Behavior

Lecture 4
30th apirl/2021
Key
Concepts
The role of the following on behavior,
• Perception and factors affecting it
• Sensation, sense organs/special organs
• Attention and concentration
• Memory and its stages, types and methods to
improve it
• Types and theories of thinking
• Cognition and levels of cognition
What is behavior?

 Human behavior refers to the array of every physical action and observable
emotion associated with individuals, as well as the human race as a whole.
 Factors influencing behavior are personality, temperament, age and genetics,
driven in part by thoughts and feelings, insight into individual psyche, knowledge,
experience, attitudes and values.
 Social behavior, a subset of human behavior, study the considerable influence of
social interaction and culture. Additional influences include ethics, encircling,
authority, rapport, hypnosis, persuasion and coercion.
Behavior
 Behavioral Perspective to
understand Behavior

For behaviorists psychology is the science of behavior.

That is, they held that the study of behavior needed to conform to the rigorous
scientific standards as used in the natural sciences. Therefore one had to study
measurable behaviors.
Theories of behavioral psychology

Classical conditioning Operant conditioning

 A theorist that contributed a theory to  B. F. Skinner, who created the theory of

behavioral science is Ivan P. Pavlov. operant conditioning.

 Classical conditioning is accompanying a  It is composed of the idea that if

specific stimuli with a certain response behavior is reciprocated with a certain
which is learned over a period of time. consequence, whether it is a positive or a
negative reinforcement, the behavior is
more likely to be repeated and become
constant. A consequence is a reaction to a
behavior which serves as a reinforcement.
 Perception
Perception (from the Latin perceptio,
percipio) is the organization,
identification, and interpretation
of sensory information in order to
represent and understand the
environment.
All perception involves signals in
the nervous system, which in turn result
from physical or chemical stimulation
of the sense organ.
 Perception

“From the multitude of stimuli constantly bombarding our sensory organs

we select certain stimuli to which we attend “(Williams 1990).

Therefore, perception is about the selection and interpretation of events in the

world around us.
Perception

 Perception is not the passive receipt of these

but is shaped by learning, memory, expectation, and
signals,
attention.
 Perception can be split into two processes.
1. Firstly, processing sensory input, which transforms
these low-level information to higher-level information
(e.g., extracts shapes for object recognition).
2. Secondly, processing which is connected with a
person's concepts and expectations (knowledge) and
selective mechanisms (attention) that influence
perception.
Perception
Components of perception

According to Alan Saks and Gary Johns, there are three components to perception.
 The Perceiver, the person who becomes aware about something and comes to a final
understanding. There are 3 factors that can influence his or her perceptions:
experience, motivational state and finally emotional state. In different motivational
or emotional states, the perceiver will react to or perceive something in different
ways. Also in different situations he or she might employ a "perceptual defence"
where they tend to "see what they want to see".
 The Target. This is the person who is being perceived or judged. "Ambiguity or lack of
information about a target leads to a greater need for interpretation and addition."
 The Situation also greatly influences perceptions because different situations may call
for additional information about the target.
Features

 Constancy

Perceptual constancy is the ability of

perceptual systems to recognize the same
object from widely varying sensory inputs.
The perceptual systems of the brain achieve
perceptual constancy in a variety of ways,
each specialized for the kind of information
being processed. Other constancies include
melody, odor, brightness and words.
Features

 Grouping
The principles of grouping are a set of
principles in psychology, first proposed by
Gestalt psychologists to explain how humans
naturally perceive objects as organized patterns
and objects. Gestalt psychologists argued that
these principles exist because the mind has an
innate disposition to perceive patterns in the
stimulus based on certain rules. These
principles are organized into six categories,
namely proximity, similarity, closure, good
continuation, common fate and good form.
Lecture
Features
Effect of experience

 With experience, organisms can learn to make finer perceptual distinctions, and
learn new kinds of categorization.
e.g car, ship, vagon bus all are vehicles.
 Empirical research show that specific practices (such as Yoga, Mindfulness, Tai-chi,
Meditation, and other mind-body disciplines) can modify human perceptual
modality.
Effect of motivation and expectation

 A perceptual set, also called perceptual expectancy or just set is a predisposition to perceive
things in a certain way. It is an example of how perception can be shaped by "top-down"
processes such as drives and expectations.
 Perceptual set has been demonstrated in many social contexts. People who are primed to think
of someone as "warm" are more likely to perceive a variety of positive characteristics in them,
than if the word "warm" is replaced by "cold". When someone has a reputation for being funny,
an audience is more likely to find them amusing. Individual's perceptual sets reflect their own
personality traits.
 Philosopher Andy Clark explains that perception, although it occurs quickly, is not simply a
bottom-up process (where minute details are put together to form larger wholes). Instead, our
brains use what he calls 'predictive coding'. It starts with very broad constraints and expectations
for the state of the world, and as expectations are met, it makes more detailed predictions (errors
lead to new predictions, or learning processes).
Sensation

 Hearing
Hearing (or audition) is the ability to perceive sound by
detecting vibrations. Frequencies capable of being
by humans are called audio or sonic. The range
heard
typically
is considered to be between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz
The auditory system includes the outer ears which
and filter sound waves, the middle ear for transforming
collect
the sound pressure (impedance matching), and the inner
ear which produces neural signals in response to the
sound. By the ascending auditory pathway these are led
to the primary auditory cortex within the temporal lobe
of the human brain, which is where the auditory
information arrives in the cerebral cortex and is further
processed there.
 Speech
Speech perception is the process by which the
sounds of language are heard, interpreted
and understood. Research in speech
perception seeks to understand how human
recognize speech sounds and use this
listeners
information to understand spoken language.
The sound of a word can vary widely
to words around it and the tempo of the
according
speech, as well as the physical characteristics,
accent and mood of the speaker. Other
variations are that reverberation(echo),
morphology( study of form and shape) &
semantics(meaning of words) that involve higher
level language processes.
Sensation

 Touch
Haptic perception is the process of recognizing objects
through touch. It involves a combination
of somatosensory perception of patterns on the skin
surface (e.g., edges, curvature, and texture) and
proprioception(sense of position) of hand position and
conformation. People can rapidly and
accurately identify three-dimensional objects by touch. This
involves exploratory procedures, such as moving the fingers
over the outer surface of the object or holding the entire
object in the hand. Haptic perception relies on the forces
experienced during touch.
 Sensation

 Taste
Taste (or, the more formal term, gustation) is the ability to perceive the
flavor of substances including, but not limited to, food. Humans
receive tastes through sensory organs called taste buds, or gustatory
calyculi, concentrated on the upper surface of the tongue.
The human tongue has 100 to 150 taste receptor cells on each of
its roughly ten thousand taste buds. There are five primary tastes:
sweetness, bitterness, sourness, saltiness, and umami.
The basic tastes contribute only partially to the sensation and flavor of
food in the mouth — other factors include smell, detected by the
olfactory epithelium of the nose; texture, detected through a variety of
mechanoreceptors, muscle nerves, etc.; and temperature, detected by
thermoreceptors.
Sensation

Other senses
 Other senses enable perception of body
balance, acceleration, gravity, position
of body parts, temperature, pain, time,
and perception of internal senses such
as suffocation.

 Social perception is the part of perception

that allows people to understand the
individuals and groups of their social
world, and thus an element of social
cognition.
Attention

 Attention is the behavioral and cognitive process

of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of
information, whether deemed subjective or
objective, while ignoring other perceivable
information.

 Detecting the source of the sensory

cues and signals that generate attention, the
effects of these sensory cues and signals on
the tuning properties of sensory neurons, and
the relationship between attention and other
behavioral and cognitive processes like working
memory and vigilance.
 Selective attention and visual attention

 In cognitive psychology there are at least two models which

how visual attention operates.
describe
1. Spot-light model
2. Zoom-lens model

 Generally speaking, visual attention is thought to operate as a two-

stage process.
1. In the first stage, attention is distributed uniformly over the external
visual scene and processing of information is performed in parallel.
2. In the second stage, attention is concentrated to a specific area of the
visual scene (i.e., it is focused), and processing is performed in a
serial
fashion.
 Attention types

 Spatial attention: A region of space within the visual field is selected for attention and the information
within this region then receives further processing.
 Multi-tasking: Multitasking can be defined as the attempt to perform two or more tasks
however, research shows that when multitasking, people make more mistakes or perform their tasks more
simultaneously;
slowly.
 Focused attention: The ability to respond discretely to specific visual, auditory or tactile
stimuli.
Sustained attention (vigilance and concentration): The ability to maintain a consistent
 response
behavioralduring continuous and repetitive activity.
 Selective attention: The ability to maintain a behavioral or cognitive set in the face of distracting
or competing stimuli. Therefore, it incorporates the notion of "freedom from distractibility."
 Alternating attention: The ability of mental flexibility that allows individuals to shift their focus of
attention and move between tasks having different cognitive requirements.
 Divided attention: This is the highest level of attention and it refers to the ability to
simultaneously to multiple tasks or multiple task demands.
respond
Brain
Game
Do you remember which door was the exit?
Result
Memory
Game
 Memory

 Memory is the process in which information is encoded,

stored, and retrieved.
 Encoding or registration: receiving, processing and
combining of received information.
 Storage: creation of a permanent record of the encoded
information in short term or long term memory.
 Retrieval, recall or recollection: calling back the stored
information in response to some cue for use in a process
or activity.
 Types of memory

 Sensory- ability to retain impressions of sensory

information after the original stimuli have
ended.
Iconic memory- is fast decaying visual information.
Echoic memory is fast decaying auditory
information.
Haptic memory is fast decaying tactile information.
The sensory memory cannot be prolonged
via rehearsal.

Information is passed from the sensory

memory into
Lecture 5. Quiz (14 JULY 2020)
Lecture 6. (21 July 2020- mid term papers started)
29th July mid term paper Dpt
Lecture 7 4th august 2020
 Short-term memory

 Short-term-
Working memory-or temporary recall of the information
which is being processed at any point in time. 5-7 items
up to 1 minute.
 The central executive part of the prefrontal cortex at
the front of the brain appears to play a fundamental
role in short-term and working memory.
 The central executive controls two neural loops, one
for visual data (which activates areas near the visual
cortex of the brain and acts as a visual scratch pad), and
one for language (the "phonological loop", which
uses Broca's area as a kind of "inner voice" that repeats
word sounds to keep them in mind). These two scratch
pads temporarily hold data until it is erased by the next
job
Short-term memory

 In 1974 Baddeley and Hitch proposed a "working memory

model" that replaced the general concept of short-term
memory with an active maintenance of information in the
short-term storage.
 The central executive essentially acts as an attention sensory
store. It channels information to the three component
processes: the phonological loop, the visuo-spatial
sketchpad, and the episodic buffer.
 The phonological loop stores auditory information
by silently rehearsing sounds or words in a continuous
loop.
 information.
The visuospatial sketchpad stores visual and spatial
 The episodic buffer is dedicated to linking
informationdomains to form integrated units of visual, spatial,
across
and verbal information and chronological ordering (e.g.,
the memory of a story or a movie scene). The episodic
buffer is also assumed to have links to long-term memory
and semantical meaning.
Long term memory

 Richard Schiffrin, is well known for his work in the 1960s

suggesting that ALL memories automatically pass from a
short-term to a long-term store after a short time
(known as the modal or multi-store or Atkinson-Schiffrin
model).

 Long-term memory, on the other hand, is maintained by

more stable and permanent changes in neural
connections widely spread throughout the brain.
The hippocampus is essential (for learning new
information) to the consolidation of information from
short-term to long-term memory, although it does not
seem to store information itself.
Mechanism
Mechanism

 Physiologically, the establishment of long-term memory involves a

process of physical changes in the structure of neurons (or nerve cells) in
the brain, a process known as long-term potentiation.
 At its simplest, whenever something is learned, circuits of neurons in
the brain, known as neural networks, are created, altered or
strengthened. These neural circuits are composed of a number of
neurons that communicate with one another through special junctions
called synapses.
 Through a process involving the creation of new proteins within
the body of neurons, and the electrochemical transfer of
neurotransmitters across synapse gaps to receptors, the
communicative strength of certain circuits of neurons in the brain
is reinforced.
 With repeated use, the efficiency of these synapse connections increases,
facilitating the passage of nerve impulses along particular neural circuits,
w
h i c h may involve many connections to the visual cortex, the auditory
co r t e x
, the associative regions of the cortex, etc
Mechanism

 Visual, elaborative, organizational, acoustic, and semantic encodings are the most intensively
used.
 These learning experiences have been known to trigger a cascade of molecular
events leading to the formation of memories. These changes include the modification of
neural synapses, modification of proteins, creation of new synapses, activation of gene
expression and new protein synthesis.
 These cells also organize themselves into groups specializing in different kinds of information
processing. Thus, with new experiences the brain creates more connections and may
‘rewire’. The brain organizes and reorganizes itself in response to one's experiences,
creating new memories prompted by experience, education, or training.
TYPE
S
By information type
 Topographic memory involves the ability to orient oneself in space, to recognize
and follow an itinerary( a route), or to recognize familiar places.
 Flashbulb memories are clear episodic memories of unique and highly emotional
events.
Anderson (1976) divides long-term memory into:
 Declarative (explicit) memories
 Procedural (implicit) memories
Memory
Types

 Declarative memory requires conscious recall, in that some conscious process

call back the information. It is sometimes called explicit memory, since it consists of
must
information that is explicitly stored and retrieved.
 Sub-divided into
 Semantic memory, concerning principles and facts taken independent of context;
Semantic memory allows the encoding of abstract knowledge about the world.
 Episodic memory, concerning information specific to a particular context, such as
a time and place. It is used for personal memories, such as the sensations, emotions, and
personal associations of a particular place or time.
 Autobiographical memory - memory for particular events within one's
own life - is generally viewed as either equivalent to, or a subset of, episodic
memory.
 Visual memory is part of memory preserving some characteristics of our senses
pertaining to visual experience. One is able to place in memory information that
resembles objects, places, animals or people in sort of a mental image.
Types

Procedural
 In contrast, procedural memory (or implicit memory) is not based on the
conscious recall of information, but on implicit learning. It can best be summarized
as remember how to do something.
 Procedural memory involved in motor learning depends on
the cerebellum and basal ganglia.
Types

By temporal direction
 Another major way to distinguish different memory functions is whether the
content to be remembered is in the past, retrospective memory, or in the
future, prospective memory.
Memory- Disorders

 Forgetfulness
 Amnesia Amnesic patients are described as those who have suffered damage to
their medial temporal lobe, resulting in the impairment of explicit recollection of
everyday facts and events.
 Anterograde
 Retrograde
 Aging and memory
 Emotional memory
Improving memory

 Physical exercise
 Get your Sleep.
 Make time for friends
 Keep stress in check
 Brain-boosting diet.
 Identify and treat health problems.
 Tips to improve memory

1. Repeat
One of the golden rules of learning and memory is repeat, repeat, repeat. The brain also responds to novelty, so repeating
something in a different way or at a different time will make the most of the novelty effect and allow you to build stronger
memories.
2. Organize
A day planner or smart phone calendar can help you keep track of appointments and activities and can also serve as a journal in
which you write anything that you would like to remember. Writing down and organizing information reinforces learning.
3. Visualize
Learning faces and names is a particularly hard task for most people. In addition to repeating a person’s name, you can also
associate the name with an image. Visualization strengthens the association you are making between the face and the name.
4. Cue
When you are having difficulty recalling a particular word or fact, you can cue yourself by giving related details or “talking around”
the word, name, or fact.
5. Group
When you’re trying to remember a long list of items, it can help to group the items in sets of three to five, just as you would to
remember a phone number.
Thinking

 Expanding Dooyeweerd's ideas, Roy Clouser, highlighted three types of thinking

that are involved in all our ways of functioning in the aspects:
 Everyday thinking (and acting, living) - Practice: Intervening in real-life situations;
Doing.
 Lower abstraction - Understanding situations; reflecting on situations, problems,
etc. Decision support.
 Higher abstraction - scientific or theoretical thinking - scientific or theoretical
thinking.
Cognition

 Cognition is "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding

through thought, experience, and the senses.

 Aristotle focused on cognitive areas pertaining to memory, perception, and mental imagery.

 It encompasses processes such as knowledge, attention, memory and working

memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and "computation", problem solving and
decision making, comprehension and production of language, etc. Human cognition is
conscious and unconscious, concrete or abstract, as well as intuitive (like knowledge of
a language) and conceptual (like a model of a language).
Cognition

 Thomas Aquinas, who divided the study of

behavior into two broad categories: cognitive (how
we know the world), and affective (how we
understand the world via feelings and emotions).
 Consequently, this description tends to apply to
processes such as memory, association, concept
formation, pattern recognition, language, attention,
perception, action, problem solving and mental
imagery.
Jean Piaget’s theory on cognitive
development
15th August 2020
Lecture 8
Cognitive Process

 Concept Reasoning
 Decision making
 Problem solving
Problem solving strategies

 Situation or problem
 Data collection
 Evaluation of causes
 Solution & implementation
 Evaluation of process
 Standardization
Decision Making

 Situation
 Alternatives/options
 Consequences of alternates
 Emotional values
 Communication

Communication is simply the act of transferring information from one place, person or group
to another.
Types of Communication
1. Verbal
2. Non verbal
3. Written
4. Visual
 Factors which affects Non verbal
communication

Culture, age, gender and geographic location are critical. Gestures may mean very
different things in different regions.
Put things into context. E.g If someone has their arms crossed it may just mean they are
chilly.
Characteristics of good
communicator
The End