Faculties of the Mind

Perception §

• Perception is not just a matter of passively picking up information from the senses, but a product of an active construction process that involves combining input from sensory signals with other information

• Picking up information about our worlds is not a passive, reflective process, but a complex, active one in which the senses and the brain work together, helping us to construct a perception (or illusion) of reality

• The first stage of perception involves detecting the signal that something is out there

  • Signal Detection Theory suggests that accurate perception is determined not just by sensory capacity but a combination of sensory processes and decision processes. Decisions vary according to the degree of cautiousness required (i.e., response bias)
  • All senses respond better to changes in the environment than to a steady state. Receptors habituate or stop responding when nothing changes

• Input from the senses (sensation) is fed into the brain which then uses knowledge it already has to construct a model of what is perceived. The model sets expectations and allows for prediction.

  • The model is Bayesian ¹ in nature. It is updated based on incoming information.
  • These processes are subconscious until we are faced with something that gives us perceptual difficulty (i.e., ambiguities, impairments or illusions)
  • Neurons respond to specific features.

• Sources of information have to be integrated if they are to provide us with a coherent representation of the world that corresponds to reality.

• Perception also involves forming hypotheses, generating predictions and making connections. It involves attention.

  • Normally we focus by filtering out what is unnecessary at the time on the basis of low level information
  • Our attentional processes can work so fast and efficiently that they can protect us from consciously noticing things that might upset us, such as obscene or disturbing words. This is called Perceptual Defense
  • We can divide our attention most easily between information coming to us through different channels
  • When we habituate, we orient ourselves to something new.

• So much of perception goes on outside awareness that we cannot be sure that there is a good match between what we perceive and reality, or between what we perceive and what others perceive. Psychologists have suggested that two kinds of processing are involved.

Memory §

• Our memory systems did not evolve because we need to catalogue the items and events in the world but rather because we need to survive in a changing world.

• Memory is an active process. It is not just a question of making an accurate record but also fitting new information into existing information in a way that makes sense.

• The process of retrieval involves reconstruction, which is influenced by the frameworks that people already have in their heads

  • At particularly important or emotional moments, details tend to get better ‘fixed’ in our memories. However, even then the details remembered by two people present at the same event may be strikingly different.
  • The past is always an argument between counterclaimants. Even when we do remember details accurately, the details we remember are not fixed in our memories, but remain changeable

• There are three main stages of memory — encoding, storage and retrieval.

  • Sensory Memory - encodes the memory. It can hold a large amount of information but only for a short time.
  • Working Memory - stores the information from sensory memory.
  • Long Term Memory - involves chunking material from working memory to consolidate memory (i.e., keep it for long term use)
    • Synaptic Consolidation - happens in the hippocampal regions of the brain and occurs within the first few hours of learning.
    • Systemic Consolidation - involves transfer of information to the cortex.

• Forgetting occurs because similar memories become confused and interfere with each other when we try to recall them.

Thinking and Reasoning §

• Thinking uses up energy, and this energy and our use of it has evolved until it is now super-efficient

• Thinking Fast And Slow

• Even if we succeed in reasoning logically, biases and mistakes can creep in. Even experts can be blind

• Positive Transfer Effect - the phenomenon where we solve problems more easily as we accumulate experience.

• Developing a mental set prevents us having to reinvent the wheel each time but slows us up when faced with a new set of difficulties.

  • Functional Fixedness is a kind of mental set where we think of objects only in terms of their functions

• Creativity can be measured in various ways.

  • The degree to which people think divergently by exploring freely and generating many solutions
  • The degree to which people think convergently following a set of steps which appear to converge on one correct solution to a problem.

• Characteristics such as nonconformity, confidence, curiosity, and persistence are at least as important as intelligence in determining creativity.

• The theory of linguistic relativity suggests that language fosters habits of perception as well as thinking and that different views of reality were reflected in different languages.

  • Rumpelstiltskin Principle - one you can name something, you have power of it. By giving names to our terminologies, we can start to reason and talk about them better.
  • Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - your ability to think a thought depends on knowing words capable of expressing the thought. If you don’t know the words, you can’t express the thought and you might not even be able to formulate it

Motivation §

• Feelings provide an impetus to action. Often we explain our actions in terms of things we felt at the time.

• Affective Processes help to explain why we do what we do.

• The affective prediction hypothesis states that patterns of neural activity experienced in the past are coded and stored in such a way as to determine expectations about the future, and their responses are sensitive to whether or not those expectations are fulfilled.

  • Affect feeds into all mental activity.

• The value that something has for us determines whether or not we want it, are motivated to seek it out, and will take action to get it

  • Primary Reinforcers retain the value they have acquired through years of evolution.
  • Secondary reinforcers obtain a value of their own based on associations with other things of value.

• There are two main theories regarding motivation

  • Homeostatic Drive Theory - it is important to maintain a reasonably constant internal environment. Any imbalance from homeostasis prompts action. Actions are driven by imbalance.
    • Drive Reduction Theory extends Homeostatic Drive Theory. Behaviors that successfully reduce a drive are experienced as pleasurable and thus reinforced. Motivation to continue the behavior decreases as the drive is satisfied.
  • Goal Theory - someone’s motivation is what they are trying to do. People work harder when their goal is harder to achieve

• Emotion.

  • Pain is a mysterious thing. Part of it is an objective response that reinforces or alters our behaviors; Part of it is an emotion that is based on our own experiences and expectations.

• What we experience is greatly influenced by cognitive factors: by what we know about a situation, how we interpret what happens to us internally and externally, and of course what we have learned and remembered about such situations in the past.

• Cognitive-behavioral therapies, particularly for depression and anxiety, are based on the idea that thoughts, feelings, and behavior are so intimately related that changing one will change the other

• There is evidence that the limbic system functions as the emotional center. The layers of convoluted grey matter evolved later so we evolved the ability to think about feelings.

Links §

• [[Psychology — A Very Short Introduction by Butler and McManus
• Personality

Footnotes §

1. This is debatable if it actually is what happens in practice. ↩