COGS 101B Final

Misinformation Effect Examples

Video example (subjs shown video of a car going through an intersection after a stop sign, followed by a picture of the same intersection with either a stop or yield sign--those shown the yield sign photo often identified the sign as what the car blew through) Photoshop Experiment (subjects shown photoshopped picture of themselves in a fake photo and were asked to recall event details--many came up with elaborate stories; same effect only with a completely real class photo and asked about a crazy stunt they (didn't) pull that year--many recalled the stunt the researchers suggested even though this memory was a plant)

Imprinting

Viewing another creature as your caretaker, happens during a very brief window after birth

Revised Model of Working Memory

Visuospatial Sketchpad, Phonological Loop, and Episodic Buffer are parts of STM, which are "slave"/subsidiary systems that feed into and are controlled by the Central Executive System, where active processing/manipulation takes place. This entire system is WM, and the STM components interact with visual semantics, language, and events (, etc.) in LTM.

Template Theory of Object Recognition

We have a template for every object that we see (e.g., the letter A), and detection of said object is based on whether it fits our template Issues: doesn't account for different fonts/styles/angles Modern Theory: Maybe mental templates are looser & DO account for angles

Extinction

Weakening/Eliminating a CR (often by no longer enforcing it)

Stroop Effect

Word spells (/is associated with) a different colour than the font colour--e.g. "green"

Forming Visual Images

Words (and word pairs) are better remembered when accompanied by an image

Linking Words to Self

Words on a list that people could relate to themselves were more accurately recalled

Attentional Residue Experiment

Workers given word puzzle game, followed by lexical decision task, then review resumes (followed by resume memory test) - Workers who didn't finish the word puzzle game did better at the lexical decision task with words related to the puzzle game but did worse on the resume/memory test portion

You are looking for a friend Sanjay at a crowded party but cannot find him. Unbeknowst to you, he is calling out your name amidst the many voices and music. You even brush by one another at one point without noticing. According to signal detection theory, this is an example of what? a. Miss b. False alarm c. Correct rejection d. Hit

a. Miss

Suppose that in a signal detection experiment, researchers pay participants $15 for each response that is a hit and $2 for each response that is a correct rejection. How might this affect a typical participant's response criterion? a. The participants' response criteria will be more liberal b. The participants' response criteria will be more conservative c. This will not affect response criteria

a. The participants' response criteria will be more liberal

Patients with lesions to their amygdalas participate in the experiment recalling normal v. horror movie pictures (then also being tested on the images' frame colours). As the research assistant, you predict that their memory of the colour of the picture frames would be a. Worse than what they claim to remember b. Better than what they claim to remember c. Worse than their healthy controls d. Nonexistent, because the amygdala is necessary to encode memories

b. Better than what they claim to remember

After studying a word list, before proceeding immediately to the free recall, you ask your experiment participants to perform some simple arithmetic calculations for 30 seconds. How do you expect the recall plot to differ from the one without the arithmetic task? a. The primacy effect will be smaller or eliminated b. The recency effect will be smaller or eliminated c. Both the primacy and recency effects will be smaller or eliminated d. No change, because remembering words and manipulating numbers don't interfere with each other

b. The recency effect will be smaller or eliminated

According to transfer-appropriate processing, which of the following strategies predicts the best performance on an exam? a. Imagining different models b. Using flashcards to memorise key terms c. Grouping theories of the same behavioural phenomemon d. Making a rhyming poem for all the experiments

b. Using flashcards to memorise key terms

Which of the following correctly ranks the memorisation methods from highest to lowest? a. Self-reference, semantic meaning, perceptual features, auditory features b. Mental imagery, self-reference, auditory features, perceptual features c. Self-reference, mental imagery, auditory features, perceptual features d. Perceptual features, auditory features, semantic meaning, self-reference

c. Self-reference, mental imagery, auditory features, perceptual features

Suppose a 2-month-old is invited to perform the following task--what would you predict her brain activity t look like when the square disappears?: Eyes focuses on centre cue, square flashes in a corner of the screen) a. Neurons that fired in response to the square continue to fire at the same rate b. Firing rate in general is slightly lower than when she saw the square on screen c. Some or all of the neurons stop firing d. Nothing, because infants don't have a prefrontal cortex

c. Some or all of the neurons stop firing

Bottom-Up Processing

processing data chronologically from the first stage of raw data to the final stage of the big picture (e.g., sensory stimuli -> transduction -> following specific pathway of parts of the brain (V1->V2->etc.) -> final picture

Which of these tasks is particularly supported by sensory memory? 1. Continuing to process a stimulus after it has disappeared 2. Remembering a phone number or shopping list for a few minutes 3. Recognising someone when you meet them for the second time 4. Spatial navigating using landmarks

1. Continuing to process a stimulus after it has disappeared

Biological Preparedness Examples

1. Human phobias 2. Rat experiment (using sweetness or clicker while rat was drinking water to associate with pain, sweet/nausea and clicker/pain caused associations, while other pairs did not) 3. Pigeon experiment (visual cues always took precedence over sound cues because pigeons possess/rely on much better vision)

Imagine you are at a big dinner party. Your ability to focus on one conversation while ignoring the other conversations happening around the dinner table is called 1. Divided attention 2. Exogenous attention 3. Endogenous attention 4. Selective attention

4. Selective attention

Which of the following is/are true about task automaticity? 1. Repetition is enough to achieve automaticity in simple tasks 2. It's possible to perform multiple tasks in parallel once automaticity is achieved 3. Automaticity happens without intentional effort 4. Some automaticity doesn't require attentional resources at all 5. All of the above

5. All of the above

Continuous Reinforcement

Behaviour always rewarded/punished

Supernormal Stimuli Examples

Candy/Sweeteners Gambling Exaggerated body features (hypersexualised art)

What are the three factors that aid encoding?

Creating connections, active creation, and organisation

Studying for an important exam while watching television is not very efficient because it is an example of...

Divided attention

What's the difference between echoic memory and iconic memory?

Echoic memory lasts longer than iconic memory (~4s)

Evolution of Modal Memory Model

Evolved from concept of primary memory (memory never lost from consciousness--STM) Has evolved to include different types of sensory memory/include a more sound definition of WM (v STM)

IP Approach

Information Processing Treated the mind like a computer

Operant Conditioning

Learning where behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher

Frequency Effect

Letters more commonly used words are more easily remembered

Memory Span

Maximum number of items recalled in correct order

Short Term Memory

Memory currently stored that has not yet left our consciousness

How practice influences attentional abilities/performance

More practice generally decreases resources required to perform activity

Classical Conditioning

NS paired with an US that already causes a specific URAfter training, the NS becomes a CS that will cause the CR (usually the UR)

NS

Neutral Stimulus

Preparatory Response Theory

Purpose of CS/CR is to prepare the body for the US in the most adaptive way

Testing Effects

Reading a passage, then taking a practice test a few days later, leads to better final test results over reading a passage, then rereading it a few days later

Fixed Ratio

Reinforced every n times

Executive Functioning Components

Response Selector: required for selecting and imitating responses, both physical and mental

Implicit Memory

Retention via performance/non-conscious recollection

Constructive Memory Advantages

Schemas and relying on present information often enhance memory and expectations (e.g., knowing a class's typical structure helps you recall about what your last week's worth of classes looked like and gives you a general sense of what to bring/how to prepare for future classes) Breaking schemas/expectations can cause outliers to better stand out Generally help someone function in society/daily life

Introspection Method Shortcomings

Subjective analysis, doesn't account for sub/unconscious processes

Fixed Action Pattern Examples

Tailor bird weaving its nests, jewel beetle mating

What do change and inattentional blindness suggest about attention?

There is only so much information we take in that we're actually aware of (paying attention to), which is heavily influenced by our selective attention (Attention as a spotlight)

In the selective attention experiment (arrow that may or may not point to a red square that appears shortly after), why are participants usually slower to respond on invalid cue trials than on valid cue trials?

They shift their attention in the direction of the cue, which is the correct direction on valid cue trials, but is the incorrect direction on invalid cue trials

Which of the following best DOESN'T explain a lower working memory ability? a. It's the result of a smaller working memory capacity b. The central executive is less efficient c. The agent is more prone to distraction d. The agent has an impaired prefrontal cortex e. None of the above

a. It's the result of a smaller working memory capacity

Which of the following is most likely true about HM post-surgery? a. He didn't experience proactive interference b. He didn't experience retroactive interference c. He had considerable trouble with maintaining attention d. He should be able to perform the eye moving task where you focus on a cue in the centre of the screen and watch a square flash in one of the corners, often drawing your attention to it

d. He should be able to perform the eye moving task where you focus on a cue in the centre of the screen and watch a square flash in one of the corners, often drawing your attention to it

Which of the following is NOT expected to activate the hippocampus? a. Encoding of episodic memories b. Retrieval of episodic memories c. Consolidation of episodic memories d. Retrieval of semantic memories

d. Retrieval of semantic memories

Prefrontal Cortex Damage Leads to

- Preservation errors--tendency to produce the same response over and over for a task even though the task requires changing responses Patients can verbalise the recognition that their response should change, but they can't change it - Difficulty planning/Goal neglect

Sam Chase's 3 Basic Skills of Attention

1. Seek out new information 2. Sort between information streams 3. Keep track of important stuff

Marvin Chun's Tips to Increase Focus/Attention

1. Simplify (control how much information you have to pay attention to) 2. Relax (Stress decreases performance) 3. Unitask (performance increases when brain focuses on on one thing at a time)

Albina is in a hurry to a COGS 101B lecture and has to stop halfway through her MATH 10B assignment, which she usually finishes before the lecture. What would you predict about her attention in this particular lecture? 1. Worse than usual, due to the influence of the attentional residue 2. Worse than usual, due to failure to multitasking 3. Roughly the same as usual 4. Better than usual, since her WM contains less MATH10B material so she can focus on COGS101B

1. Worse than usual, due to the influence of the attentional residue

Duration of iconic memory

200-500ms

Digit Span

7 +/- 2 Maximum number of sequentially presented digits readily recalled in the correct order

Echoic Memroy

Brief auditory storage

Haptic memory

Brief somatosensory storage

Habituation

Decreased stimulus response strength over exposure time

Discriminative Stimulus

Elicits response after association with reinforcement (rather than stimuli not associated with reinforcement)

Cognitive Hypothesis of Reminiscence Bump

Encoding is best when after a period of change/craziness, there's a lull and stability where you don't really have to encode big events (thus the dip between 30-40yo) Supported by immigrants having a bump in memory recall between 30-40yo if they immigrated at 35

Supernormal Stimuli

Exaggerated, artificial, and stronger releaser

Stroop Task

Example of how reading words is an automatic process

Word Interference

In Stroop Task, colour/colour-associated words (e.g., grass) interfere with naming ink colour in incongruent trials

Sensitisation

Increased stimulus response strength over exposure time

Mental Representation

Internal depictions of information (e.g., being able to mentally represent shapes or conjure scenes, hearing a song in your head without it actually playing IRL)

Source Monitoring Errors

Misidentifying the origin of a memory

Word Superiority Effect

More used words will more readily come to mind (i.e., "stamp" will likely be thought of before "stump" because it's said/heard more)

Retroactive Interference

New learning interferes with old learning

Mindfulness

Paying attention to the present without judgement Practicing it leads to increased openness/compassion/sense of social connection, decreased implicit bias

Constructive Memory Disadvantages

Prone to misinformation effects (e.g., the car example) and assumptions of situations fitting schemas leads to stereotypes (knowing primarily male comedians shifts people to think men's humour is funnier than women's; office example where people brought into office briefly, and when asked to describe it many listed books as an object in the room despite there being no books)

Keppel & Underwood Findings

Reanalysed Peterson & Peterson, looking at the first time only for both experimental settings Noticed proactive interference

Culture Hypothesis of Reminiscence Bump

Society's "life scripts" often dictate important events that we automatically go to when asked to recall important events in our lives, and most of these "life script" events (graduations, first loves, marriage, etc.) often happen during 10-30yo

UR

Unconditioned Response

What does the data of the Stroop Effect show? 1. Difference in reaction times in which congruent trials are faster than incongruent trials 2. Difference in reaction times in which incongruent trials are faster than congruent trials 3. No difference in reaction times

1. Difference in reaction times in which congruent trials are faster than incongruent trials

Stimuli that are missed due to attentional blink: 1. Can capture endogenous attention 2. Can still be reported 3. Aren't perceived 4. Do not enter conscious awareness

4. Do not enter conscious awareness

Change Blindness

Being unaware of a change even while observing it (movie inconsistencies)

CR

Conditioned Response

Behaviourist Definition of Punishment

Decreasing the frequency of a behaviour

Modules

Faces and visual scenes especially, put together in large chunks Could explain paradelia (seeing faces in inanimate objects) and prosopagnosia (failure to recognise faces) Supported by the Thatcher Effect

What are the two main methods of active creation?

Generating information and testing

Evidence for Subdivision of Memory Systems

HM: No explicit memory, but implicit memory intact as evidenced by the mirror-and-maze-tracer setup Clive Wearing: 7-10s memory retention--another example of only explicit memory being affected

Organization of Information

If information is presented/encoded in an organized manner, it's much easier to retrieved than disorganized information

Unilateral Neglect

Ignoring objects in opposite (left) hemifield of damage after damage to right inferior parietal cortex

What are the two main ways to create connections?

Imagery and self-reference

Brain Area Associated with Executive Functioning

Prefrontal Cortex

Source Monitoring

Recalling (sometimes guessing) where we first learned something

Maintenence

Transferring STM to LTM by rehearsing something to yourself over a period of time Recollection often limited by digit span and word length

Working Memory

"Workspace" for information (in STM) to be manipulated

Types of Temporal Arrangements in Classical Conditioning

(Most to least effective) Delayed Conditioning (NS precedes US with some overlap) Trace Conditioning (NS precedes US with no overlap) Simultaneous Conditioning (NS and US directly overlap) Backward Conditioning (NS follows US)

When do people tend to make errors in eye-witness testimony?

- Media and police interference (accidental positive reinforcement) - Narrative rehearsal often leads to greater inaccuracy, especially when paired with other interference types

Tests Used to Diagnose Executive Function Issues

1. Copy a drawing comprised of shapes (goal neglect) Normal Executive Function: start with larger shapes and fill in using an organised method Abnormal Executive Function: no clear organisation/pattern to copying 2. Direction test: indicate direction of middle object in a lineup (preservation error) [ < < < ^ < < < ] Those with executive function issues will have trouble completing this task 3. Tower task (stack rings with largest on bottom to smallest on top) 4. Task to connect the dots without crossing lines 5. Stroop Task (name the ink colour a word is written in) 6. Dichotic Listening (attend to one channel, tune out the other)

Based on what you've learned about congruency, which of the following would be an example of an incongruency that might interfere with automaticity? 1. While giving your friend directions to the library, you point left but tell them to take a right 2. You point out a red car you like to your friend who's wearing a green shirt 3. You skip while chewing gum 4. You wave goodbye to your family and say "goodbye" at the same time

1. While giving your friend directions to the library, you point left but tell them to take a right

Dichotic Listening Experiments

2 channels going into people's ears--told to pay attention to one Strengths of attention: we can easily tune into one channel and shadow (repeat) it (good selective attention) Weaknesses: Only aware of low-level changes (pitch/non-speech sounds) in the unattuned channel, but not high-level ones (words/story, language, etc.) (change blindness) (What do they tell us about attention strengths and limits?)

Shifting attention to a specific location without moving your eyes to fixate that location is called... 1. Selective Attention 2. Covert Attention 3. Divided Attention 4. Trick question: spatial attention requires fixating the attended location

2. Covert Attention

Which of the following behavioural results best supports the hypothesis that there are task-general attentional resources? 1. Performing motor reasoning when driving slows down reaction time 2. Discussing philosophical ideas when driving slows down reaction time 3. Being able to judge road conditions while reading signs along the street 4. Practicing the Stroop Task leads to faster reaction time

2. Discussing philosophical ideas when driving slows down reaction time

You and your friends are playing the word mafia game, and you're the chosen mafia. One of your friends described the secret word as "something you're consciously aware of", while another said "you remember when it was". What would you guess the word is? 1. Implicit 2. Episodic 3. Procedural 4. Semantic

2. Episodic

When the primed response is different from the correct response, it constitutes... 1. Retroactive interference 2. Proactive interference 3. A late bottleneck 4. Chunking

2. Proactive interference

What does the Stroop effect demonstrate? 1. The difficulty in colour recognition 2. The automaticity of language 3. The automaticity of image recognition 4. The difficulty of language

2. The automaticity of language

The attention blink refers to not reporting a target stimulus that was presented...

200-500ms after a first target

Selective attention is our ability to... 1. Fill in the missing details in a noisy stimulus 2. Listen to our neighbour's conversation while pretending to do something else 3. Focus on one input or task while ignoring others 4. Do multiple things at the same time

3. Focus on one input or task while ignoring others

What description best characterizes the serial position curve for an experiment in which a distractor task comes between the presentation of a series and participants' recall of that series? 1. High recall for the first few items, low recall for the middle items, and high recall for the final items 2. High recall for the middle items and low recall for items at the beginning and end 3. High recall for the first few items and low recall for all other items

3. High recall for the first few items and low recall for all other items

The full v partial report experiments suggest that... (choose all that apply) 1. Human sensory memory is limited in capacity, typically holding 3-4 items at a time 2. LTM is different from WM 3. Unattended sensory information starts to decay after a short period of time 4. It's the STM system that's the bottleneck, not sensory memory

3. Unattended sensory information starts to decay after a short period of time 4. It's the STM system that's the bottleneck, not sensory memory

Shepard and Metzler

3D "Same Shape but different orientation" test (Asked if 2 3D objects were the same, included objects comprised of cubes rotated at different angles) Greater rotation angle correlated with longer reaction time Data supported the existence of mental imagery

According to the "Modal Model" of memory, if you were to time travel back to sabotage Pavlov's experiment, what manipulation could you do, assuming all of the following options are feasible? 1. Distract the dog every time the bell rings after it's learned the associations 2. Give the dog a brain lesion so it can't encode information into LTM 3. Use its favourite toy to distract it during training 4. All of the above

4. All of the above

Jill went out for dinner with 3 friends and they are working to split the bill. The restaurant gave them $10 off. Assuming each individual calculation takes the same amount of time, which of the following sequence of calculations would take the longest for them? 1. Add up the price of all the items, then subtract $10 2. Subtract $10 from the most expensive item, then add everything else together 3. Divide the total amount by 4, then multiply the tax rate 4. Multiply the tip rate, then divide the total amount by 4 5. All sequences take roughly the same amount of time

4. Multiply the tip rate, then divide the total amount by 4

According to the modal model of memory, which of the following statements is/are true? 1. Unattended sensory info may be implicitly encoded into LTM 2. If info retrieved from LTM is left unrehearsed, it becomes inaccessible 3. LTM isn't affected by forgetting 4. Not all WM info is transferred into LTM

4. Not all WM info is transferred into LTM

In class, a sequence of letters flashed on the screen and you were then asked to count down every third number from a given starting point. You ended up not remembering as well as when you had immediately recalled the letters after presentation. Which system is most affected by the additional countdown task? 1. Central executive 2. Visuospatial sketchpad 3. Episodic buffer 4. Phonological loop

4. Phonological loop

Neuroscience evidence shows that attention works by... 1. Filtering out unattended stimuli at early stages of processing 2. Selecting attended stimuli at late stages of processing 3. Maintaining eye fixation on the attended stimuli 4. Strengthening responses to attend stimuli at many levels of processing

4. Strengthening responses to attend stimuli at many levels of processing

Which observation suggests the existence of a phonological loop? 1. A list of long words is harder to memorise than a list of short words 2. After seeing the letter string "BPKMEL", some report seeing "VBKMEL" 3. Listening to lyrical music while trying to memorise your friend's phone number leads to poorer results 4. Some people are able to learn word associations but not foreign vocabularies 5. All of the above

5. All of the above (1. Word length effect 2. Phonological similarity effect 3. Articulatory suppression 4. Effect of stroke)

Episodic Buffer

A component of WM where information where STM components interact with LTM components

How do feature nets account for phenomena/errors in word recognition?

Account for priming & frequency effects Similar shapes or letter pairings, influenced by the stronger connections of more commonly-used bigrams/words, may activate the neurons to recognise the wrong word (e.g., recognising "truck" instead of "track" due to similarities in letter features and hearing "truck" more frequently)

Treisman's Attenuation Model

Accounts for cocktail party effect Attenuating filter "turns down" volume of unattended message, but it still enters working memory Inputs --> Sensory Store --> Attenuating Filter -Bottleneck-> Hierarchy of Analysis --> Working Memory Issue: unattenuated message can still impact the meaning taken from the attenuated message

Multitasking

Act of rapidly switching between tasks under the illusion of "performing them at the same time" Task switching performed by executive control

How attention helps solve the binding problem

Acts as a "spotlight" for our sensory cohesion--not everything is brought to conscious awareness (Concepts like change/inattentional blindness support this view)

Positive Punishment

Adding something that incentivises subject to decrease a behaviour

Positive Reinforcement

Adding something that incentivises subject to increase a behaviour

Late Selection Attention Theories

All input receives analysis Selection only occurs after analysis Inputs --> Sensory Analysis --> Full Analysis --> Filter --> WM

Using a cellphone while driving isn't safe because...

Attention is divided between the phone and the driving task

Compensatory-Response Model

Automatic CR in the opposite direction of the expected stimulus' effect (UR)

Simple Reflexes

Automatic response to a stimulus

Behaviorist Perspective

Backlash to the introspective methodInvolved Skinner & WatsonTreated the mind as a black box not to be studied--only focus on inputs and outputs (behaviour)

Episodic Memory Over Time

Becomes semantic memory, often through stronger inter-system connections and less reliance on the hippocampus for memory retrieval

Josh wonders why he can never recall the names of new acquaintances. In search of an answer, he analyses his own mental behaviours/feelings about meeting new people. Who would disagree with the validity of this approach?

Behaviourists and Cognitive Psychologists

How is expectancy theory inconsistent with a strict behaviourist perspective?

Behaviourists believe a reinforcement/training process can shape any behaviour, but the expectancy theory shows active punishment isn't always enough to diminish/encourage behaviours

How is learning-performance distinction inconsistent with a strict behaviourist perspective?

Behaviourists would argue that using a reinforcement system should always result in performing the learned behaviour, but this distinction shows that animals/people can learn behaviours and still not perform them, even with a strong reinforcement system

Similarities Between Facial and Object Recognition

Both involve holistic recognition based on a buildup of features and the object standing out against the background

Iconic Memory

Brief visual storage

Role of Complexity in Visual Stimuli on Working Memory Limit

Complexity generally decreases WM (e.g., easier to recall placement of more squares > English Characters > Chinese Characters > 3D Boxes)

CS

Conditioned Stimulus

Phonological Similarity Effect

Confusing letters that sound (NOT LOOK) similar e.g., F and S

Explicit Memory

Conscious memory of facts and experiences

Stimulus Discrimination

Contrasts stim generalisation, when stimuli are different enough to not evoke the same CR

Flashbulb Memories

Detailed recollections of the events surrounding how one heard about a big event (usually disaster)

Attentional Residue

Difficult to transition attention from an unfinished to new task

Miller Findings

Digit Span (7+/-2) Chunking

Digit Span v. Visual Working Memory Limit Differences

Digit span is more affected by chunking/the amount of numbers VWM is affected by both duration and capacity as well, but less info is often recalled & much greater scene complexity/variation

Task General Resources

Domain General Dissimilar tasks can use the same resources

Task Specific Resources

Domain Specific Similar tasks use more of the same resources--even harder to multitask because it takes up more attention

Broadbent's Filter Model

Early-selection model Message filtered based on low-level characteristics (e.g., pitch/accent/speaking rate) Inputs --> sensory store --> selective filter -bottleneck-> higher level processing --> working memory

Long Term Memory

Encoded memories sent from WM, whether they're truly ever "lost" v inaccessible over time is still a mystery

Thorndike Puzzle Box

Example of observational learning Cat that observes another cat perform a task will be faster at learning it

Pragmatic Inference Experiment

Example of unconscious inference People given list of sentences and asked to remember them When asked to fill in the blanks for these sentences, people would often use words that expanded upon the scenario they were initially presented (e.g., "the flimsy bookcase collapsed" v. the original "the flimsy bookcase bent"; "the baby cried all night" v. the original "the baby stayed up all night")

Expectancy Theory

Expectations can override actual training experience (e.g., if you're told that choosing high value cards in a task will lead to a big reward but keep losing money when you choose said cards, you will still choose the high value cards because you believe your expectation will eventually pay off)

How do top-down influences affect object recognition?

Expectations of an object are very likely to change what we perceive it as (and where we look for it)

Peterson & Peterson Findings

Experiment to read letter string, count down from #, then recall letters STM duration ~15s

Differences Between Facial and Object Recognition

Facial recognition is more orientation-dependent

Blocking

Failure to learn the stimulus-outcome association due to another stimulus already predicting said outcome (likely from being present at the same time as/before the NS)

Inattentional Blindness

Failure to see something one wouldn't expect to see (double-dutch example)

True or False: The primacy effect—better memory for the first few items in a series—takes place because the first few items are still present in your working memory upon recall.

False

True or False: Whether a person detects a stimulus depends only on their absolute threshold

False Also depends on response criteria/incentives

Reminiscence Bump

Finding that 40yos+ have greatest memory recall of adolescence/young adulthood (10-30yo)

Ebbinghaus

First attempted graph of human memory by studying the process of forgetting Memory can be quantified

Schedules of Reinforcement

Fixed or Variable, Ratio or Interval Examples of intermittent reinforcement

Kulik's Belief about Flashbulb Memories

Flashbulb memories are more vivid AND more accurate than normal memories

Pragmatic Inference

Going beyond what was initially stated (making inferences based on the circumstances)

Executive Function

Higher order mechanisms for goal-setting, prioritising, and cognitive processing

Binding Problem

How does the brain combine sensory stimuli to create a cohesive picture of the world?

Feature Net

How word recognition stems from a neural network that recognises basic shapes in letters, which connects to letters, then bigrams, then words This is a bidirectional feedback system

Object Recognition

Identifying an "object" and perceiving it as separate from its background

What was the difference between Sperling's Full Report and Partial Report tasks?

In the Full Report task, participants had to recall the full set of letters; in the Partial Report task, participants only had to recall one row of letters

Behaviourist Definition of Reinforcement

Increasing the frequency of a behaviour

Fixed Action Pattern

Innate skills/behaviour sequences an animal doesn't have to learn Initiated by RELEASER stimuli, even if stimuli is taken away the behaviour will continue

Biological Preparedness

Intrinsic tendencies that make certain associations come more readily associatable than others (i.e., bio history makes certain correlations/behaviours easier to learn)

Josh wonders why he can never recall the names of new acquaintances. In search of an answer, he analyses his own mental behaviours/feelings about meeting new people. How would you classify his attempt to understand the problem?

Introspection

Top-Down Processing

Knowledge, models/ideas, and expectations influence the interpretation of sensory information

Non-declarative Memory

LTM demonstrated through behaviour/nonverbal manners

Drug Overdose

Likely more frequent in hotel/non-home settings because at home, a compensatory response decreases the body's reaction to a drug and makes the person take more to experience a more extreme effect A novel environment doesn't trigger this response to prepare the body and the dose is lethal

Transfer-Appropriate Processing

Memory is most likely to transfer from one situation to another when the encoding and retrieval contexts of the situations match

The Standard Model of Consolidation

Memory retrieval depends on the hippocampus during consolidation, but not after

Perceptual Load Theory

Mind is like a bucket--can only take in so much information, and each task will take up a certain amount of resources/space in said bucket

Successive Task Procedure

Modified card sorting task, with low-complexity (sort cards by number) and high-complexity (sort cards by number AND colour) sets Mean reaction time for alternating task blocks (i.e., sort cards by number, then sort by colour) was longer than repetitive task blocks Mean reaction time for higher-complexity tasks was also slower than lower-complexity tasks

Critical Period

Most favourable/necessary time to develop a specific behaviour (e.g., langauge)

Patient PV

No phonological loop, could learn meaningful word associations but no foreign associations (e.g., while most people can learn to associate "gato" with a cat if it's shown next to a picture of a cat enough times, PV could never learn this association)--likely could not learn new words either

Learning-Performance Distinction

Not performing a behaviour doesn't mean an animal hasn't learned it

Recognition by Components Theory

Objects are mentally represented by a collection of "geons" (3D shapes that look different from each other at almost any angle and are stored in the mind)

Transcendentalism

Observe effects first, THEN look into the process bringing said effects about

Proactive Interference

Old learning interferes with new learning

Synaptic Consolidation

On a neuron-by-neuron level Short-term change (minutes/hours) Increase or decrease in specific receptors Lead to Long-Term Potentiation/More Widespread Changes

System Consolidation

On a systems-level Longer-term change (months/years) Structural change in neural connections Usually what's affected by brain-trauma-related amnesia (e.g., concussions/stroke)

DRM Word String Experiment

People given list of related words surrounding a "critical word" that didn't appear on the list (e.g., list with "sleep" synonyms but not "sleep" itself) When asked whether any of the following 3 words existed, many people would correctly remember the critical-word-adjacent on the list (e.g., "doze") and correctly not select the unrelated word (e.g., "cheese") but would INCORRECTLY recall the critical word (e.g., "sleep") \

How is the demonstration that we use hypotheses to guide rule learning inconsistent with a behaviorist perspective?

People love to hypothesise complex rules and will often learn them faster than simple rules This goes against the behaviourist theory that simple associations should be easy (easier) to make under a reinforcement system

Reality of Flashbulb Memories

People often make MORE errors in recalling where they were when they heard about a disaster than a mundane event, if not entirely fabricating it (yet they will feel more confident about their answer)

Bartlett's "War of the Ghosts" Experiment

People read a long passage about a subject, then are tested on it Found that people consolidate ideas (turn flowery prose into more straightforward factual sentences), forget information that they didn't think was important (not remembering the details of the scenery because they didn't think that was the passage's main focus), and are prone to schemas/bias by inserting things they're familiar with into a scene and dropping things they're not (e.g., how British people replaced the word "kayak" with "skiff")

Modal Memory Model

Perception/Sensory stimuli --> Sensory Memory -Attention-> Working Memory (interacts with Short Term Memory) -Encode-> Long Term Memory

Switching Costs

Performance takes more time and is less accurate due to phases of goal switching and rule-activation as one jumps from one task to another

Baddeley's Model of Working Memory

Phonological loop (audio) and Visuospatial Sketchpad are connected by the overlapping Central Executive System that serves as the controller of which information gets pulled

How did Sperling's Partial Report task reveal the duration of iconic memory?

Poorer recall when there was a longer delay between the presentation of the letters and the cue for recall

David Marr

Popularised belief that one needs to study the brain using more than just neurons--use background/environment as well

Task Novelty

Practice will often decrease the amount of resources required for a task (unless the task is too complex, like if a "does this appear in a set" task involves only letters, versus a numerical target and letter distractors)

Types of Implicit Memory

Priming/Statistical Learning, Procedures, and Conditioning

Well-Formedness

Probability of a string of letters occurring in a certain language Helps babies figure out basic speech patterns

Automaticity

Processing that occurs 1. Without intention 2. At a cost of few/no cognitive resources

Misinformation Effect

Putting misleading information of an event can cause a person to recall the information as if it were real Especially bolstered when the information is given good (v bogus) doctored evidence and happens shortly after the original event (though misinformation effect can be quite potent even years down the line)

Evidence for Blocking

Rat experiment where rats were trained under 3 conditions 1. Tone paired with shock, resulting in rats to react to tone with a fear response 2. Tone and light paired with shock, resulting in rats to react to both tone and light (separately) with a fear response 3. Tone paired with shock, then tone AND light paired with shock, which led to the rat reacting in fear to the tone and NOT the light

Spontaneous Recovery

Reappearance of a CR after extinction

What are the three main methods of organisation?

Recall by groups (e.g., the spontaneous grouping of fruits), presenting in an organised way, and meaningful framework (balloon experiment)

State-Dependent Memory

Recall is better if in the same internal conditions (emotionally, un/drugged, etc.) as encoding

Encoding Specificity

Recall is better if in the same physical context as the information encoding (e.g., the scuba experiment)

On the first day of your literature class, the instructor asks all 15 students to introduce themselves. Afterward, when you try to remember your classmates' names, you realize that you can only remember the last few people who introduced themselves. What is the name of this phenomenon?

Recency effect

Feature Detection

Recognising an object by building up certain components e.g., feature nets with neurons that take in base shapes of letters, which weigh in on neurons that take in the letters, which weigh in on neurons for letter pairs, which weigh in on neurons for full words

Semantic Memory

Recollection of "facts", independent of any attached personal scenarios (e.g., knowing your birthday but not via your personal experience on the day of birth)

Episodic Memory

Recollection of personal experiences (e.g., knowing your birthday because you have a memory of neither of your parents showing up for your birth)

Suppose a friend calls and tells you the seven-digit passcode to enter her home so that you can watch her cat while she's out of town. What can you do to maintain that information in working memory until you find a pen to write it down?

Rehearse it by repeating the passcode to yourself

Variable Interval

Reinforced after about n amount of time High response rate

Variable Ratio

Reinforced after about n times High response rate

Fixed Interval

Reinforced after exactly n time has passedWorst response rate

Process Models

Represent processes/neurons involved in cognitive mechanisms Use boxes to represent special processes and connect the relevant pathways with arrows

Tolman's Cognitive Maps

Representations of structures that help visualise/explain a structure or PROCESS Pro: falsifiable

Persistence of Vision

Retention of sensory stimulation for a brief period of time (<1s) Why we see a "trail of light" when we quickly move a glowstick

Confidence's Relation to Eye-witness Testimony Accuracy (When Uncontaminated)

Right after the event, witnesses confident in their statements are usually very accurate (This accuracy degrades over time with contamination, does not apply to unconfident eye-witnesses)

Wickens et al. Findings

STM and Proactive Interference Experiment See/Recall Word list Over time, trial performance for just fruits decreases If last trial is on veggie list, slight performance improvement If last trial is on professions, performance nearly same as first fruit trial Information is impeded by proactive interference and is semantically encoded

Self-Image Hypothesis of Reminiscence Bump

Self-identity is most formed between 10-30yo (e.g., often become a parent, or start a career/life path/start life-long hobbies and passions during this time of life)

The difference between short-term memory and working memory is that...

Short-term memory describes a temporary information store, while working memory also involves processing or manipulating information

Priming Effect

Showing a word in a test beforehand makes someone faster /more likely to choose the correct letter (FORK-------K/M v. K--------K/M K is better remembered in word context)

Latent Inhibition

Slower learning that occurs when NS is already familiar (e.g., hearing a bell all the time, then being trained to respond to it)

Relating Words to Survival Value

Some experiments show words are better recalled if person affirms that they can use them in a "surviving like our ancestors" scenario Issue: This experiment design could be flawed by not properly accounting for levels of processing/relation to self effect, as the comparative scenario (could you use this to defend yourself against an attacker) is a more realistic scenario with separate reasons for being worse recalled in general

Spacing

Spreading out studying time into smaller increments increases recall/performance

Simple Reflex Examples

Startle reflex, sucking reflex, flexation reflex, grabbing reflex, orientation(all found in newborns primarily)

Stimulus Generalisation

Stimuli similar to initial CS evoke similar response to CR

When Switching Is Most Detrimental to Performance

Switching between familiar to unfamiliar complex tasks (e.g., multiplying to dividing)

Negative Punishment

Taking something away that incentivises subject to decrease a behaviour

Negative Reinforcement

Taking something away that incentivises subject to increase a behaviour

What does the driving with phones experiment suggest we don't know?

Talking while driving hinders driving because it may use domain specific resources

Executive Resources on Multitasking

Task general Sets goals/priorities, chooses strategies, and controls sequences of cognitive processes

Evidence for Holistic recognition of Faces

Thatcher Effect Upside down faces look less natural than upside down faces with reversed smiles/eyes (we suck at upside down faces)

Why is working memory important for language comprehension?

The comprehender needs to hold the message in memory and update it with new words as they are heard or read

Levels of Processing

The deeper memory is processed/the more things you can link an item to in memory, the more accessible it will be

Recall of which items in a list would be most strongly affected by difficulty forming long-term memories, as in anterograde amnesia?

The first few items

Strict Behaviorist Assumptions

The mind is an unpackable black box not to be touched with a ten foot pole Some also believed given the right inputs, one could train a child into any career (Watson) or society into a complete utopia (Walden II)

In the selective attention experiment (arrow that may or may not point to a red square that appears shortly after), what was the difference between the invalid cue and valid cue?

The valid cue was an arrow pointing to the target location, and the invalid cue qas an arrow pointing away from the target location

Cryptoamnesia

Thinking you came up with an Original IdeaTM, when it was actually unconsciously influenced by something you'd previously come across (e.g., the author of Treasure Island confessing the first 3 chapters of his book was basically just the plot of a story he read as a kid, and he had no idea until years later)

Memory Consolidation

Time is needed to process/encode a list of items from STM to LTM

Elaborative Rehearsal

Transferring STM to LTM by linking the STM information with things already in LTM (e.g., an event/experience, telling a story with the information, etc.) More elaborate than maintenance

True or False: State-dependent memory depends on both the external and internal states at time of encoding

True

Declarative Memory

Type of explicit memory--able to be recited verbally/through language

US

Unconditioned Stimulus

Introspection Method

Using self-observation to make predictions and theories about the mindPopularised by Wilhelm Wundt