0HM130

ADVANCED COGNITION
 Lectures Online/Offline
• Hybrid teaching has proven to be difficult – there is little
interaction with online attendants.
• This also means the 08:45 lecture on Thursday.
• So what should we do?
 Studyguide
• The goal of this course is to gain a further understanding of the
basic research questions and methodologies of cognitive
science.

• There will be a series of core lectures about basic cognition,

and content lectures where a wide range of topics in cognitive
psychology will be discussed.
 Studyguide
• There is reading for each lecture. This reading will be used in
the Core Lecture Assignments, and in the Final Report.

• Last year we changed the final exam into a final report. We

want the course to be about using insights from cognitive
psychology to a societal problem, and less about learning facts.
• Was well appreciated, so we kept it this year. But feedback to
improve is very welcome.
 Studyguide
Study Material:
No book. Articles are provided in links on Canvas.
Grading:
Final Report (70%) – Examine the rubric.
– 30% based on the first part (handing in halfway)
– 40% based on the second part (handed in at the end).

Assignments (30% - 5 times 6%)

 Studyguide
Grading:
• Final Report (70%) – The final assignment is a policy report that you
will write as if you were a member of the Behavioral Insight Team
of Europe (BITE). Each week, you will be asked to think about how
you can contribute to solving a societal problem using advanced
knowledge of cognition. Your policy report will consist of an
analysis of societal problems, the cognitive factors that play a role
in the problem, an analysis of the underlying cognitive mechanisms
from a theoretical perspective, and a proposal for an intervention
study that you think will mitigate the societal problem.
1 16-nov 5-6 Introduction to Advanced Cognition Daniel Lakens
1 18-nov 1-2 Computational Modelling Leo Tiokhin
2 23-nov 5-6 Similarity Daniel Lakens
Small Workgroups collaborate on computational
2 25-nov 1-2 Leo Tiokhin
modelling assignment
3 30-nov 5-6 Mental Representations Daniel Lakens
3 2-dec 1-2 Working Memory Daniel Lakens
4 7-dec 5-6 Attention Daniel Lakens
4 9-dec 1-2 No meeting
Interim Report Deadline December 12 23:59
5-6
5 14-dec Evolutionary Approaches to Cognition Leo Tiokhin
5 16-dec 5-6 No Meeting
6 21-dec 5-6 Habit Formation Chao Zhang
6 23-dec 1-2 No Meeting
CHRISTMAS BREAK
Daniel Lakens
7 11-jan 5-6 Stimulus Response Compatibility
7 13-jan 1-2 Small Group Meetings on Final Report
8 18-jan 5-6 Small Group Meetings on Final Report
8 20-jan No Meeting
Behavioral Insight Team Report Deadline
January 23 23:59
A SHORT HISTORY OF COGNITIVE
PSYCHOLOGY
 Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mind and mental
function, including learning, memory, attention, perception,
reasoning, language, conceptual development, and decision
making.
The modern study of cognition rests on the premise that the
brain can be understood as a complex computing system.
 Cognitive Psychology
Descartes’ Dualism: The mind and body are two different
entities.
This is somewhat undesirable because we don’t know how these
two substances interact (Descartes proposed the pineal gland,
responsible for melatonin production, as the seat of the soul –
but so far we haven’t found the soul).
 Behaviorism
• Before the cognitive revolution behaviorism was the dominant
approach in psychology.
• All learning is the consequence of 2 processes:
– Reinforcement learning, or operant conditioning
– Classical conditioning.
• Asked: What are necessary and sufficient conditions for
learning to occur?
 Reinforcement Learning
• Thorndike’s law of effect
– responses that produce a satisfying effect in a
particular situation become more likely to occur
again in that situation, and responses that
produce a discomforting effect become less likely
to occur again in that situation
 Reinforcement Learning
• Skinner box
– Rats learn to push a lever if they get a reward,
learn association between a behavior and an
outcome.
 Reinforcement Learning
• The strength of an associative link between a stimulus (S) and a
response (R) is related to the frequency and recency with
which S and R co-occur.

• Thorndike’s ‘Law of exercise’: The more often a given situation

is followed by a particular response, the stronger will be the
associative bond between them’
 Behaviorism
• Behaviourism can be seen as a deterministic system: as long as
we can identify the physical antecedents to some form of
behaviour, we can then claim to understand the causes of that
behaviour.

• Skinner: ‘There is no need for free will’.

 Logical Behaviorism
• There is no need to talk about mental states. You are not
‘thirsty’ – if there were water you would drink.
• Behavioral dispositions: mental entities are nothing more than
a ‘shorthand way of talking about actual and potential patterns
of behaviour’.
• But ‘pain’ is surely a feeling, not just a behavior to wince.
 Tolman & Honzik, 1930
Rats run through a maze.

1) Get reward
2) No reward
3) 10 days no reward, then reward.

Group 3 learned to run through the maze much faster when getting a
reward than group 1. They must have learned something!
 Latent Learning
• So if we can learn without reinforcement, what are we
learning?
• Two hypotheses:
– Place learning
– Response learning
Latent Learning
 Cognitive Maps
• Tolman took this as evidence for the hypothesis that animals
can form high-level representations, or cognitive maps.
• Lashley (1951): Behavior is not a string of sequential actions.
Instead, it is hierarchically organized, and most of the planning
and information processing occurs subconsciously.
 Limitations of Behaviorism
Learn the following words:

lion, onion, Bill, firefighter, carrot,

zebra, John, clerk, Tom, nurse, cow
Limitations of Behaviorism
Recall the words:
 Limitations of Behaviorism
Recall the words:

lion, zebra, cow, onion, carrot,

firefighter, clerk, nurse, John, Bill, Tom
Mental Processes: Structuring
 Limitations of Behaviorism

STIMULI -> RESPONSE

STIMULI -> MENTAL PROCESS -> RESPONSE

 Explaining Effects
As Cummins (2000) notes, the Law of Effect or the Law of
Exercise is just restating an phenomenon in more general terms.

They are ‘effects’. The need to be explained (an explanandum,

not an explanans)
 Explaining Effects
‘What, after all, would a successful explanatory theory of the mind
look like?’

‘The primary explananda of psychology, however are not effects

(psychological laws) but capacities: the capacity to see depth, to learn
and speak a language, to plan, to predict the future, to empathize, to
fathom the mental states of others, to deceive oneself, to be self-
aware, and so on. Understanding these sorts of capacities is what
motivates psychological inquiry in the first place.’
 How are the Mind and Brain Related?
• By adopting a functional approach we can argue that ‘The
mind is to the brain as the program is to the hardware’ (Searle,
1994, p. 200).

• What cognitive psychologists are attempting to do is specify

mental software.
 Computationalism
Explaining cognitive abilities from computationalism.
• Identify a task or capacity to be explained.
• Specify the capacity as a function: what inputs produce what
outputs under what circumstances
• Finally, that characteristic function or relation
is analyzed into components that have known computational
realizations.
 Turing on Computation
• The “Turing machine” is a very simple system. It consists of (a)
a tape containing symbols, usually blanks and slashes; (b) a
scanner to read the tape; and (c) four operations: move right,
move left, write a slash, and erase a slash.
 Turing on Computation
• The crucial point is that what the scanner does at any given
moment is fully determined by exactly two factors: the symbol
it reads on the tape (input) and its current internal state. There
is no “Deus ex machina”, no external force or intelligence that
tells it what to do.
 Information Theory
• Claude Shannon described how information could be
represented as binary choices among alternatives (information
theory).
• This made it possible to quantify information, and allowed
electronic systems to carry out Boolean logic.
 Information Theory
• Interested in channel capacity, rate of transmission,
redundancy of encoding, and noise.

• Defined irrespective of any hardware – truly a functional

account.
 Turing on Computation
• In 1943, neuropsychologist Warren McCulloch and logician
Walter Pitts closed the gap between human and machine by
proposing that, since neurons also operate as binary units
(either they fire or they do not), they could be thought of as
logical units carrying information.
• The brain can be seen as a Turing machine.
 Information processing
Shannon’s idea that information can be measured (e.g., in units
of ‘ bits’) became very popular.

For example in Miller’s ‘7±2’ and Broadbent’s model of

attention.
 George Miller
Our sensory systems are all information channels with roughly
the same channel capacity (where the channel capacity of an
information channel is given by the amount of information it can
reliably transmit).
 George Miller
• Miller proposed an information-processing bottleneck. Our
information channels can only process around seven items at
the same time.
– Can be increasing through chunking
– Natural language is the ultimate chunking tool.
 Computer Metaphor
Information processing has been compared to how a computer
processes information, where ‘input’ is translated into ‘machine
language’ so that a central processor can operate on it (e.g.,
Wyer, 1974).
 Wyer & Srull (1986)

“The Comprehender is an initial pattern recognition device. It interprets raw

stimulus information in terms of previously acquired semantic concepts
(drawn from the semantic bin in Permanent Storage)” (p. 324)
 Computationalism
However, just because we can compute it, does not
mean our brains use this approach.
We are still left with a gap between the
computational description, and the bioneural
processes in the brain.
 Neuroscience
Tries to understand how the brain works, and how it
allows us to do what we do.
Ideally, a strong neuroscience program would inform
explanations in cognitive psychology that have and
acceptable neuroscientific reconstruction.
 Early influences
• Donder's (1868) work attempts to describe the processes going
on in the mind, by analyzing cognitive activity into separate
stages.
• Critically examined the idea at the time that thoughts were
instantaneous.
• Used Reaction Time (RT) to measure decision making.
• “subtractive method”
 Donders (1868)
1. a simple reaction time task - e.g. you are seated in 1. a simple time task would require perception
front of a panel that contains a light bulb and a and motor stages - time to receive and then
response button. When the light comes on, you must execute the stimulus.
press the button.

2. a discrimination reaction time task - e.g. you are 2. a discrimination reaction time task requires
seated in front of a panel with 5 light bulbs and one the above plus a discrimination stage.
response button. When the target light goes on you
must press the button - but not if the 4 other lights
come on.

3. a choice reaction time task - e.g. you are seated in 3. a choice reaction time task requires all of the
front of 5 light bulbs, each with their own button. You above - time to receive and execute the
must press the button corresponding to the stimulus, and discriminate plus a choice stage.
appropriate light.
 Donders (1868)

Simple RT = stimulus perception + response ≈220 ms

Choice RT = stimulus perception + decision + response ≈320 ms
Decision = Choice RT - Simple RT ≈ 320 ms - 220 ms = 100 ms
 Donders (1868)
• Donders’ experiment is important because it illustrates that
mental processes cannot be measured directly, they must be
inferred...
– from behavior.
– from biological changes.
– from behavioral differences associated with biological differences.
 Other early influences
• In 1929, Hans Berger discovered that the mind exhibits
continuous electrical activity.
• This cast doubt on the Pavlovian model of perception and
response because the brain appeared to be active, even
without stimuli in the environment.
• 1949, Donald Hebb formulated what became the basis of the
idea of “Hebbian learning“:
• "When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite a cell B and
repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth
process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells
such that A’s efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is
increased.”
1949, Donald Hebb formulated what became the basis of the
idea of “Hebbian learning“:

“Cells that fire together, wire together”

Behaviorists could not explain how behavior made it into the

mind, but Hebbian learning provided a mechanism.
 Cognitive Psychology
• The formal discipline of “Cognitive Psychology” started in the
mid-1900s during the cognitive revolution.
• In 1956 at a meeting at MIT:
– Naom Chomsky presented his theory of language
– George Miller discussed ‘magic number 7’
– Bruner examined concept formation
– Etc.
 Information Processing
• Simplistic approach to
information processing.
• Opening the ‘black box’ by
looking at attention,
perception, thoughts.
 Cognitive Psychology
• The term ‘cognitive psychology’ did not emerge until 1967,
when Neisser published:
Search ‘Neisser Video’ on YouTube
Cognitive Psychology
• The original attentional
blindness experiment was by
Neisser (1979) where a
woman walked across the
room with an umbrella.
 Attention
• Selective attention
– Refers to the process by which we attend to certain stimuli and
ignore others
– Broadbent’s filter model for selective attention (1958)
 The discipline matures
• Chomsky’s work says little about how language is stored or
used.
• Early work in AI (Artificial Intelligence) tried to create computer
programs that could use language.
• ELIZA is an early attempt: play around with this chatbot:
http://cyberpsych.org/eliza
 Winograd’s SHRDLU
• Operates in a microworld of objects with colors. Breaks down
language into syntax, semantics, and links meaning to the
world.
Winograd’s SHRDLU
Which pairs depict the same figure?
 Mental Rotation
• Subject have to use visual imagery, and mentally rotate the
figures (which takes time)
 Mental Rotation
Focus your attention on the tail of the airplane.
 Mental Rotation
Did the airplane have a pilot? Did the airplane have a
propeller?

Faster response, closer to the tail Slower response, further away

from the tail
 Visual Imagery
From this, Kosslyn concluded that we don’t always think of things
in binary code, as a computer does, but we have real images in
our mind.

Thinking is in a way like seeing.

The assignment of this week is about mental imagery.
 Next Thursday
• Next lecture on Computational Modelling by Leonid Tiokhin

• Core Lecture Assignment 1 is online

– Canvas
– Hard deadlines (because answers are available after the course).
• Behavioral Insight Team Assignment 1 online
 Behavioral Insights Team Policy Report
• Week 1: Introduction
• Week 2: Modelling
• Week 3: Similarity
• Week 4: Mental Representation
• Week 5: Attention
• Week 6: Evolutionary Perspectives on Cognition
• Final assignment: Proposed intervention Study
Questions?