Cognitive ProcessesMental Activity

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Cognitive ProcessesMental Activity

• Rise of the field
• Theory
• Role of the brain
• We understand the brain the way we do because of
  our brain are we then limited in conceptualizing
  what a brain cold be?
• Methods
• Present and future

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How do we know the mind?

• Early-early
• Memory impressions on wax
• Mind/body distinction
• Later
• Scientific introspection problem mental image
  vs. mental activity
• Even later
• Behaviorism observable events
• S?R connections
• Today
• Cognitivism inferences based on observations
• Cognitive neuroscience brain as substrata for
  mind

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Important Caveats for Inferences

• Experimental (procedural) control
• Controlling confounding variables (alternative
  plausible explanations)
• Cause-and-effect conclusions

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An Example Infants Long-term Memory

• Carolyn Rovee-Collier
• Fact Infantile amnesia
• Question Can pre-linguistic babies remember
  events for days, weeks, even months?
• Problem babies cant tell us what they remember!
  How to test? Watch how they kick

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Training Phase
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Baseline and Retention Tests
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Reactivation Phase
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Duration of Retention
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How does this study illustrate knowledge of the
mind based on inferencing?

• The IV?
• The DV?
• Procedural control?

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Early Studies of the Brain

• Correlations between observable behavior and
  findings at autopsy
• e.g., Paul Brocas study of Tan
• Effects ofand duringsurgery on behavior
• e.g., Wilder Penfields poke-n-probe
  experiments

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Earliest modern-age imaging methods

• EEG

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Newest Methods for Relating Brain and Behavior

• PET (positron emission tomography)
• fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging)
• ERP (event-related potential)

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PET Scan
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Longitudinal development study of the brain of a
child at various ages. Child was engaged in same
activity at each scan.
PET Scan
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fMRIworking memory
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The Information Processing Model(Atkinson
Shiffrin, 1968)

• Computer metaphor
• Original focus Stages and stores
• Characteristics
• Capacity
• Duration
• Encoding format

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PROCESSFilter attention
Model of Thought Information processing
PROCESSPattern recognition
PROCESSSelection attention
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Characteristics of Memory Stores
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Bottom-up Processing
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The Information Processing Model(Atkinson
Shiffrin, 1968)

• Computer metaphor
• Original focus Stages and stores
• Characteristics
• Capacity
• Duration
• Encoding format
• Recent focus on processes, as well
• Characteristics
• Type of encoding (control processes)
• Retrieval (cues context)
• Forgetting
• Interactions
• Working memory.

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Working Memory (Baddeley) Added
Working Memory
PROCESSFilter attention
Model of Thought Information processing
PROCESSPattern recognition
PROCESSSelection attention
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Summary of Current Status

• Cognitive science
• Cognitive neuroscience
• fMRI
• Neural networks, PDP, connectionism, computer
  simulations
• Artificial intelligence

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A simple neural network
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ArtificiaIIntelligence

• Sodarace
• Is this AI?
• Robots make a clean sweep. swissinfo SRI
  (October 1, 2002). "Robots which dust, wipe,
  clean and scrub are being put through their paces
  this week at the first international cleaning
  robot competition in Lausanne. The event is one
  of the highlights of a week-long international
  conference on intelligent robots."