Cognition Ch's 4-7 Midterm

According to Treisman's feature integration theory, the first stage of perception is called the __________ stage and the second stage is called ____________.

Preattentative; focused attention

Physiological studies indicate that damage to the brain's___________can disrupt behaviors that depend on working memory.

Prefrontal cortex (attention/executive functions/behavior)

Where do attention processes come from in the brain?

Prefrontal cortex, occipital, and parietal lobes

In a memory span experiment, what counts as correct?

Recalled items in the sequence presented

According to Tulving, an episodic memory is distinguished by the process of ________ it.

Reliving

___________ cues help us remember information that has been stored in memory.

Retrieval

If you were not going to attend the test review tutorial, which of the following would be the best thing to do, so you would not miss anything?

Send a tape recorder with a friend

What does the modality effect suggest about the nature of the sensory store?

Sensory registers are supposed to be for initial, unanalyzed information that we are exposed to. The modality effect may suggest that the sensory stores are more modality specific (iconic and echoic stores) and that visual presentation is not the most useful method of storage for sensory memory. It may also suggest that more information may be provided by the verbal material compared to the visual list.

This multiple-choice question is an example of a ___________ test.

recognition

Treatment of PTSD has benefitted from recent research on

reconsolidation

Retrograde amnesia is usually less severe for ______ memories.

remote

Information remains in sensory memory for

seconds or a fraction of a second.

The three structural components of the modal model of memory are

sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory.

According to memory research, studying is most effective if study sessions are

short and across several days.

Procedural memories are also known as ________ memories.

skill

Feature Integration Theory (FIT)

the theory that scene perception takes place in two stages; resolves the binding problem by proposing that attention is directed to one object at a time

Transfer-appropriate processing is likely to occur if

the type of encoding task matches the type of retrieval task.

When the methods used to encode and retrieve information are the same, this is called ________ processing.

transfer-appropriate

The ability to manipulate information in memory temporarily while remembering something else is called

working memory

Attention

Our ability to focus on specific features, objects, locations, thoughts or activities

Divided attention

Our ability to focus on, or carry out, two or more tasks at the same time.

Selective Attention

Our ability to focus on one thing and ignore all others

The effective duration of short-term memory, when rehearsal is prevented, is

15-20 seconds or less.

What is easiest to search for in a visual search task?

A banana among oranges

What is a conjunctive search?

A conjunctive search is when the items to be searched vary on more than one feature.

What is true about visual search tasks?

A feature search is easier than a conjunctive search.

Working memory (WM)

A limited capacity system for the temporary storage and manipulation of information for increased complexity of tasks.

Short-term memory (STM)

A memory mechanism that can hold a limited amount of information for a brief period of time, usually less than 30 seconds without with effort to maintain the information.

Which would you expect to have a higher rate of recall, your professor listing all of the chapters that you need to study for the final exam on the board or verbally telling you the chapters that you have to study? Why?

According to the modality effect, you will have a better recall of the last chapters if they are spoken compared to written.

Discuss how the idea of iconic and echoic memory and the serial position curve are related.

At around 5 or 6 items, iconic memory seems to wear off faster than echoic storage. When we examine the end items, the memory for verbally presented letters is greater than for visually presented items, which may signify that the echoic trace decays more slowly than iconic trace.

When a list is presented verbally, compared to visually, memory for the last items is________________

Better

Which of the following is the process by which features such as color, form motion, and location are combined to create our perception of a coherent object?

Binding

What is it called when you fail to detect a changed scene or object?

Change blindness

Which of the following stimulus characteristics most challenges the processing capacity of short-term memory?

Complexity

___________ transforms new memories from a fragile state, in which they can be disrupted, to a more permanent state, in which they are resistant to disruption.

Consolidation

As people get older, their memories of past experiences tend to have an emphasis on ________.

Facts

What is change blindness?

Failing to detect that an object has changed is change blindness.

What specific type of paradigm was used to illustrate change detection?

Flicker

What does it suggest if your memory span is lower for words than letters?

Given that words are more complex (e.g., have meanings, multiple letters, multiple syllables), it is not surprising that memory for words would be lower than for letters.

A man suffering from Korsakoff's syndrome would be able to perform which of the following activities without difficulty?

Identifying a photograph of his childhood home

Your roommate talks you into going to an Elvis Presley convention to see all the people dressed up as Elvis. Somehow, you get separated from your roommate and are looking through the crowd to see if you can spot him. If your roommate is 68 and everyone in the room is dressed in a white jumper and has black hair, do you think it will be easy or hard to spot him? Why?

If all other characteristics of the crowd are similar, then height is the only feature you will have to search for. Since he is very tall, your search should not take long (unless of course there are dozens of 6'8" Elvis look-a-likes).

What specific actions are occurring during a conjunctive search compared to a feature search?

In a conjunctive search, the participant is visually analyzing the shape and color of each individual stimulus to determine if the target (a circle that is green) is present. This takes longer if the target is present because all the stimuli will be analyzed. In a feature search, the target varies on only one feature (color), making its detection automatic and quick.

If you have the choice of going to a class and hearing the professor lecture or simply getting the notes from someone else and reading them for yourself, which method may increase your memory for the material, according to the modality effect?

It is better to go and hear the lecture rather than just get the notes, according to the modality effect. Moreover, since the auditory message will persist, the quality of notes may be better as you can augment the enhanced notes that you take.

For which type of item is memory span the longest?

Numbers

In a visual search task, what requires attention?

Only conjunctive searches

In a visual search task, under what condition does search time increase with the number of distractor items?*

Only conjunctive searches*

What kind of memory task requires the recall of items in the order in which they were presented?

Serial recall task

Rehearsal is important for transferring information from

Short-term memory to long-term memory

What would it mean if you had a memory span of 10 for short words?

Since the average memory span is seven (± 2), this would indicate that you have an excellent short-term memory.

Research suggests that the capacity of short-term memory is

Somewhat small, holding only about seven items at one time.

How do you think the addition of red circles and squares into the visual search area would affect the reaction time compared to a feature search?

The addition of another color and another shape would be an example of a conjunctive search; therefore, reaction time would be slower with the addition of the red circles and squares.

One function of ___________ is to pull information out of long-term memory.

The central executive

The episodic buffer directly connects to which two components in Baddeley's model of memory?

The central executive and long-term memory

According to the modality effect, which items should be best remembered?

The end items of a verbally presented list

What is the flicker paradigm and how is it used in the Change Detection CogLab?

The flicker paradigm is produced when an original image is followed by a blank image (a mask) and then a changed image (and another mask)

The dramatic case of patient H.M. clearly illustrates that ___________ is crucial for the formation of long-term memories.

The hippocampus

What happens to the "pop-out" effect in a visual search as the number of distractors increases?

The number of distractors does not directly affect the speed at which the target "pops out" or the speed at which the participant subsequently responds. Since the target and distractor vary on one feature, the target is easy to identify.

What is the specific role of the mask within the Change Detection CogLab?

The presence of the mask prevents automatic detection of change.

When doing a conjunctive search, how does the number of distractors relate to reaction time?

There is a positive correlation between the number of distractors and response times. As the number of distractors increases, the reaction time also increases, meaning that processing is slower.

How do you think automaticity might increase the probability for change blindness to occur?

When a behavior or environment becomes automatic, we often spend less time and fewer resources processing information, unless something novel occurs or appears. As automaticity increases, so would the likelihood of experiencing change blindness unless the change was dramatic.

Discuss the difference between parallel and serial processing as it relates to the visual search paradigm.

When searching through a number of stimuli for a specific target, parallel processing is simultaneous and quick. Such a search usually occurs when items vary on one feature. If the items vary on more than one feature, serial processing of individual items may need to be done to determine if that object is the target item or not. Serial processing takes longer to do than parallel processing.

For which type of item is memory span the shortest?

Words

From a cognitive psychology perspective, memories from specific experiences in our life are defined as being ________.

autobiographical

Explicit memory is to ___________ as implicit memory is to ___________.

aware; unaware

Illusory conjunctions are.....

combinations of features from different stimuli.

When investigating the serial position curve, delaying the memory test for 30 seconds

decreases the recency effect.

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.

Acquiring information and transforming it into long-term memory is

encoding.

___________ memories are to experiences as ___________ memories are to facts.

episodic; semantic

The concept of reconsolidation is based on the ________ of retrieved memories.

fragility