Assignment 7

Language is a detrimental aspect of our lives. Throughout history, philosophers have debated whether innate ideas play a role in language acquisition, and if so, to what extent. It was believed that language was a product of our general ability to reason. It was seen as the things that made us special and set us apart from other species. Descartes, a philosopher, looked at language use as a way to distinguish humans from "machines" and "beasts". He proposed that the acquisition of concepts and knowledge was the real mystery behind it all. 

In the 20th century, linguists, psychologists, and philosophers began too look into language further. When our use of syntax and semantics became more advanced, they came the realization that knowing a language was not simply a matter of associating words with concepts. Instead, it also involved putting words together in order to convey our thoughts. Modern theories suggests that language is a very complex thing. However, humans are able to use these complicated syntactic and semantic rules to communicate hundreds or thousands of times per day effectively and effortlessly. Because of this, it is believed that humans have a very special brain that enables them to learn and speak natural language.Chomsky's view on language was that the brain contains innate knowledge of  various linguistic rules, constraints and principles. This innate knowledge then primes the brain to comprehend and learn language through exposure. 

The section that I wanted to focus on specifically is the critical period for language acquisition. Lenneberg argued that children can acquire language unproblematically but only during the critical period. This period lasts until about late childhood to early puberty. To support this argument, Lennberg stated the facts that mentally challenged children's language development stops around puberty; that ‘wild children' who grow up with no or little exposure to human language, exhibit severely compromised language skills; and  that whereas very young children are able to relearn language after aphasias produced by massive left-hemisphere trauma (including hemispherectomy), aphasias in older children and adults are typically not reversible.

In addition, Lennberg studied language recovery after trauma. It was found that older children, even those who did not succeed at learning a language previously, can recover from trauma to the left hemisphere well after the "critical" and "sensitive" periods. It is equivalent to learning a language from scratch as an adolescent. As far as adults, most of them regain at least some degree of language competence. Many of them recover to substantially normal competence. This is likely due to regeneration of the damaged areas and compensation of damaged areas by other areas of the brain. However, it was shown through a series of studies that language acquisition after trauma can vary person to person, and that even very young children may not recover from certain damage to these areas.

Assignment 6

   In this article, they address the seven sins of memory and they can be misleading at times. Our memory is known to change, especially over longer periods of time. Because of this, we often tend to leave out pieces of information or add inaccurate information to a past memory. This article specifically, focuses on the Clinton and Monica Lewinksy scandal. It mentioned how Clinton failed to recall incidents or statements when from when he testified before the grand jury. Incidents like this are surprisingly common, especially with eyewitness identification. Identifying an offender from a lineup can become difficult and even inaccurate due to alterations of our mind over time. 

    Scientists have/continue to study and research how our memory is affected in our day to day lives. They have come to name these distortions of memory "The seven sins of memory". Our seven sins of memory come from the combination of social, clinical, and cognitive psychology. One major contributor used to gain information in this area about how the brain works are studies that have been conducted on patients with brain lesions in regards to memory performance. They asses these changes in neural activity through localization. This is done through medical technology such as fMRIs and PET scans.  

    The particular sin that I would like to focus on is blocking. This refers to when we momentarily can't retrieve information that has been previously encoded into our memory. This sin in particular is especially frustrating because you know that the information is somewhere in your brain, but you simply can't access it at the time. It is also known as the tip of the tongue phenomenon. These retrieval blocks often occur in episodic and semantic memory. High stress situations are normally the cause of this mental block. Sometimes, you can retrieve the relevant phonological or semantic information regarding the memory but not in its entirety. Cues that are related to the information can help to assist in retrieving the information. This normally happens in older individuals and can be most prevalent in situations such as recalling names. 

     In the text, they provide an example study which included evaluating a crime scene. A college student's room was staged as a crime. The experimenters would then ask questions regarding specific items in the room, which fell under a certain category. When the experimenters asked questions about objects that did not fall in a category, the participants would have trouble recalling those items. This due to the fact that the participants' memory appeared to be blocked by retrieval of related items that were also those categories. In addition, the article also discussed a PET scan which ended up showing neurological evidence that the brain experiences activation localization during the act of proper name production. This helped come to the conclusion that the left temporal lobe was associated with retrieval deficits. 

     I particularly enjoyed this article because I could relate to it a lot. I often have trouble with the seven sins of memory, given that I am a generally forgetful person. Learning some of the scientific reasons that they occur helped me to understand the reasons why I forget things so often. Therefor I would say this article was both beneficial and informational. 

Schacter, D. L. (1999). The seven sins of memory: Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist, 54(3), 182-203.

Assignment 5

In this article, the author talked about how memory is an increasingly important topic in the field of cognitive psychology. Recently, substantial progress has been made to attempt to create human like memory in deep learning systems. This process introduces key questions that are important to keep in mind. They are: What makes memory such a complex subject in deep learning systems? What are the main techniques used to represent memories in deep learning models? Where can we draw inspiration about memory architectures? 

Neuroscience and cognitive psychology are among the fields of psychology that have had the most influence on our knowledge of memory. Neuroscience mainly focuses on how memories are created, destroyed, and stored as either short term or long term. One case study that provided a huge breakthrough in this field was Henry Gustav Molaison, or patient HM. He suffered an accident when he was young that ultimately caused him to have seizures on a regular basis. When he became an adult, he went through surgery that aimed to cure his symptoms. Unfortunately, the surgeons accidentally cut a part of his hippocampus, which caused HM to be unable to create new memories. Post-surgery, he was only able to retain information for a few minutes and became unable to form new long-term memories. This helped lead to a better understanding of how memories are stored, created, and recalled. 

A substantial challenge related to the aspect of the neuroscience theory of memory is the binding problem. The binding problem is difficulty scientists have understanding how small fragments of memories can be put together by the mind to form a complete memory. All memories of different events or things are stored in small parts in different areas of the brain, and only one que can cause you to remember the entirety of the event. Although researchers are still unsure of the exact reason for this, a possible explanation is that parts of a full memory are linked by electromagnetic vibrations. These would then cause a link between memory fragments; which would activate them together when recalling a memory.  

To better understand this binding problem, we need to consider other psychological factors that impact memory recollection. A leading theory that explains associations in memory is called the priming effect. The priming effect is one of the most significant explanations for associations in memory. It states that being primed, even with one word, can trigger a flood of memories associated with the word. For example, if you hear the word “college” you may immediately think about classes, exams, or partying. The memories or events that one remembers through priming differs based on personal experience. 

This article was very intriguing to me.  Ever since I was young, I have always wondered how we formed memories and what science was behind it. I am not shocked that researchers still struggle to explain the binding problem. The concept of understanding it completely seems incredibly challenging. The information provided in this article ties in very well to what we have been learning in class and aided a lot in helping to connect aspects of the last couple chapters to real-life research.  

Citation: 

Rodriguez, J. (2018, July 25). Understanding Memory in Deep Learning Systems: The Neuroscience, Psychology and Technology? Retrieved from https://towardsdatascience.com/understanding-memory-in-deep-learning-systems-the-neuroscience-psychology-and-technology-78922ae6a1dd

Assignment 4

    In the article "A Perspective on 3D Illusions", they address the way in which our brain interprets certain visuals to be something that they are not. It is explained that even though our sensations feel accurate and real, they do not necessarily reproduce the physical reality of the outside world. "Visual illusions are defined by the dissociation between physical reality and subjective perception of an object or event. When we experience such an illusion, we may see something that is not there, or fail to see something that is there, or even see something different from what is there." (Paragraph 3) This is due to a disconnect between perception and reality in the brain. 

    They go on to explain how this idea is prevalent in art. An example is how a painter can make paint on a canvas appear to be a realistic image by using techniques such as shading, lighting, and color. This can also be demonstrated through architecture, such as with the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The concept behind this illusion is that when two of the same image are side-by-side of the same tilted and receding object, the object appears to be leaning in two different directions. This illusion explains how the visual system uses perspective to reconstruct three dimensional objects.  It is explained that the brain uses the convergence angle of two reclining objects as they recede into the distance to calculate the relative angle between them, making it appear slanted. 

    The article also touched upon the subjectivity of color, brightness, and shape, and how the process of our brains processing sensory information varies based on each individual's brain circuits. How each brain experiences the color, brightness, and shapes presented in our environments may or may not accurately match reality, and visual illusions really encompass how interpreting this information is subjective.

    Personally, I really enjoyed this article. Before reading, I wasn't aware of the illusion behind the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It is amazing to me how our eyes can play tricks on us so effectively that it appears to be reality.  I thought it was interesting that the article tied visual illusions into artists' realism. Normally, when one thinks of optical illusions they think about the abstractness of the illusion, but artists incorporate illusions into their work of art in order to simulate reality. Overall, this was my favorite reading to date.

Assignment 3

     In the article, “Studying Mind and Brain with fMRI”, a group of researchers aimed to study localization in the brain and how it applies to psychological functions in different regions of the brain. To do this, they looked at fMRIs to further understand the connection between psychological and neural processes. 

    One study evaluated fMRIs of participants while performing various tasks, theorizing that if the same area of the brain is activated during both tasks, they likely are related to the same processes in the brain. Another study on disassociation in the brain monitored activation of brain regions while performing the Stroop task. This showed that while performing a single task, it is possible for multiple regions of the brain to be active at once. The left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was more active when subjects were told to name the color rather than read the word, and the anterior cingulate cortex was activated by the stimuli itself, thus showing greater activation for the high-conflict incongruent compared with the low-conflict congruent stimuli. 

    In contrast, a third study actually revealed differences in localization between individuals. Activation of the amygdala were consistent when viewing fearful facial expressions, however they became inconsistent when viewing happy facial expressions, showing that brain activation may differ from person to person in certain situations. They also addressed how fMRIs can be used to test psychological models. This happens through the use of fMRIs while testing different model predictions; helping to distinguish between competing psychological theories. The use of fMRIs allows researchers to visually see the activation in these areas to accurately predict which areas are activated throughout various, different tasks.

    Overall, I thought that this article was a little boring to read. However, it was very informational and lead me to learn uses for fMRIs that I was not aware of before. I also learned that viewing happy facial expressions can activate different areas of the brain depending on the person, but that the amygdala was consistent with the viewing of fearful facial expressions. I was not aware of this before I read this article, but it is an interesting concept that I would like to learn more about!

Embodied Cognition Reading

Embodied Cognition 

    What is the task to be done? What are the resources available? How might these resources be assembled to solve the task? Did the subject assemble and use these resources? These are the four main questions that researchers are trying to answer through embodied cognition. In Andrew Wilson and Sabrina Golonka's article Embodied Cognition is not what you think it is, they address this new theory that cognition is not only limited to the brain; rather, it is influenced by factor such as our body and the environment as well. This suggests that our brains eliminate the need for complex mental representation of what we perceive due to the resources provided by the environment and our bodies to accomplish tasks.

    One of the main points in this article that struck my attention the most was the concept of locomotion and passive dynamics. I hadn't ever asked myself the question "why do we walk the way that we walk?" However, when I came across this section in the reading, in sparked my interest. "Humans don’t walk like lions because our bodies aren’t designed like lions’ bodies." This is a fairly obvious statement, however I had never thought of it as a biological trait over a cognitive one. They go on to explain that the reason that we walk on two feet instead of four is due to the bodies structure and not solely due to cognition. When they represented this with the robots who had no programming to walk on two feet, but learned to do so through their structure and environment.

    The idea of embodied cognition makes sense if you really think about it. It would be near impossible for us to simply be born with the cognitive abilities to survive and exist. Although we are naturally equipped with a mind and body suitable to our environment,it takes interaction and experience with our surroundings to make sense of it all. As we grow older, we experience more from our environment and become to understand things on a new level. Because of this, we can then use the interaction between our environment and cognition to provide things such as heuristics, which help take pressure off of the brain by creating mental shortcuts that we use in our daily lives.

    Before reading this article, I was unsure of if I understood what embodied cognition truly was. Now, I have a whole new insight into a theory in psychology that I didn't even know existed. This text was both informational, as well as interesting to learn about. I would say that I agree with the embodied cognition theory and I hope to learn more as research continues.

     

Embodied cognition is the hypothesis that cognition is not only limited to the brain; rather, it is influenced by factor such as our body and the environment as well. This concept was a bit confusing to me at first, however, upon reading the article I obtained a much clearer understanding of how embodied cognition works and which aspects of life it affects. 

    The most intriguing section, to me, were the experiments with the robots and animals.