COGS101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Dyslexia, Synesthesia, Temporal Lobe
2 Jun 2018
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Week 1 - Delusions and Disorders of the Brain:
Disorders
• Abnormal performance level e.g. dyslexia = low performance on reading
• Unusual perceptual experience e.g. synaesthesia = involves individuals seeing
words or letters in particular colours
• Acquired Disorders
→
a cognitive abnormality in someone who acquired
particular skills normally but then lost that ability after brain damage/injury
• Developmental Disorders
→
a cognitive abnormality in someone (often
children) who never acquired a particular skill normally in the first place
Cognitive Approach to Understanding Disorders
• Levels of Description:
o Biological → e.g. genetic abnormality, damage to left temporal lobe
o Cognitive → theoretical cognitive process e.g. impairment in memory,
language ability, belief evaluation
o Behavioural → observable e.g. poor word reading, unable to produce
long sentences, poor performance on false belief tasks
• Cognitive level provides an important explanatory link between brain
(biological level) and behaviour (level)
• Explains what the brain is trying to achieve in functional terms, not structural
Cognitive Models
• The best cognitive theories are represented as explicit models, which specify
the sequence of processes involved in performing some cognitive operation
• Studying cognitive disorders – through group studies and case studies
o Experimental studies, longitudinal studies, training studies
• Aims of cognitive research:
o Use models of normal cognitive functioning to better understand and
explain patterns of cognitive abnormality
▪ Models → abnormal behaviour
o Use data from studies of people with abnormal cognitive ability to
test, extend or develop theories about normal cognitive processing
▪ Abnormal behaviour → models
o Use theories and models of cognitive processes to guide assessment
and diagnosis and the development of evaluation and intervention
programs
▪ Models → abnormal behaviour
Case Examples:
• Acquired Phonological Dyslexia
o Dyslexia with someone who has had a brain injury (acquired)
o Models of reading propose separate ‘sounding out’ and ‘whole word
recognition’ processes
o Thus expected to see cases of selective impairment
o Led to identification of cases such as “Clive”
▪ Clive’s reading of words compared to nonsense words
▪ Clive has problems with the sounding out process
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