2018-2019
Behaviour & Environment
Lectures & Workgroups
Made by Maha Abdallah
1
, 2018-2019
Week 1 3
Lecture: thinking before doing impulsive and reflective
processes that guide behaviour 3
Week 2 10
Video Lecture 10
Week 3 17
Lecture: Goals and Implementation Intentions: How to Get
Things Done 17
Workgroup 3 25
Week 4 26
Video Lecture 26
Workgroup 4: Cognition, Attitude and Motivation 32
Week 5 32
Lecture: Reinforcers and incentives 32
Video lecture 38
2
, 2018-2019
Week 1
Lecture: thinking before doing
impulsive and reflective processes that
guide behaviour
Mental Representations
• Refers to
• e.g categories, exemplars, symbols etc
• Mental content or mental operation refers to something in the world.
• The function of mental representations is to filter what we see in the
world. This can happen through the following processes:
• Classification
• Additional attributes
• Steering attention and interpretation
• Communication
• Thinking
Activation of mental representations
• Accessibility can be defined as the activation potential of available
knowledge. This is measurable with the Lexical decision task.
• Accessible concepts:
• Are retrieved easily from memory
• Have a stronger influence on attention, judgement and behaviour
• Often, the activation of mental representations is clear, while it might
be blurry at other times.
3
, 2018-2019
• Example: woman can be categorized on the basis of gender and
ethnicity. The context in which the woman is presented has an
influence; if the woman is presented applying makeup she is
categorized as woman. If she is presented with chopsticks she is
categorized as Chinese.
• Availability: refers to the availability in memory by which the concept
can be potentially used in information processing, right now.
• Accessibility: refers to the ‘readiness' of the concept to be used for
information processing at a specific.
Models of mental representations
• Associative network models
• Schemas
• Connectionist models
• Multiple format models
• Embodied cognition models
Associative network models
• Spreading activation: When one node gets activated, associated
nodes in the associative network will also be activated.
• Activation is facilitated
via pathways that
represent strong
associations
• Whenever a node is
sufficiently triggered this
node will be activated
and so on
4
Behaviour & Environment
Lectures & Workgroups
Made by Maha Abdallah
1
, 2018-2019
Week 1 3
Lecture: thinking before doing impulsive and reflective
processes that guide behaviour 3
Week 2 10
Video Lecture 10
Week 3 17
Lecture: Goals and Implementation Intentions: How to Get
Things Done 17
Workgroup 3 25
Week 4 26
Video Lecture 26
Workgroup 4: Cognition, Attitude and Motivation 32
Week 5 32
Lecture: Reinforcers and incentives 32
Video lecture 38
2
, 2018-2019
Week 1
Lecture: thinking before doing
impulsive and reflective processes that
guide behaviour
Mental Representations
• Refers to
• e.g categories, exemplars, symbols etc
• Mental content or mental operation refers to something in the world.
• The function of mental representations is to filter what we see in the
world. This can happen through the following processes:
• Classification
• Additional attributes
• Steering attention and interpretation
• Communication
• Thinking
Activation of mental representations
• Accessibility can be defined as the activation potential of available
knowledge. This is measurable with the Lexical decision task.
• Accessible concepts:
• Are retrieved easily from memory
• Have a stronger influence on attention, judgement and behaviour
• Often, the activation of mental representations is clear, while it might
be blurry at other times.
3
, 2018-2019
• Example: woman can be categorized on the basis of gender and
ethnicity. The context in which the woman is presented has an
influence; if the woman is presented applying makeup she is
categorized as woman. If she is presented with chopsticks she is
categorized as Chinese.
• Availability: refers to the availability in memory by which the concept
can be potentially used in information processing, right now.
• Accessibility: refers to the ‘readiness' of the concept to be used for
information processing at a specific.
Models of mental representations
• Associative network models
• Schemas
• Connectionist models
• Multiple format models
• Embodied cognition models
Associative network models
• Spreading activation: When one node gets activated, associated
nodes in the associative network will also be activated.
• Activation is facilitated
via pathways that
represent strong
associations
• Whenever a node is
sufficiently triggered this
node will be activated
and so on
4
