11 Psychophysiology of perception, attention, memory, speech, thinking.

• The problem of attention in psychophysiology
• Types of attention
• Involuntary attention and approximate reflex
• Arbitrary attention
• Activation mechanisms
• Indicative research activities

The problem of attention has become one of the central ones in the study of the psycho-physiological mechanisms of cognitive (cognitive) processes, which begin with perception, and attention contributes to the selection of the most significant information.
Attention - the process and the state of setting the subject to the perception of priority information and the performance of the tasks.
Psychologists distinguish three types of attention: involuntary, voluntary and post-voluntary.
Involuntary attention refers to the phenomenon of switching attention to a stimulus that has not previously attracted it. The basis of this type of attention is an indicative reflex (PR) or indicative reaction.
An approximate reaction is a complex of motor reactions (turning of the head, eyes) to the unexpected appearance of a new stimulus. The PR automatically includes voluntary attention and provides further controlled processing of the stimulus.
PR was opened by I.P. Pavlov and he called him the reflex “What is it?”.
Psychophysiology of memory
Memory
Structural memory organization
Types of memory
Temporal memory organization, engram
Declarative and procedural memory
Amnesia
Memory is one of the basic properties of the nervous system, expressed in the ability for a long time to store information about the events of the external world and the reactions of the body, repeatedly display this information in the area of ​​consciousness and behavior. Learning and memory are two sides of the same process. When studying learning, first of all, the mechanism of acquiring knowledge is studied, while studying memory, the mechanism of storing and using this knowledge.

The psychologist Carl Lashley, a pioneer in the field of experimental study of the brain and behavior, tried to answer the question of the spatial organization of memory in the brain. He taught animals how to solve a specific problem, and then, one after another, removed various parts of the cerebral cortex in search of a place to store traces of memory. However, it was not possible to find that specific place where the engram is stored - the memory trace formed during the learning process. Further research has shown that many areas and structures of the brain other than the cortex are important for learning and memory. It also turned out that the traces of memory and in the cortex are widely scattered and repeatedly duplicated.

In humans, there are at least three different types of memory: the “direct imprint” of sensory information is iconic memory, short-term and long-term memory. Depending on receptors that perceive irritations, they emit visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory and other “memories”.

TOUCH (EXTREME, Instant, iconic) MEMORY

Psychophysiology of speech
Speech The first and second signal systems
The interaction of the first and second signal systems
Basic speech functions
Aphasia. Organization of speech centers in the cortex
Hemispheric asymmetry and speech
The behavior of animals and humans is so varied that a person, apparently, must have additional neurophysiological mechanisms that determine the characteristics of his behavior. The main thing that distinguishes us from animals is human speech. Speech is a historically established form of communication between people using sound and visual signs.
To distinguish the higher nervous activity of animals and humans, I.P. Pavlov introduced the concepts of the first and second signaling systems expressing various ways of mental reflection of reality.
The first signaling system is a system of concrete, sensually immediate images of reality, fixed by the brain of man and animals, the only signaling system in animals and the first in humans provide a reflection of reality in the form of immediate sensory images. This is “what we have in ourselves as impression, sensation and representation from the surrounding external environment, both common to ours and our social, excluding the word that is heard and seen”.
The specific features of the higher nervous activity of a person are represented by the second signal system inherent only to man by the system of generalized reflection of reality in the form of concepts whose content is recorded in words, images, works of art, which arose as a result of the development of speech as a means of communication between people in the labor process. “The word made us human,” wrote I.P. Pavlov. The development of speech led to the emergence of language as a new system for displaying the world. The second signaling system is a new signaling principle. It made possible the distraction and generalization of a huge number of signals of the first signal system, and operates with significant formations (“signal signals”). The second signal system reality in a generalized and symbolic form. The central place in the second signaling system is occupied by speech activity, or speech-thought processes. A word denoting an object is not the result of a simple “word-object” type of association.
Psychophysiology of thinking
General idea of ​​thinking
Thinking and speaking
Structure of the thinking process
Artistic, mental, and average types by I.P. Pavlov
Types of intelligence by G. Eyzenku
Thinking is a cognitive (cognitive) activity in which the subject operates with various types of generalizations, including images, concepts and categories.
The process of thinking is associated with the formation of judgments as a result of the association of concepts, problem solving, abstract creativity, etc. Therefore, there are different types of thinking: visual-effective, visual-figurative, verbal-logical, as well as intuitive, creative, theoretical and practical, realistic and autistic (associated with avoiding reality into internal experiences), involuntary and arbitrary, depending on the control from the side of consciousness. This separation reflects the long process of development of thinking in the course of natural and social evolution, as well as throughout human life.
Based on the features in the ratio of the work of the first and second signal systems I.P. Pavlov proposed a classification of specifically human types of higher nervous activity, highlighting the artistic, mental, and average types. In this approach, the emphasis is on the ratio of verbal (related to speech) and non-verbal intelligence. To establish membership in different types of methods used special testing.
The artistic type is an individual with a relative predominance of the first signaling system, who perceives the world around him specifically, figuratively, without a tendency to analyze.
The mental type is an individual who has a relative predominance of the second signaling system, which perceives the world abstractly, with a tendency to analyze and synthesize, to generalize the signals of the external environment.
The middle type is characterized by the balance of the functions of the two signaling systems.
Such differentiation is possible primarily due to the specialization in the work of the left and right hemispheres of the brain and the dominance of one of them in the process of joint activity.