PSY 1001 Exam 2
What are the different kinds of long-term memory?
(1) Explicit (a) Episodic (b) Semantic (2) Implicit (a) Procedural (b) classical conditioning (c) priming
duration of sensory memory
fraction of a second
What is a genetic correlation?
refers to the situation where different traits are influenced by the same genes
automatic systems
reflex of the mind in which the processing of the information occurs outside of our awareness and consciousness
rehearsal
the conscious repetition of information, either to maintain it in consciousness or to encode it for storage
What is proactive interference?
the disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information
What is meant by a split-brain?
The corpus callosum is a wide band of axon fibers connecting the two hemispheres of the brain. Split brain results when the fibers of the corpus callosum are severed isolating each hemisphere from the other
What is retroactive interference?
The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information
What do adoption studies show?
The environment has no impact on a child's personality, but it does effect their attitudes, values, manners, faith, and politics. Failed to observe a significant correlation between IQs of parents and their adopted children in 100+ families, low correlation between IQ scores of adoptive siblings.
What are examples of implanted memories?
The false memories that have been successfully implanted in people's memories include remembering being lost in a mall as a child, taking a hot air balloon ride, and putting slime in a teacher's desk in primary school.
What is the relationship between IQ and brain volume?
Correlation of 0.3
imagery
Description that appeals to the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste)
Who was Albert Binet and what did he contribute to this field?
Designed the first IQ test for children in need of remedial education
Stimulants
Drugs (such as caffeine, nicotine, and the more powerful amphetamines, cocaine, and Ecstasy) that excite neural activity and speed up body functions.
Duncker's candle problem
Duncker's candle problem: a cognitive performance test, measuring the influence of functional fixedness on a participant's problem solving capabilities
What is the availability heuristic?
mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision
What are the conditions for a proper test of linguistic relativity?
multiple languages tested linguistic differences between languages independent demonstration of cognitive differences
chunking
organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically
crystallized intelligence
our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age
serial position effect
our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list
How do people ignore base rates?
people ignore them by not taking into account all relevant data
Is there a correlation between years of education & intracranial volume & IQ?
yes
does language affect how we reason and remember about the world?
yes
Reliability
consistency of measurement
capacity of short term memory
7 +/- 2
What is a GWAS "hit"?
A SNP that is significantly correlated with the trait
What are some possible causes of the Flynn effect?
- improved nutrition - more and better education - smaller families - cultural changes that demand more abstract reasoning (industrialization, information technology)
Stages of sleep
1. Lightest Sleep (NREM) 2. Slightly Deeper Sleep (NREM) 3. Deeper Sleep (NREM) 4. Delta Waves are omitted but there is not much difference between this stage and stage 3 (NREM) 5. REM
What is an average score on an IQ test?
100
duration of short term memory
20-30 seconds
What is the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon?
A failure to retrieve information despite confidence that it is stored in memory
Retrograde
A form of amnesia in which access to memories prior to brain damage is impaired, but the individual can store new experiences in long-term memory
Recognition
A form of retrieval that relies on identifying previously seen or experienced information
Tarahumara research
A has a different name in English, B and C have different wavelengths than the language of the Tarahumara which tells us that the Wharf hypothesis is supported
Algorithms
A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.
controlled system
A set of components in a physiological system that is controlled by commands from a regulatory system.
Language
A shared system of symbols, including spoken, written, and signed words and gestures, and a set of rules for how to combine those symbols to communicate meaning
What is REM sleep?
A state of active, irregular sleep associated with dreaming; rapid eye movement associated with it
What is the difference between achievement vs. aptitude tests?
Achievement tests measure how much knowledge a person has acquired over some period of time. Aptitude tests measure potential to learn
What is Project Talent?
Administered IQ tests to 400k high school students.
Are IQ tests valid and reliable?
Are IQ tests valid and reliable?
As people age, do environmental or genetic factors seem to be more influential in terms of IQ?
As people age, genetic influence goes up, effects of environment go down.
What kinds of things increase the likelihood of false memories?
Being exposed to the misinformation effect, imagination inflation, doctoring photos and evidence
How can researchers measure the consciousness of an individual in a vegetative state?
Brain scan studies.
clive wearing
British musician with 7-second memory due to damage to amygdala and hippocampus
How is elaboration important?
Elaboration is a long-term memory process which involves changing or adding to material, or making associations to make remembering easier. Elaboration is a cognitive process whereby material is extended or added to (elaborated) to make it more memorable
How do stages of sleep vary?
Frequency, amplitude, wavelength
What is deductive reasoning?
General -> specific
What is the definition of intelligence?
General cognitive ability, that among other things, involves ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and from experience
Syntax
Grammatical rules that govern how words and phrases combine into well-formed sentences
Heuristics
Heuristics are rules of thumb that produce quick solutions at the cost of errors
What is Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences?
Howard Gardner theorized that there are eight kinds of intelligences: Verbal-linguistic Logical-mathematical Visual-spatial Bodily kinesthetic Musical Naturalistic Interpersonal Intrapersonal
What is the keyword method?
Identify a real word (the keyword) that sounds like the word to be remembered. Create an image linking the two words.
In problem-solving, what is the initial state, the goal state, and the current state?
Initial state is where we start off; goal state is where we're trying to get to (may be more than one); current state is state we're in right now
What is the difference between intelligence, g, and IQ?
Intelligence - ability to acquire and apply knowledge G - the trait measured by standardized ability and achievement tests, same as intelligence to the extent that the tests have validity IQ - sum of scores obtained on various tests within a battery measuring g, same as g to the extent that the battery of tests has reliability
An object seen in the right visual field will be processed on which side of the brain?
Left, won't be processed
What are the properties and components of consciousness?
Limited and selective Dynamic -Can change quickly or dramatically -Can focus on past or future Involves both arousal and awareness -Wakefulness or alertness -Ability to recognize something
What are the results of Owen (2006)?
It shows vegetative state humans have awareness and same brain activity, their behavior just does not outwardly confirm this
Do labels help or hurt memory for pictures?
Labeling categorically distinct items improves memory even though labels (e.g., "toaster") do not capture state or exemplar- level information
What are birth order effects in the area of Intelligence?
Later-born son enjoys IQ boost that closely coincides with the magnitude of the Flynn effect in general population
Mental Age vs. Chronological Age
Mental shows intellectual level for a certain age while chronological is your actual physical age
Are there diminishing returns on intelligence?
Once someone has an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn't seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage.
What is consciousness?
Our awareness of both external world (events taking place around us) and internal world (awareness of ourselves, thoughts, feelings, behaviors)
What is the link between creativity and mental illness?
People with mental illness have higher creativity.
An object seen in the left visual field will be processed on which side of the brain?
Right
What are helpful study hints derived from memory research
Seven tips to better testing (and hopefully better grades) are (1) pay attention, (2) study often, (3) encode deeply, (4) test yourself, (5) use retrieval cues, (6) reduce stress, and (7) sleep
How can analogies be helpful?
Solving simpler analogies can help us solve tougher problems
What is the study of individual differences (also known as differential psychology) and what kinds of traits are studied?
Studying to answer basic questions in which the ways human beings differ from each other Traits: personality, mental illness, work interests, religiosity, political attitudes
What's the aim of GWAS studies?
Tells us a person's genotypes at preselected polymorphic sites (SNPs)
What are proteins?
The basic functional and structural units of our body. They include enzymes that speed up critical biochemical reactions and basic components of cellular machinery
What is the paradox of expertise?
The better that someone is at solving a certain problem, less likely they can tell others how they solved the problem. They no longer have conscious awareness of steps on how to solve the problem
Anterograde
The inability to transfer information from short-term to long-term memory, preventing new long-term memories from forming
What is framing?
The particular way that an issue, decision, or set of options is described. Framing can change decisions by shifting the decision maker's reference point.
What's the relationship between the number of mutations and a parent's age?
The paternal mutation rate increases with age
Morphemes
The smallest unit of language that carries bits of meaning. Morphemes include words and also word parts like prefixes and suffixes that change a word's meaning
Phonemes
The smallest unit of language, such as the individual sounds that make up speech
What is loss aversion?
The tendency to make choices, including riskier ones, that minimize losses
Hindsight
The tendency, once some outcome is known, to overestimate the likelihood that one would have predicted that outcome in advance
What were the goals of Alfred Binet's Intelligence test?
Their goal was to identify and further educate intellectually delayed children
What are the flaws with twin studies?
Twin studies fail to separate the effects of genes and the prenatal environment. This failure casts doubt on claims of the relative effects of genes and environment on intelligence, psychiatric disorders, personality and other psychological variables, and other conditions.
What does the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart show?
Twins raised apart are more alike than they are different, and more alike than siblings raised in the same environment. This suggests that environment does not play as big of a role.
dizygotic (DZ) twins
Twins who are formed when two separate ova are fertilized by two separate sperm at roughly the same time. (Also called fraternal twins.)
What are the correlations between indicators of g?
V, Q, and S correlations come from Project talent, correlations between different IQ tests are fairly large
What is linguistic determinism?
Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think
Is IQ correlated with anything meaningful in the real world?
Yes, wealth, technical skills, etc
What is a flashbulb memory?
a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event
What is blindsight?
a condition in which a person can respond to a visual stimulus without consciously experiencing it
Relearning
a method of measuring the retention of learned material by measuring how much faster a person can relearn material that had been previously learned and then forgotten
echoic memory
a momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds
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
What is the normal curve?
a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data
Confirmation bias
a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence
What is a normative approach?
a value based approach to building communities, based on the assumption that all people have a need to belong, want to have a sense of purpose, and want to experience success
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
What is the method of loci?
associate items to be remembered with locations in well known room, building, or street
attention
behavioral and cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete stimulus while ignoring other perceivable stimuli
Ebbinghaus
created the forgetting curve and serial position effect in memory
Why was so much research done with colors?
color tests have been done because they vary between languages
Sperling study
first flash letters really fast, see what can remember; then second time same but white bar over line and write letters from bar; can vary time between when the display goes away and which row to write down, harder when longer time
intelligence quotient (IQ)
defined originally as the ratio of mental age to chronological age multiplied by 100
Depressants
drugs (such as alcohol, barbiturates, and opiates) that reduce neural activity and slow body functions
What is the difference between experts and novices in problem-solving?
experts tend to allocate more of their time to the early or preparatory stages of problem solving, whereas novices tend to spend relatively more of their time in the later stages
Decay
fading away of memory over time
Do males or females with Autism carry more mutations?
females
What is a syllogism?
logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true
What does GWAS stand for?
genome wide association studies
What is the role of the amygdala in memory?
helps us recall emotions associated with fear-provoking events
How stable is IQ over time?
highly stable over shorter periods of time; changes of about (+/-) 10 to 20 points over longer intervals; increased stability with age (plateau at about 10 years old)
monozygotic (MZ) twins
identical twins
What is a descriptive approach?
include case studies, surveys, and naturalistic observation. The goal of these designs is to get a picture of the current thoughts, feelings, or behaviours in a given group of people
misinformation effect
incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event
What is the representativeness heuristic?
involves estimating the likelihood of an event by comparing it to an existing prototype that already exists in our minds
What are Raven's Progressive Matrices?
non-verbal test typically used to measure general human intelligence and abstract reasoning and is regarded as a non-verbal estimate of fluid intelligence
What is the Flynn effect?
observation that each generation has a significantly higher IQ than the previous generation
Source monitoring errors
occurs when a memory derived from one source is misattributed to another source
Interference
phenomenon in which some memories interfere with the retrieval of other memories
encoding specificity
phenomenon of remembering something better when the conditions under which we retrieve information are similar to the conditions under which we encoded it
What is a weak method of problem-solving?
problem-solving techniques based on general principles rather than specific, domain-relevant knowledge
Hallucinogens
psychedelic ("mind-manifesting") drugs, such as LSD, that distort perceptions and evoke sensory images in the absence of sensory input
What are the different types of levels of processing for memory?
shallow intermediate deep (best recall)
What are SNPS?
single nucleotide polymorphisms (polymorphic sites)
What is inductive reasoning?
specific to general
What is the correlation between IQ for MZ twins?
strong correlation
Peterson and Peterson
studied the length of short term memory
primacy effect
tendency to remember words at the beginning of a list especially well
recency effect
tendency to remember words at the end of a list especially well
Belief perseverance
tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence contradicts them
Fluid intelligence
the ability to tackle new and unusual situations
What is the circadian rhythm?
the biological clock; regular bodily rhythms that occur on a 24-hour cycle
validity
the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to
What is the Modal Model of Memory?
the idea that memory has three separate components: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory
What is Sensory memory?
the immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system
What is linguistic relativity?
the language that you speak determines how you perceive, think about, and remember the world around you
What is backward chaining?
the last response is taught first, and reinforcement is provided after successful attempts
Recall
the mental process of retrieval of information from the past
What are base rates?
the naturally occurring frequency of a phenomenon in a population
retrieval
the process of bringing to mind information that has been previously encoded and stored
encoding
the processing of information into the memory system—for example, by extracting meaning.
long-term memory
the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.
What is eugenics?
the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics
What are mental sets?
the tendency for old patterns of problem solving to persist
Overconfidence
the tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments.
What is confirmation bias?
the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values
functional fixedness
the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving
Are Schizophrenia & Bipolar disorder genetically related?
yes
capacity of long term memory
unlimited
capacity of sensory memory
unlimited
duration of long term memory
unlimited
What are the content domains measured on IQ tests?
verbal, quantitative, and spatial
What is forward chaining?
when a behavior is taught in "logical" or chronological order, and each step of the behavior is reinforced