Short Answers
Explain how the object discrimination problem and the landmark discrimination problem help show what pathways in the brain are responsible for different cognitive abilities. How does damage to different lobes of the brain make these tasks more difficult, and what pathways are involved?
After removing the temporal lobe , it was difficult for monkeys to perform the object discrimination task but they could perform the landmark task(what or perception pathway was obstructed). Monkeys who had their parietal lobe removed could not perform the landmark discrimination task but could perform the object discrimination task(where or action pathway was obstructed).
Define automatic processing. Describe the research by Shiffrin and Schneider, which showed how practice can affect our ability to do multiple tasks simultaneously. In your description, clearly distinguish between consistent and varied mapping, both in terms of procedure and results.
Automatic processing is unintentional and uses little cognitive resources. Shriffin & Schnieder's experiment participants had to remember the target stimuli while trying to determine is the target was present among the distractors. This became easier with more trials.
Discuss how the process of binding is essential in your ability to watch a movie or television program.
Binding is the combination of features of an object so that we perceive the object as a whole rather than its separate parts. This is useful when we watch TV because it allows us to perceive the entire scene rather than perceiving parts of the scene separately. For example, when viewing two people in a show having a conversation, we bind their physical features (hair, clothes, face, body) to form the perception of a person making it is easier to perceive a scene.
Much has been learned about imagery using physiological techniques. Explain how each of these techniques (brain imaging, removal of part of the brain, and single-neuron recordings) has demonstrated parallels between imagery and perception.
Brain imaging was used to show that similar brain areas, such as the visual cortex, are involved in perception and imagery. Neuron recordings have shown that similar neurons respond to perceiving and imagining an object. After having her right occipital lobe removed, patient M.G.S. performed the mental walk task and reported standing 35 feet away from the animal when it filled her visual field compared to only 15 feet away before she had the surgery. Removing part of the visual cortex reduced her actual visual field which influenced how she imagined her visual field.
Explain how BOTH bottom-up and top-down processing are involved in the "Crystal running on the beach" example.
Crystal uses bottom-up processing when she assumes the blob in the distance is driftwood.She then uses top-down processing when she is reevaluating the blob's features and realizes it is an umbrella.
Define change blindness. Explain two sets of experimental data that illustrate this phenomenon
Difficulty detecting changes in a scene when not properly attending. Levin & Simmons showed a video of two women talking. In every frame, something in the scene was different however only 1/10 participants could detect a change. Rensink alternated two photos to participants to see how long it took for them to notice the difference in the pictures.
Explain how Donders' and Ebbinghaus's pioneering methods, though very different from each other, allowed for behavior to determine a property of the mind.
Donders was able to infer how long it took to make a decision by measuring reaction time(time it takes to respond to a stimulus) by comparing the simple and choice reaction times. Ebbinghaus wanted to know how rapidly information was lost over time by measuring how long it took for him to memorize a list of nonsense syllables and then after a delay how long it took to relearn the syllables. The difference in the amount of time is savings, which he used to measure a property of the mind.
Explain how psychologists distinguish between episodic and semantic memory, and also how these two types of memories are connected.
Episodic memory is the memory for events and involves mental time travel. It allows us to relive memories. Semantic memory is the memory for facts that is not tied to personal events. These two types of events can be connected because our knowledge of events can influence how we remember the experience. For example, when somebody asks where you were for Thanksgiving, you will begin to relive the experience (episodic) but you will also remember specific things such as your location and what you ate that represent semantic memories of the event.
An important application of memory research has been in understanding the nature of eyewitness testimony. Citing the research in your text, explain why people make errors in eyewitness testimony.
Errors in eyewitness testimony can arise during if the victim or witness did not properly attend to the features of the suspect, which makes their memory susceptible to false memories. Wells and Bradfield asked participants to pick the suspect from a group of pictures after viewing a recording of the crime. The gunman's picture was not included in the spread, but that did not prevent the witnesses from picking someone from the lineup that they thought was the criminal. This experiment can also demonstrate how errors can also occur due to suggestibility. Even though a picture of the criminal was not present, the participants were led to believe that it was.
Suppose a friend tells you she has such a vivid memory of a personal event that it seems like a photograph. She wonders aloud about these kinds of memories and how they work. Explain to her the nature of flashbulb memories and what is known about them.
Flashbulb memories are memories that we have of our circumstance during distinctive events. It is the memory of where we were and not the memory of the actual event. They are very vivid and can last over a long period but they are not like photographs because the memory is not perfect or accurate and they tend to change over time.
Describe Moray's "words in the unattended ear" experiment. Why does this research pose a problem for Broadbent's filter model? Specifically, what does this research say about its classification as an early selection model?
Participants heard a different message in each ear and were told to shadow(repeat) one message while ignoring the other. They were able to filter out the ignored message but responded when they heard their name. Broadbent theorized that only one message would get through, however Moray's experiment showed that we process the unattended message and can analyze it's meaning allowing us to hear our name.
Suppose that your friend has just done poorly on a very important college exam. She is complaining about her memory failures and wishing she could develop photographic-type memory to make life easier. Provide information based on your textbook chapter to develop a compelling argument about why it is actually beneficial that human memory is NOT like a video recorder.
Patient AJ, who was able to remember all autobiographical event in her life, demonstrates the negative side of remembering everything. It was not useful to her when she took exams as it actually impaired her performance. She could not think abstractly or creatively. Storing all memories is not efficient so her memory system was constantly in "overload".
Compare and contrast the phenomena of proactive and retroactive interference. Then, use these two concepts to describe successful strategies for studying in college.
Proactive interference occurs when previously learned information interferes with the learning of new info. Retroactive interference occurs when recently learned information inhibits the recollection of previously learned info. To prevent proactive interference when studying, it would be useful to study different subjects on different days or to take a break in between studying different subjects. To prevent retroactive interference when studying it would be useful to restudy old flashcards after studying new flashcards to make sure that information from earlier in the semester is not forgotten.
Your text explains that one common type of human memory error involves source monitoring. Define source-monitoring errors. Then, explain why these errors reinforce the characterization of memory as being "constructive."
Source monitoring errors occur when we incorrectly remember the source of information. It demonstrates our constructive memory because it involves remembering the information in stages. We first retrieve the memory and then try to remember where we received the information, which is where problems arise because we could attribute multiple sources to the information we are trying to remember and as a result we might recall the wrong one.
Discuss how people perceive separate words in spoken sentences. Describe speech segmentation and discuss the role of context in this process.
Speech segmentation allows us to perceive separate words in spoken sentences if we know the meanings of the words and if we are aware of the context, which gives us clues. Context is useful if we aware of the meaning of the sentence because it helps us to organize and separate the words based on what would make the most sense, given the context of the sentence.
Define state-dependent learning and encoding specificity. Then, explain three ways a student might apply these principles to enhance her learning in college courses. Using the results of experimental research, state why these suggestions for learning are likely to be successful.
State dependent learning is the idea that our internal state will influence our memory. Encoding specificity states that we remember information better in the context in which we learned it. State dependent learning can help a student perform well on a test if they studied the material while calm and took the test while calm. Encoding specificity can help test taking in two ways: if the test is taken in the same environment where the material was originally learned, it will be easier to recall. Also if you studied the material while listening to music, it would be helpful to listen to the same music while taking the test to enhance retrieval.
Describe the experiments that show how the surface and structural features of problems influence people's ability to make effective use of analogies in problem solving. Make sure you define and identify surface and structural features in your answer.
Surface features are the specific elements of the problem and structural features are the underlying principles that govern the solution. When given the lightbulb problem (target problem) after reading the radiation problem (the source problem), it was easier for participants to find the solution to the lightbulb problem because the two stories had similar surface features. To demonstrate how structural features could help solve a problem, two different version of the lightbulb problem were presented to participants to help solve the radiation problem. The group that received the lightbulb problem with similar structural features as the radiation problem were more likely to solve the radiation problem than those who were given the lightbulb problem with different structural features.
Treisman's model has been called a "leaky filter" model. Describe her model, and explain why it is "leaky." How does Treisman's model explain the results of Moray's "words in the unattended ear" experiment?
The attended and unattended messages are transferred through the attentuator. The unattended message is weaker than the attended message but some of it still gets through, which is why it is referred to as a leaky filter. This model describes why participants can perceive their name in Moray's experiment because Treisman claims that important words such as our name have a lower threshold so it is easier for us to perceive it in the unattended message.
Explain the mental walk task. Describe the concept of "overflow" as it applies to the imaging of large and small objects. What do the results of mental walk experiments tell us about properties of the image field? Which side of the "imagery debate" do these findings support?
The mental walk task was designed to determine how close you can get to an object before it overflowed (filled the visual field). Subjects were to imagine that they were walking toward an animal and were asked to estimate how far away they were from the animal before it overflowed the visual field. Subjects could move closer to a small animal before it filled the visual field. This finding supports Kosslyn's argument that mental imagery is spatial as are perceptions.
Describe in detail two techniques that use imagery to improve memory. Explain the underlying principles that define why imagery works successfully as a memory enhancer.
The method of loci uses images to improve memory by placing things to be remembered at different locations in a spatial layout. The pegword technique involves associating things to be remembered with concrete words to create a retrieval cue and can help remember things based on order. Imagery enhances memory because it requires practice and rehearsal to strengthen memory.
Models designed to explain mental functioning are constantly refined and modified to explain new experimental results. Discuss this idea by describing an "old" theory, the "new or revised" theory, and the data that brought about the change from the old theory to the new theory based on the research described in the chapter on short-term and working memory
The modal model of memory was modified to refine short term memory. The new theory added working memory, introduced by Baddeley and Hitch and has a limited capacity that is involved in comprehension, learning and reasoning. This is different from STM which has a limited capacity briefly stores info. They found that participants could hold a small amount of info while reading a paragraph. Modal model would say that we would not be able to remember the info, but the new model showed that the paragraph did not take the whole memory store so the 3 numbers could be remembered.
Explain how action potentials change in response to stimulus intensity. Use an example from one's visual system to illustrate this process.
The rate of firing increases with an increase in stimulus intensity. Looking at an intensely bright light will generate a higher frequency of firing than when looking at a dim light.
Sam has an extensive vocabulary because she is actively learning new words all the time. When Sam reads a word she does not recognize, she repeats its spelling until she looks it up in a dictionary. When she sees the word again on subsequent pages, she remembers the meaning. Describe the structural features of the modal model and control processes involved in the above example.
The unfamiliar word enters Sam's sensory memory and she realizes that she does not know it. SHe only focuses on that word (control process of selective attention). She hold the word in her short term memory by repeating the spelling (rehearsal control process)and then it is stored in her long term memory (control process of encoding) when she sees the word later and retrieves the meaning (another control process).
Describe analytic introspection. Give an experimental example. Also, describe two limitations to this method.
Wundt's technique that was used to describe mental elements by training subjects to describe their experience in response to s stimuli. Wundt played a chord of five notes and asked his subjects whether they could hear individual notes. It required extensive training and did not provide reliable results.
