Topical Blog Week #10 (Due Wednesday)

1a) The topic I have choose to take a closer look at from chapter 10, is synesthesia.

1b) This topic relates to this chapter directly because there is a section titled synesthesia: the sound of colors and it goes on to discuss what the condition entails, and gives a few examples of what people may experience.

1c) I am interested in this topic because it is such an unusual condition that you don’t regularly hear about in day to day life. I would guess that most people don’t even know what it is, and have never heard of it before. I want to learn more about this condition, if it is genetic, if there are any disadvantages/advantages of having it, is there a way of treating it, and I would also like to learn about some specific case studies.

2) Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to automatic experiences in another pathway. People with this condition can hear colors, see sounds, their perceptions have many modalities corresponding to different ways of experiencing the world. In addition to their five senses they add in modalities such as words, numbers and colors. There are many different forms of synesthesia including: Grapheme-color (individual letters of the alphabet associated with a color or shade), Chromesthesia (people associate sounds with colors), auditory-tactile (certain sounds induce sensations in different parts of the body), and many more. In order for this condition to be diagnosed it must meet a few different criteria: it must be involuntary/automatic, their perceptions are spatially extended, their percepts are consistent and generic, they are highly memorable, and it is laden with affect. The most common types of synesthesia are colored days of the week and colored graphemes.

A lot of what is known about synesthesia is based of a skewed population of those who are educated on the matter, because those who are not don’t know they even have a condition because they perceive it as their normal perceptions. Therefore it is hard to come up with exact numbers of those who have it, and it is hard to see if the way people perceive things is standardized across everyone who does have it. It has been estimated that about 1 in every 100,000 or 1 to 5,000 may have the condition, but again this is generated by self report. People with this condition often have had it for as long as they can remember, they are usually female, their seems to be a somewhat genetic component related to it, and those with it tend to be more artistic/creative and they perform better on cognitive assessment tests and memory tests, but lower on spatial functioning tests. This condition is not a disease, they are not mentally ill, and they score negatively on tests checking for schizophrenia, psychosis, delusions, and other disorders. It is also not the result of intense drug use. There has been proof that synesthesia does actually occur using fMRI’s and other tests. This condition typically does not get in the way of living a normal life, these people actually pity non-synesthetes because they have a one-dimensional sensory experience with life. However, when a certain stimulus produces an aversive synesthetic experience it can be bothersome.
One of the least common forms of synesthesia includes word-gustatory synesthesia where hearing or seeing a word evokes an involuntary taste association. Only 5 cases of this have been documented in the past century, one being the case of a woman who goes by TD. TD was tested on her synesthesia by GEndel who presented her with 806 random words and she had to write down the taste she associated with them. A control group of 9 other women did this same task. 3 months later both groups were tested again and TD wrote the same associations down, but the other 9’s were different and no association was made. This supported TD in saying that she had this type of synesthesia. This is just one case of many that show how unusual this condition is.

3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
This website was very useful because it gave a good overview of what the condition is, some different characteristics of it, a few different forms, diagnostic criteria, epidemiology, history and research behind it, and even some information on how it is incorporated into todays society and culture.

http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/12/04/tasting-words-a-study-of-one-o/
This website was very interesting because it provided a case study on one of their rarest forms of synesthesia which is tasting words. It provided information on what life is like for a person with this condition, and gave information on different experiments they have done on people with this form.

http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/12/04/tasting-words-a-study-of-one-o/
This website was useful because it provided a lot of important information one might want to seek if they think they might have it. They explain what life is like with a person who may have it, some of the difficulties they may face, how common it is, they explain whether or not it is considered a disease, and lastly they touch on the proof on how they know it exists.

Topical Blog Chapter 9

My topical blog for chapter 9 is on the concept of procedural knowledge. I am interested in procedural knowledge as it affects our learning and involves more of our senses such as hands-on experience. I, personally, believe I use procedural knowledge the most when thinking about things. Therefore, I wanted to research more on procedural knowledge and what it entails.

Procedural knowledge is implicit and may be sampled through performance. On page 264 of our textbook, productive memory is linked to procedural knowledge. Our textbook explains that procedural knowledge is the knowledge of knowing how to do something. Examples listed within our text include: how to tie your shoes, order food in a restaurant, and how to do mathematics. Our textbook seems to discuss procedural knowledge at a very high level. Through my sources, however, I dug into how this knowledge aids in our learning and how we can use this knowledge from within our everyday memory.

First, procedural knowledge is highly exercised in the performance of a task as it is applied to a task. Procedural knowledge is formed by doing a task. Without doing a task, this knowledge would be more declarative knowledge. For example, an individual may know all the rules and theory behind driving a car, but may not actually know how to drive a car. Without knowing how to drive a car means there is no procedural knowledge involved. You may know everything about driving, but you will not understand (have procedural knowledge) until you get behind the wheel of a car and apply your rules and theories.

In other words, procedural knowledge is not just a collection of facts. With procedural knowledge, you must receive hands-on experience, practice solving problem or a task, and understand limitations to a solution. In cognitive psychology, an individual may learn procedural knowledge without even being aware of what they are learning due to the hands-on experience.

Within a classroom, procedural knowledge is part of knowledge that was already gained. A student may know the rules of completing something, but it is not until they put those rules into action that they are using procedural knowledge. For example, students learn to add and subtract by first using their fingers to do so. The student is using problem solving skills and a hands-on task to learn how to add two numbers together.

Many times, you will hear a teacher, mentor, or elder ask how you learn best. When this question is asked, they are referring to the nature of your procedural knowledge. Some people learn best by using procedural knowledge through hands-on experience and visuals. Many classrooms may feature a more active learning to use procedural knowledge and enhance learning. Classrooms that exercise the use of procedural knowledge provide students with the opportunity to participate in thought-provoking activities rather than paper/pencil multiple choice assignments.

With a more hands-on approach, our memory is enhanced. If an individual can apply their understanding by playing out a task, the individual is more likely to remember how to do something. Not all individuals learn best through procedural knowledge, but the more you can perform a task yourself, the more you will recall the steps of a task.

http://www.theoryofknowledge.info/what-is-knowledge/types-of-knowledge/procedural-knowledge/
This website contributed to the post in which it provide a real life definition of procedural knowledge. The URL also defined the difference between procedural and declarative knowledge in order for me to understand the importance of procedural knowledge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_knowledge
This website described procedural knowledge in terms of cognitive psychology. The URL also discussed the advantages of procedural knowledge in such ways that it is hands-on experience and educational implications of procedural knowledge.
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/certop/imp_proc.html
This website discussed what procedural knowledge is in relation to its effect on learning. The URL also provided examples of classrooms using procedural knowledge and tips on how to improve procedural knowledge. It was explained how procedural knowledge has an effect on our memory.

Because this week’s chapter is called verbal representation of knowledge, I thought it would be interesting to look up aphasia. I have heard of aphasia in many of my psychology classes, but the professors never went into details and I had never looked it up to know more. Also, the blue box of this chapter, titled “I never forget a face, it’s names I can’t remember” reminded me of an episode of the TV series House, called “Failure to Communicate”, which featured a man who has aphasia and dysgraphia, although he thinks that he was speaking and writing normally. I was surprised to find more types of aphasia than I initially thought there were. I thought it would be interesting to learn a little bit about different types of aphasia.

Wernicke’s Aphasia is also referred to fluent or receptive aphasia. With this type of aphasia, you can find it difficult to comprehend and understand the meaning of a word when it is spoken. However, you are still able to conduct a fluent and connected speech. However, what you say is mostly a series of meaningless words that sound like sentences, but don’t make sense. You may not even realize that your speech is incorrect. In most cases, reading and writing can be severely impaired as well.

Broca’s Aphasia can be caused by injuries to the left frontal area. Sufferers can encounter difficulties forming complete sentences; although they can get their messages across using basic words, they can leave out small words like “is” or “the”. They often say something that doesn’t resemble a sentence, as well as having problems understanding sentences. They can also find it hard to follow directions without mistakes also. Suffers can say words that are close to what they mean, but not the exact word; they may say “car” when they actually mean “truck”. They can have troubles comprehending sentences, or fail to understand the importance of the order of words in sentences, and hence interpreting the meaning of the sentences incorrectly.

Global aphasia is the most severe type of aphasia. It often happens right after someone has a stroke. Sufferers of global aphasia can have troubles speaking and understanding words. In addition, they are also not able to read or write. Sufferers are often aware of their inability to communicate through speech; hence they turn to facial expression, intonations, and gestures to successfully express themselves without the use of speech.

Anomic Aphasia is the least sever form. Sufferers are often unable to find the correct words for the things they want to talk about, however they are still able to understand speech and able to read normally, except their writing ability may be impaired. They may not always recognize that they have successfully found a correct word to describe what they want, showing some troubles with word recognition.

Primary Progressive Aphasia is a rare degenerative brain and nervous system disorder they leads to declining speaking and language skills overtime. Sufferers can encounter difficulties naming objects or misusing word endings, verb tenses, conjunctions, and pronouns. Different to many other types of aphasia mentioned, primary progressive aphasia does not result from brain damage, but is rather a progressive type of dementia, and happens when the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain shrink.

Aphasia can be caused by stroke or brain damage to parts of the brain that are in charge of language. According to the National Aphasia Association, 25%-40% of people who had a stroke get aphasia. It can also be a result of a brain tumor, brain infection, or dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease. In other cases, aphasia can be a symptom of neurological disorders.

http://www.webmd.com/brain/aphasia-causes-symptoms-types-treatments

Although this website does not provide much information on each type of aphasia, it mentions the causes of it, very useful for some additional information.

http://www.aphasia.com/about-aphasia/types-of-aphasia

This website provided me with some simple yet accurate information regarding different types of aphasia, in addition, there is also a figure showing the Broca’s aphasia and the Wernicke’s aphasia, as well as a list of differences between the two types of areas.

http://www.strokeassociation.org/STROKEORG/LifeAfterStroke/RegainingIndependence/CommunicationChallenges/Types-of-Aphasia_UCM_310096_Article.jsp

This website contains the most information. It was very helpful when I was trying to find some information that is not mentioned in the other websites.

1) This week I chose to find out more about why people remember faces but not names, but more specifically looking at aphasia. This topic relates back to the chapter as we are looking at memory and even the evidence box in the chapter that talks a little about why we can remember faces but not names. After reading the box in the chapter I really wanted to look into it much deeper as I have always noticed myself recognizing faces but never remembering the name. I have also heard my Professors talk about aphasia but they have never really go in depth as to how one gets aphasia and how one treats it.

2) Aphasia is an impairment of expression or comprehension of language that is caused by something effecting the language centers of the brain like an injury or a disease. There many different forms of aphasia a lot of them have to do with the ability to speak or seek proper sentence as they may be broken and or hard to understand. Sometimes the injury that leads to aphasia is a stroke, once the patient comes to senses after a stroke they may be unable to understand language as the stroke has touched the left side of the brain that then messed with the language part in the center of the brain.

Aphasia treatment is extremely and important aspect of life after a stroke which has affected someone’s ability to speak. Although there are many different treatments that exist for the different types of aphasia only a few of them have been tested and proven to be efficient. Pharmacotherapy is one of the most appealing forms of aphasia therapy also its efficacy has yet to be proven. Another type of therapy is group therapy which provides a casual context for patients to practice communication skills that they have learned with others.

People who are living with aphasia often live with having a hard time communicating which we said but most of the time it is not they don’t understand people around them and themselves. But it is often the people around them that don’t understand them. These people have a hard time making complete sentences they would often say something like, “You know that smoodled pinkered and that I want to get him round and take care of him like you want before,” or “walk dog” which they mean I will take the dog for a walk. This often makes life for them hard as people often don’t understand what they want from that sentence and ask the person to repeat it a couple of times.

I personally think that it would be hard to be someone who has to live even a part of your life not being able to correctly communicate with those around you. I think that people with aphasia have to have a great deal of patience to deal with everyone asking what you said over and over again. I honestly didn’t know that most of the time aphasia comes from diseases and injuries and that if not treated right away they will have to live the rest of your life with the symptoms.
http://kickass.to/blog/Aphasiac/post/living-with-aphasia/# This website gave me some insight as to what a person who is suffering from aphasia is dealing with on a daily basis and more information as to how it starts in the brain and it’s functions.
http://www.psychologycs.com/aphasia.htm# This web page helped me to define aphasia and also showed me all the different names and where each one effects the person in life but the list was far too long to put in the information above.

http://stroke.about.com/od/caregiverresources/a/Aphasiarx.htm this web page gave me information on treatment and how it is really important to get treatment for stroke victims.

For this weeks topical blog I would like to talk about cognitive maps. I thought that cognitive maps were interesting because I get to use them everyday. Having known what a cognitive map was before I read the chapter made it easier to comprehend the information. One question that I had while I was reading the chapter was to see if cognitive maps could be used for anything other than proximity memory. I was wondering if cognitive maps could be used in cases of studying. It would be interesting to see if we could tie cognitive maps to learning, such as studying for a test. If we could link terms that we wanted to study for a test to a pre existing map it might be easier to recall information. So I wanted to see if there were an interesting articles that had to deal with cognitive maps, so I could get some more knowledge. Also I wanted to see if there was anything else that I could find that would help in my understanding of cognitive maps.

The first article I came across had to do with general knowledge of cognitive maps. The information in the article was very similar to the information provided in the text. There was something that I came across that was helpful in my understanding of cognitive maps and that was the information on Tolman. Tolman was a cognitive psychologist that was one of the first to research the area of cognitive maps. In his experiment he would use rats in a maze. He would have the rats find a piece of cheese at the other end of the maze and see if they could find it. After a few trials the rats would find the correct way to find the cheese. What he wanted to see next is if the rats would choose the same path if they were placed on the other side of the maze. What he saw was that the rat would not be fooled because the rat had came up with a cognitive map of the maze. I also found out that cognitive maps are implicit way of thinking, and different from mental maps that use an explicit way of thinking.

After I had read about Tolman I wanted to know more about him. I like doing this because I believe it gives me a better understanding of the person behind the theory. It also helps in my understanding of the topic and then in turn the understanding of cognitive psychology. What I found out about Tolman was similar to the other article and that he was a leading man in the area of cognitive maps. What interesting information I found out about him was that him and his brothers were suppose to take over the family business but took the academic route instead. This was interesting because if Tolman did decide to take over the family business then the area of cognitive maps and cognitive psychology would not be as far as it is today, and this is the information that I find to be most interesting. What I also learned from this article was the Tolman was a man in the area of cognitive psychology in a field dominated by behaviorists at that time. I found this article to be very informative in the sense that I got to learn more about cognitive maps and the man behind the theory.

After gaining knowledge on both cognitive maps and Tolman, I wanted to see the experiment. So I looked to youtube to see if they had any experiments like Tolmans. I found a nice video that had the experiment with the rats. I got to see that rat go through the maze a couple times from one direction, and then placed on the opposite side of the maze. The rat did exactly what Tolman had predicted in his early research, and that was the rat had gained knowledge of the maze and created a cognitive map in its head. The whole time the rat was told to go to the right in the first side of the maze. When placed on the other side of the maze and presented with the option to go to the right and left side. The rat took the correct way instead of the way it had been reinforced the whole time on the other side. Proving that the rat was not just going with what was routine, but what the cognitive map had told him based on the information he had gained from the maze.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k7oikkz9mg
This article was helpful because I got a visual in the experiment of the rat maze Tolman had created

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_map
This article was helpful in the understanding of general knowledge of cognitive maps.

http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/tolman.htm
This article was informative because I got to learn more about cognitive maps and Tolman.

This week I decided to look into aphasia. I thought it sounded like an interesting disorder when it was mentioned in the chapter and wanted to learn more about it.

Aphasia is a disorder that results from damage to the brain, specifically the areas that control language. People with aphasia can have trouble expressing and understanding both written and verbal language. Aphasia can range from having difficulty finding the words you want to you to a complete loss of the ability to speak, read, or write.

Lesions to the brain are the most typical cause of aphasia, be it from a brain injury or a stroke. Cancer is another possible cause of aphasia, as well as a number of progressive neurological diseases. These diseases cause the aphasia to grow and progress slowly. Brain hemorrhages also can aphasia, and epilepsy or a severe migraine can cause temporary aphasia to occur.

There are four main types of aphasia. Expressive aphasia occurs when a person knows what they want to say but are unable to find the words they want to use, either when writing or talking verbally. Receptive aphasia is when you hear the word or see it written, but are unable to understand what it means. A third type of aphasia is anomic aphasia. When this happens a person has trouble using the right words for things, places, or events. Global aphasia is the last type and occurs when a person is unable to read, speak, or write.

There is no one treatment for all types of aphasias, but treatments normally fit under one of two categories. There is a substitute skill model, where a person is given a tool to help with spoken language, such as a whiteboard or pen and paper. A second model is the direct treatment model, in which uses an approach that targets a specific exercise.

There are, however, ways to prevent aphasia. Because aphasias are typically caused by brain injuries, strokes, and cancers, most prevention techniques include eating well, exercising, and avoiding alcohol and drugs. Wearing protective headgear, such as helmets, during physical activity and controlling blood pressure are also ways to decrease your risk.

A person with aphasia may speak in incomplete or short sentences, form sentences that do not make sense, use made-up words, write sentences that don't make sense, or have trouble following a conversation. Since aphasia is often co-morbid with other disorders if a person has any of these symptoms they should see a doctor immediately.

http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/aphasia.htm#common
I used this link to find information about the range of severity of aphasia

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/aphasia/basics/symptoms/con-20027061
I used this link to find treatments and learn more about the types of aphasia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphasia
this link provided me with the symptoms and more treatments for aphasia

I chose to do my topic on declarative memory. I was interested in this type of memory because it involved the information that we store and then retrieve. I wanted a better idea of how we are able to recall information that we learn in class. I also wanted to get a better understanding of how we are able to store memories in a way that allows us to recall and tell other people stories about our lives. Explicit memory is one of the most interesting memory systems to me because it involves our own personal lives and our experiences and it can be looked at almost as a big book. Declarative memory is related to the chapter because we have been learning a lot about the different memory systems and the text takes some time to talk briefly about declarative memory but it didn’t go into detail.

The declarative memory system is verbal and conscious. We can think about something that we have experienced and make a timeline of those events. This type of memory helps us to organize a history of ourselves. The explicit memory system begins to form at around 18 months. The hippocampus matures at around 5 years old and it helps us to remember the sequence of memories and then be able to share that with others. When we tell people stories we are accessing our explicit memory.

Declarative memory is our memory that includes facts and events that we can recall when needed. Another word for declarative memory is explicit memory. Declarative memories are mainly stored in the hippocampus and the medial temporal lobe. One of the most famous studies was with the patient H.M. He had parts of his medial temporal lobe, hippocampus, and amygdala removed in order to help with his epilepsy. After the surgery H.M. was not able to form any declarative memories. He was only able to make short term memories and then almost immediately forgot what he had just done. He kept a diary where he would write what he was doing but he would get upset and cross out previous things he wrote because he wouldn’t remember having done those things. This case was groundbreaking because it gave researchers the ability to understand the link between areas of the brain and how they are involved in forming short and long-term memories.

Other studies have been done that have led researchers to other conclusions. One study showed stress actually has a significant impact on how we form declarative memories. I thought this was interesting because depending on the situation we may not have an accurate memory of certain events if they were highly stressful. I know that when I have really stressful days at work my recall for my kids’ behavior is really bad because so much was going on and I was very anxious throughout the day. On more relaxed days I have no trouble recalling different behaviors as well as remembering pretty accurately the time in which everything took place. Another study showed that the more slow-wave sleep we are able to get during the night, the better our declarative memory is. This requires us to get to a deep sleep and stay in it for a good amount of time. This is why many times students are told that getting their rest the night before a test is far more important than staying up all night attempting to study for it.

Terminology: H.M., declarative memory, explicit memory, medial temporal lobe, hippocampus, amygdala, verbal, conscious, epilepsy, long-term memory, short-term memory, stressful, slow-wave sleep

Declarative Memory: Definitions & Examples
http://www.livescience.com/43153-declarative-memory.html
This source helped to define declarative memory and give a good idea of what it consists of.

Declarative (Explicit) & Procedural (Implicit) Memory
http://www.human-memory.net/types_declarative.html
This source helped to clarify which parts of the brain are activated when forming declarative memories as well as includes information about the H.M. study.

Implicit and Explicit Memory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-W6TDYi0Cw
This video was helpful in giving me a better understanding of the age in which declarative memory begins to form and how it works to build a sequential recall of memories.

I chose to do my paper on facial recognition rather than remembering a person’s name, and why we are better at recognizing faces. People are much better at recognizing faces, because the brain better stores our visual information. There is more cortex that is used to process our visual information than any other sense. Names are stored in a different part of the brain that visuals, so when a face is recognized, the name has to be recalled from another area of the brain. When a person tries to remember a name along with the face, people tend to try to picture that person and features they had such as about how tall they were, the shape of their face, or the color of their hair. People also pick out features they notice that may be unique such as freckles or dimples.
According to a news article, a newer study showed that women are better at remembering faces and names than men. The reason for this is that women tend to take in more detail of a person’s features when they first meet someone. There was an experiment that was done over a period of four days where participants were shown 120 different faces. During the different days some of the photos were shown more than once and the participant was asked where they had seen that person before and if they could remember their name. On average women were able to recognize 7 out of 10 faces where men were able to recognize about 5-6 faces, so not that much lower than women. Women are just quicker to recognize because they take not of the facial features where as men may take a minute longer to remember the face.
Overall people better recognize faces and it takes longer to recall names, because people have to retrieve that information and retrieve features about that person that will help them remember.
http://www.sciencefriday.com/blogs/06/10/2013/why-do-we-remember-faces-but-not-names.html?series=28
I chose this website, because it talked about the cortex that is used to process the visual information and how each is stored in different parts of the brain, that’s why it takes time for the name to be recalled.
http://bodyodd.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/06/18780235-women-are-better-at-remembering-new-faces-and-heres-how-we-do-it?lite
This article talked about an experiment that was done that showed that women are better at recognizing faces and recalling names than men.
http://www.buildyourmemory.com/faces.php
This website gave examples about how people try to recall names to a person that they have met.
Terms: facial recognition, recall, retrieve, cortex,

The topic that I researched this week was adaptive control of thought (ACT). This topic was mentioned in the recent chapter about the verbal representation of knowledge and relates to it due to the fact that ACT is a knowledge representation theory itself. I was interested in this topic while reading the chapter because it involves declarative and procedural/productive memory in its framework. Memory is something that interests me a great deal and the idea that knowledge is derived from a roundabout interpretation of memory and associations is something that I wanted to try and learn more about. The model is very complex and I'll admit that I didn't understand all of it and still don't after researching it for the purpose of this assignment. Even so, the theory was still very interesting and I hope that it gets discussed more in-depth during this class.

Adaptive control of thought was developed by John Anderson as a cognitive architecture in order to explain how human cognition works. It is an expansion upon the theory of human associative memory (HAM). The core framework of ACT is made up of three types of memory: working, declarative, and productive. Working memory can be thought of as active memory, the information that can be accessed and processed at a certain time. This information can be from new outside stimuli or retrieved from long-term memory. Declarative memory/knowledge is knowledge about facts and things within the world. Productive/procedural memory is knowledge about how to perform specific tasks.

In ACT, all knowledge is stated to begin as declarative information, which is then transcribed into procedural knowledge by making inferences from existing factual knowledge. Also in this theory, the components of cognition and human memory are identified as chunks and productions. The theory supports three different types of learning: generalization, discrimination, and strengthening. Generalization is when productions become broader in their range of application. Discrimination is when productions become narrow in their range of application. Strengthening is when productions are applied more often. And new productions can be formed by the conjunction or disjunction of existing productions.

Another component that relates more to the specific subject of this chapter is the application of the theory to sentence structure in order to understand how such information is stored within memory. According to the theory, the meaning of a sentence can be broken down into propositions, which are smaller units of knowledge within the sentence. The example that I saw describing this was a sentence that read "Susan gave a white cat to Maria, who is the president of the club". This sentence can be broken down into three separate propositions: Susan gave a cat to Maria, the cat was white, and Maria is the president of the club. All three of these propositions would go through working memory and likely be processed into declarative knowledge, or discarded.

ACT has many other applications beyond those that I described here. As I said before, the theory is very complex and overarching within the subject of cognitive architectures. Unfortunately, there isn't much else within the theory and I feel I could accurately convey without studying it even further and I hope that ACT will be discussed within our class this week in order to help me understand it more completely.

http://www.massey.ac.nz/~wwpapajl/evolution/assign2/YD/act.htm
This was helpful for the verbal representation part of the theory.
http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Adaptive_control_of_thought_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT-R
These two were good for basic overviews of the subject and its applications.
http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/act.html
This was also helpful as a short overview of the theory and the figure was helpful in showing how working, declarative, and procedural memory function together as a system.

Chapter 9 Topical Blog

The topic that I chose to learn more about from chapter nine is the spreading activation model. The spreading activation model is basically a way for a person to relate certain information to other information. It forms a sort of “web” type model. This model helps people to recall, relate, and store information. This relates to the chapter because the chapter is all about the verbal representation of knowledge. The model that I chose to learn more about has the person use verbal cues (words), to show their knowledge. I am interested in this topic because I think that it’s a really cool way to represent the knowledge that we have. And there are also so many ways that the webs can connect. The words that are in the chart are connected to each other through a series of lines. The length of the lines represents the strength of the connection. If a line in shorter in length (so the two words are closer together), then that means the words are more closely related to each other than they are to other words. When the lines are longer, that means that the words are not as closely related. I think that this is really interesting for two reasons. The first is that I have never seen or heard of a model like this, and I would like to start using them to recall and chart out my own knowledge. The second reason I found this all interesting was because it could go in so many different ways and forms. It is something that could almost go on forever. And I think that that is pretty cool.

The main thing I found most interesting about the spreading activity model was how we could use it to retrieve information that we have stored. The spreading activation model is the most promising method for information retrieval. One article I found talks about the nodes and links. The nodes are the words in the spreading activation model and the links are the lines that connect the words. The article talks about how nodes can be anything. They can be authors, books, movies, colors, nouns, and so forth. The links connect the nodes so we can see that they are related. This process of connecting the nodes together can help for information retrieval. Say that you just heard a really good song, and you know the name, but you can’t think of the author. You may start by making a spreading activation model. First write out all of the nodes. One node would be the name of the song, one node would be some lyrics, and then you can just keep connecting nodes. Maybe write the meaning of the song, certain reoccurring words, or anything you can think of. This is a great way to try and recall the name of the author of that song. I think that more people should try to use this method in remembering things. This sort of relates to the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. Everyone has been in the position where you know that you have certain information stored in your brain, but you can’t seem to retrieve it. Creating a spreading activation model could really help speed that process up.

Sometimes what a person recalls through the spreading activation model can be false information. If a person is given one word, it will for certain increase the chances of them recalling false words that weren’t given. For example, if I give a person the word “tree” – they would be more likely to falsely recall a words later, such as “leaf”. The example that the article gave was a series of words: snooze, nap, blanket, tired, etc. The person read through all of these words and when later asked to recall the words, they were very likely to report the word “sleep”. I thought that this whole concept was pretty interesting because it shows how a person’s mind develops false memories. I know that the examples that I gave were only one word examples. But if someone were trying to recall a series of information or even a story, they might still get false results. I think that this is interesting because we can have a person map out their own spreading activation model and then we will be able to pin-point where exactly their false memory began. If there is one word that was given to them, or one word that they put into their model that was false, that would throw off part of the entire web. This is good information to have, because then we can see where their mind went once that false memory was created.

Like I discussed earlier, there are different strengths of connections between certain concepts. Some connections might be much easier and faster to make than others. If things are more common to us, we will be able to recognize the terms and make connections faster. If there is a word that is more foreign to us, we might be able to make a connection, but it will be much slower. For example – if I am given the word “parrot” and then the word “bird”, I will be able to make that connection rather quickly. I will also make it a shorter link because they are closely related. I know that a cat is an animal. If I am given the word “parrot” and then the word “animal”, I will know that those two are connected, but it will take me much longer to make the connection. I know that a parrot is an animal, but to me, a parrot fits better in the category of “bird”.

There are a lot of things that I learned about the spreading activation model. I think that this will all help me to recall my own information if I ever need to. Drawing out a spreading activation web might even help me study. I can remember the terms and the connections that the terms have. The web’s links will also show me the strength of the connections.

Terms: Spreading Activation Model, Verbal Representation of Knowledge, Nodes, Links, False Memory

URLs:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.105.5594&rep=rep1&type=pdf
This was a really helpful article that I found online. It was very lengthy, but it had a vast amount of information on semantic networks, associative networks, and spreading activation as they all relate to information retrieval.

http://www.psych.wustl.edu/coglab/publications/spreading2001.pdf
I found a lot of good information in this article about the spreading activation model and false memories. It shows a lot of good examples on how a person’s spreading activation technique can lead us straight to the false memory, where it started, and what started it.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-spreading-activation.htm
This website had a lot of good information on the links in the spreading activation model. It showed some great examples of the different strengths of links a person can get and why.

1a) State what your topic is.

For this week’s blog I decided to look more into the topic of connectionist models.

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.

There was a section in this week’s chapter that talked specifically about connectionist models and parallel distribution processing.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in this because it gives a structural model for cognitive processing which is understandable in the simplified terms of computer science, and which works well with what we know about how the brain works.

2)
Connectionist models, or parallel distribution processing (PDP) models, are a class of computational models which have been used to explain cognition significantly better than previous models that run linearly rather than parallel. In all connectionist models, there are three main components that need to be understood: the net input function, the activation function, and the output function. The net input function determines the total input that a single unit receives, and is often as simple as being the sum of the overall inputs. The activation function determines the internal function of the unit. There are several different types of activation functions, including step functions, sigmoidal functions, and Gaussian functions. Step functions are simple, and if I understand things correctly, are the type of activation functions used by the units in the brain, which would of course be the neurons. Step functions work in the ‘all or none’ sense, meaning that they either fire or they do not depending on whether or not the threshold is reached. In terms of the brain, this would be the action potential. Sigmoidal activation functions are different, in that they can fire at different levels. If a unit that works with sigmoidal activation functions receives half of the input that a unit with a step activation function receives, it would fire out a signal that is half as strong, whereas the step function cell would not fire at all. Gaussian functions work in a rather curious way, with their range of activation resembling a bell curve, where at a certain point, increasing inputs actually start to reduce the output.

Of course the units in a connectionist models are nothing without the connections. The connections between units in a connectionist model are weighted so that they control what amount of the output function of one unit is received by the input of another unit. Say if one unit fires a signal of 0.763, and it goes through a connection weighted at 1, then the following unit receives an input of 0.763. Now, had the weight of the connection been only 0.5, then the following unit would only receive an input of 0.3815. In the brain, these connections would be the synapses. Support for the connectionist model in the brain comes from the findings that learning is linked to the strengthening of synapses between the activated parts of the brain. In computer models, you would need an algorithm called a learning rule to run through the program adjusting the connection weights until the outcome of the program is close enough to that of the desired result. The brain has multiple methods of simulating this learning rule. One of which is the reward system, which is the central theme of operant learning. If something leads to a reward, the brain’s reward system is activated, which strengthens the synapses between active neurons, increasing the likelihood that whatever behavior led to the reward will be increased. This is how operant learning works in the brain according to the connectionist model. Classical learning works in a similar way, increasing the strength of synapses through association.

Although I don’t entirely understand it, the connectionist model attempts to explain consciousness as the stability of representation of attraction states. It is posited that knowledge is stored not in individual units in the brain, but in the complex interaction of connection weights between the cells. Some information is more relevant at times than others, and this is what is consciously experienced. This is just the phenomena that is experienced when sensory information is related to previously held knowledge before that information is relayed to the area of the brain responsible for behavior. I’m not sure if the connectionist model of consciousness makes all that much sense, but all the rest of it does to me, and it is all rather interesting. Ideally, we will figure out much more about how these interactions are responsible for consciousness, memory, and all cognition in the upcoming years when more information is obtained, possibly as a result of the completion of a comprehensive brain map.


3)
http://psych.stanford.edu/~jlm/papers/McCCleeremans09CnxMdlsOCC.pdf
This link talks about connectionist models and how they relate to cognitive processes like learning and consciousness.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/6q5/connectionism_modeling_the_mind_with_neural/
This link gives a basic overview of how connectionism works with cognition while relating it to computer science.

http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~isb9112/dept/phil341/wisconn.html
This link explains connectionist models in terms of computer science, which helps my overall understanding of them as they relate to cognitive science.

The topic that I look at this time was adaptive control of thought. Adaptive control of thought was developed by John Anderson to explain how cognition works.as.if I read it right it builds off of human associative memory. ACT is made up of three types of memory: working, declarative, and productive. Working memory is active memory, the information that you are taking in all the time. This information can be from new outside stimuli or retrieved from long-term memory. Declarative memory is knowledge about facts and things around you in the world. Productive memory is knowledge about how to do certain task. In ACT, everything starts as declarative information, which is then made into procedural knowledge by making links from existing knowledge. Also in this theory, the components of cognition and human memory are identified as chunks and productions. The theory has links to 3 different types of learning: generalization, discrimination, and strengthening. Generalization is when become broader. Discrimination is when you narrow things down. Strengthening is when you use it over and over again and it just strengthens the connection.

http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Adaptive_control_of_thought_theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT-R