Psychology 111 - Exam 3 - Chapter 5 and 6 - Full Review

Full consciousness: (Levels of consciousness)

able to report your mental state; aware of the state while having the state

Working memory:

active maintenance of info in short term storage; consists of: -central executive controlling the flow of visual info -visuo-spatial sketchpad/phonological loop -episodic buffer that integrates info

Dynamic unconscious: (The Unconscious Mind)

active system encompassing a lifetime of hidden memories, instincts and desires; struggles to control these forces

Case judgements:

appearance of the world

Consistency bias:

bias to reconstruct past to fit the present

2) Absentmindedness:

-lapse in attention that results in memory failure -caused by lack of attention or by forgetting to carry out actions planned to do in the future

Episodic memory: (Types of explicit memory)

collection of past personal experiences that occurred at a particular time/place; increasing activity for remembering activities in past and future

Chunking:

combining small pieces of info into large clusters or chunks to make easier to store

Long-term potentiation (LTP):

communication across the synapse between neurons strengthens the connections making future communication easier

Collaborative memory:

how people remember in groups

Mind-body problem:

how the mind is related to brain and body (remember Descartes?) What do you think is the order of operations? -Do we have a thought then an action? Or, do we complete the action then have a thought?

Phenomenology:

how things seem to the conscious person

Retroactive interference: (Transience)

later learning impairs memory for info acquired earlier; days blending together

Trying to recall: (Two processes for retrieval)

left frontal lobe

Minimal consciousness: (Levels of consciousness)

low-level kind of sensory awareness/responsiveness that occurs when mind inputs sensations and makes behaviour; rolling over when asleep from being poked; driving a car

Storage:

maintaining info in memory over time

Repression: (The Unconscious Mind)

mental processes of removing unacceptable thoughts and memories from consciousness to keep in unconscious

Thought suppression:

conscious avoidance of a thought

Explicit: (Forms of long-term memory)

consciously or intentionally retrieve past experiences

Hypnagogic state: (Sleep and Dreaming: Good Night, Mind)

presleep consciousness; hypnic jerk (sensation of dropping)

Flashbulb memories: (Persistence)

detailed recollections of when/where we heard about shocking events; not always accurate but remembered more often

Ironic processes of mental control:

errors occur because the mental processes that monitor errors can produce them, outside of conscious awareness Ex: telling yourself not to think about a white bear is generating an image in your mind to think of a white bear

Echoic memory:

fast-decaying store of auditory information; echo in the mind's ear; 5 seconds

Iconic memory:

fast-decaying store of visual information; 1 second or less

Serial position effect:

first and last items are more likely to be remembered

Source memory: (Memory Misattribution)

recall of when, where and how information was acquired; déjà vu (disruption in subjective feeling of remembering)

Long-term retention is enhanced by

sematic encoding

Rhyme judgements:

sound of the word

Daydreaming ... another state of consciousness

-Brain is active even when there is no task at hand; flow of purposeless thoughts -Even when people are not busy, they show activation in default network area of the brain -Thinking about social life -Thinking about the self -Thinking about the past and future

6) Bias:

-Distorting influence of present knowledge, beliefs and feelings on recollection of previous experiences -Current mood biases recall of past experiences

Judge minds based on:

-Experience (ex: pain, pleasure, hunger, anger, fear) -Agency (ex: self-control, planning, memory, thought)

1) Transience:

-Forgetting what occurs with the passage of time -Occurs during the storage phase of memory -Quality of memory changes; most forgetting happens soon after the event -Influenced by interference from others

7) Persistence:

-Intrusive recollection of events that we want to forget -Emotional experiences are better remembered than non-emotional experiences

What would have...

-Little experience and little agency? = dying person -Experiences but little agency: infants -Experiences and agency: us! -No experiences but perceived agency: perception of agency

Where are memories stored?

-Memory storage depends on spaces between neurons -Sending a neurotransmitter across a synapse changes the synapse strengthening the connection between the neurons

Hippocampal patient H.M.

-Removed parts of temporal lobes (including hippocampus) -Could not remember anything that happened after the operation (anterograde amnesia)

Three types of memory storage:

-Sensory -Short-term -Long-term

5) Suggestibility:

-Tendency to incorporate misleading information from external sources into personal recollections -Our memories are vulnerable to others and their interpretations and suggestions

Survival encoding:

-includes semantic, visual imagery and organizational encoding -encourages extensive planning to benefit memory -memory system has evolved to allow us to remember information to our survival

4) Memory Misattribution:

-assigning a recollection or an idea to the wrong source

3) Blocking:

-failure to retrieve info that is available in memory -occurs most often for names of people and places ... but why? -links to related concepts/knowledge vs. names; remembering someone is a baker instead of the last name Baker

Problem of other minds:

-fundamental difficulty in perceiving the consciousness of others Ex: you are the only one that will never know what it is like to be you

LTP Properties:

-occurs along several pathways within hippocampus -can be induced rapidly -can last for a long time

Benefits of groups?

-others reveal items others don't remember -others help reduce/correct memory errors

Effective as it:

-relates incoming knowledge to present knowledge -helps to have two mental place holders (visual and verbal); more ways to remember

Role of amygdala:

-responds strongly to emotional events -level of activity is a good predictor for memory of the event

Three types of encoding processes:

-semantic encoding: words -visual imagery encoding: vision -organizational encoding: categories

Four properties of consciousness

1) Intentionality 2) Unity 3) Selectivity 4) Transience

Memory Failures: The Seven Sins of Memory:

1) Transience 2) Absentmindedness 3) Blocking 4) Memory Misattribution 5) Suggestibility 6) Bias 7) Persistence

Memory:

ability to store and retrieve info over time -three key functions: encoding, storage and retrieval

False recognition: (Memory Misattribution)

a feeling of familiarity about something that hasn't been encountered before

Altered state of consciousness: (Sleep and Dreaming: Good Night, Mind)

a form of experience different than subjective experience of the world and mind

Unity: (Four properties of consciousness)

ability to integrate info from all of the body's senses into one coherent whole

Cognitive unconsciousness:

all the mental processes that influence thoughts, choices, emotions and behaviour; not experienced by the person

But ... can we do this? What are some issues?

assuming people are telling the truth, but no way to prove it

Mental control:

attempt to change consciousness states of mind

Retrieval:

bringing to mind information that has been encoded and stored

Selectivity: (Four properties of consciousness)

capacity to include some object but not others; include/exclude info; dichotic listening; cocktail party phenomenon: talking to someone, when hear name look across room

Organizational encoding:

categorizing info according to the relationships among items -can improve recall by organizing everything into multiple-level categories -activates the upper surface of the frontal lobe

Proactive interference: (Transience)

earlier learning impairs memory for information acquired later; forgetting where you parked if you always park in the same lot

Priming: (Types of implicit memory)

enhanced ability to think of a stimulus as a result of recent exposure to the stimulus

Freudian slips: (The Unconscious Mind)

evidence of unconscious mind; ex: forgetting the name of someone you do not like

Change bias:

exaggerate differences btwn what we feel or believe now vs. before

Egocentric bias:

exaggerate the change btwn past/present to make ourselves look good

Retrieval cues:

external info associated with stored info to help bring it to mind Information is available in memory just momentarily inaccessible

Self-consciousness: (Levels of consciousness)

focuses on the self to the exclusion of everything else; evaluating yourself and your shortcomings; 18 months +

Procedural memory: (Types of implicit memory)

gradual acquisition of skills as a result of practice

Successfully recalling: (Two processes for retrieval)

hippocampal region and processing centers in brain for senses

Short term memory:

holds non-sensory info for more than a few seconds but less than a minute; ex: phone #

Sensory:

holds sensory information for a few seconds or less

Conceptual priming: (Types of implicit memory)

implicit memory for the meaning of a word and how you would use and object, left hemisphere; front of brain

Perceptual priming: (Types of implicit memory)

implicit memory for the sensory features of an item (visual characteristics of a word or picture); right hemisphere; back of brain

Retrograde amnesia:

inability to retrieve info before a particular date

Anterograde amnesia:

inability to transfer new info from short-term store to long-term store

Semantic judgements:

meaning of the word

Transfer-appropriate processing:

memory is likely to transfer from one situation to another when the encoding/retrieval connects of the situations match

Reconsolidation:

memories are vulnerable to disruption when they are recalled

Consolidation:

memories becomes stable in brain After encoding memories are fragile where they can be disrupted Sleep plays an important role in memory consolidation

Circadian rhythm: Why do we sleep and why on such a specific schedule?

naturally occurring 24-hour activity When awake, brain waves alternate between beta waves (high-frequency) during alertness and alpha waves (low-frequency) during relaxation

Semantic memory: (Types of explicit memory)

network of associated facts and concepts that make up general knowledge

Implicit: (Forms of long-term memory)

past experiences influence later behaviour and performance; w/o effort to remember or awareness of the recollection.

Experience-sampling technique (Conscious contents)

people report on conscious experiences at certain times; consciousness is dominated by the environment; current concerns (what person is thinking about repeatedly) But again ... do we see any issues? Biases?

Consciousness:

persons subjective experience of the world and the mind

Hypnopompic state: (Sleep and Dreaming: Good Night, Mind)

postsleep consciousness

Rehearsal:

process of keeping info in short-term memory by mentally repeating it Limited by how long it can hold it can hold information and how much it can hold (about 7 meaningful pieces of info)

Semantic encoding:

process of relating new info in a meaningful way to knowledge already stored in memory; lower left parts of the frontal and temporal lobes

Visual imagery:

process of storing new info by converting it into mental pictures -activates processing regions in occipital lobe

Encoding:

process of transforming what we perceive, think, or feel into an enduring memory -memories are made by combining info we already have with new info from the senses -memories are constructed not recorded

Intentionality: (Four properties of consciousness)

quality of being directed toward and object

Prospective memory: (Absentmindedness)

remembering to do things in the future

Encoding-specificity principle

retrieval cue can serve to remind how memory was initially encoded

Retrieval-induced forgetting:

retrieving an item from long-term memory impairs recall of related items

State-dependent retrieval:

tendency for info to be better recalled when the person is in the same state during encoding and retrieval

Rebound effect of thought suppression:

tendency of a thought to return to consciousness with greater frequency following suppression

Transience: (Four properties of consciousness)

tendency to change; focus of attention changes; stream of consciousness

Subliminal perception: (Example of System 1 at work)

thought or behaviour is influenced by stimuli that person cannot consciously report perceiving Ex: reminder of aging causes a person to walk slower

Collaborative inhibition: (Problems with groups?)

together recall fewer than if working on their own -Retrieval strategies used by individuals might disrupt those used by others

Dual-process theories:

two systems for processing information - fast, automatic, unconsciousness processing (System 1); slow, effortful, conscious processing (System 2)

Long-term memory:

type of storage that holds info for hours, days, weeks, or years No capacity limits

Disorder of consciousness (Brain damaged individuals)

unable to demonstrate full consciousness or self-consciousness