature), some vision processing, Brocas area (language production) Occipital: primary visual cortex is located here Temporal: spatial reasoning (a little but not much), primary auditory cortex, Wernickes area (where you process language comprehension), memory processes

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So many different functions cross over to different parts of the

brain in case something gets damaged Subcortical structures Commissures: think bundles of fibers that carry information back and forth between the hemispheres Limbic System Thalamus: sensory switch board, information coming in through sense organs goes to thalamus first and then gets sense to other areas for processing (exception = smell!! Goes right to processing) Hypothalamus: tries to keep you in a state of balance (homeostasis), tells you when youre hungry/thirsty, regulates and monitors temperature and pH balance, talks to pituitary gland Pituitary gland: master gland of endocrine system (regulates all other glands), gets instructions from hypothalamus Amygdala: emotions, helps you evaluate the situation and how to feel about it Hippocampus: memory consolidation, take memory from a fragile state to a more permanent state (happens when one is sleeping), very close to amygdala so memories have an emotional component Brain stem Pons: helps with spatial navigation, helps with posture, plays a role in facial expressions Reticular formation (reticular activating system): in charge of circadian rhythms (sleep cycle) Medulla (medulla oblongata): heart rate, blood pressure, breathing Primary projection areas: in the cortex, receiving station for sensory information or dispatching station for motor control Areas are not proportional to actual size of body part (reflects how much its used/needed) Contralateral control: left hemisphere controls right side of body and vice versa Map of sensory environment Somatotopic organization: assignment of space governed by function, not anatomical proportion; amount of cortical area is determined by the complexity of the function not size of organ Association Areas
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Association cortex: sections of brain that associates simple ideas and sensation to form complex thought and behaviors; responsible for integrating information Brain deconstructs elements of stimuli and breaks them into components for processing so to in order to have a conscious experience, the association cortex takes this processed information and integrating it Grandmother cell theory: any given neuron that you have contains all of the information about a topic o In theory there is no cap on long term memory o Infinite variety in firing combinations Lesions to: o Frontal lobeapraxia (motor planning deficit) o Occipital or posterior parietal lobeagnosia (object identification problem) Prosopagnosia: face blindness (cant recognize faces) o Parietal lobeneglect syndrome (when you ignore one hemisphere of your body/visual field) o Left frontal lobeaphasia (language production problem) o prefrontal areaplanning, strategy problems

Neuroimaging techniques lesion: specific area of damage in the brain dissociation: one function is present while another is absent (single or double) Textbook Notes Capgras Syndrome: An Initial Example Capgras syndrome: seems to be one of the accompaniments to Alzheimers syndrome, the person can fully recognize the people in his or her world but is utterly convinced that these people are not who they appear to be (thinks the person they are talking to is an imposter and real family member or friend was kidnapped) Facial recognition involves two separate systems in the brain (cognitive appraisal and global, emotional appraisal)

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In Capgras the emotional appraisal is disturbed so the person looks like your friend or husband but doesnt trigger a warm, emotional response The neural basis for Capgras o Neuroimaging techniques: allow researchers to take highquality, 3D pictures of living brains without disturbing the owners of the brains o Capgras patients have damage in the temporal lobe which disrupts circuits involving the amygdala Amygdala: almond shaped structure that serves as an emotional evaluator and helps organisms to detect stimuli associated with threat or danger as well as positive stimuli that indicates safety and reward o Damage to the amygdala explains why there is no emotional response to other people in people with Capgras o People with Capgras also have damage in their prefrontal cortex Prefrontal cortex: especially active in tasks that require planning or careful analysis and is less active when someone is dreaming (explains why dreams are often

illogical and bizarre) o Damage to the prefrontal cortex explains why people with Capgras cannot distinguish imagination from reality The Study of the Brain The human brain weighs between 3 & 4 pounds Hindbrain, midbrain, and forebrain o Hindbrain: sits directly atop the spinal cord and includes several structures crucial for controlling key life functions, regulates the rhythm of heartbeat and breathing, plays a role in maintaining the bodys posture and balance , helps control brains level of alertness Cerebellum: largest area of the hindbrain, plays a role in coordination of bodily movements, balance, spatial reasoning, discriminating sounds and integrating the output received from various sensory systems

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o Midbrain: plays an important part in coordinating your movements (includes eye movements), relays auditory information form the ears to the areas of the forebrain where this information is processed and interpreted, regulates the experience of pain o Forebrain: largest region in humans, surrounds the entire midbrain and most of the hindbrain Cortex: the outer surface of the forebrain (aka the cerebral cortex), constitutes 80% of the brain, comprised of a very large sheet of tissue that is crumpled up and jammed into the limited space inside the skull Convolutions: the wrinkles in the brain caused by the wrinkling of the cortex Longitudinal fissure: runs form the front of the brain to the back and separates the left cerebral hemisphere from the right cerebral hemisphere o Fissures in the brain divide it into four lobes Frontal lobe: right behind the forehead Parietal lobe: the brains top most part, divided from the frontal lobe by the central fissure Temporal lobe: divided from the frontal lobe by the lateral fissure Occipital lobe: located at the very back of the brain, connected to the parietal and temporal lobes Subcortical structures o Thalamus: acts as a relay station for nearly all the sensory information going to the cortex o Hypothalamus: plays a crucial role in controlling motivated behaviors such as eating, drinking, and sexual activity o Limbic system: contains the thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala and the hippocampus o Amygdala and hippocampus: essential in learning and memory Lateralization

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o All parts of the brain come in pairs (whatever is on the left is o on the right) Commissures: thick bundles of fibers that carry information back and forth between the two hemispheres Corpus callosum: largest commissure, separates the right side of the brain from the left from neuropsychology Neuropsychology: the study of the brains structures and how they relate to brain function Lesion: a specific area of damage

Data o o

Data from neuroimaging o Old techniques Computerized axial tomography (CT scan): used to study the structure of the brain Positron emission tomography (PET scan): used to study the brains activity o New techniques Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): relies on the magnetic properties of the atoms that make up the brain tissue and yields detailed pictures of the brain Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): measures the oxygen content in the blood flowing through each region of the brain to track the level of neural activity in the brain from electrical recording Neurons do the brains main work Neurons communicate with each other using neurotransmitter Two types of communication = within the neuron and between the neuron

Data o o o

o Electroencephalography: a recording of the voltage changes occurring at the scalp that reflect activity in the brain underneath (produces electroencephalogram or an EEG) o Event-related potential: changes in EEG in the brief period just before, during, and after the event The power of combining techniques

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o Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): technique that creates a series of strong magnetic pulses at a specific location on the scalp causing a disruption in the brain region directly underneath this scalp area, provides crucial information about that brain area Localization of function: research effort aimed toward figuring out whats happening where within the brain The Cerebral Cortex Cerebral cortex is the region where an enormous amount of information processing takes place Divided into three areas: motor areas, sensory areas, and association areas Motor areas o Contain brain tissue crucial for organizing and controlling bodily movements o Primary projection areas: includes primary motor projection areas (departure points for signals leaving the cortex and controlling muscle movement) and primary sensory projection areas (arrival points for information coming from the eyes, ears, and other sense organs) o Contralateral control: right brain controls the left side of the body and left brain control the right side of the body Sensory areas o Contain tissue essential for organizing and analyzing the information we receive form the senses Association areas (association cortex) o Support many functions including thinking o These areas perform the task of associating simple idea and sensation in order to form more complex thoughts and behaviors o Apraxia: disturbance in the initiation or organization of voluntary action o Agnosia: disruption in the ability to identify familiar objects, usually affect one modality only o Neglect syndrome: the individual seems to ignore half of the visual world
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o Aphasia: disruption to language capacities Brain Cells Neurons and glia o Glia: help to guide the development of the nervous system in the fetus and young infant, support repairs if the nervous system is damaged, maintain and control the flow of electrical insulation surrounding parts of the neuron (myelin) o Neuron: makes possible the main flow of information though the brain Cell body: portion of the cell that contains the neurons nucleus and all the elements needed for the normal metabolic activities of the cell Dendrites: the input side of the neuron, receive signals from many other neurons, heavily branched Axon: the output side of the neuron and sends neural impulses to other neurons The synapse o Synapse: the end of the axon plus the tiny gap separating neurons plus the receiving membrane of the next neuron o Action potential: a signal that moves down its axon which in

turn causes the release of neurotransmitters at the next synapse, potentially causing the next cell to fire o All-or-none law: either a signal is sent down the axon or its not, if the signal is sent its always of the same magnitude o Transmission across a synapse slows down the neuronal signal but its better because it allows for many neurons to affect each other at the same time The Visual System The photoreceptors o o o o Reflected light launches the process of vision Parts of the eye include the cornea, lens, and retina Retina: light sensitive tissue that lines the back of the eyeball Photoreceptors: specialized neural cells that respond directly to the incoming light, types of photoreceptors include rods and cones

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o Rods: sensitive to lower levels of light and play an essential role in vision in semidarkness or dim light, color blind o Cones: less sensitive than rods and need much more incoming light to operate, sensitive to color differences, allow us to discern fine detail Acuity: the ability to see detail o Fovea: the very center of the retina, no rods are located here Lateral inhibition o Photoreceptors stimulate bipolar cells which in turn excite ganglion cells o Ganglion cells converge to form the optic nerve (the nerve tract that leaves the eyeball and carries information to various sites in the brain o Lateral geniculate nucleus: where information from the optic nerve is sent, info travels from here to the primary projection area for vision o Lateral inhibition: a pattern in which stimulated cells inhibit the activity of neighboring cells o Edge enhancement: helps the visual system to discern the shapes contained within the incoming visual information Single neurons and single-cell recording o Single-cell recording: a procedure through which investigators can record the pattern of electrical changes within a single neuron Multiple types of receptive fields o Center-surround cells: light presented to the central region of the receptive field has one influence and light presented to the surrounding ring has the opposite influence Parallel processing in the visual system o Area V1: the site on the occipital lobe where axons from the LGN first reach the cortex o Parallel processing: a system in which many different steps are going on simultaneously (its opposite is serial processing where steps are carried out one at a time) o Simultaneous processing allows for speed and mutual influence among multiple systems
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o Within the optic nerve there are P cells (provide the input for the LGNs parvocellular cells and appear to be specialized for spatial analysis and the detailed analysis of form) and M cells (provide the input for the LGNs magnocellular cells and are specialized for the detection of motion and the perception of depth) Binding problem: the task of reuniting the various elements of a scene, elements that are initially dealt with by different systems in different parts of the brain Visual maps and firing synchrony o Neural synchrony: if the neurons detecting a vertical line are firing in synchrony with those signaling movement, then these attributes are registered as belonging to the same object February 27th Chapter 3: Recognizing Objects Sensation vs. Perception Sensation: the experience of having your sense organs stimulated Perception: interpreting the sensations that are experienced Sensation vs. Perception evidence Difficult to interpret images (i.e. sensation without perception) o Ex: map of Europe turned on its side o Dont have perception until you identify the object Ambiguous images (i.e. images with multiple interpretations = same sensation with different people) o Ex: do you see a face or a man playing a saxophone? o Ex: being able to flip a cube with your eyes Rapid switching but never at the same time Filling-in (pattern completion) phenomena = perception that goes beyond perception o Blind spot: where the optic nerve leaves the eye We should have black spots in our visual fields

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Eyes are always moving so brain takes all of the images and puts them together to complete you vision

Visual perception Form perception: identify size and shape of object Object recognition: identify what the object is Why is object recognition crucial? o Recognition allows us to use our knowledge o Categorization to integrate new with old information Beyond the information given o Bottom-up processing: stimulus driven, your interpretation is o o influenced by the physical stimulus itself Top-down processing: knowledge/experience/expectations influences processing Ex: Dalmatian pic Bottom up: enough edges/lines, colors Top down: prior knowledge of what dogs (Dalmatians) look like Gestalt psychologists: the whole is different from the sum of its parts Ambiguous figures (bi stable images)

o o

o Figure/ground Figure: the object of your attention (typically only 1) Ground: the background Organization and features o Often assumed order of feature detection 1.) Collect stimulus information 2.) Interpret information Interpretation often happens before or in the absence of stimulus information Features (stimulus information) becomes available after reorganization o Features and interpretation are mutually influential Parallel processing: basic features and large-scale configuration are analyzed at the same time Different areas of the brain responsible for each are in constant communication

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The Logic of Perception Perception is influenced by priming o response to second stimulus is influenced by response to first (response to second stimulus is better) repetition priming: youll be faster the second time you see it semantic priming: youll respond faster when the second thing you see has relationship to the first How visual system constructs vision 1.) fit between stimulus and interpretation 2.) prefer simplest explanation Law Law Law Law 3.) perceptual system avoids interpretations that are coincidences of Pragnanz: law of simplicity, of similarity: of good continuation: of proximity:

Paper: Intro: law focuses on what is the truth A: how do people perceive the truth B: deception C: how to decide if someone is lying to you March 4th Object Recognition recognition: some early considerations o same object in different orientations o same object when partially occluded o different fonts template matching (template=guide/standard): when you encounter something in your environment you try to match it up with different templates stored in your brain, once you have a match you have identified your object no flexibility in template matching
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does a poor job in explaining how you can read

different fonts because there is variation in fonts does a poor job in explaining how you identify people because everyones features are different (wearing a different outfit, wear glasses vs. contacts, change hairstyle) o effect of context features o recognize object by integration of parts o feature: one of a small set of elements out of which more complicated patterns are composed a visual alphabet both features and letters are finite yet you can combine different features to make different objects and different letters to make words o feature integration theory: features are first analyzed and then combined to result in perception of an object an object is mentally disassembled first and then put together again based on features this is the same as distributive coding (vision) steps: objectpreattentive stage (analyze features)focused attention stage (combine features)perception o benefits of using features can explain perception of many different target types can account for perception of targets in which there is variation in the stimuli (ex: font size) the letter A will have certain characteristics that it will always have no matter the font features have priority in perception of world features take priority over the whole object visual search task you notice the messed up object first in a series takes longer the more features you view feature detection is separate from object recognition

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integrative agnosia (agnosia=object recognition impairment): can name features but not the object itself

Word Recognition factors influencing recognition o tachistoscopic presentations: briefly presenting stimuli (for fractions of a second), supposed to control presentation of stimulus o mask: interrupts continued processing of the stimulus, present a mask to eliminate the after image from the image before it to make processing of next image purer (way for a researcher to have control in experiment) o word frequency (familiarity): how often a word appears in the language, calculated by studying newspapers, books, movies, tv shows and counting the words when they appear high frequency words have higher reaction time than low frequency words o recency (priming repetition priming): if you have recently encounter a word and then you encounter it again you will process it more quickly the words we use change overtime (new words develop and old ones arent used anymore) the word superiority effect: easier to perceive letters when presented in the context of a word than when presented in isolation (ability to identify letters and not words) o perform better when letters are in the context of the work degrees of well-formedness o ex: e in fike vs. e in heft o perform better when word is formed like a real word o pronounceability o bigram frequency: (bigram is a combination of two letters) how often do two letters appear side by side ex: sp appears much more frequently than sb making errors o irregulars replaced with regulars but not vice versa ex: rametame, came, same

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o over-regularization errors: tendency to perceive the input as being more regular than what it is Feature Nets and Word Recognition design of a feature net

models of human behavior o getting networks to behave as a human being would behave o if you get it to work, you can see how the brain works o nodes and links o all networks have at least 3 layers bottom layer=input (information youre getting from your environment) middle layer(s)=hidden layer(s) (represent your brains processing) top layer=output (represents behavior) o different connection strengths o bottom up approach o influenced by input strength and current activation level

March 6th Feature nets and word recognition Design of a feature net

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o Whether or not a detector is active is influenced by input strength and current activation level (which is influenced by frequency and recency) Input strength = bottom up Current activation = top down o Words that are used more frequently already start partially activated (house vs. aardvark) Feature net and well-formedness o Difficulty of previous model explaining (PIRT vs. PTIR) Distributed knowledge

o Information/expectations not built into the network (i.e. not logically represented o Instead, distributed knowledge (patterns of activity across the nodes) Descendants of the feature net McClelland and Rumelhart Model o Word recognition, but no bigram detectors o Excitatory connections and inhibitory connections o Back propagation: higher nodes influence lower Recognition by components (RBC) o o o o Geons: geometric ion Lowest layer: geon feature detectors (edges, curves, etc.) Middle layer: geon detectors Upper layers: recognize geon assemblies (relations between geons); object model (full object)

Chapter 4: Paying Attention Selective Listening Shadowing Attended channel Unattended channel Dichotic listening Participants can describe physical characteristics of unattended channel, but not semantic content Some unattended inputs are detected

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o Cocktail party effect: words in unattended channel carrying personal importance are noticed Perceiving and the limits on cognitive capacity o Broadbents filter model

March 11th Selective blindness Inattentional blindness: failure to see when attention is directed elsewhere Conscious perception, unconscious perception o No conscious perception without attention Change blindness: inability to detect changes in scenes participants are directly looking at o If central to scene 12 exposures o If peripheral to scene 25+ exposures Intermediate Selection: Treismans Attenuation Theory Messagesattenuatordictionary unitto memory o Physical characteristics o Language o Meaning Attenuation theory Different words have different thresholds Early vs. late selection Perceptual or memory problem
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o Early-selection models Messages are filtered before theyre analyzed for meaning Filter for 1 specific message Determine meaning Evidence for early selection Distractor stimuli are unattended EEG studies: attended and unattended stimuli are distinguishable 60-70ms after presentation

Single cell recordings of neurons in primary visual cortex o Late-selection models Stimuli are selected for final processing until after they are analyzed for meaning Determine meaning of all presented messages Filter for meaning Evidence for late selection Unaware of distractors that still influence behavior Cognitive resources that are available are influenced by task

complexity Selective priming priming if detector has been used recently or frequently in the past priming from expectations cognitive resources needed for priming Posner and Snyder (1975) warning signal o neutral: + followed by AA o primed: A followed by AA o misled: A followed by CC validity o low validity = warning signal is bad indicator of test stimulus to follow o high validity = warning signal is good indicator of test stimulus to follow Chronometric studies and spatial attention
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spatial attention: ability to focus attention on specific area in space

Attending to objects or attending to positions location of attention may not be in line with where youre fixating o pay attention to objects rather than locations in space o unilateral neglect syndrome support for space based account March 13th Selective listening Divided Attending to objects or attending to positions attention: performing multiple tasks simultaneously Performing cognitive tasks taps into limited cognitive resources The specificity of resources o Verbal resources o Visual/spatial resources o Even tasks that tap different types of resources can interfere with each other Identifying general resources o Mental effort o Response selector: selects and initiates responses Coordinates timing of mental activities Can only initiate one response at a time Can do more than one task at a time, but slower and less efficient than f either was performed on its own Executive control as a limited resources o Executive control: task general mental resource; sets goals, chooses task priorities, and avoids conflict among competing habits or responses Maintains desired goal in mind Inhibits automatic or habitual responses o Working memory capacity influenced by executive control o Neural underpinnings Prefrontal cortex: goal maintenance Anterior cingulate: conflict detection Practice
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More complicated tasks demand more cognitive resources Effects of practice o More practiced tasks require fewer resources o Mental effort: practiced tasks establish habits, which dont require executive control o Response selector: practice leads to established sequences of events

Chapter 5: Acquisition of Memories and Working Memory System Questions about memory How do we get that stuff into our heads? o Encoding How do we hold that stuff in our heads? o Storage/retention How do we get that stud out of our heads? o Retrieval Why do we sometimes forget things? o Forgetting The route to memory Information processing: mental event happens in discrete steps o Output of one step ins the input for the next Modal model o Inputsensory memory (capacity is anything in the visual field)short-term memory (5-9 units, duration is about 30s)long-term memory (unlimited capacity and duration) o Everything enters your sensory memory but only what you are attending to will pass to your short term memory o Information must be passed back to short term memory before output (no direct connection from long term memory to output) o Sensory memory: all incoming information held for only a fraction of a second Sensory memory for visual information is iconic memory and for auditory information is echoic memory

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