1. Cognitive Psychology EXP 3604 Ira Fischler Welcome to the course CP in the curriculum Web resources –www.psych.ufl.edu/~fischler Course structure and requirements CP in science and society Scope and nature of CP

2. Cognitive Psychology A COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGIST’S VIEW OF THE ACADEMIC WORLD social psychology neuropsychology developmental psychology anthropology neuroscience education humanities and arts philosophy computer science sports & music evolutionary psychology

3. WHAT IS COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY? BY FORMAL DEFINITION –the study of human mental processes and their role in perception, attention, memory, thinking and decision-making (Goldstein) BY TOPIC –attention and information processing –memory: representation and dynamics –Language and concepts –thinking and problem solving BY ISSUES –does “subliminal learning” work? –What is the matter in dyslexia? –Do you use the cell phone and drive? –are “recovered memories” reliable? –What is insight? Intuition? Creativity? –Should you get a smallpox vaccination? –Can we increase IQ by training?

4. GOALS OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY PERFORMANCE –how accurate?..fast?..much? PROCESS –models of the stages and codes involved in a cognitive task PRINCIPLES –what is the “functional organization of the mind?” to describe human cognition in terms of

5. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Course Goals THE COGNITIVE APPROACH –how to think about cognition like a cognitive psychologist THE METHODS OF THAT APPROACH –understanding the interplay between theoretical and experimental tools THE NATURE AND LIMITS OF COGNITION –how we do those things we do (e.g., perceive, attend, recall, think…) TIPS AND TECHNIQUES FOR ENHANCING COGNITION –methods of improving your skills in learning, remembering and thinking In EXP 3604, you will learn about... … and revive that childlike sense of awe

6. A CAPSULE HISTORY OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY A VIEW OF PROGRESS IN SCIENCE –Thomas Kuhn (1962): THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS –Normal science versus “Paradigm shifts” –Revolutions in the natural sciences –Revolutions in the social sciences –Progress or “cultural construct”?

7. PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY –since 500 BC: From Greece to the Enlightenment Plato: innate, ideal “concepts” (nativism) and knowledge via reason (rationalism) Aristotle: the role of experience in learning, and observation in science (empiricism) Kant: innate concepts of space, time and causality; cognitive “schema” Locke and the British Empiricist tradition

8. SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY IS BORN 1850’s: Psychophysics (e.g., Fechner) 1880’s: Introspection (e.g., Wundt)

9. REACTIONS TO INTROSPECTION’S.. –Elementalism: vs. “global” aspects of perception > Gestalt Theory (Kohler) –Accessibility: vs. “imageless thought” > Psychoanalysis (Freud) –Structuralism: vs. the “purposiveness” of cognition > Functionalism (James) –Scientific validity: vs. problems with replication & bias > Behaviorism (Watson) THE COGNITIVE REVOLUTION –1950s: Information processing (e.g., Broadbent)

10. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY IS BORN (1950 - 1965) BEHAVIORISM EVOLVES –e.g., Lawrence (1952) HUMAN FACTORS –e.g., Broadbent (1955) INFORMATION THEORY –e.g., Shannon (1949) LINGUISTICS –e.g., Chomsky (1957) COMPUTER SCIENCE –e.g., von Neumann (1950) COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY - e.g., Neisser (1967)

11. THE INFORMATION- PROCESSING FRAMEWORK STAGES OF PROCESSING –The sequence of mental operations that occur as we do a task how many stages? do they require attention? are they obligatory? do any stages occur “in parallel”? CODES OF REPRESENTATION –The form or nature of the information being processed visual or verbal? analog or conceptual? Broadbent’s “structural” IP model (1955):

12. MEMORY STRUCTURES AND PROCESSES IN THE “MODAL MODEL” (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968) SENSORY REGISTERS sensory inputs SHORT-TERM STORE (STS) temporary, working memory LONG-TERM STORE (LTS) permanent memory store visual auditory control processes: - rehearsal - coding - decisions - retrieval strategies tactile

13. USING REACTION TIME TO STUDY PROCESSING STAGES Letter-matching: Same or Different? (Posner & Mitchell, 1967) AA, ff, LL etc… “yes” msec Aa, Gg, kK etc… “yes” msec Ad, gF, RM etc… “no” msec Type of Pair Response RT Aa requires one additional stage, so Aa - AA gives the time of that stage This difference correlates with verbal SAT scores! (Hunt, 1975)

14. STAGES AND CODES IN A SIMPLE PROCESSING TASK Letter-matching: Same or Different? (Posner & Mitchell’s “task” IP model, 1967) (stimulus appears) Select response left key right key Aa See the letters Compare the forms same form? YESNO Name the letters Compare the names YESNO same names?

15. STRATEGIES OF COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE The Coin of the Realm: correlations between psychological and neurophysiological events/structures Establishing two-way constraints between levels –Cognitive psychology as the bootstrap –Neuroactivity as the bootstrap Regions of interest (ROI’s) and localization of function –Subtractive versus parametric designs –Event-related activation “dynamics” Covariation and functional networks –Patterns of correlated activity among multiple regions of interest

16. EEG and EVENT-RELATED POTENTIALS (ERPs) Postsynaptic extracellular potentials vary with neuronal activity Masses of pyramidal cells generate a varying electrical signal, the EEG Changes in the EEG that are related to psychological events (ERPs) can be seen by averaging Various ERP “components” are sensitive to cognitive processes

17. MAGNETOENCEPHALOGRAPHY methodology –Incredibly weak magnetic signal (femtoTeslas) –Detected by SQUID ($3M, 16,000 lbs, minus 269 deg C –Works for neural fields tangental to surface

18. MAGENTIC RESONANCE IMAGING (MRI) Align the spins of Water-based hydrogen atoms by powerful magnetic field Create a “gradient” in the field “pulse” the field with a strong radio- frequency signal that perturbs the alignment Using an RF detector, track the return to alignment With really complex computing, reconstruct the 3D density of tissue in the brain

19. FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING (fMRI) Oxygenated blood has different magnetic properties than deoxy So comparing MRI between target task and “control” task (a challenge) reveals areas of task-related activation

20. fMRI (cont’d) Event-related fMRI allows tracking of the “hemodynamic response” to individual events: Source: Kwong et al., 1992

21. COLLECTING EEG

22. REACTION TIME AND UNCERTAINTY (Hick, 1952) Reaction Time (msec) A logarithmic function – as predicted By Shannon’s Information Theory (1949)

23. Davachi, Lila et al. (2003) Meaning, Brain activity, and Memory

24. Davachi, et al. (2003) Increases in activation for Image vs. Read

25. Davachi, et al. (2003) Difference in activation (Image – Read) for Remember vs. Forget