Posted 1/20/06

Video 1661:  Cognitive Processes (2nd program on video); available from Media Services

Points from the video

• ___________: study of behavior itself, with no assumptions about internal representations
• Cognitive revolution: focus on thinking, _________, and _____________
• Donald Broadbent (1958), beginning of ___________________ tradition
• First flow chart showing sequence of ordered stages in a mental operation (encoding of information)
• Herbert Simon: Organisms as ______
• Input information, store, read,compare, etc.
• Categories and concepts
• What qualifies as a ________? E.g., women, fire, and dangerous things
• _________ (e.g. picnic)
• Organizations of knowledge that inform new problems
• Mental imagery
• Mental rotation and scanning RTs
• Errors in ___________ (Seattle vs. Montreal)

• Introspection
• Limitations in what people can report
• ______________
• ___________
• Behaviors associated with cues
• No internal representations of relationships, concepts
• Information processing
• Computer metaphor (storage capacity, processing speed)
• Describe cognitive process with a ______________ model

• Too many possibilities
• Too many options to choose from
• Too many ___________ consistent with an experience
• Too much ______________
• Too many cues to attend to.
• Too much information to process
• What's the solution?
• _____________
• ___________ strategies

• ______________
• Bird song learning
• Happens most easily in _______________
• Happens only for birds own song (not another species song)
• ___________ learning
• Most successful during ___________
• Explained by simplified processing

• Preparedness
• Easier for rats to associate
• Food  -> _______
• Click  -> _______
• Expectations
• Find a relationship that you expect
• _____________ correlation

• Multiple reasonable interpretations of a visual scene
• _________ system has a preference for certain interpretations

• ________ strategy
• Gives _________ answer in this example
• May be a good approximation in many cases

• Who has the highest course average?

• Computational steps
• Read A1
• Read W1
• Multiple A1  xW1
• Store product 1
• Read A2
• Read W2
• Multiple A2 x W2
• Store product 2
• ... Sum products 1, 2, and 3
• Store sum-A
• ...Compare sum-A to sum-B
• Store winner
• Compare winner to sum-C
• Choose winner

• Notice that Amy ________ Curt
• ____ or _____ score on _______
• Brian's scores have low ______; know that average must be ______________
• Amy has the ______________
• Amy does best on ________________
• These short cuts are accurate much of the time and __________________________

• Mind is a ________________ system
• Cognitive processes occur in ___________
• Mind is a  _____________  processor

• Type of _____________; stands for something
• Meaning ____________ assigned (e.g., words, numbers)
• ____________-- can refer to abstract concepts or broad classes
• Doesn't store __________ in which information was received (seen, read, heard)

• Manipulate and transform symbols, e.g.,
• Mathematical ______________
• ____________
• on (ball, box)
• is-a (cow, animal)

• Let's theory make specific ________________
• Not just about accuracy but also about ____________ and possibilty other factors such as difficulty
• Allows _____________ models, expert systems, and artificial intelligence systems
• Provides understanding about what the cognitive system is doing.

• Method of subtraction
• Eliminating one _____________ reduces processing time by the amount needed for that component
• Example: use an ______________ average that gives _____ weight to all 3 exams
• Eliminates  _____________ and ___________, so RT should be shortened by that amount

• Memory space, time, and ___________ are limited
• Since processes happen in real time, number of sequential steps indicates the _____________ needed
• Some theories can be ruled out because they are not ____________________
• Mental system compenstates for limited capacity by using  ____________________when time is short or problems are complex.
• Example:

What is cognitive science?

• Umbrella discipline that includes all fields that study computational models of cognition
• Fields include
• Cognitive psychology
• ________________
• Philosophy
• ____________ Science
• Vision research (including neuroscience)
• Approaches include
• Descriptive/psychological/empirical
• Theoretical/normative