Cognitive PsychologyChapter 1Introduction Cognitive psychology is concerned with how the mind represents and uses information about the outside world.The study how humans (and other animals)Acquire informationStore information in memoryRetrieve informationWork with information to reach goalsIn all these cases we are dealing with mental representations.Information is taken in through perceiving what is attended to, and is stored initially in short-term or working memory.Then selected items are retained in long-term memory through learning processes and form knowledge that can be represented in a variety of ways.Later, stored information may be retrieved if it has been retained, or it may turn out to be forgotten.Perceived and recalled information shapes skilled actions on the environment and enters into problems solving, reasoning and decision processes.Information can be shared with others via language and frequently involves an emotional aspect.History and approachesMnemonics: a learning device used to aid memory.The method of loci. → Relies on associating a visual image with the object to be remembered, and placing these images in a familiar location or along a familiar route.The keyword method → used when learning a foreign language vocabulary. The learner makes an association between the unfamiliar word and a familiar word in the native language that sound like the unfamiliar word. The use of an interactive visual image underlies the mnemonic effect. Imagery can be a useful mnemonic device.The phonetic number system (or major system) → commonly used by memory experts, increases memory capacity of numbers. This system converts numbers into constant...

Cognitive PsychologyChapter 3Attention and consciousnessAttention and consciousness have the idea of selection in common.We attend to particular aspects of information hitting our senses and seem consciously aware of only a limited view of the world at any one time. Attention is a limited resource that is deployed to facilitate the processing of critical information.External attention: selecting and controlling incoming sensory information (like features, objects, spatial locations, sensory modality and time points).Internal attention: selecting control strategies and maintaining internally generated information. It involves regulating our internal mental life so we can achieve our goals (like task rules, responses, long-term memory and working memory).The attention system: can be seen as independent from processing systems and it utilizes a network of anatomical areas that carry out functions that are specified in cognitive terms.Three basic components:AlertingOrienting (type of external attention)Executive function (type of internal attention) The alerting system is comprised of brain areas in the brainstem and frontal cortex that are responsible for achieving a state of arousal.The orienting system includes brain areas in frontal and partial cortex that direct our processing resources to incoming information and includes areas such as the frontal eye fields that are involved with rapid strategic control of attention.This orienting system is external attention since it has the function of orienting our sensory processing to incoming information.The frontal eye fields are found in the frontal cortex and are involved with the generation and control of eye movements.The...

Cognitive PsychologyChapter 5Long-term memoryThree important aspects of long-term memory processes:Long-term memory processes are not disturbed throughout the brain. Damage to particular areas within the temporal lobes will cause profound long-term memory loss. Particular brain regions are responsible for long-term memory function.Long-term memory encompasses a number of different abilities and some learning may be possible after damage to the system.memory is separable form language, perceptual and other cognitive functions. Amnesia revers to the amnesic syndrome. A pattern of memory loss characterized by impaired long-term memory and spared short-term memory.General characteristics:Short-term memory is intactMemory for language, and concepts is largely intact.There is a severe and lasting anterograde amnesia (memory for events after the onset of the amnesia will be impaired).There will be a retrograde amnesia, of variable extend. The patient will have loss of memory for events prior tot the onset of amnesia.Skill learning, conditioning and priming will be unaffected. The patient will also be able to engage in skills acquired prior to the onset of amnesia.Ribot’s law:Recently formed memories are more susceptible to impairment that are older memories.Wechsler Memory scale: a widely used neurocognitive assessment that measures visual memory, auditory memory and working memory.Causes of amnesia include effects of brain surgery., infections, head injuries or stroke, conditions such as Korsakoff’s syndrome, and injury.Korsakoff’s syndrome: brain dame related to thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency. It generally...

Cognitive Psychology Chapter 7Concepts and knowledge representation Concepts: mental representations of classes of items.When we treat distinct objects as the same as other distinct objects.To represent all the distinct object that make up the categories concerned.Dealing in concepts rather than in distinct individual objects is clearly an efficient way to work and emerges as an inevitable result of who the brain responds to stimulation, in that similar stimuli evoke similar activation patterns and by association will arouse similar memories and action tendencies.Concepts allow us to organize information in long-term semantic memory very efficiently into hierarchical structures.Overall, our long-term knowledge about the world is based on concepts and relations among concepts. Also, representations of current situations are in terms of concepts.All higher-level mental concepts involves imagining possible actions in terms of concepts.Visual images convey information as to what an object looks like and the image associated with a concept would seem likely to be important in using that concept.Imagery: the mental representations of sensory properties of objects, experienced as like perceiving the object but with less vividness than in reality. Despite the pervasive role of concepts in cognition, there is no universal agreement on the best way of define concepts in a whole.Definitional approach Some concepts are well defined and clear black and white definitions can be given.Well-defined concepts...

Cognitive PsychologyChapter 9Problem solvingProblem: a situation in which you have a goal but do not know how to achieve it.Thinking: a process of mental exploration of possible actions and states of the world. Problems can be said to arise when a person or animal has a goal but does not have an immediately available way of reaching the goal.Problems can be classified in terms of a few broad characteristics:Degree of definitionWhether an adversary is involved or notWhether extensive knowledge is needed or not.Whether the time scale of the problem is long or short.There are a number of ways we classify problems based on these characteristics which help us to group different types of problems together for understanding and research.Well definedA problem in which starting conditions, actions available and goals are all completely specifiedIll-definedA problem in which starting conditions, or actions available or goals are not completely specified.We then determine whether specialized knowledge is required to solve a problem. Making them:Knowledge richProblems that require extensive specialist knowledgeKnowledge leanDo not require specialist knowledgeFinally, we consider whether the type of problem involves a rational opponent.Problems can be classified as:Non-adversaryProblems in which the solver is dealing with inert problem materials with no rational opponentAdversary problemsProblems in which the solver has to deal with a rational opponent (as in board games)Some problems are large scale and require months or years of effort...

Cognitive PsychologyChapter 11ReasoningReasoning: the cognitive process of deriving new information from old information.People who can correctly derive new information by reasoning do well on tests of general ability or intelligence and in turn do better in education and in the occupational world. Deductive: drawing logically necessary conclusions from given information.Inductive: the process of inferring probable conclusions from given information.In deductive tasks, people are required to determine what conclusions, if any, must follow when they are given statements that are assumed to be true.Premises: statements assumed to be true from which conclusions are drawn.Valid arguments: those in which the conclusions must be true if the permisses are true.Deductive reasoning is of two types:Propositional reasoning: reasoning about statements connected by logical relations such as ‘and’ ‘or’ ‘not’ ‘if’Syllogistic reasoning: reasoning about groups/ sets using statements connected by logical relations of ‘some’, ‘none’, ‘all’, ‘some not’Propositional reasoningPropositional logic is a set of rules devised by logicians which enable valid arguments to be developed.Inference rules: rules for reaching a conclusion given a particular pattern of propositions, e.g. modus pones, which states that given ‘if p then q’ and ‘not q’ we can infer ‘not p’.Can be used to derive correct conclusions from patterns of propositions, such that different patterns trigger different inference rules.Three examples:Modus pones.If p then q. p → qModus tollensIf p then q. not q → not pDouble negationNot p → not qTwo main mistakes or...

Cognitive PsychologyChapter 13Language comprehensionHow we understand speech and written language.Understanding requires accessing semantic information and appreciating the meaning of words, the intention of the utterance, and sometimes the non-literal meaning.The objective is to understand what is being communicate.At lower levels the processes involved in speech perception (the process by which we convert a stream of speech into individual words and sentences) and visual word differ markedly.Speech presents us with a virtually continuous signal of sound from which we must decipher words, phrases sentences and meaning.Speech is a rapidly decaying signal and is often encountered in less than optimal conditions.Speech is not simply a string of precise phonemes. Sounds blend into each other and are affected by previous and subsequent sounds within utterances, as well as factors specific to the speaker.Speech processing is a fast, accurate and automatic process. Once we have acquired language, we readily understand a spoken utterance.The speed with which the task is achieved does not reflect the complexity of the process.Word recognition is the starting point for language comprehension and understanding language is the key of much of higher cognition. Prosody: the rhythm, intonation and stress patterns in speech.Aspects of an utterance’s sound that are not specific to the words themselves.While we perceive a sequence of words within the stream of speech, the speech signal itself is not produced as discrete units.There are few clear boundaries between words in...