COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY TEST 1 STUDY GUIDE CHAPTER 1 Cognitive Psychology the scientific study of the mental process Cognitive Science an interdisciplinary effort to understand the mind includes the five disciplines philosophy neuroscience artificial intelligence linguistics and anthropology Laws of Association explains why the activation of some concepts seem to automatically lead to the activation of others Psychophysics the study of the relationship between the physical properties of a stimulus and the properties taken on when the stimulus is filtered through subjective experience Unconscious Inference our visual systems are constantly making inferences about the external world based on the information gathered as well as on the evidence of previous experience Introspection a procedure that requires participants to provide a rigorous unbiased report of every element of the conscious experience that accompanies the presentation of some stimulus Structuralism by applying introspection a thorough method with objective analysis to a wide range of everyday experiences it would yield the elemental sensations images and feelings that combine to produce everyday consciousness Stream of Consciousness captures the continuous ever changing nature of our experience analyzing it at any discrete point in time Functionalism devotes itself to figuring out the functions of the mind and what it does in everyday life Behaviorism emphasizes the study of observable responses and their relation to observable stimuli S R Psychology behaviorism the discovery of the stimulus and response connections Savings the reduction in the number or trials it took to relearn a list Forgetting Curve memory performance declines over the time interval since study Schemata generalized knowledge structures about events and situations that are constructed based on past experience Gestalt configuration Gestalt Psychology interested in the organizational principles that guide mental processing the way you organize visual stimuli in your environment Latent Learning learning when the stimulus and response were never associated Mental Map mental representations and their influence on behavior Information Processing Model uses the computer as a model for human cognition and has dominated theory and research in cognitive psychology for its first five decades Connectionism uses the brain as a basis for modeling cognitive processes Cognitive Neuroscience involves relating cognitive processes to their neural substances what the brain is doing when the mind is thinking Neuron or nerve cell the basic unit located in the brains cerebral cortex Action Potential when a signal travels from the dendrites to the cell body the seat of complex thought down the length of the axon Brain the primary focus of cognitive neuroscience because the brain is the center of information processing Anterior the front portion of the brain Posterior the back portion of the brain Dorsal the top surface of the brain Ventral the bottom portion of the brain Medial refers to areas closer to the brain s midpoint Hindbrain is located at the base of the brain just above the spinal cord and its primary function is to monitor maintain and control basic life functions such as breathing and heartbeat Lateral refers to brain structures closer to the periphery Midbrain contains areas that are involved in some sensory reflexes and help regulate brain arousal Forebrain comprises most of the brain Cerebral Cortex the wrinkled outer shell of the brain which is actually a sheet of billions of neurons and it has two hemispheres Each hemisphere is made up of four major areas or lobes Higher Cognitive Functions remembering planning deciding and communicating Hemispheric Asymmetries the left hemisphere receives information from and controls the right side of the body while the right hemisphere receives information from and controls the left side of the body Split Brain Patients people who have had their corpus callosum severed to alleviate the severity of epileptic seizures Split Brain Research takes advantage of the wiring of the visual system which is structured so that if you were to stare straight ahead information right of center would go predominantly to the left hemisphere while information left of center would go predominantly to the right hemisphere Limbic System is integral to learning and remembering new information as well as the processing of emotion Hippocampus is vital for encoding new information into memory Amygdala plays a key role in regulating emotions and in forming emotional memories Thalamus primarily serves as a relay point that routes incoming sensory information to the appropriate area of the brain and also seems to play a role in attention Hypothalamus controls the endocrine system and plays an important role in emotion as well as the maintenance of important and basic survival processes such as temperature regulation and food intake Diencephalon the thalamus and hypothalamus together Single Dissociation performance deficits in one task but no performance deficits in another task Double Dissociation the single dissociated data that area X is responsible for A but has a deficit for B and area Y is responsible for B but has a deficit for A Electroencephalograph EEG uses electrodes placed on the scalp to pick up the electrical current being conducted through the skull by the activity of neurons underneath essentially providing a global recording of the action potentials occurring in the brain Event Related Potentials ERP changes in the brain s electrical activity at certain critical points that represent the action potentials that occur in relation to some event N400 Response tends to be larger over the parietal and temporal regions of the right hemisphere P300 Response a pronounced positive deflection in the brain s response 300 ms after stimulus presentation relative to a baseline condition Magnetoencephalography MEG an encephalographic technique that has a basis of the changes in electrical potential in the brain producing more then electrical signals also producing magnetic fields Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation TMS can be used to interfere with brain activity impeding or disrupting brain processing even temporarily allows researchers to gain insights about what areas are involved in brain processing and what the time course of the processing might be Positron Emission Tomography Scan PET uses radioactive substances ingested by a willing