Mu Csci 350 Cognitive Science - Exam 2

Front 1

Neuroscience

Back 1

The study of nervous system anatomy and physiology. It is concerned with the structure of this system in humans and other animals as well as its functions

Front 2

Problems with basing research on brain damage cases?

Back 2

Areas of the brain are interdependent. The effects of damage to one area could have a variety of functional interpretations.

Front 3

Parts of a neuron

Back 3

Dendrite
Nucleus
Soma
Axon hillock
Axon
terminal buttons

Front 4

Parts of a brain (10 of them we must know)

Back 4

left and right hemisphere
(from front to back, top down):
frontal lobe
broca area
motor strip
temporal lobe
brainstem
sensory strip
parietal lobe
Wernicke area
cerebellum
occipital lobe

Front 5

Dorsal

Back 5

"towards the top"

Front 6

ventral

Back 6

"towards the bottom"

Front 7

medial

Back 7

towards the middle of the brain

Front 8

lateral

Back 8

towards the outside of the brain

Front 9

What are the dorsal and ventral pathways in relation to vision?

Back 9

Visual input begins in the occipital lobe, and once processed the information is divided and sent to two different paths in the brain
Dorsal - information about motion and location is extracted
Ventral - data about color and form travels down to the temporal lobe

Front 10

3 types of agnosia

Back 10

Apperceptive agnosia
Associative agnosia
Prospagnosia

Front 11

Aperceptive agnosia

Back 11

Cannot assemble the parts of features of an object into a meaningful whole.

Front 12

Associative agnosia

Back 12

Percieve the whole but have difficulty assigning a name to it.

Front 13

Prosopagnosia

Back 13

Inability to recognize faces, despite the capacity to recognize other types of visual stimuli

Front 14

What brain structures are involved in the function and control of attention?

Back 14

Reticular activating system

Superior colliculus

thalamus

intraparietal sulcus

cingulate cortex

Front 15

Describe component process model

Back 15

Each of the multiple areas responsible for the control of attention performs a distinct operation.
Their model specifically describes the changes that occur in the visual selective attention, where attention is shifted from one spatial location to another

Front 16

describe distributed network model

Back 16

separate neural structures are not specialized and functionally independent as they are in the component process model.
functions of the different areas overlap to a degree. each brain region performs a major operation that is attention related but can perform other attention related functions as well
the redundancy in neural networks implies that any given area can suffer damage, while the system as a whole will maintain some of the functionality of the damaged regions.

Front 17

Identify and describe the main brain area involved in the human memory system

Back 17

Hippocampus (LTM) and amygdala are responsible for memory.
Engrams - collection of neurons responsbile for a particular memory
equipotentiality → memories are not laid down in any one area of the brain but that all parts of the brain participate in memory storage
suggests that multiple copies of a single memory are stored throughout the brain and that multiple brain regions participate in memory function
Learning
learning at a cellular level requires synaptic plasticity, a capacity for change in the structure or biochemistry of a synapse.
memory is essentially the formation of a neural circuit
LTP (long-term potentiation) is the process of repeated firing of neurons that strengthens the synaptic connections through repeated stimulation.
Occurs as a result of increased activity, not an event. (ex. long-term studying)
Then has potential to be long-term memory if you keep building up more sites of reception (buttons)

Front 18

what are symptoms of someone who has had damage to their hippocampus?

Back 18

Anterograde amnesia - cannot retain new information after the incidient
Retrograde amnesia - cannot remember information acquired prior to the incident

Front 19

What is the executive function?

Back 19

executive function - cognitive operations such as planning, sequencing of behavior, flexible use of information, and goal attainment

Front 20

Difference between classic view of cognition and problem solving versus the connectionist view

Back 20

Classic - one area does one task
Connectionist - One area may do a task well but it is divided among other areas of the brain as well.

Front 21

Characteristics of an Artificial neural network

Back 21

computer simulation of how populations of actual neurons perform tasks, performs calculations in parallel, characteristics (neurons, links between nodes, nodes fire if the input exceeds a threshold value, links have weights, which specify the link strength)

Front 22

Detailed example of an action schema known as a script

Back 22

going to dinner:
being seated, getting menus, ordering, waiting, getting food, getting check, paying, leaving

Front 23

script

Back 23

type of schema, a body of knowledge on a subject

Front 24

action schema

Back 24

structures that control automatic attentional processes

Front 25

advantages and disadvangtages of the connectionist view of cognition and problem solving

Back 25

pro: similarity between real world and simulated
cons: brains are massively parallel, networks show a convergent dynamic(network reaches a stable state unlike real brains)

Connectionism: similar to emergence in relation that the belief of mental phenomena are explained by connected neural networks. can only explane these phenomena in very general terms.

Front 26

Spreading activiation

Back 26

there is a unit within the neural network that has an activation. this activation is a numerical value that represents some aspect of the unit. it tends to spread to the other units which are connected to the activation.

Front 27

differences between a typical artificial neural network and semantic network

Back 27

ANN nodes represents symbols but SM nodes have a specific meaning. SM nodes have spreading activation

Front 28

What is a small world network? describe two kinds.

Back 28

where the number of links between any pair of nodes is few

Egalitarians: all links are distributed more or less equally

Aristocratic networks: contains hub, nodes that have many more links than the rest of the network’s nodes...THE INTERNET!!!

Front 29

kevin bacon effect

Back 29

Any Hollywood actor can be linked back to kevin bacon through their film roles within 6 steps

Front 30

What responsibility do the brain structures each have?

Back 30

Reticular activating system - controls the brains overall arousal and alterness levels

Superior colliculus - the shifting of visual attention from one object or location in the visual field to another

thalamus - receives inputs from RAS and forwards them to the cortex. Forwards incoming sensory information to different parts of the cortex specialized for processing them

intraparietal sulcus - active in processing a combination of visual stimuli features like color and shape. This suggests that it is responsible for the binding of features in visual search

cingulate cortex - the site where a response is selected, especially in the cases where the response entails the inhibition of an alternative response.

Front 31

explain specific deficits a person with executive dysfunction could have and what area of the brain is involved

Back 31

executive dysfunction - frontal lobe damage, psychological intertia (problems starting or stopping actions), environmental dependency syndrome(stimuli from environment triggers automatic behavior), problem solving

Front 32

Why is it thought that the human brain is a small world network?

Back 32

brains have to react fast, thus the information can not pass through many synapses

Front 33

What are the 3 main elements of natural selection?

Back 33

Inheritance: passing of gene based characteristics

selection: particular attribute or attributes promote survival under altered conditions

variation: differ on physical traits

Front 34

How is natural selection different from sexual selection?

Back 34

Natural selection is concerned with survival whereas sexual selection is more concerned with reproductive success

Front 35

Traditional cognitive science views the brain as a general purpose processor, while evolutionary psychology suggests the brain is more like a “Swiss army knife.” Explain.

Back 35

each part of the mind is assumed to of evolved to solve a specific problem.

Front 36

What are the six properties of an evolved psychological mechanism?

Back 36

Purpose

perceptual focus

Communication

Output

Type of output

Solution

Front 37

Purpose

Back 37

Solve specific problem of survival or reproduction

Front 38

Perceptual focus

Back 38

Mechanism triggered only by a visual image of a specific stimulus

Front 39

Communication

Back 39

Input of a mechanism informs the organism of the type of problem

Front 40

Output

Back 40

Input produces a behavioral output or response

Front 41

Type of output

Back 41

can be physiological activity, input to another psychological mechanism, or a behavior

Front 42

Solution

Back 42

Mechanism evolved to provide a solution to the problem

Front 43

Describe the concept of categorization. What is its relationship to typicality?

Back 43

our minds tend to group like things or ideas together

typicality: grouping things that are not necessarily the same

used for remember things that will hurt us
eat rotten food once (get sick) → won't eat again

Front 44

Explain the significance of the Wason Selection Task. In particular, explain why the task
was easier with the “bouncer” example than with the cards example.

Back 44

logical thinking ability test

the bouncer one seems easier because of cheater detection,

humans hate freeloaders and cheaters, this is shaped by social evolution

Front 45

What is the typicality effect? Give an example.

Back 45

Concepts are organized around representative members of a class, known as the typicality effect

birds and penguins

Front 46

Heuristic usage

Back 46

Mental shortcuts to ease cognitive load.
Usually involve focusing on one aspect of a complex problem while ignoring others

Front 47

Heuristic

Back 47

Simple rules which people use to form judgments and make decisions

Front 48

What is the relationship between a heuristic and a
fallacy

Back 48

Heuristics lead to errors and fallacies

Front 49

Base-rate fallacy

Back 49

People tend to overestimate the probability of extremely rare properties

Ex: Guy wears all black, dies his hair and listens to death metal. How likely is it that he is a Christian and how likely is it that he is a Satanist?

Front 50

There appear to be differences between the spatial and verbal abilities of men and women.
Explain from an evolutionary perspective.

Back 50

Spatial - MEN
Men were typically the hunters, who needed less nuanced communication. They were generally doing more tracking and things of that nature.

Verbal - Women
They were more along the lines of gatherer and did not require team communication so much as social communication

Front 51

Molecular Drive

Back 51

Copies of genes mutate

Front 52

Neutral Drift

Back 52

Random change of Genes

Front 53

Priming

Back 53

the processing of a stimulus is facilitated by the prior exposure to related stimulus.
a person will recognize the word “doctor” is seen after the word “nurse” much faster if “nurse was not presented