I was wondering if an alzheimer´s patient has more difficulties in learning new things, such as motor skills like biking for example. Are these related in any way?

Animal Language

Here is a link to an article that talks about language and animals.
I found it very interesting as it show many different points of view about it and also it talks about it in a more philosofical way...

Check it out!

http://www.santafe.edu/~johnson/articles.chimp.html

conection between retrograde and anterograde amnesia

I would like to know if anyone has researched about the relationship between retrograde and antegrade amnesia and semantic memory disorders.

Cognews.com

I just found this really cool blog thats all about cognitive psychology...it has some really interesting things on it, particularly about toddlers, memories, and Alzheimers. Here is the link: http://cognews.com/

Multi-Tasking

I think that this article is interesting, especially for all of us who are trying to get last minute studying in for all of our finals...it turns out all of our cramming may not be worth it...http://www.apa.org/releases/multitasking.html

Jabberwocky

Just so you all know, here is a link to allow you to actually talk with the Jabberwocky computer program that won the Turing test: http://www.jabberwacky.com/

Another Book

The teacher of my high school course also recommended another book, but I have not read it yet. It is called Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch. If you're interested in theatre, this is definitely a good book for you. He told us that it was about improv and acting / music and how the brain is less or more creative in certain individuals.

Book Recommendation

The reason I enrolled in Cognitive Psychology this summer was because of a book I read for another high school course called: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. It is so interesting, and it really sheds some light on why we pardon those who hurt us and why we continue to hurt people. I really, really recommend it.

50 First Dates Reply

About Arantza's post on 50 First Dates...I think that Drew Barrymore's character definitely suffers more from anterograde amnesia. She still remembers her brother and father and past events, but she definitely cannot transfer STM to LTM.

Alzheimer's

I know that conduction aphasia is caused by damage to the arcuate fasciculus and Broca's aphasia is caused by damage to Broca's area etc..., but I was wondering if there was any known damged area of the brain with Alzheimer's disease.

Controlling Neurons

Yesterday in the New York Times there was a fascinating article about how some researchers have discovered a way to "turn on and off" different neurons in the brain to see their functions. You can find the article here. It has to do more with neuroscience than cognitive psychology, but it could certainly help locate more specific places for memory, language, and other cognitive processes in the brain. Also researchers believe that this technique could help fix psychological disorders in the future. And the coolest thing: Stanford has a main part in all of this research!
Well, I hope you guys find that interesting.

It was fun meeting all of you guys, and I'll miss our cog psych class!
Rachel

Awesome Book

I highly recommend that everyone reads Daniel Levitin's book titled This is Your Brain on Music. It is very interesting.. especially if you have any background in music theory. It talks about a wide range of topics, from the neural bases of music processing, to music and evolution, to the genetic bases of musicality, to "hearing" notes when the fundamental frequency is dropped. Very cool stuff.

Mouse Brains.

cool website.... www.brainatlas.org

Scientists have mapped out some of the areas of specific genes in mice brains and how they are related to function. Very cool. I am touring the lab when I get back home, which will be really interesting after having taken two Psychology classes!

50 First Dates

I am hoping that many of you have seen this movie (50 First Dates) with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler.
After learning about different kinds of memory disorders, i thought about the movie and I thought that she would be an example of a patient with Retrograde amnesia as she could not remember anything from the past before the accident happenned. but also, she would forget everything after every day. So does she suffer from both anterograde amnesia and retrograde amnesia?

Stroop effect

i knwo it's a little bit late to talk abou the stroop effect, but I found a video of how to get better at this task. i never thought this would be possible! It's a long video, but it's worth watching. Everything is very unexpected. I think is amazing how vision and audition are related. when you see something, you already know what it sounds like, so this video is very surprising:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sHUokEJBKAA

hope you enjoy it!

Perception

I have a question:

Do we perceive information even when we do not have the feeling of perceiving?

Jamais Vu

As we all know because of what we learned in class, jamais vu is the opposite of deja vu. and of course everyone has experienced both of these sensations. I have a friend who had an epileptic seizure, and then afterward she had jamais vu for a long period of time. I thought this was very strange, but it makes sense because of the sense of newness she felt when she "woke up". But what are the other things that cause jamais vu? oh, and why do people who travel more and are part of a higher socioeconomic status have deja vu more often?

Placebos

I did my research project on the placebo effect and the psychological effects that it has on medical patients. It has been found in much research that the placebo effect has great psychological effects for a few reasons. one might be that the patient expects a response to occur, so the patient either believes a reaction has occured, or one actually does occur. Another reason might be that the patient believes something has happened as a result of the placebo when it really hasn't. But in the end, placebos relieve patients of diseases and pain more than 50% of the time. Have any of you ever had experience with placebo medications or participated in an experiment involving placebos?

12 Angry Men

In the movie the 12 angry men, people different perceptions of the same event are shown. Perception depends on memory, and each of the people in the movie has a different idea of what the real memory is. Because people have selective attention when it comes to an event, each person remembers something different. Everyone chooses to attend to differernt details. The movie demonstrates Broadbent's filter model becasue not everything goes into everyone's memory. We should watch the movie to see this demonstration of selective memory.

Writing Backwards

I have two younger sisters who are 8 year old twins. One of them, Katie, sometimes writes things backwards. She once had to write a story for school and she wrote it as if someone were to read it from right to left instead of left to right. She and her twin, Lucy, go to a Jewish school where they are taught Hebrew which is written from right to left. I'm guessing that when Katie is writing backwards she is taking the technical rules of Hebrew and applying them to English. Is this unusual?

How Animals Think

I remember in one lecture, we got on the topic of how animals think. I find it really interesting, because they do not have language with words like humans do. They do have some form of communication though, because they are able to interact with other animals. So, that means they must think, right? I know it is really hard, if not impossible to understand how animals think (for example: in pictures, some form of their means of communication, etc.), but does anybody know if any experiments have been done testing this question?

Lee

As a last contribution to the blog, I would just like to point out that, according to our lecture slides, naturalistic intelligence includes a talent for cloud watching. Apparently everyone is intelligent from a certain perspective.

Good luck studying!

Aphasia

Hey guys,

I found this user on YouTube who posts videos of various Speech Aphasias.

http://www.youtube.com/user/speechaphasias

It is a really good resource for various examples of all types of speech aphasias.

Enjoy!

Reverse Turing Test

Hey,

There are several terms used in the aforementioned clip that others, without background knowledge of Professor Alan Turing's experiment, may not be familiar with. The "Imitation Game" refers to the study's initial test. I feel like it should be known that there is a concept known as the Reverse Turing Test. We have all had to interact with this concept every time we register for an online account. Usually, we are presented with a distorted word upon a colored background which prevents automated servers from creating spam accounts. In this way, website designers assume that today's AI technology cannot read and decode a distorted word. The challenge-response process used to determine whether the user is a machine or a human is known widely as CAPTCHA. The acronym was determined in 2000 by Luis Van Ahn and Manuel Blum. According to statistical analysis, with a possible 16 images that can be guessed as the correct image, a machine has a 1 in 65536 chance of guessing correctly. Anyways, thought it would be an interesting story to tell. Enjoy!

-Nishant

-Nishant

Turing Test

Hello,

Here is a cool video I found concerning the Turing test:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zFwsmI95xw

The video has some pretty impressive artificial intelligence. The test is run entirely by computers or so the video says. There is a computer with artificial intelligence to run like an evalutator. It is a really neat video.

-Aravind

Unanswered Questions...

The notion that cognitive processes have their basis in neurological activities has been claimed to have been verified by studies involving imaging techiniques that show correlation between a cognitive act and a corresponding increase in regional activity in the brain. But does correlation imply causation? Which is the cause and which the effect? The cognitive act or the activity in the brain? The chicken or the egg?

In any case, I'm still mystified as to how a regional activity in the brain is translated into a perception or an experience of a sensation, or for that matter, even the awareness of an experience of a sensation. What is the sequence of events that translate external and internal stimuli into an experience of the world? How does activity in the occipital lobe or the primary visual cortex translate into seeing, for example, the colour red? What is "seeing"? What is it that is "seeing" red? Am I seeing? What am "I"?

I think Descartes was being rather glib when he said...well, wrote: Cogito ergo sum. It seems more likely that I think, therefore I can attempt to verify that I am. However, am I, if I am without thoughts? ;)

Colorado Adoption Project

Hey,

I found the Chapter 13 caption regarding the Colorado Adoption Project very interesting. So, I looked it up and did about 30 mins of research on the basis of the study and found some interesting facts. Apparently, the department of Behavioral Genetics at Colorado University studied how closely adopted children resemble their parents in relation to non-adopted children. If you want to read up on it more, check out the website: http://ibgwww.colorado.edu/cap/history.html

-Nishant

Model of Comprehension

Hey,

I was reading through Chapter 11 and I came across a section that I didn't fully understand. If anyone can help summarize the tenets of Kintsch's Model of Comprehension, I would really appreciate it. As of right now, all I know is that there are two extremes: the goal schema and the text. Thanks!

-Nishant

Thanks everyone!

I just wanted to express my thanks to all of you for a great class this summer! I really learned a lot from all of you and your great questions and comments. This blog has also been a great way to exchange ideas and information, and I really appreciate your contributions. Please keep in touch and let us know if you need any help in the future. We look forward to hearing from you and how you are doing! Best of luck with the final exam and life after Cognitive Psychology class!

What is the matrix?

I was looking through random videos on youtube and I found a clip of the Matrix where Morpheus offers Neo two piils.
I found it funny because apparently this clip was used in some decision making classes and I thought it would just be fun to post it after learning about decision making. Enjoy....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvs7AAYz0kU

Lefties really more creative?

A few weeks ago we discussed brain lateralization Today, I noticed this link to Yahoo answers on the Yahoo homepage addressing whether lefties are in fact more creative. I once had an art history professor tell me that some of the greatest artists ever known were left handed, and that there had to be some sort of correlation. I am reminded, however, of one of the greatest tenets of experimental psychology: correlation is not equivalent to causation.
See the articles for yourself:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylc=X3oDMTFtMXI2N3ZvBF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEX3MDMzk2NTQ1MTAzBHNlYwNmcm9udCBwYWdlBHNsawNGUC1Ub2RheUludA--?qid=20060630162104AAR78pk&fr=hp

and:


http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylc=X3oDMTFtMXI2N3ZvBF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEX3MDMzk2NTQ1MTAzBHNlYwNmcm9udCBwYWdlBHNsawNGUC1Ub2RheUludA--?qid=20060821111105AA5J1Sj&fr=hp


enjoy!

For all of the musicians out there...

When I was researching for my research proposal last week, I came across an atricle on whether reading music was an automatic process, just as reading language seems to be. There was an experiment done on the Stroop Effect (the test that asks you to name the color of the ink that is used in a word instead of the word itself) and if it relates to reading music. Interestingly, very similar results were found in this study as to the original stroop effect study that tested language. I think this is really cool because I can apply it to my life.. for me, reading music is just like reading language (I have been taking piano since i was 6) and so it is interesting that this property is similar between the two domains.

Here is a link to the study.. http://www.annalsnyas.org/cgi/reprint/1060/1/377.pdf

Enjoy!
Taylor

Demos on heuristics and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task

Here are a couple of links to check out on heuristics:

Availability heuristic demo

Decision making & heuristics

And here's a demo on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task -- we didn't get to talk about this in class, but it's mentioned in the textbook (Ch. 14, pp. 438-439).


I just wanted to say that I had such a blast teaching to all of you this summer! It was great how you challenged us -- you were very involved and integral to the success of our class. I had a lot of fun, and I hope you did too! Thanks for making this class such a great experience :-)

False Memories

Hey, I was wondering if anyone has any research on false memories... specifically ones that substantially affected the subject. Thanks so much!!

Taylor

God or Not...

Last week in class I brought up the issue of whether belief in a "higher being" is universal across different cultures, and some of my classmates correctly pointed out that this is not the case. However, what I had really intended that to say was that perhaps belief in a "higher reality" is universal. Every culture has sought to construct a higher reality that can explain the source (and purpose), not only of our existence, but of all existence. This construct, depending on the culture and the zeitgeist, varied in its level of sentience, ranging from a conscious entity imbued with intent and will, to a mechanical device following deterministic laws modulated by mild uncertainty.

Daniel Oppenheimer: 2006 Ig Nobel Award for literature

Did you know that Daniel Oppenheimer won the Ig Nobel Prize 2006 in Literature for his paper "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with using long words needlessly" which argues that simple writing makes authors appear more intelligent than complex writing.

Another interesting paper by Oppenheimer: Everything you ever wanted to know about discounting of cognitive states in heuristic judgement but were afraid to ask (2005)

ASIMO

Hello everyone!
Here's a link to the latest ASIMO movie.
http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/

Devika

Transformational Grammar

Hello hello!

I was re-reading Chapter 11 (Language Processes) for the final, and I found something worth discussing. I think it's fascinating that no matter how you rearrange a sentence, semantically it has meaning. In our brains, we concieve meaning from a sentence as long as it has potential meaning. The term used by the book to describe an awkwardly worded sentence is "regularity", something that, despite making the sentence difficult to read and consisting of a different underlying structure, makes sense to the human brain. Enjoy!

-Nishant

random question

Hello! I have a question about language. If you are listening to someone speak another language and can pick out some of what they are saying but can't make sense of the whole phrase, would this still be activating Broca's Area since there isn't really "comprehension", but rather the recognition of certain words?

Taylor Wiesmann

South Korea draws up code of ethics -- for robots

So this article made me think of "I, Robot" (which Greg mentioned recently and posted a link to the trailer) and in a way, the 3 Laws of Robotics that they flashed in the movie. South Korea has a goal of having a robot in every household by 2013!

Center for the Mind, Brain, and Computation

I thought you might be interested in this article on the developing Center for the Mind, Brain, and Computation here at Stanford. The Center aims to take an interdisciplinary approach to studying the brain and its various processes.

Who knows, maybe some of you will be part of this group in the future!

Thinking about the Turing Test

Here are my thoughts on the Turing Test...

Being fooled by a computing device into thinking that one has been communicating with a "thinking" being, does not necessarily imply that the device was in fact thinking. We are constantly being "fooled" by our cognitive processes into thinking that the world is continuous in nature, whereas according to modern physics the world is actually particulate in nature. For example, the continuity that we see in water is a macroscopic average, an illusion produced by our inability to visually resolve the discrete molecules of water. In other words, our erroneous impressions do not make reality other than what it is.

On the other hand, if the Turing Test were a valid method to decide whether a computing device is an entity capable of thought, then perhaps we are also misled into "thinking" that we are thinking beings...that is, if we passed the Turing Test.

Prototype Theory: Central Tendency vs. Attribute Frequency

In chapter 4 (Pattern Recognition) of the textbook, prototype formation (not part of the course reading) is one of the theories mentioned to account for the cognitive process of pattern recognition in the human brain. Prototype formation asserts that pattern perception occurs as a result of abstraction of stimuli, which are stored in LTM and serve as idealized forms against which patterns are evaluated.

Two models are proposed by prototype theory: (a) the central tendency model, which states that a prototype presents the mean or an average of the set of exemplars, and (b) the attribute-frequency model, which states that a prototype represents the mode or a summation of the most frequently experienced attributes.

Now, let's consider the central tendency model, which states that the prototype is the mean of a set of exemplars. Instead of thinking of the mean as something static and "central", if we allow the mean to be a measure that can evolve with time, then as more and more and exemplars are introduced, the prototype is modified to reflect the "current" mean or average of all the exemplars sensed so far. From this perspective, the time-varying mean will converge towards the exemplar that is most frequently sensed. Thus, the two models can perhaps be subsumed under one model?

Artificial intelliegence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH9eiLbGKGg

I thought this was an interesting interview. Mark Meadows, researcher for the Stanford Reserach Institute on Artificial Intelligence, talks about artificial intelligence, how it relates to psychology, and how AI will change and develop in the future.

Funny Farm

This post refers back to something we discussed last week, I think. We were talking about why we would confuse words while speaking (saying cat instead of rat, for example) and about the connections our minds make between words.

A few months ago, a friend of mine showed me this game that is built off of that and I thought it would be cool to share with you guys!

Funny Farm

If any of you do try it and want help, or the answers, let me know! We finished it after a ton of work and lots of Googling :)

Jabberwacky AI Program

I discovered a pretty cool site (www.jabberwacky.com) where you can chat with the program that we talked about today in class (that has frequently won awards in the Turing test). I was quite impressed and also entertained. Here is part of our "conversation":

Jabberwacky: And I thought you saw me yesterday in the café.
Me: In Palo Alto, California?
Jabberwacky: I don't work as a chambermaid anymore, and certainly not in California.

"Programming"?

This is more of a random thought than anything, but a lot of people were talking about how even if AI makes a human-like choice, it is still just working on the basis of a program which is originally created by human intelligence. I was just thinking that maybe human intelligence is also just "programmed" as well. It's hard to figure out the exact difference between AI (hypothetically, at this stage in our tech) making choices and acting like a human due to it's programming and humans acting according to our own programming.

I'm not necesarily talking about god or a higher power (though those things are both something to think about), but it is true that we have innate abilities, pre-dispositions, instincts, and intrinsic limitations and talents. Where do these things come from that provide the basis (the 'g' factor, perhaps) for everything we do? We take what we have been intrinsically endowed with and combine it with new knowledge in order to think, act, interact, and decide. Is it so different when we endow a computer with this same basis, then 'teach' it and see if it can also do these "human" processes?

What's it mean to be human, anyway?

I loved the discussions and debates that sprang up in class today! Since we had a lot of material to cover, unfortunately we couldn't completely play those out. But here's your chance to raise those issues again -- on intelligence, artificial intelligence, etc.

I wanted to add some information on the Loebner prize, the annual contest designed to see if a computer passes the Turing Test. Here's the official website of the Loebner prize, and here's an old article from Wired magazine reporting on what it's like to be one of the real humans in the workings of the Loebner prize contest.

Anterograde Amnesia

I found this video of anterograde amnesia. I think the example is very clear and everything is very well explained.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ObnErfTblY&mode=related&search=

The McGurk Effect

Hi guys,

This has little to do with class but is an interesting cognitive effect nevertheless. It involves the crossing of modal information, although not quite like the Synesthesia condition. Here is a video, just follow the instructions, the results are quite interesting!

http://www.media.uio.no/personer/arntm/McGurk_english.html

Brain electrodes help man speak again

Hello all,
Since we have been on the topic of language comprehension and production, I thought this article, posted today on yahoo news would be interesting. It is about a man who, through the use of brain stimulation, regained his ability to speak after 8 years of voicelessness due to a severe beating.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070801/ap_on_he_me/brain_damage

Autism

In class the problems that people with autism have with language was mentioned. I think it's really interesting, because I volunteer with autistic children at home, and I get to observe the problems they have. Some of the kids I work with can not form sentences and sometimes not even words. Others are more advanced and can have normal conversations. There is one girl, however, that I have worked with named Kelly. Most of the time she just repeats certain phrases she hears on TV or in movies and she does not interact much with the other volunteers and me. We will talk to her and try to get her to participate in games, but it seems as if she does not understand what we are saying. There are times, though, where she will look into our eyes and you can tell that she understands everything that is going on. At these times she will then form sentences and converse with us for a few seconds. In class we talked about how autistic people have language problems, but is there any explanation for these sporadic moments of complete understanding?

I found a website that explains what autism is and its characteristics if anybody is interested.
http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/autism.asp

Tests for Aphasia

Phillip and some others were interested in knowing about the tests for aphasia. Here is a list of some of them:

Porch Index of Communicative Ability (PICA)
Token Test
Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE)
Western Aphasia Battery
Minnesota Test for Differential Diagnosis of Aphasia
Halstead-Wepman Aphasia Screening Test
Head's Serial Tests
Language Modalities Test
Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities
Michigan Picture Language Inventory
Functional Communication Profile
Examining for Aphasia
Sklar Aphasia Scale
Neurosensory Center Comprehensive Examination for Aphasia

The most popular test is the BDAE. In this older article they compare that test with another popular one, called the Western Aphasia Battery. They find that the two tests agree on only 27% of the cases! The authors conclude that they both are good and bad in different ways, mainly that the BDAE fails to classify 60% of the patients and the WAB classifies everyone but whether or not it does so accurately remains to be seen.

As for confusing aphasia with other disorders (mentioned by Phillip), there is definitely the possibility that aphasia can be confused with apraxia or dysarthria. Here is what the National Aphasia Association said about confusing aphasia with dementia.

Dementia: A condition of impairment of memory, intellect, personality, and insight resulting from brain injury or disease. Some forms of dementia are progressive, such as Alzheimer's disease, Picks disease, or some forms of Parkinson's disease. Language impairments are more or less prominent in different forms of dementia, but these are usually overshadowed by more widespread intellectual loss. Since dementia is so often a progressive disorder, the prognosis is quite different from aphasia.

They can certainly co-occur as well, so someone with dementia may also have aphasia.

Hyperlexia

Spurred by Noah's comment in class, I did some digging around about hyperlexia. It's really fascinating! I guess it is usually found in people with autism, but what essentially happens is that the kids start recognizing words and becoming really attached to words very early on. Sometime kids will even be able to recite the alphabet by 18 months. However, they are delayed in other language and cognitive development. They may know words but they don't know the rules of a conversation. Here is one of the earlier articles about hyperlexia. (Ignore the random paragraphs in Spanish in the first 2 pages) In this article, they study 12 children who have hyperlexia and try to look for patterns. I think it's a worthy point that most of the parents were really proud of their children's special ability. Of course, that positive feedback may be reinforcing but for people with autism, that social dimension is lost.

Thoughts?

Body Worlds

Someone mentioned Body Worlds today in class. I just wanted to post about it because I saw the exhibit in Chicago and thought it was a great experience. The exhibit gives great scientific background and allows you to see the human body in ways not previously possible. I would recommend it to anyone interested in medicine, physiology, and the human brain. However, you should avoid looking at the pictures from the exhibit if you are sensitive to graphic images of the body - some people find these displays to be very disturbing.

Here is a link to the exhibitions. You can also check out the process by which the bodies are preserved (plastination).
http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/exhibitions/current_exhibitions.html