Unit III Cognitive Psychology

script example

"John went to a restaurant, ordered lobster, paid and left" we assume he sat down, ate lobster, paid waiter etc you would infer answers based on behavioral schema (script)

PPH and visual imagery

-Active when viewing places -Active when imagining places

what is hypnosis

-An induced state of relaxation, measurable on EEG -Induced by verbal guidance -People vary in susceptibility -Naturally in this state when waking up, zoning out

interference theory study

-Ask people to recall information, but with variable amount of experiences in btw -EX: Ask soccer players who they played. Players who were in every game had a worse memory for information

how do we measure depiction versus description?

-Ask questions that would vary in how easy they would be to answer depending on whether they were looking at an image or consulting a propositional network

car crash study follow up

-Asked later-- Did you see the smashed glass? (no broken glass) -People given word "smashed" reported seeing broken glass when other conditions didn't

hypotheses regarding tip of the tongue phenomenon

-Blocking -Incomplete activation -Transmission deficit

schema study

-Brought in to a room that looked like an office -When asked later, described things that were typically in an office, but not present in actual room -People truly have memories consistent with expectations

confidence and memory errors

-Can't rely on confidence -Confidence can be based on outside feedback, unrelated to whether memory is real or not

memory recovery and context

-Careful reinstantiation of context can recover lost access to memories -Changing context can override habits, but not exactly forgotten

evidence of exemplars

-Categories can be flexible based on context -Flexibility in category representation

distributed networks

-Concepts are represented by the pattern or activity across more or less equipotential units- units have no meaning alone -"Node" is replaced with a pattern of activity -Patterns can be more or less similar, reflecting semantic similarity

strength of connections between units (distributed networks)

-Connections btw units can have different strengths -Learning is the alteration of connection weight -2 patterns of connection look similar because 2 things are associated (cat and dog, etc) -Strength of connection weights determines how activation will flow within network (knowledge is potential for activation flow)

sleep and memory

-Consolidate and encode -Also, no other information coming in to interfere

overt misinformation and false memories

-Content in the questions (car crash) -Visual evidence (picture balloon ride) -"Other people said..."

3 hypotheses of forgetting

-Decay theory -Interference theory -Retrieval failure

these studies most naturally account for

-Depiction -But you can also explain them within a propositional network-- what if there is priming in network?

false childhood memories study

-Doctored people's childhood photos (altered context etc) -Subject didn't remember, but when pressed and shown photos... -The subject's memories of the event became more vivid, they offered spontaneous details

event specific knowledge of autobiographical memory

-Episodic -Rend to be vivid and sometimes emotional e.g. When you froze during your 3rd grade talent show

categories as theories

-Explanatory- why object is that way -Inferences- generalize things across category members

credentialing of questioner and false memories

-Given second grade photo (unaltered, simply having picture made them remember something from back then) -Professional trained to help people remember

verification speed- what does it tell us?

-Helps understand knowledge structure- there is a heirarchy of semantic knowledge -Number of levels to be "traversed" in a network predicts how long it will take -Ex: Robin is under bird is under animal... confirm a robin is a bird faster than that it is an animal

age of acquisition affects

-How often you have experienced a word -How many connections it has in your mind

post-experience questioning alters memory (car crash study)

-How they are questioned alters memory -Showed video clips of car accidents -Asked-- How fast were the cars going when they (contacted/hit/bumped/collided/smashed) -Different words elicited different responses about the speed

forming an image of a specific object can facilitate the actual perception of that object (study)

-Image started low contrast, became increasingly clear -People were to report when they could tell what it is -Manipulation: imagine some object -When object matches what you imagined, you recognize it faster (w/ lower contrast)

elephant rabbit fly study

-Imagine elephant and rabbit v. fly and rabbit -What color are rabbits eyes? -Answer faster for 2nd image because you don't have to "zoom in" -Evidence of depiction

forming an image can increase false alarms when trying to detect low contrast stimuli

-Imagining something makes you see things -Imagine auditory stimuli make you hear things -Taken as evidence that imagining and perception use same mechanism

emotion and memory

-Impacts what is encoded, how strongly -How accessible it is later -Can cause spontaneous retreival

function of categories

-Include theories about things assigned to them -Assume things about categories

knowledge representation is latent in a distributed network

-Knowledge is a state of potential, refers to how activation will flow if one thing is activated -Having connections between two concepts means when one is activated, the other will be activated -Therefore, learning is the adjustment of weight between concepts

characteristics of hypnotic state

-Less inhibited -open to suggestion -less resistant to change -more optimistic

3 components of autobiographical memory

-Lifetime periods -General events -Event-specific knowledge

why schemas

-Limited processing capacity -World is predictable, so schemas are most often correct, allow us to focus resources on information that provides information -Script violations are noticed (attended) and remembered

Deese-Rodiger-McDermott (DRM) effect

-List of related words -"Critical word" not given on list, but related to other words -Vivid memories of "critical word," but not unrelated words

FFA and visual imagery

-More active w/ faces -More active when imagining faces

basic categories

-Most directly accessible "Entry level category," activated first -chair, shirt, cat

memory recovery through hypnosis

-Myth -People are suggestible under hypnosis -Will report as memory even though it was not a real experience, and become indistinguishable from real memories (through perceptual fluency)

evidence of category hierarchy

-Naming tends to be basic -Label verification fastest for basic terms -Children learn basic terms first -Basic terms are more universal across language

why do intrusions happen?

-No boundaries btw network-represented memories -Elements may be connected because of actual experience (memory) OR because they are associated through other connections (intrusions) -Spreading activation

loss of memory for traumatic experiences

-Often problematically well-remembered -Little evidence of "repression" -However-- emotional state is a context, sometimes memories can come back through reinstantiation of emotional state

factors that facilitate false memories

-Overt misinformation -Credentialing of questioner -Guidance during recall

learning categories study (CogLab)

-Participants learn categories through trial and error -Prototypes NOT shown during learning -Categorization responses were fastest to (never before seen) prototypes

phobias and internal biasing

-Passages with phobic and neutral information -Individuals with phobias recall more info associated with a phobia than (equally present) info unassociated with phobia

confidence study

-People asked to remember something -Afterwards, given feedback (either "good" or nothing) -People who were told "good" were more confident

mental rotation and depiction

-People take longer the more they ask you to rotate the object (supports depiction) -people were just as good at mentally rotating in 3 dimensions as picture plane (2 dimensions) -Shows that sometimes mental image is more of a sculpture than a picture if we can manipulate in 3D

reasons for error in flashbulb memories

-People talk to each other, "compare notes" -Lots of visual evidence after the fact -Telling and retelling increases perceptual fluency and confidence

challenger shuttle study

-People wrote their experience right after the incident happened -Asked them about memories years later -How accurate people were about later details surrounding Challenger explosion was very different from confidence in memories

depictions

-Picture like -Have relative size, visual features, spatial relations etc -Feels like you're looking at it

two types of re-experienced events

-Pre-reflective -Reflective

history and categorization

-Representations include a history of the object -Depends on type of object -History plays a stronger role in categorizing natural than artifical objects

mental image versus picture study

-Saw breifly -Form an image in mind, inspect what you saw. Can you see it another way? Couldn't do it. -Draw what you remember- then they can see the other one.

evidence of prototype representation (sentence verification)

-Sentence verification studies- true or false -Ex: A robin is a bird A penguin is a bird Answer robin faster

evidence of prototype representation (production tasks)

-Some examples are later produced or not at all Ex: Robin, sparrow, jay.... .... .... .... penguin, ostrich

balloon story study

-Some people saw photo and story, some people just got story -Photo provided context for the story -Subjects provided with a thematic schema remember and understand information more

organization of categories

-Some types of categories are more prominent -Subordinate, basic, superordinate

evidence that forgetting is a retrieval failure

-Spontaneous recovery -Tip of the tongue phenomenon

thematic schemas and memory errors study

-Story about a guy going to the doctor and getting weighed -People were given a various amount of context in different conditions -Had people recall information -People who got more info remembered better, but had more intrusions

methods of avoiding forgetting

-Strong initial learning -Refreshing connections by revisiting memories

island study

-Study map and memorize -Asked to image -Asked to move attention from one landmark to another, how long does this mental task take? -People took longer when landmarks were further apart -Evidence of depictions

examples of adaptive forgetting

-Trauma -"Unlearning" bad habits

blocking hypothesis of tip of the tongue phenomenon

-Trying to remember something, activates related terms -Creates lateral inhibition and ends up supressing the target term

descriptions

-Verbal like -Seperate from a sensory modality -Propositional

transmission defecit hypothesis of tip of the tongue phenomenon

-Within a model in which semantic and phonological activation are seperate but usually connected -Occurs when there is a semantic activation and connections to phonological system are disrupted or impaired

moderators of re-experienced events

-Women have more reflective -Eastern cultures, more reflective v. Western -If it's not consistent with self schema, more likely to be remembered as a reflective memory -More emotional= pre-reflective

flashbulb memories

-a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event -rememember where you were when you "heard the news," and specific details of surrounds -People may be wrong about details, but very confident

atypical things that are still identified with a category

-categorization depends on individual beliefs about what attributes are essential to a category -vary across people

propositional network

-set of interconnected concepts and relationships -links have content- depict relationship between nodes -can represent semantic or episodic knowledge

CogLab Age of Acquisition

-the response time to words should be faster than the response time to nonwords. -Second, the response time to early AoA words should be faster than the response time to late AoA words.

propositions are formed by...

...consulting your particular semantic association network. ex: I could extract "Skunks are pets" from my semantic associations because I have experience with skunks as pets, or "Skunks terrorize pets," because of bad experiences. Both have Skunks associated with pets. If I don't have that association, I could extract "Skunks are not pets."

Exemplar emu example

If you just read an article about flightless birds, you will be faster to confirm emu as a bird.

superordinate categories

More general, vehicles, animals, furniture, food

confirmation of individual differences in mental imagery

People who report more picture-like representation have more occipital activation

Guidance during recall and false memories

Reinforcement, punishment

exemplars

The individual instances, or examples, of a concept that are stored in memory from personal experience. Judgements about a category membership vary based on which exemplars are brought to mind.

incomplete activation hypothesis of tip of the tongue phenomenon

Traget is partially activated, but other related things are also activated. Related activation raises baseline noise in memory, and activation is insufficient to compete with other currently active alternatives. e.g. Thinking of other things trying to remember is overriding target activation

subordinate categories

Very specific, Toyotas, Calicos, Recliners, Porterhouses

schema

a conceptual framework of semantic information a person uses to make sense of the world

stereotypes

a form of categorization that relies on prototypes and exemplars, but these are biased by social information rather than experiental information

self schema

an integrated set of memories, beliefs, and generalizations about the self

theories of forgetting

are not exclusive, they all contribute to forgetting

prototype

average representation of many different experiences with things referred to as "dog." You may never actually experience anything that corresponds to this prototype

schemas lead to better ____ but more ______

better memory, but more intrusions

artefactual categories

defined by human action, therefore more flexible

natural categories

defined by nature, stable properties

mental chronometry

determining the amount of time needed to carry out a cognitive task

visual versus spatial tasks brain activation

differential brain activation

exemplars go with...

episodic memory

themes

establish schematic frameworks

convergence

examples that are privileged (eg. more quickly produced, faster verification) one one taks, tend to be more privileged on other tasks as well.

confidence is...

familiarity, increases with perceptual fluency repetition increases confidence and perceptual fluency

reflective reexperienced events

from the POV of an observer

defining categories by attributes...

has limited functionality (ex: not all dogs have 4 legs, floppy ears, but it's still a dog. Also, some non-dogs have 4 legs)

what would cat study look like if it was a description

head would be slower because you traverse more of network from "cat" to "head"

if we didn't specifically encode some information...

how could we extract it, unless it was a depiction- a mental image that you could examine?

depiction versus description cat study

imagine a cat... does it have a head? faster answered faster does it have claws? answered slower depiction makes sense, head is bigger and you have to "zoom in" on claws

spontaneous recovery

information that had apparently been forgotten is suddenly recalled, usually through the introduction of appropriate cues (e.g. returning to environment in which material was learned)

debate about visual knowledge

is it a depiction or a description? question came from individual differences among introspective reports of the experience of mental imagery

general events in autobiographical memory

more specific than lifetime periods, can cluster accross time periods e.g. Christmases at home, riding bike in neighborhood

semantic network

network defined by associations

interference theory

new information interferes with old information, and the more time that passes, the more opportunity there is for new information to interfere

lifetime periods in autobiographical memory

organized around a theme e.g. high school, before the accident, etc

pictures versus mental images

pictures require perceptual interpretation, mental images have already been interpreted

categories are represented by both

prototypes and exemplars

pre-reflective reexperienced events

remembered from your POV

scripts

schema associated with sets of behavior that happen in certain situations ex: We have a restaurant schema (seated, get a menu, waiter, order etc)

prototypes go with...

semantic memory

engaging in a visual (inspection) task using imagery is...

seperable from engaging in a spatial task using imagery

Hyperthymesia

superior memory of autobiographical events, struggle with generalization

categories

the concepts or mental distinctions we use to understand the world

generalized knowledge is an upside of...

the downside of not remembering individual experiences

tip of the tongue phenomenon

the experience that you know something and are about to remember it, but can't get it out.

retrieval failure

the information is there, but the pathways to access it have decayed or been disrupted

autobiographical memory

the memory for events and facts related to one's personal life story. Can be semantic (name, where born etc) or episodic (particular events in life)

mental lexicon

the mental dictionary of words and their meanings

decay theory

the representations of stored memories (nodes) deteriorate over time

proposition

the smallest unit of knowledge that people can judge to be either true or false e.g.: Dogs eat meat

thematic schemas can also cause us to remember...

things consistent with schema that didn't happen

neutral settings lead to worse _____ but fewer _____

worse memory, but fewer intrusions