Mental Rotations in Children/Infants

• Spatial Ability: think about 3D things and draw conclusions.
• Men have better spatial ability, shown as young as 4 years old, but not yet in infants.
• Mental rotation is effected by gender differences quite a bit.
• A 4 month old can track, but mental rotation needs to deal with 3D objects, not 2D.
• They wanted to know, if the babies would habitualize the rotated object, that is they wouldn't see it as novel.
• Experiment recorded eye fixations and durations and saw either left or right parts of a mirrored object.
• In the habituation trials, the objects rotated. In the Test object, they switched between left and right.
• Novel object (mirrored image) - males looked at it longer - significant difference.
• Females saw them the same, females did not recognize familiar objects, males did.
• Maybe due to hormones (testosterone), or in the hemispheric differences.
• They also showed that 3-4 month old infants would have differences showing preference for the mirrored objet shows you have done the mental representation-rotation.
• familiarized trials, then preference trials.
• Males did better, even at 3-4 months.
• Social experience/influences may play a big role here.

Cognitive and Neural Contributions to Understanding the Conceptual System

Barsalou article:

• conceptual system: extensive system distributed throughout the brain, and represents knowledge about all aspects of experiences.
• What is the role of attention in these categorizations?
• It allows us to focus on distinctive elements that separate categories (ex. spatial, physical, social).
• The conceptual system (whole of knowledge representation) is used for basically anything we want to think about or do mentally. There is no such thing as a knowledge-free cognitive process... top down knowledge.
• What's semantic memory?
• facts. Its amodel, that is, its not linked to episodic memory or anything else... specifically not particular senses.
• This is a big debate between cognitive science and neuroscience. Barsalou questions this idea in the article. If we don't have vision, then visual memory decreases, so perhaps semantic memory is liked to vision in some way.
• Conceptual system: an entire system of knowledge that includes concepts, categories, and how they're linked together.
• It is used for everything that we do with our minds.
• There is no such thing as a knowledge free action.
• Semantic memory is amodal, meaning it is not based on vision or hearing, etc.  Semantic memory is another name for the conceptual system.
• Cognitive revolution came about around 1970, breaking out of behaviorism... so they concluded it was amodal.
• How does neuroscience view differ from cognitive?
• Its grounded in modal cortexes, so, knowledge is perhaps based in vision, or auditory, not separate areas that are abstracted from the senses. Perhaps some knowledge is based in the areas that process the senses.
• What happens when those areas are damages?
• Lesions to visual areas produce deficits in categories that rely heavily on visual processing (ex. animals).
• In imagery studies, the people imagining still have areas activated like they were seeing something.
• the knowledge is somewhat stored in the areas that do the processing in the same way... otherwise you wouldn't know if you were perceiving or imagining.
• Cognitive science and neuroscience are disagreeing: Perhaps cognitive students need to be open to the modal processing areas bringing about the knowledge.
• Neural network theory: entities that hold knowledge may have some of the same properties as neurons... which may begin to bring about common ground between the cognitive and the neuro perspective. 
• Impact on grounded theories: the brain attempts to redefine the experience when remembering - knowledge: simulating the way in which we learned it at first... same mental state.

Environment and Goals Jointly Direct Category Acquisition / Wikibook - Semantic Networks

Love Article

• Why and how do people categorize?
• why- to develop a schema that corresponds well to their real life. We need that so we aren't routinely mislead.
• how- from either exemplars or prototypes (maybe both? we're unsure)
• What issue is important but ignored by prototype and exemplar?
• The author argues that its not so clear, but we have to take into account flexibility of structures as well as people's goals. Instead we should use clusters.
• clusters: bundles of experiences that group together - a more flexible way of representing info.
• Encompass both prototypes and exemplars in that a category represented by one cluster is a prototype and one category with many clusters is an exemplar.
• exemplar prototype continuum (a spectrum)
• Knowledge gets more complex the more we learn, and this model follows that.
• The author says the world comes in natural chunks, so it makes sense that we would make clusters out of those things that naturally go together
• from this perspective, clustering is driven by the environment, but it may also be influenced by goals. -ex. you may look at a cow differently if you are a vet or a butcher.

Wikibook - Semantic Networks

• A node represents a concept, also stores various characteristics of that concept.
• a link represents what ties different concepts together.
• They argue that it is stored heirachically in nodes.
• demonstrated that the time it takes to respond correlates with the distances in the networks.
• Collins and quillian were key in the move to semantic networks.
• Semantic network: evidence that things are stored by specificity. Specifics are stored, and the rest of the process is inferred, (but its not always this way).
• ex. you can say very quickly that a sports car is fast and needs fuel.
• Spreading activation: adjacent concepts are activated, and then are more easily retrieved fro memory, they are joined. Thinking of one thing makes you think of another.
• This was proved with the lexical decision task - is this a word or isnt it?
• Typicality effect: reaction times are faster for more typical members of a category
• Connectionistic Approach (vs. semantic approach, saying a node is not just one concept): A concept is distributed across other networks - Multiple elements working together.
• Neural network:
• input layer - sensory perception/from environment
• hidden layer- inter-neurons between the two
• output layer- what we do in response to those things
• Connectivist approach may be more likely as they are more complex networks, not just a single model.
• Neural networks work well in practice
• Parallel distributed processing- processing takes place in parallel lines, output is distributed across many units (which leads to neural networks), not a single node in a network.
• so, if you destroy one unit, the whole thing won't break down.
• Computational Knowledge Representation
• knowledge is full of useful information, rather than as supporting a model of cognitive activity. 
• it doesn't come before the actual cognitive or neural processes, but it is something we draw on during those.
• Applications of knowledge Representation: computational knowledge representation provides tools to make knowledge accessible.

Love article continued:

• He uses a neural network approach to understand concepts: SUSTAIN model about categorization
• Clusters: like the hidden layer (represented by circles on diagram) formed mental averages... refine themselves.
• 2 kinds of learning: supervised and unsupervised.
• new clusters are created when old clusters fail for goals (supervised)
• SUSTAI N changes when its surprised by experiences, and creates new clusters.
• Inference: related to concepts - you know that something is in a category but you don't know a lot about it... but you can infer. A missing factor inferred from others.
• classification categorization - focuses on information that distinguishes categories.
• the SUSTAIN model, he claims, can handle both types of learning.
• he found inference learning leads them to more complete knowledge - best for classroom learning.
• Two groups with different goals (like fisherman) and can draw different inferences from the same information - the SUSTAIN model can account for differences in goals, like this.
• SUSTAIN is good for the relationship between clusters and rules: clusters with selective attention are mimicking rules/ maybe they then are rules.
• SUSTAIN takes into account rules.
• conclusion: categorization - searching for regularities in the world (taking into account what's in the environment (and differing goals). It starts simple, then experience leads to added clusters as experiences and surprises are encountered.

Neural Markers of Relicious Construction

• Religion pros: have better mental health, physical health, lower mortality rates
• Religion cons: terrorist attacks, wars, conviction
• Religious conviction provides relief from uncertainty - it reduces anxiety, but then we ignore the inconsistencies.
• A system that responds to out comes different than what we expected is in the anterior cingulate cortex, an "alarm" is activated which produces anxiety
• Religion as xanax:
• we have ideals, it reduces our experience of error, and we can become more extreme in our convictions
• religion is too structured and rigid that any inconsistencies are restructured to fit their existing beliefs.
• Religious conviction reduces uncertainty because it minimized the ACC response to error, like an anti-anxiety pill.
• Study 1: Religious Zeals
• Assess people's religious conviction
• They used the Stroop.
• People with religious zeal had less ACC reaction to an error, and responded more accurate. They sacrificed speed for accuracy.
• Study 2: Belief in God
• greater belief in God was correlated with less ACC activation too, when all other factors were controlled for. 
• So, people who believe in God overall have neural signs of lower anxiety.
• Causes? Religion lowers ACC arousal, not vise versa.
• Maybe not specific to religion, probably strong convictions of anything.
• Makes us prone to a mental set, though.

Wikibook - Knowledge Representation

• What is knowledge? Why is it so important to us?
• mental representations of the world, a structured collection of information that can be acquired through learning , perception of reasoning.
• ex. "Watson"the computer playing jeopardy, and beating others... its a computer manipulation of knowledge representation.
• It is so important because it is essential to so many other things we do with our minds.
• Why are categories or concepts so important to knowledge?
• Saving time and effort so we don't have to remember every detail of everything - efficiently and save space.
• Category: a group of something that are labeled with similar properties of and other general information.
• Perhaps the categories and concepts are important for survival, too, so we can know dangerous from not dangerous, and we don't have to dawdle. 
• Concepts can't always be so rigidly defined, because real concepts tend to overlap - hard to figure out, what are the core of the essential features?
• Definitions don't work very well for real concepts (ex. cars)
• This brings about the idea of family resemblance: members of a category resemble each other in several ways.
• Prototype Approach: a kind of mental average
• typicality effect: high-prototypical members are faster recognized as a member of a category, ex. sparrow is more prototypical of a bird than a penguin.
• Exemplar Approach: judging by comparison to examples you have in your mind... can also explain the typciality effect.
• Heirarchical organization of categories.:
• Supordinate level: ex. animal (decrease of information)
• Basic level: ex. dog
• Most common and preferred.
• Subordinate level: ex. Retriever (low gain of information)
• most expert.
• Maybe your base level is higher if you're an expert.

A Basic-Systems Approach to Autobiographical Memory

• What are autobiographical memories made of?
• spatial, temporal, emotional elements, but most importantly, they have personal significance.
• The basic systems are: components from senses, spatial system, narrative system, explicit memory system (which coordinates and binds information from the other systems, like explicit memory with Schacter).
• What does this perspective tell us about the self?
• The self is not a single entity, but parts linked together.
• So, what seems to be uniquely you, actually depends on what people in your culture emphasize.
• 2 main properties of autobiographical memory?
• sense of recollection
• belief that memories are accurate
• Measured by ratings on scales of vividness of visual imagery, and auditory imagery, and spatial context.
• What may be the basis of a person's sense of recollection?
• how vivid the imagery was - more = stronger sense of recollection (correlation)
• So these are somewhat separable.
• What about the belief that the memory is accurate?
• (somewhat visual), clarity of spatial context and narrative coherence (correlation)
• People with amnesia - can have loss of autobiographical memory, because the elements of the memory can't be bound together and retrieved later (like Schacter imaging studies of future and past).
• So, if you damage visual memory, is autobiographical memory damaged? Yes!
• so, visual components are key for autobiographical memory. 
• But, an interesting catch is that the old memories are damages, but the people studied could still make new autobiographical memories! It may be that visual is preferred, but it is possible to make new memories with other senses.
• But auditory loss or language loss doesn't effect the memories as much.
• Psychopathology- memories of worry and social phobia are rated lower on recollection.
• One major claim - PTSD memories are unorganized, but this article finds that that is not the case, there is no difference compared to others.
• The more a person makes the trauma a central part of who they are, the more PTSD they will show.
• To test this, he did a experiment where people take pictures of something, and then are shown pictures of something, and asked whether or not the picture they took that one.
• There seem to be certain areas that are activated more for biographical information.

Sierra's presentation and Schater's Seminar

Sierra's Presentation:
Article One:

• We infer rather than perceive the moment we decide to act.
• We have a neurological prep before and action - conscious will is not an instigator of choice.
• 'W' is the time participants select on the basis of available cues.
• Eagleman - the critical cue for judgement of intention is perception of the response.
• Experiment one: Dot going around the clock, participant was supposed to report the number when they made the choice to press the button.
• W is probably based on the time of response (rather than motor response or prior brain events)
• Experiment 2: wanted to make sure experiment one wasn't specific to auditory cues, and it wasn't.
• Intention causing actions are backwards according to this, its actually actions that cause intentions.
• Movements of decision come from perceived movements of action.

Article two:

• attending to a certain thing increases oxygen to that level - attentional spotlight
• 2 conditions attending to the action movements, or attending to the urge to move.
• greater activation during the first condition in areas like:
• PreSMA
• Dorsal Prefrontal cortex (intention to move?)
• IPS - interparietal sulcus
• Patients with parietal lesions - no distinction between the I and the M condition. 
• There are separate brain areas between attending to intention and movement.
• We don't think about thinking a thought, we may not be the authors of our own thoughts.

Schater's Webinar and Slideshow

• Bartlett (during behaviorism) quotation:  memory as a constructive process, i.e. linking bits and pieces of info from different sources. Memory is not reproduction, but construction.
• Why would memory be constructive, are there advantages?
• economy of storage - we don't need to know every detail, but the gist. The bad side of that is that it can lead to memory errors.
• Episodic memory: the ability to recollect our experiences. But episodic memory is also important for the future as well as the past, because we imagine the future (constructive)
• amnesic patients - medial temporal lobe damage
• Can't make new lasting memories, but also have trouble imagining their personal futures.
• Patient KC could not remember his past - he had hippocampal damage, but also couldn't think of what he'd do tomorrow.
• There is a correlation between remembering the past and imagining the future.
• This is supported by individual differences studies
• also be remembering and imagining studies - study for younger and older people, evidence of this link.
• The parts that are involved are the medial temporal love - hippocampus, frontal lobe, parietal lobes too, - implicated in both past and future tasks.
• Hypothesis: imagining and remembering both use the same information.
• A flexible recombination of details from past events
• but that makes us more likely to make errors, but also imagine the future.
• The major questions :  How does hippocampus contribute? How do we interpret the correlation between imagining and remembering?
• They ask participants both about imagining and remembering, but they are really in the same brain areas when compared to a control group.
• but levels may vary - stronger for future or stronger for memory.
• Hippocampus (a particular part) engages more during imagining the future than remembering the past.
• So, they are trying to test this experimentally - recombination
• For more experimental control, first they had participants generate a memory pool.
• Experimenters mix these memories up, and have you imagine the future or imagine something in the past (vs. a control)
• they want to know if its critical for future or just imagining in general.
• All the core networks come online, but the front part of of the hippocampus was still most closely tied to imagining than remembering.
• Age-related changes in the past and future events (article in moodle)
• Recalling events - younger people have more internal and less external memories, and its the same when they are imagining.
• Still, younger people have more internal details, and old have more external details for imagining and recalling.