This document contains all the information needed for the first Cognition and Behavior sub-exam. The document contains a summary of the material from the book, the notes to the lectures and the important information from the research assignments.
Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of the mind. The
mind creates and controls mental functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions,
language, deciding, thinking and reasoning. This indicates different types of cognition. The mind has
a central role in determining our various mental abilities. Many of the processes involved operate
outside the conscious control. The mind is a system that creates representation of the world so that
we can act within to achieve our goals. This indicates something about how the mind operates. The
mind is important for functioning and survival. In the 1800s, ideas about the mind were dominated
by the belief that it is not possible to study the mind, because it is not possible for the mind to study
itself and the idea that properties of the mind simply cannot be measured. Donders was interested in
determining how long it takes for a person to make a decision. He measured reaction time: How long
it takes to respond to the presentation of a stimulus. First he measured simple reaction time by
asking his participants to push a button as rapidly as possible when they saw a light go on. In
addition, he measured choice reaction time by using two lights and asking his participants to push
the left button when they saw the left light go on, and the right button when they saw the right light
go on. Presenting the stimulus (the light) causes a mental response (perceiving the light), which leads
to a behavioral response (pushing the button). Donders reasoned that the difference in reaction time
between these tasks would indicate how long it took participants to make the decision that led to
pushing the correct button. This experiment was one of the first cognitive psychology experiments
and showed that mental responses cannot be measured directly, but must be inferred from
behavior. Structuralism (Wundt): our overall experience is determined by combining basic elements
of experience which are called sensations. Wundt wanted to create a scientific description of the
components of experience by using analytic introspection: a technique in which trained participants
described their sensations, feelings and thought processes in response to stimuli. Wundt is seen by
many as leading the shift in the study of the mind from the rationalist approach to the empiricist
approach: emphasizing the pivotal role of experiments in gaining knowledge about the human mind.
Ebbinghaus was interested in determining the nature of memory and forgetting – specifically, how
rapidly information that is learned is lost over time. Ebbinghaus proposed a measure called savings.
This put in a savings curve shows that memory could be quantified and that functions like the savings
curve could be used to describe a property of the mind. William James’ observations were based on
the operation of his own mind. He observed that paying attention to one thing involves withdrawing
from other things. Behaviorism: the strict study of stimulus-response or input-output relationships.
Watson became dissatisfied with the method of analytic retrospection, because it produced
extremely variable results from person to person and the results were difficult to verify. Observable
behavior is the main topic of study. Watson showed that classical conditioning applied to human
behavior and he used the idea of classical conditioning to argue that behavior can be analyzed
without any reference to the mind. Skinner introduced operant conditioning: how behavior is
strengthened by the presentation of positive reinforces. One general critique was that a simple
stimulus-response theory cannot explain that people often respond to different aspects of the same
stimulus event, and which aspect that is, is not known until the response is made because we don’t
know the meaning it has to the individual. Tolman’s research: even though the rat had previously
been rewarded for turning right, its cognitive map indicated that it should turn left to reach the food.
The use of the word cognitive, and the idea that something other than stimulus-response
connections might be occurring in the rat’s mind, placed Tolman outside of mainstream behaviorism.
,Skinner argued that children learn language through operant conditioning. Noam Chomsky pointed
out that children say many sentences that have never been rewarded by parents. Chomsky saw
language development as an inborn biological program that holds across cultures. To understand
complex behavior, it is necessary not only to measure observable behavior but also to consider what
this behavior tells us about how the mind works. The 1950s is the beginning of the cognitive
revolution: a shift in psychology from the behaviorist’s stimulus-response relationships to an
approach whose main response was to understand the operation of the mind. Computers processed
information in stages. Information-processing approach: traces sequences of mental operations
involved in cognition. The operation of the mind can be described as occurring in a number of stages.
Applied to Cherry’s dichotic listening experiment, “input” would be the sounds of both the attended
and unattended messages; the “filter” lets through the unattended message and filters out the
unattended message; and the “detector” records the information that gets through the filter.
Artificial intelligence (John McCarthy) making a machine behave in ways that would be called
intelligent if a human were so behaving. Logic theorist (Newell and Simon): create proofs of
mathematical theorems that involved principles of logic. George Miller disclosed stringent limitations
to the processing capacity of the human mind. He focused on basic perceptual skills, and, inspired by
computational science, he started using the term bits. He reasoned that, to enable further
processing, memory processing must actively recode the information that is carried in complex
stimuli into smaller units. Memory is not just a passive store of sensory information. The mind as a
computer metaphor. In contrast to behaviorism, cognitive psychology accepts the existence of
unobserved (cognitive) processes that can be scientifically studied via the creation and evaluation of
mental models.
Models are representations of structures or processes that help us visualize or explain the structure
or process. Structural models are representations of a physical structure. One purpose of models is
to simplify. Such models however do not tell you how these structures are involved in the specific
functions that cognitive psychologists are interested in. Process models represent the processes that
are involved in cognitive mechanisms, with boxes usually representing specific processes and arrows
indicating connections between processes. Resource models focus on the mental “effort” or the
“resources” that these processes require. When a process uses a lot of effort or can only obtain this
effort from a limited resource, a capacity problem can arise leading to ineffective functioning of the
process. Another idea that plays a role in these models is that processes often share resources and
therefore have to compete for them. Multiple resource model: The first dimension is the stages of
processing dimension, distinguishing between perception and cognition processes on the one hand
and responding on the other. The second dimension has to do with codes of processing, indicating
that spatial activities require different resources than verbal/linguistic activities. The third dimension
refers to modalities, indicating hat auditory perception uses different resources than visual
perception.
Spacing and interleaving: repeated presentation and reviewing of information facilitates learning and
improves memory. When distributed over time (spacing), repetition may initially lead to slower
learning but will ensure more durable retention. Intermixing different topics within a particular
domain (interleaving) will improve performance.
Retrieval-based learning: the act of retrieving information might be beneficial for learning (Roediger
and Karpicke). Fast learning results in fast forgetting and that retrieval practice is very beneficial in
the long run. Retrieving makes the remembered information more retrievable.
Note taking and elaboration: Taking notes by hand led to superior performance in tests of factual and
conceptual understanding. Students who used their laptop for note taking were just simply
, transcribing content without thinking about it. Elaboration and active involvement with the materials
is necessary for efficient learning.
Cognitive psychologists also measure physiological processes that underlie that behavior.
Module 5.1 Kalat
How far you see, depends on how far the light travels before it strikes the eyes. Light rays bounce off
an object in all directions, but you see only those rays that reflect off the object and strike your
retina. Your brain encodes the information in a way that doesn’t resemble what you see. The brain
codes information largely in terms of which neurons are active, and how active they are at any
moment. The law of specific nerve energies: whatever excites a particular nerve, establishes a
special kind of energy unique to that nerve.
Light enters the eye trough the pupil. It is focused by the lens (adjustable) and cornea (not
adjustable) and projected onto the retina, the rear surface of the eye, which is lined with visual
receptors. The visual system codes the image by various kinds of neuronal activity. In the vertebrate
retina, messages go from the receptors at the back of the eye to bipolar cells. The bipolar cells send
their messages to ganglion cells. The ganglion cells’ axons join together and travel back to the brain.
Amacrine cells get information from bipolar cells and send it to other bipolar, ganglion and amacrine
cells. Amacrine cells refine the input to ganglion cells, enabling certain ones to respond mainly to
particular shapes, directions of movement, changes in lightning, color, and other visual features. The
ganglion cell axons join to form the optic nerve that exits through the back of the eye. The point at
which it leaves is a blind spot because it has no receptors. You don’t notice the blind spot, because
your brain fills in the gap, and anything in the blind spot of one eye is visible to the other eye. The
fovea is an area specialized for acute, detailed vision. Because blood vessels and ganglion cell axons
are almost absent near the fovea, it has nearly unimpeded vision. The tight packing of receptors aids
perception of detail. Each receptor in the fovea connects to a single bipolar cell, which connects to a
single ganglion cell that has an axon to the brain. The ganglion cells in the fovea of humans and other
primates are called midget ganglion cells because each is small and responds to just a single cone.
That is, each cone in the fovea has a direct route to the brain. Because the midget ganglion cells
provide 70% of the input to the brain, your vision is dominated by what you see in and near the
fovea. Toward the periphery of the retina, more and more receptors converge onto bipolar and
ganglion cells. Foveal vision has better acuity (sensitivity to detail), and peripheral vision has better
sensitivity to dim light. In the periphery, your ability to detect detail is limited by interference from
other nearby objects.
The vertebrate retina contains two types of
receptors: rods and cones. The rods, abundant in
the periphery of the human retina, respond to faint
light but are not useful for daylight because bright
light bleaches them. Cones, abundant in and near
the fovea, are less active in dim light, more useful in
bright light, and essential for color vision. Because of
the distribution of rods and cones, you have good
color vision in the fovea but not in the periphery.
Both rods and cones contain photopigments,
chemicals that release energy when struck by light.
Photopigments consist of 11-cis-retinal bound to
proteins called opsins, which modify the
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