Cognitive Processes - 1002
Be able to define infantile amnesia and describe three possible explanations for its occurrence
A lack of memories from ages of 0-4. Fred would have said these are repressed but recent theories say our brains weren't developed to encode episodically. Schema isn't fully developed eg - all women are viewed as mummy
Be able to describe Collins and Loftus's hierarchical network model of memory, the assumptions made, the manner in which meaning is represented within it (superset and property relationships), and the sentence verification method used to test its validity
A logical hierarchical structure with interconnected nodes eg. canary -> bird -> animal. Properties yellow, has wings, breathes. Cognitive economy where each concept/property is only stored once. Properties stored at the highest level of network. Presenting a concept leads to activation of appropriate node and spread of activated to related nodes. Found through sentence verification task measuring time to verify sentences. If two concepts are related spreading activation from them will 'intersect'. The time taken to verify depends on the distance between them. Semantic distance (time to verify) is also affected by strength and amount of time of initial activation. Affected by typicality eg. penguin as a bird takes longer. Affected by category size.
Be able to describe the nature of Kim Peek's unique memory ability in conjunction with his unique conceptual memory flaw, and understand in relation to the DRM evidence what may have been occurring in his case.
A man who could remember everything but couldn't understand concepts in words. He would remember everything in lists and never fell for the false memory paradigm.
Understand the key findings of Conway's et al's flashbulb memory study and the best and worst remembered kinds of memory.
A study of memory from 9/11. Surveys were taken from right after the event, then in 2002 before the anniversary and half tested after and in 2003 the final survey. These asked for recollections and confidence ratings for each. The consistency was very poor whilst the confidence rating was very high.
Understand how meaning is stored within a propositional network, and implications for memory of specific sentence structure
Associational network models - Nodes of concepts, proximity is how closely they are related, everyone has a different structure and different experiences develop different associations. Propositional network models - Contains more information and tells a story. The connection between two nodes is a proposition with more confidence in memory, length and richness of story, network in mind and story hits the nodes but this doesn't tell us how we acquire information.
Be able to define, distinguish and give examples of focused attention, divided attention, in-attentional blindness, and change blindness.
Attention is happening just after sensory detection with eyes as processing images, recognising and selecting what is going on. Focused Attention - concentrates attention on a target stimulus for any period, makes it possible to quickly detect relevant stimuli. Attention is about processing things rather than perception, whether you are consciously aware of them. Can consciously affect attention by saying semantic things. Spotlight attention vs object based attention meaning something in a different depth plane could be missed. Attention has evolved to look at depth planes and objects not just areas and spatial locations Divided attention - When mental focus is on multiple tasks or ideas at once. This decreases the amount of attention being placed on any one task as there are multiple focuses at once. In-attentional blindness - The failure to notice a fully visible but unexpected object because attention was engaged on another task, event or object, it's not processed at all. While you consciously experience the world as complete the mind is processing limited information and notice obvious things. Good at adjusting attention, only pays attention to what we need. Attention is required for processing so if you aren'y paying attention to something that you aren't aware it exists at a conscious level. Change blindness - Visual short term memory is cleared when moving eyes back and forth between images. The sudden cut between images means you are unable to detect motion, when you remove the motion you can no longer see changes. Takes effort and there is a load on visual memory and. Attentional not perception because once you know the change between the two images you can't unsee. Change blindness implies the percept of completeness, the sense we have of completeness and seeing everything all the time is an illusion. The amount we are encoding from the environment is very small, only by moving attention around can these be processed. The role of attention is irrelevant for many people meaning multitasking isn't typically powerful attention Why is attention limited - Not processing surrounding information attentionally and the memory rapidly disappears.
Understand the impact of aging on memory and how attitudes and effort distort the impact further. Be able to illustrate this with reference to recognition and recall data, schema concerning the elderly across cultures, and the impact of labelling a memory test as a "test" (Rahal et al.)
Attitudes to study/effort - Self-schema (strengths, weakness and age), lead with attitude otherwise it will be hard to learn, must be open minded to learning. Motivation to remember; raising MTR at retrieval has no effect by at encoding it greatly improves memory. A poor attitude leads to a fixed mental state Memory and ageing - We lose neurons and we get slower but effort remains. As you get older it becomes harder to learn things Ageing and memory - memory is influenced by activated schemas. Differences in Western and Chinese students due to American schema of old people as slow, forgetful and frail vs Chinese as friendly, kind and wise. Rahal, Hasher and Colcimbe (2001) - Memory task where subjects were told it was testing memory ability vs other testing ability to learn trivia. There were no differences but they did worse on memory indicating an emotional belief affects memory
Be able to describe three pieces of evidence supporting the existence and nature of the phonological loop within working memory.
Baddeley's model of working memory is a more accurate model of STM. Working memory deals with spoke and written material, holding information in a speech based form and the articulatory processes. Can repeat verbal information in a loop with a capacity of however much someone can take in in 2-5 seconds. Evidence - Dual task paradigm, recency effect, auditory presentation led to greater recall of the most recently studied terms.
Understand and be able to describe the limitations of behaviourism which led to the Cognitive revolution using specific examples such as language, the need for internal mental representations and concepts like attentional overload and attentional limits.
Behaviourism - Watson pushed psychology as behaviourism, a study of only the observable and forbidding the unobservable. Skinner believed that humans had no free will and were subject entirely to rewards vs punishment. This meant talk of consciousness was banned as was anything that couldn't be objectively measured. Problems - In some aspects of lfie we don't have free will and punishments and rewards are necessary but in other aspects we can decide freely how to behave with things that people don't have self control over but can change. Tolman brought this around in a stand out paper.
Understand and be able to describe the famous "War of the Ghosts" experiment by Bartlett and its findings which led to the proposition of schemas
British participants were given a Native American story but they had trouble understanding it. Once the story was changed to make it more familiar to their own cultural schemas by changing or transforming certain aspects they understood it better. Proposes that encoding or retrieval is through the lens of their pre-exisiting schemas.
Be able to both list the features of and describe the evidence supporting the features of short-term memory (capacity, duration, format)
Capacity of 5-9 pieces of information. Duration decays within 20 seconds if not rehearsed. Encoding is phonological, visual is different letters are translated into a sound. Verbal rehearsal interferes with short term memory, dichotomy between short and long term memory
Understand the nature of the limit of short-term memory and how it can be worked around using chunking and hierarchical chunking
Chunking groups together fewer parts to remember. Don't expand memory neurologically, strategy and making the most of 7 plus or minus 2. Rate of forgetting decays within 20 seconds if not rehearsed. Phonological and lasts only 20 seconds.
Be able to describe Bransford and Johnston's (1972) balloon study, its method and key findings, and what these suggest about when it is important to give a structure for encoding.
Comprehension and recall are improved when information is given in context due to the deeper levels of processing involved. Recall is adversely affected unless the passage is given with wider meaning. Participants who were shown the picture that went along with the text were able to recall more information and performed better on comprehension tasks than those who simply read the passage. Context provides a deeper cognitive appraisal, resulting in deeper processing, better recall and increased understanding.
Understand and be able to describe the DRM (Deese, Roediger & McDermott) false memory paradigm in relation to words presented and words not presented, and the usual findings.
DRM effect catches people by reading related words. Memory is stronger for the words that weren't read out than the words that were, we associate and process things that come in. Subjects are presented with lists of semantically related words at encoding. After a delay, subjects are asked to recall or reorganised these words and are asked if they remember presented words and related never presented words. The critical word is recognised with high probability and confidence
Be able to define, distinguish between and give examples of semantic memory and episodic memory.
Declarative memory (factual information includes semantic and episodic) Semantic memory - general knowledge, stored undated, the memory of the meaning of things without additional information eg. facts Episodic memory system - dated recollections of personal experiences and the memory of life events, how and what happened to you eg. first kiss. Non-declarative memory system - Actions, perceptual motor skills, conditioned reflexes, emotional memories eg. riding a bike
Have an understanding of "levels of processing", its impact on memory, and the importance of carefully defining depth to avoid a circular logic.
Deep processing - Involves asking questions and elaboration on material, structuring material semantically. Selfreferent encoding by reading the same information from different sources and different authours. Semantic structuring of information allows for more effective chunking and allows you to relate the information you are trying to learn to what you know. Elaboration creates more retrieval cues
Have an understanding of how the transfer appropriate processing account of these dissociations renders unnecessary the proposal of another memory system.
Different neuroanatomical structures underline implicit and explicit memory eg. declarative vs procedural. Tendency to create more memory systems to account for new dissociations. We know that declarative and procedural memory are implicit and explicit. Implicit and explicit memory task involve different encoding processes and therefore benefit from different retrieval processes. Memory depends on the match between encoding and retrieval eg, perceptual vs conceptual. During implicit memory you are doing something different than when you are encoding. Explicit memory is when you know the memory is going to be tested meaning you are trying to find retrieval cues. Transfer appropriate processing, the retrieval cues match better. Encoding is incidental, implicit.
Have an understanding of how priming works in reference to spreading activation on an associational network.
Display or mention of one concepts 'spreading activation' to other related concepts. eg - money ->withdraw -> robbery. 'He walked towards the bank' interpretation varies on priming.
Be able to both give and interpret examples which demonstrate an early, late or flexible locus of selection.
Early - Hearing messages in both ears but only paying attention to one ear. In the other ear all they could process was male/female, pitch etc, all which are crude characteristics. Selection will be early with a high cognitive load. Late - Same instructions, processing the meaning in the unintended ear is evidence of late locus, processing the meaning of something not intending too. No cognitive load
Be able to define and distinguish between proactive and retroactive interference.
Encoding - Avoid distractions, silence is best, music interferes as much as speech, seek serenity before or after study period. Avoid interference - Before and after can affect study and memory, competition from other material. Breaks reduce proactive interference, resetting encoding space. Retroactive interference - new material affects old material Proactive interference - old material affects new material.
Be able to define and distinguish between endogenous and exogenous attention as it relates to guided searched and attentional capture.
Endogenous attention - goal driven attention eg. spotting the odd one out in a visual search. Voluntary and controlled, looking for things actively. Exogenous attention - Driven by external events in the environment. Involuntary and stimulus driven, something sudden that captures attention.
Be able to define and distinguish between an explicit memory test and an implicit memory test.
Explicit - Recall and recognition of explicit retention. People respond to a direct request for information about their past. Implicit - Fragment completion, stem completion. People are asked to perform some task; the measure of interest is how some prior experience affects the task eg. Implicit association test, Lexical decision task, Word stem completion task, Artificial grammar learning, Word fragment completion, The serial reaction time task
Understand the key differences between recall and recognition tests, and the impact that this has on advice for both studying for and completing multiple choice exams.
Free Recall task - report items from earlier study episode Recognition task - select previously studied items from mixture of old and new items. Recognition is more beneficial than recall, given the retrieval cue rather than generating it yourself. less effort and better at it. Multiple choice - Hard and need to have processed elaborately to retrieve related information and choose correct answer. Study for recall as distractors are manipulating.
Be able to both list the features of (capacity, duration, format) and describe the evidence supporting the features of both kinds of sensory memory (iconic and echoic).
Iconic memory records visual. Echoic memory records auditory memory. These have an unlimited capacity, fleeing and short storage. Sternberg's memory demonstration - When asked to recall all could only recall 3-4. Tells us that its unlimited, short duration. Echoic can last longer 8 seconds.
Be able to describe how the stem completion form of an implicit memory task is used to establish implicit memory.
Indirect memory test assess the retention of information without direct reference to the source of information. Participants are given tasks designed to elicit knowledge that was acquired incidentally or unconsciously and evident when performance shows greater inclination towards items initially presented than new items. Performance on indirect tests may reflect contributions of implicit memory, the effects of priming as a preference to respond to previously experience stimuli over novel stimuli.
Understand and be able to give examples as to why Cognitive Psychologists do not rely on introspection as a methodology and seek objective measures. Examples may include reasoning errors such as the certainty and pseudo-certainty effects demonstrated in the lecture.
Introspection - Introspection is too subjective and doesn't have direct access to the fine level thoughts. Consciousness - This is limited and hard to study as it can't quantify or measure consciousness, remaining vague. Cognitive biases - We all have cognitive biases and poor subjective observers. The Framing effect - in the face of sure gain humans are risk aversive, when faced with certain loss humans are risk seeking, part of prospect theory which maps out that losses are more valuable than gains
Understand and be able to describe the difference between an early, late or flexible locus of selection.
LOS is the point which some things are selected for further processing, the point when things are discarded and not further processed. Early LOS - What you are paying attention to is chosen based on appearance not on meaning eg. information such as colour, pitch or direction of the stimuli. Late LOS - Everything is processed after the point of meaning and therefore processing is based on meaning. All information is attended to, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Flexible LOS - Attention operates to select relevant information at whatever stage or stages of processing are overloaded by a particular stimulus-task combination. Attention operates at an early stage in some experimental paradigms and at a late stage in other, suggesting LOS is flexible.
Understand the additive factors method which allows cognitive psychologists to draw inferences about internal mental processes (as described by Snodgrass and in the lecture). Be able to apply this method to the memory scanning task.
Mental Chronometry - Timing how long thoughts take (the time of mental events). Measured simple and choice reaction time. Choice - Simple = estimate of stimulus evaluation time. For simple reaction time press the button to any light. Press one button to red light and another button to green for choice RT. Memory Scanning Experiments - Additive factors logic don't change the task dramatically but rather change the nature of one of the steps of the task. These were used to determine how we access the information in our short term memory. Participants saw a series of numbers presented one at a time and were asked to remember the numbers with pauses then were tested on them. These found our searches to be serially exhaustive but we can't determine our own processes
Understand and be able to describe the more modern (active) representation of short-term memory known as working memory, and be able to distinguish between its three components.
Modern concept of short and long term memory as active rather than passive, requiring rehearsal. Consists of phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketch pad and the central executive Phonological loop - Repeating sentences back assists, why we count on our fingers. Holds and processes verbal and auditory information. This information is rehearsed in the phonological code and has a greater working memory capacity. This memory span is 8 seconds and the capacity is 2-5 seconds. eg. using recitation to remember a phone number Visuo-Spatial sketchpad - Allows people to temporarily hold and manipulate visual images. Central executive - Controls the deployment of attention, switching focus of attention and dividing as needed.
Be able to describe the distinct features of implicit memory when compared to explicit memory (dissociations) in regard to duration, modality/format change, and impact of level of processing.
More deeply processed stimuli are better remembered. Deep processing refers to semantic encoding, finding the meaning of things. Shallow processing is structural involving rote learning, counting the letters in a word. Implicit memory systems behave in different ways to explicit memory. When people focus on the shallow stimuli implicit memory is better whereas explicit memory is worse. Modality of the stimuli matters eg. if you are hearing something but then the task is doing something visual implicit memory won't transfer or format and font counts. Explicit memory degrades rapidly with time, implicit memory less so. Amnesic patients have procedural memory are good with implicit task but deny seeing the stimuli.
Consider the evidence regarding flashbulb memories and be able to explain and argue about differences and similarities with ordinary memories and their significance.
More long lasting and vivid but this accuracy is only percieved. Special neural mechanism was believed to be activated (Brown and Kulick, 1977). Uses the amygdala, personal importance and emotion
Reminiscence bump memory
Most memories across one's life time are created in 10-30. After 30 memories are as a result of recency
Parallel and serial self search
Parallel self-terminating search - All 4 numbers come to the internal eye and therefore find the number instantly, no change in the search time, positive response doesn't depend on how many items there are, negative response does. Serial self-terminating search - Searching through the items one at a time with positive and negative responses dependent on set size with a need to search through more as the set gets bigger. This stops when the number is identified explaining why the negative response depends more. Serial exhaustive search - Search through one item at a time but keep searching through all the items. This doesn't stop when we reach a positive response
Be able to define and give examples of flashbulb memories; and be able to explain why psychologists use such events to study emotional memory.
People have very vivid and detailed memories surrounding dramatic world events, believing them to be more accurate. A special neural mechanism was believed to be activated however because they are rehearsed more frequently in some cases this means they are reconstructed frequently. Recent research shows more confidence then these but they decay like others.
Be able to describe and define the primacy and recency effects and explain with evidence why they are thought to have different origins.
Primacy and Recency effects are thought to have different sources. Primacy - remembering the first pieces of information Regency - the middle numbers have been discarded (not enough time to semantically encode into the LTM) but the last are still able to be retrieved from the STM
Be able to define and give examples of procedural memory, and describe at least three possible reasons why it is hard to verbalise.
Procedural memory is implicit and is memory dedicated to how to do things. It isn't verbalisable or available to conscious awareness. this is learnt through gradual, incremental experience, not one trial learning eg. learning to ride a bike.
Be able to discuss, with evidence and examples, and defend, a view of memory which emphasises its malleability and fragility and how 'features' of a memory do not necessarily speak to its accuracy.
Recovered memories re memories found under hypnosis or through strong suggestions. People claim that these memories are ture of fals based on the nature of the memory. Memory is a constructive and reconstructive process which is shape by intial observations and conditions during attempts to remember and events between the observation and attempted remembered. They ca be altered, deleted and created by events that occur during and after the time of encoding and during the period of storage and during any attempts of retrieval. Spontaneous memories may be accurate, inaccurate, fabricated or a mixture. The presence or absence of detail in a memory report doesn't necessarily define its accuracy. Scientific and clinical evidence doesn't allow accurate, inaccurate and fabricated memories to be distinguished in absence of independent corroboration
Be able to define and explain transfer appropriate processing, and have a good understanding of Godden and Baddeley's (1975) swimming pool study on context, and the differences they found between the recall and recognition data.
Retrieval is best when encoding and retrieval MATCH Mood, Time and place, Thoughts and feelings, Smells, Images, Nature of the task, Role of context in memory. Godden and Baddeley discovered that those who learnt words in the water or on the shore where best at recalling when in the same location. Context can be the retrieval cue itself and recognition memory supplies the retrieval cue.
Be able to define, describe and give examples of schema, how schema are used to benefit memory economy, but also result in distortions, omissions, false inclusions and other kinds of errors.
Schema - Generalised mental representations or concepts describing a class of objects, people, scenes or events. Patterns of activation that allow for more efficient memory encoding. Rather than encoding all the details we encode a single category or schema and make predictions/filling in the blanks from there. Unfamiliar experiences are adjusted to fit into known schemas. Hard to interpret items are often omitted however outstanding items are also remembered distinctly. Involves top down schematic processing, collecting information and imposing the category on it. Important for organisation of LTM Schemas can distort experiences and perceptions and come at profound costs by not encoding the full richness. Stereotypes are also types of schemas eg- racial or gender.
Be able to describe, identify and apply an understanding of the misapplication of a script.
Sometimes transfers of scripts are incorrect and inappropriate with expectations and precise order of circumstances. Schemas govern perception of events occurring and encoding and remembering experiences. Eg. the transfer from high school to university is very different, or expecting table service at a fast food restaurant
Be able to explain and apply evidence which suggests technology is reducing the amount of material we are committing to organic memory.
Sparrow et al - Saying vs remembering. Googling effects on memory, cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips. Students increasing 'hoard' course materials. Does the comfort of external storage reduce organic memory performance eg. cognitive off loading. Comfort when you think something is saved, don't engage in an effort to remember
Be able to define, distinguish, identify and give examples of different kinds of schema: person schema (stereotypes) and event schema (scripts).
Stereotypes, person schemas such as racial and gender stereotypes. Scripts - schemas of events and how to behave in certain situations, giving us expectations about things eg. dining, birthdays, weddings. Complexity of scripts and script transreference, you act out the expectations you have, if they are wrong you end up doing the wrong things. Scripts are fragile and complex
Understand with the use of the actual outcome of the memory scanning example, the difference between the aims of fields like artificial intelligence, and Cognitive Psychology.
Stimulus enconding can't be measured with a self report as there is no insight into cognition as it needs to be inferrred. There's a nearly perfect linear relationship between the reaction times and the number of items studied. The more items studied the longer to respond to the test item. For every additional item studied the longer it took another 38ms to respond to the test number, suggesting it takes that long to scan one item in short term memory. There was no found difference in reaction times between trials where the target had appeared in the study group and those that hadn't. Suggests that scans of short term memory are exhaustive, meaning even when the item is found other items are scanned as well. There is a linear relationship between study group size and reaction time inferred scanning short term memory is serial. Equivalent reaction times for studied test items and novel test items inferred that scans of short term memory are exhaustive.
Be able to describe and apply the findings of Dunlosky et al. (2013) on effective study techniques in regard to: rereading, practice testing, and distributed practice.
Summarisation is better than just copying but has a low utility. There is no evidence that highlighting and underlining are effective Rereading is good for recall but is unclear whether it benefits comprehension. Unclear how dependent it is on student's ability and is inefficient compared to other techniques so overall low utility. Practice testing has strong and diverse evidence that it is effective with direct and mediated effects. Practices recall and search and has an overall high utility Distributed practice - Spacing effects, lag effects (longer is better), material reprocessed or reminded of previous learning or consolidation with overall high utility.
Understand the role of attention according to Treisman's FIT (feature integration theory) and the visual search evidence (for both feature and conjunction targets) which supports it.
The role of attention is to bind features, unique features are detected easily, but unique combinations are much harder to find. FIT - We process features independently in a pre-attentive manner (quickly and in parallel) and the role of attention was to bind these features together into objects (a slow and serial process). Features of what we are pre attentively detecting at the bottom, need the spotlight to put things together.
Understand and be able explain parallel distributed processing (PDP) models of memory: how memories are stored in them, how they work, and what they are good at and bad at
This is a computational model. Set of interconnected processing nodes that communicate by sending activation or inhibition. Learning rule for adjusting connections throughout the network. Exposure to a new example that share features with known categories allowing it to 'inherit' these properties - generalisation. However these networks struggle with learning atypical examples. Stored in particular patterns of activation
Understand Tolman's perspective on internal mental representations and be able to describe the evidence he found in rat maze navigation which supported this viewpoint.
Tolman 1948 - A rat going through a maze with original thoughts. A simple stimulus-response connection where learning is the strengthening of connections and the weakening of others. A rat progressing in the maze is helplessly responding to a succession of external stimuli-sights, sounds, smells, pressures. The rat is learning which directions equal food but with no cognition or awareness of the maze and no spatial awareness Tolman's experiment - 3 groups of rats placed in a maze for 9 days. Group 1 had food introduced at the start and learned to find it faster and faster with errors dropping and a sharp learning curve. Group 2 food wasn't introduced until day where there were large amounts of errors with rats just wandering around. Behaviourists would say learning was when food was introduced but the learning curve was steeper than expected indicating that they may ave been learning the maze while they were wandering around. S-R relationships - Language isn't easily explained with punishments and rewards however Skinner did attempt to explain but didn't seem to add up. Chomsky kicks off the cognitive revolution pointing out we need internal processes to learn as fast as we do The role of technology - Machines being built for the first time exceed the cognitive capacity of humans. Ergonomics need to match human capacity, it's the first time its been needed to appreciate and understand the limits of our cognition.
Understand how the 'method of loci' works and how it may have been used by ancient cultures
Using spatial memory as a tool for other memorisations eg. using the rooms in your house to remember ingredients in a recipe. Traditional cultures have used this method eg. star maps for aboriginal walking cultures or each wrinkle in Uluru telling a part of a story. Linking what you're learning with locations you're already familiar with
Understand and be able to give examples of situations where focused visual or auditory attention leads to limited processing of other stimuli.
Walking in public while being on the phone. Music draws attention away and can then affect walking.
Be able to describe the particular kind of amnesia Clive Wearing suffers from and how it affects his existence.
Wearing was unable to form new memories or retrieve long term memories, unable to consolidate the short term memory into the long term, rather it just decayed (Anterograde and retrograde amnesia). Lived in the present with a memory span of 30 seconds and the only things he could remember were his wife and how to play piano. STM and LTM are different memory systems
Have an understanding of Roediger and Karpicke's (2006) test enhanced learning study, and be able to describe the key findings and their implications in regard to study and memorisation.
studied prose passages of 260 words for; Participants studied Studied for 7 minutes, then studied for 7 minutes OR Studied for 7 minutes, then tested for 7 minutes The recall 'test' was just a blank page with the title of the passage Recall test: 5 minutes, 2 days, 7 days after The study-test condition was more consistent over time whereas study-study condition was good in the short term
