Cog Psych Exam 3

In the semantic network model, a specific category or concept is represented as a

Node

What categories are universal?

None, but emotions are the closest we can get

The story in the text about the balloons that were used to suspend a speaker in mid-air was used to illustrate the role of ___________ in memory.

Organization

Bransford and Johnson's study had participants hear a passage, which turned out to be about a man on the street serenading his girlfriend in a tall building. The wording of the passage made it difficult to understand, but looking at a picture made it easier to understand. The results of this study illustrated the importance of ___________ in forming reliable long-term memories.

Organizational context

Which of the following is a connectionist model proposing that concepts are represented by activity that is spread across a network?

Parallel distributed processing theory

What study shows that hierarchial organization is better?

People memorizing words using this method remembered *way* more words than people who learned them randomly

__________ occurs when reading a sentence leads a person to expect something that is not explicitly stated or necessarily implied by the sentence.

Pragmatic Inference

Treatment of PTSD has benefitted from recent research on

Reconsolidation

What is the problem with these two models?

not all cues are equally effective (strong association with "oink") and we use parallel search

Who feels disgust for contaminants?

*everybody* - roommates won't steal orange juice if in a toilet seat (mere association is enough)

How do we name objects?

- 3 levels of categories: - superordinate: animal - basic: fish - subordinate: trout - we tend to name things on a basic level, while experts use the subordinate level (so, not the properties of the object, but the *individual's experience with it*)

What do we know about universal emotions?

- 6 basic ones - same state of mind, but expressed differently - debate about which ones are our core emotions - some have words for emotions we don't lack, but can't describe (& vice versa) - *understanding = different from language* - emotion may be universal, but the thing *causing* the emotion may differ (disgust)

What are some examples of other universal categories?

- cancer = disease - happiness = not disease

What is autobiographical memory?

- combo of semantic and episodic memory - mems of ourselves and the world around us - flashbulb mems - strong, emotionally salient

Explain the feature comparison model.

- compare features of object (canary) to features of category (bird), and get good/bad match - "some" match means we have to consider "essential features" to the category (birds & bats) - accounts for the category-size effect - but no evidence that humans actively compare features

Explain the hierarchical network model.

- concepts = nodes in a network - time it takes you to respond (is a canary a bird?) increases with levels traveled - some results don't fit the model (primate vs animal) - needed more levels

What are the levels of processing?

- deeper you encode, better you remember - study: upper/lower case is shallow processing, rhyming is moderate processing, and sentence-making is deep processing - deeper the processing, the more information connected - *what you do while encoding matters*

How does disgust evolve for us?

- disgust comes from something that tastes bad - becomes a reaction to anything of "offense" (interpersonal & moral things - hat of Adolf Hitler)

What methods can improve your memory?

- elaborative interrogation (explanations for facts) - self-explanation (generate your own explanation) - interleaved practice (block study - switch school subjects) - generation effect - produce the info (filling in blanks) rather than reading it - self-reference effect - how does the info relate to you? - learn random facts that are associated with a domain of higher knowledge (sharks) - *active, elaboration, deep processing = better memory!*

What are the two steps of LTM?

- encoding (storing) - retrieval (getting it out)

Why do we get flashbulb memories?

- higher the emotional response, more detailed the memory is - not photographical, evidence suggests that they are usually inaccurate in some way or another (still *reconstructive*) - not more accurate, actually less detailed than normal memories, just maybe more vivid

What is encoding specificity?

- learn info with *context* - memory = better when info present at encoding is available at retrieval, too - (state-dependent memory)

What is the free recall phenomena?

- list 16 words - recall in any order (free recall) - improved recall at beginning and end of list, middle of list fairly flat - excellent recall of last few items

What does the Dyirbal language tells us about categorization?

- only 4 categorizations for all things - tells us cultural context affects how we categorize - many categories we use defy definition, but we still know what it is

What is the study supporting distributed practice and what is the ideal way to do this?

- postal workers & quick typing - *a single, one hour* practice a day = best speed & accuracy by far (massed worse than distributed)

What does it tell us about recency & primacy?

- primacy: first items had no interference & related to each other at first - recency: last items still in working memory - primacy = LTM, recency = STM (*diff systems involved*)

What are the 2 approaches to categorization?

- prototype (comparison to the "average" member) - exemplar (compare each item to any member in the category) - some suggest we use both strategies

What methods won't improve your memory?

- re-reading - highlighting

What is the testing vs restudy study?

- read paragraph - either recall as much or re-read again - rereading better than testing ONLY after 5 min, but testing is way better after that - *act of retrieving = better for memory*

Learning in the connectionist network is represented by adjustments to network:

Connection Weights

What are the two types of retrieval? Which is utilized in multiple choice tests?

- recall - produce the answer - recognition - pick correct answer (multiple choice) - study: 1) told to learn words (intentional) or 2) told to classify them into groups (incidental) ... intentional = better @ recognition incidental = better @ recall

Why do we need categorization?

- reduces the need for constant learning - how we decide actions (mushrooms categorized as edible & poisonous) - relate objects & events

What is the narrative rehearsal hypothesis as it relates to flashbulb memories?

- repeatedly thinking about the event - memory errors introduced as the memory is reconstructed

What are schemas?

- representational structures - basic facts, and then *very* specific details - stored in slots (shape, material, size - all in different slots) - value in slot specifies typical value (propositional = function, proportional = shape & size) - they encode regularities within categories

What does the study involving retrieval-induced forgetting tell us?

- retrieval without practice = forgetting because of inhibition of info as we are practicing - things in non-practiced group remembered better than things in practiced group that weren't practiced because we inhibited them

Explain the spreading activation model.

- some things more closely related than others - effectiveness decreases with travel: shorter the link, more closely related - problem is we can't generalize other cultures - combines first 2 models, but hard to test predictions (because we don't know what will activate people's categories

Why don't people use distributed practice to study?

- they think massed is better - what you know (memory) and what you know about what you know (metacognition) are different

What are the 4 main dimensions that brain activity clusters to when we categorize?

- things that move - social interaction - civilization - biological

What are some reasons why we forget things?

- too much info (what to prioritize?) - so we can make decisions quickly - older memories not as useful - things more relevant than others - mundane things aren't important

Explain the connectionist models.

- weights for connections between items - weights (in place of nodes) have different strengths - higher weight, more connections - can start to predict & generalize because weights for different things are the same - it's a computer model - *allows us to say that THIS model is doing some of the work*

How can we ethically change someone's mood and why would we do this?

- write about happy/sad days or *music* (merry vs melancholy) - we do this to study state-dependent memory (memory better when moods match - regardless of happy or sad)

Jacoby's experiment, in which participants made judgments about whether they had previously seen the names of famous and non-famous people, found that inaccurate memories based on source misattributions occurred after a delay of:

24 Hours

A task for determining how prototypical an object is would be:

A task where participants rate the extent to which each member represents the category title

Are humans good at remembering everyday objects?

Absoluuuutely not - Norman: knowledge in world vs knowledge in head - knowledge in world is readily available, so we don't spend effort to remember it (bikes)

For most adults over age 40, the reminiscence bump describes enhanced memory for:

Adolescence and young adulthood

What is the mere exposure effect?

Advertising - you don't even remember what they were selling, but the mere *exposure* to it makes your preference slightly higher (ex: doesn't mean you will recall it in the future! England radio study)

Which statement below is NOT true, based on the results of memory research?

Although eyewitness testimony is often faulty, people who have just viewed a videotape of a crime are quite accurate at picking the "perpetrator" from a lineup

Your text's discussion of false memories leads to the conclusion that false memories:

Arise from the same constructive processes that produce true memories

What is the interference theory?

As you try to learn more pieces of info, they may get "overlaid" by competing pieces of info - retroactive interference = activity after learning causes disruption - proactive interference = interfering material occurs before the to-be-learned material

In Lindsay's "misinformation effect" experiment, participants saw a sequence of slides showing a maintenance man stealing money and a computer. This slide presentation included narration by a female speaker who described what was happening in the slides as they were shown. Results showed that the misinformation effect was greatest when presentation of misleading post-event information was:

Auditory from a female speaker

Why should you study in a quiet place?

Because the exam will be quiet, so the context matches and you get better memory

Why would we forget what we were doing when we walk into the next room?

Because we forget things when the context changes - so, if you go back into the room (same context), you should remember

Which of the following terms is most closely associated with semantic networks?

Cognitive Economy

The "telephone game" is often played by children. One child creates a story and whispers it to a second child, who does the same to a third child, and so on. When the last child recites the story to the group, his or her reproduction of the story is generally shorter than the original and contains many omissions and inaccuracies. This game shows how memory is a __________ process.

Constructive

Arkes and Freedman's "baseball game" experiment asked participants to indicate whether the following sentence was present in a passage they had previously read about events in a game: "The batter was safe at first." Their findings showed inaccurate memories involved:

Creations from inferences based on baseball knowledge

The definitional approach to categorization...

Doesn't work well for most natural objects like birds, trees, and plants

People often report an annoying memory failure when they walk from one end of the house to the other for something and then forget what they wanted when they reach their destination. As soon as they return to the first room, they are reminded of what they wanted in the first place. This common experience best illustrates the principle of

Encoding specificity

___________ are actual members of a category that a person has encountered in the past.

Exemplars

The principle illustrated when most people are able to recognize a variety of examples of chairs even though no one category member may have all of the characteristic properties of "chairs" (e.g., most chairs have four legs but not all do) is:

Family Resemblance

What is categorization?

How we identify/classify objects

According to your text, imagery enhances memory because

Imagery can be used to create connections between items to be remembered

According to the typicality effect

Items that are high in prototypicality are judged more rapidly as being in a group

Katie and Alana are roommates taking the same psychology class. They have a test in four days during a 10:00-11:00 AM class period. Both women intend to study for three hours, but because of different work schedules, Katie will study one hour for each of the next three days, while Alana will study three hours the day before the exam. What could you predict about their performances?

Katie should perform better because of the spacing effect

"S," who had a photographic memory that was described as virtually limitless, was able to achieve many feats of memory. According to the discussion in your text, S's memory system operated:

Less efficiently than normal

You have been studying for weeks for a nursing school entrance exam. You love the idea of becoming a nurse, and you have been enjoying learning about the material for your exam. Each night, you put on comfortable clothes and study in the quiet of your lovely home. Memory research suggests you should take your test with a(n) ________ mindset.

Relaxed

Give an example of exceptional memory.

Savants (Daniel Tammet (could describe what he's doing - very rare), Stephen Wiltshire - fewer than 100 recorded cases, usually math, music, art, couldn't drive a car, poor social skills)

What is an example of extraordinary synesthesia?

Shereshevskii - could remember tons of numbers or any info b/c of synesthesia (one stimulus evokes another) - bad b/c had he heard that 5 min ago or 5 yrs ago? (small details interfere)

What does made to stick mean?

Simplicity: prioritize your points Unexpected: DQ Blizzard Concrete: convert abstract to concrete Credibility: "true & right" Emotions: harness correct emotion Stories: better remembered than facts

The standard model of consolidation proposes that the hippocampus is

Strongly active when memories are first formed and being consolidated but becomes less active when retrieving older memories that are already consolidated

Autobiographical memory research shows that a person's brain is more extensively activated when viewing photos:

That the person took themselves

The connectionist network has learned the correct pattern for a concept when:

The error signals are reduced to nearly none and the correct properties are assigned

Transfer-appropriate processing is likely to occur if

The type of encoding task matches the type of retrieval task

What are seductive details? What's their downfall?

Things that grab your attention sometimes make you not remember anything else? (not core concepts)

Why do we need top-down processing?

To decipher visual ambiguity (shiny legs)

Why is our drawn map of the world distorted?

We draw things bigger when we know more info about them

Recent research on memory, based largely on fear conditioning in rats, indicates that

When a memory is reactivated, it becomes capable of being changed or altered, just as it was immediately after it was formed

What's an example of perceptual schemas?

boundary extension (trash can example) - shows that schemas change your memory of what you actually saw (we fall back on the default when we cant remember *exactly*, and then our memory reconstructs)

How do children learn that something is disgusting?

by learning about contamination (usually around age 7)

What is source monitoring?

classic study: read non-famous names, 24 hrs later, recall which are famous and which aren't (previous exposure makes you more familiar - so they picked names that weren't famous)

Why should we organize information to remember it better?

hierarchial representation is better (alphabet) because things come out as clusters so we don't remember them all (7 dwarves)

What is Loci's Memory Palace?

the DIY visual pneumonic - imagine strong picture and associate each item with a room

Why do we tell people something they originally told us?

we don't remember *where* we learned something