Cog Psych Final
Family Resemblance-characteristics of categories
-Family resemblance means that membership in a category may be defined by each item's general similarity other members in the category rather than by a specific list of features. -family typical characteristics as opposed to defining features; we organize things among ideal members and atypical members -the more atypical, the more out of the family you are -family resemblance explains fuzziness of categories -we define categories by similarities
Concept as Theories Model
-Heuristic: are simple, efficient rules which people often use to form judgments and make decisions; A reasonably efficient strategy that works most of the time; Prototypes and exemplars -we need to make quick decisions that doesn't require a lot of thinking -When heuristics fail, people may need a more complete view; Concept-as-theory -Concepts and categories are like schemas; They allow people to form generalizations; Related to typicality; Generalizations more likely from typical cases; Robins more likely to be like all birds; Penguins less likely to be like all birds -Natural kinds and artifacts are reasoned about differently; Natural kinds (e.g., the skunk and raccoon) have essential properties; These principles do not apply to artifacts (e.g., toaster and coffeepot)
Dual-Coding (Paivio)
-High-imagery words, for instance, can be coded as both word and image -Low-imagery words only have a verbal code -concrete vs abstract words recalled -concrete: "high imagery" words; have strong mental image; something out of reality we can easily picture; ex: we can picture a hair better than we can picture the concept "justice" -easier to recall concrete words than abstract words -longer words harder to remember because harder to rehearse
Lemma
-Hypothetical entity containing only semantic and syntactical information -No information concerning the phonology of the word -an abstract conceptual form of a word that has been mentally selected for utterance in the early stages of speech production. A lemma represents a specific meaning but does not have any specific sounds that are attached to it. -strawberry: a singular noun
Sentence Verification Tasks
-In a sentence verification task, participants are asked to decide as quickly as possible if a sentence is true or false: Tigers have stripes; Tigers have lungs; Tigers have spots; Tigers have gills -measure how quickly participants respond -Raposo, Mendes, Marques (2012)
The influence of language on memory development (theory childhood amnesia)
-Lack of language is huge -Language is an entire way humans process information (Inner voice > articulatory loop) -May have limited access to early stored memories because without language they are in a form we cannot access
Lexical Decision Task (LDT)
-Lexical decision task (LDT): participants must judge, as quickly as they can, whether or not a string of letters is a word or not (Doctor-yes; xffxere-NO; Pluckban-NO) -give ppl a button and ask whether or not they viewed a word or a nonword based -reaction times differentiate based on words or nonwords
Lexical Memory
-Lexical memory: (also known as the LEXICON) mental dictionary; all of the words that we know -A representational system for the words of our language -Heavily overlaps with semantic memory > facts and concepts can be represented as WORDS -ex: The word "rain" means the presence of water precipitating from clouds
Morphology
-MORPHOLOGY: refers to how words are constructed within a particular language -MORPHEMES: smallest unit of meaning -examples include prefixes, subfixes and past tense -Prefixes: trans (across, over, through), dis (opposite), mono (one), sub (beneath) -Suffixes: er (one who, that which), able (capable of), ish (somewhat like) -Past tense: ed
The Reminiscence Bump Theories
-Memory-Fluency Theory -Neurological Theory -Socio-cultural Theory -Several lines of research support a combination of memory-fluency and socio-cultural theories; Large life changes can shift the reminiscence bump; Bilingual research: moving to a new culture with a new language
Analogical Representations
-Mental representations that have some of the physical characteristics of objects -Think of an object > visual image -mental maps: analogical representation -ex: pause and think about a cat
Subjective experience and autobiographical memory
-OBSERVER MEMORIES are memories in which we take the vantage point of an outside observer and see ourselves as actors in our visual memory -FIELD MEMORIES are autobiographical and visual memories in which we see the memory as if we were looking at the event through our own eyes (More associated with emotion)
Phonology
-PHONOLOGY: is the study of sounds and how they are used in a language -PHONETICS: the details of speech sounds and how we make them -PHONEMES: smallest unit of sound (sounds aren't necessarily one letter; ex: "th"; put units of sounds together to form words) -Examples: /b/ /e/ /th/
Allen and Brooks 1991-Exemplar Theory
-Participants trained to categorize two fictitious animals (Builders and Diggers) -One abstract rule: builders had two of the following characteristics (long legs; angular bodies; and spots) -Anything else was a Digger -Trained over 40 trials -Given a categorization test with new examples not seen during training (Some examples looked like an example of the Diggers used in the practice session, BUT were Builders) -Negative match Builders were identified slower and less accurately -One single practice example was used over the abstract rule -Brooks, Norman, and Allen (1991) replicated this data using medical diagnosis of skin disorders
Simcock and Hayne (2002) Childhood Amnesia
-Presented two-, three-, and four-year old children with a demonstration of their "incredible shrinking machine" (An object, such as a beach ball, "shrunken" by the machine) -1-year later: children return and must recall what was shrunken -Children only remembered those objects for which they possessed the vocabulary for when they witnessed the event. -Supports language development view
Talarico and Rubin (2007)- Flashbulb memories
-Procedure- compared: 1) Memories of participants' personal whereabouts when they heard the news of 9/11; and 2) Memories of participants' personal whereabouts during an ordinary event around the same time period -Results: They found that the flashbulb memories were no more accurate than the ordinary memory; Vividness ratings, confidence ratings, and other subjective ratings were all higher for the flashbulb memory than for the normal memory; REMEMBER: confidence does not equal better memory
Feature Comparison Theory/Defining Feature Model
-how we DO NOT form categories; we don't form categories this way because this model was a failure; it doesn't incorporate typicality; it made us accept that there are fuzzier boundaries for categories; atypical members don't fit -States that we maintain a list of features for each category -Defining features are required for any example of a particular category -Characteristic features generally accompany an instance of the category but are not required
Event Specific Memories (Conway)
-individual episodic memories -"Vast reservoir" of specific episodic memories across a lifetime -Episodes versus details: Both extended events and instant events refer to particular and unique events; Differ in length of the episode
Neuroscience of Concepts and Categories
-lesions in the brain made people have a harder time identifying natural vs. artificial categories (people, animals, tools) > aligns with "what" pathway -Categories represented in different highlighted brain areas
Cue Word Technique (Daselaar 2008)
-Procedure: Cue-word technique for autobiographical memory; Participants monitored by fMRI -Results in 1.5 seconds: Medial temporal lobe, the hippocampus, and right prefrontal cortex were active; By 3 seconds, these areas are deactivating -Results in 3 seconds: Occipital cortex (visual cortex) and the left prefrontal cortex were active; Activity increased until about 12 seconds and then they leveled off -Those memories that were given high judgments of emotionality were correlated with greater activity in the hippocampus, amygdala, and frontopolar areas in frontal lobe
Prototype Theory
-Prototype theory: A prototype is defined as the most typical member of a particular category. Prototype theory states that prototypes form the central feature in our representation of categories -Prototype: An average of various category members that have been encountered (ex: averaging out all the Batmans who ever were and putting all the faces together to make a morphed face) -an abstraction -Differs across individuals -May differ across countries/cultures (ex: typical for NC to see seagulls but typical for NY to see pigeons) -Graded membership; Some members closer to the prototype -Fuzzy Boundaries; No clear dividing line for membership
Protypes and Typicality Effects
-Prototypes are easily named: Items considered more prototypical are easily (more quickly) identified -The more prototypical an example is the more likely it is to be judged more quickly after semantic priming -Typicality effects (how typical something is); things we encounter more frequently will come to mind quicker; ex: flamingos vs canaries; Flamingo is less typical and less frequently encountered; Flamingo is less expected -Prototypical members of a category are easier to name (more accessible for retrieval) -The more prototypical category members are also "privileged" in rating tasks
Associative Model Collins and Loftus (1975)- Associative Structures in Semantic Memory
-Represent info in semantic memory in terms of CONNECTIONS among units of info (aka, a NODE) -A node is the unit of memory, which is then connected to other nodes -use nodes to form connections between things that are based on association
Situated Simulation Theory
-Representation of a particular concept varies as a function of the situation or context (Barsalou, 2003) -The context in which a category is encountered calls upon different aspects of its representation; For example: we think about the concept of "hydrogen" very differently when we encounter it in the context of hydrogen-cell batteries than when we encounter it in the con
Aspects of words and language
-SEMANTICS: the study of meaning -PRAGMATICS: refers to language use -SYNTAX: refers to word order within a language and other aspects of grammar
Jack, Simcock, and Hayne (2012)-Childhood Amnesia
-Same kids at 10-years old -20% still remembered the "magic shrinking machine" -Older children continued to only recall what they had words for at the time
Semantic Memory
-Semantic memory: the neurocognitive system that stores general world knowledge -Facts > or at least pieces of information we know about the world -portion of LTM -ex: Enrique Peña Nieto is the president of Mexico -Associative Structures in Semantic Memory: Associative Model Collins and Loftus (1975) and Spreading Activation
Lexical Memory cont.
-Semantic priming and LDTs showed us there is a significant relationship between semantic memory and lexical memory -By the time one reaches college, it is likely that the average student knows about 100,000 words in his or her native language (Nearly double that if they are bilingual; This amount of knowledge requires good memory representation with fast access at retrieval) -Psycholinguistics is the study of the psychological processes involved in human language; Language serves as a: (a) mode of communication; and (b) a mode of thought
Semantic Priming
-Semantic priming: the effect of one word or idea on the processing of a related word or idea -refers to the observation that a response to a target (e.g., dog) is faster when it is preceded by a semantically related prime (e.g., cat) compared to an unrelated prime (e.g., car). -looking at the idea/concept that a word represents and comparing related words to unrelated words -Semantic priming improves performance for related words in lexical decision tasks (Semantically related: Nurse - Doctor); (Semantically Unrelated: Cheese - Doctor) -Measured with typical priming procedure (Prime - Target) and a LDT; Press 1 for WORD and 2 for NONWORD -making an LDT at the target as quickly as you can
Raposo, Mendes, and Marques (2012)- Sentence Verification Task
-Semantic-verification tasks while participants were being scanned by fMRI technology -Found that areas of the left prefrontal lobe and areas of the left medial temporal lobe were particularly active during sentence verification
Sound-Substitution Errors
-Similar but incorrect phonological structure is retrieved -BUT the word retrieved has no obvious semantic or syntactical connection to the desired word -Example: if the word you are seeking is "tiger" you might accidentally retrieve "tirade." -Happen at level of lexeme after lemma has been retrieved
Lexeme
-Stores the phonology of a word (i.e., how the word sounds) -strawberry: "straw" "berry" -contain information about how the word is pronounced; deals with the phonology of the word; it attaches information about the sounds that will have to be uttered.
Language acquisition device (LAD)
-The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a hypothetical module of the human mind posited to account for children's innate predisposition for language acquisition. First proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s, the LAD concept is an instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce language. -LADs allow young children to extract meaning and start learning words from stimuli that are often ambiguous (Chomsky, 1986)
Shepard and Metzler (1971) results
-The more the two figures were rotated away from each other, the more time it took participants to make their decisions -The Shepard and Metzler data support the analog view; People's imagery systems appeared to be actually manipulating images and not abstract code-like representations -measured mental rotation; amount of spins/rotations> longer reaction time -the more you rotate, the more active the occipital lobe gets
The Reminiscence Bump
-The reminiscence bump refers to a spike in recalled memories corresponding to late adolescence to early adulthood, or roughly between the ages of 16 and 25 -Can shift for several very specific reasons and noted
Memory-Fluency Theory (The Reminiscence Bump)
-This view is based on the idea that the time period of age 16-25 is simply a time period with many "first experiences" -Events that are unique and novel
Spreading Activation (Associative Structures in Semantic Memory)
-Transfer of activation from one node to an associated node -Automatic AND conscious process -ex: every time you hear the word "truck", all activations of the concepts around it that are heavily related (bus, car, etc) -the length of spreading activation is meaningful because it explains the flow of thought and how long it takes to associate connections
Visual Memory
-We have knowledge in different forms -being able to picture things in your mind; having images in head -visuospatial sketchpad -People describe their thoughts as being formulated in words, pictures, sounds, or abstract -A variety of day-to-day problems seem to require the use of visual imagery; How many windows are in your apartment?; Was David in class yesterday?; Will this sweater look good with your blue pants? -What is the nature of these mental images? -Thinking Involves Two Types of Representations: Analogical and Symbolic Representations
Phoneme Perception
-We have studied phoneme perception in infants: We can perceive more phonemes as infants than we can as adults!; We lose the ability to perceive phonemes we don't use -Phoneme perception is also regularized: We exhibit categorization of phonemes rather than continuous hearing/perception of phoneme sounds -Many words have no clear boundaries yet speech segmentation is effortless > more evidence of regularization/categorization
Boundary Extension
- Boundary extension is an error of commission in which people confidently remember seeing a surrounding region of a scene that was not visible in the studied view -Information is filled in that was not present in the picture.
Chronometric Studies
-A common methodology we will be exploring -Ask participants to manipulate the mental images -Observe how long these manipulations take -includes mental rotation and mental scanning -MENTAL ROTATION: rotating images in the mind -MENTAL SCANNING: allows us to visualize something or someplace without actually being there
Symbolic Representations
-Abstract mental representations -Do not correspond to physical features -words: language -ideas: democracy
Theories of Childhood Amnesia
-Age-related changes in self-concept -Neurological transitions in memory systems -The influence of language on memory development
Automatic Process- Spreading Activation
-Automatic process (ASA, automatic spreading activation) -Fast acting -No strategy; just connects to stuff that its related to -Facilitates processing of related info; only sends out activation of related info -Does not inhibit processing of unrelated info
Word Exchange Errors
-Word-exchange errors: occur when we substitute a word with a similar meaning for another word, regardless of how the words sound -For example, if the word one was trying to retrieve was "sandals," they might accidentally say "heels" instead -Wrong lemma is activated
Word
-Word: smallest unit of grammar that represents a full meaning -needs to have a full meaning; a combo of morphemes to be gramatically useable
Examples of Autobiographical Memory
-Your first time driving a car? -Your first time in an airplane? -Your first romantic kiss? -Getting accepted into ECU? -High school graduation?
Flashbulb Memories
-a group of emotional memories -memories of extraordinary clarity, typically for highly emotional events, retained despite the passage of many years -ex: memories people have of first hearing the news of JFK assassination -accuracy of flashbulb memories: Talarico and Rubin (2007)
Neely (1977)-Associative Structures in Semantic Memory
-Background: Tests the notion that spreading activation is a two process model-Automatic spreading activation (ASA) and conscious spreading activation (expectancy) -did a semantic LDT priming task -taught the participants the prime words and what to expect; Taught participants to expect a different word category of the target after the prime; built conscious expectations of unrelated categories (Body > Building) -Varied word category of target (body-body; body-building; body-bird) -Varied the amount of reaction time between prime and target (SOA); 250, 400, 700, and 2000 ms
Neely (1977) Predictions
-at a short SOA: ASA should facilitate processing of BODY - BODY; ASA should have little/no effect on BODY - BIRD; ASA should have little/no effect on BODY - BUILDING -at long SOA: Expectancy should facilitate BODY - BUILDING; Expectancy should inhibit BODY - BODY; Expectancy should inhibit BODY - BIRD
Prototype and Exemplar
-Both prototype and exemplar provide information -Kermit the Frog; Prototypical features-is green and eats flies; Exemplar (gives examples)-sings and loves pigs -Every concept is a mix of exemplar and prototype: -Early learning involves exemplars -Experience involves averaging exemplars to get prototypes -With more experience, we can use both exemplars and prototypes
Neurological transitions in memory systems (theory childhood amnesia)
-Brain changes as it matures -Synaptic pruning (process of synapse elimination in early childhood to puberty), new connections, maturing regions of the brain -Perhaps maturing of regions associated with episodic encoding matches offset of childhood amnesia; oh wait never mind
Category
-Category: a mental construct referring to a SET OF OBJECTS or ideas that are grouped together or are associated with each other -how we group together objects
Childhood Amnesia
-Childhood amnesia: observation that adults have almost no episodic memories from the first three to five years of their life -Difficult to research: Accuracy is an issue; Lack of objective comparison is another issue; Illusory self-memories -Common procedure: Ask people to report earliest memory ; Average estimate is 3.1 years
Cross Race Bias in South Africa
-Citizens of African ancestry are in the majority and citizens of European ancestry are in the minority -Here, it is the Europeans who are better at recognizing African faces than the Africans are at recognizing European faces
Coarticulation
-Coarticulation: the blending of phonemes at word boundaries; the articulation of two or more speech sounds together, so that one influences the other. -"My name is Dan Reisberg" -"My name is Noam Chomsky" -S is slightly different because the post phonemes for D and N are slightly different
Concept
-Concept: a mental construct that contains information associated with a specific idea -Concepts are generally considered to be "wider" or "larger" ideas than categories -Concepts can be something such as "government" or "atheism" or "purple" -Concepts can also something such as "fried chicken" or "dog" or "chair" -more general ideas; wide and abstract; flexible; everything is a social or mental concept -ex: colors
Sense of Smell and Autobiographical Memory-Willander and Larsson (2007)
-Conducted a study on the role odors play in autobiographical memory -They tested three cueing conditions: 1) Odors alone; 2) word alone; 3) smell and word together-the name of the odor and the actual odor -Results: Odor alone produced the most autobiographical memories and Odor alone produced the oldest autobiographical memories
Conscious Process-Spreading Activation
-Conscious process (expectancy) -Slow acting -Strategy based and requires intent; based on expectations -Facilitates processing of expected info -Inhibits processing of unrelated info (things that are unrelated to what we are expecting inhibits processing) -Does not inhibit ASA
Diary Studies and Autobiographical Memory
-Diaries provide a written record by which memories can be compared -Can be extremely useful tools in the study of autobiographical memory -Wagenaar (1986): Recorded over 2,400 events over the course of six years; Found that what, where, and who cues were better at retrieving information than when cues
Age-related changes in self-concept (theory childhood amnesia)
-Early lack of a coherent self -No way of organizing episodic information if there is no self to base it around -Lines up are of end of amnesia with development of early self concept; kinda
Cross Race Bias in the US
-European-Americans better recognize European-American faces than African-American faces -African-Americans perform as well on European-American faces as they do on African-American faces
Features Comparison Model: Evidence for and against Knowledge Network
-Evidence for and against the knowledge network the feature comparison model would need: Sentence verification task -Participants must quickly decide whether sentences like the following are true: -Canaries are birds. vs Canaries are animals (RT goes up as predicted) -Canaries are birds. vs Flamingos are birds (RT for flamingos is longer, which the model does not predict)
Exemplar Theory
-Exemplar > example -Categories are classified by maintaining a large number of specific instances of a category that are associated with each other in semantic memory -It argues that individuals make category judgments by comparing new stimuli with instances already stored in memory. The instance stored in memory is the "exemplar".
The Working Self (Conway)
-goals, knowledge, and self-images that make up our view of ourselves -It is a complex collection of autobiographical knowledge, goals, and self-monitoring processes -Functions to keep two features of memory intact: coherence, and correspondence -COHERENCE: the extent to which autobiographical memories are consistent with the working self -CORRESPONDENCE: the extent to which retrieved memories match actual events
General Events (Conway)
-memories of common reoccurring episodes formed around schema structures (thought pattern that organizes information) -SIMPLE EVENTS: the combined, averaged, and cumulative memory of highly-similar events; Organized by schemas & stand out less; (Example, going to the grocery store: you remember the order of events in a general sense and know that you went to a common set of cashiers > not detailed) -EXTENDED EVENTS: Single long sequence of connected episodic events that only occurred once; However, it is similar to a simple general event because it requires schemas to link units into a coherent event
Lifetime Periods (Conway)
-organization of our autobiographical info -The larger time periods events fit within -Large scale organization of memories -Organize both event-specific and general events -Typically organized by themes that may overlap across time periods; For example, "when I was in high school"; "when I dated person X"; "when I was at ECU" -IDIOSYNCRATIC (i.e., personal) ways we each organize our autobiographical past ("Before I came to college"; "That show must have been in 2014-2017 because it was during my relationship with person X")
Autobiographical Memory
-refers to the specific memories and self-knowledge -Autobiographical memory combines information from episodic events (ex: Falling out of a tree at Aunt Beulah's when I was ten years old) and semantic knowledge (ex: I was born in the small town of Ottauquechee, Vermont) -the memory that each of us has for the events of our lives; plays a central role in shaping how each of us thinks about ourselves and how we behave
Neurological Theory (The Reminiscence Bump)
-young adults have the most efficient encoding system -optimal maturation of brain mechanisms of memory -before the inevitable decline in memory abilities associated with age
Neely 1977-What does it all mean?
1) Automatic spreading activation coupled with expectancy: facilitates the processing of semantically related and expected information at both short and long SOAs (BIRD robin) 2) In the absence of automatic spreading activation: Expectancy inhibits the processing of unrelated and unexpected information, BUT this inhibition takes time to build (BIRD arm); Expectancy facilities the processing of expected information at long but not short SOAs (BODY door) > expectancy takes time to build 3) In the absence of expectancy: automatic spreading activation facilitates the processing of semantically related information at short SOAs, but this facilitation decays rapidly (BODY heart)
Three Characteristics of Categories
1) Categories are fuzzy; We often think of categories as well defined, but this is an illusion; For serious, what is the difference between a "bed" and a "chair"; defining characteristics are very abstract; ex: chairs and beds have very similar characteristics; harder to define distinct different characteristics in artificial things vs. natural; ex: chairs vs beds and dogs vs cats; dogs and cats have diff DNA but you can use chairs and beds for same concepts 2) Categories have levels (levels of categorization) SUPERORDINATE > BASIC > SUBORDINATE (ex: furniture > chair > upholstered armchair) 3) These different levels are flexible > what is a basic level can be used as a superordinate level (Chair > Lazyboy > Leather Lazyboy)
Sociocultural Theory (The Reminiscence Bump)
Age range 16-25 is associated with changes in identity-formation of the individual
Sense of Smell and Autobiographical Memory- Herz (2004)
Autobiographical memories produced by odor cues were given higher emotion ratings than those elicited by either visual cues or auditory cues
Wu and Barsalou (2009)
Procedure: -Asked participants to regard specific concepts from different perspectives -Participants view a phrase, such as "split coconut" or "chipped coconut" -Asked participants to generate as many properties as possible for each phrase Results: -Both stimuli call one's attention to the concept of a coconut BUT the adjective served as context -Participants focused on different aspects of the concept depending on that context -A "split coconut" elicited phrases relating to the opening of a coconut -A "chipped coconut" elicited phrases related to the drinking of coconut milk. -Evidence that context is important
Shepard and Metzler (1971)-mental rotation
Procedure: -Decide if two figures were geometrically the same of if they were different -Yes or no as quickly as possible -Varied the orientation of one picture relative to the other -Half of the pictures were identical whereas half were not -Measured how long it took participants to indicated whether the figures were the same or different -The researchers examined response times as a function of the angle of rotation between the two figures
Conway's Model of Autobiographical Memory
The primary components of autobiographical memory: 1. Event specific memories: individual episodic events 2. General events: memories of common reoccurring episodes formed around schema structures; simple and extended events 3. Lifetime periods: organization of our autobiographical info *These levels of episode organization create an interacting but hierarchical representation structure in our memory system (specific>general>periods) 4. The working self: goals and self-images that make up our view of ourselves
Cue-Word Technique for Recalling Autobiographical Memories
Cue-word technique: -An ordinary word is provided to participants -They are asked to provide the first memory which the word elicits -Memory can be from any point in their life > free associate
Lexicon
Lexicon: our mental "dictionary"; more properly our word memory system.
