Cognition

• Readings: Goldstein, Bruce. (2015). Cognitive Psychology:

Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience. 4th Edition
• Also TBA

• Grading: Quizzes 20% (5-6, 1 dropped)

Midterm 30%
Final 35%
Assignment 15% (Essay 10%, Viva 5%)

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 Cognition
Module Lecture Topics Source
1 1 Introduction to the Study Bruce chp 1
Introductio of Cognitive Processes
n and 2 History Bruce chp 1 +
History   TBA
Module Lecture Topics Source
2 3 Cognitive Neuroscience Bruce chp 2
 
Cognitive 4 Cognitive Disorders
Neuroscien Bruce chp 2 +
ce TBA
     
   
       
3 5 Perception – I Bruce chp 3
Perception    
6 Perception – II Bruce chp 3
   
4 7 Attention– I Bruce chp 4
Attention 8 Disorders of Attention – II Bruce chp 4
and  
Performanc      
e  
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5 9 Traditional models of STM Bruce chp 5
Short Term 10 STM and WM Bruce chp 5
and
Working
Memory
  11 + 12 Review for Mid-Term TBA
Exam
  Midterm Week + Semester Break
6 13 LTM Structure Bruce chp 6
Long term 14 LTM Structure Bruce chp 6 +
Memory TBA
(4 lectures) 15 LTM Encoding and Bruce chp 7
Retrieval
16 LTM Encoding and Bruce chp 7
Retrieval

7 17 Memory Errors Bruce chp 8

Memory 18 Memory Errors Bruce chp 8
Errors
8 19 + 20 Multiple Knowledge Bruce chp 9 +
Knowledge Structures TBA
 
Module Lecture Topics Source
9 21 Visual Memory Bruce chp 10
Visual  
Memory 22 Visual Memory Bruce chp 10
Systems  
   

10 23 Language Bruce chp 11

Language 24 Language Bruce chp
11+ TBA
11 25 + 26 Problem Solving Bruce chp 12
Problem
Solving
12 27+28 Judgement and Decision Bruce chp 13
Judgement making
and
Decision
Making
       
  Final Exam Week + Semester Break
 Cognition
• How do we perceive the environment (visual / auditory)?
• How do we pay attention to part of it?
• How do we remember past events?
• How do we distinguish categories?
• How do we visualize events?
• How do we understand and produce language?
• How do we problem solve?
• How do we make a decision?
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 Cognition
• Cognitive Psychology: Scientific study of the mind
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• ‘Mind’ can be thought of in a number of different ways.
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• In every day sense ‘mind’ may mean remembering, problem solving,
deciding, normal functioning -> ‘healthy mind’ vs. opposite, mind as
something to be used, mind as intelligence / creativity
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• The mind creates and controls mental functions such as perception,
attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking and
reasoning.
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• Alternate emphasis: The mind is a system that creates
representations of the world so that we can act within them
to achieve our goals
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• Focus on different types of cognitive processes vs. functional
view of representations
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• Early History:
• 1800s – It was not thought possible to study the mind for self
referential reasons, also due to the question of materiality of
mind
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• Plato: Rationalism
• Aristotle: Empiricism

• Donders (1868):
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• Simple RTs for light is ‘on’
• Choice Rts for Left / Right light is ‘on’
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• Choice RT takes 1/10 second longer
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• Mental processes inferred from behavioral data
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• Wundt (1879):
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• Structuralism: Analyse the basic components of experience to identify basic sensations
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• Analytic Introspection: Study experience under
controlled repeatable conditions
• Identified elaborate system for description e.g.
mode, form , quality, duration
• Debates about interrater differences
Is conscious sensation effected more by bottom up
or top down elements
Gestalt school: A focus on patterns rather than an
atomistic approach
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• Ebbinghaus Memory Studies:
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• Nonsense syllables to level out prior memory trace
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• ‘learning time’ ‘delay’ ‘relearning time’
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• Savings = Original time – Relearning time
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• Savings curve: rapid forgetting for ~ 2 days followed by relative stability
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• Both Ebbinghaus and Donders going from behavior to inferred mental
processes
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• Principles of Psychology William James (1890):
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• Observations and analysis of his own mental activity
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• E.g., the role of attention in every day life
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• Watson and Behaviorism
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• Introspection variable from person to person
• No objective verification
• Builds on Pavlov’s ideas that mental content is an ‘echo’ of observable
stimuli.
 Cognition
• Rejected introspection as a method but also focused on
behavior rather than consciousness the focus of investigation
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• Rather than asking what does behavior tell us about the
• ‘mind’, behaviorism asks what is the relationship between
stimuli in the environment and behavior
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• ‘Little Albert’ (1920) 9 month baby and stuffed toy
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• US + CS -> CR
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• Skinner:
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• Operant conditioning
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• Mental concepts with behaviorism
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• Tolman (1938)
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• Rat allowed to explore a ‘+’ maze. Rats will learn to turn right if given reinforcement
in a reward box. If allowed to start from a different location, will turn left not right.
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• This suggests a ‘cognitive map’, a mental representation of the maze’s layout.
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• More significantly:
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• Skinner’s Language Behavior (1959) review by
Noam Chomsky
• Children speak sentences not by imitation or
reinforcement e.g., ‘mommy is bad’
• They speak systematically ungrammatical
sentences ‘I hitted the ball’
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• The pattern of behavior is not explained by stimuli (to be
imitated) or reinforcement but by inborn biological programs.
Language is the result of mental structures. This may also be
the pattern for other ‘mental processes’ e.g., problem solving,
memory etc.
•  Lashley: Problem of serial order
• ‘Language as you may guess provides an example of this.
• Humming vs. whistling
•  Pianists moved too fast for serial cuing
• Skilled worker adjusted movements dynamically
• Aiming for and dynamic adjustment to goal states
 Cognition
• Recap:
• Invisible entities
• Resistance in science to teleological claims
• Cause -> effect vs. Effect -> Cause
• However, in the case of complex systems scientists
were coming around to such explanations
• Servo control / feedback systems
• Cybernetics and AA guns
• TOTE: Test – Operate – Test - Exit
 Cognition
• Computation (1950):

• Reasoning can be captured in circuits

• Representations: Aboutness / intentionality

•  Brentano: Mental acts vs. Mental content

• Symbolic systems and symbol manipulation

• Connectionism: Subsymbolic system

• Information processing approach: Tracing the sequence of mental operations involved in

cognition
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 Cognition
• Flow Diagrams:
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• Input -> Memory -> Arithmetic unit -> Output
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• Cherry (1953)
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• Attended message / unattended message
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• People could hear ‘sounds’ of the unattended message but
not the content
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• Broadbent Model (1958)
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• Input -> Filter -> Detector -> Memory
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• AI and Information Theory
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• AI conference (1956)
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• Newell and Simon: Logic theorist
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• Miller (1956): The Magic number 7 +- 2
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• In a few decades, cognitive psychology became the dominant approach in psychology
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• Often still measure relationships like Donders e.g., Easier to remember 1 st and last words in a 20 word list, we respond faster to
frequent words like ‘house’ than ‘hike’, people judge events that they have heard about e.g., ‘tornado’ as more likely to cause
deaths than events that they haven’t heard about e.g., ‘asthma’.
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• The goals is to study these individual relationships and like them to general models and explanations of how the mind works
 Cognition
• Exploring Complex questions of Mind:
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• Two approaches:
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• Following a trail: Picking the right questions
• Beilock (2010): ‘Choking’ i.e., performing more poorly than expected under pressure
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• In sports -> missing an easy shot
• Academics -> Performing poorly in exams even when you know the material
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• Working memory involved in holding information when it is being manipulated e.g., when do
a mathematical calculation in one’s head
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• Meilock and Carr (2004): Does the result have a remainder?
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• (32-8) / 4 = ? (no)
• (32-6) / 4 = ? (yes)
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• Low pressure vs. High pressure: Here is a problem vs. you will be
videotaped and need to perform well for a cash reward
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• Performance decreased in high pressure for difficult problems which
needed WM. Hypothesized that this was due to worry using up WM
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• This is Donders method of inference
 Cognition
• Beilock and Carr (2005): Understanding the causal mechanism for choking by looking at
characteristics of people more prone to choking
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• Daneman and Carpenter (1980) WM capacity can be measured and people divided into
Low WM and High WM
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• Which of these can be expected to do better?
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• But also consider Kane and Engle (2000) LWM and HWM subjects given verbal tasks in
either low load (only doing verbal task) vs. high load (dual task), in low load condition,
HWM performed better, but the difference vanished under high load conditions.
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• This was what was found by Beilock, HWM subjects performed poorly in high pressure
conditions removing the advantage they had in low pressure conditions
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• Why?
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• Strategies: In low pressure conditions, HWM subjects used the strategy of calculation. This always gives the right
answer but put a heavy load on WM
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• LWM subjects often used ‘short cut’ or ‘heuristic’ if all the numbers are ‘even’ then the answer is ‘no’ else ‘yes’.
This strategy puts a lower load on WM but does not always work
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• In low pressure HWM strategy gives a better performance but not in high pressure conditions when they often
shifted to the heuristic strategy
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• One way of summarizing the lines of questions and their findings is to create models that represent structures
and processes in cognition
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• Models:
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• Structural Models: Can represent the appearance of an object and locations of subcomponents e.g., a diagram or
the connections between them
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• We can increase / decrease the level of detail in a model to achieve various goals e.g., a
model of the brain can explain gross structure or it can explain functional unit connectivity
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• Most structural models are designed to represent structures involved in specific functions
e.g., Pain matrix Thalamus -> Amygdala -> Insula -> PFC -> S1 (Somatosensory). They abstract
away details of other connectivities
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• Process Models: represent processes involved in cognitive mechanisms with boxes for
processes and arrows for connections / information flows
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• E.g., Broadbent model
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• Input -> Filter ->Detector->Memory
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• The boxes represent a process not a brain location (it could be happening in a number of
regions)
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• Modal Model of Memory
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• Input -> Sensory Memory -> STM (Rehearsal) (output) <-> LTM
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• Such models summarize complex information and make may be starting point
for research e.g.,
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• LTM: Episodic, Semantic, Procedural
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• Process models can be compared and mapped onto structural models
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• There is also a physiological aspect to all such behavioral questions as the
brain machinery that produces behavior has its own principles