Psy 318 Cognitive Psychology Paper

Psychology 318 – COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Instructor: Dr. Susan Marshall
Office: 407 Fraser E-mail: [e-mail]
Office Hours: Tuesday & Thursday 9:00-9:15 & 10:45-noon

Teaching Assistant: Rudy Goldstein
Office: 528 Fraser Email: [e-mail]
Office Hours: Monday & Wednesday 11:30-12:30

Text: Ashcraft & Radvansky, Cognition (5th Edition) Website: http://courseware.ku.edu

In this course, you will learn about the scientific study of cognitive processes. The focus will be on the research and theories that have been central to the field. Topics for the course include history, cognitive neuroscience, attention, sensation and perception, memory, language, computer models, decision making, problem solving, intelligence, and
more.

The course will be primarily lecture.
There will be three noncumulative exams of 100 points each. In addition, there will be 12 online quizzes, one for each chapter. These quizzes are designed to encourage reading and processing of the text and lecture material and should be completed on a weekly basis as we cover the material. Each quiz will be worth 10 points and your final quiz point total will be the 10 highest scores you receive (100 possible points). Final grades will be based on performance on the exams and quizzes, relative to the performance of the class. The +/- grading system will be used in this class.

The staff of Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD), 135 Strong, 785-864-2620, coordinates accommodations and services for KU courses. If you have a disability for which you may request accommodation in KU classes and have not contacted SSD, please do as soon as possible. Please also see me privately in regard to this course.
Expectations

Preparation

It is my hope and expectation that students will come to class prepared. Mostly, that preparation entails having read the assigned material prior to attending lectures. Attending class, being attentive during lectures, and taking detailed notes will also go a long way toward helping you understand and master the material for this course.

Class Behavior

I do not take attendance, as you are responsible adults and the best judges of where you need to be during this time. When you are in class, I ask for certain courtesies: Please turn off your cell phones before coming into class and put your newspaper and materials for other courses away when class begins. Once you make the commitment to be in class, I ask that you stay for the duration to avoid the disruption of leaving in the middle. If you know in advance that you will have to miss part of a class, I ask that you inform me before class and sit near the door so you can leave unobtrusively.

Make-ups

Please inform me in advance if missing a test is absolutely necessary. Any make-up exam, for any reason, will be an essay exam. In-class activities cannot be made up, as the classroom experience can’t be duplicated.

Academic Misconduct

Academic misconduct is becoming increasingly common at KU. Copying answers on an exam or plagiarizing a written work are absolutely unacceptable and will be dealt with harshly. Academic misconduct charges will be filed, you will receive a failing grade in the course, and the charge may become part of your permanent academic record. It’s just not worth it.

Please don't ever hesitate to come see me regarding the class. I’m happy to help if you are having problems, but don't wait until just before the last exam to try to lift your grade. It's usually too late by then, but it's almost always possible earlier in the semester. Also, remember that when you're sitting in class having trouble understanding something (assuming you've already read the material), there are probably a lot of other students who are also having trouble. Don't hesitate to speak up in class with questions or comments.

Course Schedule

Dates Topic Reading

1/25-27 Introduction/Cognitive Science Approach Ch. 1 & 2

2/1-2/3 Perception & Pattern Recognition Ch. 3

2/8-2/10 Attention Ch. 4

2/15-2/17 Attention/Short-Term Working Memory Ch. 4 & 5

2/22-2/24 Short-Term Working Memory Ch. 5

Quizzes 1-5 must be completed by midnight on 2/24

3/1 EXAM 1 – TUESDAY (Ch. 1-5)

3/3 Learning & Remembering Ch. 6

3/8-3/10 Learning & Remembering/Knowing Ch. 6 & 7

3/15-3/17 Knowing Ch. 7

3/22-3/24 NO CLASS – Spring Break

3/29-3/31 Knowledge in the Real World Ch. 8

4/5-4/7 Knowledge in the Real World Ch. 8

Quizzes 6-8 must be completed by midnight on 4/7

4/12 EXAM 2 – TUESDAY (Ch. 6-8)

4/14 Language Ch. 9

4/19-4/21 Language/Comprehension Ch. 9 & 10

4/26-4/28 Comprehension Ch. 10

5/3-5/5 Comprehension/Decisions, Judgments, & Reasoning Ch. 10 & 11

5/10-5/12 Decisions, Judgments, & Reasoning/Problem Solving Ch. 11 & 12

Quizzes 9-12 must be completed by midnight on 5/12

5/16 FINAL EXAM —MONDAY— 7:30-10:00 A.M. (Ch. 9-12)
Continuum of Ch. 3
Visual Sensory Memory
-Masking and Interference/Erasure
-Averback & Coreill (1961)
Results for bar cue: (replicated Sperling research)
-High performance with short delays of the cue
- Performance decreased with longer delays
-Memory duration of 250ms
Results for circle cue: - Lower performance - Circle erased the memory trace for the letter
Backward Masking
Pattern Recognition
-Grouping principles only go so far
- How do we actually recognize something as familiar and identify it?
- Template Approach: we have stored in memory models of all categorizable patterns, we match template to image to identify it….problems: great variability in the objects we can recognize, high demand on memory to learn store and search all possible templates (and their different orientations, distances from us, etc.)
- Feature Detection: we store a limited number of elemental features or components that comprise the images we are able to identify, combining the features results in all possible images we can identify, less demanding on memory
Pandemonium (Selfridge, 1959) - Important characteristics of Pandemonium - Feature detection—neurological evidence in cats and monkeys that some neurons respond to simple features (e.g., diagonal lines, etc.) - Parallel processing—all of the demons are working at the same time, trying to identify the pattern
- Perception is problem solving—visual system must put together “pieces” from our environment and figure out the whole picture - Problem with pandemonium o Bottom-up only-the entre model is driven by the data o It doesn’t take into account the effects of context
Connectionism
- Connectionist modeling—a theoretical and computational approach to studying cognition o Uses computer modeling and mathematical computations to simulate/understand cognition o A connectionist network is designed to simulate same tasks - Input units: in a model of a simple connectionist network, input units are basic “cells” that receive inputs from the environment - Hidden Units: this level in the network is completely internal, always one step removed from an input and output - Output Units: The units that report the system’s response, say to the question “what is this word?”
Object Recognition - Recognition by Components (RBC) Theory: o The approach to recognizing letters by features can be explanded to objects o Geons-small number of basic elements that can be combined to form objects we can recognize ▪ Important aspects of the patterns: the edges and how they relate to one
another ▪ The verticles—where lines intersect
Agnosia
- We can understand a lot about how the brain works by studying what happens when something goes wrong - Agnosia—a deficit in recognizing objects - Apperceptive Agnosia: Individual features cannot be integrated into a whole; a basic disruption in perceiving patterns, Impairment in organizing visual sensory information, right hemisphere only
Auditory Sensation