!1) Which of the following would John Locke most likely have said, given !

3) data on the relationship between the readiness potential and the awareness of an intention to act?

!a) I am surprised by this evidence. It suggests there really is nothing we can call

free will in spite of my argument that free will actually does exist. b) The results don’t surprise me. I always said you cannot will what you will. c) I would still argue that there is a real sense in which human decisions are freely

made, despite these results. d) b and c. *

See next slide for explanation

This question requires some reasoning so it perhaps might have been better to present this one later in the exam, rather than as an opener. !Here is how to arrive at the answer. !Locke argued that we cannot ‘will what we will”. Rather, desires or urges compete until one becomes dominant and turns into an intention. !On page 22: The competition between different choices may occur unconsciously but at some point, our will is determined by ‘the most.....urgent uneasiness’ we in fact perceive. So a conscious intention is a particular kind of mental state that emerges after competing possible desires are resolved in favor of one dominant goal.

!Libet showed that the Readiness Potential builds before you are aware of the intention to act. This evidence is much like the building of urges over which you have no voluntary control, according to Locke.

So Locke would not have been surprised by evidence showing that motor intentions are driven by preparatory events over which you have no voluntary control (We cannot will what we will). Therefore choice (b) is a correct choice but not choice (a).

!What about choice (c)? Locke argued that we do have control over second order volitions (page22: Our freedom, according to Locke, lies precisely in this second-order activity that we engage in to prevent the fulfillment of wishes that we deem could be harmful to ourselves or others.

‘For during this suspension of any desire, before the will be determined to action....we have the opportunity to.... judge of the good or evil of what we are going to do’.)

!Libet also argued that we do not have free will but we do have free won’t. We can veto motor intentions that we feel may be harmful or should not otherwise enact.

From the case study on Libet’s experiment:

‘..conscious control can be exerted before the final motor outflow to select or control volitional outcome. The volitional process, initiated unconsciously, can either be consciously permitted to proceed to consummation in the motor act or be consciously “vetoed’’’. !This idea of Libet’s is exactly like Locke’s notion of ‘second-order volition”, a conscious vetoing of a motor intention. !So Locke would argue, just like Libet, that there is still something called free will ( ‘For during this suspension of any desire, before the will be determined to action....we have the opportunity to.... judge of the good or evil of what we are going to do’.) Therefore, choice (c) is also correct. !So — both (b) and (c) are correct, which is answer (d)

2) Which of the following do animals lack, according to Aristotle? !a) Psuché. b) Imagination. c) Rational thought. * d) All of the above.

This question simply examines whether you kept up with the reading of Chapter 1.1, and your attention to detail in that chapter. We did not cover this point in class, but background reading is an important part of this second year course if we wish to develop the conceptual foundations for other more advanced courses. !It is a common misconception that according to ancient scholars, only human beings have souls and that animals are incapable of cognition. So, a layperson would certainly assume that animals do not have Psuché (or a soul), have no imagination and are incapable of rationale thought (choice (d)). !But on page 4, we see that !The word psuché in ancient Greek (from which the word psychology derives), is widely taken to mean ‘soul’ but according to Aristotle, dogs and dandelions have psuché as well as human beings. Psuché is what animates or sustains living things so the word ‘soul’ as a translation isn’t really adequate. These animators are sets of capacities or faculties; having a soul is like having a particular skill. A vegetative ‘soul’ allows plants and animals to nourish themselves and reproduce, and an animal or sensitive soul enables the more complex functions of locomotion, sensation, memory and imagination (yes, even animals, according to Aristotle, have imagination, which he assumed was a form of internally driven perception). ! Animals, and even plants have Psuché and animals have imagination but no rational thought, so (c) is the correct answer. !

Figure 1 The drawing on the right (Figure 1), taken from Descartes, is meant to depict how !a)the pineal gland translates between perception and action. b)the will influences action. c)the body experiences pain. d)action occurs without cognition. *

A straightforward question. !From the text and classroom discussions: !Automatic movements, on this account, can be an orchestrated sequence of actions designed to serve a particular function, without first requiring stimulus identification. A further clue to interpreting Descartes’ argument is that F in the brain is not the pineal gland and in fact he tells us explicitly that F is a cavity. Since the pineal gland is the seat of ideas, we should infer that the response to a flame (depicted in the figure) is immediate, automatic and does not require a mental representation of any sensory event before the orchestrated action occurs. So we can refer to this kind of movement as an action that occurs without cognition (note the figure caption), in the sense that the foot moves without the brain working to first classify or interpret the sensation.

Action without cognition

Which of the following claim(s) about innate ideas did Locke dispute (disagree with)?

a) People are born with the capacity to acquire simple and complex ideas. b) Ideas present in all cultures must be innate. *c) The urge to produce a voluntary action occurs before the conscious intention to act.d) All of the above.

Locke noted that merely suggesting that humans have a predisposition to readily acquire ideas does not help us distinguish between an innate capacity for knowledge (which is a rather general possibility that he did not dispute) and the more interesting possibility that infants come into the world already equipped with some form of knowledge. !A further objection Locke raised against arguments in favor of innate ideas is the following: We often conclude that any idea universally present in all cultures must be innate. “(Even) if it were true... that there were certain truths wherein all human beings agree, it would not prove them innate if there can be any other way shown how people may come to this universal agreement.” !What is it that determines our will? In other words, what happens just before we form a conscious intention to act? … The competition between different choices may occur unconsciously but at some point, our will is determined by ‘the most.....urgent uneasiness’ we in fact perceive.

From the text:

Did not dispute

Did dispute

Did not dispute

Which of the following is (are) True about surface dyslexia. !a) No patient described in the literature with a severe impairment to the Semantic System can read orthographic exception words (e.g. pint,

leopard, sew) as accurately as neurologically intact control subjects. b) Pure cases of surface dyslexia can read pronounceable nonsense words (e.g. zint) as accurately as neurological intact control subjects. * c) Pure cases of surface dyslexia cannot read orthographically regular words (e.g. hand, mint, steam) as accurately as neurologically intact control

subjects. d) All of the above.

Page 35: Many patients with dementia (for example, in cases of Alzheimer’s disease, or in cases of semantic dementia) have semantic impairments (in the Wernicke-Lichtheim diagram, Ideation is impaired). That is, word meaning is impaired. Such patients generally also have difficulty reading words with irregular spelling-to-sound patterns (for example, dough, colonel, yacht). Except for the undeniable fact that occasionally a patient with severe dementia shows no such reading impairment; irregular words, even uncommon words like jeopardy, tortoise, and pharaoh are read aloud correctly, even though the patient no longer retains any grasp of their meaning.

Option (a) is not true:

Option (b) is true: Pure cases of surface dyslexia have an intact non lexical route.

Option (c) is not true: Pure cases of surface dyslexia can read orthographically regular words via the non lexical route, because grapheme-phoneme conversion rules will yield the correct pronunciation.

According to Gall, mental faculties !a) are innate predispositions to behave or perceive the world in particular way. b) function independently, in the sense that the operation of any faculty does not require the contribution of other faculties. c) are determined by their content. d) All of the above. *

Gall assumed that each mental organ functioned independently in the sense that its operation did not require the contribution of other faculties.

!A further assumption Gall made is that the mental faculties he listed were innate propensities or predispositions to behave or perceive the world in a particular way.

!Gall argued that each faculty is determined by the content of the information on which it relies, not by the way this information is used to carry out different tasks.

From the textbook:

A student is asked to explain what is meant by a classic double dissociation. The student replies: ‘Some patients read pronounceable nonsense words better than they read orthographic exception words. Other patients are better at reading orthographic exception words than pronounceable nonsense words. The differing performance of the two kinds of patients is an example of what we mean by a double dissociation.’ Is the explanation offered by the student correct? !a) Yes, the explanation is correct. b) No, the explanation is incorrect. *

From the lecture on Mental Organs (slides downloadable). A classical double dissociation is always defined relative to a normal control group. On the right is the incorrect definition, supplied by the student in the question above. !Both the phonological and the surface dyslexic may be abnormal in reading exception words and pronounceable nonsense words, even though patient A is better than patient B at reading exception words, and patient B is better than A at reading nonsense words.

What according to Descartes, could an animal learn to express using abstract signs (for example, a parrot learning to say ‘Goodnight” to its mistress)? !a) The animal could learn to express its passions. b) The animal could learn to express ideas that were ‘stimulus-free’. c) The animal could learn to produce a sign determined by its hope or fear. d) a and c. * e) a, b and c.

a) Descartes’ argued that animals may experience fear, joy, anger, even hope of a reward, but these are passions. We can teach them to produce ‘words’ for a reward, or to signal a passion but this would not be using language the way humans communicate their ideas. !!!Not b)!!The Cartesian theory of language production (Chomsky).!!“…one fundamental contribution of what we have been calling 'Cartesian linguistics' is the observation that human language, in its normal use, is free from the control of independently identifiable external stimuli ..... and is not restricted to any practical communicative function….”!!“Free from the control of independently identifiable external stimuli” means “stimulus-free”.!!c) Descartes: Similarly, all the things which dogs, horses, and monkeys are taught to perform are only expressions of their fear, their hope, or their joy; and consequently they can be performed without any thought.!

From the case study on Language.

The colour red is !a) a simple idea according to Locke. * b) a clear and distinct idea according to Descartes. c) both of the above. d) neither of the above.

Locke is in fact deliberately blurring the distinction between percepts and concepts; the experience of seeing the color red is as much a kind of idea (a simple idea, in fact) as is the thought “I am now experiencing a particular kind of color” or for that matter “Apples are red and sometimes green”.

From the text:

From the lecture notes on Descartes (second lecture)

All qualities of an object are in need of an explanation (including colour) other than motion, size, shape and the arrangement of parts (see panel), so colour is not a clear and distinct idea.

Also, from the text: !Descartes’ approach included the assumption that the shape of an object is a more fundamental aspect of perceptual cognition than the colour.

0) The shape of a red triangle is !a) a simple idea according to Locke. b) a clear and distinct idea according to Descartes. c) both of the above. * d) neither of the above.

All qualities of an object are in need of an explanation (including colour) other than motion, size, shape and the arrangement of parts (see panel).

Descartes again on shape:

Locke: The shape of a triangle is directly perceived as a simple idea.

Shape is in italics to emphasize that we are talking about the form and not the colour.

Shape is not in need of explanation because it is a clear and distinct idea.

A red triangle is !a) a simple idea according to Locke. b) a clear and distinct idea according to Descartes. c) both of the above. d) neither of the above. *

A red triangle is a combination of the idea “red” and “triangle”. For Descartes, red is a quality that is not a clear and distinct idea, even though the idea of a triangle is clear and distinct. So the combination of the two ideas, is not clear and distinct. !For Locke, the red triangle is the same as a red apple: Red may be a simple idea, but the combination of red and apple is a complex idea. The textbook indicates as an example of a complex idea, “horse”. The object “apple” is similarly a complex idea.

According to Descartes, passions of the soul !a) are not triggered by the brain. b) are triggered by the brain. * c) originate in the soul. d) both a and c.

This was another question assessing your background reading. In class, I glossed over this part of Descartes and mentioned that the text should be consulted.!!In the study guide (see panel) is a series of questions on passions of the soul. These were designed to help you avoid making the mistake of assuming that passions of the soul are generated by the soul itself. !The question in the midterm is directed at the mistaken assumption that passions of the soul must mean “passions generated in the soul”. !!The textbook notes, however: !“Rather, passions can arise from external objects or events acting on our senses, or they can be felt as occurring spontaneously within the mind itself, in which case they are “passions of the soul”. These are triggered by the brain (‘caused, maintained and strengthened by the movement of the spirits’) and so unlike willed or voluntary thoughts or feelings, they do not have their origin in the soul, even though they are referred to as passions of the soul”.

Which of the following is (are) teleological explanations? !a) The sun produces light so that plants can photosynthesize. b) Germs mutate to become drug resistant. c) The earth has an ozone layer to protect life from ultra-violet light. d) All of the above are teleological explanations. *

Another straightforward question on the nature of a teleological explanation. All the sentences imply a goal direction.

In fact, I presented the question to test your understanding

Which result do we use to draw a conclusion about the functional architecture of the reading mechanism: (i) The overwhelming majority of cases who show an association be-tween impaired comprehension and reading aloud or (ii) the handful of patients who show a dissociation? The logic that everyone has the same functional architecture means that even one case showing the dissociation would prove that map-ping the visual form of a word to its pronunciation does not require access to the meaning or semantic representation (Ideation).

We would have to say based on this way of thinking, that the evidence for a positive relationship between reading and word comprehension in the majority of dementia cases is misleading. Another general factor, say cortical atrophy, must be responsible for the association between impaired reading

and comprehension. The greater the atrophy, the more the impairment in both domains. Cortical atrophy, of course, will affect many systems in the brain that have nothing to do with each other at a functional level. For example, reading aloud, object and face recognition, the planning of a se-quence of actions, and general intelligence would all be af-fected. Thus, it is not of any theoretical significance to ob-serve that reading as well as word comprehension is affected in many (though not all) dementia cases.

The alternative is that the basic assumption of the dia-gram makers is flawed, as Sir Henry Head suggested. There may be no universal, one-size-fits-all (i.e. procrustean) archi-tecture of the language mechanism. Applying this possibility to the relationship between word meaning and reading aloud in dementia, the majority of individuals may have developed a functional architecture that requires the meaning of at least a subset of orthographic exception words (say, those words which are not very common) to be accessed before their pro-nunciation can be retrieved (see the diagram labelled Most readers on the left. The dotted line indicates that only some ex-ception words can be read by directly mapping between the word’s orthographic form and its pronunciation). In the mi-nority of individuals, however, this functional dependency be-tween the meaning and pronunciation of an exception word may not exist (see the diagram on the right labelled A few read-ers), and reading can be intact for all exception words (even less common words) despite considerable impairment of word meaning.

36

Figure 2

A B

Consider the two diagrams on the right (A and B). !According to which diagram, A or B, is the association between impairment to meaning and surface dyslexia (documented in many cases of dementia) a mere association? !a) Diagram A. b) Diagram B. *

The diagram labelled B indicates a functional architecture in which the direct mapping from the orthographic lexicon to the phonological lexicon occurs for all words, with no dependence on the meaning of the word (the unbroken, solid line indicates this assumption) !The diagram labelled A indicates a functional architecture in which the direct mapping from the orthographic lexicon to the phonological lexicon occurs for a subset of words, while other words cannot access their phonological form without first accessing the meaning of the word. !From the textbook: !!Applying this possibility to the relationship between word meaning and reading aloud in dementia, the majority of individuals may have developed a functional architecture that requires the meaning of at least a subset of orthographic exception words (say, those words which are not very common) to be accessed before their pronunciation can be retrieved (see the diagram labelled Most readers on the left. The dotted line indicates that only some exception words can be read by directly mapping between the word’s orthography form and its pronunciation). In the minority of individuals, however, this functional dependency between the meaning and pronunciation of an exception word may not exist (see the diagram on the right labelled A few readers), and reading can be intact for all exception words (even less common words) despite considerable impairment of word meaning.

So — For readers with architecture B, reading exception words does not depend on access to their meaning. Any relationship between impairment to meaning and surface dyslexia must therefore be a mere association. In other words, a source of damage like cortical atrophy happens to affect both the meaning of word and the mapping between the word’s orthographic and phonological form. On the other hand, architecture A indicates that some words do rely on meaning, so damage to meaning will affect reading these words if they are orthographic exception words. For these individuals — with architecture A — the relationship between impaired meaning and surface dyslexia is functionally genuine, not a mere association.

I am very fond of asking questions about diagrams which have to be understood in detail, please note.

From the case study entitled The Cartesian Theater. !The unconscious audience includes “Syntactic Analysis”, part of the systems that interpret the contents of consciousness.

The Spotlight Controller is part of the Context Operators functioning behind the scenes. !Taste and Smell are Outer Senses that compete for access to consciousness.

15) Which of the following is determined by the unconscious audience in Baar’s Global Workspace model of consciousness? !a) The ‘spotlight controller’. b) The taste of an object you experience. c) The smell of an object you experience. d) The grammatical form of an auditory sentence. *

Syntactic analysis is responsible for determining!the grammatical form of a sentence.

From the lecture on Broca and Wernicke (slides on our website.

Assume the connection between Centre A and Centre M is severely impaired in the Wernicke-Lichtheim diagram. No other damage has occurred to the model. Which of the following tasks would be impaired by this lesion, according to the diagram? !a) Repeating a word spoken by the examiner (e.g. the examiner says “mint” and the patient is required to repeat

“mint”). b) Repeating a nonsense word spoken by the examiner (e.g. the examiner says “zint” and the patient is asked to

repeat “zint”). * c) Producing the past tense of a verb (e.g. the examiner says “eat” and the correct response is “ate”). d) Naming pictures of familiar objects (e.g. presented with a picture of a lion, the correct response is “lion”).

Note: Producing the past tense of a verb requires the link A to Ideation (to understand the verb) and then the link Ideation to M (to produce the past tense). Both pathways A-Ideation and Ideation-M are intact, so the tasks will be correctly done.

7) Assume the component termed Ideation is severely impaired in the Wernicke-Lichtheim diagram. No other damage has occurred to the model. Which of the following tasks would be impaired by this lesion, according to the diagram? !a) Repeating a word spoken by the examiner (e.g. the examiner says “mint” and the correct response would be “mint”). b) Repeating a nonsense word spoken by the examiner (e.g. the examiner says “zint” and the correct response would be “zint”). c) Producing the past tense of a verb (e.g. the examiner says “eat” and the correct response would be “ate”). d) Naming pictures of familiar objects (e.g. presented with a picture of a lion, the correct response would be “lion”). e) Both c and d. *

Again, the patient will not understand the word so will not produce the past tense. !Naming pictures will also be impaired.

From the lecture and slides on our website.

!18) Broca considered two possible explanations for the language impairment that occurred after damage to what is now known as Broca’s area. In addition to the possibility that patients had lost the capacity for articulate speech, Broca considered that aphemia may be the result of !(a) a general loss of intellect.

(b) a loss of memory for words.

(c) a loss of the ability to relate a sign to meaning.

(d) a form of locomotor ataxia. *

Lecture and accompanying slides.

Pierre Marie claimed that ‘Wernicke’s area is not a psycho-sensory centre but an intellectual centre’. The evidence Marie put forward in support of this claim was

a) the fact that patients with damage to Wernicke’s centre not only had impaired comprehension but also impaired language production.

b) the fact that there is often an association between impaired language and other tasks requiring more general intellectual abilities. *

c) the fact that patients with damage to Wernicke’s area are often unable to correctly read words aloud.

From the lecture on Associations and accompanying slides.

Which of the following statements is (are) true of diagrams of language centres in the 19th century?

a) Diagrams were intended to represent a universal architecture of the brain that was the same from person to person.

b) The diagrams were proposed as functional architectures of the language mechanism.

c) The diagrams, according to Sir Henry Head, were procrustean.

d) All of the above. *

!From the textbook:

In general, we refer to such a diagram (i.e. diagrams like the Wernicke-Lichtheim diagram) as a functional architecture, because it depicts in abstract form the processes and connections involved in carrying out a particular set of cognitive operations. Since Lichtheim’s schema included many core ideas developed by Wernicke, the model was ultimately referred to as the Wernicke-Lichtheim diagram.

And it is true if you think about the problem, that the diagrams were intended to represent a universal architecture of the brain that was the same from person to person !In his book Aphasia and Kindred Disorders of Speech, Sir Henry included a chapter entitled the Diagram Makers. He used the term pejoratively (expressing contempt or disapproval), in the context of the following remarks on a case published by Wernicke.

No better example could be chosen of the manner in which the writers of that period were compelled to lop and twist their cases to fit the procrustean bed of their hypothetical conceptions.

According to Wernicke, the Center for Ideation in the Wernicke-Lichtheim diagram was

a) a single center that stored the meaning of individual words.

b) a system of multiple sensory and motor representations. *

c) a set of abstract rules indicating how we should use words to produce meaningful sentences.

The Wernicke-Lichtheim diagram has the form of a house

It’s true that the original depiction of the Wernicke-Lichtheim diagram has Ideation (Begriffe — B — in German) as a single node in the diagram. !But the textbook points out: ! Wernicke conceived of a two-layer system which he diagrammed in the form of a house. The ‘ground-floor’ is the speech pathway from auditory input to spoken output that we have already discussed. The ‘roof ’ of the house represents the meaning of the word. Wernicke used the term ‘Ideation’ to refer to what we now refer to as the semantic or conceptual content of a word (i.e the meanicng). Unlike cortical centers for the auditory and spoken forms of a word, Wernicke’s model has no localizable center for Ideation, even though we can diagram the flow of information between word sound and word meaning using circles and arrows.

!In addition, the lecture on Grounded (or Embodied) Cognition explicitly emphasizes this point. There is no single centre for Ideation but in fact a collection of sensory and motor representations wired together by association.

From the lecture on Grounded Cognition

The modularity principle assumes that it is never possible to damage the Orthographic Input Lexicon without also affecting the operation of Grapheme-Phoneme conversion.

a) True.

b) False. *

From the textbook: !Modules are the building blocks of complex functional systems. For example, our language ability (one of Gall’s mental organs) must include separable components (i.e modules) that transform acoustic signals into words, while other modules extract the grammatical constituents of a sentence which are then used to derive meaning. When we read, other specialized modules extract letter shapes from squiggles on the page which are then mapped to components that encode a word based on the letters in a particular order. CAT is one word, ACT another, and we immediately perceive that TAC, though obeying the rules of English orthography, is not a legitimate word in our language. The auditory word that sounds like “tac” is actually spelled TACK (as in thumbtack). !The specialized modules referred to in the above paragraph, include grapheme-phoneme conversion rules which can be preserved when damage occurs to the lexical route. Also, the dissociation between surface and phonological dyslexia provides evidence that the lexical route can be damaged without affecting the non lexical route.

Is the following statement True or False?

Wernicke argued that the children are born with an impulse to imitate words and the sounds of their language long before they develop the capacity to consciously utter words that convey thoughts.

a) True. *

b) False.

Wernicke argued that the children are born with an impulse to imitate words and the sounds of their language long before they develop the capacity to consciously utter words that convey thoughts.

From the textbook:

A patient with severe damage to the Orthographic Lexicon (but intact Grapheme-phoneme conversion rules and a normal Semantic System) is presented with the written word BEAD and asked to define the meaning. Which of the following is the patient likely to say?

(a) That word means ‘a piece of furniture you sleep on’. *

(b) That word means a ‘small decorative object that you thread on a string to make jewelry’.

(c) I have no idea what that word means.

(d) That’s a nonsense word that doesn’t have any meaning.

The word BEAD is an orthographic exception word. !HEAD BEAD BREADINSTEADDREAD AHEAD INSTEAD

A patient with surface dyslexia (i.e. the patient is reading via grapheme-phoneme conversion rules) will apply the regular pronunciation of EAD (“ed”) to BEAD. This will result in the pronunciation “bed”. !This is actually happens to be a word, not a nonsense word (though, of course, in most reading errors in surface dyslexia, a nonsense word is produced when a regularization error occurs)! !The meaning of the word is consistent with: “a piece of furniture you sleep on”. So— the patient will define his or her pronunciation of BEAD as “a piece of furniture you sleep on”.

A patient with phonological dyslexia is presented with the written word BEAD and asked to define the meaning. Which of the following is the patient likely to say?

(a) That word means ‘a piece of furniture you sleep on’.

(b) That word means ‘a small decorative object that you thread on a string for jewelry’. *

(c) I have no idea what that word means.

(d) That’s a nonsense word that doesn’t have any meaning.

The patient reads via the intact lexical route. In phonological dyslexia, only the non-lexical route is impaired. !So BEAD is correctly pronounced and understood. !The patient will define BEAD correctly then, not as ‘bed”.

Which of the following is known as the ‘direct route’ from print to speech output?

(a) Letter Identification → Orthographic Lexicon → Phonological Lexicon. *

(b) Letter Identification → Grapheme-phoneme conversion rules.

(c) Letter Identification → Orthographic Lexicon → Semantic System → Phonological Lexicon.

From the case study entitled “Double Dissociations”.

Which visual words will be incorrectly pronounced after damage to the Orthographic Lexicon?

(a) The nonsense word ZINT.

(b) The word HINT.

(c) The word BEAD. *

(d) The word AM.

The word BEAD is an orthographic exception word. !HEAD BEAD BREADINSTEADDREAD AHEAD INSTEAD

Damage to the Orthographic Lexicon produces surface dyslexia. In surface dyslexia, orthographic exceptions words are misread by applying grapheme- phoneme conversion rules.

Which of the following were considered mental organs by Gall?

(a) Language.

(b) Color.

(c) Shape.

(d) All of the above. *

From the lecture on Broca. !Gall considered language a mental organ, and also colour

Shape (i.e. form) was also considered a mental organ (or vertical faculty) as indicated in the diagram below,

Is the following statement true or false? According to Gall, there was no such mental faculty as an organ for memory in the brain.

(a) True. *

(b) False.

From the textbook: !Aristotelian faculties included memory, will, perception, abstraction, attention and reasoning. None of these were listed as mental organs by Gall and subsequent phrenologists.

Also discussed in class (see slides on Gall).

In what way, according to Locke, is our will based on a free choice? Which one of the following describes his views on this particular question?

(a) We are free to will what we will.

(b) We are free to judge the good or evil of an outcome before our will gives rise to an action. *

(c) A conscious intention is a particular kind of mental state that emerges after competing possible desires are resolved in favour of one dominant goal.

(d) The fact that we consciously experience our intentions means that we are free to will what we will.

This question requires understanding what Locke meant by a free choice. !We are not free to will what we will. !Nevertheless…… !From the textbook: !!In what way, then, are the actions of human agents voluntary if we are not free to will what we will? Our freedom, according to Locke, lies precisely in this second-order activity that we engage in to prevent the fulfillment of wishes that we deem could be harmful to ourselves or others. ‘For during this suspension of any desire, before the will be determined to action....we have the opportunity to.... judge of the good or evil of what we are going to do’. !!

Which of the following would provide strong evidence that an idea is innate, according to the textbook?

(a) An infant is in possession of such knowledge at a very early age.

(b) There is no way the knowledge could have been learned given the sensory information available to the child. *

(c) The idea is universally present in all cultures.

(d) All of the above.

The emphasis in the question is on “strong” (as opposed to weak) evidence. !From the textbook: ! It is surely not enough to show that an infant is in possession of such knowledge at a very early age; there is always a possibility that the knowledge has been rapidly learned. An additional piece of evidence is needed: namely that a careful analysis of the situation guarantees that there is no way the knowledge could have been learned given the information available to the child.

And of course, Locke argued that universal ideas are not good evidence for innateness. !From the textbook: !A further objection Locke raised against arguments in favor of innate ideas is the following: We often conclude that any idea universally present in all cultures must be innate. Yet how secure is this inference, assuming that it is possible to show that ‘universal consent’ (as Locke put it) might occur for some other reason than innate ways of thought?

Locke’s claim that an idea is the immediate object of perception,

(a) deliberately blurs the distinction between percepts and concepts.

(b) implies that ideas are experienced consciously.

(c) Both of the above. *

From the textbook: In what way is an ‘immediate object of perception’ an idea? Locke is in fact deliberately blurring the distinction between percepts and concepts; the experience of seeing the color red is as much a kind of idea (a simple idea, in fact) as is the thought “I am now experiencing a particular kind of color” or for that matter “Apples are red and sometimes green”.

From the lecture on Locke (and the slides on our website on this lecture)

Select one of the choices below to complete the following statement by Descartes:

In fact, none of our external actions can show anyone who examines them that our body is not just a self-moving machine but contains a soul with thoughts, with the exception of .......

(a) emotional expressions.

(b) words. *

(c) responses to passions.

(d) responses to visual objects.

In fact, none of our external actions can show anyone who examines them that our body is not just a self-moving machine but contains a soul with thoughts, with the exception of words, or other signs that are relevant to particular topics without expressing any passion.

From the case study on Cartesian Linguistics

Which of the following statements describes Descartes view of perception?

(a) The neural representation of an object actually should be thought of as a literal copy of the object inside the brain.

(b) Physical mechanism in the brain represent three dimensional objects in terms of line lengths. *

(c) Neither of the above.

Finally, perception is the result of a physical mechanism in the brain, and this mechanism actually functions by representing three dimensional objects in terms of line lengths.

From the textbook:

A short term store that holds two and a half seconds of auditory information but has no role to play in the short term storage of other kinds of information (shape, touch, color etc.) is

(a) A vertical faculty. *

(b) A horizontal faculty.

(c) A domain general faculty.

(d) None of the above

The case study entitled Aristotle versus Gall lists some specialized memory systems, including auditory short-term memory.

!!For example, a short term memory store that can hold only 7 items regardless of whether these are words, pictures, sounds, etc., would be a horizontal faculty. !

Also, from the same case study..… !Note that the memory system described alongside is domain general because it holds 7 items regardless of whether they are pictures, sound and so on. !Bu the question asked about a short term store that holds specifically, auditory information. So this store, unlike the one mentioned in the case study, is domain specific or a vertical faculty.

Space perception, according to Helmholtz, is

a) domain-specific. *

b) modality-specific,

c) domain-general.

From the textbook ! We note that space is conceptualized by Helmholtz as an abstract domain that integrates a number of different modalities. This idea should alert you to the distinction between the terms domain-specific and modality-specific. Space as a domain is common to action, touch, vision, and even audition (you can localize sounds in space, though not very well in comparison to visual localization). The different senses that produce the same ordering of spatial events are referred to as input modalities. So we can say that the representation of space is domain-specific but modality-independent; it is the same location of an object that I can touch and perceive, but the input modalities that provide the details of the object’s spatial position (relative to the midpoint of my body, say, as a reference) are different.

Which of the following did Helmholtz consider was fundamental to establishing visual representations of space and objects?

a) Innately determined signs.

b) Perceptual adaptation.

c) Movement of your sense organs. *

Helmholtz was arguing that you learn to represent the position of objects in space by tagging the spatial ordering of events you experience through movement of your sense organs.

From the lecture and slides posted on the website.

From the textbook:

Helmholtz referred to his influential theory of perception as a ‘sign-theory’. He meant that

(a) the correspondence between physical objects and the neural signals they evoke is symbolic. * (b) we cannot recognize objects unless they give rise to simple ideas. (c) there is no meaningful distinction between perception and abstract thought. (d) there must be some innate correspondence between the neural representation of a visual object and the object itself.

From the textbook: !Helmholtz referred to his influential theory of perception as a ‘sign-theory’, because his general assumption was that there is no simple resemblance between the neural events that give rise to sensations and physical objects in the world. Just as the label for an object is a sign that does not resemble the object itself, the correspondence between physical objects and the neural signals they evoke is symbolic.

From the lecture and slides:

A B

To which of the two figures on the right does the following rule apply? If two visual structures have a non-accidental relation, then group them together and assign them a common origin.

!(a) Figure A. * (b) Figure B.

From the lecture and slides, and also the case study entitled Objects are Constructed.

The figure on the left has parallel lines for each black shape, which is a non-accidental relation (it’s very unlikely that parallel lines occur together by chance). So the visual system groups the lines together to produce a common object (a rotated L). And then, there is no white shape induced by the black elements, covering (occluding) the black shapes. !The blobs in the right figure have no parallel lines, though the induced square does have parallel lines. The edges that are seen on the right cover the circles, because each white edge cannot be grouped with a circular blob. Rather, they are grouped as parallel edges of a square. By contrast, the figure on the left has edges that are grouped as rotated L’s and nothing then is seen as covering them.

0) What do contemporary theorists mean by saying that meaning is embodied (a view that would also have been shared by Carl Wernicke)?

(a) The meaning of concrete (but not abstract) words depends of sensory-motor representations. (b) There is a crucial distinction between the abstract meaning of a word and sensory-motor representations. (c) The meaning of both concrete and abstract words relies on emotions and sensory-motor representations.

From the lecture on Grounded Cognition and slides.

According to Locke, both simple and complex ideas depend on direct experience. !a) True. b) False. *

Simple ideas are learned by directly perceiving them; Complex ideas do not have to be acquired through perception, because they can be synthesized from simpler ideas that we have perceived directly, or if not, these simpler ideas can themselves be further analyzed into constituents which have been thus experienced.

From the textbook:

Wernicke argued that damage to Centre A in the Wernicke-Lichtheim diagram can affect the ability to produce language from Ideation (e.g. produce the name of a familiar object if shown a picture of that object). !a) True. *

b) False. From the lecture on the Wernicke-Lichtheim diagram. Damage to Wernicke’s centre actually produces impairment in naming pictures and in spontaneous speech. Wernicke argued that to produce speech required a feedback loop indicated in the diagram. We also noted that Freud criticized the idea as attempting to compensate for the fact that the model does not account for the impairment seen after damage to Wermicke’s centre without this extra assumption. Notice the question asked about the argument developed by Wernicke, not what the model predicts without the extra assumption indicated in the figure below.

Descartes argued that our thinking has little to do with our bodies.

a) True.

b) False. *

From the textbook (concluding paragraph of the section on Descartes): !Despite common misconceptions that Descartes believed in the virtues of a passionless, analytic mind and that he considered emotions to be a disruptive influence on rational thought, he in fact argued that emotions played an important role in sustained acts of will and that certain passions, for example a feeling of wonder, were essential for intellectual development.

Both language and vision require the development of unconscious rules that are domain specific.

a) True. *

b) False.

From the lecture on Helmholtz (and slides)

Notice that both language and vision demand unconscious rules of inferencing, though of course the rules and the kind of inferences are quite different in the two domains.

Textbook:

Babies cannot learn the auditory form of a word until they know the meaning of that word.

a) True.

b) False. *

Another point to note (and this is very important) is that the stored auditory form of a word (we will use this term instead of ‘auditory image’ to avoid confusion with mental imagery) is not the meaning of the word. Babies at first have no understanding of the words they hear. Instead, they are storing the auditory representation of different words in considerable detail, (abstracted away from intonation, loudness, accent and so on), so that by the age of two, they have in memory distinct representations for very similar words like: want versus went, nose versus news or tree versus try. Languages are full of these, and the typical infant is very capable of rapidly distinguishing between and storing the different sounds of hundreds of words in a very short time.

From the textbook:

Which choice completes the following sentence?

Modules are the building blocks of…..

a) perceptual representations.

b) complex functional systems. *

c) complex ideas.

d) horizontal mental faculties.

Modules are the building blocks of complex functional systems. From the textbook:

What was the crucial difference between Helmholtz’s sign theory of perception and Descartes’ view of perception?

a) Helmholtz argued that our construction of objects from neural signals is learned through experience; Descartes argued that the relationship between neural representations and perception was innate. *

b) Helmholtz argued that there was a resemblance between neural representations and visual objects while Descartes argued that no such resemblance existed.

c) Descartes argued that language and perception depended on the same kind of mental representation while Helmholtz argued that language and perception were functionally independent.

d) All of the above.

A crucial difference between Descartes and Helmholtz, though, is that Helmholtz argued that our construction of objects from neural signals is learned through experience; we neither have an innately specified representation of space, nor of objects.

Textbook:

Helmholtz did not argue that there was any resemblance between neural representations and visual objects (hence the notion of a ‘sign theory’) — therefore (b) is not true.

Notice that both language and vision demand unconscious rules of inferencing, though of course the rules and the kind of inferences are quite different in the two domains.

(c) is also not true

Which measure establishes the timing of the subject’s conscious perception of his or her intention to move.

a) A

b) B

c) C *

The movement of the dot on the clock face is used by the subject to identify the moment when he or she experienced the intention to move. !!Video of experiment seen in class. !Also lecture and notes

Which measure establishes the time of the physical movement itself?

a) A

b) B *

c) C

The electrode on the wrist measuring the flexion of a muscle.

Which of the following describes the outcome of Libet’s experiment?

a) The timing of the event measured by C occurs 300 milliseconds before A.

b) The timing of the event measured by A occurs 500 milliseconds before B. *

c) The timing of the event measured by C occurs 500 milliseconds before B.

From the lecture and slides, and from the case study on Libet. The Readiness Potential (A) begins to build 1/2 second (500 ms) before the movement (B).