Psychology unit 7 test

what are the problem solving strategies?

Problem solving strategies include: 1. TRIAL AND ERROR a) One tribute to our rationality is our problem-solving skill b) Some problems we solve through trial and error c) Thomas Edison tried thousands of light bulb filaments before stumbling upon one that worked 2. ALGORITHMS 3. HIERARCHIES 4. INSIGHT

what gets in your way of solving a problem?

mental set, functional fixedness, and confirmation bias

What are the reasons that we forget?

1. Encoding failure 2. Storage decay 3. Retrieval failure

what is anterograde and retrograde amnesia?

1. Anterograde amnesia: an inability to form new memories 2. Retrograde amnesia: an inability to retrieve information from one's past.

how do you encode meaning? What is visual encoding and what is the effectiveness of the different types of encoding?

1. Encoding meaning a) Processing the meaning of verbal information by associating it with what we already know or imagine b) Encoding meaning (semantic encoding) results in better recognition later than visual or acoustic encoding 2. Visual Encoding a) Mental pictures (imagery) are a powerful aid to effortful processing, especially when combined with semantic encoding b) Showing aversive effects of tanning and smoking in a picture may be more powerful than simply talking about it 3. Effectiveness of encoding (from best to worst) 1. Semantic (type of...) 2. Acoustic (rhymes with..) 2. Visual (written in capitals)

what are categories?

1. Category Hierarchies a) We organize concepts into categories hierarchies b) You break things down into hierarchies 2. Categories: a) Once we place an item in a category, our memory shifts toward the category prototype b) A computer generated face that was 70% Caucasian led people to classify it as Caucasian c) We get drawn towards are prototype d) More away from our prototype and category boundaries may blur e) Similarly when symptoms don't fit one of our disease prototypes we are slow to perceive an illness f) People whose heart attack symptoms don't match their heart attack prototype may not seek help g) And when behaviors don't fit our discrimination prototpyes- we often fail to notice prejudice h) People more easily detect male prejudice against females than female against males or female against females i) Concepts speed and guide our thinking, but they don't always make us wise

what is cognition and cognitive psychology?

1. Cognition a) All mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating 2. Cognitive psychologists: a) Study these mental activities b) Concept formation c) Problem solving d) Decision making e) Judgment formation

what is a heirarchy?

1. Complex information broken down into broad concepts and further subdivided into categories and subcategories 2. Ex: Hierarchy of encoding (automatic or effortful) a) . Encoding A) Meaning B) Imagery 1) Organization 2) Chunks 3) Hierarchies 3. When people develop expertise in an area, they process information not only in chunks but also in hierarchies composed of a few brao concepts divided and subdivided into the narrower concepts and facts a) Organizing knowledge in hierarchies helps us to retrieve information efficiently, as Gordon Bower and his colleagues demonstrated by presenting words either randomly or grouped into categories b) When the words were organized into categories recall was two to three times better c) Such results show the benefits of organizing what you study. Taking class notes in outline format - a type of hierarchical organization-may also prove helpful

what is the duration of long term and working memory?

1. Duration a) Peterson and Peterson (1959) measured the duration of working memory by manipulating rehearsal b) The duration of the working memory is about 20 seconds 2. Working Memory Duration a) It decreases rapidly 3. Long Term Memory: a) Essentially unlimited capacity store b) Long Term Memory can last your whole life

what does effortful learning require?

1. Effortful learning usually requires rehearsal or conscious repetition 2. Ebbinghaus studied rehearsal by using nonsense syllables: TUV YOG GEK XOZ a) He was one of the first memory researchers b) He would give people a couple of minutes to memorize these syllables and then he would check them at different times c) This is where we get the memory curve from 3. If you keep looking at things everyday, it keeps the curve stronger and allows you to remember them for a while because you are building a memory neuron and you exercise it everyday a) The amount remembered depends on the time spent learning b) As rehearsal increases, relearning time decreases

Why do we forget?

1. Forgetting can occur at any memory stage a) You can forget information and your memory can be filtered, alter or lose much information during any of these stages 2. Sensory memory: the sense momentarily register amazing detail 3. Short term memory: a few items are both noticed and encoded 4. Long term memory: some items are altered or lost Retrieval from long term memory: depending on interference, retrieval cues, moods, and motives, some things get retrieved and some don't

what is encoding? What is the dual track of memory?

1. Encoding: Getting Information In a) How we encode b) Some information (route to your school) is automatically proceeded latent learning because you are learning something and you are not even aware of it c) However, new and unusual information (friend's new cell phone number) requires attention and effort 2. Dual Track memory: effortful versus automatic processing a) Our mind operates on two tracks: A) Atkinson and Shiffirn's model focused on how we process our EXPLICIT MEMORIES. We encode explicit memories through conscious, EFFORTFUL PROCESSING B) Behind the scene, outside the Atkinson-Shiffrin stages, other information skips the conscious encoding track and barrages directly into storage. This AUTOMATIC PROCESSING, which happens without our awareness, produces IMPLICIT MEMORIES (also called nondeclarative memories) b) Our two track mind engages in impressively efficient information processing c) As one track automatically tucks away many routine details, the other track is free to focus on conscious, effortful processing d) This reinforces an important principle: mental feats such as vision, thinking, and memory may seem to be single abilities but they are not. e) Rather, we split information into different components for separate and simultaneous processing

what is functional fixedness?

1. Functional fixedness: a tendency to think about familiar objects in familiar ways which may prevent more creative use of those objects to solve the problem a) Solving problems a certain way

how does the brain process language? What is aphasia, the broca's area, and wernicke's area?

1. Genes design the mechanisms for a language, and experience modifies the brain 2. Imagining a physical activity activates the same brain regions as when actually performing the activity 3. We think of speaking and reading, or writing and reading or singing and speaking as merely different examples of the same general ability-language 4. But consider this curious finding: APHASIA, can result from damage to any of several cortical areas a) Aphasia: impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area (impairing speaking) or to Wernike's area (impairing understanding) b) Even more curious, some people with aphasia can speak fluently but cannot read (despite good vision), while others can comprehend what they read but cannot speak c) Still other can write but not read, read but not write, read numbers but not letters, or sing but not speak d) These cases suggest that language is complex, and that different brain areas must serve different language functions 5. Indeed, in 1865, French physician Pual Broca reported that after damage to an area of the left frontal lobe (later called BROCA'S AREA) a person would struggle to speak words while still being able to sign familiar songs and comprehend speech a) Broca's area: controls language expression-an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech 6. In 1874, German investigator Carl Wernicke discovered that after damage to an area of the left temporal lobe (WERNICKE'S AREA) people could speak only meaningless words a) Wernicke's area: controls language reception-a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe b) Asked to describe a picture that showed two boys stealing cookies behind a woman's back, one patient responded: "mother is away working her work to get her better, but when she's looking at the two boys looking at the other part. She's working another time." c) Damage to Wernicke's area also disrupts understanding 7. Today's neuroscience has confirmed brain activity in Broca's and Wernicke's areas during language processing a) But neuroscience is refining our understanding of how our brain processes language b) Language functions are distributed across other brain areas as well c) Functional MRI scans show that different neural networks are activated by nouns and verbs, or objects and actions; by different vowels; and by reading stories of visual versus motor experiences d) Different neural networks also enable one's nativ language and a second language learned later in life e) Joke that play on meaning are processed in a different brain area than jokes that play on words 8. THE POINT TO REMEMBER: in processing language, as in other forms of information processing, the brain operates by dividing its mental functions-speaking, perceiving, thinking, remembering-into subfunctions a) Your conscious experience of reading the page seems indivisible, but your brain is computing each word's form, sound nad meaning using different neural networks b) The brain engages specialized subtasks, such as discerning depth, movement, form, and color c) And in vision as in language, a localized trauma that destroys one of these neural work teams may cause people to lose just one aspect of processing d) In visual processing, a stroke may destroy the ability to perceive movement but not color e) In language processing, a stroke may impair the ability to speak distinctly without harming the ability to read f) What you experience as a continuous, indivisible stream of experience is actually but the visible tip of a subdivided information processing iceberg

what is the fluency effect?

1. Fluency Effect: a) If the form of information is difficult to assimilate, that affects our judgments about the substance of that information b) Subjects rated the exercise as harder and said they were less likely to try it when the instructions were printed in a font that was hard to read.

how do you store implicit memories?

1. Implicit memory involves learning an action while the individuals does not know or declare what she knows Implicit memory system: the cerebellum and basal ganglia a) How to do things or say things b) It is difficult to explain to somebody c) Your hippocampus and frontal lobes are processing sites for your explicit memories d) But you could lose those areas and still, thanks to automatic processing, lay down implicit memories for skills and conditioned associations 2. Joseph LeDoux recounted the story of a brain damaged patient whose amnesia left her unable to recognize her physician as each day he shook her hand and introduced himself a) One day, she yanked her hand back for the physician had pricked her with a tack in his palm b) The next time, he returned to introduce himself, she refused to shake his hand but couldn't explain why c) Having been classically conditioned, she just wouldn't do it

what type of memory does the hippocampus store and how does it do this?

1. Hippocampus: Your hippocampus and frontal lobes are processing sites for your explicit memories a) But you could lose those areas and still, thanks to automatic processing, lay down implicit memories for skills and conditioned associations 2. Joseph LeDoux recounted the story of a brain damaged patient whose amnesia left her unable to recognize her physician as each day he shook her hand and introduced himself a) One day, she yanked her hand back for the physician had pricked her with a tack in his palm b) The next time, he returned to introduce himself, she refused to shake his hand but couldn't explain why c) Having been classically conditioned, she just wouldn't do it neural center in the limbic system that processes explicit memories 3. Cognitive neuroscientists have found that the HIPPOCAMPUS is the brain's equivalent of a "save" button for explicitly memories a) Brain scans, such as PET scans of people recalling words, and autopsies of people who had amnesia (memory loss) have revealed that new explicit memories of names, images, and events are laid down via the hippocampus b) Damage to this structure therefore disrupts recall of explicit memories 4. Chickadees and other birds can store food in hundreds of places and return to these unmarked caches months later- but not if their hippocampus has been removed a) With left hippocampus damage, people have trouble remembering verbal information, but they have no trouble recalling visual designs and locations b) With right hippocampus damage, the problem is reversed c) Subregions of the hippocampus also serve different functions. d) One part is active as people learn to associate names with faces e) Another part is active as memory champions engage in spatial mnemonics f) The rear area, which processes spatial memory, grows bigger the longer a London cabbie has navigated the maze of streets 5. Memories are not permanently stored in the hippocampus a) Instead, the structure seem to act as a loading dock where the brain registers and temporarily holds the elements of a remembered episode-its smell, feel, sound, and location b) Then, like older files shifted to a basement storeroom, memories migrate for storage elsewhere 6. Sleep supports memory consolidation a) During deep sleep, the hippocampus processes memories for later retrieval b) After a training experience, the greater the hippocampus activity during sleep, the better the next day's memory will be c) Researchers have watched the hippocampus and brain cortex displaying simultaneous activity rhythms during sleep, as if they were having a dialogue d) They suspect that the brain is replaying the day's experiences as it transfers them to the cortex for long term storage 7. Cortex areas surrounding the hippocampus support the processing and storing of explicit memories a) After losing his hippocampus in surgery, patient Henry M remembered everything before operation but could not make new memories. Anterograde amnesia b) For some memory loss is severe and permanent c) Consider Henry Molaison who for 55 years after having brain surgery to stop severe seizures, Molaison was unable to form new conscious memories d) He was, as before his surgery, intelligent and did daily crossword puzzles e) Yet, reportered neuroscientist Suzanne Corkin, "I've known Henry Molasion since 1962, and he still doesn't know who I am." f) For about 20 seconds during a conversation he could keep something in mind g) When distracted, he would lose what was just said or what had just occurred h) Thus, he never could name the current president of the United States i) Memory formation in anterograde amnesia: HM got better and better at the mirror tracing task, but he didn't remember doing it k) HM is unable to make new memories, that are declarative (explicit) but he can form new memories that are procedural (implicit)

what is long term potentiation?

1. Long term potentiation (LTP) refers to synaptic enhancement after learning / an increase in a cell's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory a) After you learn something new, your synapse change so if you study every night, you are exercising your synapse which makes you lean it better b) There are certain drugs that mess with this process (claritin, benadryl, cortizon, 2. In experiments with people, rapidly stimulating certain memory circuit connections has increased their sensitivity for hours or even weeks to come a) The sending neuron now needs less prompting to release its neurotransmitter and more connections exist between neurons b) This increased efficiency of potential neural firing is called LONG TERM POTENTIATION (LTP) 3. Several lines of evidence confirm that LTP is a physical basi for memory: a) Drugs that block LTP interfere with learning A) Mutant mice engineered to lack an enzyme needed or LTP couldn't learn their way out of a maze B) Rats given a drug that enhanced LTP learned a maze with half the usual number of mistakes C) Injecting rats with a chemical that blocked the preservation of LTP erased recent learning b) After long term potentiation has occurred passing an electric current through the brain won't disrupt old memories A) But the current will wipe out very recent memories B) Such is the experience both of laboratory animals and of severely depressed people given electroconvulsive therapy C) A blow to the head can do the same since people who are knocked unconscious typically have no memory of events just before the knockout because their working memory had no time to consolidate the information into longer term memory before the lights went out 4, Some memory biology explorers have helped found companies that are competing to develop memory altering drugs a) The target marked for memory boosting drugs includes millions of people with Alzhiemer's disease, millions more with mild neurocognitive disorder that often becomes Alzheimer's and countless millions who would love to turn back the clock on age related memory declare b) From expanding memories perhaps will come building profits c) In your lifetime, will you have access to safe and legal drugs that boost your fading memory without nasty side effects and without cluttering your mind with travis best forgotten d) The question has yet to be answered e) But one safe and free memory enhancer is already available: sleep

what is memory?

1. Memory is any indication that learning has persisted over time. It is our ability to store and retrieve information a) Memory is the basis for knowing your friends, your neighbors, the English language, the national anthem, and yourself b) Memory: the persistence of learning over time through the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information 2. Research on memory's extremes has helped us to understand how memory works-people cannot form new memories at all after suffering a stroke vs people who would be gold medal winners in a memory Olympics a) Russian journalist Shereskevskii, or S had merely to listen while other reporters scribbled notes b) You and I could parrot back a string of about 7 or 9 digits. S could repeat up to 70 if they are read about 3 seconds apart in an otherwise silent room c) Moreover, he could recall digits or words backward as easel as forward d) His accuracy was unerring even when recalling lists as much as 25 years later 3. You remember countless voices, sounds, and songs; tastes, smells, and textures; faces, places, and happenings a) Imagine viewing more than 2500 slides of faces and places for 10 seconds each b) Later, you se 280 of these slides paired with others you've never seen c) Actual participants in this experiment recognize 90% of the slides they had viewed in the first round. In follow up experiments, people exposed to 2800 images for only 3 seconds each spotted the repeats with 82% accuracy d) Or imagine yourself looking at a picture fragment and you have seen the complete picture for a couple of seconds 17 years earlier. This too was a real experiment and participants who had previously seen the complete drawings were more likely to identify the objects than were members of a control group. Moreover, the picture memory reappeared even for those who did not consciously recall participating in the long ago experiment e) It is our memory that accounts for time and defines your life f) It is our memory that enables us to recognize family, speak our language, find our way home, and locate food and water g) It is our memory that enables us to enjoy an experience and then mentally replay and enjoy it again h) And it is our memory that occasionally pits us against those whose offenses we cannot forget 4. Without memory-our storehouse of accumulate learning there would be no savoring of past joys, no guilt or anger over painful recollections a) We would instead live in an enduring present, each moment fresh b) But each person would be a stranger, every language foreign, every task-dressing, eating, biking-a new challenge c) You would even be a strange to yourself, lacking that continuous sense of self that extends from your distant past to your momentary present

what is motivated forgetting? What is repression?

1. Motivated forgetting: people unknowingly revise their memories a) When we remember stuff, we tend to make ourselves look better and self censor info that is embarrassing b) To remember our past is often to revise it c) Our memories fail is in part because memory is an unreliable, self serving historian d) Consider one study, in which researchers told some participants about the benefits of toothbrushing e) Those individuals then recalled (more than others did) having frequently brushed their teeth in the preceding 2 weeks f) As we process information, we filter, alter, or lose much of it 2. Signmund Freud might have argued that our memory systems self censored this information a) Repression: a defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness / in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories b) He proposed that we REPRESS painful or unacceptable memories to protect our self concept and to minimize anxiety c) But repressed memory lingers, he believed and can be retrieved by some later cue or during therapy d) Repression was central to Freud's psychoanalytic theory and was a popular idea in twentieth century psychology and behind e) In one study, 9 in 10 university students agreed that memories for painful experiences are sometimes pushed into unconsciousness f) Some therapists assumed it 3. Today, however, increasing numbers of memory researchers think repression rarely, if ever, occurs a) People succeed in forgetting unwanted neutral information, but it's harder to forget emotional events b) Thus, we may have intrusive memories of the very traumatic experiences we would most like to forget c) So, if you are ever depressed over earning a bad grade, cheer up. Chances are, if you just wait long enough, it'll improve d) Their accuracy of recall declined steadily from 89% for A's to 64% for Bs, 51% for C's, and 29% for D's

how do we organize information for encoding?

1. Organizing information for encoding 2. We break down complex information into broad concepts and further subdivide them into categories and subcategories a) Chunking b) Hierarchies c) Mnemonics

what is storage and what are the three stores of memory?

1. Storage: retaining information 2. Storage is at the heart of memory. Three stores of memory are shown below: a) Sensory memory: really short, hearing someone call your name b) Sensory memory is unlimited but there is not a lot of recall 3. Working memory: a) Long-term memory: keeps everything storied b) Events go to sensory memory which encodes into working memory and then long term memory. Retrieval comes from long term memory to working memory and out to use it 4. Whole report: a) The exposure time for the stimulus is so small that items cannot be rehearsed b) Sperling argued that sensory memory capacity was larger than what was originally thought c) The wrong a low tone, medium tone, and high tone with each memory and it was easier to remember but after a second, not many people can tell you what letter it was d) The longer the delay, the greater the memory loss for sensory memory e) Over time your sensory memory degrades rapidly

how does language influence thinking? What is language determinism?

1. Thinking and language intricately intertwine a) Asking which comes first is one of psychology's child and egg questions. Do our ideas come first and we wait for words to name them? Or are our thoughts conceived in words and therefore unthinkable without them? 2. Language influences thinking: a) Linguist Benjamin Lee Whoft contended that language determines the way we think: Language itself shapes a person's basic ideas. b) Whorf's LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM hypothesis is too extreme. c) Linguistic determinism: Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think d) For example, he noted that the Hopi people do not have the past tense for verbs. e) Therefore, the Hopi cannot think readily about past f) "It turns out that people in southern Africa, the cradle of humanity, not only have richer DNA than anyone else but richer languages, with up to one hundred distinct sounds..." - Sam Kean 3. We all think about things for which we have no words. a) And we routinely have unsymbolized thoughts, as when someone, while watching two men carry a load of bricks, wondered whether the men would drop them b) Nevertheless, to those who speak two dissimilar languages, such as English and Japanese, it seems obvious that a person may think differently in different languages c) Unlike English, which as rich vocabulary for self focused emotions such as anger, Japanese has more words for interpersonal emotions such as sympathy 4. When a language provides works for objects or events, we can think about these objects more clearly and remember them. It is easier to think about two colors with two different names than colors with the same name a) It turns out that, since people prefer typing with their dominant hands and most of them are right handed, they tend to prefer the words with more right hand letters than left hand letters b) "While we think ourselves the masters of language, precisely the opposite is true. Language is the master of us, a tyranny from which no escape can be imagined." - Pesce c) Many bilingual individuals report that they have different sense of self, depending on which language they are using d) In one series of studies with bilingual Israeli Arabs (who speak both Arabic and Herbrew), participants thought differently about their social world, with different automatic associations with Arabs and Jews depending on which language the testing session used e) Bilingual individuals may even reveal different personality profiles when taking the same test in their two languages f) This happened when China-born, bilingual students at the University of Waterloo in Ontario were asked to describe themselves in English or Chinese g) The English language self descriptions fit typical Canadian profiles: students expressed mostly positive self statements and moods h) Responding in Chinese, the same students gave typically Chinese self descriptions: they reported more agreement with Chinese values and roughly equal positive and negative self statements and moods i) Similar personality changes have been shown when bicultural, bilingual Americans and Mexicans shifted between the cultural frames associated with English and Spanish j) So our words may not determine what we think, but they do influence our thinking 5. We use our language in forming categories a) In Brazil, the isolated Piraha tribespeople have words for the numbers 1 and 2, bt numbers above that are simply many b) Thus, if shown 7 nuts in a row, they find it very difficult to lay out the same number from their own pile 6. Words also influence our thinking about colors a) Whether we live in New Mexico, New South Wales, or New Guinea, we see colors much the same, but we use our native language to classify and remember colors b) If your language is English, you might view three colors and call two of them "yellow" and one of them "blue. c) Later you would likely see and recall the yellows as being more similar d) But if you are a member of the Papua New Guinea's Berinmo tribe, which has words for two different shades of yellow, you would more speedily perceive and better recall the distinctions between the two yellows e) And if your language is Russian, which has distinct names for different shades of blue, you might remember the blue better f) Words matter 7. Perceived difference grown when we assign different names to colors a) On the color spectrum, blue blends into green until we draw a dividing line between the portions we call blue and green b) Although equally different on the color spectrum, two different items that share the same color name (as two blues do) are harder to distinguish than two items with different names (like blue and green) 8. Given words' subtle influence on thinking, we do well to choose our words carefully a) When hearing the generic he, people are more likely to picture a male b) If he and his were truly gender free, we shouldn't skip and bea when hearing that "man, like other mammals, nurses his young" c) To expand language is to expand the ability to think d) Young children's thinking develops hand in hand with their language e) Indeed, it is very difficult to think about or conceptualize certain abstract ideas without language f) And what is true for preschoolers is true for everyone 9. IT PAYS TO INCREASE YOUR WORD POWER a) That's why most textbooks introduce new words-to teach new ideas and new ways of thinking 10. Increased word power helps explain what McGill University researcher Wallace Lambert calls the bilingual advantage a) Although their vocabulary in each language is somewhat smaller than that of people speaking a single language, bilingual people are skilled at inhibiting one language while using the other b) And thanks to their well practiced executive control over language, they also are better at inhibiting their attention to irrelevant information c) This superior attentional control is evident from 7 months of age into adulthood d) Lambert helped devise a Canadian program that immerses English speaking children in French e) For most of their first three years in school, the English speaking children are taught entirely in French, and thereafter gradually shift to classes mostly in English f) Not surprisingly, the children attain a natural French fluency unrivaled by other methods of language teaching g) Moreover, compared with similarly capable children in control groups, they do so without detriment to their English fluency, and with increased aptitude score,s creativity, and appreciation for French-Canadian culture h) Whether we are in linguistic minority or majority, language links us to one another 11. Language also connects us to the past and the future

what are the perils and powers of intuition?

1. We have seen how our irrational thinking can plague our efforts to see problems clearly, make wise decisions, form valid judgements, and reason logically a) Moreover, these perils of intuition feed gut fears and prejudices b) And they persist even when people are offered extra pay for thinking smart, even when they are asked to justify their answers, and even when they are expect physicians or clinicians 2. Cognitive scientists are also revealing intuition's powers. Here is a summary of some of the high points INTUITION IS HUGE a) Through selective attention, we can focus our conscious awareness on a particular aspect of all we experience b) Our mind's unconscious track, however, makes good use of intuitively of what we are not consciously processing c) Today's cognitive science offers many examples of unconscious influences on our judgements d) Most people guess that the more complex the choice, the smarter it is to make decisions rationally rather than intuitively e) Actually, Dutch psychologists have shown that in making complex decisions, we benefit by letting our brain work on a problem without thinking about it f) In one series of experiments, they showed three groups of people complex information g) They invited one group to state their preference immediately after reading information about each of four options h) A second group, given several minutes to analyze the information, made slightly smarter decisions i) But wisest of all, in study after study, was the third group, whose attention was distracted from a time, enabling their minds to process the complex information unconsciously j) Critics of this research remind us that deliberate ,conscious thought also is part of smart thinking 3. Nevertheless, letting a problem incubate while we attend to other things can pay dividends a) Facing a difficult decision involving lots of facts, we're wise to gather all the information we can, and then say give me some time not to think about this b) By taking time to sleep on it, we let our unconscious mental machinery work on and await the intuitive result of our unconscious processing 4. INTUITION IS USUALLY ADAPTIVE a) Our instant intuitive reactions enable us to react quickly b) Our fast and frugal heuristics, for example, enable us to intuitively assume that fuzzy looking objects are far away-which they usually are, except on foggy mornings c) Our learned association surface as gut feelings, the intuitions of our two track mind d) If a stranger looks like someone who previously harmed or threatened us, we may without consciously recalling the earlier experience-react wariy e) People's automatic, unconscious associations with a political position can even predict their future decisions before they consciously make up their minds 5. INTUITION IS RECOGNITION BORN OF EXPERIENCE: a) It is implicit knowledge- what we've learned but can't fully explain b) We see this tacit expertise in chess masters playing blitz chess where every move is made after barely more than a glance c) We see it in experienced nurses, firefighters, art critics, car mechanics, and hockey players d) And in you, too, for anything in which you have developed a special skill e) In each case, what feels like instant intuition is an acquired ability to size up a situation in an eyeblink f) Intuition is analysis frozen into habit 6. The bottom line: intuition can be perilous, especially when we overfeel and underthink, as we do when judging risks a) Today's psychological science reminds us to check our intuitions against reality, but also enhances our appreciation for intuition b) Our two track mind makes sweet harmony as smart, critical thinking listens to the creative whispers of our vast unseen kind, and then evaluates evidence, test conclusions and plans for the future c) Predictably irrational 7. The power of free! a) Truffle at 15 cents kiss at 1 cent b) 73% chose truffle 27% chose kiss c) Truffle at 14 cents kiss at free d) 31% chose truffle 69% chose kiss e) The price difference in both cases is the same 14 cents f) So..free can make you miss something g) More people will buy truffles over hersey kisses because they are better, but as soon as heresy kisses become free, everyone buys them instead

what is memory construction? What is the misinformation effect?

1. While tapping our memories, we filter or fill in missing pieces of information to make our recall more coherent a) Misinformation effect: incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event A) In many follow up experiments around the world, others have witnesses an event, received or not received misleading information about it, and then taken a memory test B) The repeated result is a MISINFORMATION EFFECT: exposed to misleading information, we tend to misremember C) A yield sign becomes a stop sign, hammers become screwdrivers, coke cans become peanut cans, breakfast cereal becomes eggs, and a clean shaven man morphs into a man with a mustache 2. So powerful is the misinformation effect that it can influence later attitudes and behaviors a) Just hearing a vivid retelling of an event can implant false memories b) One experiment falsely suggested to some Dutch university students that, as children, they became ill after eating spoiled egg salad c) After absorbing that suggestion, a significant minority were less likely to eat egg salad sandwiches, both immediately and 4 months later d) Even repeatedly imagining nonexistent actions and events can create false memories e) American and British university students were asked to imagine certain childhood events, such as breaking a window with their hand or having a skin sample removed from a finger f) One in four of them later recalled the imagined event as something that had really happened 3. Digitally altered photos have also produced this imagination inflation a) In experiments, researchers have altered photos from a family album to show some family members taking a hot air balloon ride b) After viewing these photos (rather than photos showing just the balloon), children reported more false memories and indicated high confidence in those memories c) When interviewed several days later, they reported even richer details of their false memories d) In British and Canadian university surveys, nearly one fourth of students have reported autobiographical memories that they later realized were not accurate e) The human mind, it seems, comes with builtin photoshopping software 4. Memory is not precise a) We infer our past from stored information plus what we later imagined, expected, saw, and heard b) We don't just retrieve memories, we reweave them Information acquired after an even alters memory of the event c) We often construct our memories as we encode them, and every time we replay a memory, we replace the original with a slightly modified version (memory researchers call this reconsolidating) d) So in a sense, your memory is only as good as your last memory e) The fewer times you use it, the more pristine it is f) This means that to some degree, all memory is false

what is the power of words? How does adjectives and tastes affect people?

Adjectives and Tastes: 1. Studies show that flowery modifiers not only tempt people to order the lyrically described foods but also lead them to rate those foods as tasting better than the dentical foods given only a generic listing a) "Salad" vs "A melange of local greens" b) Stuff written in nice fonts is more appealing than stuff written in other fonts Word power: 2. Increasing word power pays its dividends. It helps explain the bilingual advantage of bilingual children to inhibit one language while using another. 3. But what about psychosis...people that are bilingual usually have the auditory visions in the second language and not the first language

What are algorithms?

Algorithm: a) Methodical, logical, rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem 1. Contrasts with the usually speedier- but also more error prone use of heuristics a) By step by step algorithms can be laborious and exasperating b) To find a word using the 10 letters in SPLOTCHY for example, you could try each letter in each of the 10 positions-907,200 permutations in all

what are the basic memory processes?

Basic memory processes 1. Encoding: code and put into memory a) Types of memory codes: A) Acoustic B) Visual C) Semantic 2. Storage: maintain in memory a) We have different types of storage (quick or slow) and then different lengths of storage b) Types of long term memory: A) Episodic B) Procedural C) Semantic 3. Retrieval: recovery and memory a) Types of retrieval: A) Recall B) Recognition C) Much easier to remember than recall because there are more clues D) Memories are better if you can recall it instead of recognizing them

how does the cerebellum store memories?

Cerebellum: 1. A neural center in the hindbrain that processes implicit memories 2. The cerebellum plays a key role in forming and storing the implicit memories created by classical conditioning 3. With a damaged cerebellum, people cannot develop certain conditioned reflexes, such as associating a tone with an impeding puff of air-and thus do not blink in anticipation of the puff a) When researchers surgically disrupted the function of different pathways in the cerebellum of rabbits, the rabbits became unable to learn a conditioned eyeblink response 4. Implicit memory formation needs the cerebellum a) The basal ganglia, deep brain structures involved in motor movement facilitate formation of our procedural memories for skills b) The basal ganglia receive input from the cortex but do not return the favor of sending information back to the cortex for conscious awareness of procedural learning c) If you have learned how to ride a bike, thank you basal ganglia d) Our implicit memory system, enabled partly by the cerebellum and basal ganglia, helps explain why the reactions and skills we learned during infancy reach far into our future e) Yet as adults, our conscious memory of our first 3 years is blank, an experience called infantile amnesia 5. In one study, events childents experienced and discussed with their mothers at age 3 were 60% remembered at age 7 but only 34$ remembered at age 9 a) Two influences contribute to infantile amnesia: A) first, we index much of our explicit memories using words that nonspeaking children have not learned B) Second, the hippocampus is one of the last brain structures to mature

what is chunking?

Chunking 1. Organizing items into a familiar, manageable units, often occurs automatically 2. You already know the capacity of the working memory may be increased by "chunking" a) F-B-I N-S-A CiA I-B-M b) FBI, NSA, CIA, IBM c) But you didn't know that you can handle 4 chunks Try to remember the numbers below: 1-7-7-6-1-4-9-2-1-8-1-2-1-9-4-1 d) If you are well versed with American history, chunk the numbers together and see if you can recall them better: 1776, 1492, 1812, 1941 3. Acronyms are another way of chunking information to remember it a) HOMES = Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior b) PEMDAS= Parentheses, Exponents, Multiply, Divide, Add, Subtract c) ROY G. BIV = Red orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violent d) Organize information is more easily recalled 3. Chunking usually occurs so naturally that we take it for granted. a) If you are a native English speaker, you can reproduce the 150 or so line segments that make up the words in the three phrases. b) It would astonish someone unfamiliar with the language 4. We all remember information best when we can organize it into personally meaningful arrangements

what are concepts

Concept: a) Mental grouping of a similar objects, events, ideas, or people 1. We like to group things into group a) The concept chair includes many items- a baby's high chair, a reclining chair, a dentist's chair- all of which are for sitting 2. Concepts simplify our thinking a) Imagine without them. We would need a different name for every person, event, object, and idea b) We could not ask a child to throw the ball because the would be no concept of throw or ball c) Instead of saying they were angry, we would have to describe expressions, intensities, and words d) Concepts such as ball and anger give us much information with little cognitive effort e) We often form our concepts by developing prototypes and category hierarchies

how does encoding failure prevent us from remembering?

Encoding failure 1. We cannot remember what we do not encode a) Much of what we sense we never notice, and what we fail to encode, we will never remember 2. Age can affect encoding efficiency a) The brain areas that jump into action when young adults encode new information are less responsive in older adults b) This slower encoding helps explain age related memory decline 3. But no matter how young we are, we selectively attend to few of the myriad sights and sounds continually bombarding us a) When texting during class, students may fail to encode details that their more attentive classmates are encoding for next week's test b) Without effort, many potential memories never form

what is false memory syndrome? Does repression of threatening memories ever occur?

False Memory Syndrome: 1. Condition in which a person identity and relationships center around a false but strongly believed memory of traumatic experience a) Sometimes induced by well meaning therapists 3. So does repression of threatening memories ever occur? a) The most common response to a traumatic experience is not banishment of the experience into the unconscious b) Rather such experiences are typically etched on the mind as vivid, persistent, haunting memories

how do can you boost the creative process?

For those seeking to boost the creative process, research offers some ideas: 1. Develop your expertise: a) Ask yourself what you care about and most enjoy Follow your passion and become an expert at something 2. Allow time for incubation a) Given sufficient knowledge available for novel connections, a period of inattention to a problem allows for unconscious processing to form associations b) So think hard on a problem ,then set it aside and come back to it later 3. Set aside time for the mind to roam freely a) Take time away from attention-absorbing television, social networking, and video gaming, jog, go for a long walk, or meditate 4. Experience other cultures and ways of thinking a) Living abroad sets the creative juices flowing b) Even after controlling for other variables, students who have spent time abroad are more adept at working out creative solutions to problems c) Multicultural experiences expose us to multiple perspectives and facilitate flexible thinking

what is forgetting?

Forgetting: 1. An inability to retrieve information due to poor encoding, storage or retrieval a) To discard the clutter of useless or out of date information- last year's locker combination, a friend's old phone number, restaurant orders already cooked and served-is surely a blessing 2. The Russian memory whiz S was haunted by his junk heap of memories. a) They dominated his consciousness b) He had difficulty thinking abstractly-generalizing, organization,g evaluating. After reading a story, he could recite it but would struggle to summarize its gist c) A more recent case of a life overtaken by memory is "AJ" whose experience has been studied and verified by a University of California at Irvine research team d) AJ, who has identified herself as Jill Price, compares her memory with a running move that never stops. It's like a split screen. I'll be talking to someone and seeing something else. Whenever I see a date flash on the television I automatically go back to that day and remember where I was, what I was doing, what day it fell on, and on and on, and on. Itis nonstop, uncontrollable, and totally exhausting 3. A good memory is helpful, but so is the ability to forget. a) If a memory-enhancing pull becomes available, it had better not be too effective b) More often, however, our unpredictable memory dismays and frustrates us 4. Memories are quirky a) Neurologist Oliver Sacks described another patient, Jimmie, who had anterograde amnesia resulting from brain damage b) Jimmie had no memories-thus, no sense of elapsed time beyond his injury in 1945 c) When Jimmie gave his age as 19, Sacks set at mirror before him and Jimmie turned ashen, gripped the chair, cursed then became frantic d) When his attention was diverted to some children playing baseball, his panic ended, the dreadful mirror forgotten 5. Careful testing of these unique people reveals something even stranger: although incapable of recalling new facts or anything they have done recently, Mollaison, Jimmie, and others with similar conditions can learn nonverbal tasks a) Shown hard to find figures in pictures, they can quickly spot them again later b) They can find their way to the bathroom, though without being able to tell you where it is c) They can learn to read mirror image writing or do a jigsaw puzzle, and they have even been taught complicated job skills d) They can be classically conditioned e) However, THEY DO ALL THESE THINGS WITH NO AWARENESS OF HAVING LEARNED THEM f) Molaison and Jimmie lost their ability to form new explicit memories, but their automatic processing ability remained intact g) Like Alzheimer's patients, whose explicit memories for new people and events are lost, they can form new implicit memories h) They can learn how to do something, but they will have no conscious recall of learning their new skill i) Such sad cases confirm that we have two distinct memory systems, controlled by different parts of the brain j) For most of us, forgetting is a less drastic process

what is the information processing model of memory?

Information Processing Models: 1. Psychologists create memory models to help us think about how our brain forms and retrieves memories. Information processing models are analogies that compare human memory to a computer's operations 2. Thus, to remember any event, we must: a) Encoding: the processing of information into the memory system-for example by extracting meaning b) Storage: the process of retaining encoded information over time c) Retrieval: the process of getting information out of memory storage 3. Our memories are less literal and more fragile than a computer's a) Moreover, most computers process information sequentially, even while alternating between tasks 4. Our dual track brain processes many things simultaneously (some of them unconsciously) by means of PARALLEL PROCESSING a) Parallel processing: the processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain's natural mode of information processing for many functions. Contrasts with the step by step (serial_ processing of most computers and of conscious problem solving b) To focus on this complex, simultaneous processing, one information processing model, connectionism, views memories as products of interconnected neural networks c) Specific memories arise from particular activation patterns within these networks d) Every time you learn something new, your brain's neural connections change, forming, and strengthening pathways that allow you to interact with and learn from your constantly changing environment

what is the spacing, testing, and serial position effect?

Memory Effects: 1. We retain information better when our encoding is distributed over time 2. More than 300 experiments over the last century have consistently revealed the benefits of this SPACING EFFECT a) Spacing Effect: we retain information better when we rehearse over time b) Spacing effect: the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long term retention than is achieve through massed study or practice c) Massed practice (cramming) can produce speedy short term learning and a feeling of confidence, but those who learn quickly also forget quickly d) Distributed practice produces better long term recall After you've studied long enough to master the material, further study at that time becomes inefficient e) Better to spend that extra reviewing time later- a day later if you need to remember something 10 days hence, or month later if you need to remember something 6 months hence f) Spreading your learning over several months, rather than over a shorter term, can help you retain information for a lifetime g) In a 9 year experiment, Harry Behrick and three of his family members practiced foreign language word translations for a given number of times, at intervals ranging from 14 to 56 days. Their consistent finding: the longer the spacing between practice sessions, the better their retention up to 5 years later 3. Serial Position Effect: When your recall is better for first and last items on a list, but poor for middle items a) You can remember the first couple and the last couple, but you won't remember the middle items very well b) Another memory retrieval quirk, the SERIAL POSITION EFFECT, can leave us wondering why we have large holes in our memory of a list of recent events c) Serial position effect: our tendency to recall best the last (a recency effect) and first items (a primacy effect) in a list d) In experiments, when people view a list of items (words, names, dates, even odors) and immediately try to recall them in any order, they fall prey to the serial position effect e) They briefly recall the last items especially quickly and well (a recency effect), perhaps because those last items are still in working memory f) But after a delay, when they have shifted their attention away from the last items, their recall is best for the first items (a primacy effect) 4. One effective way to distribute practice is repeated self testing, a phenomenon that researchers Henry Roediger and Jeffery Karpicke have called the TESTING EFFECT a) Testing effect: enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information. Also sometimes referred to as a retrieval practice effect or test enhanced learning. b) Better to practice retrieval (as any exam will demand) than merely to reread material (which may lull you into a false sense of mastery) 5. The point to remember: SPACED STUDY AND SELF ASSESSMENT BEAT CRAMMING AND REREADING. PRACTICE MAY NOT MAKE PERFECT, BUT SMART PRACTICE-OCCASIONAL REHEARSAL WITH SELF TESTING-MAKES FOR LASTING MEMORIES

what is your mental set?

Mental set: old pattern of problem solving is applied to a new problem / a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past 1. Once we incorrectly represent a problem, it's hard to restructure how we approach it a) If the solution to a problem eludes you, you may be experiencing fixation-an inability to see a problem from a fresh perspective 2. A prime example of fixation is MENTAL SET a) As a perceptual set predisposes what we perceive, a mental set predisposes how we think; sometimes this can be an obstacle to problem solving, as when our mental set from our past experiences with matchsticks predisposes us to arrange them in two dimensions

what is the one word stage?

One word stage: a) From about age 1 to 2 b) The stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in single words 1. Around their first birthday, most children enter the ONE WORD STAGE a) They have already learned that sounds carry meanings, and if repeatedly trained to associate, say fish with a picture of a fish, 1-year olds will look at a fish when a researcher says "fish, fish, look at the fish" b) They now begin to use sounds-usually only one barely recognizable syllable, such as ma or da-to communicate meaning c) But family members quickly learn to understand and gradually the infant's language conforms more to the family's language d) Across the world, baby's first words are often nouns that label objects or people e) At this one word stage, a single inflected word ("doggy") may equal a sentence ("look at the dog out there" )

Why do we fear the wrong things?

Psychologists have identified four influences that feed fear and cause us to ignore higher risks 1. We fear what our ancestral history has prepared us to fear a) Human emotions were road tested in the stone age b) Our old brain prepares us to fear yesterday's risks: snakes, lizards, and spiders c) Yesterday's risks also prepare us to fear confinement and heights and therefore flying 2. We fear what we cannot control a) Driving we control, flying we do nt 3. We fear what is immediate: a) The dangers of flying are mostly telescoped into the moments of takeoff and landing b) The dangers of driving are diffused across many moments ot come, each trivally dangerous 4. Thanks to the availability heuristic, we fear what is most readily avaiable in memory a) Powerful, vivid images like that of united flight 175 slicing into the World Trade Center, feed our judgments frisk b) Thousands of safe car trips have extinguished our anxieties about driving c) Similarly, we remember and fear widespread disaters that kill people dramatically in bunches d) But we fear too little the less dramatic threats that claim lives quietly, one by one, continuing into the distant future d) Bill gates has noted that each year a half million children worldwide die from rotavirus e) This is the equivalent of four 747s full of children every day and we hear nothing of it 5. The news and out own memorable experiences, can make us disproportionately fearful of infiniteismal risks a) As one risk analyst explained "if its in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition of news is something that hardly ever happens. b) Despite people's fear of dying in a terrorist attack on an airplane, the last decade produced one terrorist attempt for every 10.4 million flights-less than one twentieth the chance of any one of us being stuck by lightning 6. The point to remember: it is perfectly normal to fear purposeful violence from those who wish us harm a) When terrorists strike again, we will recoil in horror b) But smart thinkers will check their fears against the facts and resist those who aim to create a culture of fear c) By so doing, we take away the terrorists' most omnipresent weapon: exaggerated fear

are child sexual abuse repressed memories repressed or constructed?

Repressed or constructed: Those committed to protecting abused children and those committed to protecting wrongly accused adults have agreed on the following: 1. CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE DOES OCCUR: and it happens more often than we once supposed a) Although sexual abuse can leave its victims at risk for problems ranging from sexual dysfunction to depression, there is no charaacteristic "survivor syndrome"- no group of symptoms that lets us spot victims of sexual abuse 2. SOME ADULTS DO ACTUALLY FORGET SUCH EPISODES: a) It is possible that memories can be forcibly repressed however there is a large number of false memory syndromes b) many of those actually abused were either very young when abused or may not have understood the meaning of their experience- circumstances under which forgetting is common c) Forgetting past events, both negative and positive is an ordinary part of everyday life 3.INJUSTICE HAPPENS: some innocent people have been falsely convicted a) And some guilty people have evaded responsibility by casting doubt on their truth telling accusers 4. RECOVERED MEMORIES ARE COMMONPLACE: cued by a remark or an experience, we all recover memories of long forgotten events, both pleasant and unpleasant a) What many psychologists debate is twofold: does the unconscious mind sometimes forcibly repress painful experiences? If so, can these experiences be retrieved by certain therapist aided techniques? b) Memories that surface naturally are more likely to be verified 5. MEMORIES OF THINGS HAPPENING BEFORE AGE 3 ARE UNRELIABLE: we cannot reliably recall happenings from our first three years. a) As noted earlier, this infantile amnesia happens because our brain pathways have not yet developed enough to form the kinds of memories we will form later in life b) Most psychologists-including most clinical and counseling psychologists-therefore doubt "recovered" memories of abuse during infancy c) The older a child was when suffering sexual abuse, and the more severe the abuse, the more likely it is to be remembered 6. MEMORIES "RECOVERED" UNDER HYPNOSIS OR THE INFLUENCE OF DRUGS ARE ESPECIALLY UNRELIABLE: under hypnosis, people will incorporate all kinds of suggestions into their memories, even memories of past lives 7. MEMORIES, WHETHER REAL OR FALSE, CAN BE EMOTIONALLY UPSETTING: both the accuser and the accused may suffer when what was born of mere suggestion becomes, like an actual trauma, a stringing memory that drives bodily stress a) Some people knocked unconscious in unremembered accidents know this is all too well b) They have later developed stress disorders after being haunted by memories they constructed from photos, news reports, and friends' accounts

how do you retrieve incomplete knowledge?

Retrieving Incomplete Knowledge: 1. Tip of the tongue Phenomenon: "the answer is on the tip of my tongue...it starts with Q" 2. Feeling of knowing experience: if you don't know the answer, how likely is it that you could recognize the answer? People are good at this. They "know it" but can't retrieve it.

How does sensory memory work? What is echoic and ionic memory?

Sensory memories: 1. The duration of sensory memory varies for the different senses 2. Visual memory 3. Auditory memory: you can hear a person and repeat back to them what they said even if you aren't listening a) Automatic processing happens so effortlessly that it is difficult to shut off. b) When you see words in your native language, you can't help but read them and register their meaning c) Learning to read wasn't automatic. You may recall working hard to pick out letters and connect them to certain sounds. But with experience and practice, your reading became automatic d) We develop many skills (driving, texting, speaking a new language) with effort but then these tasks become automatic 4. Sensory memory feeds our active working memory, recording momentary images of scenes or echoes of sound a) In one experiment, people viewed three rows of three letters each for only one 20th of a second. After the nine letters disappeared, they could recall only about half of them b) The researcher, George Sperling, cleverly demonstrated that people actually could see and recall all the letters, but only momentarily c) Rather than ask them to recall all nine letters at once, he sounded a high, medium, or low tone immediately after flashing the nine letters d) This tone directed participants to report only the letters of the top, middle, or bottom row, respectively e) Now they rarely missed a letter, showing that all nine letters were momentarily available for recall f) Sperling's experiment demonstrated ICONIC MEMORY 5. Iconic: 0.5 secs long a) Iconic memory: a momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second b) For a a few tenths of a second, our eyes register a photographic or picture image memory of a scene, and we can recall any part of it in amazing detail c) But if Sperling delayed the tone signal by more than half a second, the image faded and participants again recalled, only about half the letters. d) Our visual screen clears quickly as new images are superimposed over old ones 6. We also have an impeccable, though fleeting, memory for auditory stimuli, called ECHOIC MEMORY a) echoic : 3-4 seconds long b) Echoic memory: a momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words an still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds c) Picture yourself in class, as your attention veers to thoughts of the weekend. If your mildly irked teacher tests you by asking "what did I just say?' you can recover the last few words from your mind's echo chamber. d) Auditory echoes tend to linger for 3 or 4 second

what do synaptic changes have do do with memory?

Synaptic Changes 1. In aphasia, Kandel and Schwartz (1982) showed that serotonin release from neurons increased after conditioning a) When you form a memory, you release neurotransmitters (serotonin, nepepherin, endorphins are probably involved) b) Given increased activity in particular pathways, neural interconnections are forming and strengthening while you learn c) The question to understanding the physical basis of memory has sparked study of the synaptic meeting palaces where neurons communicate with one another via their neurotransmitter messengers 2. Eric Kandel and James Schwartz observed synaptic changes during learning in the sending neurons of the California sea slug, a simple animal with a mere 20,000 or so unusually large and accessible nerve cells a) The sea slug can be classical conditioned with electric shock to reflexively withdraw its gills when squirted with water, much as a shell shocked soldier jumps at the sound of a snapping twig b) By observing the slug's neural connections before and after conditioning, Kandel and Schwartz pinpointed changes c) When learning occurs, the slug releases more of the neurotransmitter serotonin into certain synapses d) Those synapses then become more efficient at transmitting signals

What, then, should we say about the relationship between thinking and language?

THINKING AFFECTS LANGUAGE, LANGUAGE AFFECTS THINKING 1. Language influences our thinning a) But if thinking did not also affect language, there would never be any new words b) And new words and new combinations of old words express new ideas 2. THINKING AFFECTS OUR LANGUAGE, WHICH THEN AFFECTS OUR THOUGHT a) Psychological research on thinking and language mirror the mixed views of our species by those in fields such as literature and religion b) The human mind is simultaneously capable of striking intellectual failures and of striking intellectual power 3. Misjudgments are common and can have disastrous consequences a) So we do well to appreciate our capacity for error b) Yet our efficient heuristics often serve us well c) Moreover, our ingenuity at problem solving and our extraordinary power of language mark humankind as almost "infinite in faculties."

what are the types of long term memories?

Types of long term memories: 1. Explicit (declarative) with conscious recall a) Processed in hippocampus b) Facts and general knowledge c) Personally experienced events 2. Implicit (procedural) without conscious recall a) Process by cerebellum b) Skills motor and cognitive c) Classical and operant conditioning effects

what is working memory?

1. An newer understanding of short term memory that involves conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long term memory a) Alan Baddeley and others challenged Atkinson and Shriffrin's view of short term memory as a smal, brief storage space for recent thoughts and experiences 2. Two types of working memory are auditory and visual-spatial information because he use it in the present but it will fade unless we rehearse it a) Auditory is remembering directions to somewhere b) Research shows that this stage is not just a temporary shelf for holding incoming information A) It is an active desktop where your brain processes information, making sense of new input and linking it with long term memories 3. To emphasize the active processing that takes place in this middle stage, psychologists use the term WORKING MEMORY a) Right now you are using your working memory to link the information you're reading with your previously stored information b) The pages you are reading may enter working memory though vision. You might also repeat the information using auditor rehearsal. As you integrate these memory inputs with your existing long term memory, your attention is focused 4. Baddeley suggested central executive haldes this focused processing a) Without focused attention, information often fades b) In one experiment, people read and typed new information they would later need. If they knew the information would be available online, they invested less energy in remembering and they remembered the trivia less well c) Sometime, Google replaces rehearsal

What is belief bias?

1. Belief bias: a) The tendency for one's preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning 2. Sometimes making invalid conclusions seem valid or valid conclusions seem invalid 3. Belief Bias example: a) God is love b) Love is blind c) Ray Charles is blind. d) Ray Charles is God

how do you store explicit memories?

1. Explicit Memories refers to facts and experiences that one can consciously know nand declare a) Stories you can tell or facts from school b) Found in the cortex c) Explicit memory system: the frontal lobes and hippocampus 2. As with perception, language, emotion, and much more, memory requires brain networks a) The network that processes and stores your explicit memories for facts and episodes includes your frontal lobes and hippocampus b) When you summon up a mental encore of a past experience, many brain regions send input to your frontal lobes for working memory processing c) The left and right frontal lobes process different types of memories. d) Recalling a password and holding it in working memory, for example, would activate the left frontal lobe. e) Calling up a visual party sense would likely activate the right frontal lobe

how does memory construct memories of abuse?

1. the research on source amnesia and the misinformation effect raises concerns about therapist-guided recovered memories a) There are two tragedies related to adult recollections of child abuse b) One happens when people don't believe abuse survivors who tell their secret. c) The other happens when innocent people are falsely accused 2. Some well intentioned therapists have reasoned with patients that people who've been abused often have your symptoms so you probably were abused. Let's see if aided by hypnosis or drugs, or helped to dig back and visualize your trauma, you can recover it a) Patients exposed to such techniques may then form an image of a threatening person b) With further visualization, the image grows more vivid c) The patient ends up stunned angry, and ready to confront or sue the remembered abuser and the accused person (often a parent or relative) is equally stunned and devastated and vigorously denies the accusation 3. Critics are not questioning more therapists' professionalism. Nor are they questioning the accusers' sincerity, even if false, their memories are heartfelt a) Critics charges are specifically directed against clinicians who use memory work techniques, such as guided imagery, hypnosis, and dream analysis to recover memories b) Irate clinicians have countered that those who argue that recovered memories of abuse never happen are adding to abused people's trauma and playing into the hands of child molesters c) In an effort to find a sensible common ground that might resolve psychology's memory war, professional organizations have convened study panels and issued public statements.

what is the creativity test?

Although there is no agreed upon creativity measure- there is no creativity quotient corresponding to an intelligence quotient score-Robert Sternberg and his colleagues have identified five components of creativity 1. EXPERTISE: a well developed base of knowledge furnishes the ideas, images, and phrases we use as mental building blocks a) The more blocks we have, the more chances we have to combine them in novel ways b) Wile's well developed base of knowledge put the needed theorems and methods at his disposal 2. IMAGINATIVE THINKING SKILLS: provide the ability to see things in novel ways, to recognize patterns, and to make connections a) Having mastered a problem's basic elements, we redefine or explore it in a new way b) Wiles' imaginative solution combined two partial solutions 3. A VENTURESOME PERSONALITY: seeks new experiences, tolerates ambiguity and risk, and preservers in overcoming obstacles a) Wiles risked much of his time in pursuit of his dream and reserved in near isolation from the mathematics community patiala to stay focused and avoid distraction 4. INTRINSIC MOTIVATION: is being driven more by interest, satisfaction, and challenge than by external pressures a) Creative people focus less on extrinsic motivators-meeting deadlines, impressing people, or making money-than on the pleasure and simulation of the world itself b) WIles said that he was so obsessed by this problem that he was thinking about it all the time 5. A CREATIVE ENVIRONMENT: sparks, supports a refines creative ideas a) After studying the careers of 2026 prominent scientists and investors, Dean Keith Simonton noted that the most eminent were mentored, challenged, and supported by their colleagues b) Many had the emotional intelligence needed to network effectively with peers c) Even Wiles stood on the shoulders of others and wrestled this problem with the collaboration of a former student d) Creativity fostering environments support innovations, team building, and communication e) They also support contemplation f) Google has estimated that nearly half its product innovations have been sparked during the 20% of employee time reserved for unstructured creative thinking

what is constructed memory?

Constructed Memories: 1. Loftus' research shows that if false memories (lost at the mall or drowned in a lake) are implanted in individuals, they construct (fabricate) their memories a) Because the misinformation effect and source amnesia happen outside our awareness, it is nearly impossible to sift suggested ideas out of the larger pool of real memories b) Perhaps you can recall describing a childhood experience to a friend and filing in memory gaps with reasonable guesses and assumption c) We all do it and after more retellings, those guessed details-now absorbed into our memories-may feel as real as if we had actually experienced them d) Much as perceptual illusions may seem like real perceptions, unreal memories feel like real memories 2. False memories can be very persistent a) People who were asked to recognize the presents words from a larger list, you were err three out of four times by falsely remembering a non represented similar word b) We more easily remember the gist than the words themselves 3. Memory construction helps explain why 79% of 200 convicts exonerated by later DNA testing had been misjudged based on faulty eyewitness identification a) It explains why hypnotically refreshed memories of crimes so easily incorporate errors, some of which originate with the hypnotist's leading questions b) It explains why dating partner who fell in love have overestimated their first impressions of one another while those who broke up underestimated their earlier liking c) How people feel today tends to be how they recall they have always felt d) As George Vaillant noted after following adult lives through time, it is all too common for caterpillars to become butterflies and then to maintain that in their youth they had been little butterflies. Maturation makes liars of us all

what is automatic processing?

1. Automatic processing: unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency; and of well learned information, such as word meanings 2. Implicit memory: retention independent of conscious recollection (also called nondeclarative memory) a) Our implicit memories include procedural memory for automatic skills (such as how to ride a bike) and classically conditioned associations among stimuli. 3. We process an enormous amount of information effortlessly, such as the following: a) Space: while reading a textbook, you automatically encode the place of a picture on a page A) The space that you are in when the memory occurred while studying, you often encode the place on a page or in your notebook where certain material appears; later, when you want to retrieve information about automatic processing, you may visualize the location of tht information on this page b) Time: we unintentionally note the events that take place in a day A) We have our own mental clock of when things happen while going about your dog, you unintentionally note the sequence of its events. Later, the event sequence in your brain automatically encoded you to retrace your steps to find missing belongings c) Frequency: you effortlessly keep track of how many times things happen to you A) This is why they recommend that you sit in the same seat when you are taking a test because you will remember things better B) You remember things if there are repetition C) You effortlessly keep track of how many times things happen, as when you suddenly realize, this is the third time I've run into her today

why is chilhood a critical period for learning language?

1. Childhood is a critical period for fully developing certain aspects of language a) Children never exposed to any language (spoken or signed) by about age 7 gradually lose their ability to master any language b) Childhood seems to represent a critical (or sensitive) period for mastering certain aspects of language before the language-learning window closes c) Learning new languages gets harder with age d) People who learn a second language as adults usually speak it with the accent of their native language, and they also have difficulty mastering the new grammar 2. In one experiment, Korean and Chinese migrants considered 276 English sentences and decided whether they are grammatically correct or incorrect a) All had been in the United States for approximately 10 years: some had arrived in early childhood, others as adults b) Those who learned their second language early, learned it best c) The older one is when moving to a new country, the harder it will be to learn its language and to absorb its culture 3. The window on language learning closes gradually in early childhood a) Later than usual exposure to language unleashes the idle language capacity of a child's brain, producing a rush of language b) But by about age 7, those who have not been exposed to either a spoken or a signed language, gradually lose their ability to master any language c) The impact of early experiences is evident in language learning in the 90+ percent of prelingually deaf children born to hearing nonsigning parents d) These children typically do not experience language during their early years e) Natively deaf children who learn sign language after age 9 never learn it as well as those who lose their hearing at age 9 after learning English f) They also never learn English as well as other natively deaf children who learned sign in infancy g) Those who learn to sign as teens or adults are likely immigrants who learn English after childhood: they can master basic words and learn to order them, but they never become as fluent as native signers in producing and comprehending subtle grammatical differences 4. Children will typically become linguistically stunted if isolated from language during the critical period for its acquisition

how does language develop?

1. Children learn much of their native languages before learning to add 2 +2 a) We learn, on average (after age 1), 3,500 words a year, answering 60,000 words by the time we graduate from high school b) Start language as an infant when with cooing and then babbling to learn language c) Although you use only 150 words for about half of what you say, you will have learned about 60,000 words in your native language during those years d) That averages to nearly 3500 words each year or nearly 10 each day after the age of 2 2. As a preschooler, you comprehended and spoke with a facility that puts to shame college students struggling to learn a foreign language a) We humans have an astonishing facility for language b) With remarkable efficiency, we sample tens of thousands of words in our memory, effortlessly assemble them with near perfect syntax and spew them out, three words a second c) Seldom do we form sentences in our minds before speaking them d) Rather, we organize them on the fly as we speak e) And while doing all this, we also adapt our utterances to our social and cultural context, following rules for speaking and listening 3. Words in English? a) With variants- 750,000 b) Smart and educated people may use as many as 60,000 English words, or about 7.5% of the entire English vocabulary c) We use remarkably little of it... d) Ten simple words account for 25 percent of all English speech e) 50 words account for 60% f) 1,500 to 2,000 words account for 99 percent of all that Americans say

are children's eyewitness recal reliable?

1. Children's eyewitness recall can be unreliable if leading questions are posed a) However, if cognitive interviews are neutrality wounded, the accuracy of their recall increases c) In cases of sexual abuse, this usually suggests a lower percentage of abuse. d) If memories can be sincere, yet sincerely wrong might children's recollections of sexual abuse be prone to error 2. Stephen Ceci and Maggie Cruck's studies of children's memories have made them aware of how easily children's memories can be molded a) For example, they asked 3 year olds to show on anatomically correct dolls where pediatrician had touched them b) Of the children who had not recieved genital examinations, 55% pointed to either genital or anal areas c) In other experiments, the researchers studied the effect of suggestive interviewing techniques d) In one study, children chose a card from a deck of possible happenings and an adult then read the card to them e) In interviews, the same adults repeatedly asked children to think about several real and fictitious events f) After 10 weeks of this, a new adult asked the same question g) The stunning result: 58% of preschoolers produced false (often vivid) stories regarding one or more events they had never experienced h) Given such detailed stories, professional psychologists who specialize in interviewing children could not reliably separate the real memories from the false ones i) Nor could the children themselves 3. In another experiment, preschoolers merely overheard an erroneous remark about a magician's missing rabbit had gotten loose in the classroom a) Later when the children were suggestively questioned, 78% of them recalled actually seeing the rabbit b) The research leads me to worry about the possibility of false allegations. It is not a tribute to one's scientific integrity to walk down the middle of the road if the data are more to one side 4. When questioned about their experiences in neutral words they understood, children often accurately recalled what happened and who did it a) And when interviewers used less suggestive, more effective techniques, even 4 to 5 year old children produce more accurate recall b) Children were especially accurate when they had not talked with involved adults prior to the interview and when their disclosure was made in a first interview with a neutral person who asked non leading questions

what is deja vu?

1. Deja Vu means "I've experienced this before." Cues from the current situation may unconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier similar experience a) Sight has a big impact on it for some reason b) It happens mostly to well educated, well imagined adults when they are tired or stressed 2. Source amnesia also helps explain DEJA VU a) Two thirds of us have experienced deja bu b) It happens most commonly to well educated, imaginative young adults especially when tired or stressed c) Some wonder, "how could i recognize a stiaution i'm experiencing for the first time?" and others may think or reincarnation or precognition d) The key to deja vu seems to be familiarity with a stimulus without a clear idea of where we encounter it before e) Normally, we experience a feeling of familiarity (thanks to temporal lobe processing) before we consciously remember details (thanks to hippocampus and frontal lobe process) 3. When these functions (and brain regions) are out of sync, we may experience a feeling of familiarity without conscious recall a) Our amazing brains try to make sense of such an improbable situation, and we get an eerie feeling that we're reliving some earlier part of our life b) After all, the situation is familiar, even though we have no idea why c) Our source amnesia forces us to do our best to make sense of an odd moment

what is explicit memories/ What is effortful processing?

1. Effortful Processing a) Committing novel information to memory requires effort just like learning a concept from a textbook b) Such processing leads to durable and accessible memories c) Atkinson and Shiffirn's model focused on how we process our EXPLICIT MEMORIES. We encode explicit memories through conscious, EFFORTFUL PROCESSING 2. Explicit memories: memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare" (also called declarative memory) 3. Effortful processing: encoding that requires attention and conscious effort a) Automatic processing happens so effortlessly that it is difficult to shut off. b) When you see words in your native language, you can't help but read them and register their meaning c) Learning to read wasn't automatic. You may recall working hard to pick out letters and connect them to certain sounds. But with experience and practice, your reading became automatic d) We develop many skills (driving, texting, speaking a new language) with effort but then these tasks become automatic e) Research shows that several effortful processing strategies can boost our ability to form new memories. Later, when we try to retrieve a memory, these strategies can make the difference between success and failure 4. Chunking 5. Mnemonics 6. Hierarchies

what is exaggerated fear?

1. Exaggerated fear about what may happen. Such fears may be unfounded. This is opposite of having overconfidence 2. We often fear the wrong things a) We fear flying because we play in our heads some air disaster b) We fear letting our children walk to school because we play in our heads tapes of abducted and brutalized children c) We fear swimming in ocean waters because we replay Jaws in our heads d) Even just passing by a person who sneezes and coughs heightens our perceptions of various health risk e) And so, thanks to these readily available images, we come to fear extremely rare events 3. What is most likely to kill someone your age...15-24 a) Murder? b) Criminal violence? c) Accidents, mostly car drecks d) As a group, you are more likely to kill yourselfs than to be murdered? e) Are you more likely to be burglarized or steal from your work? f) California state university professor mike orkin points out that if a person drives ten miles to buy a lotto ticket, he or she is about 16 times more likely to get killed in a car crash than to win the lotto 4. Meanwhile, the lack of comparably available images of global climate change-which some scientists regard as a future armageddon in slow motion-has left most people little concerned a) The vividness of a recent local cold day reduces their concern about long term global warming and overwhelms less memorable scientific data b) Dramatic outcomes make us gasp; probabilities we hardly grasp c) As of 2013, some 60 nations including Canada, many in Europe and the United States, have however sought to harness the positive power of vivid memorable images by putting eye catching warnings and graphic photos on cigarette packages d) This campaign may work, where others have failed As psychologists Paul Slovic points out, we reason emotionally and neglect probabilities 5. We overfeel and underthink a) In one experiment donations to a starving 7 year old child were greater when her image was not accompanied by statistical information about the needy African children like her b) The more who die, the less we care 6. The 9/11 attacks led to a decline in air travel due to fear a) After the 9/11 attacks, many people feared flying more than driving b) In a 2006, Gallup survey, only 40%% of Americans reported being not afraid at all to fly c) Yet from 2005 to 2007 Americans wre mile for mile-170 times more likely to die in an automobile or pickup truck crash than on a scheduled flight d) In 2009 alone, 33,808 Americans were killed in motot vehicle accidents-that's 650 dead people each week e) Meanwhile in 2009 zero died from airline accidents on scheduled flights f) In a late 2001 essay, it was calculated that if because of 9/11 we flew 20% less and instead drove half those unflown miles, about 800 more people would die in the year after 9/11 g) German psychologists Gerd Gigerenzer lated chcked this estimate against actual accident data h) U.S. traffic deaths did indeed increase significantly in the last three months of 2001 i) By the end of 2002, Gigerenzer estimated, 1600 Americans had lost their lives on the road by trying to avoid the risk of flying j) Despite our greater fear of flying, flying's greatest danger is for most people, the drive to the airport

what are flashbulb memories? How can stressful events trigger memories?

1. Flashbulb memories are clear memories of emotionally significant moments or events a) This perceived clarity of memories of surprising, significant events leads some psychologists to call them FLASHBULB MEMORIES b) Flashbulb memories: a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event c) Others' memories for the circumstances under which they merely heard about an event were more prone to errors compared to those who had witnessed it 2. Our flashbulb memories are noteworthy for their vividness and the confidence with which we recall them. a) But as we relieve, rehearse, and discuss them, these memories may come to err, as misinformation seeps in 3. Heightened emotions (stress related or otherwise) make for stronger memories a) Memories that stand out very vivid b) Our emotions trigger stress hormones that influence memory formation c) When we are excited or stressed, these hormones make more glucose energy available to fuel brain activity, signaling the brain that something important has happened d) Moreover, stress hormones provoke the amygdala (two limbic systems, emotion-processing clusters) to initiate a memory trace in the frontal lobes and basal ganglia and to boost activity in the brain's memory forming areas e) The results are emotional arousal can share certain events into the brain, while disrupting memory for neutral events around the same time f) Emotions often persist without our conscious awareness of what caused them 4. In one ingenious experiment, patients with hippocampal damage (which left them unable to form new explicit memories) watched a sad film and later a happy film a) After the viewing, they did not consciously recall the films, but the sad or happy emotion persisted b) Significantly stressful events can form almost indelible (unforgettable) memories c) After traumatic experiences- a school shooting, a house fire, a rape- vivid recollections of the horrific event may intrude again and again d) It is as if they were burned in because stronger emotional experiences make for stronger more reliable memories e) This makes adaptive sense since memory serves to predict the future and to alert us ot potential dangers 5. Conversely, weaker emotions mean weaker memories a) People given a drug that blocked the effects of stress hormones later had more trouble remembering the details of an upsetting story b) Emotion-triggered hormonal changes help explain why we long remember exciting or shocking events such as our first kiss or our whereabouts when learning of a loved one's death

what is interference and what are the types?

1. Forgetting as Interference: a) Learning some items may disrupt retrieval of other information 2. Proactive (forward acting) interference: disruptive effect of prior learning on recall of new information a) Your well rehearsed Facebook password may interfere with your retrieval or your newly learned copy machine code 2. Retroactive (backwards acting) interference: disruptive effect of new learning on recall of old information a) Sleep prevents retroactive interference. Therefore it leads to better recall b) If someone signs new lyrics to the tune of an old song, you may have trouble remembering the original words c) It is rather like a second stone tossed in a pond, disrupting the waves rippling out from the first 3. Information presented in the hour before sleep is protected from retroactive interference because the opportunity for interfering events is minimized a) Researchers John Jenkins and Karl Dallenbach first discovered this in a now classic experiment b) Day after day, two people each learned some nonsense syllables, then tried to recall them after up to 8 hours of being awake or asleep at night c) Forgetting occurred more rapidly after being awake and involved with other activities d) The investigators surmised that "forgetting is not so much a matter of the decay of old impressions and associations as it is a matter of interference, inhibition, or obliteration of the old by the new." e) The hour before sleep is a good time to commit information to memory, though information presented in the seconds just before sleep is seldom remembered f) If you are considering learning while sleeping, forget it because we have little memory for information played aloud in the room during sleep, although the ears do register it 4. Old and new learning do not always complete with each other of course a) Previously learned information often facilitates our learning of new information b) This phenomenon is called positive transfer

what is insight?

1. Insight involves a sudden novel realization of a solution to a problem 2. Humans and animals have insight a) It can be seen in the brain before you are conscious of it b) Brain imaging and EEG studies suggest that when an insight strikes (the Aha experience), it activates the right temporal cortex. The time between not knowing the solution and responding is about 0.3 seconds c) Sometimes, no problem solving strategy seems to be at work at all, and we arrive at a solution to a problem with INSIGHT 3. Insight: a sudden realization of a problem's solution; contrasts with strategy-based solution 4. Teams of researchers have identified brain activity associated with sudden flashes of insight a) They gave people a problem: think of a work that will form a compound word or phrase with each of three other words in a set and press a button to sound a bell when you know the answer b) EEGs or fMRIs revealed the problem solver's brain activity c) In the first experiment, about half the solutions were by a sudden Aha! Insight d) Before the Aha! Moment, the problem solvers' frontal lobes (which are involved in focusing attention) were active, and there was a burst of activity in the right temporal lobe 5. We are also not the only creatures to display insight, as psychologists Wolfgang Kohler demonstrated in an experiment with Sultan, a chimpanzee a) Kohler placed a piece of fruit and a long stick outside Sultan's cage b) Inside the cage, he placed a short stick with Sultan grabbed using it to try to reach the fruit c) After several failed attempts, he dropped the stick and seemed to survey the situation d) Then suddenly, as if thinking "aha!" sultan jumped up and seized the short stick again e) This time, he used it to pull in the longer stick-which he then used to reach the fruit f) What is more, apes will even exhibit foresight, by storing a tool they can use to retrieve food the next day 6. Insight strikes suddenly, with no prior sense of "getting warmer" or feeling close to a solution a) When the answer pops into mind, we feel a happy sense of satisfaction b) The joy of a joke may similarly lie in our sudden comprehension of an unexpected ending or a double meaning

what is intuition?

1. Intuition may be perilous if unchecked, but may also be extremely efficient and adaptive a) Intuition can be very good and very bad. 2. Forming good and bad decisions and judgements: a) When making each day's hundred of judgements and decisions, we seldom take the time and effort to reason systematically b) We just follow our INTUITION 3. Intuition: an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning a) If someone from a particular ethnic or religious group commits a terrorist act, as happened on September 11,2001 when Islamic extremists killed nearly 3000 people in the United States in coordinated terrorist attacks, our readily available memory of the dramatic event may shape our impression of the whole group b) Even during that horrific year, terrorist acts claimed comparatively few lives c) Yet when the statistical reality of greater dangers was pitted against a single vivid case, the memorable case won, as emotion laden images of terror exacerbated our fears

what is language?

1. Language, our spoken, written, or gestured work, is the way we communicate meaning to ourselves and others / our spoken, written or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning a) When we speak, our brain and voice apparatus conjure up air pressure waves that we send baging against another's eardrum-enabling us to transfer thoughts from our brain into theirs b) And thanks to all those funny sounds created in our heads from the air pressure waves we send out, we get people's attention, we get them to do thing,s and we maintain relationships c) But LANGUAGE is more than vibrating air 2. When transmitted by reflected light rays into your retina, the printed squiggles trigger formless nerve impulses that project to several areas of your brain, with stored information, and decode meaning a) Thanks to language, information is moving from mind to mind b) Thanks to language, we comprehend much that we've never seen and that our distant ancestors never knew c) Language is the jewel in the crown of cognition 3. If you were able to retain one cognitive ability, make it language a) Without sight or hearing, you could still have friends, family and a job b) But without language, you might not c) Language is so fundamental to our experience, so deeply a part of being human, that its hard to imagine life without it

what are mnemonics?

1. Mnemonic techniques use vivid imagery and organizational devices in aiding memory. Imagery is at the heart of many memory aids a) MNEMONICS: memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices b) TO help them encode lengthy passages and speeches, ancient Greek scholars and orators also developed mnemonics c) Many of these memory aids use vivid imagery because we are particularly good at remembering mental pictures d) We more easily remember concrete, visualizable words than we do abstract words 2. The peg word system harnesses our superior visual imagery skill and requires you to memorize a jingle. a) Without much effort, you will soon be able to count by peg words instead of numbers: bun, shoe, tree... and then visually associate the peg words with to be remembered... one is a bun, two is a shoe, three is a tree.... b) With few errors, you will be able to recall the items in any order and to name any given item c) Memory whizzes understand the power of such systems. A study of start performers in the world memory championships showed them not to have exceptional intelligence but rather to be superior at using mnemonic strategies 3. Chunking and mnemonic techniques combined can be great memory aids for unfamiliar material a) We can chunk information into a more familiar form by creating a word (called an acronym) from the first letters of the to be remembered items

how do we store memories in the brain?

1. Our capacity for storing long term memories is essentially limitless a) Our brains are not like attics, which once fille can store more items only if we discard old ones 2. Retaining formation in the brain a) for a time, some surgeons and memory researchers marveled at patients' seeking vivid memories triggered by brain stimulation during surgery b) On closer analysis, the seeming flashbacks appeared to have been invested, not relieved c) In a further demonstration that memories do not reside in single, specific spots, psychologists Karl Lashley trained rats to find their way out of a maze, then surgically removed pieces of their brain's cortex and retested their memory. d) No matter which small brain section he removed, the rats retained at least a partial memory of how to navigate the maze e) The point to remember: DESPITE THE BRAIN'S VAST STORAGE CAPACITY, WE DO NOT STORE INFORMATION AS LIBRARIES STORE THEIR BOOKS, IN DISCRETE, PRECISE LOCATIONS. INSTEAD, MANY PARTS OF THE BRAIN INTERACT AS WE ENCODE, STORE, AND RETRIEVE THE INFORMATION THAT FORMS OUR MEMORIES 3. Memory stores quick look: 1. FEATURE: encoding a) SENSORY MEMORY: copy b) WORKING MEMORY: phonemic: c) LTM: semantic 2. FEATURE: capacity a) SENSORY MEMORY: unlimited b) WORKING MEMORY: 7+- 2 chunks c) LTM: very large 3. FEATURE: duration a) SENSORY MEMORY: 0.25 seconds b) WORKING MEMORY: 20 seconds c) LTM: years 4. Storing memories in the brain a) Loftus and loftus reviewed previous research data showing, through brain stimulation, that memories were etched into the brain and found that only a handful of brain stimulated patients reported flashbacks b) Using rats, Lashley suggested that even after removing parts of the brain, the animals retain partial memory of the maze c) Our memories are very dispersed so if you get brain damage in one area, it won't take out all of your memory ability

what is overconfidence?

1. Overconfidence: tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments the tendency to be more confident than correct-to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgment a) In the stock market, both the seller and the buyer may be confident about their decisions on a stock 2. Overconfidence increases with action. As we actively engage, we become more confident in what we are doing a) Sometimes our judgements and decisions go awry simply because we are more confident than correct b) Across various tasks, people overestimate their performance c) If 60% of people correctly answer a factual question, such as "is absinthe a liqueur or a precious stone?" they will typically average 75% confidence d) This is OVERCONFIDENCE e) It was overconfident BP that, before its exploded drilling platform spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico, downplayed safety concerns, and then downplayed the spill's magnitude f) It's overconfidence that drives stockbrokers and investment managers to market their ability to outperform stock market averages, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary g) A purchase of stock X, recommended by a broker who judges this to be the time to buy, is usually balanced by a sale made by someone who judges this to be the time to sell h) Despite their confidence, buyer and seller cannot both be right 3. History is full of leaders who were more confident than correct a) And classrooms are full of overconfidence students who expect to finish assignments and write papers ahead of schedule b) In fact, the projects generally take about twice the number of days predicted 4. Anticipating how much we will accomplish, we also overestimate our future leisure time a) Believing we will have more time next month than we do today, we happily accept invitations and assignments, only to discover we're just as busy when the day rolls around b) Failing to appreciate our potential for error and believing we will have more money next year, we take out loans or buy on credit c) Despite our painful underestimates, we remain overly confident our next prediction 5. Overconfidence can have adaptive value a) People who err on the side of overconfidence live more happily b) They make tough decisions more easily and they seem more credible than others c) Moreover, given prompt and clear feedback, people can learn to be more realistic about the accuracy of their judgments d) The wisdom to know when we know a thing and when we do not is born of experience 6. You might steal more when asked not to a) Sign posted that condemned the fac that many visitors steal the wood from Petrified Forest National Park b) In the absence of the sign 3% stole wood c) In the presence of the sign 8% stole wood d) Messages that condemned yet highlight undesired social norms are common, and that they invite counterproductive results

what are context effects (or contect dependent memory)

1. People recall things that didn't happen more than they remember stuff that did happen Context Effects: 2. Putting yourself back in the context where you experienced something can prime your memory retrieval a) You remember what you learned about if you are in the same place you learned it 3. Scuba divers recall more words underwater if they learned the list underwater, while they recall more words on land if they learned that list on land a) When scuba divers listened to a word list in two different settings (either 10 feet underwater or sitting on the beach) they recalled more words if retested in the same place b) After learning to move a mobile by kicking, infants most strongly respond when retested in the same context-rather than in a different context c) You may have experienced similar context effects 4. In several experiments, one researcher found that a familiar context could activate memories even in 3 month olds a) After infants learn that kicking a crib mobile would make it move (via connecting ribbon from the ankle), the infants kicked more when tested again in the same crib with the same bummer than when in a different context

what is creatvity, convergent and divergent thinking?

1. Pierre de Fermat, a 17th century mischievous genius, challenged mathematicians of his day ot match his solutions to various number theory problems a) His most famous challenge-Fermat's last theorem-baffled the greatest mathematical minds, even after a $2 million prize was offered in 1908 to whoever first created a proof b) Princeton mathematician Andrew Wiles had pondered the problem for more than 30 years and had come to the brink of a solution c) One morning, out of the blue, the final revelation struc him d) Wiles' incredible movement illustrates CREATIVITY 2. Creativity: the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas a) Studies suggest that a certain level of aptitude- a score about 120 on a standard intelligence test-supports creativity b) Those who score exceptionally high in quantitative aptitude as 13 year olds are more likely to obtain graduate science and math degrees and create published or patented work c) Intelligence matters yet there is more to creativity than what intelligence tests reveal 3. Indeed the two kinds of thinking engage different brain areas a) Intelligence tests, which typically demand a single correct answer, require CONVERGENT THINKING A) Convergent thinking: narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution B) Injury to the left parietal lobe damages this ability b) Creativity tests require DIVERGENT THINKING A) Divergent thinking: expands the number of possible problem solutions (creative thinking that dives in different directions) B) Injury to certain areas of the frontal lobes can leave reading, writing, and arithmetic skills intact but destroy imagination

what are retrieval cues? What is priming?

1. Retrieval cues: memories are held in storage by a web of associations. Their associations are like anchors that help retrieve memory a) The processing of retrieving a memory is that memories are held in storage by a web of associations, each piece information interconnected with others 2. When you encode into memory a target piece of information, such as the name of the person sitting next to you in class, you associate with it other bits of information about your surroundings, mood, seating position, and so on a) These bits can serve as retrieval cues that you can later use to access the information b) The more retrieval cues you have, the better your chances of finding a route to the suspended memory 3. Priming: to retrieve a specific memory from the web of associations, you must first activate one of the strands that leads to it / the activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory a) Often our associations are activated without our awareness b) The philosopher-psychologists William James referred to this process, which we call priming, as the wakening of associations c) Priming is often memoryless memory-invisible memory, without your conscious awareness d) If walking down a hallway, you see a poster of a missing child, you may then unconsciously be primed to interpret an ambiguous adult child interaction as a possible kidnapping e) Although you no longer have the poster in mind, it predisposes your interpretation f) Priming can influence behaviors as well g) In one study, participants primed with money related words were less likely to help another person when asked h) In such cases, money may prime our materialism and self interest rather than the social norms that encourage us to help

what is retrieval? What is the difference between recall, recognition, and relearning?

1. Retrieval refers to getting information out of the memory store 2, To a psychologists evidence of memory includes these three measures of retention: a) In recognition, the person must identify an item amongst other choices (a multiple choice tests requires recognition) A) Recognition: a measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned as on a multiple choice test B) Long after you cannot recall most of the people in your high school graduating class, you may still be able to recognize their yearbook pictures from a photographic lineup and pick their names from a list of names C) You could also probably recognize more names of Snow White's Seven Dwarfs than you could recall D) Our recognition memory is impressively quick and vast C) Before the mouth can form our answer to any of millions of such questions, the mind knows and knows that it knows D) Our speed at relearsing also reveals memory Hermann Ebbinghasu showed this more than a century ago, in his learning experiment, using nonsense syllables E) He randomly selected a sample of syllables, practiced the,, and tested himself F) The day after learning such a lit, Ebbinghaus could recall few of the syllables G) But they weren't entirely forgotten H) The more frequently he repeated the list aloud on day 1, the fewer repetitions he required to relearn the list on day 2 I) Additional rehearsal (overlearning) of verbal information increases retention, especially when practice is distributed over time J) For students, this means that it is important to continue to rehearse course material even after you know it K) The point to remember; TESTS OF RECOGNITION AND OF TIME SPENT RELEARNING DEMONSTRATE THAT WE REMEMBER MORE THAN WE CAN RECALL b) In recall, the person must retrieve information using effort (a fill in the blank test require recall) A) Recall: a measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier as on a fill in the blank test c) Relearning: a measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material again. For example, when you study for a final exam or engaged a language used in early childhood, you will relearn the material more easily than you did initially

what is source amnesia?

1. Source Amnesia: attributing an event to the wrong source that we experienced, heard, read, or imagined (misattribution). Source amnesia, along with the misinformation effect, is at the heart of many false memories a) You can't remember where we got this information from 2. Among the frailest parts of a memory is its source a) We may recognize someone but have no idea where we have seen the person b) We may dream an event and later be unsure whether it really happened c) We may misrecall how we learned about something 3. Misattribution is at the heart of many false memories a) Authors and songwriters sometimes suffer from it b) They think an idea came from their own creative imagination, when in fact they are unintentional plagiarizing something they earlier read or heard 4. Debra Poole and Stephen Lindsay demonstrated source amnesia among preschoolers a) They had the children interact with "Mr. Science" who engaged them in activities such as blowing up a balloon with baking soda and vinegar b) Three months later, on three successive days, their parents read them a story describing some things the children had experienced with Mr. Science and some they had not c) When a new interviewer asked what Mr. Science had done wit them, 4 in 10 children spontaneously recalled him doing things that had happened only in the story Source amnesia also helps explain DEJA VU

what are the language theories?

1. Theory 1. Operant learning; Skinner believed that language development may be explained on the basis of learning principles such as association, imitation, and reinforcement 2. Theory 2: Inborn Universal Grammar: Chomsky opposed Skinner's ideas and suggested that the rate of language acquisition is so fast that it cannot be explained through learning principles, and thus most of it is inborn a) Children can make sentences with words they have never heard before b) Children have a unique talking ability c) All human beings have the same sentence structure with nouns, verbs, etc d) Dormant theory currently e) The world's 7000 or so languages are structurally very diverse f) Linguist Noam Chomsky has nonetheless argued that all languages do share some basic elements, which he calls universal grammar g) All human languages, for example, have nouns, verbs, and adjectives as grammatical building blocks h) Moreover, said Chomsky, we humans are born with a built in predisposition to learn grammar rules, which helps explain why preschoolers pick up languages so readily and use grammar so well i) It happens so naturally-as naturally as birds learn to fly-that training hardly helps j) We are not, however, born with a built in specific language k) Europeans and Native Australia-New Zealand populations, though geographically separated for 50,000 years, can readily learn each others' languages l) And whatever language we experience as children, whether spoken or signed, we all readily learn its specific grammar and vocabulary m) But no matter what language we learn, we start speaking it mostly in nouns rather than in verbs and adjectives n) Biology and experience work together 3. Statistical learning: a) When adults listen to an unfamiliar language, the syllables all run together b) Human infants display a remarkable ability to learn statistical aspects of human speech c) Their brains not only discern word breaks, they statistically analyze which syllables, as in "hap-py, bab-by" most often go together d) After just two minutes of exposure to a computer voice speaking an unbroken, monotone string of nonsense syllables, 8 month infants were able to recognize (as indicated by their attention) three syllables sequences that appeared repeatedly e) In further testimony to infants' surprising knack for soaking up language, research shows that 7 month olds can learn simple sentence structures f) After repeatedly hearing syllable sequences that follow one rule, infants listened longer to syllables in a different sequence g) Their detecting the difference between the two patterns supports the idea that babies come with a built in readiness to learn grammatical rules

Do animals exhibit language?

1. There is no doubt that animals communicate 2. Vervet monkeys, whales, and even honey bees communicate with members of their species and other species 3. They communicate, but psychologists don't call it a language a) Animals display customs and culture that are learned and transmitted over generations. b) All those chimps who get trained in American sign language, one of the first words they master is tickle and one of the first sentences is tickle me. c) If we say that animals can use meaningful sequences of signs to communicate a capability for language, our understanding would be naive d) Steven pinker concludes, chimps do not develop language. e) Asking whether language is mainly nurture is as silly as asking whether the saltiness of table salt comes mainly from chlorine or mainly from sodium

how do you use and misuse heuristics? What are representativeness and availability heuristic?

1. When we need to act quickly, the mental shortcuts we call heuristics enable snap judgements a) Thanks to our mind's automatic information processing, intuitive judgements are instantaneous and usually effective b) However, research by cognitive psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman on the representativenes and availability heuristics showed how these generally helpful shortcuts can lead even the smartest people into dumb decsions 2. Two kings of heuristics are the representativeness heuristics and availability heuristic a) Representativeness heuristic: judging the likelihood of things or objects in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, a particular prototype; may lead us to ignore other relevant information A) The representativeness heuristic enabled you to make a snap judgement, but it also led you to ignore other relevant information B) The representativeness heuristic influence many of our daily decisions C) To judge the likelihood of something we intuitively compare it with our mental representation of that category D) If the two match, that fact usually overrides other considerations of statistics or logic E) Ex: if you meet a slim, short, man who wears glasses and likes poetry, what do you think his profession would be? Is it more likely an ivy league professor of ancient Greek history or a truck driver? F) The probability that that person is a truck driver is higher than the person being an ivy league professor b) Availability Heuristic: estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory A) If instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common B) Example: airplane crash C) The availability heuristic operates when we estimate the likelihood of events based on how mentally available they are D) Casinos entice us to gamble by signaling even small wins with bells and lights-making them vividly memorable-while keeping big losses soundlessly invisible E) The availability heuristic can lead us astray in our judgements of other people too. F) Anything that makes information "pop" into mind-its vividness, recency, or distinctiveness-can make it seem commonplace

how do we thinking in images?

1. Without a doubt, words convey ideas a) To answer some questions, you probably thought not in words but with implicit (nondeclarative, procedural) memory-a mental picture how how you do it 2. Indeed, we often think in images a) Artists, composers, poets mathematicians, athletes and scientists think in images b) For someone who has learned a skill, as ballet dancing, even watching the activity will activate the brain's internal simulation of it, reported one British research team after collecting fMRIs as people watched videos c) So too, will imagining a physical experience, which activates some of the same neural networks that are active during the actual experience d) Small wonder, then that mental practice has become a standard part of training for Olympic athletes 3. One experiment on mental practice and basketball foul shooting tracked the University of Tennessee women's team over 35 games a) During that time, the team's free throw shooting increased rom approximately 52% in games following standard physical practice to some 65% after mental practice b) Players had repeatedly imagined making foul shots under various conditions including being trash talked by their opposition c) In a dramatic conclusion, Tennessee won the national championship game in overtime, thanks in part to their foul shooting d) Mental rehearsal can also help you achieve an academic goal, as researchers demonstrated with two groups of introductory psychology students facing a midterm exam 1 week later e) Scores of other students formed a control group, not engaging in any mental simulation f) The first group spent 5 minutes each day visualizing themselves scanning the posted grade list, seeing their A, beaming with joy, and feeling proud g) This outcome simulation had little effect, adding only 2 points to their exam scores average h) Another group spent 5 minutes each day visualizing themselves effectively studying-reading the textbook, going over notes, eliminating distractions, declining an offer to go out i) This process simulation paid off and the second group began studying sooner, spent more time at it and beat the others' average by 8 points 4. THE POINT TO REMEMBER: it's better to spend your fantasy time planning how to get somewhere than to dwell on the imagined destination 5. To a large extent thinking is language based. When alone, we may talk to ourselves. However, we also think in images. 6. To a large extent thinking is language based. When alone, we may talk to ourselves. However, we also think in images 7. We don't think in words, when: a) When we open the hot water tap b) When we are riding our bicycle

when does language devleop?

1. babbling stage 2. one word stage 3. two word stage 4. We are all born to recognize speech sounds from all the world's languages a) As we get older, we can recognize sounds but we lose the ability to perceive them all outside of your native language 5. Receptive language: a) Children's language development moves from simplicity to complexity b) Infants start without language c) Yet by 4 months of age, babies can recognize differences in speech sounds d) They can also read lips: they prefer to look at a face that matches a sound, wo we know they can recognize that ah comes from wise open lips and ee from a mouth with corner pulled back e) This marks the beginning of the development of babies' receptive language, their ability to understand what is said to and about them f) At 7 months and beyond, babies grow in their power to do what you and I find difficult when listening to an unfamiliar language: to segment spoken sounds into individual words g) Moreover, their adeptness at this task, as judged by their listening patterns, predicts their language abilities at ages 2 and 5 6. Summary of Language Development: a) Month 4; babbles many speech sounds b) Month 10: babbling reveals households language c) Month 12: one word stage d) Month 24: two word telegraphic speech e) Month 24+: language develops rapidly into complete sentences

what is the babbling stage?

Babbling Stage (pre-linguistic event) a) Beginning at 3 to 4 months b) The stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language 1. Babies' productive language, their ability to produce words, matures after their receptive language a) They recognize noun-verb differences-as shown by their responses to a misplaced noun or verb-earlier than they utter sentences with nouns and verbs b) Before nurture molds babies' speech, nature enables a wide range of possible sounds in the BABBLING STAGE, beginning around 4 months of age c) vowel pairs formed by simply bunching the tongue in the front of the mouth (da-da, na-na, ta-ta) or by opening and closing the lips (ma-ma), both of which babies do naturally for feeding 2. babbling is not an imitation of adult speech-it includes sounds from various languages, including those not spoken in the household a) From this early babbling, a listener could not identify an infant as being, say, French, Korean, or Ethipian b) Deaf infants who observe their parents signing begin to babble more with their hands 3. By the time infants are about 10 months old, their babbling has changed so that trained ear can identify the household language a) Without exposure to other languages, babies lose their ability to hear and produce sounds and tones found outside their native language b) Thus, by adulthood, those who speak only English cannot discriminate certain sounds in Japanese speech nor can Japanese adults with no training in English hear the difference between the English r and l c) For Japanese speaking adult, la-la, ra-ra may sound like the same syllable repeated d) A japanese speaking person told that the train station is just after the next light may wonder, the next what after the street veering right or farther down, after the light

what is belief perseverance?

Clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited 1. Our overconfidence in our judgement is startling; equally startling is our tendency to cling to our beliefs in the face of contrary evidence 2. Belief perseverance often fuels social conflict; as it did in the classic study of people with opposing views of capital punishment a) Each side studied two supposedly new research findings, one supporting and the other refuting the claim that the death penalty deters crime b) Each side was more impressed by the study supporting its own beliefs, and each readily disrupted the other study c) Thus, showing the pro and anti capital punishment groups the same mixed evidence actually increased their disagreement 3. If you want to rein in the belief perseverance phenomenon, a simple remedy exists: CONSIDER THE OPPOSITE a) When the same researchers repeated the capital punishment study, they asked some participants to be "as objective and unbiased as possible." b) The pleas did nothing to reduce biased evaluations of evidence c) They asked another group to consider whether you would have made the same high or low evaluations had exactly the same study procedure results on the other side of the issue d) Having imagined and pondered opposite findings, these people became much less biased in their evaluations of the evidence e) The more we come to appreciate why our beliefs might be true, the more tightly we cling to them f) Once we have explained to ourselves why we believe a child is gifted or has a specific learning disorder or why candidate X or Y will be a better commander in chief or why company Z makes a product worth owning, we tend to ignore evidence undermining our belief 4. Prejudice persists a) Once beliefs form and are justified, it take more compelling evidence to change them than it did to create them

what is confirmation bias?

Confirmation bias: a tendency to search for information that confirms a personal bias / a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence a) Seek out only information that confirms my belief Inventive as we are, other cognitive tendencies may lead us astray 1. For example, we more eagerly seek out and favor evidence verifying our ideas than evidence refuting them a) Peter Watson demonstrated this tendency, known as CONFIRMATION BIAS, by giving British university students the three number sequence 2-4-6 and asking them to guess the rule he had used to devise the series b) The rule was simple: any three ascending numbers c) Before submitting answers, students generated their own three number sets and Wason told them whether their sets conformed to his rule d) Once certain they had the rule, they could announce it e) Seldom right but never in doubt, most students formed a wrong idea and then searched only for confirming evidence f) Ordinary people, said wason, evade facts become inconsistent, or systematically defend themselves against the threat of new information relevant to the issue 2. Thus once people form a belief- that vaccines cause autism spectrum disorder, that President Barack Obama is a Kenyan born Muslim, that gun control does (or doesn not) save lives- they prefer belief confirming information a) The results can be momentous b) The US war against Iraq was launched on the belief that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed an immediate threat c) When that assumption turned out to be false, the bipartisan US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence identified confirmation bias as partly to blame: administration analysts had a tendency to accept information which supported their presumptions more readily than information which contradicted them d) Sources denying such weapons were deemed either lying or not knowledgeable about Iraq's problems ,while those sources who reported ongoing WMD activities are seen as having provided valuable information

what are the building blocks for language? Define them.

Consider how we might go about investing in a language. For a spoken language, we would need three building blocks: 1. Phonemes: the smallest detect second unit in a spoken language. a) PHONEMES: in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit b) To say bat, English speakers utter the phonemes b, a, and t (phonemes aren't the same as letters. Chat also has three phonemes-ch, a, and t) c) Linguists surveying nearly 500 languages have identified 869 different phonemes in human speech, but no language uses all of them d) English sues about 40; other languages use anywhere from half ot more than twice that many e) As a general rule, consonant phonemes carry more information than do vowel phonemes 2. MORPHEMES: in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix) a) In English, a few morphemes are also phonemes- the personal pronoun I and the s that indicates plural for instance b) But most morphemes combine two or more phonemes c) Some like bat or gentle are words d) Other like the prefix, pre- in preview or the suffix -ed in adapted are parts of words 3. Semantics: a) The set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language b) Also, the study of meaning 4. Syntax-Grammar a) The rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language b) GRAMMAR: in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. c) In a given language semantics is the st of rules for deriving meaning from sounds, and syntax is the set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences d) Rapid bouquets deter sudden neighbors e) Syntactically correct but not semantically correct 5. In all the 6,000 languages in the world, only about 14 different syntaxes are employed and the vast majority fit within 4 styles, again supporting Chomsky's views a) Dr. Sapolsky Stanford University b) Language becomes increasingly complex as we move from one level to the next c) In English, for example, 40 or so phonemes can be combined to from more than 100,000 morphemes, which alone or in combination produce the 616,500 words forms in the Oxford English Dictionary d) Using those words, we can then create an infinite number of sentences, most of which are original e) Life like constructed from the genetic code's simple alphabet, language is complexity build of simplicity f) Our capacity of communicate and comprehend complex sentences, is what distinguishes human language capacity

what is the impact of vividness, wording effect, and leading questions of memory construction and eyewitness testimony?

Impact of Leading Questions on Eyewitness Testimony: 1. Depends on how they ask a question, their answer can vary a) People watched the same video but the virbady used changes the estimate of how fast they were going, their memory, and the severity of the crash 2. Memory Construction: wording effects: a) A week later they were asked: was there any broken glass? b) Group B (smashed into) reported more broken glass than Group A (hit) c) In more than 200 experiments, involving more than 20,000 people, Elizabeth Loftus has shown how eyewitnesses reconstruct their memories after a crime or an accident d) In one experiment, two groups of people watched a film of a traffic accident and then answered questions about what they had seen e) Those asked "about how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other" gave higher speed estimates than those asked "about how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?" f) A week later, when asked whether they recalled seeing any broken glass, people who had heard smashed were more than twice as likely to report seeing glass fragments when in fact, the film showed no broken glass 3. Vividness makes information more available in memory: a) On his way out the door, Sanders staggered against a serving table, knowing a bowl to the floor b) On his way out the door, Sanders staggered against a serving table, knocking a bowl of guacamole dip to the floor and splattering guacamole on the white shag carpet. c) Took people at two fake juries in a fake court case against Sanders for drunk driving and they only had eye witness testimony of these examples. Jury A didn't convict him because they didn't remember it, but Jury B remembered the vividness of B and convicted him

what are the different levels of processing and define them?

Levels of Processing: 1. Memory researchers have discovered that we process verbal information at different levels and that depth of processing affects our long term retention 2. SHALLOW PROCESSING: encoding on a basic level based on the structure or appearance of words 3. DEEP PROCESSING: encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best retention 4. In one classic experiment, researchers Fergus Craik and Endel Tulving flashed words at people. a) Then they asked the viewers a question that would elicit different levels of processing. b) In their experiment, the deeper, semantic processing yields a much better memory than did the shallower processing or shallow processing (which is especially ineffective) 5. Making material personally meaningful a) If new information is not meaningful or related to our experience, we have trouble processing it b) We students in an experiment heard a paragraph without a meaningful context, they remember ,little of it c) When told the paragraph described washing clothes (something meaningful to them), they remembered must more of it d) We sometimes recall a sentence by the meaning we encoded when we read it and not as it was actually written e) Referring to such mental mismatches, researchers have likened our minds to theater directors who, given a raw script, imagine the fished stage production f) Asked later what we heard or read, we recall not the literal text but what we encoded g) Thus studying for a test, you may remember your class notes rather than the class itself h) We can avoid some of these mismatches by rephrasing what we see and hear into meaningful terms I) From his experiments on himself, German philosopher Hermann Ebbinghaus estimated that compared with learning nonsense material, learning meaningful material required one tenth the effort j) The time you spend thinking about material you are reading and relating it to previously stored material is about the most useful thing you can do in learning any new subject matter k) We have especially good recall for information we can meaningfully relate to ourselves l) Asked how well certain adjectives describe someone else, we often forget them; asked how well the adjectives describes us, we remember the words well n) This tendency, called the self reference effect, is especially strong in members of individualist Western cultures o) Information deemed "relevant to me" is processed more deeply and remains more accessible p) Knowing this, you can profit from taking time to find personal meaning in what you are studying 6. The point to remember: THE AMOUNT REMEMBERED DEPENDS BOTH ON THE TIME SPENT LEARNING AND ON YOUR MAKING IT MEANINGFUL FOR DEEP PROCESSING

what are prototypes?

Mental image or best example of a category 1. Matching new items to the prototype provides a quick and easy method for including items in a category (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin) a) People are more quickly to agree that a robin is a bird than that a penguin is a bird because the robin is the birdier bird; it more closely resembles or bird prototype b) And the more closely something matches our prototype of a concept-bird or car-the more readily we recognize it as an example of the concept 2. Once we place an item into a category, our memory of it later shifts toward the category prototype as it did for Belgain students who viewed ethnically blended faces a) When viewing a blender face in which 70% of the features where caucasia and 30% were asian, the students categorized the face as caucasin b) Later as their memory shifted toward the caucasian prototype, they were more likely to remember an 80% caucasian face than the 70% Ascaucasian they had actually seen c) Likewise, if shown a 70% Asian face, they later remembered a more prototypically asian face d) So to, with gender: people who viewed 70% mae faces categorized them as male and then later misremembered them as even more prototypically male

what are heuristics?

Mental shortcuts that allow us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently a) Heuristics: a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error prone than algorithms 1. Heuristics are less time consuming, but more error prone than algorithms 2. Heuristics make it easier for us to use simple principles to arrive at solutions to problems a) Rather than give you a computing brain the size of a beach ball, nature resorts to HEURISTICS,similar thinking strategies b) Thus you might reduce the number of options in the SPLOTCHY example by grouping letters that often appear together (CH and GY) and excluding rare letter combinations such as two y's together 3. By using heuristics and then applying trial and error, you may hit on the answer

how can our mood affect our memory? What is mood congruent?

Moods and Memories: 1. We usually recall experiences that are consistent with our current mood (state dependent memory) a) Our memories are mood congruent. Emotions, or moods serve as retrieval cues. b) Closely related to context dependent memory is state dependent memory c) When we learn in one state-be it drunk or sober- may be more easily recalled when we are again in that state d) When people learn when drunk they don't recall well in any state (alcohol disrupts storage) but they recall it slightly better when again drunk 2. Our mood states provide an example of memory's state dependence a) Emotions that accompany good or bad events become retrieval cues b) Thus our memories are somewhat MOOD CONGRUENT c) Mood congruent: the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood 3. If you had a bad evening, your gloomy mood may facilitate recalling other bad times a) Being depressed sours memories by priming negative associations which we then use to explain our current mood 4. In many experiments, people put in a buoyant mood-whether under hypnosis or just by the day's events-have recalled the world through rose colored glasses a) They judge themselves competent and effective, other people benevolent, happy events more likely b) Knowing this mood memory connection, we should not be surprised that in some studies currently depressed people have recalled their parents as rejecting, punitive, and guilt promoting whereas formerly depressed people's recollections more closely resembled the more positive descriptions given by those who never suffered depression c) Similarly, adolescents' rating of parental warmth in one week gave little clue to how they would rate their parents six weeks later d) When the teens were down, their parents seemed inhuman but as their mood brightened, their parents morphed from devil into angels 5. In good or bad mood, we persist in attributing to reality our own changing judgements memories and interpretations a) In a bad mood, we may read someone's look as a glare and feel even worse b) In a good mood, we may encode the same look as interest and feel even better 6. Passions exaggerate a) This retrieval effect helps explain why our moods persist b) When happy we recall happy events and therefore ee the world as a happy place, which helps prolong our good mood c) When depressed, we recall sad events which darkens our interpretations of current events d) For those of us with a predisposition to depression, this process can help maintain a vicious, dark cycle

what are strategies you can take to improve your memory?

Psychology's research on memory benefit education A summary of some research based suggestions that could help you remember information when you need it 1. Study repeatedly to boost long term recall a) To master material, use distributed practice b) To learn a concept, give yourself many separate study sessions c) Take advantage of life's little intervals d) New memories are weak; exercise them and they will strengthen e) To memories specific facts or figures, rehearse the name or number you are trying to memorize, wait a few seconds, rehearse again, wait a little longer rehearse again, then wait longer still and rehearse again f) Reading complex material with minimal rehearsal yield little retention g) Rehearsal and critical reflection help more h) It pays to study actively 2. Spend more time rehearsing or actively thinking about the material a) mentally re-create the situation and the mood in which your original learning occurred. Jog your memory by allowing one thought to cue the next 3. Make material personally meaningful a) You can build a network of retrieval cues by taking text and class notes in your own words b) Apply the concepts to your own life c) Form images d) Understand and organize information e) Relate the material to what you already know or have experienced f) Knit each new thing on to some acquisition already g) Restate concepts in your own words h) Mindlessly repeating someone else's words won't supply many retrieval cues i) On an exam, you may find yourself stuck when a question uses phrasing different from the words you memorize 4. Use mnemonic devices: a) Associate with pg words-something already stored b) Make up a story c) Chunk-acronyms 5. Activate retrieval cues-mentally recreate the situation and mood 6. recall events while they are fresh before you encounter misinformation 7. Minimize interference: a) Test you own knowledge b) Rehearse and then determine what you do not yet know c) study before sleep. Do not schedule back to back study times for topics that are likely to interfere with each other 8. SLEEP MORE: during sleep, the brain reorganizes and consolidates information for long term memory. Sleep deprivation disrupts this process 9.TEST YOUR OWN KNOWLEDGE, BOTH TO REHEARSE IT AND IT AND TO FIND OUT WHAT YOU DON'T YET KNOW: a) Don't be lulled into overconfidence by your ability to recognize information b) Test your recall and outline sections, define the terms and concepts for each section

how does retrival failure prevent us from remembering information? What are the types of retrieval failure?

Retrieval Failure: 1. Although the information is retained in the memory store, it cannot be accessed. 2. Tip of the tongue (TOT) is a retrieval failure phenomenon. Given a cue (what makes blood cells red) the subject says the word begins in an H (hemoglobin) 3. Often, forgetting is not memories faded but memories unretrieved a) We store in long term memory what's important to us or what we've rehearsed b) But sometimes important events defy our attempts to access them c) Given retrieval cues ("it begins with an M"), we may easily retrieve the elusive memory 4. Retrieval problems contribute to the occasional memory failures of older adults, who more frequently are frustrated by tip of the tongue forgetting a) Research shows that words that you visualized are more readily retrieved with the image that you store than does the sentences's actual word that is not as visualized b) But retrieval problems occasionally stem from interference and perhaps from motivated forgetting 5. Interference: 6. Motivated forgetting

how does storage decay prevent us from remembering?

Storage Decay 1. Poor durability of stored memories leads to their decay. Ebbinghaus showed this with his forgetting curve. It falls pretty rapidly but then it levels off 2. Retaining Spanish....maybe not: a) Bahrick (1984) showed a similar pattern of forgetting and retaining over 50 years b) Harry Bahrick found a similar forgetting curve for Spanish vocabulary learned in school c) Compared with those just completing a high school or college Spanish course, people 3 years out of school had forgotten much of what they had learned d) However, what people remembered then, they still remembered 25 and more years later e) Their forgetting had leveled off 3. Even after encoding something well, we sometimes later forget it a) To study the durability of stored memories, Hermann Ebbinghaus learned more lists of nonsense syllables and measured how much he retained when relearning each list, from 20 minutes to 30 days later. b) The result, confirmed by later experiments, was his famous forgetting curve: THE COURSE OF FORGETTING IS INITIALLY RAPID, THEN LEVELS OFF WITH TIME c) One explanation for these forgetting curves is a gradual fading of the physical memory trace 4. Cognitive neuroscientists are getting closer to solving the mystery of the physical storage of memory and are increasing our understanding of how memory storage could decay a) Memories may be inaccessible for many reasons A) Some were never acquired (not encoded) B) Others were discarded (stored memories decay) C) And others are out of reach because we can't retrieve them

what is framing?

The way an issue is posed a) How an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgements 1. Example: what is the best way to market group beef- as 25% far or 75% lean? a) In surveys, both patients and physicians said the risk seems greater when they hear that 10% will die rather than 90% will survive. b) Similarly, 9 in 10 college students rated a condom as effective if told it had a supposed "95% success rate" in stopping the HIV virus c) Only 4 in 10 judged it effective when told it had a 5% failure rate 2. To scare people, frame risks as numbers not percentages a) People told that a chemical exposure is projected to kill 10 of every 10 million people feel more frightened than if told that the fatality risk is an infinitesimal 0.00001 3. Framing can be a powerful persuasion too a) Carefully poses options can nudge people toward decisions that could benefit them or society as a whole b) THOSE WHO UNDERSTAND THE POWER OF FRAMING CAN USE IT TO INFLUENCE OUR DECISIONS

what is Atkinson-Shriffin model of memory? What is sensory memory, short term memory and long term memory? what are modifications to this model?

Three stages of memory (Atkinson-Shiffrin model) To example our memory forming process, Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin proposed another model, with three stages: 1. External Stimuli: a) We first record to be remembered information as fleeting sensory memory: 2. Sensory memory: briefly retains the information picked up by the sensory organs b) Sensory memory: the immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system c) This is really short, almost unconscious memory d) Gives you continuity of the world so you can remember what you are doing e) It is linked to the present and once the present is going, that memory is gone 3. Short term memory: temporarily holds information in consciousness a) Works with working memory b) From these, we process information into short term memory, where we encode in through rehearsal c) Short term memory: activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as the seven digits of a phone number while dialing before the information is stored or forgotten 4. Long term memory: cna retain information for long periods of time, often until the person dies a) Finally, information moves into long term memory for later retrieval b) Long term memory: the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences c) Can last up to a lifetime d) Typically has meaning to you 5. Modifications to the three stage model a) Other psychologists have updated this model to include important newer concepts, including working memory and automatic processing b) . Some information skips the first two stages and enters long term memory automatically A) If something is really unusual, if will go to long term memory because you will remember it c) Since we cannot focus on all the sensory information received, we select information that is important to us and actively process it into our working memory A) We select information by attending or paying attention to it

what is the two word stage and the telgraphic speech?

Two word stage: a) Beginning about age 2 b) The stage in speech development during which a child speaks in mostly two word statements 1. At about 18 months, children's word learning explodes from about a word per week to a word per day a) By their second birthday, most have entered the TWO WORD STAGE 2. Telegraphic speech: a) Early speech stage in which the child speaks like a telegram- "go car"- using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting "auxiliary" words b) They start uttering two word sentences in TELEGRAPHIC SPEECH c) Like today's text messages or yesterday's telegrams that charge by the word, a 2 year old's speech contains mostly nouns and verbs d) Also like telegrams, it follows rules of syntax: the words are in a sensible order, English speaking children typically place adjectives before nouns-white house rather than house white. Spanish reverses this order as in casa blanca e) Moving out of the two word stage, children quickly begin uttering longer phrases f) If they get a late start on learning a particular language, their language development still proceeds through the same sequence, although usually at a faster pace g) By early elementary school, children understand complex sentences and begin to enjoy the humor conveyed by double meanings" "you never starve in the desert because of all the sandwich is there"

how does working memory store memory?

Working memory: 1. The magical number seven, plus or minus two in their working memory a) Working memory, the new name for short term memory, has a limited capacity (7 + or - 2) and a short duration (20 seconds) b) George Miller proposed that short term memory can retain about seven information bits (give or take two) c) Other researchers have confirmed that we can, if nothing distracts us, recall about seven digits, or about six letters or five words 2. How quickly does our short term memory disappear? a) To find out, researchers asked people to remember three consonant groups, such as CHJ. to prevent rehearsal, the researchers asked them to start at 100 and count aloud backward by threes. After 3 seconds, people recalled the letters only about half the time; after 12 seconds, they seldom recall them at all b) Without the active processing that we now understand to be a part of our working memory, short term memories have limited life 3. Working memory capacity varies, depending on age and other factors a) Compared with children and older adults, young adults have more working memory capacity; so they can use their mental workspace more efficiently b) This means their ability to multitask is relatively greater c) But whatever our age, we do better and more efficient work when focused, without distractions, on one task at a time d) When you do two things at once, you don't do either one as well as when you do them one at a time