Week 2 & 3:

Cognitive Psychology
Foundation Year Introduction into
Psychology
Dora Simunovic
 The Strange Case of Phineas Gage
• September 13th, 1848
• While setting a blast,
Gage’s temping iron
sent a spark against
the stone, setting off
the charge
• The pointed end of
the temping iron
(3.2cmx110cm) shot
up through his skull,
and landed 25m away
 The Strange Case of Phineas Gage
• September 13th, 1848
• While setting a blast,
Gage’s temping iron
sent a spark against
the stone, setting off
the charge
• The pointed end of
the temping iron
(3.2cmx110cm) shot
up through his skull,
and landed 25m away
 The Strange Case of Phineas Gage
• Gage was a BAMF

“When I drove up he said, "Doctor, here is business enough for you."

I first noticed the wound upon the head before I alighted from my carriage,
the pulsations of the brain being very distinct. The top of the head appeared
somewhat like an inverted funnel, as if some wedge-shaped body had passed
from below upward. Mr. Gage, during the time I was examining this wound,
was relating the manner in which he was injured to the bystanders. I did not
believe Mr. Gage's statement at that time, but thought he was deceived. Mr.
Gage persisted in saying that the bar went through his head. Mr. G. got up
and vomited; the effort of vomiting pressed out about half a teacupful of the
brain, which fell upon the floor.”
Statement by first attending doctor, Edward H.
Williams, thirty minutes after the accident
 The Strange Case of Phineas Gage
• Loss of vision and ptosis of the left eye, partial
paralysis of the left side of the face, and a
deep crack in the skull
• “No longer Gage”
• Impulsivity, disinhibition, loss of self-control
• Gage lost his job and toured the US as a “living museum
piece”; he died 12 years after the accident, having
become an alcoholic and developed epileptic attacks
 What’s interesting?
• People used to be really badass
• The brain is a lot more durable / amazing than
we give it credit for
• Phineas Gage’s personality change
• Fame?
• Injury?
• …?
 What’s interesting?
• People used to be really badass
• The brain is a lot more durable / amazing than
we give it credit for
• Phineas Gage’s personality change
• Fame?
Social reasons
• Injury?
Neurological reasons
• …?
 Neuroscience
• Scientific study of the nervous system
• Branch of biology
• But also: medicine, genetics, evolutionary science,
economics (neuroeconomics), computer science,
engineering, psychology, cognitive science, social
science…
• In (cognitive) psychology, we are most
interested in what happens in the brain itself
 Meet Brian

“If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would
be so simple that we couldn’t.”
Emerson Pugh, The Biological Origin of human
Values (1977)
 Building blocks of the Brain: Neuron
• Specialized cells for
the reception and
transmission of
electrical signals

• The signals are

transferred via
synapses
 Building blocks of the Brain: Neuron
• Dendrite: “branches”
from the soma which
receive signals from
other neurons, muscles
or sense organs
• Axon: single “thread”
that carried signals
away from the soma
• Myelin: fatty material
which wraps around
the axon like insulation
 Synapse
• Microscopic gap
between neurons
• Electrical impulse
translates into a
neurochemical
burst
• Neurotransmitter:
chemicals
produced by
neurons
 Building Blocks of the Brain: Glia
• Non-neuronal cells that maintain homeostatis
(ensuring stability and constancy of internal conditions), form
myelin, and provide protection for neurons
• Glia (Greek, γλία) means glue
• They surround neurons and hold them in place
• Supply neurons with nutrients and oxygen
• Insulate one neuron from another
• Destroy pathogens and remove dead neurons
 Derp Brian…

THALAMUS amygdala
hippocampus
 Relays
messages pituitary

CEREBELLUM
 Coordination
and balance
BRAINSTEM  Heart rate
and breathing
Domains of the Brain
 Neural Networks do Exist
• Neural network: interconnected neurons
particularly likely to activate in synch

• Within the different “domains”, there are

neurons connected more closely, which cause
patterns of behaviour
…or so the theory goes
 Hemispheric Specialization
LEFT HEMISPHERE RIGHT HEMISPHERE
• Processing information in a • Processing information in a
linear manner (analytic) holistic manner
• Identifying important • Identifying context
details • Metaphoric thinking and
• Literal meaning, grammar language production
and vocabulary • Spatial and facial
• Symbolic thinking perception
• Right side of the body • Left side of the body
CORPUS CALLOSUM: spongy tissue connecting the two
MOST PROCESSES ARE BILATERAL!
 Other Neural Networks
• Central Nervous System (CNS)
• Brain and spinal cord
• Integrating information received from PNS
• Peripheral Nervous System (PNS)
• Nerves and ganglia outside of the brain and spinal
cord
• Made up of the somatic and autonomous nervous
system
• Voluntary and involuntary body function, respectively
• Reflex system
 Neuroplasticity
• Change happening in the brain during an
animal’s lifetime
• Physical changes to individual neurons
• Cortical remapping
• While new neurons cannot be formed (yet),
other neurons can overtake the functions of
their damaged neighbours
 Studying the Brain
• Structural brain imaging • Functional brain imaging
techniques
• Angiography, computer
tomography (CT)
• Magnetic resonance
imaging (MRI) and
diffusion MRI
• Useful in diagnostic
medicine and psychiatry to
determine whether there
are structural changes in
an individual brain
techniques
• Positron emission
tomography (PET)
• Electro / magneto-
encephalography (EEG,
MEG)
• Transcranial magnetic
stimulation (TMS)
• Functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI)
• Useful in determining
correlations between brain
function and brain activity
in real time
 Cognitive psychology
• Studies (human) cognitive processes

• Name a cognitive process

 Cognitive psychology
• Studies (human) cognitive processes

• Name a cognitive process

• What did you have to do to be able to answer this
question?
 Cognitive psychology
• Studies (human) cognitive processes

• Name a cognitive process

• What did you have to do to be able to answer this
question?
• Hear the question, understand it; recall an answer,
formulate it, take into consideration the situation
and decide whether to answer or not; produce
speech…
 Cognitive psychology
• Studies (human) cognitive processes

• Name a cognitive process

• Cognition: the collection of mental processes

and activities used in perceiving, learning,
remembering, thinking, and understanding,
and the act of using those processes
 Cognitive psychology
• Perceiving – how do we see, hear, touch?
• Attending – how to we focus our attention?
• Memory – how do we remember things?
• Learning – how to we learn?
• Language – how do we communicate?
• Reason – how do we reason?
• Problem-solving – how do we solve problems?
• Decision-making – how do we make decisions?
 Cognitive psychology
• Perceiving – how do we see, hear, touch?
• Attending – how to we focus our attention?
• Memory – how do we remember things?
• Learning – how to we learn?
• Language – how do we communicate?
• Reason – how do we reason?
• Problem-solving – how do we solve problems?
• Decision-making – how do we make decisions?
 Perception
• The first step to… everything
• Sensation: the process by which the central nervous
system receives input from the environment via
sensory neurons
• PERCEPTION: the process by which the brain
interprets and organizes sensory information
• We will later talk a lot about social perception, which is
interpretation of social and interpersonal information…
and shouldn’t really be called perception.
Name as many sense as you can
 The five major senses
• Vision – electromagnetic
– Occipital lobe
• Hearing – mechanical
– Temporal lobe
• Touch – mechanical
– Sensory cortex
• Taste – chemical
– Gustatory insular cortex
• Smell – chemical
– Olfactory bulb
– Orbitofrontal cortex
 The sixth sense
And the seventh…and eighth…and ninth…

• Vestibular  balance and motion

– Inner ear
• Proprioceptive  relative position of body parts
– Parietal lobe
• Temperature  heat
– Thermoreceptors throughout the body, sensory cortex
• Nociception  pain
– Nociceptors throughout the body, sensory cortex
 What is cognition?
• Perceiving, narrowly defined, is registering
stimuli (sensing)

• However, it also means making sense of

stimuli
 How does perception work?
• Bottom-up theories
• Parts are identified, put together; recognition
occurs, as does, subsequently, interpretation

• Top-down theories
• People actively construct perceptions using
information based on previous expectation of
what the information likely means
• They interpret in real time, not post hoc
 Bottom-up processing
• Template theories
– Recognition occurs when one compares templates
held in memory with stimuli
– Problem: imperfect matching!
• Feature matching theories
– Recognition occurs when specific elements are
detected and assembled into more complex
forms; “feature detectors”
 Top-down processing
• Perception is not automatic from raw stimuli

• Instead of analysing each feature before

matching it to the pre-existing templates,
people make quick inferences, guessing from
experience and taking context into
consideration
 Configural-Superiority effect

• Measuring reaction time showed the target

(different stimuli) was spotted faster in
context (1884 v. 749 miliseconds)
 J.J. Gibson’s Theory of Direct
Perception
• Information in our sensory receptors is all we
need to perceive anything
• We do not need the aid of complex thought
processes to explain perception

• Dude also invented

AFFORDANCE
 Gestalt Psychology
• 1910: Max Wertheimer noticed distant objects
seemed to move with the train, nearby ones
went past
• Perceptual experience has properties the
individual components do not
 Gestalt Psychology
• Humans are not passive receivers of sensory
information
• The whole is more than a sum of its parts
• Like the top-down theories, Gestalt argues that we
organize perceptions into coherent wholes

• Principles of organization
• Law of Prägnanz: individuals organize their experience
in as simple, concise, symmetrical, and complete
manner as possible (affordance?)
• Perception happens in context
Müller-Lyer-illusion
Ponzo illusion
Or when do we fail to organize visual
information?
Gestalt’s Principles of Visual Perception
 Gestalt’s Principles of Visual Perception

• Figure-ground
– Organize perceptions by
distinguishing between a figure
and a background
• Proximity
– Elements tend to be grouped
together according to their
nearness
• Similarity
– Items similar in some respect
tend to be grouped together
 Gestalt’s Principles of Visual Perception
B
• Continuity
A
– Based on smooth continuity,
which is preferred to abrupt D
changes of direction C
• Closure
– Items are grouped together if
they tend to complete a figure
• Symmetry
– Prefer to perceive objects as
mirror images
Tactile illusions

46
 Is the Whole Seen Before the Parts?

• Global superiority effect (Navon, 1977)

 Cognitive Load
• Why did those pictures bother you?

• Cognitive load: total mental effort being used

in the working memory
• The less reality fits into our expectations, the
more effort we have to expend in order to
correctly perceive it
• Effort? Attention, thinking time, memory
retrieval…
 Exercise
• Count the number of times the white team
pass the basketball
 Exercise
• Count the number of times the white team
pass the basketball

• Have you noticed the gorilla?

 Attention
• Process of focusing on specific features of the
environment, or on certain thoughts or
activities
• Process of excluding features of the environment
other than the selected ones
 Selective Attention
• Your experiences?
 Selective Attention
• Ability to concentrate on one information set,
and ignore all others
• Dichotic listening
 Selective Attention
• Ability to concentrate on one information set,
and ignore all others
• Dichotic listening
• Participant is asked
to “shadow” only one
of the two information
streams
If asked to repeat the
unattended information
stream, participants have
only limited success
 Broadbent’s filter model of attention

• Sensory memory holds all incoming information

for a fraction of a second
• Filter identifies only wanted information based
on physical characteristics
• Detector determined higher-level characteristics
of the information
 Broadbent’s filter model of attention

• Early-selection model
• Filter acts BEFORE incoming information is
analysed for meaning
 Broadbent’s filter model of attention

• Problem: unattended information should not

even be perceived
Treisman’s Attenuation Theory
 Treisman’s Attenuation Theory

• Threshold recognition: unattended information

comes to notice when it surpasses a certain
amount
• Dictionary unit contains stored words and thresholds
for activating the words
 Divided Attention
• Mental state in which focus is divided on
multiple stimuli at the same time
• It is a skill, not an ability!
• Involved in multitasking
• Urban legend: women outperform men on
multitasking
• Why do you think that is?
 Stroop Effect
• Name the colours of the letters
 Simulated driving task
• Strayer and Johnston (2001)
• Participants on cell phones missed twice as many
red lights, and took longer to apply the breaks in
emergency situations
• Same result for hands-free cell phones!
 Simulated driving-test
• Risk of accident is four times higher when
using a cell phone while driving
 Visual Attention
• The way we look at things
• Eye tracker
 Face Perception
• Faces always exceed the attention threshold
 Face Perception
• We have a special way of looking at faces
 Face Perception
• We even see them when they are not really
there
Face Perception
Face Perception
Face Perception

Thatcher effect
 Memory
• Process involved in retaining, retrieving, and
using information
 Types of Memory
• Sensory memory
• 100-300 msec

• Short-term memory
• 1-30 sec

• Working memory

• Long-term memory
• >2min
 Sensory Memory
• Registers all or most information that is
perceived
• Information decays very quickly
 Sensory Memory
• Sperling (1960)
• Array of letters flashed quickly on screen
• Whole report: participants were able to recall 4.5
out of 12 letters, on average
• Partial report: a tone told the participants which
row to recall – 3.3 out of 4 letters
 Short-term Memory
• “Primary” or “active” memory
• Capacity for holding a small amount of
information in the mind in an active, readily
available state for a short period of time
 Short-term Memory
• Magic number 7 ± 2

• Function: learning, and encoding information

to store in the long-term memory
– Anterograde amnesia, as opposed to retrograde
amnesia, is the inability to learn new facts and
episodes; disconnect between short-term and
long-term memory
 Patient HM
• Henry Molaison (1926 – 2008)
• Suffered severe epilepsy, the centre of which was in
his right medial temporal lobe
• To treat this, Molaison’s hippocampi were removed
after which he developed severe anterograde amnesia
• He could no longer commit new events to his explicit
memory
• Working and procedural memory were intact, as well
as IQ, attention, concentration, language and long-
term memory already stored
 Working memory
• Capacity for short-term holding of new and
already-stored information pertinent to an
action being performed
• Kind of like RAM…
• Short-term memory is a single component active
in working memory!

• Magic number 7 ± 2
 Long-term Memory
• System for storing unlimited (?) information
for the duration of an individual’s lifetime
• “Reference” memory

• Located in the hippocampus, along with short-

term memory
 Long-term memory
• Implicit:
• Procedural memory, locus for priming effects…
• Memory without conscious awareness
• Explicit:
• Episodic memory, semantic memory, spatial
memory…
• Conscious recollection of events or facts the
individual has learned
 Implicit and Explicit Memory
• Implicit memory task:
• Show a task to a participant and ask them to
repeat it
• Completion of the task indirectly indicates
memory
• Explicit memory task:
• Show a task to a participant and ask them to
explain it
• The complex cognitive process required now are
explicit, semantic and episodic memory
 Explicit memory
• Semantic memory (“knowledge”) and episodic
memory (mental time travel)
• Blue areas are associated with semantic, orange
with episodic memory
• Separate processes, but connected
 Implicit memory
• Mere exposure effect / propaganda effect
• Positive attitude towards things experienced
before, even unconsciously (priming)

• Procedural memory
• Hanoi Tower
• HM got better at it with
Repetition even though he
could not remember doing it
 Memory over the Lifetime
• People tend to
remember more
that happened in
their teens
• 13-14 for women
• 15-18 for men
• WHY?
 Memory over the Lifetime
• “Reminiscence bump”
Life Psychology Individual assumes one’s life identity
Cognitive Psychology Encoding systems are at their peak
Cultural Psychology Cultural learning requires increased information
storage
Evolutionary Psychology Time during which the animal is at the beginning
of its sexual peak and will form the most
referential experiences
…?
 False Memory
• Phenomenon in which a person recalls events
which did not actually occur
• Memory corruption can happen when previous
experiences fall under the influence of subsequent
experiences
• Alternatively, memories can be implanted
 Learning
• Experiential process resulting in a relatively
permanent change of behaviour which is not
explained by temporary states, maturation, or
innate response tendencies
 Types of learning
• Classical conditioning
• Individual responds to neutral stimuli as though it
is another, relevant stimuli
• Operant conditioning
• Individual behaves in accordance to positive /
negative feedback
• Cognitive learning
• Individual employs conscious and wilful cognitive
processes such as attention and memory
 Classical Conditioning
• A new stimulus (bell)
is presented along
with existing stimulus
(food) which elicits
reaction (salivation)
• Given enough
repetition, the
reaction (salivation)
will occur even
without the causal
stimulus (food) , but
in the presence of the
new stimulus (bell)
 Classical Conditioning
• Ivan Pavlov
• A new stimulus (bell) is
presented along with
existing stimulus (food)
which elicits reaction
(salivation)
• Given enough
repetition, the reaction
(salivation) will occur
even without the
causal stimulus (food) ,
but in the presence of
the new stimulus (bell)
INVOLUNTARY REACTION
 Classical Conditioning
• Food aversion

• Smell-memory connection
 Operant conditioning
• E.L. Thorndike
• If an action produced a
desired effect (latch
opened cage; positive
feedback), it is more likely
to be repeated
• The reverse is also true: if
an action produced an
undesirable effect
(negative feedback), it is
less likely to be repeated
 Operant conditioning
• E.L. Thorndike
• If an action produced a
desired effect (latch
opened cage; positive
feedback), it is more likely
to be repeated
• The reverse is also true: if
an action produced an
undesirable effect
(negative feedback), it is
less likely to be repeated
VOLUNTARY ACTION
• Trial and error learning!
 Operant Conditioning
• Reinforcers: positive and negative feedback

• Used all the time

• Examples?
 Cognitive Learning
• Requires “higher-order” cognitive functions
• May or may not involve a reward-punishment
system
 Cognitive Learning
• Observational learning
• Involves model – student
• Could be quite complex (Bandura’s Bobo experiment)
• Insight learning
• Mental process marked by a sudden occurrence of a
solution (Aha! Effect)
• Sultan and the banana
• Symbolic learning
• Specific to humans?
Emotions
 Emotions
• Affect v. emotion v. mood v. temperament
 Emotions
• Affect: brief, intense emotional state
• Emotion (in the narrow sense): consciously
experienced state of intense mental activity and a
high degree of pleasure/displeasure associated with
a particular stimuli
• Mood: less specific, less intense emotion which was
not necessarily triggered by a specific stimuli
• Temperament: personality-related tendency to
experience certain emotions
 Emotions
• Emotions consist of:
– Physiological arousal (hormones, neurochemistry,
neural activation, heart-rate, breathing, muscle
tone…)
– Cognitive/Conscious experience (What am I
feeling? Why am I feeling it?)
– Expressive behaviours (gestures, facial
expressions, decision-making…)
 The 10 Basic Emotions

• Joy • Interest/Excitement
• Surprise • Sadness
• Anger • Disgust
• Contempt • Fear Guilt
• Shame
Culturally Universal
Naturally Occurring
Shared with Other Primates?
 The 10 Basic Emotions

• Joy • Interest/Excitement
• Surprise • Sadness
• Anger • Disgust
• Contempt • Fear Guilt
• Shame
Universal to all human beings (and beyond). Have
universal facial expressions, recognizable to all
humans no matter their cultural background.
 The 10 Basic Emotions
• NATURE:
– Everyone has emotions
– The basic ten are expressed essentially the same
way, particularly when it comes to facial
expressions (true for some mammals as well)
• NURTURE:
– Culture, generation, social situation will affect
how we express our emotions
– Emotion regulation is learned (even though some
people seem to find it easier than others)
 Emotional processing
• Biophychology of emotion - the action
happens in the limbic system
– Hypothalamus: fight, flight, freeze;
breathing/heart rate regulation
– Amygdala: fear and rage
– Septum: suppression
of negative emotional
states
 Emotional Processing
• Frontal lobe: “brake system”
– What Phineas Gage lost was the neocortex matter
which functioned as his inhibition, emotional
rationalization, and impulse-control
How do we feel?
 How do we feel?
• James-Lange model
– Experience of emotion is awareness of
physiological responses to emotion-arousing
stimuli!
Sight of Pounding Fear
oncoming heart (emotion)
car (arousal)
(perception of
stimulus)
 How do we feel?

Pounding
• Cannon-Bard model
heart – Emotion-arousing stimuli
(arousal)
Sight of trigger cognitive (I am
oncoming
car afraid), and physiological
(perception of (heart rate, adrenaline
stimulus)
burst) responses
simultaneously
Fear
(emotion) • Ignores cognition, i.e.
interpretation of emotion
 How do we feel?

Pounding
• Schachter’s
heart Two-factor
(arousal)
Sight of Fear model:
oncoming (emotion)
car – To experience
(perception of emotion, both
stimulus)
the cognition,
and the
Cognitive
label physiological
response must
“I’m afraid”
be activated
 How do we feel?
• We have no idea!
– There is evidence for arousal → cognition
(interpretation) = emotion
• Misattribution
– Also evidence for expression → cognition →
arousal = emotion
• Pencil experiment
– As well as stimuli → arousal + emotion (with no
cognitive process in between)
• Evolutionarily assembled responses, microexpressions
 Misattribution of Arousal
• Dutton and Aron (1974) had a female
confederate meet men on a bridge
 Misattribution of Arousal
• Dutton and Aron (1974) had a female
confederate meet men on a bridge

39% called her 9% called her

 Misattribution of arousal
• Arousing stimuli (erotic movie, violent movie)
led to greater expression of aggression than
neutral stimuli (flower movie)
– Even though the arousal should have been sexual,
the (male) participants who viewed the erotic
movie translated that arousal into a new context,
and exhibited aggression
 Bright Side of Life
• Soussignan, 2002

• Measured self-reported
levels of positive
emotion in response to
different stimuli
– The participants held a
pencil in their mouths,
which either forced
them to smile or not
Shortcut emotions
 Phobias from the Stone Age
• We report fears of snakes, spiders, and cliffs…

• …but not electricity, traffic or weapons

 Phobias from the Stone Age
• We report fears of snakes, spiders, and cliffs…

Human evolution bypassed the cognition-

behaviour loop in the case of some stimuli
• …but
whichnot electricity,
were likely totraffic
kill us.orHuman
weapons
nature
has simply not caught up to the modern
world yet…
 Disgust Keeping us Alive
• Paul Rozin (2002)
• Thirsty participants would not drink
from the glass even after the
cockroach was taken out, and the
glass sterilized

• “Sympathetic magic”: when two

objects come into contact, they
acquire similar properties
 Disgust Elicitors
• Food- and water-contamination
– Excretes, maggots, cockroaches, flies, mould…
• Bad smell, bad taste – an evolutionary protection from
poisoning ourselves or contracting other diseases

• Animal-reminder disgust elicitors

– Putrid flesh, poor hygiene, dead bodies, bizarre
sexual behaviour
– Reminds us of our mortality
 Disgust Elicitors
• Moral disgust:
– Emotional reaction due to moral sense
• Hume’s idea of moral emotions
• Meng Ke (Mencius):
“All men have a mind which cannot bear to see the suffering of others.
“My meaning may be illustrated this way: if men suddenly see a child about
to fall into a well, they will without exception experience a feeling of alarm
and distress – not so they may gain favour of the child’s parents, nor to seek
the praise of their neighbours and friends, nor from fear of a reputation of
having been unmoved by such a thing.
“From this case, we may perceive that the feeling of commiseration is
essential to man, that the feeling of shame and dislike is essential to man,
that the feeling of modesty and complaisance is essential to man, and that
the feeling of approving and disapproving is essential to man.”
 Moral Disgust
• Most of us find violence, abuse, murder, rape,
and those that commit them, disgusting
• However…
 Moral Disgust
• Most of us find violence, abuse, murder, rape,
and those that commit them, disgusting
• However…

• (Religious) conservatives feel physical disgust

at the thought of homosexuality
• Racists feel physical disgust at the thought of
contact with persons from other ethnicities…
 Emotion and Gender
• Physiology and intensity:
– Men experience emotional events more intensely
than women
– Conflict is physiologically more upsetting (i.e.
arousing) for men than it is for women
• Makes evolutionary sense: for men, conflict often
means physical danger
– Women recall emotional events more intensely
and vividly than men do
 Emotion and Gender
• Expression
– How acceptable is it for men/women to express
positive/negative emotions?