Cognitive Test 2 Study Guide

What is the typical capacity of short-term memory? How can this capacity be increased?

- "magic number 7": you can typically remember 7 items in your short term memory (+/- 2) - increase capacity by chunking (stimuli into groups to remember better), recoding (recon info to another code/ adds meaning, group items together based on previous knowledge) ex. SAT, PHD, CBS

Perception

process of interpreting and understanding sensory information

Atkinson and Shiffrin's model of memory

sensory store (shortest form of memory) --attention--> short-term store (current memory) --rehearsal--> long-term store

Describe change blindness, and why it may occur.

- *change blindness*: failure to notice changes in visual stimuli (ex: difference between two scenes) - type of inattention blindness - changes occur during a saccade - miss large changes in visual world when we do not know they are happening, failure to notice obvious changes - video in class: participants not noticing person switch at research check-in counter - why does this happen? our attention is limited, we have to pick and choose what we focus on

What is hemineglect? When does it typically happen? Is it rare? Which side is normally affected? Is it purely a visual problem? Explain.

- *hemineglect*: disruption or decreased ability to look at something in the field of vision (usually the left) and pay attention to it - usually the result of a stroke - damage to one hemisphere results in neglect on other side - can happen in the right visual field, but not permanent; always permanent in the left visual field - unable to direct attention voluntarily to one side of space (neglects stimuli presented to that side) - evidence suggests the inability to disengage attention from a stimulus on the non-neglected side (disruption of process of shifting attention - Muller (2017): no treatment has proven to be effective, incorporate different cues (ex. buzzing, hand gestures) to signal them to focus on left side

What is the difference between implicit and explicit processing?

- *implicit processing*: conscious awareness is not necessary - *explicit processing*: involves conscious processing or awareness (aware it is happening and intentionally controlling)

What is the typical explanation given for the primacy effect? The recency effect? Describe a study that demonstrated what happens to each when a distractor task is placed between list presentation and recall.

- *primacy effect*: slight advantage for words presented FIRST (LTM storage?) - *recency effect*: slight advantage for words presented LAST (STM storage?) Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) - gave participants list of items, gave a distractor task, then tested them on the list of items - manipulated distractor time after list was given (0 sec control, 10 sec, 30 sec) - measured serial position effects - 0 sec demonstrated primacy and recency effects, 10 and 30 sec demonstrated primacy effects but no recency effects - showed that primacy effect is not affected by distractor due to LTM storage AND recency effect is affected by distractor due to only being in STM

What is a saccade? How long does it last? How well do we see during a saccade? What is a fixation? What are some basic differences in how we process information during each?

- *saccade*: rapid eye movements lasting 25-100msec, suppression of normal vision processes, not processing visually - *fixation*: pauses between saccades where visual processing take place - eye tracker chart (large blobs where fixations occurred)

What is the difference between selective and divided attention?

- *selective attention*: the ability to attend to one source of information while ignoring other sources, involves the processes of filtering - *divided attention*: divide attentional processes equally between both tasks, requires attention devoted to 2+ stimuli simultaneously, higher demands on attentional processes when doing both tasks (more errors, increased response time or takes longer to do task)

What is ADHD (what are the two types)? Is it most likely representing an 'attention deficit?' Describe a study that suggested otherwise.

- ADHD: attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder - 2 categories: inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity Lorch et al (2004) - "attentional disorder" viewpoint - children watched TV in a room with or without toys and then were quizzed on what they watched - ADHD children were affected on a greater scale and the gap between "normal" and ADHD children grew wider with toys present (INATTENTION) - tested visual attention and comprehension Barkley (1998) - "motivational disorder" viewpoint - problem of self-regulation due to poor inhibitory control not lack of ability (specifically for attention) - lack of ability to self regulate and control where attention is going

Be familiar with the method and conclusions of the following studies if discussed in class: Warren & Warren (1970), and Hubel & Weisel (1962).

- Hubel & Weisel (1962): put electrodes on occipital cortexes of cats, presented them visual stimuli, tracked how different neurons fired with different stimuli, cats were looking at lines and different lines triggered different areas to light up and showed where different areas of perception responded - Warren & Warren (1970): presented audios with bursts of static noise in the beginning of a word (in the context of a sentence) and asked participants to perceive the whole word; subjects did not detect the missing phoneme, but interpreted the word based on context of the sentence; did not notice the loss in sound, because of the context they knew the word automatically; showed brain as operating top-down

Describe several areas in which people with LWM span perform differently than those with HWM (or be prepared to discuss an area provided). Explain why these differences exist between LWM and HWM people.

- LWM: lower working memory - HWM: higher working memory - people with HWM tend to do better on aptitude and achievement test (SAT), following directions, note taking, mathematical ability, cocktail party effect (they do not notice name due to selected attention), thought suppression ability, general intelligence (g) - they are better at filtering out irrelevant information

Filtering

- part of selective attention - mental process of eliminating unwanted messages or distractions

Galvanic skin response studies (reading)

- a measurable change in the electrical conductivity of the skin when emotionally significant stimuli are presented - often used to detect the unconscious processing of stimuli - ex: shocking person when mentioning London, Rome and then when saying Paris they have a GSR even tho no shock was administered - supported late selection theory - GSR occurred when trained shock words are presented in unattended stimulus in dichotic listening task, showing evidence for some processing of unattended stimuli

Cocktail party phenomenon

- a phenomenon in which people tune in one message even while they filter out others nearby - able to attend to nearby conversations when name is heard

Bottleneck theory of attention

- a theory that attempts to explain how people select information when some information-processing stage becomes overloaded with too much information - nothing more meaningful/understanding makes it through bottle

What is endogenous/controlled attention?

- attention from within - selective attention - divided attention - a deliberate, voluntary allocation of mental effort or concentration - preparation of response in a deliberate way to environment - serial processing - conceptually driven (content of information): makes decision to pay attention because of the context of it - TOP-DOWN - prefrontal cortex is important to attention and shifting attention

What is exogenous/input attention? What are some basic characteristics of input attention?

- basic process of getting sensory information into the cognitive system - attention from the outside (surroundings) - alertness or arousal: you do at a low level process some info even if you are not aware of it - automatic-like (reflexive) process - FAST - low-level content information - result of reticular activating system (RAS) activity (series of different structures around brain) - not fully in control - reflexive: redirection of attention toward an unexpected or relevant stimulus (hearing loud crash and attending to it)

Reflection 4 (Dr. P)

- could not perceive faces of his students, events, and objects if he relies solely on visual interpretation - needed to hear voice or detect a key feature before recognition (ex: wife=hat, fire hydrant=child, foot=shoe, etc) - still able to function with a routine (often had to put tasks to music), disturbance to routine threw him off - suffered from INTEGRATIVE/ASSOCIATE AGNOSIA - could see objects and explain them but could not identify them (ex: glove) - difficulty naming objects based on appearance only

Synesthesia (reading)

- cross sensory experiences - a condition in which individuals presented with sensory input of one modality consistency and automatically experience a sensory event in a different modality - ex: seeing color or hearing musical notes, describing words as colors 'to perceive together' - synaestehtic experience are mandatory/automatic and require conscious attention to the inducer two forms of synesthetic experience 1. *projectors* experience the color as if it were 'out there' in physical words superimposed on stimulus 2. *associators* see the color in their 'mind's eye', more common

Describe the dichotic listening task. What does it mean to shadow a message?

- examines selective attention - different audio messages in each ear - *shadowing*: used in a dichotic listen task in which participants must repeat aloud the to-be-attended message and ignore the other message without delay - goal of Cherry studies was to discover how much unattended information is processed

Pandemonium (reading)

- fanciful, but appealing, conceptual model of a feature extraction process involving shouting demons (bottom-up feature detection) - demons detect more and more complex features until the object is recognized - more shouting = more pandemonium

Be prepared to describe the methods of examining a person's working memory, and why they are testing working memory, not just STM.

- o-span task example: (8/2)-1=5? APPLE - sentence span task example: The cow jumped over the moon. CHAIR - goal: remember the word at the end of the sentence or math problem (keeping word in STM) - requires simultaneous mental processing and storage of info in WM, using attention to maintain or suppress info

Do we need to be alert and aroused to process information? Describe one study that demonstrates that we might not.

- one does NOT need to be alert to attend to and process information Bonebakkeer et al (1996) - 80 surgical patients under anesthesia, given list before and during surgery over headphones to test memory - implicit memory intact (word stems GR___) - explicit memory failed (yes/no recognition) - supports implicit information processing - showed processing still occurred even when unconscious as patients were asked to fill out word stems and they would answer first with words they had heard unconsciously

Reflexive attention

- part of exogenous/input attention - redirection of attention toward an unexpected or relevant stimulus - usually triggered by significant or novel stimulus (significant=broken glass, novel=new person in class) - non-voluntary

Marcel's priming studies (reading)

- present stimulus that would enhance for target word when prime word was followed by associated target word - response to target was faster than when non-associated words proceeded - evidence for masking - ex: BREAD followed by BUTTER

Sensation

- reception of energy from the environment - initial encoding into the nervous system

Role of rehearsal

- rehearsal buffer: mental recycling system for holding information temporarily 2 properties of rehearsal 1. keeps information in STM 2. increases probability information will be transferred to LTM

Blindsight (reading)

- sees something but unaware they saw it - damage to striate cortex resulting in blindness - can report details of objects appearing in the blind area of visual field despite having no conscious experience of seeing them explanation for blindsight is that we have 2 visual systems: 1. *primitive non-striate system*: sensitive to movement, speed, and other important characteristics of a stimulus without giving rise to conscious perception 2. *advanced striate system*: striate (allow for identification of object) and non-striate (allow for localization of object in space) having evolved for different roles

ADHD cognitive deficits

- selective attention: ADHD would struggle with dichotic listening and would struggle to not attend to the unattended - working memory (holding information in memory while attending to other tasks): ADHD would struggle to focus attention, deficit in WM (ex: taking notes while listening to lecture ) Mueller et al (2017) - impairment in frontal lobes? -> prefrontal cortex - ADHD children might have a thinner cortex AND less activity in prefrontal cortex - not agreed upon by all researchers, others have refuted this

Reflection 5 (ADHD/sleep)

- some scientists claimed that ADHD was a sleep disorder - lack of sleep produced same symptoms (inattention/distractibility) as ADHD - ADHD caused sleep problems because of medications (stimulant) and hyperactivity (inability to control behaviors) - ADHD IS NOT A SLEEP DISORDER; if treated for sleep problems ADHD would still persist - circadian rhythm: cycle of sleepfulness and wakefulness - behavioral intervention = improve sleep hygiene (bedtime routine; winding down and going to bed at a good time) - sleep architecture: graph that represents structure of normal night's sleep activity (deep sleep, REM, etc) - sleep onset latency: amount of time it takes to fall asleep (affected by stimulant medication) - polysomnography: sleep study with EEG watching brain activity - actigraphy: watch that measures movement during sleep

Striate vs Extrastriate cortices (occipital lobe)

- striate: responsible for UNDERSTANDING what is seen - extrastriate: vision (WHAT is seen)

Haptic perception (reading)

- tactile (touch) and kinaesthetic (awareness of position and movement of joints and muscles) perception - haptic illusions; using touch and perception to evaluate illusions (example: Ebbinghaus illusion)

What is the Brown-Peterson task? What does it demonstrate about short-term memory? What conclusions did Peterson & Peterson make about why STM performance declines as a result of the Brown-Peterson task? Describe a study that demonstrated problems with the Petersons' explanation of this STM decline.

- task: shown a grouping of 3 letters, then given a number and asked to count backwards by 3 while trying to remember those 3 letters (distractor task) - goal: find the length of time *non-rehearsed* information stays in the STM - evidence for DECAY THEORY (information in your STM slowly fades/decays away as time passes) Waugh & Norman (1965) - tried their own version of the Brown-Peterson task - task: list of 16 numbers was read consecutively or with brief lags in between, then asked to recall a number in the sequence - evidence for INTERFERENCE THEORY (other things get in the way of remembering things), no differences due to function of time but differences in number of intervening items between critical digit and recall

Describe the Stroop task. What did it demonstrate about automaticity? Can practice lead to automaticity?

- the effect of a well-learned response to a stimulus slowing the ability to make the less-well-learned response - ex: the word BLUE but the ink is pink, naming the color of the ink -there is little effect on speed of word naming, but naming the ink color is significantly slowed -written word activates its response automatically, so when the goal is to name the ink color the already active word response interferes with producing the name of the ink color. As evidenced by Shiffrin and Schneider's experiments with responses to consistent vs. varied sets of consonants and digits, automacity can develop over thousands of trials and will cease drawing on limited attentional resources.

Context effects

- the influence of environmental factors on one's perception of a stimulus - ability to use context to perceive what we are seeing - sHe bAt example

Negative priming and inhibition (reading)

- the response time to categorize a target item will be slowed if that same item has been presented on the previous trial as a distractor item that was ignored - evidence for late selection

Describe the dual-task procedure. Discuss a study that addressed how capable we are of dividing our attention between two different tasks. What do neuroimaging data suggest about what is happening in the brain when we split our attention between visual and auditory tasks?

- two tasks presented simultaneously or with a brief (ms) lag - investigates attentional processing demands Strayer, Drews, & Johnson (2003) - test of divided attention - driving simulator while on phone, miss traffic signals, react more slowly (not shown in radio, audiobooks, or recorded conversations) - evidence that we CANNOT do two attention demanding tasks simultaneously - tradeoff between occipital and temporal lobe activity, less activity in lobes the they are both activated in task - when we combine talking on phone and driving it slowed activity in brain

What is agnosia? Does it differ from memory loss, language loss, or general cognitive decline? Explain.

- visual agnosia = deficit in object recognition - not due to vision loss - disorder of visual perception, can see just alters the entire visual experience - very specific to not being able to RECOGNIZE OBJECTS

Name and diagram the three components to Baddeley's (1974) working memory model. Describe how each component functions, and at least one study that supports the existence of the three components.

1. *central executive*: attentional system, control and decision processes, integrates info into the system, reasoning and language comprehension 2. *phonological loop*: maintaining speech-based information (audiological STM), duration 1-2 sec, sub-vocal repetition (rehearsal technique of saying something over and over to yourself to remember), backup system for comprehension 3. *visual-spatial sketchpad*: maintaining spatial and visual information (visual STM) study- Baddeley and Hitch- hypothetical mechanism which is believed to be overall control of WM-assumed to control a variety of tasks, like decision-making/problem-solving/and selective attention -served by 2 short- term stores

Two types of recall tasks were discussed, explain them both, and some differences you might expect to find in performance using each.

1. *free recall*: recalling items in any order (ex: grocery list) 2. *serial recall*: recalling items in the exact order of presentation (ex: phone number)

Describe the three different types of agnosia mentioned in class, the differences between people with these types of agnosia, and the brain regions involved. Be prepared to answer questions related to the quiz supplement as well.

1. *prosopagnosia*: disruption in face recognition (can extend to objects); typically occurs in right occipital and temporal lobes; tends to accompany the other 2 forms of agnosia, extends to object recognition when recognizing within a class of options (3 types of chairs example) 2. *form/apperceptive agnosia*: difficulty perceiving patterns, discriminating between shapes, seeing objects as a whole; diffuses the whole occipital lobe; cannot copy an image if shown one; carbon monoxide poisoning 3. *integrative/associative agnosia*: inability to associate pattern and meaning; occipital-temporal border damage; can copy an image if shown one but cannot interpret it; strokes/tumors

Describe the difference between the two types of interference outlined in class.

1. *retroactive interference*: new information interferes with old learning (can't remember old info) 2. *proactive interference*: old information interferes with new learning (can't remember new info)

If each component of the WM model were located in one part of the brain, where would they be located?

1. CE: dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC); executive control and dual task switching, left side of brain 2. PL: broca's area and right parietal lobe; verbal processing, mostly left side of brain 3. VSSP: DLPFC, posterior parietal lobe, extrastriate cortex (mostly occipital lobe/right side of brain)

Attention can be defined in a couple different ways, explain these definitions.

1. attention as a *mental process*: concentrating effort on a stimulus or mental event ("attend to...") 2. attention as a *limited mental resource*: limited mental energy or resource that powers the mental system ("devoting our attention to...")

Models of Selective Attention

1. early selection: sensory, cherry studies, most of info gets filtered out in the beginning 2. middle selection: grammatical and semantic 3. late selection: awareness, some meaning based info is processed even in unattended, all info comes in and then is attended to

What are the conditions required for recoding information?

1. sufficient time/mental resources 2. well learned scheme or strategy

Superior vs Inferior (directionality)

AKA dorsal (top) vs ventral (bottom)

Anterior vs Posterior (directionality)

AKA front vs back

Describe the Cherry studies and the results that were found. What did this demonstrate about our attentional system? What did this suggest about when selection occurs? What did Moray's and Treisman's studies demonstrate that was problematic for this selection theory, and why?

Broadbent (1958) - Broadbent's Filter Model - selection occurs at earliest phases of perception - *only one* message can pass through filter - evidence: Cherry studies - simplified: if you don't pay attention to it, it's discarded Cherry (1953) - people noticed a change from human speech to a tone and male to female voice pitch difference (basic physical features) - people did NOT notice language change and identifying a word presented over and over and over in the unattended ear (meaning/higher level thinking) - ANYTHING MEANING BASED was not processed, only basic physical features - EARLY SELECTION Moray (1956) - insert participant's name in unattended message, 35% report hearing their name - evidence AGAINST early selection model, FOR middle/late selection Treisman (1960) - two stories played (one per ear), would repeat (shadow) story from one ear but switch stories halfway through, people attend to message content - evidence AGAINST early selection model, FOR middle/late selection

Describe several factors that determine when LBFS accidents seem to occur.

LBFS = look but fail to see, inattentional blindness situations this occurs: 1. more accidents when car was parked in-lin (same lane as traffic) then when parked in echelon (diagonally across) because mistake in lane as a moving vehicle 2. warning signs and cones did not guarantee detection, raised sensory conspicuity but not enough to prevent accident 3. accidents were closer to peoples home as they were so familiar with route they did not expect police car to be there as it normally is not 4. all over age of 25 more likely, more experienced drivers expect cars to always be moving on motorway

Reflection 6 (HM and STM/LTM)

PEOPLE - HM: medial temporal lobes removed (LTM damage) - KF: damage to entire left side of brain (STM damage, notice DLPFC/Broca's area located here) - Penfield's patient: frontal lobe/prefrontal cortex removed (attentional difficulty/CE of working memory attentional control) - double dissociation: KF had STM damage with LTM intact, HM had LTM damage with STM intact (refutes memory as a single process theory) TASKS - digit span task: repeat a group of numbers after they are said either forward or backward, failure is indicated by how many numbers they cannot remember in the sequence (their digit span), HM's digit span improved after surgery but this cannot be 100% attributed to surgery improving STM (anxiety about surgery, seizures) - same/different task: presented two stimuli with a brief delay in between and asked to identify if they were the same or different from each other - distractor task/Brown-Peterson task by Corkin did worse as distractor time period got longer - card task: rule given, must choose card according to rule (ex: same color), rule would change to test WM (attentional task), asked to describe rules at end of test (LTM task), HM could correctly figure out the rule without knowing but at end of the study could not recall what the rules had been. Showed the strength of his STM WM but lack of LTM. Penfields patient who had no frontal lobe only sorted them by shape even though told that was wrong, showing reliability on frontal lobe for planning/thought for sorting task -N-back test: on HM, asked him to identify if color before or 2 before matched current color. He struggled the more before colors he had to remember due to STM capacity and inability to store info in LTM on colors. HEBB & KANDEL MEMORY THEORIES - Hebb: LTM creates physical changes in neurons and STM does not, STM occurs when the neurons communicate in a closed loop while LTM occurs due to growth at the synaptic level - Kandel: STM is associated with synaptic functional changes and LTM is associated with synaptic structural changes (LTM requires protein synthesis)

What is a PRP? Describe one study that demonstrated this effect.

Psychological refractory period - central bottleneck phenomena - the time delay between the response to 2 overlapping signals that reflects the time required for the first response to be organized before the response to the second signal can be organized - at very short inter-stimulus intervals, processing of the second stimulus must wait until processing of first stimulus is completed - meaning cannot parallel process 2 things of information - study that demonstrates Book example of PRP: Cherry studies using dichotic listening task, when quizzed on meaning of unattended message they were unable t say what it had been about, so w/o attention there seemed to be no memory for the meaning of the unattended message, they did noticed changes go voice to M and F and changes from speech to tone

Explain the basic differences (outlined in class) between what cognitive psychologists mean by working memory and short-term memory?

STM - emphasis on STORAGE - focus on *capacity and recall processes* - what you are thinking of right now, holding info when you are doing something WM - emphasis on storage AND processing - mental workbench - focus on *attentional control* -being aware of what is going on around you while also thinking

Describe the differences in perceptual processing through the ventral and dorsal streams.

VENTRAL STREAM - a pathway in the brain that deals with the visual information for what objects are - OBJECT CENTERED, perception for recognition - knowledge based using stored representation to recognize objects - meaning, RECOGNITION DORSAL STREAM - a pathway which carries visual information about the spatial location of an object - VIEWER CENTERED frame of reference, perception for action - faster than ventral stream - ACTION/MOVEMENT

Describe the template and feature detection approaches to pattern recognition (visual and auditory), the problems with each, and the role of context.

VISUAL - *template approach*: stored models of categorical patterns; difficulty handling the variability of patterns; extremely large number of templates would be required, brain stores templates of possible objects and when you see something you match it to that template - *feature detection approach*: very simple pattern, a fragment or component can appear in combination with other features across stimulus patterns; example letter B, looking for loops and a line to identify AUDITORY - *template approach*: problem of invariance (sound of speech may vary), hearing different sounds matter by context for what you hear - *feature detection approach*: context matters, context in which you hear it helps to determine what was said

What formula did Engle postulate to describe working memory? Explain.

WM = STM + controlled attention example: (4+5) x 2 <--holding top info in head ____________ 3 + (12/4) <--while solving bottom half of problem (STM) example: "I know you are not unaware of my inability to speak German"

What is required to say that a process is automatic?

capable of occurring... 1. goal unrelated 2. unconscious 3. fast 4. efficient- little to no demand on attentional resources The difference between controlled and automatic processes is graded, not clear-cut NO EFFORT IS NEEDED!

Ponzo effect

objects represented on a linear background will appear larger (as it appears farther away)