Applied Cognitive Psychology - Leiden University (2019)

Lecture 2: Fundamentals of Cognition

Perception:

Any type of sensory information

Most of the information first comes in to the Thalamus, and then spreads e.g. visual cortex, primary sensory cortex...

For ACP: we are interested in only some low-level perceptual phenomena: hering grid, motion-after-effect, color-after-effect

Focus of ACP: what drives our perception?

Bottom-up driven processes drive our perception in an automatic way.

Top-down processing drives our perception through expectancies. Example: A I3 C or I2 I3 I4

If the information quality goes down, then the top-down influence increases

Limitations:

Broadbent’s Attentional Filter: Early selection on attended channel and physical properties (pitch, color, loudness). But: there must be some semantic processing left.

-Example: dichotic listening task ---> while people cannot recall what they heard, it still influences their actions

Attention

According to William James, attention is similar to consciousness, it implies concentrating on one thing.

Overt attention: Any kind of physical change that follows our attention - e.g. head turn

Covert attention: The focus of our attention changes without any phyisical change (Posner) - even if eye is centered in one place, we can focus on other things.

Endogenous attention: conscious, controlled effort (top-down)

Exogenous attention: automatic, e.g.: someone sneezes in the exam room and you automatically pay attention to it

Visual search:

Feauture integration process: Different feautures of an object are processed in different parts of the brain. When target and distractor differ in only one feauture, it is easier to notice.

Pop-out: target is seen automatially - e.g. green circle amongst pink circles

Conjunction: more difficult to note - e.g.: search for orange square amongst blue squares and orange triangles

Attentional control:

Example: learning to drive a car requires conscious attention, but once skill is mastered it becomes somewhat automatic

Disadvantage to things becoming automatic: difficult to deal with unexpected situations

Working memory

Limited capacity,limited duration

Primacy: you will remember better the first couple of letters in a sequence

Recency: you will remember better the last couple of letters in a sequence

Chuncking: Chuncking into information that makes sense to us so we remember it better.

Example: PASAAICIBF ---> FBI CIA ASAP 

Interference: More difficult when two informations interfere with eachother. Example: Stroop task

There's 3 parts to working memory:

1. Central Executive: Manages Visuospatial sketchpad and Phonological loop

2: Visuospatial sketchpad: we interact with visual information

- Maintain and manipulate visual information

- Spatial insight, mental rotation

3. Phonological loop

-capacity of the phonological loop is fixed amount (duration) of speech sounds ~ 2.5 seconds

- articulatory loop: worse recall if articulation of words is suppressed by counting aloud.

-phonological store: similarity effect – letters that sound similar (BDPGV) are more difficult to retain than letters with distinctive sounds (BFHXR)

3

Applied Cognitive Psychology - Leiden University (2019)

Lecture 4: Human Error

While in the past being hurt was seen as a "personality trait", it turned out that there is no difference in proneness to injury.

It is often difficult to judge a situation to be safe or not.

Kahneman:

2 systems for processing information

• System 1:
  • Fast
  • Unconscious
  • Intuitive
  • Sensitive for pictures
• System 2:
  • Slow
  • Conscious reasoning
  • Evaluate
  • Sensitive for information

System 1 always gives an immediate reaction, this is ‘uncontrollable’.

System 2 has to be activated

Unfortunately this reaction is not always good. Estimates of probability and impact are strongly influenced by:

• Saliency
• Availability
• Public outrage

Saliency

Example: 9/11 very salient, but actually much more people died in car accidents that week.

Availability

Example: While hurricane Maria got little media coverage, it was more destructive than hurricane Harvey.

Public outrage

Example: the public outrage for a gun crime is much higher than the actual hazard

James Reason

Not-intentional behavior:

• Skill-based slip (Error of commission)
• Skill-based-lapse (Error of omission)

Intentional behaviour

• Rule- or knowledge-based mistake
• Violation

Fatigue

Significant jump in risk of error after 8 hours of working

Risk of mistake is more than double after 90 minutes after break compared to 30 minutes

Expectations

Fixation on expected solutions

Confuse new problems with old problems with known solutions

Rule breaking

Who violates?

• Violators can be found at all levels of an organisation
• People may treat rules as prescriptions for others but only as guidance for themselves
• Incidents may have been caused because people followed (bad?) procedures
• Personality characteristic: sheep or wolf?

Conclusions

‘Human error’ research looked at individual behaviour and ways to ‘fix it’

Reason and Rasmussen caused a revolution in the 1980s when they categorised human error and related the categories to organisational issues

The success has been staggering in the areas where it has been applied: up to 96% less accidents

Recent developments: look at human error from a ‘complexity’ point of view

At the moment there are few practical applications, but it has potential

Applied Cognitive Psychology - Leiden University (2019)

Lecture 6:Food and Drugs

Effect of food on cognition

-Source of energy

-Maintain cognitive function

-Adapting for food acquisition has affected evolution of the modern brain and cognitive skills

-Omega 3 linked to brain development

-Fish based diet decreased, saturated/trans fatty acids increase --> depression also increases

-Gut bacteria can influence mood, prevent depression

Neurotransmitters

Acetycholine (Ach):

-involved in muscle action, memory and attention

-Malfunction: associated with AD

Dopamine (DA):

-Movement, learning, attention, emotion. Mediates effects of natural rewards and drugs

-Malfunction: Reduced – Parkinson’s, ADHD, Excess – Schizophrenia

Seratonin:

-Affects mood, hunger, sleep, arousal, and social behavior

-Malfunction: low – depression, high - autism

Norepinephrine:

-Helps control mood, alertness, and arousal

-Malfunction: low- depression, high – anxiety

GABA:

-Major inhibitory neurotransmitter

-Malfunction: low – Huntington’s disease and personality changes, high – sleeping and eating disorders

Glutamate:

-Major excitatory neurotransmitter, involved in memory formation

-Malfunction: low – depression, schizophrenia, high – migraines, seizures

Inactivation of Neurotransmitters

Neurotransmitters are released from the presynaptic cell into the synapse, to be absorbed in the postsynaptic cell

Some drugs block the release of neurotransmitters:

-Botulinium toxin (Ach) --> muscle paralysis (like botox)

-Clozapine in Schizophrenia --> to decrease dopamine

Reuptake by axon terminals or glial cells for reuse: released dopamine gets reabsorbed

-Cocaine and Speed delay reuptake of Norepinephrine ( more pleasure)

-Anti-depressants (Prozac) block reuptake of Serotonin

-Lithium speeds reuptake (increases depression)

Neurotransmitters deactivated by enzymes:

-Nerve gas (VX) destroys AChE

-COMT-gene encodes an enzyme that destroys DA in the pre-frontal cortex

Neurotransmitters can also be diffused via blood

Dopamine level

-Low: Poor performance – Parkinson’s disease, ADHD

-Moderate: Maximum performance

-High: Poor performance – Schizophrenia, drug overdosing

-Optimise baseline by either CNS stimulants (e.g.coffee) or depressants (e.g. alcohol) or both

-Effects of a drug depends on the dose and baseline DA levels

Baseline DA level correlates with working memory capacity

High listening span: higher activity of caudate and plutamen (in Basal ganglia)

Genetics and dopamine:

-Enzymes in the COMT gene inactivate released dopamine, thereby regulating its flux in the PFC

-COMT knockout mice show increased DA in the PFC and COMT inhibitors shows to improve WM in humans

-COMT gene has 2 alleles: Val-Val, Val-Met, Met-Met

-->e.g.: we get Val from our mother, Met from our father (rare genotype)

Val amino acid: Fast DA degradation (“warriors”)

Met: Slow DA degradation (“worriers”)

Wisconsin card sorting test and N-Back tasks:

Effect of amphetamine on participants who do the tasks:

N-back task:

-Val allele people: Because of amphetamine, their performance increases – maximum performance – Less

Applied Cognitive Psychology - Leiden University (2019)

Lecture 8: Aging & Individual differences

Aging in the Netherlands

Double aging: more old people and increase in life expectancy

Health care cost  NL – 15.4% of GDP

2013: 27%  are 65+, 2040: 51% will be 65+

Healthcare costs are cut, but there’s an increasing number of people needing care

Solution: stay at home, family has to take care of you

-more responsibility for vulnerable group, lack of knowledge and tools

Proper solution:

• Cheap& efficient care: robotics, ehealth, domotics 
• Improve functioning: occupational health, stress, assessment, workplace design
• Preventive interventions: healthy mind, healthy brain, goal setting, sense making
• Senior consumers: media, ebikes, memory support

How does aging impact cognitive performance?

Sensory perception – Cognition – Motoric action

Sensory perception:

Eye sight:

Pupil size gets smaller, clarity goes down, needs 3x the light as a young person

Focus speed and movement speed of lens & muscles goes down, worse near focus

Retina: peripheral view gets worse

Trouble in traffic: night blindness, motion perception ,depth perception

Hearing

Hardening of membranes and eardrums

-3D perception

-High tones (voices/words)

Consequences:

-Social isolation

-Bad orientation

-Problems in traffic

Other senses

Can't smell as well ---> more likely to eat spoiled food

Can't taste as well --->bad appetite

Worse balance -->fall over

Proprioception goes down -->accidents

Less sensitive to touch --> might not notice dangerous heat

Motoric decline

Leg strength decreases

Aerobe muscles decreases (muscles that use oxygen to perform)

Grip sense decreases

(Leiden Academy of Aging – they have aging suits! - experience what it's like to be old)

Neuro-muscular degeneration:

-Dopamine in CNS goes down

-Tremours

-Posture: slow correction

-Motor process speed

-Fine motor control

-Speech control

-Parkinsons – so little dopamine that movement becomes difficult

Cognitive control

Conjunctive attention, divided attention and sustained attention goes down

Switching, inhibition, updating goes down

Routine and fixed rules improve

Prospective memory (planning to perform action later on) goes down

PFC:

-Gray Matter (neuron bodies & dendrites) goes down

-White matter volume also decreases

-Old people use more of their PFC than young people, because they need to use more brain power to do the same task

Compensation:

-In old age people have more positive mood (a way to get more dopamine)

Memory

Episodic, spatial and working memory decreases

Hippocampus volume goes down – seems that higher education decreases less

Hemispheric Asymmetry Reduction in Older Adults (HAROLD): old people