1 00:00:00,090 --> 00:00:02,490 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,490 --> 00:00:04,030 Commons license. 3 00:00:04,030 --> 00:00:06,330 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,330 --> 00:00:10,720 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,720 --> 00:00:13,320 To make a donation or view additional materials 6 00:00:13,320 --> 00:00:17,280 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:17,280 --> 00:00:20,070 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:20,070 --> 00:00:22,470 PROFESSOR: Information from your surroundings 9 00:00:22,470 --> 00:00:26,040 and does stuff with it, uses it to make decisions, 10 00:00:26,040 --> 00:00:30,820 uses it to guide behavior, uses it just to remember something. 11 00:00:30,820 --> 00:00:32,474 Anyone remember the first day of school 12 00:00:32,474 --> 00:00:34,890 when you were in first grade, maybe your first time riding 13 00:00:34,890 --> 00:00:37,650 a school bus, right? 14 00:00:37,650 --> 00:00:40,220 So information came in, and you've 15 00:00:40,220 --> 00:00:43,860 hung onto it for something like 10 years now, right. 16 00:00:43,860 --> 00:00:44,770 That's pretty cool. 17 00:00:44,770 --> 00:00:49,400 This is the thing that human brains do that's neat. 18 00:00:49,400 --> 00:00:53,280 So thinking about the brain as a knowledge and information 19 00:00:53,280 --> 00:00:56,700 processing device as opposed to classic Freudian psychotherapy 20 00:00:56,700 --> 00:00:59,430 that talks about drives and subconscious 21 00:00:59,430 --> 00:01:00,440 motivations and stuff. 22 00:01:00,440 --> 00:01:05,040 This is a different approach and a different focus 23 00:01:05,040 --> 00:01:07,060 on what humans are doing. 24 00:01:07,060 --> 00:01:09,750 And then the neuroscience part, well, neuroscience science 25 00:01:09,750 --> 00:01:14,397 is the study of the nervous system, and in particular, 26 00:01:14,397 --> 00:01:16,230 in this case, the part of the nervous system 27 00:01:16,230 --> 00:01:18,310 we're most interested in is the brain, 28 00:01:18,310 --> 00:01:20,730 the central nervous system where all of this processing 29 00:01:20,730 --> 00:01:22,650 is going on. 30 00:01:22,650 --> 00:01:28,410 So historically, kind of the cognitive psychology approach 31 00:01:28,410 --> 00:01:31,350 has been kind of prone to treating the human brain 32 00:01:31,350 --> 00:01:32,530 as just kind of a black box. 33 00:01:32,530 --> 00:01:34,650 We don't care how it's doing what it was, 34 00:01:34,650 --> 00:01:37,320 we just care about what goes in versus what comes out, 35 00:01:37,320 --> 00:01:39,180 being able to compare these. 36 00:01:39,180 --> 00:01:41,970 And there's kind of a history in the neuroscience world 37 00:01:41,970 --> 00:01:43,860 of looking maybe at very small scale things, 38 00:01:43,860 --> 00:01:45,060 at cellular level changes. 39 00:01:45,060 --> 00:01:49,380 How do neurons work, what are the different molecules in them 40 00:01:49,380 --> 00:01:51,810 that make them do cool stuff. 41 00:01:51,810 --> 00:01:54,180 But the fun here, the way this is a cool field, 42 00:01:54,180 --> 00:01:57,070 is where you get these two things intersecting. 43 00:01:57,070 --> 00:01:59,760 So where you take all of this stuff and you say, 44 00:01:59,760 --> 00:02:02,230 cool, the brain does all of this stuff. 45 00:02:02,230 --> 00:02:05,490 How can we take what we know about how the brain works, 46 00:02:05,490 --> 00:02:07,950 the structure of the brain, the function of the brain, 47 00:02:07,950 --> 00:02:10,480 and use it to understand how the brain does all 48 00:02:10,480 --> 00:02:12,540 of this stuff with information. 49 00:02:12,540 --> 00:02:14,040 And vise versa, how can we use what 50 00:02:14,040 --> 00:02:16,524 we know about human behavior and human information 51 00:02:16,524 --> 00:02:17,940 processing, the stuff that we know 52 00:02:17,940 --> 00:02:20,460 brains can do from cognitive psychology, 53 00:02:20,460 --> 00:02:22,380 to guide the questions that we ask when we're 54 00:02:22,380 --> 00:02:26,026 trying to study neuroscience. 55 00:02:26,026 --> 00:02:30,590 So cool stuff. 56 00:02:30,590 --> 00:02:31,720 So that's all going to do. 57 00:02:31,720 --> 00:02:33,470 You guys can see in your syllabus 58 00:02:33,470 --> 00:02:36,760 it's kind of broken out into weekly broad themes. 59 00:02:36,760 --> 00:02:41,090 There's going to be reading assignments each week. 60 00:02:41,090 --> 00:02:43,600 The first two are listed there. 61 00:02:43,600 --> 00:02:45,880 I have the ones for the first week with me, 62 00:02:45,880 --> 00:02:50,270 and I'll get next week's to you tomorrow or Wednesday. 63 00:02:50,270 --> 00:02:51,770 I'm not as organized as I should be, 64 00:02:51,770 --> 00:02:53,270 which is why they're not spelled out 65 00:02:53,270 --> 00:02:55,886 for the rest of this session, and I apologize for that, 66 00:02:55,886 --> 00:02:57,010 but I will get them to you. 67 00:02:57,010 --> 00:02:59,301 I'm going to try and stay about a week ahead with those 68 00:02:59,301 --> 00:03:02,060 so you have them in plenty of time. 69 00:03:02,060 --> 00:03:03,337 It's less reading. 70 00:03:03,337 --> 00:03:05,170 I know that Junction is kind of billing this 71 00:03:05,170 --> 00:03:07,000 as undergraduate level class. 72 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:07,600 It's not. 73 00:03:07,600 --> 00:03:10,240 It's less reading because I get you guys for seven hours 74 00:03:10,240 --> 00:03:10,937 a week. 75 00:03:10,937 --> 00:03:13,270 The kind of standard homework for an undergraduate level 76 00:03:13,270 --> 00:03:15,220 class metric that is given out is two hours 77 00:03:15,220 --> 00:03:18,820 of outside-class time for every hour of in-class time, which 78 00:03:18,820 --> 00:03:21,820 would mean giving you guys about 14 hours of reading a week. 79 00:03:21,820 --> 00:03:24,487 Anyone got 14 hours to spare, free time, 80 00:03:24,487 --> 00:03:26,320 besides what you're putting in your classes? 81 00:03:26,320 --> 00:03:27,310 That's what I figured. 82 00:03:27,310 --> 00:03:29,879 It's summer, people are working. 83 00:03:29,879 --> 00:03:31,420 Most people, many people are working. 84 00:03:31,420 --> 00:03:33,040 I'm working. 85 00:03:33,040 --> 00:03:36,880 But I am going to have stuff for you guys to read, 86 00:03:36,880 --> 00:03:39,490 and it's going to be related to what we're doing in class. 87 00:03:39,490 --> 00:03:41,170 It may not be exactly the same stuff, 88 00:03:41,170 --> 00:03:42,878 but it might be another perspective on it 89 00:03:42,878 --> 00:03:45,580 or somebody else's explanation. 90 00:03:45,580 --> 00:03:47,710 Some of them are going to be online stuff. 91 00:03:47,710 --> 00:03:50,950 That Brain From Top to Bottom site is very, very cool, 92 00:03:50,950 --> 00:03:54,110 and I'll make sure you guys get the link to that. 93 00:03:54,110 --> 00:03:57,640 And we're going to be doing some writing, just low-key writing. 94 00:03:57,640 --> 00:04:01,714 We're going to have you guys right quick stuff in class, 95 00:04:01,714 --> 00:04:03,380 take five minutes to do things, and I'll 96 00:04:03,380 --> 00:04:04,670 ask you to do a weekly paper. 97 00:04:04,670 --> 00:04:06,419 And we'll talk more about those at the end 98 00:04:06,419 --> 00:04:09,010 of this week, because the first of those short papers 99 00:04:09,010 --> 00:04:11,680 is due on Monday, next week. 100 00:04:15,350 --> 00:04:16,130 Questions? 101 00:04:16,130 --> 00:04:17,720 AUDIENCE: Do we get, like, graded? 102 00:04:17,720 --> 00:04:21,170 Do we get, like, graded, that's an interesting question. 103 00:04:21,170 --> 00:04:23,043 Do you guys want to be, like, graded? 104 00:04:23,043 --> 00:04:23,870 AUDIENCE: No. 105 00:04:23,870 --> 00:04:24,546 AUDIENCE: Yes. 106 00:04:24,546 --> 00:04:25,170 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 107 00:04:25,170 --> 00:04:26,535 AUDIENCE: I like the challenge. 108 00:04:26,535 --> 00:04:27,450 AUDIENCE: No. 109 00:04:27,450 --> 00:04:29,880 PROFESSOR: So the way I was thinking of 110 00:04:29,880 --> 00:04:33,750 it was probably things that I think are important here. 111 00:04:33,750 --> 00:04:35,500 What do you guys think are important here? 112 00:04:35,500 --> 00:04:36,967 What would constitute doing-- 113 00:04:36,967 --> 00:04:38,550 what are the things that would make up 114 00:04:38,550 --> 00:04:41,220 a good grade in a class like this, doing well? 115 00:04:41,220 --> 00:04:42,660 What's important? 116 00:04:42,660 --> 00:04:44,160 AUDIENCE: Understanding the material 117 00:04:44,160 --> 00:04:45,120 that you're teaching us? 118 00:04:45,120 --> 00:04:47,620 PROFESSOR: Understanding the material that I'm teaching you. 119 00:04:47,620 --> 00:04:49,551 And how would I know that you're doing that? 120 00:04:49,551 --> 00:04:50,800 AUDIENCE: Class participation? 121 00:04:50,800 --> 00:04:52,300 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 122 00:04:52,300 --> 00:04:54,337 PROFESSOR: Class participation is good. 123 00:04:54,337 --> 00:04:56,920 AUDIENCE: You can express that through your writings properly. 124 00:04:56,920 --> 00:04:58,480 AUDIENCE: Writing skills are really important, 125 00:04:58,480 --> 00:04:59,220 you guys know this. 126 00:04:59,220 --> 00:05:00,190 You hear this from your teachers, 127 00:05:00,190 --> 00:05:01,660 you hear this in school, you're going to hear it again 128 00:05:01,660 --> 00:05:02,680 when you hit college. 129 00:05:02,680 --> 00:05:05,096 Everyone's going to ask you to be able to write stuff down 130 00:05:05,096 --> 00:05:05,710 on paper. 131 00:05:05,710 --> 00:05:07,750 More practice at it is going to be-- 132 00:05:07,750 --> 00:05:09,640 even if it's a pain in the butt at the time-- 133 00:05:09,640 --> 00:05:12,500 a good thing in the long run. 134 00:05:12,500 --> 00:05:14,400 AUDIENCE: Asking questions? 135 00:05:14,400 --> 00:05:17,040 PROFESSOR: Class participation and asking good questions. 136 00:05:17,040 --> 00:05:17,770 Asking questions. 137 00:05:17,770 --> 00:05:20,730 Also, even if you think it makes you look stupid and not smart, 138 00:05:20,730 --> 00:05:21,990 it's OK. 139 00:05:21,990 --> 00:05:23,361 No stupid questions, et cetera. 140 00:05:23,361 --> 00:05:24,360 You guys know the drill. 141 00:05:27,660 --> 00:05:31,610 So do we want to be, like, graded? 142 00:05:31,610 --> 00:05:34,387 Class consensus, yes, no? 143 00:05:34,387 --> 00:05:35,850 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 144 00:05:35,850 --> 00:05:38,790 PROFESSOR: Yeah, probably? 145 00:05:38,790 --> 00:05:40,630 What about like on a 10 point scale, 146 00:05:40,630 --> 00:05:43,180 is that a reasonable compromise? 147 00:05:43,180 --> 00:05:47,260 Like yay, you did a good job, and we'll figure something out. 148 00:05:47,260 --> 00:05:47,760 I'm-- 149 00:05:47,760 --> 00:05:50,280 AUDIENCE: On the condition that we don't ever 150 00:05:50,280 --> 00:05:53,526 have to look at each other's grades or-- 151 00:05:53,526 --> 00:05:55,650 PROFESSOR: We can have private e-mails about grades 152 00:05:55,650 --> 00:05:58,620 or something, if you want them. 153 00:05:58,620 --> 00:06:01,272 Actually, you know what, you've got my email there. 154 00:06:01,272 --> 00:06:03,480 Drop me an email if you want me to keep track of what 155 00:06:03,480 --> 00:06:04,800 you're doing grade-wise, OK? 156 00:06:04,800 --> 00:06:05,697 Tonight. 157 00:06:05,697 --> 00:06:07,530 I know some of you don't and some of you do, 158 00:06:07,530 --> 00:06:09,821 so this will let you make your own decision about that. 159 00:06:19,090 --> 00:06:20,260 What do we got for time? 160 00:06:20,260 --> 00:06:22,580 OK. 161 00:06:22,580 --> 00:06:31,750 So let me have-- 162 00:06:31,750 --> 00:06:32,920 pass these out to you. 163 00:06:32,920 --> 00:06:33,760 These are readings for the week. 164 00:06:33,760 --> 00:06:35,740 I probably won't run them off in the future. 165 00:06:35,740 --> 00:06:38,380 Everyone's got internet access at home, good, easy? 166 00:06:38,380 --> 00:06:40,240 Does that work for everybody? 167 00:06:40,240 --> 00:06:44,100 If it doesn't work for you-- is it a problem? 168 00:06:44,100 --> 00:06:45,990 Billy, does it work for you, or is it a-- 169 00:06:45,990 --> 00:06:46,720 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 170 00:06:46,720 --> 00:06:48,640 PROFESSOR: OK, because what I will probably 171 00:06:48,640 --> 00:06:51,550 do is scan stuff to PDF and just upload it 172 00:06:51,550 --> 00:06:54,124 so that I don't have to pay for photocopies, 173 00:06:54,124 --> 00:06:55,540 because photocopies are expensive, 174 00:06:55,540 --> 00:06:57,831 and that way you guys can either read it on the screen, 175 00:06:57,831 --> 00:06:59,860 or you can run it off yourselves. 176 00:06:59,860 --> 00:07:01,750 So that works, that's cool. 177 00:07:01,750 --> 00:07:04,180 Again, if that's a problem for you, catch me after class 178 00:07:04,180 --> 00:07:06,096 and let me know, and we'll work something out. 179 00:07:11,160 --> 00:07:15,010 So readings for the week, take a glance, put them away. 180 00:07:15,010 --> 00:07:16,655 We're not going to work on those now. 181 00:07:22,360 --> 00:07:23,610 So what I wanted to do today-- 182 00:07:23,610 --> 00:07:25,310 I wanted to do two things. 183 00:07:25,310 --> 00:07:27,670 I wanted to run down a bit more of an introduction 184 00:07:27,670 --> 00:07:30,420 to this cognitive psychology idea, 185 00:07:30,420 --> 00:07:31,570 these cognitive principles. 186 00:07:31,570 --> 00:07:34,450 This is kind of my educational background 187 00:07:34,450 --> 00:07:36,620 that are going to lead to what we're doing. 188 00:07:36,620 --> 00:07:39,490 And then I want to jump in to look at the journal article 189 00:07:39,490 --> 00:07:41,340 we're going to read this week. 190 00:07:41,340 --> 00:07:45,262 So cognitive psychology. 191 00:07:45,262 --> 00:07:46,377 Thanks. 192 00:07:46,377 --> 00:07:47,710 Yeah, we're missing folks today. 193 00:07:47,710 --> 00:07:50,260 We'll see what happens with that. 194 00:07:50,260 --> 00:07:52,810 Cognitive psychology, again, is looking 195 00:07:52,810 --> 00:07:55,930 at the human brain as an information processing 196 00:07:55,930 --> 00:08:01,090 approach, and the way this always starts 197 00:08:01,090 --> 00:08:04,030 is by giving a little bit of a history lesson. 198 00:08:04,030 --> 00:08:07,380 And so modern psychology, most people 199 00:08:07,380 --> 00:08:11,290 will date it back to kind of the late 1800s. 200 00:08:11,290 --> 00:08:16,397 This guy named Wilhelm Wundt opened a laboratory in-- 201 00:08:16,397 --> 00:08:17,230 did I write it down? 202 00:08:17,230 --> 00:08:18,430 I didn't write it down-- 203 00:08:18,430 --> 00:08:21,010 the 1870s. 204 00:08:21,010 --> 00:08:23,740 And Wundt was very into this idea of introspection, 205 00:08:23,740 --> 00:08:26,680 this idea that if you were properly trained, 206 00:08:26,680 --> 00:08:30,550 then you could understand mental processes simply 207 00:08:30,550 --> 00:08:33,280 by thinking about how your mental processes seem 208 00:08:33,280 --> 00:08:35,230 to you to be working. 209 00:08:35,230 --> 00:08:38,289 And so you could consider sensations, 210 00:08:38,289 --> 00:08:40,660 you could consider what memory was like, 211 00:08:40,660 --> 00:08:42,159 and you could learn a lot about them 212 00:08:42,159 --> 00:08:45,071 by considering them kind of from the inside out. 213 00:08:45,071 --> 00:08:46,570 And a lot of cognitive psychologists 214 00:08:46,570 --> 00:08:49,330 today will look at this idea and go, um, what? 215 00:08:49,330 --> 00:08:51,130 It's not, because by our standards 216 00:08:51,130 --> 00:08:54,000 it's a very subjective way of studying something. 217 00:08:54,000 --> 00:08:56,240 It's very dependent on the observer. 218 00:08:59,330 --> 00:09:03,170 So that was Wundt and a bunch of other 19th century guys, 219 00:09:03,170 --> 00:09:04,750 and in the early 20th century, there 220 00:09:04,750 --> 00:09:07,470 was a revolution in psychology, and this 221 00:09:07,470 --> 00:09:09,010 was the behaviorist revolution. 222 00:09:09,010 --> 00:09:14,170 You guys have heard of Skinner, maybe, and that crowd, 223 00:09:14,170 --> 00:09:16,210 and they said, no, no, no, no, no. 224 00:09:16,210 --> 00:09:18,580 Introspection is nonsense. 225 00:09:18,580 --> 00:09:20,790 It's too subjective, it depends on people, 226 00:09:20,790 --> 00:09:22,744 you can't have somebody else confirm 227 00:09:22,744 --> 00:09:24,910 your results of introspection because their brain is 228 00:09:24,910 --> 00:09:26,050 different from your brain. 229 00:09:26,050 --> 00:09:27,940 Psychologists should have nothing 230 00:09:27,940 --> 00:09:30,160 to do with introspection, and they 231 00:09:30,160 --> 00:09:35,690 should focus on objective, observable behaviors. 232 00:09:35,690 --> 00:09:40,400 So these behaviorists were trying to understand. 233 00:09:40,400 --> 00:09:44,290 So we have our introspection, right, 234 00:09:44,290 --> 00:09:49,690 in the late 1800s, late 19th century, and so 235 00:09:49,690 --> 00:09:58,720 that's 1870s to 1920-ish. 236 00:09:58,720 --> 00:10:03,734 And then we have the behaviorists coming in, 237 00:10:03,734 --> 00:10:05,150 and so these are the guys who said 238 00:10:05,150 --> 00:10:07,790 objective, observerable behavior is the only thing that 239 00:10:07,790 --> 00:10:10,520 is worthy of scientific investigation, the only thing 240 00:10:10,520 --> 00:10:13,670 you can be truly rigorous about. 241 00:10:13,670 --> 00:10:16,700 So you guys have seen your kind of classic rat in a box, 242 00:10:16,700 --> 00:10:18,780 right, pushing a lever in order to get a reward, 243 00:10:18,780 --> 00:10:20,690 or running a maze to get a reward. 244 00:10:20,690 --> 00:10:22,230 These are behaviorist ideas. 245 00:10:25,020 --> 00:10:26,800 And they had this model that said 246 00:10:26,800 --> 00:10:28,470 that basically behavior is caused 247 00:10:28,470 --> 00:10:30,180 by stimuli in the environment. 248 00:10:30,180 --> 00:10:32,940 That is this very simple model where you see a stimulus 249 00:10:32,940 --> 00:10:37,150 or you have a stimulus of some sort, and you respond to it. 250 00:10:37,150 --> 00:10:39,310 If I give you a reward, then you will [INAUDIBLE].. 251 00:10:39,310 --> 00:10:42,900 So for example Pavlov, right, Pavlov's dogs. 252 00:10:42,900 --> 00:10:47,950 Pavlov had these dogs and he gave them a little-- 253 00:10:47,950 --> 00:10:49,790 he would food deprive them, right. 254 00:10:49,790 --> 00:10:51,330 This is classic animal research, you 255 00:10:51,330 --> 00:10:52,746 food deprive your subjects so they 256 00:10:52,746 --> 00:10:54,637 are motivated to work for you. 257 00:10:54,637 --> 00:10:56,220 So he'd keep them a little bit hungry, 258 00:10:56,220 --> 00:10:58,650 and he'd give them a meat powder, tasty and delicious. 259 00:10:58,650 --> 00:11:02,100 And every time he did it, he'd ring a bell. 260 00:11:02,100 --> 00:11:05,160 And of course the dogs get the meat powder, 261 00:11:05,160 --> 00:11:09,420 they salivate, right, reflex response. 262 00:11:09,420 --> 00:11:13,770 And eventually through this conditioning, 263 00:11:13,770 --> 00:11:14,930 then you get a paired-- 264 00:11:18,360 --> 00:11:21,210 the response, the salivation, which 265 00:11:21,210 --> 00:11:23,940 was originally paired with the original stimulus, the meat 266 00:11:23,940 --> 00:11:24,690 powder. 267 00:11:24,690 --> 00:11:27,023 But if you pair the meats powder and the bell every time 268 00:11:27,023 --> 00:11:30,042 you present it, eventually you can ring just the bell 269 00:11:30,042 --> 00:11:31,500 and the dogs will start salivating. 270 00:11:31,500 --> 00:11:33,500 And this is kind of a classic behaviorist set up 271 00:11:33,500 --> 00:11:36,150 where you aren't measuring mental activity of any kind, 272 00:11:36,150 --> 00:11:37,770 you're just measuring salivation. 273 00:11:37,770 --> 00:11:39,205 You know, you can-- 274 00:11:39,205 --> 00:11:40,830 heck, you can collect it in little cups 275 00:11:40,830 --> 00:11:42,579 and figure out how much salivation you get 276 00:11:42,579 --> 00:11:46,920 and things like that, very rigorous. 277 00:11:46,920 --> 00:11:54,710 And this was kind of how it worked for up into the 1950s, 278 00:11:54,710 --> 00:11:56,617 this was the way psychology worked. 279 00:11:56,617 --> 00:11:58,700 This was what you did, you worked with white rats, 280 00:11:58,700 --> 00:12:01,280 or cats, or dogs. 281 00:12:01,280 --> 00:12:03,950 There wasn't a whole lot of human subjects' behavior. 282 00:12:03,950 --> 00:12:06,260 And in the 50s people started saying, hey look, 283 00:12:06,260 --> 00:12:09,470 this stimulus response model might work OK 284 00:12:09,470 --> 00:12:13,670 for rats running mazes, but it doesn't work real well 285 00:12:13,670 --> 00:12:14,610 for human behavior. 286 00:12:14,610 --> 00:12:17,825 Human behavior is complicated, it's tricky. 287 00:12:21,380 --> 00:12:24,367 Everything that we do requires all of these different factors 288 00:12:24,367 --> 00:12:24,950 to be weighed. 289 00:12:24,950 --> 00:12:26,744 If you're running late for class, 290 00:12:26,744 --> 00:12:28,910 you might have to decide, am I going to try and wait 291 00:12:28,910 --> 00:12:29,785 here and catch a bus? 292 00:12:29,785 --> 00:12:32,180 Am I just going to run across campus? 293 00:12:32,180 --> 00:12:34,190 Am I going to call my teacher and tell them 294 00:12:34,190 --> 00:12:35,630 I'm going to be late? 295 00:12:35,630 --> 00:12:38,150 And which of those options anyone might choose 296 00:12:38,150 --> 00:12:42,140 in a given circumstance is dependent on a wide range 297 00:12:42,140 --> 00:12:43,670 of factors-- 298 00:12:43,670 --> 00:12:47,930 simple things like weather and how late you are, but also 299 00:12:47,930 --> 00:12:49,970 maybe you know that the bus should come, 300 00:12:49,970 --> 00:12:53,320 or you know the bus won't come because the bus system fails. 301 00:12:53,320 --> 00:12:55,640 And so human behavior is a lot more complicated 302 00:12:55,640 --> 00:13:00,230 than these behaviorist models can really explain. 303 00:13:00,230 --> 00:13:03,170 And at the same time, in the 50s, 304 00:13:03,170 --> 00:13:06,020 this was the rise of computers when you started having things, 305 00:13:06,020 --> 00:13:08,660 and historically there's been this tradition 306 00:13:08,660 --> 00:13:11,750 of modeling the brain and the nervous system 307 00:13:11,750 --> 00:13:13,550 as the shiny new technology of the day. 308 00:13:13,550 --> 00:13:15,530 In the 1800s, they talked about the brain 309 00:13:15,530 --> 00:13:18,260 is a series of hydraulic tubes, because that 310 00:13:18,260 --> 00:13:19,970 was the technology that could do really 311 00:13:19,970 --> 00:13:22,984 elaborate, complicated things, and around the turn 312 00:13:22,984 --> 00:13:24,650 of the 20th century they talked about it 313 00:13:24,650 --> 00:13:27,154 as being like a telegraph network. 314 00:13:27,154 --> 00:13:29,570 And in the 50s, they started talking about the brain being 315 00:13:29,570 --> 00:13:32,420 like a computer, and we'll talk some more about that analogy 316 00:13:32,420 --> 00:13:34,700 probably tomorrow. 317 00:13:34,700 --> 00:13:37,490 But one of the things that happened with computers 318 00:13:37,490 --> 00:13:39,500 is that you started to have this model 319 00:13:39,500 --> 00:13:43,400 of complicated information processing within the guise 320 00:13:43,400 --> 00:13:45,140 of being an acceptable scientific thing 321 00:13:45,140 --> 00:13:48,000 to think about in kind of the software world. 322 00:13:48,000 --> 00:13:51,020 And that and this decision that behaviors couldn't 323 00:13:51,020 --> 00:13:53,270 cover everything led to a new growth 324 00:13:53,270 --> 00:13:56,450 of people talking about things like memory, like attention, 325 00:13:56,450 --> 00:13:57,590 like visual perception. 326 00:13:57,590 --> 00:14:02,900 All of these things that we could consider cognitive topics 327 00:14:02,900 --> 00:14:06,790 started showing up in the literature in the 50s. 328 00:14:06,790 --> 00:14:10,630 So viola, brief history of where this field is coming from. 329 00:14:10,630 --> 00:14:13,220 So the behaviorism actually did a lot for the field. 330 00:14:13,220 --> 00:14:15,320 Psychologists now don't work like Wundt 331 00:14:15,320 --> 00:14:18,710 did with his introspection and his personal observation 332 00:14:18,710 --> 00:14:22,388 of what his mental sensations felt like. 333 00:14:22,388 --> 00:14:24,868 AUDIENCE: Is there a name for the mass movement 334 00:14:24,868 --> 00:14:25,452 you described? 335 00:14:25,452 --> 00:14:27,951 PROFESSOR: There were a bunch of people involved right then, 336 00:14:27,951 --> 00:14:29,970 a lot of kind of the classic work in the field, 337 00:14:29,970 --> 00:14:33,280 so you'll hear some of these names all through the course. 338 00:14:33,280 --> 00:14:36,860 This isn't a one-person sort of thing. 339 00:14:36,860 --> 00:14:39,290 I'd say Wundt for the classic introspection 340 00:14:39,290 --> 00:14:41,540 would be one good name to know, and Skinner and Pavlov 341 00:14:41,540 --> 00:14:45,980 are both good names to know for behaviorism. 342 00:14:45,980 --> 00:14:48,260 Skinner boxes are still used by people working 343 00:14:48,260 --> 00:14:51,290 with mice and rats, the little boxes where 344 00:14:51,290 --> 00:14:53,120 you can push a lever and you can program 345 00:14:53,120 --> 00:14:54,370 them to do all sorts of stuff. 346 00:14:54,370 --> 00:14:57,200 They've got levers, and lights, and speakers, and little pellet 347 00:14:57,200 --> 00:14:57,740 trays. 348 00:14:57,740 --> 00:15:01,810 And one of the things I did my junior year at UNH 349 00:15:01,810 --> 00:15:04,670 was writing code for an attention task. 350 00:15:04,670 --> 00:15:07,010 We were working with the rats, and they 351 00:15:07,010 --> 00:15:08,660 had to stare at this panel of light. 352 00:15:08,660 --> 00:15:12,830 So you've got a Skinner box, right, box. 353 00:15:12,830 --> 00:15:14,850 And these ones had-- 354 00:15:14,850 --> 00:15:15,950 here, we have a box. 355 00:15:19,577 --> 00:15:20,910 Yeah, that's more or less right. 356 00:15:20,910 --> 00:15:24,270 So these ones had three little lights along the top, 357 00:15:24,270 --> 00:15:28,154 and they had two levers, and they had 358 00:15:28,154 --> 00:15:29,320 a pellet tray in the middle. 359 00:15:29,320 --> 00:15:30,730 And this is kind of off topic, but just so you 360 00:15:30,730 --> 00:15:32,370 can get a sense of what a Skinner box looks like. 361 00:15:32,370 --> 00:15:33,661 And what these rats had to do-- 362 00:15:36,520 --> 00:15:41,001 pointy nose, whiskers, rat, long tail. 363 00:15:41,001 --> 00:15:42,500 That doesn't look like a rat at all, 364 00:15:42,500 --> 00:15:44,180 but we're going to ignore that. 365 00:15:44,180 --> 00:15:45,680 So what these rats had to do is they 366 00:15:45,680 --> 00:15:47,290 had to watch this panel of lights, 367 00:15:47,290 --> 00:15:50,554 and the middle light might or might not come on. 368 00:15:50,554 --> 00:15:51,970 And it would come on very briefly, 369 00:15:51,970 --> 00:15:54,430 we're talking like a quarter second here or less, 370 00:15:54,430 --> 00:15:59,540 tenth of a second, [INAUDIBLE],, or it might not come on at all. 371 00:15:59,540 --> 00:16:02,020 And after that at the end of the trial, both of the levers 372 00:16:02,020 --> 00:16:03,853 would extend, and they had to push one lever 373 00:16:03,853 --> 00:16:06,940 if the light came on and one if the light hadn't come on. 374 00:16:06,940 --> 00:16:10,317 And if they were right, they'd get a little food pellet 375 00:16:10,317 --> 00:16:12,400 right in their little tray, and if they were wrong 376 00:16:12,400 --> 00:16:14,150 they didn't get anything. 377 00:16:14,150 --> 00:16:16,444 And so the model here is trying to figure out-- 378 00:16:16,444 --> 00:16:18,610 so this is what's called a sustained attention task. 379 00:16:18,610 --> 00:16:20,026 They've got to sit there and watch 380 00:16:20,026 --> 00:16:21,160 that light for a long time. 381 00:16:21,160 --> 00:16:23,860 Rats are not, for the most part, very good at sustained 382 00:16:23,860 --> 00:16:25,240 attention tasks. 383 00:16:25,240 --> 00:16:27,310 Humans are, for the most part, not very good 384 00:16:27,310 --> 00:16:29,110 at sustained attention tasks. 385 00:16:29,110 --> 00:16:30,640 So the human equivalent of this task 386 00:16:30,640 --> 00:16:32,848 might be like being an air traffic controller, right. 387 00:16:32,848 --> 00:16:35,380 You've got to spend your shift watching a little radar 388 00:16:35,380 --> 00:16:37,799 screen with little airplanes moving around on it, 389 00:16:37,799 --> 00:16:40,340 and make sure none of them are going to bang into each other. 390 00:16:40,340 --> 00:16:41,710 You don't really get to take a break. 391 00:16:41,710 --> 00:16:43,380 And if you're a rat you take your breaks 392 00:16:43,380 --> 00:16:46,660 by grooming or rolling over on the floor. 393 00:16:46,660 --> 00:16:49,231 They just goof around in there, it's pretty funny. 394 00:16:49,231 --> 00:16:50,980 Air traffic controllers might take a break 395 00:16:50,980 --> 00:16:54,040 by looking away from the screen, getting up and walking around, 396 00:16:54,040 --> 00:16:55,899 the human equivalents. 397 00:16:55,899 --> 00:16:57,940 So humans aren't good at this sustained attention 398 00:16:57,940 --> 00:16:59,230 sorts of stuff. 399 00:16:59,230 --> 00:17:01,150 So we were working with these guys, 400 00:17:01,150 --> 00:17:04,450 and we were actually playing with some of-- 401 00:17:04,450 --> 00:17:07,660 we were changing the levels of certain neurotransmitters 402 00:17:07,660 --> 00:17:09,940 in a particular part of their brain, 403 00:17:09,940 --> 00:17:12,040 in the prefrontal cortex, to see-- 404 00:17:14,761 --> 00:17:16,510 this was three years ago, I don't remember 405 00:17:16,510 --> 00:17:18,730 what exactly we were doing-- 406 00:17:18,730 --> 00:17:23,380 to see whether lesioning particular areas impacted 407 00:17:23,380 --> 00:17:26,290 their performance on both a sustained attention task 408 00:17:26,290 --> 00:17:28,210 versus a shorter-term attention task 409 00:17:28,210 --> 00:17:32,902 where they had an acoustic cue, a beep, to tell them 410 00:17:32,902 --> 00:17:34,360 when the trial was about to happen, 411 00:17:34,360 --> 00:17:36,670 when the light was going to go or not go. 412 00:17:36,670 --> 00:17:38,380 So comparing their performance on that. 413 00:17:38,380 --> 00:17:39,670 Anyway, but that's a Skinner box. 414 00:17:39,670 --> 00:17:41,294 They've got levers, they've got lights, 415 00:17:41,294 --> 00:17:43,089 they can do all sorts of stuff. 416 00:17:43,089 --> 00:17:44,130 Hook it up to a computer. 417 00:17:52,660 --> 00:17:55,270 But one of the things that the behaviorists gave to the field 418 00:17:55,270 --> 00:18:03,320 was this idea of really rigorous scientific experimentation, 419 00:18:03,320 --> 00:18:06,210 this idea that if you want to measure something, how someone 420 00:18:06,210 --> 00:18:07,918 performs on a task, you've got to come up 421 00:18:07,918 --> 00:18:10,040 with an operational definition. 422 00:18:10,040 --> 00:18:15,040 So if I wanted to study memory, and I 423 00:18:15,040 --> 00:18:18,370 might say that I would consider your memory to be good, maybe, 424 00:18:18,370 --> 00:18:19,524 if I can give you-- 425 00:18:19,524 --> 00:18:21,190 rather than saying, do you feel like you 426 00:18:21,190 --> 00:18:23,731 have a good memory-- do you feel like you have a good memory? 427 00:18:23,731 --> 00:18:24,395 AUDIENCE: No. 428 00:18:24,395 --> 00:18:24,850 PROFESSOR: No? 429 00:18:24,850 --> 00:18:26,516 Do you feel like you have a good memory? 430 00:18:26,516 --> 00:18:27,189 Yeah? 431 00:18:27,189 --> 00:18:28,855 Do you feel like you have a good memory? 432 00:18:28,855 --> 00:18:29,680 AUDIENCE: No. 433 00:18:29,680 --> 00:18:31,930 PROFESSOR: But see, that's all very subjective, right. 434 00:18:31,930 --> 00:18:33,805 It's depending on your own personal standards 435 00:18:33,805 --> 00:18:36,280 for what a good memory feels like, whereas I could say, 436 00:18:36,280 --> 00:18:39,910 I'm going to give you a list of numbers, six numbers. 437 00:18:39,910 --> 00:18:41,930 I'm going to give you all a list of six numbers. 438 00:18:49,310 --> 00:18:53,090 And I'm going to let you look at them for 30 seconds. 439 00:18:56,580 --> 00:18:59,010 That's a really long presentation time, by the way, 440 00:18:59,010 --> 00:19:01,562 in the cognitive psychology world. 441 00:19:01,562 --> 00:19:04,020 You'd be more likely to see half a second, how many of them 442 00:19:04,020 --> 00:19:06,103 can you pull up, or five seconds, how many of them 443 00:19:06,103 --> 00:19:08,400 can you remember. 444 00:19:08,400 --> 00:19:09,420 All right. 445 00:19:09,420 --> 00:19:10,920 Everybody got to look at them, we're 446 00:19:10,920 --> 00:19:12,045 going to make them go away. 447 00:19:14,729 --> 00:19:15,270 None of that. 448 00:19:18,920 --> 00:19:22,300 And so now I can say my operational definition 449 00:19:22,300 --> 00:19:26,080 of a good memory is going to be whether in five minutes 450 00:19:26,080 --> 00:19:29,140 or so you can still give me back those six numbers. 451 00:19:31,970 --> 00:19:34,354 Who's writing them down, which would 452 00:19:34,354 --> 00:19:36,270 be something that would be very classic, which 453 00:19:36,270 --> 00:19:37,382 would be an example of-- 454 00:19:37,382 --> 00:19:39,340 so maybe you don't think you can remember them, 455 00:19:39,340 --> 00:19:40,740 but you can write it down. 456 00:19:40,740 --> 00:19:44,070 You assist your own memory. 457 00:19:44,070 --> 00:19:48,324 An operational definition is a definition of-- 458 00:19:48,324 --> 00:19:50,740 know what, I don't have a good definition for that for you 459 00:19:50,740 --> 00:19:51,240 guys today. 460 00:19:51,240 --> 00:19:58,975 An operational definition is defining the thing you want 461 00:19:58,975 --> 00:20:00,600 to study-- if you want to study memory, 462 00:20:00,600 --> 00:20:04,110 if you want to study attention, if you want to study learning-- 463 00:20:04,110 --> 00:20:07,470 in a way that you can experimentally verify. 464 00:20:07,470 --> 00:20:10,080 So it lets you take this and say, OK, this 465 00:20:10,080 --> 00:20:13,117 is no longer a vague amorphous concept, 466 00:20:13,117 --> 00:20:14,450 this is something that I can do. 467 00:20:42,779 --> 00:20:47,202 Time check, OK. 468 00:20:47,202 --> 00:20:48,660 These classrooms don't have clocks. 469 00:20:48,660 --> 00:20:50,035 I keep being weirded out by this. 470 00:20:50,035 --> 00:20:53,706 I am accustomed to all classrooms ever having clocks. 471 00:20:53,706 --> 00:20:55,580 I'm going to have to do something about this, 472 00:20:55,580 --> 00:20:58,140 like start wearing a watch. 473 00:20:58,140 --> 00:21:06,310 So let's talk briefly-- 474 00:21:06,310 --> 00:21:08,320 so we said that cognitive cognition 475 00:21:08,320 --> 00:21:12,160 is looking at this idea of acquisition, storage, 476 00:21:12,160 --> 00:21:15,370 transformation, and use of knowledge, right. 477 00:21:15,370 --> 00:21:23,900 So OK, not yet. 478 00:21:27,530 --> 00:21:29,290 So people who are trying to understand 479 00:21:29,290 --> 00:21:33,080 theories of cognition-- 480 00:21:33,080 --> 00:21:36,020 you can make a case that everything that the brain is 481 00:21:36,020 --> 00:21:38,339 doing with cognition is really just biology, 482 00:21:38,339 --> 00:21:40,880 and everything the biology is doing is really just chemistry, 483 00:21:40,880 --> 00:21:43,587 and really it all comes down to low-level physics in the end. 484 00:21:43,587 --> 00:21:45,050 AUDIENCE: Math. 485 00:21:45,050 --> 00:21:47,810 PROFESSOR: And physics is just applied math, yes. 486 00:21:47,810 --> 00:21:50,870 But this is not terribly useful. 487 00:21:50,870 --> 00:21:53,420 Trying to understand cognition in terms of math 488 00:21:53,420 --> 00:21:57,170 is possible, maybe, in kind of an abstract way. 489 00:21:57,170 --> 00:21:58,910 We don't have the knowledge yet to do it, 490 00:21:58,910 --> 00:21:59,940 but it's not going to get you anywhere. 491 00:21:59,940 --> 00:22:02,312 It's worth it to try and look at these things 492 00:22:02,312 --> 00:22:03,395 at these different levels. 493 00:22:06,775 --> 00:22:08,150 So cognitive theories are looking 494 00:22:08,150 --> 00:22:10,490 at this particular level of abstraction that 495 00:22:10,490 --> 00:22:14,010 are thinking about information processing, 496 00:22:14,010 --> 00:22:17,150 and there's a couple of key ideas 497 00:22:17,150 --> 00:22:22,350 that cognitive psychologists use that we should talk about. 498 00:22:22,350 --> 00:22:25,220 So one of these is representation. 499 00:22:25,220 --> 00:22:28,880 So when we're talking about information processing, 500 00:22:28,880 --> 00:22:32,360 we're going to talk about you as having a representation 501 00:22:32,360 --> 00:22:34,940 of something in your mind. 502 00:22:34,940 --> 00:22:39,110 And a representation is-- 503 00:22:39,110 --> 00:22:41,306 actually, when we're talking about a representation 504 00:22:41,306 --> 00:22:42,680 of something in your brain, maybe 505 00:22:42,680 --> 00:22:45,080 of your representation of the concept 506 00:22:45,080 --> 00:22:49,550 of a cat, or the color red, or of your mom. 507 00:22:49,550 --> 00:22:53,630 And a representation is actually a physical state in your brain 508 00:22:53,630 --> 00:22:59,420 that conveys the information specific to a concept, 509 00:22:59,420 --> 00:23:03,530 or an object, , or a category or a trait of these things, 510 00:23:03,530 --> 00:23:06,880 but to something specific. 511 00:23:06,880 --> 00:23:10,010 You know, when you're thinking about your mom, 512 00:23:10,010 --> 00:23:12,230 your brain is actually in a different physical state 513 00:23:12,230 --> 00:23:14,150 than when you're thinking about the color red. 514 00:23:14,150 --> 00:23:15,540 This is cool. 515 00:23:15,540 --> 00:23:17,630 So there's a physical base underlying 516 00:23:17,630 --> 00:23:18,890 these representations. 517 00:23:23,910 --> 00:23:26,700 And we'll talk about the brain as performing different kinds 518 00:23:26,700 --> 00:23:29,050 of processes on these representations, 519 00:23:29,050 --> 00:23:34,430 so actually taking a piece of information 520 00:23:34,430 --> 00:23:36,500 and transforming it. 521 00:23:36,500 --> 00:23:39,630 So representations, process, so we'll 522 00:23:39,630 --> 00:23:42,480 have cognitive processes that take information, 523 00:23:42,480 --> 00:23:46,150 transform it according to some well-defined rules, 524 00:23:46,150 --> 00:23:50,550 so that for an input you get a consistent output. 525 00:23:50,550 --> 00:23:55,800 So a cognitive process of visual perception 526 00:23:55,800 --> 00:23:57,900 would allow you to get certain input coming in, 527 00:23:57,900 --> 00:23:59,580 light hitting the retina, and you'll 528 00:23:59,580 --> 00:24:01,230 get an output, which with this case 529 00:24:01,230 --> 00:24:04,137 would be your perception, kind of your subjective impression 530 00:24:04,137 --> 00:24:05,220 of what you're looking at. 531 00:24:10,510 --> 00:24:16,090 And with modern neuroscience and modern techniques, 532 00:24:16,090 --> 00:24:20,590 there's been a very strong move in the cognitive psych world 533 00:24:20,590 --> 00:24:23,770 to start really looking at the neuroscience, to start saying, 534 00:24:23,770 --> 00:24:27,370 what do we know about the structure 535 00:24:27,370 --> 00:24:31,300 and function of the brain that can help prove or disprove 536 00:24:31,300 --> 00:24:35,725 different theories about how cognition works. 537 00:24:35,725 --> 00:24:38,650 AUDIENCE: So is that when you have a person 538 00:24:38,650 --> 00:24:40,220 look at some pictures and then you 539 00:24:40,220 --> 00:24:41,707 want monitor the brain to see where 540 00:24:41,707 --> 00:24:42,790 the activity is happening? 541 00:24:42,790 --> 00:24:45,373 PROFESSOR: Yeah, so that would be a very good example of that, 542 00:24:45,373 --> 00:24:48,650 and you can say, OK, activity is happening in this area 543 00:24:48,650 --> 00:24:51,074 that we know works on these kinds of problems. 544 00:24:51,074 --> 00:24:53,240 What does that tell us about what kind of processing 545 00:24:53,240 --> 00:24:55,730 is going on there. 546 00:24:55,730 --> 00:24:58,010 And depending on who you talk to, 547 00:24:58,010 --> 00:25:03,600 imaging is valuable or not valuable in certain ways. 548 00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:06,530 We'll talk on Friday about imaging systems 549 00:25:06,530 --> 00:25:08,120 and the methodologies that people 550 00:25:08,120 --> 00:25:12,260 use in this sort of stuff and what some 551 00:25:12,260 --> 00:25:15,770 of the limits of those are. 552 00:25:15,770 --> 00:25:18,380 And there's this tendency in the popular media for somebody 553 00:25:18,380 --> 00:25:21,285 to write this careful paper that is like, OK, we saw this, 554 00:25:21,285 --> 00:25:22,910 we're very careful about what we claim. 555 00:25:22,910 --> 00:25:24,451 And then like the New York Times will 556 00:25:24,451 --> 00:25:28,700 be like scientists find sarcasm center in the brain, 557 00:25:28,700 --> 00:25:33,670 and the researchers will be like, that's not what I said. 558 00:25:33,670 --> 00:25:37,160 And that's partly that the limitations of the techniques 559 00:25:37,160 --> 00:25:39,470 the researchers are using are not always 560 00:25:39,470 --> 00:25:41,942 clear to the journalists who are writing about it, 561 00:25:41,942 --> 00:25:43,400 and it's also the newspaper wanting 562 00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:45,470 to write a headline that will sell papers. 563 00:25:45,470 --> 00:25:48,200 So it happens, so it's one thing to think about when you're 564 00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:50,480 reading the stuff in the paper, in the news magazine, 565 00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:54,631 in something that's not really a science publication. 566 00:26:06,910 --> 00:26:12,014 All right, we have 10 minutes before pizza. 567 00:26:12,014 --> 00:26:14,180 So one of the things we're going to do in this class 568 00:26:14,180 --> 00:26:17,600 is we're going to actually read some of the original research 569 00:26:17,600 --> 00:26:22,370 in this field, so this is this week's version. 570 00:26:22,370 --> 00:26:26,330 And the general response to seeing one of these things 571 00:26:26,330 --> 00:26:28,520 if you've never picked up a journal article before 572 00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:32,240 is, I'm not sure this is actually in English. 573 00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:33,890 They tend to be very dense, they tend 574 00:26:33,890 --> 00:26:39,230 to be kind of jargon heavy, and so I 575 00:26:39,230 --> 00:26:41,960 wanted you guys to just have some experience trying 576 00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:44,840 to work your way through one of these things 577 00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:47,750 before you get thrown them maybe in your freshman 578 00:26:47,750 --> 00:26:51,230 or sophomore level college classes and are like, ack. 579 00:26:51,230 --> 00:26:56,580 So title, the title of this one is 580 00:26:56,580 --> 00:26:59,970 "Improving Fluid Intelligence with Training 581 00:26:59,970 --> 00:27:01,110 on Working Memory." 582 00:27:04,880 --> 00:27:08,790 And who's ever actually sat down and read a journal article 583 00:27:08,790 --> 00:27:10,610 before, anyone? 584 00:27:10,610 --> 00:27:12,120 One, awesome. 585 00:27:12,120 --> 00:27:13,340 Two? 586 00:27:13,340 --> 00:27:14,206 A couple? 587 00:27:14,206 --> 00:27:18,480 Good, OK, that's actually surprisingly high, cool. 588 00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:18,980 So 589 00:27:18,980 --> 00:27:20,900 Papers are structured slightly differently 590 00:27:20,900 --> 00:27:25,200 depending on what field you're in and what journal they're in, 591 00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:27,140 but generally you're going to get 592 00:27:27,140 --> 00:27:30,950 at the beginning an abstract, usually 100 or 200 words, 593 00:27:30,950 --> 00:27:33,140 describing what the paper's doing. 594 00:27:33,140 --> 00:27:35,510 These tend to be very, very, very dense because they're 595 00:27:35,510 --> 00:27:38,060 taking the rest of the paper and [SQUISHING SOUND EFFECT] 596 00:27:38,060 --> 00:27:41,550 squishing it into 200 words. 597 00:27:41,550 --> 00:27:43,750 They're structured kind of like a lab report. 598 00:27:43,750 --> 00:27:45,500 The reason they make you write lab reports 599 00:27:45,500 --> 00:27:47,210 is in part to kind of familiarize you 600 00:27:47,210 --> 00:27:48,540 with this structure. 601 00:27:48,540 --> 00:27:50,270 There's an introduction that's like, this 602 00:27:50,270 --> 00:27:52,575 is why we want to study. 603 00:27:52,575 --> 00:27:54,200 This is kind of what the background is, 604 00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:57,270 what other people have done. 605 00:27:57,270 --> 00:28:00,200 There's going to be a description of what they did, 606 00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:01,520 their methods. 607 00:28:01,520 --> 00:28:07,040 And this particular one, because it's PNAS and they break it up, 608 00:28:07,040 --> 00:28:09,620 they start discussing their methods right there 609 00:28:09,620 --> 00:28:11,650 at the beginning of the second page, 610 00:28:11,650 --> 00:28:13,415 and they kind of do it very vaguely, 611 00:28:13,415 --> 00:28:15,290 and then they have some more of their methods 612 00:28:15,290 --> 00:28:19,220 at the very end in more detail. 613 00:28:19,220 --> 00:28:21,530 And this particular structure drives me batty, 614 00:28:21,530 --> 00:28:24,052 and I'm sorry I pulled it out for you guys 615 00:28:24,052 --> 00:28:25,760 for your first one, because I'm like, how 616 00:28:25,760 --> 00:28:26,840 do I know what you did, ack. 617 00:28:26,840 --> 00:28:28,006 It's all in the wrong order. 618 00:28:28,006 --> 00:28:32,030 So I tend to jump around and read the methods 619 00:28:32,030 --> 00:28:35,180 kind of out of order there. 620 00:28:35,180 --> 00:28:40,100 Results is a lot of numbers and a lot of stats, 621 00:28:40,100 --> 00:28:43,079 and 90% of the time, if you're just reading this-- 622 00:28:43,079 --> 00:28:45,620 if you're not like, I'm going to go out and try and duplicate 623 00:28:45,620 --> 00:28:48,830 their work, you can entirely skip the results section 624 00:28:48,830 --> 00:28:50,960 because you don't actually need to know the stats, 625 00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:53,870 and jump straight into the discussion section 626 00:28:53,870 --> 00:28:56,090 where they're going to tell you what 627 00:28:56,090 --> 00:28:57,710 all these statistics actually mean 628 00:28:57,710 --> 00:28:59,418 and what they think they learned from it. 629 00:29:03,580 --> 00:29:05,780 AUDIENCE: What are all the numbers for? 630 00:29:05,780 --> 00:29:07,550 PROFESSOR: The numbers are references. 631 00:29:07,550 --> 00:29:11,300 So in the back, there is a list, a numbered list of references. 632 00:29:11,300 --> 00:29:13,050 You'll see references in different styles. 633 00:29:13,050 --> 00:29:15,080 You've probably seen footnotes in the past. 634 00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:18,260 These guys do it with the numbers in parentheses, 635 00:29:18,260 --> 00:29:20,000 kind of classic psych journals will do it 636 00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:22,604 with a last name and a date in parentheses, 637 00:29:22,604 --> 00:29:23,770 and you'll see all of those. 638 00:29:23,770 --> 00:29:25,999 So those are referring to-- 639 00:29:25,999 --> 00:29:28,040 so the first one they'll say, "fluid intelligence 640 00:29:28,040 --> 00:29:29,660 is a complex human ability that allows 641 00:29:29,660 --> 00:29:32,840 us to adapt our thinking to a new cognitive problem 642 00:29:32,840 --> 00:29:33,770 or situation," one. 643 00:29:33,770 --> 00:29:35,936 And that means that they are pulling that definition 644 00:29:35,936 --> 00:29:40,760 from TE Rohde and LA Thompson's "Predicting Academic 645 00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:43,040 Achievement with Cognitive Ability" 646 00:29:43,040 --> 00:29:47,430 published in Intelligence in 2007, and you can look it up. 647 00:29:47,430 --> 00:29:49,970 So if you were also studying fluid intelligence, 648 00:29:49,970 --> 00:29:53,340 you might say, you know, what, what do they mean? 649 00:29:53,340 --> 00:29:54,340 Where did they get that? 650 00:29:54,340 --> 00:29:55,131 That lets you know. 651 00:29:55,131 --> 00:29:56,960 So one of the things you'll see in papers 652 00:29:56,960 --> 00:29:59,366 is that they're very, very heavily referenced. 653 00:29:59,366 --> 00:30:00,740 You're really trying to build on, 654 00:30:00,740 --> 00:30:05,300 everything we're saying somebody else already said. 655 00:30:05,300 --> 00:30:07,640 So fluid intelligence. 656 00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:09,740 What is fluid intelligence, what have we 657 00:30:09,740 --> 00:30:13,190 gotten out of this so far? 658 00:30:13,190 --> 00:30:18,492 AUDIENCE: The ability to reason and do 659 00:30:18,492 --> 00:30:21,087 new things without having known [INAUDIBLE].. 660 00:30:21,087 --> 00:30:23,170 PROFESSOR: Right, so it's kind of your performance 661 00:30:23,170 --> 00:30:25,140 on a task you've never seen before 662 00:30:25,140 --> 00:30:27,455 or a reasoning problem you've never seen before. 663 00:30:27,455 --> 00:30:29,860 If you guys think of kind of your classic logic problems 664 00:30:29,860 --> 00:30:33,370 like, a guy's found dead in a cabin in the wilderness 665 00:30:33,370 --> 00:30:35,740 naked, with 52 bicycles around him. 666 00:30:35,740 --> 00:30:38,200 You guys have run into these things before probably. 667 00:30:38,200 --> 00:30:40,180 Ask me yes or no questions until you solve it. 668 00:30:40,180 --> 00:30:41,560 No, but that's sort of like-- fluid 669 00:30:41,560 --> 00:30:43,143 intelligence is one of the things that 670 00:30:43,143 --> 00:30:44,784 allows you to do well at these. 671 00:30:44,784 --> 00:30:47,200 Having an obsession with them and having seen most of them 672 00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:49,074 before will also help you do well with these, 673 00:30:49,074 --> 00:30:52,120 but that's a very different sort of scale. 674 00:30:52,120 --> 00:30:53,530 So fluid intelligence. 675 00:30:53,530 --> 00:30:56,282 Why are they interested in studying fluid intelligence? 676 00:30:59,054 --> 00:31:01,090 AUDIENCE: It has importance especially 677 00:31:01,090 --> 00:31:05,875 for people who have occupations that involve 678 00:31:05,875 --> 00:31:09,135 adapting to the situation. 679 00:31:09,135 --> 00:31:12,842 So being able to do your job well, 680 00:31:12,842 --> 00:31:14,675 even though you're basically doing something 681 00:31:14,675 --> 00:31:16,366 you've never seen before. 682 00:31:16,366 --> 00:31:17,990 PROFESSOR: Yep, OK, good. 683 00:31:22,229 --> 00:31:25,240 And of course this is closely related 684 00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:28,060 to professional and educational success. 685 00:31:28,060 --> 00:31:29,680 Everybody wants to be able to improve 686 00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:31,679 professional and educational success. 687 00:31:31,679 --> 00:31:33,970 And the other reason they're interested in studying it, 688 00:31:33,970 --> 00:31:36,462 if you look at paragraphs two and three, 689 00:31:36,462 --> 00:31:38,170 is that nobody's really been able to find 690 00:31:38,170 --> 00:31:40,030 a good way of increasing fluid intelligence. 691 00:31:40,030 --> 00:31:42,446 You know, there's people who want to sell you smart drugs, 692 00:31:42,446 --> 00:31:46,410 or there's those video games, the brain workout video games, 693 00:31:46,410 --> 00:31:46,910 and-- 694 00:31:46,910 --> 00:31:51,830 AUDIENCE: Except that it appears to be hereditary. 695 00:31:51,830 --> 00:31:54,080 PROFESSOR: Yep, there is a strong hereditary component 696 00:31:54,080 --> 00:31:57,710 to this stuff, which is interesting. 697 00:31:57,710 --> 00:31:59,780 For most intelligence measures, there's 698 00:31:59,780 --> 00:32:01,170 a strong hereditary component. 699 00:32:01,170 --> 00:32:03,086 It's not the only thing that's going on there, 700 00:32:03,086 --> 00:32:05,840 and it's hard to pull it apart from socioeconomic stuff, which 701 00:32:05,840 --> 00:32:08,370 is also a strong component, but it's there. 702 00:32:08,370 --> 00:32:13,460 OK, so your mission for Wednesday 703 00:32:13,460 --> 00:32:16,970 is to read this and come in Wednesday 704 00:32:16,970 --> 00:32:18,740 with questions about it. 705 00:32:18,740 --> 00:32:20,990 And we will talk about it and probably work through it 706 00:32:20,990 --> 00:32:23,690 and figure out what on earth they're 707 00:32:23,690 --> 00:32:25,700 trying to study, what on earth they did, 708 00:32:25,700 --> 00:32:29,190 why it's important, what they found out. 709 00:32:29,190 --> 00:32:30,970 And with that--