01/09/24, intro

what is cognition?
- the act of thinking and effects on behaviour
- encompasses cognitive psych, neuro, and comp modelling
- nuisance variable: things that effect the length between IV and DV
→ ex. hypothesis: seeing an image of a cute dog makes ice cream taste better
- pupil size is a good indicator of cognitive load (when answering harder questions, the pupils dilate)

historical approaches to studying cognition

- ancient greece: rationalism and empiricism
→ locus of the mind (sensations, memory) and the basis of human personality was a focus of research
→ analytic approach to understanding the mind by breaking it down into parts to study it
- plato
→ introduced the idea of the psyche, first to consider the mind
→ came up with rationalism: we have innate knowledge that effects how we experience the world, meaning the world we
experience is a reflection of our individual realities (knowledge is the result of observation and prior reasoning, slide 11)
- aristotle
→ all knowledge comes from experience and we know nothing before observation (nurture, no nature)
→ we form associations between stimuli after observation in order to form thought
- early psychology: structuralism and functionalism
- structuralism
→ identifying the basic building blocks of complex thought or the conscious experience
→ emphasized the systematic, controlled observation for understanding the structure of the mind
→ introspection: self reporting on inner thoughts and observations
- wilhelm wundt
→ goal: to identify to simplest units of the mind that followed certain laws (like the periodic table)
→ used experimental self reporting and chronometry1
- functionalism
→ why does the mind work?
→ uninterested in breaking down mental states to basic elements
→ cognition is about serving a function and adapts to current and changing goals
→ criticisms: how do you tackle/study something that’s ever-changing?
- william james
→ pragmatic: opposed to searching for the basic mental elements
→ consciousness is personal and constantly changing, one will never have the same idea or through twice
→ eclectic2 methodological approach: study the usefulness and variability of accessing knowledge in the real world rather
than trying to break it down into parts (what’s the point of thinking?)
- 1900s: behaviourism then cognitive psych
- behaviourism
→ shifting focus from the mind to behaviour and using the scientific method to do so
→ focus of what can be observed, not the mental processes behind it

1
estimating the time it would take for a participant to respond to a stimulus
2
deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources
→ heavy focus on animal research because of a higher level of control (assumption that animals a similar)
→ criticisms: cannot account for complex human behaviour and assumes that learning is the same for all individuals and
across all species (ex. languages learning)
- pavlov
→ classical conditioning: learning to make association between a cue, a stimulus, and response
→ pavlov’s dog
- thorndike and skinner
→ instrumental learning/operant conditioning: non-reflexive behaviours that are strengthened and weakened by consequences
(thorndike/skinner)

cognitive revolution/early views

→starting to use scientific methods to observe mental states and their effects of behaviour
→ the mind is a processor of information (computer comparison)
→ computer interpretation: requires input in order to produce output, uses processing systems that change information in
systematic ways
- primary and secondary memory
→ when you first encounter stimulus, it is held temporarily in primary memory, and after enough rehearsal, it moves into
secondary memory (long term, different computations)
→ the amount of information we can hold has limits and needs to be repeated or it will be forgotten
- why process information?
→ human distaste for uncertainty, the more uncertain something is, the harder it takes to process
→ the amount of info processed is inversely related to how much we expect that information to occur (if we don’t know what
to expect, we have to process more)
→ ex. which requires more processing to answer?
the zebra has black and white ________
the zebra ran through the ________
→ the more possible answers, the more info we have to sift through to find the best answer
→ hicks law: the information there is to process, the longer it takes to make a response to that information
- choice overload bias
→ a great number of choice (netflix) taxes the information process and results in reduced satisfaction, lower confidence in the
choice you eventually make, and more regret
- decision fatigue
→ decisions become harder and harder to make throughout the day/the more you make
→ more effective to make important decisions earlier in the morning and delegate effort to more important choice rather than
spending energy on unimportant things

ecological validity
- do we act the same way in computer experiments and in the real world?
→ highly controlled, artificial stimuli
→ how do we relate what we learn in such artificial circumstance to what happens in the real world?
01/11/24, the mind and brain

dualism
- dualism
→ the mind and body are distinct, fundamentally different substances of equal importance
- interactionism
→ the two entities interact with one another
→ one can induce events in the other (ex. hormones affect cognition or thinking affects brain activity)
- rene descartes, 1600’s
→ idea that the pineal gland is the ‘principle seat of the soul’ and is where the mind and body connect
- epiphenomenalism
→ mental thoughts are caused by physical events, but not the other way around
→ a one way interaction
→ mental events are like steam coming off of a train; the steam does not affect the train even though it is a separate entity
(the train is the body/the physical)

monism
- monism
→ only one entity exists, the mind and body are ‘reflections of the same thing’
→ neutral monism: the underlying nature is not mental or physical, but something in between/neutral
- idealism
→ everything is a mental construct
→ without mental processing, there is no physical representation of reality
- materialism
→ everything is physical, only physical matter exists
→ all thoughts are a result of physical events
→ meaning for cognition we should focus on the brain in order to understand the mind

brain structure
→ neurons: cells that receive and transmit messages
→ nerves: bundles of axons that carry information along distances between neurons
(travel up the spinal cord f.e.)
→ glial cells: support cells for neurons
- phrenology
→ certain parts of the brain (and their size) can correspond with the mental function and
personality of an individual
→ false assumption that highly developed functions have larger areas
- functional localization
→ fusiform face area: could it be a functional specialisation for recognizing faces? or is it a part fo the brain that’s good at
discriminating between things that we have expertise in (faces)
study methods
- behavioural measurements
→ hicks experiment, measuring reactions, voluntary reactions and actions as well as involuntary responses (reflexes, pupil
dilation, etc.)
→ measure activity in the PNS in response to things that we perceive or imagine (CNS)
→ ex: eye movement, body gesture, skin conductance (amygdala activity relates to skin conductance)
- behavioural neuroscience methods
→ animal models: lesions/stimulate certain areas of the brain and observe behaviour afterwards
→ not very focused on cognition
- cognitive neuroscience models
→ real patient cases using neuroimaging tools (fMRI, MRI, PET, etc.)

chapter 4: perception

sensation
- interoception
→ proprioception: the sense of knowing where our limbs are in accordance with the rest of our body
→ nociception: the sense of pain due to bodily damage
→ equilibrioception: our sense of balance in different body positions
- receptors
→ chemoreceptors: found in the nose and mouth, respond to chemicals, lead to taste and smell
→ mechanoreceptors: stimulated by physical force, found in the skin, detect pressure, air vibrations
→ thermoreceptors: stimulated by heat and cold, found in the skin and other internal organs
→ photoreceptors: responds to light (contrast and hue), more light leads to less neurotransmitter release

01/16/24, neuroimaging tools in perception

neuroimaging techniques
- EEG
→ event-related potentials: ERPs
→ attaching electrodes to scalp and electrical activity (ERP) is measured during the performance of task
→ can’t pinpoint where activity is happening, but is very good for knowing when it happens
→ must perform a lot of trials because a lot of different things can effect ERP signals
- fMRI
→ a magnet detects changes in oxygenated blood (blood flows to neurons that are being used)
→ detects ratios of oxygen in different areas of the brain, is good for pinpointing where activity takes place
→ strengths: good spatial resolution, lots of replication and validation
→ weaknesses: poor temporal resolution (when), assumptions about neural activity based of oxygenated blood
- structural MRI
→ measures structure and function of the brain (anatomy)
→ stands for magnetic resonance imaging
- brain stimulation techniques
→ sending short, magnetic pulses into the brain that affect neurons and connected brain circuits
→ tms can improve memory function
→ good to test causality rather than just correlation

sensation and perception

- process of perception
→ stimulus energy, sensory receptors, neural impulses, brain
- different sensations
→ exteroceptive sensation: results from stimulus located outside the body (detected by eyes, ears, skin, etc.)
- synaesthesia: neurological condition when one sense automatically triggers another: being able to hear colours, smell
sounds, see time
→ synaesthesia is more common in women
→ grapheme-colour synesthesia: colours go with certain letters or numbers
→ chromesthesia: sound provoking the experience of colour

visual perception
- mcgurk effect: you hear what you see (reading someones lips can effect what you hear, the dif. between f and b)
- photoreceptors
→ cones will be concentrated in the central part of the visual field (center of your visual field)
→ rods are concentrated in your periphery (peripheral vision, low acuity)
- perceptual filling-in
→ the periphery is filled in by visual processes

visual processing in the brain

- thalamus
→ the way station
→ optic nerve relays information to both hemispheres, but crosses over each side in the middle
- primary visual cortex
→ specialised regions that process different things: edges, angles, colour, light
→ simple visual signals
→ all happens at the same time
- late visual processing
→ visual association area: interprets information acquired through the primary visual cortex
→ primary visual cortex:
→ what pathway: the ventral stream takes info from occipital lobe to the temporal lobes
→ shape, size, visual details
→ damage: object recognition is impaired
→ where pathway: the dorsal pathway takes info from occipital to parietal lobes
→ location, space, movement info
→ damage: where things are and picking them up
→ bottom-up: eyes to the brain, external information to conclusion
→ top-down: when we engage our previous knowledge to deduce perception
01/18/24, perception part 2

review: non-visual senses

- touch
→ mechanoreceptors respond to stim. through the spine to the somatosensory cortex
- olfaction
→ chemoreceptors go directly to the brain without the thalamus
→ smell has a stronger link to memory and emotions
→ smell is linked to early signs of dementia
- taste
→ taste buds are on the tongue, palate, pharynx, and upper esophagus
→ first the thalamus then the primary gustatory cortex and other areas like PFC and reward system
→ flavour is affected by other senses: red asso. with sweetness and green asso. with bitterness

constructivist theory of perception

- top down model that uses our previous knowledge to guide perception (not passive?)
- unconscious inferences to interpret and to predict sensory data
- munker white illusion
→ the brightness context changes how we perceive colour
- gestalt organisational principles
→ experience: seeing what we’re experienced with within ambiguous figures (the old hag or the young woman illusion)
→ proximity: things that are close together are grouped together
→ closed forms: finding shape in unfinished forms
→ good contour: yk
→ similarity: things that are visually similar are grouped together

direct models
- there’s enough information in the external world that we don’t need top down processing to figure things out
- a passive bottom up processing view
- JJ gibson
→ need to study perception in the real world in order to understand it
→ ambient optical array (AOA): the shit form the outside world that allows us to perceive (not in the mind)
- cues in the AOA
→ topographical breakages: discontinuity in an image helps to see edges and define objects
→ scatter reflection: the way in which light reflects off of an object tells us info about the surface
→ texture gradients: nearer means closer together and farther away mean farther apart
- affordances: cues indicate potential function of an object

damage in the PVC

- blindsight
→ can’t consciously perceive things, but can non-consciously process some information
→ proves that there is something we are intaking even if we’re unaware and perceptual awareness is on a continuum
→ there may be other pathways for visual information to bypass the PVC
 - damage to dorsal where pathway
→ spatial information and depth perception and estimating movement and direction of object
→ we use that info to guide how we move through our environment
→ causes akinetopsia: cannot see motion, everything looks like choppy stop motion
→ causes ataxia: object ataxia is difficulty reaching for objects or pouring milk or shit like that
- damage to ventral what pathway
→ difficulties recognizing objects
→ causes visual agnosia
→ difficulties can be selective to certain categories, like prosopagnosia where you can see faces at all (damage to the FFA)
- subtypes of agnosia
→ apperceptive agnosia: problems perceiving objects (faces, objects), can see things but can’t copy it down or create
perceptions based on it, but can recall/copy memories of the objects
→ associative agnosia: cannot associate input with meaning, can’t link visual info with their memory stores
- theories of visual object recognition
→ visual input is broken up into parts
→ each part is stored separately as a separate thing
→ template matching theory: every object has a template in long term memory to which it is compared to identify it, but
cannot explain the ability to recognize objects with shifts of angles and perspectives, too computationally demanding
→ prototype theory: not as strict, there’s a loose understanding of what something looks like and we go from there

january 23: auditory cognition

what are soundwaves?

- characteristics of sound waves

- the outer ear

→ outer ear collects soundwaves (pinna)
→ ear canal carries the waves into the inner ear
- middle ear
→ transferring and amplifying
→ ear drum is the boundary between the two parts of the ear, connected to the ossicles
→ ossicles: malleus, incus, and stapes
- hearing aids
→ stick them inside your ear and do the job of amplification
- inner ear
→ cochlea
→ basilar membrane
→ auditory nerve
→ fixed with cochlear implant that directly stimulates the auditory nerve and bypasses everything else

perceiving sound
- pitch → frequency
- loudness → amplitude (high amplitude, high volume)
- location → waves hit the ear at different times and the loudness is different for each ear too
- auditory objects → prior experience can help decipher ambiguous sounds
- emotion → different sound give us different emotions

mama heather’s research

- misophonia
→ disorder of decreased tolerance to specific sounds, they can be triggered emotionally and physiologically
→ why eating sounds make people angry
→ broad effects, not just with nose/mouth “gross” sounds but also with typing or nature sounds
→ the source of the sound matters (human chewing vs. turtle chewing)
→ physiological reactions like heartbeat and sweating increases

chapter 5: attention

attention
- inattentional blindness: the inability to notice stimuli that is unexpected due to attention being focused elsewhere
(there is also such thing as inattentional deafness)
- attention as a filter
→ selective attention: paying attention to one thing at the expense of all others
→ cocktail party effect: being able to attend to a specific voice in an environment where other, competing voices are present
→ dichotic listening task: participants wore headphones while different sound streams are presented in left and right ears and
were told to repeat words that were said into one ear and ignore the other ear
- types of attention
→ exogenous attention: things that grab your attention externally
→ endogenous attention: things that you are consciously trying to pay attention
- spatial neglect
→ unable to attend to the spatial attentional region on a certain side of their body (right side damage, left side deficits)
→ effects mental images as well (cannot draw things from memory)
→ neglected side of the world doesn’t exist to them and is outside of their awareness
→ deficit of attention, not vision (if you blindfold them and ask them to search for something, they’d only search one side)
- actively searching for something is a top-down task, involving the frontal eye fields

top-down attention
- sustained attention
→ maintaining focus on one input for a long period of time
- divided attention
→ shifting attentional focus between multiple tasks, like multitasking
- selective attention
→ focusing on one input and ignoring other information
→ why do we have it? because we have limited attention resources and we are picky with what we need/care to know
→ theories
1. early selection filter models → we filter out info early on in the pipeline at the level of perception (don’t process any
information that your not paying attention to for meaning)
2. attenuator →
3. late selection filter models
4. load theory

the locus of attentional filtering

- how far does unattended information go in the brain before it’s rejected in favour of the attentional information?
→ attention does not affect sensory input (the fact that sound waves will travel through your ears)

february 1st: attention pt.2

filter models
- early selection models: information is filtered at perception
- late selection models: information is filtered at meaning
- attenuator theory: important information is processed for meaning
→ attended information will always be fully processed, unlike unattended information, but meaningful stimuli can push
through and be processed even if it’s not attended to, like names or sirens (but you physically cannot focus on two things at
once)
- load theory: extra resources are used to process distracting info
→ flanker task: search for letter X or N under different loads of distraction
→ finding something in a busy environment is difficult because things take up processing abilities
→ central resource capacity view: one resource pool from which all senses pull (touch, sight, audio)
→ multiple resource capacity view: the senses have different attentional pools they can draw from

limits of attention
- change blindness
→ inability to see changes in information that you are not attending to
→ measuring it with the flicker technique paradigm: two similar images are flashed on a screen and part.s can’t find
- inattentional blindness
→ inability to see when something new appears in an unattended area
→ even if you don’t consciously notice it, your brain picks it up (may not process meaning)

february 12th: memory part 1

what does memory do?

- routines and habits
→ brushing your teeth or riding a bike, which is procedural memory
- sense of self
→ remember things about ourselves and our own behaviour that define who we are
- social functions
- solving problems

sensory memory
- sensory memory
→ has a big capacity for information but has a very short time limit (up to a second)
- three stages of memory
→ encoding (forming a new neural pattern): memory trace is formed as a hippocampal-cortical activity pattern; the
hippocampus decides where a memory is stored
→ storage (retaining the memory trace/neural code): after time a memory can become independent of the hippocampus
→ retrieval
- multi-store model
- sensory memory
→ lasts a second, information is not transferred and is lost; automatic reflections of a sense
→ short term memory: lasts about 30 seconds, information not transferred is still lost, gained through rehearsal
→ long term memory; includes implicit (procedural and priming) and explicit (episodic and semantic)
- persistence of vision
→ positive afterimage: looking away and having a visual memory in the same colours (lasts fractions of a second and is there
to help with motion continuity)
→ negative after image: looking away and seeing the colours but inverse (staring at something so intently that your
photoreceptors become overstimulated and the others come into play)

short term memory

- attended information moves from sensory to short term memory
- goes to the prefrontal cortex
- serial position effects
→ the order in which you learn effects how well you remember it
→ primacy effect: the first thing you learn or the first item in a list will be easier to memorize but it’s rehearsed more
→ recency effect: the last thing you heard is also easy to remember because it was committed to short term memory (will not
work after a minute or two because that’s when you move into long term memory territory)
- remembering items
→ 7 is the max that we can memorize easily
→ chunking is putting items together that have meaning to you
→ ex. instead of “ca tdo ghe n” you do “cat dog hen”
- working memory model
→ the phonological loop: passive store for verbal information (inner ear), and the articulatory control loop: active rehearsal
of verbal information (inner voice) which plays a big part in turning written code into something aloud
→ the visuospatial sketch pad: visual cache, information about visual features; the inner scribe, info about the spatial
location, movement, and sequences
→ brain injury can directly effect components of these two things
→ episodic buffer: integrates information from short and long term memory and bringing it into conscious awareness
long term memory
- encoding
→ ebbinghaus tested how he could remember sets of nonsense syllables, using no prior knowledge to improve memory
- level of processing theory
→ shallow: focus on sensory information without applying it to anything more with meaning
→ deep: applying information to life experience or something with higher meaning
→ rogers experiment: structural (capital letters) and phonemic (if it rhymed with another word) were shallow; semantic
(think of a synonym) and self-reference (think of it referencing yourself) are deep
→ significantly better memory when linking information to yourself
- mnemonics
→ organizational strategies to help enode information (ex. chunking, visual cues, acronyms)

february 15th: memory part 2

review
- multi-store model
→ sensory includes iconic, echoic, and haptic memory (iconic: visual, echoic: auditory, haptic: tactile)
→ short term: attentional control and working memory (working memory is the retention and manipulation of information
with conscious awareness using separate components for the senses)
→ episodic buffer retrieves information from the long term memory stores
- deep encoding
→ generation effect (active rehearsal) is practice testing and the fact that generating information yourself is more effective for
memory than only rereading or consuming the information

forgetting
- decay theory
→ memories are lost over time due to disuse, like a muscle that you don’t use so it becomes small and atrophies
- interference theory
→ memories are labile3 and need to be consolidated into stable long term memories, and before they are consolidated (post
encoding period), it’s possible for something to interfere and effect the memory (leads to forgetting)
→ not exclusive to the decay theory
→ retroactive interference: newly learned information interferes with prior learned info (a hard time remembering an old
password after you’ve made a new one)
→ proactive interference: prior information interferes with encoding a new memory (ex. trying to memorize your new phone
number but your old number keeps popping into your head)
→ similarity effects: the more similar the interference is to the original info, the harder the OG info will be to remember

encoding specificity hypothesis

- memory retrieval is better when there is overlap with the context
→ your mood, food, external environment
→ state-dependant learning: if your mental state when recalling information is the same as when it was encoded, you will
have an easier time and do better, even if the state is generally not great for learning (drunk and drunk is better than drunk and
sober)
3
liable to change
episodic and semantic memory
- hippocampus
→ children with hippocampal damage showed episodic memory impairment like not being able to copy an image after delay
→ semantic memory was left intact with normal factual knowledge
- semantic dementia
→ damage to temporal lobes will cause semantic dementia but will generally leave episodic memory intact
→ impaired ability at name and picture matching tasks
- patient KC
→ severe episodic memory loss
- anoetic consciousness
→ implicit type of memory when you have no awareness or personal engagement (tying a shoe)
- noetic consciousness
→ semantic memory when you have awareness but no personal engagement (knowing what city you were born in)
- autonoetic consciousness
→ episodic memory when you have awareness and personal engagement (remembering an event)
- reappearance hypothesis
→ an episodic memory trace is recalled the same way each time it’s retrieved
→ highly emotional memories are recalled in a fixed form
→ disproven, not supported by research
- flashbulb memories
→ vivid memories of significant memories like where you were when the queen died (something public)
→ consistent detail: a detail that remains the same when you recall it later
→ inconsistent detail: a detail that changes when you recall it later
→ consistent details decrease and inconsistent details increase for both regular episodic and flashbulb memories
→ people believe that flashbulb memories are more accurate and feel more vivid
- sights, sounds, different details are stored in different parts of the brain, and the hippocampus retrieves them
→ the hippocampus takes information and reconstructs it in your mind
- memory reconsolidation
→ when a trace is activated, it becomes unstable and your brain alters the cortical connections
→ therapy can work because it’s possible to change and reconstruct memories (rachel)
- semantics effects on retrieval
→ knowledge effects retrieving detailed memories and primes what you’ll remember

schemas
- distorting memories
→ war of ghosts experiment: people read an unfamiliar native american folk story that doesn’t align with their beliefs and
preformed practical habits and were asked to recount the story. they then recalled it with fewer and fewer details, and each
time they recalled it they would include more western like details that matched their schemas (seal hunting became fishing)
→ if you study a classroom scene with no chalk board and later are asked if there was a chalk board, you’re likely to say yes
→ false alarm: a false detail added to memory by a schema
- misattribution effect
→ retrieving familiar information from the wrong place (remember someone was in your class bu they were a teacher)
- misinformation effect
→ how a question is framed can affect how information is retrieved (how fast was the care going vs. how slow)
 - implanting memories
→ three sessions of asking a child about a series of events that actually happened and one planted event and by the third
session, 20% of children reported a false memory of the planted memory

february 20th: memory part 3

false memories
- virtues of reconstructive memory
→ helps plan and imagine for the future
→ the hippocampus can grab details from different parts of the brain and different events very flexibly, making it easier to
imagine/simulate the outcomes of certain events and what to do in certain situations

implicit memory
- procedural memory
→ includes the striatum: shaping habits and motor sequences
→ prefrontal cortex: organizes information like steps in a procedure
- habits
→ initially rely on explicit memory but become implicit
→ breaking habits: removing reward does not break the habit, neither does consequence. they had to inhibit cells in the
prefrontal cortex
- emotional responses
→ amygdala has a conditioned emotional response to things that could harm us
- semantic memory organization
→ made up of unit first (what something is, e.g. animal)
→ second the units properties (what kind it is e.g. bird)
→ third the pointers (yellow, can sing)
- spreading activation in the semantic network
→ activating certain concepts will spread to others, for example thinking of a canary may make you think of other birds
→ underlies the idea of semantic priming: related ideas triggered at retrieval (you go to the doctor, when being flashed cards
you’ll recognize nurse faster than the word butter)

amnesia
- HM
→ suffered epilepsy and tried to help by taking his left and right temporal lobes including the hippocampus
→ still had intact short term memory and procedural memory and could learn new skills
→ intact semantic memory (strong vocabulary)
→ couldn’t retain episodic memory, always living in the present and couldn’t make new memories
how did this affect his ability to make decisions?
→ can’t imagine the future
- anterograde amnesia
→ inability to form new episodic memories
→ problem with memory encoding
- retrograde amnesia
→ loss of the past (specific to episodic memory)
→ impaired retrieval of memories
→ graded, the closer the memories are to the event that caused amnesia are more likely to be affected
- dissociative amnesia
→ no brain injury at all, is a psychiatric disorder
→ you’ll se retrograde amnesia about personal episodic memories
→ usually a time point that was traumatic, is usually a response to physiological or physical trauma
→ enter a fugue state where they don’t know who they are, but the amnesia will lift
- dreams and amnesia
→ people with hippocampal damage had fewer dreams and less details than the control
→ you need memory to have detailed dreams
- dementia
→ neurodegenerative diseases that cause cell death
→ 63% of dementia are caused by alzheimer’s
→ medial temporal lobe regions are the first to have cell death
→ alzheimer’s starts with episodic memory loss
- semantic dementia
→ neurodegeneration begins in the left anterior temporal lobe and causes specifically semantic memory
- aging theories
→ aging causes the brain to shrink and affects the hippocampus
→ episodic memory is affected the most
→ domain-general theory of cognition: older adults have deficits in general executive cognitive processes
→ gives us trouble inhibiting irrelevant information
→ associative deficit hypothesis: problems encoding and retrieving associations in memory due to hippocampal atrophy
→ can remember a face, but not where you know someone from which involves association
- adaptive cognitive aging
→ why are some older adults higher performing than others?
→ younger adults only engage the left hemisphere when remembering/associating things, same with the older adults
→ older adults who performed well engaged activity across both hemisphere’s to keep up with younger adults
- extreme cases
→ taxi drivers: greater posterior hippocampus
→ hippocampus grows the longer someone is a taxi driver
- highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM)
→ people who have astounding episodic memory
→ it’s not memory strategies or photographical memory, they cannot forget moments in their life
→ downsides: relates to OCD symptoms, the more you can recollect things from your life, the more likely OCD

february 22nd: concept

terminology
- concepts: general knowledge about a category or a mental representation of it (semantic)
- category: items that are grouped together according to concept (pretty interchangeable)
- exemplars: individual items within the category
- organizing concepts
→ different level of specificity (animal → bird → owl → snowy owl)
- inclusivity
→ concepts are organized from general to specific in a hierarchy
→ superordinate: mammal, fish
→ basic: deer, dog / trout, shark
→ subordinate: terrier, spaniel / hammerhead, great white
→ children usually learn basic, superordinate, then subordinate
- cognitive economy
→ there’s a balance between accessing general vs. specific information depending on the situation
- graded concept organization (prototype theory)
→ there are ‘better’ exemplars of a concept that are more representative of the concept (a dog is a better exemplar of
mammal than a deer)
→ to determine how close it is to a category, you see how close it is to a certain prototype
→ prototypes are formed in the mind (probably based on societal and cultural views and habits)
→ exemplars that include more of stereotypical traits of the category (sparrow is closer to bird than penguin→ it can fly)
- exemplar theory states that every exemplar of a category belongs equally to the category, in contrast to the
prototype theory which states there is a graded quality to the belonging of a trait to a category
- typicality effect
→ a preference for processing things that a closer to a prototype
→ how prototypes are determined
→ comes mainly from priming!
- lexical decision
→ deciding if something is or isn’t a word
→ words that are closer to a prototype (apple for fruit rather than papaya) are easier to make lexical decisions about
- problems with prototype theory
→ doesn’t account for context (states that prototypes are context independent)
- embodied view
→ a concept is invented/organized for a specific purpose or goal (safety, procreation)
- perceptual symbols
→ activating a concept will engage certain sensory perceptions to engage certain stimulation or behaviours that will aid in a
persons goal or task
- property verification task
→ when associating words, people will be faster when two concepts are related ( rustling/leaves and loud/blender have to do
with sound or volume, whereas green/apple and loud/blender aren’t related at all)
- reading action words will activate areas that are activated when doing the action
→ concepts are rooted in motor and sensory activity
- brain injuries
→ injuries can cause deficits in recognizing non-living categories (like remembering animals but not tools) or the other way
around and not being able to remember living categories
- sensory functional theories
→ living things are defined by visual features
→ inanimate objects are defined by function
february 29th: language

what is language
- a shared symbolic system for purposeful communication
- allows for flexibility in how we access thoughts and mental representations
- morphology
→ complexity of language
→ languages spoken by more people have more simplicity for the sake of inclusivity
→ tonal language: when the tone in which you speak has specific meaning
→ warmer climate allows fro better flexibility of the vocal chords, which is why people there have tonal language

the brain
- broca’s non-fluent aphasia
→ also called expressive aphasia, intact language comprehension, impaired speed production and articulation
→ patient tan: could only speak one syllable (tan), could still communicate via gestures and intellect was intact
→ damaged frontal gyrus (broca’s area)
→ usually lateral on the left
→ not confined to speech, also effects writing
- wernicke’s fluent aphasia
→ posterior superior temporal lobe damage (wernicke’s area)
→ speech is fluent but content has no meaning
- paraphasia
→ verbal: substitution a word with something semantically related (swapping brother with sister)
→ phonemic: swapping or adding speech sound (crab salad - sad cralad)
→ neologisms: using made up words that still mean something (mansplain, situationship)
- conduction aphasia
→ neural pathway from between broca’s and wernicke’s area called arcuate fasciculus is damaged
→ speech production and comprehension are intact
→ impaired repetition
- lateralization
→ language is often lateralized in the left
→ pitch, mood, attitude, gestures, etc. are right brained
→ right hemisphere lesions have problems with interpreting and expressing emotion of phrase like sarcasm

language acquisition
- nuturist or behaviourist view
→ only learning language through the external environment and is stimulus dependant
- naturist view
→ chomsky: language is not stimulus dependent or determined by reinforcement
→ language is complex and acquired rapidly and allows us to understand and speak what we not heard before
→ an innate sense of grammar, structure, that is separate from semantic meaning
→ language acquisition device (LAD): entity that supports language (universal grammar)
→ convergence: moving a second verb in a sentence to the front when making it into a question, something children do
→ uniformity: infants develop linguistically generally at the same rate
 - poverty of stimulus argument
→ the linguistic environment of a child is not sufficient to justify the learning of a language
- psycholinguistics
→ phonemes: smallest units like ‘d’ or ‘b’
→ morphemes and words
→ syntax: rules and grammar
→ semantics: the meaning

language comprehension
- phonological ambiguity
→ we fill in information we don’t necessarily understand with phonemes by using context
- lexical ambiguity
→ a single word can have multiple meanings (homophones: can be spelled differently)
→ context tells you what they means
- cross modal priming task
→ listened to a bunch of sentences with homophones with biased or non biased meanings/contexts
- parsing and syntactic ambiguity
→ sentence parsing: dividing sentences into nouns, articles, and verbs
- syntax first
→ we only use grammatical rules to interpret sentences
- constraint based models
→ we use more than grammar to parse sentences: semantic and thematic context, expectation, frequency

language and thought

- linguistic universalists
→ language and thought are independent
- linguistic relativity
→ they are interdependent (also called the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis)
→ believe that inuits, f.e., perceive snow differently because they have 100 words for it rather than english which has 1
→ russians can discriminate between different shades of blue faster only because of the label difference
- reading
→ surface dyslexia: read letter by letter, sounding it out (would pronounce comb with the b)
→ phonological dyslexia: reads by comparing whole words to mental dictionary, can’t sound out words (difficulty with non
words or new words)
→ dual route model of reading: 1) printed word 2) whole word (mental dictionary) OR letter by letter (grapheme-phoneme)
3) speech
february 29: bilingualism

- 60% of the world is bilingual

- language coactivation
→ both languages are active and competing
→ all languages are active at the same time
→ using lexical decision tasks
→ there are overlapping words in two languages
→ cognates: hotel is the same in french and english, a facilitation
→ interlingual homographs: coin is a word in both english and french, but has different meanings causing an interference
→ because both languages area active, interlingual homographs will take longer for the brain to process
- is the native language completely intact?
→ the native language is affected by a second language
- beyond language processing
→ cognitive control
→ inhibitory control model: inhibition of a language is trigger by the presence of competition, proportional to the level of
coactivation, and prevents instructions from non-used languages
- individual difference
→ not all bilinguals are the same
→ bilinguals differ by virtue of the demands of the contexts and the experience

march 26th: problem solving

- cycle of problem solving

1. define the problem
2. brainstorm solutions
3. pick the best solution
4. implement the solution
5. review results
- cycles is recursive, meaning you can use it as many times as you want until the problem is solved
- applicable, you can apply successful cycles to new problems in the future
- generalisation: storing information from a specific solution in a general way so knowledge can be applied to a
different circumstance
- ill defined problems carry a load because of infinite possible answers
- adding constraints to a question can turn it into a well defined condition
- the right prefrontal cortex is active when there’s greater cognitive load
- moravec’s paradox: AI can solve well defined problems but not ill defined and simple skills
- ‘everything that’s easy is hard, and everything that’s hard is easy’ for AI
- problem space: mental map with the goal of moving from your current state (initial state) and goal state
- intermediate paths and operators: actions you take to change between states (can include sub goals)
- task constraints: how far you can go to reach a solution

navigating problem space

 - brute force: go through every possibility to find the best solution, can lead to combinatorial explosion, when you get
overwhelmed with too many alternatives to compute (causes decision fatigue like w netflix)
- heuristics: trial and error
→ try out a number of solutions one at a time until you find a good one (different from brute force because you stop looking
once you find the right solution)
→ problems arise when there are too many options
→ you have to use algorithms or steps to succeed, trial and error does not work
- hill climbing strategy
→ select the operation that brings you closer to the goal without examining the whole problem space
→ focusing only on the goal and not any side routes or taking steps back to find the goal
→ emphasis on efficiency to a fault
- mean ends strategy
→ more flexible than hill climbing
→ identifying sub problems
→ uses forward and backward movements (bone across the fence, can’t go through, have to leave the bone to go around the
fence— aspen test)
→ steps
1. evaluate
2. pick most relevant difference (between initial nad goal)
3. re-evaluate

april 2nd: problem solving pt.2

- tapping into memories is a good way to solve ill defined problems
- analogical problem solving
→ remembering a problem you’ve solved before and transferring that knowledge to a new problem
→ target problem: the problem you are trying to solve
→ source problem: the prior problem that provides similarities with the target problem
1. notice the relationship
2. map correspondence (what is similar? use generalisation)
3. apply mapping (generating a parallel solutions for the target problem)
→ surface details: content of scenarios
→ more important to think about structural similarities (general)
- we use hippocampal episodic memories to envision potential situations and find solutions
- patients with temporal lobe epilepsy with hippocampal damage were worse at solving ill defined problems
- einstellung effect: the bias to use familiar methods to solve a problem (stunts creativity)
→ i always do it this way
→ functional fixedness: not being able to see beyond the intended/most common use a particular object (i need an arm band,
using a sock)
→ only 39% of people can find a solution within ten minutes to the swing string study thing (it requires you to see the paint
brush as a weight instead of a paintbrush)
- candle problem: attach the candle to the wall with x materials so that it won’t drip onto the floor
- children who have less pre-utilization will be better with those types of problems than adults (the more experience
you have with an object, the harder it’ll be to see it as anything else)
- mental fixedness: hung up on a certain ay to do something and negatively effects problem solving
 - getting past these mental blocks, we experience insight problem solving, which is a positive feeling
- productive thinking: finding new ways to solve problems and having an aha moment
- gestalt switches: when your brains restructures a concept and switches between ways of thinking
- four features of insight
1. suddenness
2. ease
3. positive
4. confidence
→ seven evil people call
- the feeling that you’d know how to solve a question is more potent in non insight solving
- with insight, you think about the problem, not the solution
- with insight, it almost seems that the answer comes unconsciously
- functional difference in expert brains: recruit more areas
-

april 4th - intelligence

- the ability to generalise(memory), adapt and flexibly use information(concepts), solve new problems(problem
solving)
-
studying

constructivist theory

this is a top down model of perception, meaning that it claims that we actively take in our surroundings and base our
perception on the external environment. our previous experience is crucial in understanding our surroundings. in this model,
our previous experiences will shape our ‘blueprint’ or our expectations of what we will be seeing.

with a pen, for example. constructivist theory would suggest that when you see a pen, what helps you identify it is the fact
that you’ve seen pens before, and you have an expectation about what it will look like.

at it’s base, this model suggests that the mind is the main component and worker when it comes to perceiving.

direct model theory

this is a bottom up model of perception, meaning that it claims that we depend more heavily on what we’re actually
experiencing than our previous knowledge.
study plan

post midterm 2
module 13, decision making
lecture (march 21)
textbook
quizlet
module 12, problem solving
lecture (march 26)
lecture (april 2)
textbook
quizlet
module x, intelligence
lecture (april 9)
quizlet

post midterm 1
module 6, memory pt. 1
lecture (feb 13)
quizlet
module 7, memory pt ⅔
lecture (feb 15)
lecture (feb 20)
quizlet
module 9, concepts and knowledge
lecture (feb 22)
quizlet
module 11, language/bilingualism
lecture (feb 27)
lecture (feb 29)
quizlet