Post on 12-Jun-2018
transcript
Exam scope: All of the readings and lectures for weeks 4, 5 and 6.
Except: Dr. Boyle’s Neural Network lecture
Topic 1: Social skills and development
Lecture: Dr. Deák (1/29) How do we become socially skilled?
Readings: How Babies Think
What is kin recognition?- An organism's ability to distinguish between
close genetic kin and non-kin.- Also called kin detection- Very important!- Different sensory modalities
- E.g. Mother Penguin and ewes use olfactory information to distinguish their kids from others; long-tailed tits (Aegithalos caudatus) are capable of discriminating kin and non-kin based on contact calls.
How should we study infant minds?
- Verbal response? - Response time?
- Infants tend to pay more attention to something new, or more favorable.
- Indirect measure: the relative amounts of time they pay attention to different events,
Instead →
Can infants do face discrimination? (Layton & Rochat, 2007)
- 4 months: no clear evidence of differential response
- 8 months: distinguish mom’s face from stranger’s (still or moving)
- Even within a few months we improve at face processing
Canonical Scrambled
StimulusWhat about Biological Motion?(Bertenthal et al, 1987).
In both conditions, 3-month-olds look at the scrambled walker longer. It indicates they think it’s novel, which means that they CAN understand biological motion!
Why do we have longer childhoods? - Precocial species: Mature
early and show independent activities at birth.
- Altricial species: Mature late. Require help from parents. Rely on learning.
What can a baby do? Cont.
- They use statistics!- Babies and young children have an extraordinary ability to learn from
statistical patterns. - They use statistics to learn sound patterns of language (Saffran et.al 1966).- Babies can even understand the relation between a statistical sample and a
population (Xu, 2008).- They “understand” physics!
- Elizabeth Spelke (Harvard) found that infants understand fundamental physical phenomena such as movement trajectories, gravity and containment. Ex: They look longer at a toy car appearing to pass through a solid wall than at events that violate basic principles of everyday physics.
What can a baby do? Cont.
- They can be more creative than us!- They outperform us at tasks involving
unusual possibilities, because they are more open-minded than adults.
- e.g. Blicket detector task- Instructions make young children less
creative!- Young children who think they are being
instructed modify their statistical analysis and may become less creative as a result.
Topic 2: Social cognition and Mirror neuronsLectures:
- Dr. Boyle (1/31) Introduction to Social Cognition- Dr. Singh (2/9) Mirror Neurons and Schizophrenia
Readings:
- “First direct recording made of mirror neurons in human brain”
What is embodied cognition?● Classical View (or Cognitivism):
○ Treats the brain as an input-output device that uses the internal manipulation of symbols to perform cognitive processes.
○ Word meanings ultimately grounded on abstract symbols
● Embodied Cognition: ○ Cognition is influenced and
biased by states of the body, the environment, and the complex interaction between the two
○ Word meanings are grounded on states of the body■ Ex: action words
What is embodied cognition?● Embodied Cognition:
○ Cognition is influenced and biased by states of the body, the environment, and the complex interaction between the two
○ Word meanings are grounded on states of the body
○ Ex: action words
What are mirror neurons?Mirror neurons are activated during the...
● Execution of an action● Observation of an action
○ Mirror neurons are multimodal! They become active both when either seeing or hearing an action being performed
What are mirror neurons really?Mirror neurons code for an action with a certain intention:
● Active in both full and occluded conditions
● Respond to either robotic or human hands
● Differentiate between different intentions
What is the relationship between mu suppression and mirror neurons?
Mu = 8-12 Hz (Alpha-range) wave over M1 and S1
Changed by movement, attention, sleep, and visual tasks
In typically developing subjects ● Suppressed while performing motor actions, observing motor
actions, and imagining motor actions ● Suppression is increased for actions embedded in social context
How does mu suppression differ across populations?● Autism: Reduced mu suppression and social
abilities in high functioning autistic children compared to typical children.
● Schizophrenia: Reduced mu suppression and social abilities compared to neurotypical controls.
● Perhaps, there is a relationship between these two variables.
○ Mu suppression can be altered administration of oxytocin or by using neurofeedback
Theory of Mind (ToM)● Those with ToM are mindsighted● The ability to attribute others’ mental states ● Commonly assessed using false-belief or
“Sally-Anne” tasks
Mindblindness● The inability to attribute mental states to others● Describes many on the autism spectrum
What is social cognition?
Topic 3: Social Cognition and Interaction
Lecture: Dr. Rossano (2/14) Interacting like a human being.
Reading: The Ultra-Social Animal
What is diversity?Diversity is:
● An assumption● A tool
Occurs across time (evolutionary or developmental)
Occurs across individuals (individual differences are not noise!)
Who are the WEIRD?WEIRD people are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic
*96% of subjects in psychology experiments are WEIRD
- WEIRD people make up 12% of the world population, and 80% of subjects are undergraduates.
What does social cognition involve?
Intelligibility: how do we see what others see? (social attention)
Accountability: taking into consideration how others will perceive, understand, and judge our actions when we act/plan to act
Answerability/Responsibility: social norms, fairness and justice, social planning, trust, morality
Requesting food Stealing food
How do humans and other species differ with regards to social interaction and social cognition?
How do humans and other species differ with regards to social interaction and social cognition?
Voice Following Voice Following (Domestication vs. Socialization)
Eye Direction
Frontal eyes are good for depth perception and 3D vision, while lateral eyes are useful for
peripheral vision.
Eye Sclera
Humans are the only primate with a white sclera. Why?
How do humans and other species differ with regards to social interaction and social cognition?
Topic 4: Animal cognition
Lecture: Dr. Johnson (2/7) Animal Intelligence and Alien Minds.
Reading: Cetaceans Have Complex Brains
How can we know the minds of non-humans?1. We must appreciate each species’ sensorimotor constraints
a. What a animal can/cannot do
Vision
Ultraviolet Infrared
Human “Visible Lights”
-- Where are they on this spectrum?
No color perceptionBUT good sensitivity toMotion & Contrast!
What are some examples of sensorimotor constraints?
What are some examples of sensorimotor constraints?
-- What do these structures enable? Vision
Specialized body parts
Primates’ forward facing eyes:Depth perceptionFor hunting and arboreal activities
Opposable thumbs:Grasping and tool manipulation
-- Yet why don’t rodents use tools? Vision
Specialized body parts
Also have opposable thumbs
What are some examples of sensorimotor constraints?
-- Different animals have different coordinations Vision
Specialized body parts
Body - eye coordination
Primates:Hand-eye
coordination
Crows:Eye-beak-foot
coordination
Elephants:Trunk-eye
coordination
What are some examples of sensorimotor constraints?
What are some examples of “universal” principles?
Event Correlations
● Classical example: Pavlov’s dog● Temporal contiguity: Animals will use Event 1 to
predict Event 2 when the events overlap in time
● BUT EXCEPTION:
Taste Aversion Learning:
Only learns association between food and illness if the poisonous effect appears with >1 hour delay!
Because…?
Win stay/Lose shift
● If Win (get reward)then Stay (continue same response)
● If Lose (don’t get reward)then Shift (try another strategy)
● BUT EXCEPTION:
What if the animal gets reward from a non-reusable resource, in the natural habitat?
Win shift
What are some examples of “universal” principles?
How can we know the minds of non-humans?- Ecological Validity: The degree to which a research setup resembles an animal’s
real experience.- Is this research taking place in something that approximates an animal’s natural environment?
Keep these principles in mind:
-- sensorimotor constraints
-- learning principles
-- environmental validity
How can we know the minds of non-humans?
Making dolphins do “Match to Sample” using Color or Contrast as cues
Training Pigeons or Hummingbirds using “Win stay / lose shift” strategy
Running rats in mazes?
Considering:
sensorimotor constraints
learning principles
environmental validity
bad
bad
good
good
really good
What about a dolphin’s brain allows it to be so smart? Large mass
Large relative mass with respect to body
Regional parcellation with expanded insula and cingulate cortices
Large number of layer V spindle neurons
High ratio of white matter to gray matter
High ratio of glial cells to neurons
What are glial cells?
● Oligodendrocytes: ○ provide myelination in the Central
Nervous System○ Reason of “white matter”
● Astrocytes: ○ Predominate in the gray matter○ Maintain extracellular ion (electrical)
balance○ Nurture nervous tissues and repair
traumatic injuries● Microglia:
○ Immune cells in the Central Nervous System
Dolphins have smart brains, but are they smart? (from Cetacean reading)Declarative knowledge: understand symbolic representations and events
Procedural knowledge: understand how things work or how to manipulate them
Social knowledge: understand activities, identities, behaviors of others
Self knowledge: understand own image, behavior, and body parts
Can learn imposed language, including the languages semantics and syntax
Can use simple tools and otherwise interact with the world
Understand and provide attention guidance via pointing and head gaze
Recognize themselves in the mirror
… So Many of these, Go to your reading!
Topic 5: Distributed cognition
Lecture: Dr. Scott (2/12) Introduction to Distributed Cognition
Reading: Cognition, Distributed
1. Behaviorism: Concerned with observable behaviors rather than internal mental processes.a. e.g. Pavlov’s
classical conditioning
How have researchers thought about cognition before?
2. Cognitivism: Concerned less with visible behavior and more with the internal processes of the mind.
Treats the brain as an input-output device that uses the internal manipulation of symbols to perform cognitive processes. e.g. The Information Processing Theory is a metaphor that equates the work of the human brain to that of the computer.
What insights about cognition come from the distributed cognition approach?
- Brain is important but not enough!- Brain should be seen as the controller for
body-world interaction.- Action can reveal underlying cognitive
processes- Bidirectional interactions of the brain
& body with the material and social world is a form of cognition too.
- Entails a broader unit of analysis.
Social requirements/Information bottlenecks result in information transfer systems
“Information needs to transfer across “low-traffic” boundaries, and symbol systems
arise to deal with transferring information across these bottlenecks”
What insights about cognition come from the distributed cognition approach?
Where did d-cog come from and how do we apply it?- “Cognition in the Wild” describes observing human
cognition in its natural habitat. - The book describes Cognitive Ethnography which
entails:- The scientific description of the customs of individual
peoples and cultures.- Accurate records of specific instances of real world
human behavior.- Analyze of the cognitive aspects of those instances.
Edwin Hutchins
What is the BIG problem with cognitive ethnography? ● Seeing but not seeing problem:
○ Neglecting details but remembering the gist ○ Filling the gaps in visual scenes○ Neglecting background info e.g. Invisible gorilla○ Not hearing disfluencies and unimportant words○ Shared cultural models
● We need guidelines:○ Cognito-scope: Slow down and be honest, pay attention to how
representations are transformed across time, people, and the environment.○ Look at the process of the manipulation of cognitive representations with a
martian perspective.