Cognitive Processes Midterm 1

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Cognitive Psychology

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branch of psychology concerned with the scientific study of the mind

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cognition

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mental processes such as perception, attention and memory

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simple reaction time

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pushing a button quickly

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choice reaction time

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using two lights and asking his subjects 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

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structuralism

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our overall experience is determined ny combining elements of experience structuralists called sensations

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analytic introspection

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a technique in which subjects described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli

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savings

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Ebbinghaus experiment with memory. original time to learn the list-time to relearn the list after the delay

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savings curve

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memory drops rapidly for the first two days after the initial learning and then levels off.

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cognitive map

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a conception within the rat's mind of the maze's layout

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cognitive revolution

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a shift in psychology from the behaviorist's stimuli-response relationships to an approach whose main thrust was to understand the operation of the mind

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information-processing approach

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an approach that traces sequences of mental operations involved in studying cognition

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structural models

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representations of a physical structure

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perception

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experiences resulting from stimulation of the senses

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inverse projection problem

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the task of determining the object responsible for a particular image on the retina

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viewpoint invariance

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the ability to recognize an object seen from different viewpoints

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bottom-up processing

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sequence of events from the eye to the brain

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top down processing

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processing that originates in the brain

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speech segmentation

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able to tell when one word ends and the next one begins

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direct pathway model

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pain occurs when receptors in the skin called nonciceptors are stimulated and the send their signals in a direct pathway from the skin to the brain

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likelihood principle

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we perceive the object that is most likely to have caused the pattern of stimuli we have received

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unconscious inference

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our perceptions are the result of unconscious assumptions or inferences that we make about the environment

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apparent movement

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movement is perceived although nothing is actually happening

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law of pragnanz, principle of good figure, or the principle of simplicity

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every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as possible

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physical regularities

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regularities occurring physical properties of the environment

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oblique effect

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we can perceive horizontals and verticals more easily than other orientations

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semantic regularities

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characteristics associated with the functions carried out in different types of scenes

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scene schema

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knowledge of what a given scene typically contains

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Bayesian inference

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our estimate of the probability of an outcome is determined by two factors:

1. the prior probability

2. the extent to which the available evidence is consistent with the outcome

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experience-dependent plasticity

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the mechanism through which the structure of the brain is changed by experience

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brain ablation

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removing part of the brain

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distraction

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one stimulus interfering with the processing of another stimulus

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divided attention

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paying attention to more than one thing at a time

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attentional capture

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a rapid shifting of attention usually caused by a stimulus such as a loud noise, bright light, or sudden movement

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visual scanning

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movements of the eyes from one location or object to another

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dichotic listening

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presenting different stimuli to the left and right ears

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cocktail party effect

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the ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli

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early selection model

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the filter eliminated the unattended information right at the beginning of the flow of information

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attenuator

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represents a process and is not identified with a specific brain structure

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attenuation model of attention

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language and meaning can also be used to separate the messages

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dictionary unit

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contains words, stored in memory, each of which has a threshold for being activated

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late selection models of attention

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most of the incoming information is processed to the level of meaning before the message to be further processed is selected

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processing capacity

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the amount of information people can handle and sets a limit on their ability to process incoming information

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perceptual load

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the difficulty of the task

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low load tasks

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use up only a small amount of a person's processing capacity

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high load tasks

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use more of a person's processing capacity

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load theory of attention

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the circle represents the person's processing capacity and the shading represents the portion that is used up by a task

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overt attention

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shifting attention from one place to another by moving the eyes

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fixation

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pausing on a face

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saccadic eye movement

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a rapid, jerky movement from one fixation to the next

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stimulus salience

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bottom up processing

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covert attention

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we can direct our attention while keeping our eyes stationary

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inattentional blindness

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not attending to something that is clearly very

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change blindness

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the difficulty in detecting changes in scenes

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blinding

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the process by which features such as color, form, motion , and location are combined for our perception

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feature integration theory

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tackles the question of how were perceive individual features

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preattentive stage

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objects are analyzed into separate features

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focused attention phase

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the features of the object are combined and we perceive the object

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Balint's spectrum

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inability to focus attention on attentional or individual objects.

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language

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a system of communication using sounds or symbols that enables us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences

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psycholinguistics

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the field concerned with the psychological study of language

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lexicon

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a person's knowledge of what words mean, how they sound, and how they are used in relation to other words

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phonemes

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shortest segment of speech that, if changed, changes the meaning of a word

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morphemes

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refer to meanings and are the smallest units of language that have a definable meaning or a grammatical function

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phonemic restoration effect

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occurs when phonemes are perceived in speech when the sound of the phoneme is covered by an extraneous noise

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speech segmentation

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our ability to perceive individual words even though there are often no pauses between words in the sound signal

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word superiority effect

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refers to finding that letters are easier to recognize when they are contained in a nonword

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corpus of language

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indicated the frequency of which different words are used and the frequency of different meanings and grammatical structures in the language

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word frequency effect

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we respond more rapidly to higher frequency words like home than to low frequency words like hike

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lexical ambiguity

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the existence of multiple word meanings

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meaning dominance

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the fact that some meanings of words occur more frequently than others

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biased dominance

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when words have two or more meanings with different dominances

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balanced dominance

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when a word has more than one meaning but the meanings have about the same dominance

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semantics

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meanings of words

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syntax

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specifies the rules for combining words into sentences

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broca's aphasia

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slow, labored, ungrammatical speech caused by damage to the broca's area

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Wernicke's aphasia

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speech that was fluent and grammatically correct, but tended to be incoherent

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parsing

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grouping of words into phrases

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garden path sentences

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they begin appearing to mean one thing but then end up meaning something else

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temporal ambiguity

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the initial words of the sentence are ambiguous

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late closure

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when a person encounters a new word, the person's parsing mechanism assumes that the word is part of the current phrase, so each new word is added to the current phrase for as long as possible

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interactionist approach to parsing

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information provided by both syntax and semantics is taken into account simultaneously as we read or listen to a sentence

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visual word paradigm

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involves determining how subjects process information as they are observing a visual scene.

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inference

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determining what the text means by using our knowledge to go beyond the information provided in the text

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coherence

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the representation of the text in a person's mind so that information in one part of the text is related to information in another part of the text

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anaphoric inferences

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inferences that connect an object or person in one sentence to an object or person in another sentence

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instrument inferences

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inferences about tools or methods

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causual inferences

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inferences that events described in one clause or sentence were caused by events in a previous sentence

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situational model

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a mental representation of what a text is about

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given-new contract

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states that a speaker should construct sentences so that they include given information and new information

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common ground

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the speaker's mutual knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions

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syntactic coordination

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the process by which people use similar grammatical constructions

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synatactic priming

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hearing a statement with a particular syntactic construction increased the chances that a sentence will be produced with the same construction

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Sapir-Wolfe hypothesis

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the nature of a culture's language can effect the way people think