Cog Sci Final Exam Study Guide * Introduction and History * Disciplines in cognitive science
Psych, computer science, machine learning, statistics, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy and education * Empiricism, nativism, behaviorism, functionalism * Empiricism - all knowledge comes from experience * Nativism – we come into the world with innate knowledge * Behaviorism - a form of associationism (empiricism) viewing the structure of the mind as having been formed through interaction with the environment * Functionalism - the current methodological approach in cognitive psychology is consistent with the philosophy of functionalism * Use available empirical data as input and output * Describe: fewer nonsense syllables on the list are remembered after a long time period between study and test * Explain: the syllables are over‐written by other syllables learned on other lists * Predict: if the length between study and test is doubled, the number of syllables remembered will be halved * What goes inside the black box? What happens in between input and output? * Marr’s three levels * Implementation * How is perceptual and cog processing the remembering of information actually done with neural hardware in the brain? * Focus of neuroscience – neurons being sparked, release neurotransmitter etc. * Algorithmic * What processing steps are made to make a decision, or produce a behavior, or so on? * Focus of cognitive psychology * What processing steps were involved, short term memory, rehearse, long term memory * Computational * Why does the cognitive capability behave like it does? What is its goal or purpose? * Focus of artificial intelligence or machine learning * Why do remember some words not others? Rationale behind psychological processes * Concepts and categories * Definitional, prototype and exemplar theories * Definitional - stimuli are grouped in a set of necessary and sufficient properties. A list of conditions that need to be met for a stimulus to belong in a category * Works in very restricted formal domains – a triangle being 3 lines joined together * It is often impossible to classify a concept with a set of necessary and sufficient properties * Labov – mug glass vase experiment * Prototype - people categorize stimuli by similarity to a prototype which is an ideal instance of the category * Prototype for bird would be much more like a robin than an emu or a penguin * Category members share a family resemblance to each other rather than meeting the same definition * Proof: faces example in class, Posner and Keele prototype with dot distortions * Exemplar - every instance of a category is remembered, new stimuli are categorized by average similarity to all category exemplars * Different from prototype theory because this assumes that all people only use prototypes and do not remember specific instances * Schemas, scripts * Schemas - Schemata attempt to capture the general properties or constraints on the class of instances, while still allowing the freedom for individual variation * One approach to defining schemata is to view them as having ‘slots’ that can be filled by ‘variables’ (e.g., Minsky 1975), where: * There are default values (e.g., the fridge in the kitchen) * Slots are limited in the variables they can take (e.g., toilets cannot go in kitchens) * Slots can be filled by variables that are themselves schema (e.g., a ‘tabletop’ schema could occur in a kitchen or living room or a bedroom) * Scripts - schemata for events, rather than