Cog Psych Final Exam/Exam #3 (Chps 8-10 & 3)

What areas of the brain are specifically related to language abilities? What are they each responsible for?

- Broca's area: has functions linked to speech production and is in the inferior frontal gyrus, typically in the brain's left hemisphere; is primarily in the frontal lobe which contains the primary motor cortex -----> damage here leads to broca's aphasia which is a language disorder attributed to damage in the frontal lobe of the brain that is sometimes referred to as expressive aphasia because patients speak in halting, ungrammatical language and the production of speech is altered; these individuals have an idea of what they want to say but have trouble saying and writing it - Wernicke's area: is important for language development and is also in the brain's left hemisphere, near the juncture of the temporal and parietal lobes ----> damage here leads to wernicke's aphasia which is a language disorder attributed to damage in the temporal lobe of the brain that is sometimes referred to as receptive aphasia because speech is more fluent and grammatical but doesn't convey much semantic content; production of semantic content is altered; may also have issues with understanding others and may not understand that what they say does not make sense to other people, possibly because what they are saying makes sense to them

Discuss the neurological evidence for visual imagery.

- Roland and Friberg (1985) had Ps complete three tasks while in PET scan (measure cerebral blood flow by having Ps ingest radioactive substance and measure where the radioactive substance goes because that is how you see where the blood flow goes) ---> tasks included (1) mental arithmetic, (2) memory scanning of a musical jingle, and (3) visually imaging through one's neighborhood ---> activation in the visual cortex (occipital lobe) increase only when complete the third task which involved visually imaging through one's neighborhood - Goldenberg, Podreka, Steiner, & Willmes (1987): Ps instructed to visualize words showed increase occipital activation (regional cerebral blood flow) in addition to increase memory performance - Kounios & Holcomb (1994): differential event related potential (stat for EEG) activation in the brain when participants learned either abstract (semantic, hard to imagine; ex: love, justice) or high imagery words (easy to imagine; ex: dog, desk); activation was increased in occipital lobe for high imagery words

How can the implications of sentences be misused, or result in errors? Discuss the research of Loftus & Palmer (1974) and Harris (1977, 1978).

- The implications can lead to errors when things are primed, spreading activation occurs and as we activate concepts, we may make connections that are not there - Loftus and Palmer (1974): studied the leading question effect which can cause witnesses to remember episodes differently ----> Ps told to estimate the speed of cars when they: smashed, bumped, collided, hit, contacted ----> the more severe the adjective that is used the greater the estimated speed, as well as an increased likelihood of saying they had seen broken glass at the scene (there was no broken glass at the scene) - Harris (1978): read courtroom transcript of courtroom testimony; 64% of the statements that had been implied were endorsed as "true" by participants; these results held up when participants were warned with instructions to ignore such statements - Harris (1977): participants listened to 20 fake commercials with some asserted claims and some implied claims; folks still had trouble ignoring implied claims (things that were implied were endorsed as a true statement) despite instructions that served as a warning

What are exchange errors? What are the different types? How do they give us evidence for the hierarchical nature of language?

- an error in which two linguistic units are substituted for each other during sentence production; errors are usually made within category (i.e., at the same hierarchical level - phoneme w/ phoneme, word w/ word, etc.) - word exchange: two words are substituted with each other (ex: I have to fill up my gas with car) - morpheme exchange: two morphemes are substituted for each other (ex: slicely thinned instead of thinly sliced) - phoneme exchange: two phonemes are substituted for each other (ex: fleaky squoor instead of squeaky floor) - this provides evidence for the hierarchical nature of language because these errors typically happen at the same level

What is a garden path sentence?

- are sentence that begins by suggesting one interpretation only to present another interpretation with later parts - the sentence seems to be leading us down one path, but at some point in the sentence we realize that we were misinterpreting it - examples: "the secretary applauded for his efforts was soon promoted"; "fat people eat accumulates"; "the horse raced past the barn fell"; "because he ran the second mile went quickly" -----> these sentences need commas or another word to be added for clarity - background knowledge also plays a part in whether a sentence will be a garden path sentence ----> more likely to be a garden path sentence: the detectives examined by the reporter revealed the truth about the robbery ----> less likely to create a garden path sentence: the evidence examined by the reporter revealed the truth about the robbery

What is phonology? What is the word superiority effect and how does it relate to phonology? What is coarticulation? What is the McGurk effect?

- are the rules that govern how sounds can be combined within that language - word superiority effect is the behavioral tendency to be faster and more accurate in recognizing letters when they are within a word; relates to phonology because a word's meaning helps us perceive the letters of a words and hear the phoneme of the word - coarticulation: the blending of phonemes at word boundaries (ex: my name is Jack Arnal vs my name is Noam Chomsky - the S is slightly different because your mouth has to move different ly for the "J" vs the "N"); helps make speech production more efficient - McGurk effect: people hear different sounds when they attend to the visual vs auditory information when these two stimuli do not match each other; this is because speech perception is based on both visual and auditory info, so when they do not match, phonemes may be perceived incorrectly (ex: simultaneous visual presentation of the syllable /ba/ and auditory presentation of the syllable /ga/ will result in a perception of the syllable /da/)

What are dual process models? Explain system 1 and system 2. When do we use each? Provide empirical support.

- are two systems of thinking - system (type) 1: refers to thinking that is fast, automatic, and uses heuristics; considered "fast thinking" - system (type) 2: refers to thinking that is slower, effortful, and more likely to be correct; considered "slow thinking" - whether system 1 or 2 is used depends on the context of the decision: ---> how much time is available for the decision (less time = more likely to use system 1 thinking) ---> how much attention and working memory are available ---> how the problem is presented: what format are the data in? are statistical concepts primed? ---> emphasizing chance cues statistic reasoning ---> background knowledge increases the likelihood that participants will pay attention to base rates - training can influence the likelihood of reasoning with system 2: ---> ex: participants can be trained that large samples of data are more reliable than small samples ---> taking a statistics class also improves reasoning when sample size is important - ex's: ---> hospital example: people ignore sample size because they are primed with stats in both the question and answer; however, if primed with sample size, they are more likely to choose the correct answer) ---> when predicting whether a particular student will pass an exam, participants do pay attention to the base-rate info that only 30% of students pass the exam - Nisbett et al., 1983 ---> two groups: Ps told either that (1) someone evaluated a restaurant bases on just one meal vs (2) someone picked their meal by blindly dropping the pencil on the menu ---> group 1 saw no issues basing it off one meal but group 2 were cautious as they said that if it had landed on another part of the menu, they may have different views of the restaurant (b/c they were cued with more info)

What are the different classifications of problems (from the notes and from the book)? Give examples.

- arrangement: a problem that requires rearranging it parts to satisfy criterion (ex: anagrams which are scrambled words that you have to unscramble) - inducing structure: a problem that requires finding a pattern among a fixed set of relations (ex: given the sequence 1,2,8,3,4,6,5,6... and asked what the next number in the sequence is which would be 4 since pattern is sequential then 8-2, then sequential then 6-2 and so forth) - transformation: a problem that requires changing the initial state through a sequence of operations until it matches the goal state (ex: the orcs and hobbits problem or the missionaries and cannibals problem) - deduction problems: the solver must determine whether a conclusion fits given premises or conditions (ex: all professors are caring people and all caring people are good, it is valid conclusion based on this rule that all professors are good) - divergent problems: problems that require a solver to generate as many solution as possible to a given problem (being able to come up with numerous uses of a brick, including being able to overcome the "typical" uses)

What is base-rate information? What did Kahneman & Tversky (1973) find?

- base rate information: info about the likelihood of an event; what people ignore that causes confirmation bias in illusory covariation - diagnostic information: does an individual case belong to a category? - Kahneman & Tversky (1973): ---> were given base rate information (ex: 70 lawyers and 30 engineers) and had to determine possibility that the people described in the diagnostic information (ex for engineering: likes carpentry, sailing, math puzzles, dislikes politics) was a lawyer or engineer ---> results indicated that when given the base-rate with no diagnostic info was given the base rate is not neglected; however, if they were given the base-rate and diagnostic info they only use the diagnostic info and the base rate is neglected

What are the two approaches to studying problem solving that we discussed? How are they the same? How are they different?

- behaviorist approach: problem solving as associative learning (classical and operant conditioning) ---> relies on the fact that any behavior that is followed by a positive consequence will increase the behavior - cognitive approach: solving information-processing ---> problem solving can be thought of as a search, as if you were navigating a maze (the search is mental) ---> involves the initial state (the knowledge and resources you have at the outset, includes experiences and memories), goal state (the state you are working toward), operators (available tools or actions), and path constraints (limits that rule out some operations - heuristics: used to help when the problem space is too vast; often used when you need to think ahead; allows you narrow the problem space to be more efficient but with the possibility of occasional errors - all have an end goal and steps to get there

Describe the availability and representativeness heuristic. Use examples not in the lecture or text. Describe how they work and what cognitive process are employed.

- both cases of attribute substitution - availability heuristic: the ease with which examples come to mind is an index of frequency or likelihood ---> example for class: people estimate that there are more words that start with "R" because they are easier to come to mind, but in reality there are more words that start with "R" in the third position ---> other example: thinking that I take out the trash more than my suitemates because I can easily think of times I did it, but not them doing it ---> relying on availability as a substitute for frequency - representativeness heuristic: people classify something according to how similar it is to a typical case ( member --> prototype ---> category) ---> example: people asking girls with sports gear on to name one player because girls are stereotypically not educated on sports ---> relying on resemblance as a substitute for probability

In what ways can cognitive psychology be applied to the real world? Use examples not discussed in class or in the text.

- can help to improve study habits such as applying the idea of state-dependent memory: memory will be best when the state in which you are tested in matches the state in which you learn the information; I applied this to my own life since I take stimulant medication for my ADHD, therefore, my memory will be best when I study during times when my medicine is at its peak given that this is when I take my exams - change blindness is an inability to detect changes in scenes which can be applied to driving safety in the sense that looking away from the road to switch a song, send a text, grab food or drink, etc. can cause accidents because when people return their eyes to the road they may not notice that the light changed from green to red and run the red light which then results in a car crash

What are chronometric studies? Include specific empirical examples.

- chronometric studies: time measuring studies;relies on the assumptions that the image is a spatial representation - like seeing the object, some processes used to analyze visual pattens in the world used to analyze images, visual scanning involves shifting of attention across visual display or image, and if all of these things are true it should take time to "scan" a visual image - Kosslyn et al. (1978): had Ps memorize a map and after the map was taken away they had to scan from one landmark to another on the imagined map; results were that imagined distance corresponds to real distance, and there is a strong positive correlation: the farther the images were in the map, the longer it took them to mentally scan -Kosslyn (1973): found another positive correlation between reaction time and distance when Ps were asked to mentally scan parts of the boat -Kosslyn (1975): people asked to imagine either an elephant next to a rabbit or a fly next to a rabbit and where then asked true/false questions about the rabbit and people were faster when answering questions when picturing rabbit next to fly vs rabbit next to elephant; however, the pattern reversed when they were asked to imagine a normal size rabbit next to a giant fly or tiny elephant

What is the concrete-abstract dimension? What is dual coding theory? Include discussion of Paivio's findings.

- concrete-abstract dimension: the extent to which a concept can b represented as a picture (ex: a spider is concrete because it is easy to create a mental image to represent it, but honesty is abstract because it is hard to create a mental image to represent it - Paivio's findings: ---> four conditions: high imagery study - high imagery response (H-H), high imagery study - low imagery response (H-L), low imagery study - high imagery response (L-H), low imagery study - low imagery response (L-L) ---> findings were that is was easier to remember words that are words that can be easily created with a mental image ---> performance for mean total recall from best to worst is H-H, H-L, L-H, L-L - dual coding theory: memory is improved when items can be stored as verbal and visual codes ---> it makes memory better (why people can remember words that are highly imageable) ---> you can forget one without forgetting the other (you have two ways to retrieve the info ) ---> could be restricted to relational processing: because of the stimulus-response pairings there could be some benefit of seeing the stimulus word

What is expected value? Expected utility? Subjective expected utility?

- expected value: the average value, as determined by combining the value of events with their probability that the event will happen - expected utility: subjective values as determined by the decision makers; what the outcome is actually worth to the individual - subjective expected utility: a variation of expected value that uses utilities and subjective probabilities instead of values and probabilities

What factors affect our ability to understand words? What types of information do we typically know for each words?

- factors that affect our ability to understand words include word frequency, context effects, and lexical ambiguity ---> word frequency: relative usage of a word in a particular language; this refers to both being more frequent in the language or more frequently for you personally; accounts for the word frequency effect which is that we respond more rapidly to high-frequency words ---> context effect: the meaning of the rest of the sentence; accounts for the sentence superiority effect which is faster to detect words in a sentence ---> lexical ambiguity: some words have multiple meanings (ex: bug, truck, table, etc.) - we typically know the phonology (the sequence of phonemes that make up the word), the orthography (how the word is spelled, but that is if the person is literate meaning they can read and write), syntax (how to combine the word with other words), and semantics (what the word means, although sometimes words will have more than 1 meaning) for each word

What is functional fixedness? What is einstellung? Give examples for each.

- functional fixedness: refers to a tendency to be rigid in thinking about an object's function (ex: failing to use a box of matches as shelves or pliers as a weight) - einstellung: is the problem set; beliefs, habits, or strategies used to solve a problem; some cognitive idea that get people stuck on the approach to solve the problem; is like a heuristic in that it helps to reduce options, but may also eliminate possible solutions (ex: the water jug problem; getting stuck on the B-2A-C way of solving the problem even if there was a way you could have gotten there faster)

Dicuss the findings of Swinny & Hakes (1976)

- goal of the study was to determine the extent to which we are processing the various meanings - 3 conditions: ----> ambiguous condition: rumor had it that, for years, the government building had been plagued with problems. the man was not surprised when he found several bugs in the corner of the room ----> unambiguous condition: sentences were presented with insects replacing bugs ----> disambiguous: sentences were presented with spiders, roaches, and other bugs replacing bugs - 2 tasks to complete: (1) Ps had to make a decision as to if the 1st and 2nd sentences are related and (2) had to press a space button when they heard a particular phoneme (phoneme was "cah" which can be heard in corner) - results: the time to press the key differed in reaction for each of the three conditions which indicates that initially we are processing all meanings of bugs and it takes time to process everything together and eliminate the competing meanings; for the unambiguous & disambigious condition there is less interference which equals faster reaction time - it is important to note that all meanings are primed initially, but after a short delay (matter of milliseconds) only appropriate meanings are primed; has to do with spreading activation occurring due to concepts in the sentence

Attribution substitution

- ideally we would base judgements on a frequency estimate (how often is something going to approximately happen), but this is a strategy used when we do not have easy access to a desired piece of information - there are a lot of way to this, but many of them involve biases

What is the nature of visual imagery taken from LTM? What are image files? What did Carmichael, Hogan & Walters (1932) find? How are images stored in LTM?

- image files: recipes or instructions for how to construct an active mental image or shape; may represent visual information in terms of propositions, or verbal labels - like with other forms of LTM, you reconstruct the image as you retrieve it - Carmichael, Hogan, & Walters (1932) found that interpretation changes the reconstruction of the image because when participants were asked to identify the figure, depending on what it was labeled as changed how the Ps remembered it (see picture) - images are stored in LTM in a piecemeal fashion and the representation of the image frame must be activated ----> elaboration occurs on this frame: image with more parts take longer to create, images with more detail take longer to create, and imagers have some some control over the level of detail or number of parts they included in their image (ex: if a question about a mental image requires a lot of detail it will take longer to respond to image - think about having to "zoom" in) ---> memory for pictures illustrate ways in which LTM visual memory reflect general principles of memory such as primacy and recency, encoding specificity, schemata or generic knowledge, spreading activation and priming, familiarity and source memory, and memory errors ---> schematic retrieval: Ps fail to notice difference between previously seen and new pictures if both were consistent with a schema because it makes sense for those things to be there, but pictures that contained violations of a schema were readily noticed

Are our images perfect? What is some evidence that they aren't? Include discussions of the finding of Nickerson & Adams (1979) and Intraub & Richardson (1989).

- images are not perfect because even when we form mental images, they are not as detailed as actual perception and they are also subject to errors - Intraub & Richardson (1989) ---> showed participants a zoomed in picture of a trash can with a fence (see picture) and even though the top of the fence and trash cans were cutoff, the whole thing is included when you re-draw it ---> demonstrate boundary extension which is the idea that information is filled in that was not present in the picture ---> has to do with how people understand a picture by means of a perceptual schema and the schema places the picture in a larger context, informing the preceiver about the real would scene only partially revealed by the picture - Nickerson & Adams (1979) ---> asked people to draw all the detail that there are on a common object, a penny ---> although all subjects claimed to be able to form an image of the penny, they were horrible at accurately drawing the details; they were horrible at recognition too ---> the idea is that this is an object we see a lot, but we only take in and remember the details that are important for us in our daily lives (ex: color, size, etc)

Discuss the findings of Bransford, Barclay, and Franks (1972). What do these findings tell us about the implications of sentences?

- individual consider and are influenced by the implications of sentences - Bransford, Barclay, and Franks (1972) ---> wanted to know if tweaking sentence affected memory ---> group 1 studied the sentence "three turtles rested on a floating log, and a fish swam beneath" and were asked during a test phase if this was the sentence they saw: "three turtles rested on a floating log, and a fish swam beneath it" ----> group 2 studied the sentence "three turtles rested beside a floating log, and a fish swam beneath them" and were asked during a test phase if this was the sentence they saw: " three turtles rested beside a floating log, and a fish swam beneath it ----> group 1 incorrectly endorsed the test sentence as something they had seen before (can view this as a false memory) because in group 1, changing the word does not change the meaning of the sentence, but in group 2 it does

What are inductive and deductive thinking? How do they relate to confirmation and disconfirmation? What is belief perseverance?

- inductive thinking: from the specific instance to the general theory - deductive thinking: from the general theory to make predictions - ex: Rooster wants to prove his crowing causes the sun to rise ---> confirming evidence & inductive reasoning: every day the rooster crows, and the sun rises; confirmation bias will lead us to focus on this ---> disconfirming evidence & deductive reasoning: once he must not crow and see what happens; should be focusing on this - belief perseverance: is a tendency to continue endorsing a belief even though evidence has completely undermined it; belief is not changed by disconfirming evidence and may even be scrutinized ("well that's an exception")

How is text organized? What is integration? What determines the difficulty of integration?

- information is organized at two levels: ---> global coherence: integration of major ideas that occur throughout a text; what has happened to major characters, progress of goals (ex: the ending of a book connects back to things that were in the book prior) ---> local coherence: integration of ideas within an immediate context in a text; integrate information with what happen right before; does this sentence or couple of sentence make sense? - integration is the connecting of ideas - things that determine the difficulty of integration: 1. whether the ideas were previously given in a different sentence (easier if ideas already mentioned) 2. whether the integration uses ideas that are active in working memory -------> one way to keep information active is to associate it with other information that is continually emphasized in the text -------> mental model: person's mental representation of a situation; maintains information about the main actor (this is the info we prioritize); model changes as you get more info 3. whether the ideas can be directly linked to each other or must be linked using an inference ----> inference: the use of reasoning to establish relations in a text when the relations are not directly stated; we talked about these with hierarchical network models; these slow us down and increase the chance for mistakes

How does context affect sentence comprehension? Discuss Carpenter and Daneman's model. Discuss the findings of Schwanenflugel and Shoben (1985).

- interpretation differs depending on the conversational and extralinguistic context (the physical and social setting which you hear or see sentences - Carpenter and Daneman's model: fixate and encode next word (think about pattern recognition) ---> retrieve concept or concepts that are sufficiently activated by fixated word and prior context (think about the spreading activation model) ---> try to integrate retrieved concept(s) with prior context ---> has integration been successfully completed with the word for at least one concept?: yes - fixate and encode next word and process repeats; no - go to error recovery heuristics - Schwanenflugel and Shoben (1985) showed high constraint sentence that produce high expectations for a particular word (ex: Jack folded his clothes and put them in the _______.) and low constraint sentences that produce an expectation for a broader range of words (ex: Jack went to the store because he needed to pick up some ______. - not much constraint on what would logically fit into the sentence) ----> participants shown these type of sentences and the last word would be blank and than an item would pop up (it would be a letter string) and participants had to respond by making a lexical decision (yes that is a word; no that is not a word) ----> results showed that when letter strings were presented with high constraint sentences Ps were faster to identify words that fit with that sentence and if the word did not fit in the sentence there would be inhibition; low constraint sentences facilitated only words that would fit (a lot of words)

What research methods are used to study visual imagery? What is introspection? What are interference studies? Include an empirical example.

- introspection: "looking within"; involves someone reporting on their own mental contents; self-reports suggest they could inspect mental images as pictures; problem with it is that it has the potential for bias from the experimenter and the participant - interference: is a type of study that relies on the fact that visual imagery and perception rely on the same mental processes so through a dual task method both cannot occur at the same time; can we interfere with a visual task by doing spatial tasks? ----> Segal & Fusella (1970): participants asked to visualize a volcano or imagine a phone ringing and were then given a visual or auditory signal to answer yes or no to; Ps were less accurate when signal and image are the same and they were more likely to wrongly choose that the stimulus matches the image when signal and image are both visual or auditory

What is a heuristic?

- is a mental shortcut - is an experience-based strategy for solving a problem or making a decision that often provides an efficient means of finding an answer but cannot guarantee a correct outcome - are reasonably efficient and accurate, but in order to gain efficiency, we lose accuracy

*** Explain Kintsch's models of comprehension in great detail. What are the assumptions? (part 1 of 2 for essay question) ***

- is the most comprehensive theory of comprehension - Assumptions: 1. there are two inputs, *both of which are necessary for comprehension* ---> reader: different readers are going to interpret text differently because the knowledge and goals of the reader influence how the reader determines what is relevant and makes inferences ---> text: represented in the model as propositions (meaningful idea that typically consists of several words) which involves breaking the text down (parsing the text) 2. only a few propositions (only about 2-3; not the 7 +/- 2 because it is more complex info) can be kept active in STM at a time (since STM has a limited) ----> propositions pertaining to goals of the actors are likely to be selected ----> as you read, you try to connect new propositions to the old ones ----> if the only propositions are not in STM, you have to search LTM - reinstatement search: the search of LTM to place words in STM where they can be used to integrate a text; if you find the info you reinstate it into STM to make connections; if not you may need to make an inference which is reasonable but it takes time and it risks being incorrect - major theme of the model is that incoming information can be understood more easily when it can be integrated with information that the reader has already encountered; easiest when the information is still in STM

What is illusory covariation (correlation)? How does illusory correlation relate to confirmation bias?

- is when people make connections between variables that have no relation to each other; a perceived pattern such that one variable predicts another - confirmation bias: more responsive to evidence that confirms one's belief, while ignoring/coming up with alternative explanations for disconfirming date - biased attention + biased memory interact with each other to create a feedback loop - ex: a study of Rorschach inkblots found that even when fictitious patients and fictitious responses were randomly paired, people believed they had found patterns (everything was random so there are no patterns to be seen, but being led to believe there is a pattern often leads to people finding patterns)

Explain the Wason four-card task. What did it show? What did Griggs & Cox (1982) find? Johnson-Laird, Lagrenzi, & Legrenzi (1972)?

- it is an experimental procedure, commonly used to study reasoning, in which a person is presented with four cards with certain information on either side of the card; the person is also given a rule that may describe the cards, and the person's task is to decide which card must be turned over to find out if the rule describes the cards or not - given the cards in the picture and the rule "if a card has a vowel on one side, then it must have an even number of the other side" only 4% of people flip over the correct card to test the rule; poor performance is believed to be due to the fact that it is abstract material - Griggs & Cox (1982): ---> given the rule if a person drinks beer, the person must be 18+ years old and asked which cards they would have to turn over to to test the rule ---> cards: drinking a beer, 22 years of age, drinking coke, 16 years of age ---> 73% of correctly selected the card drinking a beer and 16 years of age ---> the reason that there is better performance is there is context as 97% of Ps knew someone who violated the rule and 73% of Ps had reported violating the rule - Johnson-Laird, Lagrenzi, & Legrenzi (1972) ---> given the rule if a letter is sealed, it must have a 50 libra stamp on it and asked which card they would have to turn over to verify this rule ---> people did not do as well as the drinking version because they don't have context like they do in the drinking version

*** What is the contruction-integration model? Explain all aspects, including spreading activation. You should have a good understanding of this model! (part 2 of 2 for essay question) ****

- it is an extension of his original theory in which he proposes that text comprehension occurs in two phases, the construction phase and the integration phase - Construction phase: words of the text are used to construct propositions that activate other words and propositions in LTM ---> works with spreading activation: concepts (nodes) are related together by links and and spreading activation travels from one node to another, via the associative links; assumptions: when a concept is processed, the links are activated and it spreads along the paths of the network, effectiveness decreases as it spreads outward, activation decreases over an intervening activity, and there is a constraint on the amount of activation ---> as you read, you create propositions; we allow these to activate other propositions you already know ---> this phase models the activation of the prior knowledge of the reader ---> during this phase initially all related info is activated ---> when we test in a lexical decision task immediately you are in this phase - Activated meanings are used to comprehend the sentence by selecting appropriate meanings during the integration phase ---> during the phase, meaning of the sentence is assembled by looking at all of the activated words and propositions (which activated ideas go together?) ---> many of the activated words are inappropriate because they do not fit the context; inappropriate ones are eliminated and inhibited

What is psycholinguistics? What is studied in psycholinguistics?

- it is the psychological study of language - studies comprehension (how do we understand?), speech production (how do we produce language including written language), and acquisition (how do we learn language?)

What do I mean by the "universality of language" - what are those characteristics?

- it means that everyone with normal capacities (i.e., those w/o brain damage/issues) develops a language and follows its rules and language is universal across cultures as there isn't a single culture without a language (the form may differ though) - one characteristic is that language development is similar across cultures: babbling at 7 months, a few meaningful words by 1st birthday, first multiword utterance (or gestures, if language is not verbal) occur at about age 2 - second characteristics is that languages are "unique but the same": they have different sounds/words/grammar, but they all have words that are nouns and verbs, and all languages include a system to make things negative, ask questions, and refer to past & present

What is language?

- language is a system of communication using sounds or symbols that enables us to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences - provides a way of arranging a sequence of signals (sounds, letters & written words, physical signals - can be formal like sign language or informal like someone pointing) - provides a wide variety of ways to transmit information from one person to another different kinds of ideas (just the words we say is not the only thing that creates meaning - tone, body language, etc. also does)

What is a lexicon, a phoneme, and a morpheme?

- lexicon: all the words a person understands; your "mental dictionary" - phonemes: shortest segment of speech that, if changed changes the meaning of a word -----> bit - b/i/t: changing the sound to "k" it now means something different ----> subphonemic differences are when they have the same phoneme categories but have slight differences and changing these do not change the meaning (ex: key vs cool) ---> do not have meaning on their own - morphemes: smallest units of language that have a definable meaning or a grammatical function ----> "truck", "table" consist of a single morpheme ----> "bedroom" has two ----> Endings like "s" or "ed" are morphemes (they have grammatical function; "s" is not always a morpheme, it has to have grammatical function to be one) - we put phonemes together to create morphemes

What is memory retrieval explanation? What is the pragmatic reasoning schemata explanation?

- memory retrieval explanation: people solve reasoning problem about familiar situations by retrieving specific example from their memory - pragmatic reasoning schemata: organized knowledge structures used to evaluate practical situations such as seeking permission or fulfilling an obligation; these schemas involve permission, fulfilling an obligation, or cause and effect relations

How does perception affect our mental images? What did Chambers & Reisberg (1985) find?

- mental images are different from pictures as perception is not neutral and goes beyond the information given and interpretations are present in images (your own knowledge comes into play) - images (like percepts - the thing you have seen) are organized depictions - one way to think about mental images is as a package that includes the depiction inteself as well as a perceptual reference frame; for instance, the duck/rabbit image, understood as a duck, is associated with the reference frame from the left - Chambers & Reisberg (1985) found that imagery only preserves one interpretation; the reason for this is that when Ps were presented with images that could be viewed in two ways (the cube - two sides could be the closer sides; animal- could be a rabbit or a duck), they mentally could not switch back and forth between the two interpretations but they can with the image in front of them

What makes human language unique? Why are we able to create unique statements?

- most animal communication lacks the properties that make human language unique, as the structure of language allows us to go beyond calls and signs of animals - we can create unique statements because the structure of language is: ----> 1. hierarchical: because it consists of a series of components that can be combined to form larger units (start with simple component such as sound, then to words, then to sentence, then to paragraph, and then to text) ----> 2. governed by rules: allow us to know the appropriate ways to organize statements; includes grammar which is a set of rules for producing correct sentence in a language (we have this b/c we can't just combine components in a random way; if we break these rule it makes communication not efficient/effective)

What is generativity of words?

- new words can be formed (ex: hardware, software lead to spyware, malware) - words can take on new meanings ("I have been hacked by a hacker" - in another time this would be interpreted differently) - a near infinite number of sentences can be formed by combining a finite set of words

What is the "parser" and what are the possibilities for how it works? What is syntactic ambiguity? Explain what parsing is.

- parser: determines the meaning of the sentence, by determining how words are grouped together; is how we resolve syntactic ambiguity - syntactic ambiguity: when the meaning of the sentence is unclear because the words are the same, there is more than one possible structure, and there is more than one meaning - to a parse a sentence means to determine each word's syntactic role - parsing: the mental grouping of words in a sentence into phrases; breaking down a sentence based on the rules of syntax to determine the meaning/message of a sentence - two possible approaches to how the parser works which is syntax-first or interactionist - semantics/background knowledge plays a role in parsing ----> ex: the sentence "the spy saw the man with the binoculars" has two meanings ----> ex: in the sentence " the bird saw the man with binoculars" is not ambiguous because our knowledge makes it clear that the man has the binoculars (in reality birds do not use binoculars so it has to be the man who has the binoculars) - when parsing people also use minimal attachment (the simplest phrase) and assume active voice

What types of errors do individuals usually make when completing logic tasks? Include examples for each type of error.

- people have trouble when there are negatives and when they are abstract such as a letter - denial of the antecedent: fallacy of declaring a consequent is false if the antecedent is false (ex: if p is false, then q is false, does not stand true in the Joe example in that even if he is not funny - p - he could still be popular for other reasons - q) - affirmation of the consequent: fallacy that involves declaying an antecedent true if the consequent is true (ex: if q is true, then p is true, does not stand when you put in concrete info such as in the police dog example) - confirmation bias: favoring of evidence the supports one's beliefs, expectation, or hypotheses (ex: flipping over a card that confirms the rule when you really need to flip over the card that disconfirms that rule to be able to test if the rule is true)

What is phrase structure grammar? What are phrase structure rules (include examples)? What are descriptive vs prescriptive rules?

- phase structure grammar is a type of generative grammar in which a system of phrase-structure rules is used to describe a sentence in terms of the grammatical structures that generates it form and define it as grammatical - phrase structure rules are constraints that govern what elements must be contained within a phrase and, in many languages, what the sequence of those elements must be ----> noun phrase (NP) + verb phrase (VP) divides a sentence into the "doer" (NP) and info about the doer (VP) ----> determinant + adjective + noun divides up a NP ----> verb + NP divides up VP ----> for sentences where the words of a sentence are compatible with more than one phrase structure, it is considered to be ambiguous - descriptive rules: rules that show typical use of a language -prescriptive rules: rules that suggest how as language should be used - when talking about descriptive and prescriptive rules, it is important to keep in mind that language changes over time so the rule as it is made is not going to always be how its followed

What influences text comprehension? What did Bransford & Johnson (1972) do? What did Anderson & Pichert (1978) do?

- prior knowledge of the reader and the organization of the ideas in the text; context improves comprehension and comprehension improves recall; perspective also aids recall - Bransford & Johnson (1972) gave Ps a story to read about balloons being raised up a few stories to deliver a message; considered the novel context ----> max comprehension rating = 7 ----> max number of ideas recalled = 14 ----> there were 4 different conditions (1) no context, 1 reading, (2) no context, 2 readings, (3) context before, (4) context after ----> the context given was a picture representing what was being explained ---> comprehension ratings (6.1) and ideas realled (8) highest for context before group, all other groups had less than 4 for both comprehension ratings and ideas recalled; indicates that context is an encoding issue not a retrieval issue ----> they did another study where Ps were given a story to read about a procedure which is washing clothes; considered the familiar context because its something people would encounter; result again showed that context before condition scored higher on comprehension ratings and ideas recalled than those with no topic, 1 reading and context after - Anderson & Pichert (1978: had participants read a story and were tested on their memory of the text and were told to read it in the perspective of either a burglar or home buyer ----> memory increase about 10% by switching perspectives, but it also lead to an increase chance of false memories; these results relate to schemas

What is a problem? What are the different types of problems?

- problem: occurs when there is an obstacle between a present state and a goal state - well defined problem: usually have a correct answer, with certain procedures that, when followed, lead to a solution (ex: a math problem; this is the type we focus on in class) - ill defined problem: do not necessarily have one "correct answer, the path to their solution is often unclear (ex: relationship conflict) - routine problems: are familiar, such that the solutions are known - nonroutine problems: are more difficult because they are not familiar and the solution is not apparent; the given state and goal state are clear, but the way to achieve the goal is not

What are the biases associated with the representativeness and availability heuristics heuristic?

- psychological bias: psychological factors affect our decision making - judging probability on similarity biases us to ignore other information that may be more objective or accurate such as base rate frequencies or prior probabilities (how often an event or situation actually occurs) - law of sample size: smaller samples sizes produce more variance (people fail to apply this in solving problems) - conjunction fallacy: the false assumption that a combination of conditions is more likely than either condition by itself - gambler's fallacy: the faulty reasoning that past events in a sequence affect the likelihood of future events - hot hand effect: the perception of being "on a roll" - anchoring: refers to how different starting points (initial values) produce different estimates or decisions; people adjust their evaluations of things by means of certain reference points called end-anchors - decoy effect: the introduction of a more or less expensive item provides an anchor to stimulate the sales of the target item - deliberation without attention effect: you have consciously made a decision, but unconscious processes helped you reach it - hindsight bias: when we look at a situation retrospectively, we believe we can see all the signs and event leading up to a certain outcome - less is more effects: refers to situations where to much info, computation, or time devoted to a problem may lead to less accurate, sensible, or satisfying decisions - zero price effect: zero is a source of irrational excitement - status quo bias: preference for current state of affairs - endowment effect: tendency to overvalue what one has in hand

What is reality monitoring? What is source monitoring? How do these relate to the findings of Garry, Manning, Loftus, & Sherman (1996) and the phenomenon of imagination inflation?

- reality monitoring: discriminating between actual and imagined events; is really a type of source monitoring; ex: did that actually happen or did I dream that? - source monitoring: discriminating between the original source of a memory - imagination inflation: is a way of measuring reality monitoring; is the phenomenon that there is the increased likelihood that a person will judge an event as having actually occurred (ex: during childhood) when they imagine the event before making such a judgement - Garry, Manning, Loftus & Sherman (1996) ---> studying imagination inflation ---> Ps were asked to imagine event ---> Ps compared to those who did not imagine events (although they may have had this happen) ---> Those who imagined event had increased confidence that the event had occurred (see picture for graph of results) ---> This represents reality monitoring in the sense that is shows that people are not good at differentiating between imagined and real events

What are risky decisions? When will individuals tend to be risk seeking? Risk aversive? Include empirical examples. What is a reason-based choice?

- risky decision are choices that are complicated with uncertainty and there is the probability of a negative outcome, such as losing something of value - people tend to be risk seeking when faced with a sure loss; people would rather take the chance of losing big than to lose a smaller amount for certain - people tend to be risk averse when contemplating potential gains; people would rather a sure gain to the mere possibility of a larger gain - empirical examples: Arke & Blummer (1985) ---> told participants they had bought $100 ski trip to Michigan and $50 ski trip to Wisconsin (believe they will enjoy this one more) and had to choice one because they cannot be returned but they are on the same weekend; 54% choose $100 ski trip to Michigan and 46% choose $500 ski trip to Wisconsin ---> participants were given two scenarios one where it asks if they should invest the last million dollars of research into developing their own plane despite a competitor building a plane that will be better and 17% say yes and 83% say no; another scenario says 10 million is invested into building a plane and they are 90% finished when a competitor comes out with a better plane and they are asked if the last 10% of the funds should be used to finish their plane and 85% say yes and 15% say no --> these demonstrate framing effects and the sunk-cost effect which is the tendency to continue investing in a given situation (even in the face of a loss) after investing a good deal of time, effort, or money - reason-based choice: the idea that our choices are not guided by utilities but rather our goal is to make decisions that we feel good about, decisions that we think are reasonable and justified

What did Warren (1970) show?

- showed the phonemic restoration effect - he played a tape that said "the state governors met with their respective legislatures convening in the capital city", but replaced first "s" in legislature with a cough - Participants claimed to have heard the "s", but had trouble identifying when they heard the cough - The reason for the participants experience is because they mentally filled in that phoneme so they could not remember where they heard the cough; also used context cues in the rest of the sentence to fill in the gap

What did Pollack & Pickett (1964) show?

- showed the value of context in how we perceive words - participants were presented with single words from conversations - they could identify the word just under 50% of the time when it was presented by itself - identification increased when the word was presented with the subsequent words in the conversation; identification increased into the 90%

What is the syntax-first approach to parsing? What is the interactionist approach to parsing?

- syntax-first: the parsing mechanism groups on structural principles and semantic is not considered at first; our first method to parsing is to use syntax only - interactionist: semantics can influence processing as the person is reading the sentence; semantic and syntactic information is taken into account - it is not semantics vs syntax: in syntax first semantics activated after initial parsing; in interactionist semantics comes into play as the sentence is being read (controversy not yet resolved, semantics does appear to come into play while reading)

What are common heuristics for problem solving? What are analogies? Discuss the research of Simon & Reed (1976), Gick & Holyoak (1980, 1983).

- the hill climbing strategy: making moves/taking actions to get closer to the goal (the problem with this is that sometimes you have to got farther away to meet the goal, which makes this strategy not work) - means end analysis: can the current state be made more similar to the goal state, using available operators; trying to minimize distance between the current state and the goals state; leads to subproblems, each with its own goal (breaking problems into smaller problems so that problem space is less vast) ---> Simon & Reed (1976): used a variation of the orcs and hobbits problem, the missionaries and cannibals problem; 5 of each and a 3 person boat; one group given a subgoal and those solved it in 50% less moves than those who were just given the problem and the instructions - working backwards: helps people make more timely decisions (ex: water lily problem) - mental imagery: translate problem into some mental image (ex: book worm problem); in some cases it helps; in other cases may be limited by perceptual reference frame (it can limit people because they visualize it incorrectly), changing the reference frame can help - analogies: one problem reminds you of another problem, so you can rely on past experience in tackling the current challenge ---> Gick & Holyoak (1980, 1983): Ps presented with the tumor problem, then had participants read a related problem (the evil dictator story) and 75% were able to solve the problem with the hint to use the story, while only 10% solved the problem without the hint; solving the problem involves noticing the analogous relationship, mapping the correspondence, and applying the mapping

What is visual imagery? What do we use visual imagery for?

- visual imagery is the act of forming a percept/pictures in the mind without sensory stimuli - we use visual imagery for memory retrieval (ex: modal model diagram to remember the essay question), problem solving, producing descriptions, motivational states (can be both positive and negative, but a lot of negative could indicate a problem like anxiety or depression), day dreaming (can affect motivational states) - when someone closes their eyes when describing something to access a mental image is another example

How do we perceive words? What is the phonemic restoration effect and speech segmentation?

- we perceive words based on how we categorize speech sounds through the context (including knowledge and expectations), place of articulation (where the airflow is restricted), whether they are voiced (the vocal folds vibrate) and those that are unvoiced, and the gaps between one phoneme and another - due to categorical perception ("phonemic prototyping") people are better at hearing differences between categories of sound (g vs k) than within sound categories (different pronunciations of a "d" sound); it is much more difficult to detect subphonemic differences - phonemic restoration: when a phoneme in a word is heard, even when it is obscured by a noise; usually happens when a word is part of a sentence - speech segmentation: the process of perceiving individual words from the continuous flow of the speech signal ---> not everyone speaks in the same way (there are 50 ways to pronounce the because it depends on what is before/after it, as well as with accents ---> we do this because we have to mentally space out language

This semester, you have learned both in class and outside of this class using a number of cognitive processes. Name and describe/explain five cognitive phenomena that have improved your knowledge of cognitive psychology. How and why did these phenomena work? (card 1 of 2)

1. The serial position effect: the ability to recall words at the beginning and end of a list better than words in the middle of list ---> primacy effect: better memory for first item because it is stored in LTM since memory rehearsal allows info to transfer from WM to LTM ---> recency effect: better memory for the last few items and is based on working memory because the last few item are not displaced (interference did not occur) by future items 2. The causes of better memory for emotional events ---> emotional events cause increased activity in the hippocampus which leads to better consolidation ---> have emotional distinctiveness ---> there is narrowing of attention to shift to emotional relevant goals ---> more rehearsal ---> physiological arousal increases consolidation ---> are subject to errors just like other memories despite the vividness in which they are remember 3. Types of retrieval from LTM: ---> recognition: involves recognizing the info, more sensitive to weak memory traces, gives retrieval cues; have to decide if an item is the right now; can rely on source memory or a feeling of familiarity; ex: multiple choice, picking the Seven Dwarves from a list of names ---> recall: have to come up with the information all by yourself; less sensitive to weak memory traces; have to generate item with or without a cue which requires a search through memory; ex: name the Seven Dwarves, essay questions

This semester, you have learned both in class and outside of this class using a number of cognitive processes. Name and describe/explain five cognitive phenomena that have improved your knowledge of cognitive psychology. How and why did these phenomena work? (card 2 of 2)

4. Divided attention: the distribution of attention to more than one task ---> our ability to do this depends on practice and difficulty of task ---> we can't do this effectively with difficult tasks because of the amount of information we miss ---> this was shown when Ps complete a driving simulator and had to press the space button when red shape appears, during the dual task of talking on the phone; reaction time was significantly slower and the probability of a miss was significantly higher for those engaging in the dual task of talking on the phone, compared to the single task; there is less of an effect of conversations with passengers in the car or a radio compared to talking on the phone 5. There are different codes and reasons for forgetting depending on the type of memory according to the memory model by Atkinson & Shiffrin ---> sensory information store: forgetting occurs due to decay (information is lost over time) and the code is simple sensory features ---> STM: forgetting occurs due to interference (processing one thing blocks you from processing something else) and the code is acoustic (sound based info) ---> LTM: forgetting occurs due to retrieval failure (is in there but we can't get it out; something goes wrong in some way somehow) and the code is semantic (meaning)

Who is Skinner? Who is Chomsky? What did they each have to say about language?

Skinner: - was a behaviorist (specifically operant conditioning); did not study mental operations - said all behavior (even language) could be explained by the Stimulus --> Response relationships - proposed that language is learned through reinforcement and children learn appropriate behavior by being reinforced and/or punished - wrote a book called Verbal Behavior (1957) Chomsky: - was a cognitive psychologist specifically in the area of language who was one of the most influential people in the cognitive revolution - proposed that language was coded in the genes (must be some genetic component) - believed that just like we are programmed to walk, we are programmed to use language (unless something happens) - believe the underlying basis of all language is similar - saw studying language as a way to study the properties of the mind (how we study language allows us to study other cognitive psychology aspects) - wrote Syntactic Structures in the same year, as well as a scathing review of Skinner in 1959 which presented arguments that brought many behaviorist ideas into question (not everything Skinner said was wrong but some things were wrong; ex. argument - as children learn language, they produce sentences they have never heard - and so can't be reinforced for such as "I hate you Mommy!"; The dog is ... would need to have a lot of associations for the word "the")