First half of Cognitive Science
Terms
undefined, object
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- who was BF skinner?
- he was a behaviorist-you study people's minds in terms of given inputs and their ensuing outputs. mind as black box?
- who strongly opposed skinner?
- chomsky said that there was not a specific part for language. skinner thought it was like learning any other behavior. it needed structure-syntax
- who had an important number?
- george miller had a # that told how many items we can hold. it revealed our limitations
- what did newell and simon come up with?
- a series of mathematical proofs that use decution, detachment (working backwards) and substitions. human processes. showed that CPU's have AI
- what are the three levels of analysis?
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1. cognitive level-what are the mental representations
2.behavioral level-outcomes of stimuli
3.neural level-brain processes - What are David Marr's levels of analysis?
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1.computational-determines goal
2.algorithmic-performs the algorithm
3.implementaion-hardware used - problems with marr's analysis?
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1.higher levels constrained by lower levels.
2.too generally based on standard computer metaphor. - what was phrenology?
- it was early modularity.
- problems with phrenology?
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1. size of brain region does not reflect strength of the region.
2.shape of skull/shake of brain
3.method was not objective - Describe Fodor's modularity?
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everything is hardwired.
information encapsulation.
domain specificity
believed understand only modules. - what was fodor wrong about?
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things aren't hardwird-it's malleable
information is not encapsulated
cognitive neuroscience has come to understand non-modular systems well. - What are darwin's requirements for natural selection?
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1.variation in traits
2.which leads to variation in fitness
3.correllation of traits between parents and offspring - what is adaptionism?
- structure reflects function. natural selectin chooses among various designs to see which one it likes.
- what is the difference between sociobiology and evolutionary psychology?
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fitness->behavior
vs.
fitness in past->psychological mechanisms->behavior - what is human kin detection?
- there is an evolutionary advantage to help your kin. similarly, mating with your kin is disadvantageous.
- what are the two primary types of cells in our brains?
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neuron-primiary information processing cell
glia-does energy metabolism, and helps structural integrety of brain tissue - what is the grey and white matter?
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white matter is the axon covered in myelin.
grey matter is the cell body - what is an action potential?
- when dendrites reach a theshold level, it sends an electrical empulse that heads down to the axon terminal. it fires because of opening and closing of ion channels.
- how many neural transmitters are fired from one cell to the next and what are the differenct kinds?
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there are about 1,000 -10,000 synapses. excitory-increase firing in post-synaptic neuron.
inhibitory- does opposite - how can we study the brain?
- study patients with brain lesions. or we can run EEG (which measure electrical activity at the scalp) and MRI that measures blood flow.
- what area can see particular loctaions of edge detection?
- V1 area
- depth perception has two kinds of cues. what are they?
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monocular-makes guesses about features.interposition, relative size, linear perspective
binocular-binocular disparity - what parts of brain deal with motion detection?
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small receptive fields:V1, retina-help see local motion
large receptive fields: medial temporal-global motion. MT neurons adapt. tricked - what is the process of object recognition?
- stimulus comes in. finds a match between the representation in the STM and the LTM
- what is evidence for view based recognition?
- we recognize things from particular view points.
- what are the two kinds of object recognition?
- view-based theory and structural based theory.
- who ran an experiment to support the structural based theory?
- Biederman and Cooper
- what part of brain is necessary for object reognition?
- inferior temporal lobe
- What i Posner's cue paradigm?
- if we have a cue, and then something shows up, we are better at detecting the cue if the cue helps us.
- what is spatial neglect? what part of brain damage will cause this?
- leaving out half of your vision. your parietal lobe is necessary for this.
- what is decibel scale?
- for every 20 decibels, it is 10 times louder.
- what are the two ways your basilar membrane handles sound?
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place coding-certain ptiches require certain parts of the membrane to fire
timing coding-each time a wave comes in a neoron fires. need volley principal - what is azimuth?
- the angel at which we hear. if there is a higher frequency, it will cast a bigger shadow on us. the signals in both ears will meet in midbrain.
- what does cross modal perception suggest?
- it suggests that modularity is wrong because something i see will affect what i hear.
- What are the two ways we categorize?
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dimension representation: symmetry, minimality and triangularity.
feature list-similarity is determined by an overlap of common features - what are the three theories on how we categorize things?
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classical theory: no specifics, just rules
prototype: average of that category
exemplar: category made by all of our experiences. - what parts of the brain are necessary for learning cateogories?
- frontal lobe and basal ganglia
- what are two types of good reasoning?
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modus ponens-if a, then b; a, therefore b
modus tollens- if a, then b; not b; therefore not a - what are two types of bad deductive reasoning?
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denial of the antecedent: if a, then b; not a, therefore not b
affirming the consequent: if a, then b; b; therefore a - what did cosmides argue that people were good at in regards to deductive reasoning?
- things that we have dealt with in evolution. eg detecting cheaters
- what did the test with rats, sweetness, and shock reveal?
- that we have biases in our perception of things. sometimes affect how we reason.
- what is base-rate neglect?
- we tend to use a representative heuristic which cause us to think illogically.
- what is an availability heuristic?
- the probability of an event is related on how easily it can be grought to our mind.
- what are the two key components to rational decision making?
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utility-how important something is
probablity-likelihood of that outcome - what are speech sounds limited to?
- sounds that can be produced by vocal apparatus and those that can be easily heard by the auditory system.
- what are the three articulatory features?
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man. of articulation-air goes, constricted
manner of voicing- when voc. chords vib.
place of articulation-constriction occur - for what sounds do vocal chords vibrate early? late?
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early- /g/ /v/ /d/ /b/ /z/
this is VOT!!!!!!!
late- /c/ /f/ /t/ /p/ /s/ - what is coarticulation?
- it occurs when acoustic features of each phoneme overlap in the acoustic signal. how a phoneme sounds depends on what proceeds and follows it.
- what are two theories of speech perception?
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motor theory-we somehow recreate physical articulatory speech
acoustic invariant-speech is like any other sound. uses vowels to determine words - what are a couple of disorder in speech perception?
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pure word deafness- cannot discriminate between sounds
wernicke's aphasia-can't understand meaning of words - what are three types of speech errors?
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syntax-work substitutions
morphology-word endings
phonology-phoneme substitutions - what part of brain help speech production? two main problems.
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prefrontal cortex.
agrammatism-scattered words, makes now sense
aphraxia of speech-cannot produced desired sounds - why is language development interesting?
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induction problem-gavagai
mapping problem-material over color
high growth rate - what is the nativist view? what is evidencte that supports it?
- that there is a specialized module for language development. damage to Weirneke's area creates impairted speech
- what is the interactionist view?
- language development is based on our interaction with others. it could not produce it on its own. this supported by IDS worldwide
- what is the connectionist view?
- believes that there is not module for learning, but we have parts for expertise. it occurs because neurons repeatedly fire togther. Weirnecke's area
- what are the two functions of working memory?
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maintenance: holding info immeditaly in mind.
manipulation: performing operations on the maintained information - what does the serial postion curve reveal?
- that long term and working memory are different.
- what are the three components of working memory?
- phonological loop, visuospatial buffer, and central executive.
- what are the two parts of the phonological loop?
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phonological store- a limited amount of information.
rehearsal process-recirculates the contents of the store - what does the central executive do?
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1. keeps goals in mind
2. chooses which part of memory to work with
3. scheduling- decides order - what are the four components of a problem?
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1. goal
2.givens
3.means of transformation
4.obstacles - what are the states of long-term memory?
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1.encoding-placing information into memory
2.storage-keeping thie info in a store
3.retrieval-bring info out of store - what are the princiapls of encoding and retreival
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1.levels of processing: shallow vs. deep
2.transfer- appropriate: deep not best
3.encoding specificity:info retrieval cue must match memory - is our memory reconstructive?
- yes- we use our knowledge about the world to reconstruct our memories
- what are the three ways we forget things?
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1. decay theory-memories are lost
2. retrieval-we need correct cues
3.repression: purposely forget - what are the types of amnesia?
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retrograde: loss of memories prior to the event.
anterograde: inablitliy to for new memories - what parts of the brain are important for forming new memories?
- frontal lobe and the hippocampus.