Cognitive Psychology Notes 2db2j

Cognitive Psychology

*Random Notes: rTMS in Boulder?! Mindstorm Youtube vid Psi Chi CU – MUEN D442 – How to go to grad school & other presentations Me - We are less entrained than animals – maybe the creation of/listening to of music is a surrogate for our entrainment, to keep us sane or harken back to an older form-shaping influence? Gustav Becker (spelling? The clockmaker?) – did pendulum movement, math equations, logarithmic scale b/w physical and mental world – proved that the world is spiritual (“you can convert them to each other” - he was a mystic of sorts). Richard Corey – Twilight Zone. Creative people produce variation & pick the best of it! Artists are ionate, obsessive and bold. Galton influenced Freud. He was like Athanasius Kircher, a nutty polymath with just as many bad ideas as good ones. Memes came from Dawkin’s books –i.e. the ‘religious gene’ could be a meme. The meme idea has “not worked out well” in cognitive psych. (Nevertheless Berta, viral memes in culture are a very real phenomena). BF Skinner made a language-generating machine and people would hear words from the nonsense generated by it; this is the basis for EVP’s in the parapsychology world, supposedly. Clones don't share MT DNA like identical twins, there are concordant and discordant traits. The ventricles are larger in schizophrenia. Boxers get large ventricles from brain damage - dementia pugilistica. iPad has higher resolution than eyes on the ‘Retina Display’ ??!!! Broca-Sulzer effect/curve. High fidelity = turn up the volume & won’t hear background noise. REM intrusion = sleep paralysis, including breathing difficulty. ‘Grey ghost’ of Vietnam, ‘old hag’, etc. Epilepsy  seeing auras, déjà vu, etc. A seizure is in the brain only = rhythmic brain activity. Convulsions are technically in the rest of the body. Sub-convulsive temporal seizures = psychic phenomena, alien abductions, auto-scoping. The Memory Book – Jerry Lucas  techniques The Ancient Greeks read forwards, then backwards the next line, then forwards again (for efficiency’s sake)

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The retina develops out of the brain – embryologically and evolutionarily. “Mary Merry Marry” test for American dialects. 256 shades of grey between black and white. A large correlation in social science is 0.5. Prototype theory = a cognitive formation of a Platonic Ideal. I.e. your ideal of the ‘most beautiful woman’ can stay with you as a prototype that informs future events and encounters. Tethitoscope (?) – flashes words on a screen for milliseconds & tests your recognition, memory ability. 80% of the prison population are bad readers but good artists & musicians. (?) Human factors engineering.. “Take 5” Beatnik song “matters of fact” = actually what the person thinks they know Random numbers are the most difficult thing to Our textbook written by Matlin is written in the first-person active voice (we, our etc.) instead of third person ive voice, which is boring to read & harder to pay attention to.

nondirective therapist “Liza” was a therapist computer program. “Perry the paranoid” was another computer program. Hypnosis enhances confidence, not memory. Malthus - the population is increasing geometrically while food production is increasing arithmetically. Darwin confirmed this theory. Creativity is because of youth. Mathematicians are typically done by age 40. A new look at stuff means less entrained mental connections Clark Hull - psychological equivalent of Principium Mathematica to predict all learning and behavior. If you're not hungry in the morning, that means the pH of your stomach is off. You don't have pictures in your head, but a code of high and low voltage. You can't directly see pictures in your head. You have a verbal and auditory code along with a visual code and a code for all the senses. How are they translated to one another in the brain?

History of the cognitive approach Modern stimulus to cognitive psychology René Descartes (1596 to 1650) Themes that influence modern psychology 1) Thinking is the essence of humans 2) Mind and body both exist and interact a. Yes, extended in time, but not space b. Mind-body problem - how can two entities interact that by their nature cannot interact. c. Materialism - only the physical realm is real. Mental phenomena are merely functions are aspects of the physical world (especially the brain). Mine is a function not a thing. Epiphenomenon - something produced that doesn't have an effect on the world. d. Libet oscilloscope experiments - experiments that showed that our brains respond to events quicker than our minds even realize (and thus our bodies respond before we 'make decisions') causing mindless reactions and thus disproving free will. A controversial theory, but kind of interesting - using oscilloscopes as a clock in looking at brain activity. 3) The body is a machine a. Can study the body as a material object b. Optics had a big effect on physiology  psychology c. Clocks were the big deal back then, getting more precise hydraulics, pneumatics d. Cognitive process theory > theory of mind in cognitive psych

4) Difference between derived and innate ideas a. Derived ideas - due to experience b. Innate ideas - not due to experiences; built into us i. (God, infinity, √-1) “You are your own brain”, there is no free will. Influence of derived and innate ideas: - British empiricists - Knowledge is obtained through the senses o All ideas are derived ideas o Innate ideas do not exist - tabula rasa - You can't really conceive infinity, nothingness, imaginary numbers etc. yet they can be mathematically extracted. You don't really have/grasp the conceptualization of the concept, but you can use the abstract representation concept of it to work with the idea. o Impedance formula o Georg Cantor showed mathematically that some infinities are bigger than others “Irresistible impulse” & “attractive nuisance” distinction (not pertinent to this subject) Association: - connecting ideas together David Hartley - laws of association (untested, armchair) Bishop George Berkeley – rationalist: we can't know the external world; all we have are ideas. David Hume - cause-and-effect, the notion of self is lost because of this. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) – (influenced Hume) - We do have any (innate?) knowledge - Categories - forms by which the mind structures experience - Influence - we impose order on the world - His work Critique of Pure Reason = the most boring book ever (great for insomnia!) *In the mind, color and pitch (which are perceived) are not actually in the world, only wavelength, frequency and amplitude Science of Psychology Wilhelm Wundt (1832 - 1920) - - Last part of 1800’s - Brought philosophy and physiology together as the science of psychology

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Studied structure of immediate conscious experience Introspection: analyzing one's own sensations and reporting them as objectively as possible

He designed clarity scales etc. which were very strict measures for introspection. He said that “you can't scientifically study memory” so he did social anthropology instead.

American Functionalism – opened up /changed psychology -

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Influence of: o Practicality – make $ with psychology o Evolution & natural selection  Influence of Charles Darwin (What is the survival value of a trait? Random variation and selection. Subjects: o Children, animals, different sexes, of different cultures

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Subject Matter: o Behavior, thinking, problem solving, emotions

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Methods: o Introspection, observation, physiology

William James (1842 – 1910) – Medical doctor who brought physiology & psychology together & a Pragmatist philosopher - Principles of Psychology (1890) – hugely influential 2-volume textbook - Never did research himself, but was a great synthesizer - Promoted many methods to study many topics - Discussed many modern topics - Most of our behavior is out of habit learning Behavioralism - focuses only on observable, objective reactions -

Problems with introspection o Paying attention to thinking may change the line of thinking o Relies on memory  Memory can be faulty o May not know what's going on in your own mind o You can't use introspection with infants, nonhuman animals, some people with mental problems o Different results with different researchers

o Wundt’s way around difference in introspection was to train graduate students in it for two years - this is also problematic. To whom do the results generalize to? -

Contribution to Psychology o Rigour in research, statistical methods developed during this time o Operational Definition - defining a concept by the way it is measured

Rise of modern Cognitive Psychology (1950s to 1960s) - Disenchantment with behaviorism - Noam Chomsky’s attack on BF Skinner's book Verbal Behavior - he said that we have deep cognitive structures that generate syntax, grammar rules etc. Psycholinguistics. - Popularity of Jean Piaget's Stage Theory of cognitive development (made while trying to refine IQ tests) - Rise of computers and information theory o vacuum tubes  transistors  integrated circuits (IC’s) o Alan Turing (1936)  Universal Turing machine - can imitate any information processing device  If human thinking is information processing, then thinking can be imitated on a Turing machine Computer influences on modern cognitive psychology - Information processing approach (2 components) o 1) A mental process can be best understood by comparing it with the operations of the computer o 2) A mental process can be interpreted as information progressing through the system in stages, one step at a time, like flow diagrams, which are serial, not parallel)  ex) Atkinson Schiffrin memory model = serial  Attention theories are often “filter” theories -

Parallel distributing processing (PDP) – similar to connectionism or neural networks o Modeled on computers o Based on brain functioning o Characteristics of the PDP approach  mental operations occur simultaneously (in parallel)  ex) visual sense = color, shape, motion, depth. There is yet to be found the “binding site” of vision in the brain.  A thought process occurs over a large area of the brain's cortex (it is distributed)  A node is the mental equivalent of a neuron

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An activated node can affect another node  Forming networks  Networks can learn A network can fill in incomplete information

*Neurons can feed back into themselves through autoreceptors (TINNITUS RELEVANT INFO) AI and PDP models use matrix algebra, iterations. The complexities of these things are impossible for humans to understand on the meta or whole/holistic level. They are hard to conceptualize and conceive, like certain mathematical proof conjectures which can be understood abstractly but not actually comprehended. Biological Innovations - Psychologists assume we are our brains o By studying the brain, we can study thinking -

Biology influence on modern cognitive psychology o Cognitive Neuroscience  Combines the research techniques of psychology with methods for assessing the structure and function of the brain  If we are our brains, cognitive psychology theories are limited by what the brain can and cannot do o Methods of Cognitive Neuroscience 

1) Brain Lesions - destruction of brain tissue  Cautions o Not neatly controlled with humans o With animals, you can neatly control destruction, but difficult to associate with thinking

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2) Brain Imaging Techniques – taking pictures of a living human brain (not always! MRIs of the dead)  Some show structure > activity, some activity > structure  A) CT Scans (Computerized Tomography) - compiles slices of brain into 3-D graphic. Differences in shades of gray can be detected by a computer, not by the naked eye. ~ 22 year old technology. o Shows structure but not activity

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B) PET Scan (Positron Emission Tomography) radioactive glucose is injected into the carotid artery. o Shows activity (actually, the glucose/blood flow take-up, not direct activity) o The brain uses glucose and oxygen o Radioactive tag glucose is put into the brain o Positrons collide with electrons and emit gamma radiation o Gamma ray detectors that color code o Red = lots of activity C) MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) – magnet applied  protons line up, pulse of radio waves goes on & off (?) o Gives image of structure, not activity D) fMRI (functional MRI) – looks at ratio of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood. Costs ~ $2.5 million. o Gives an image of activity o Special one for babies o fMRI used more than PET scans in cognitive psych. Advantages of it over PET:  1) No radioactive injections  2) Can measure activity across shorter intervals of time (better temporal resolution) – things that are 0.5 seconds long  3) Can measure activity over smaller areas of brain (better spatial resolution – like high pixels, HD)

Claustrophobia/weird experience of being inside MRI machine could be affecting cognition. Sometimes outliers are more interesting than the means. The colors (in fMRI or PET or both?) are enhanced, averaged out to be more obvious to the doctor, there isn’t as much difference in brain activity as the spectrum shown suggests. 

3) EEG – Electroencephalogram – graphical representation of activity in the brain’s cortex (the change in baseline level of brainwaves). Shows altered consciousness states, etc.

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4) ERP (Event-Related Potentials) – a type of EEG  Records tiny fluctuations in the brain’s electrical activity in response to a stimulus  Present stimulus many times to the subject and record the responses. The “clicks” (snapshots of the waveform) are averaged over many trials to see the

real waveform change (sort of like Fourier analysis to eliminate background noise and detect the real signal). (Could it be flawed in that the brain might respond slightly differently to the stimulus after the 1st incident?) 

5) TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) – rTMS – an magnetic field is applied & at the right angle to that is the electrical field. Parts of the cortex are inhibited or stimulated.  Can stimulate or inhibit activity in parts of the brain (creating “reversible lesion”)  Used to be illegal in US but tested in Canada  Mixed results in depression, shock therapy is more effective still in severe cases (yet it is a crude/broad effect across the whole brain, while this is more specific)  Limitations o Can influence only cortex of the brain o Influences a relatively large area of the cortex (cannot affect a tiny area of the cortex alone)

What about EMG for peripheral nerves? MR-guided HIFU brain lesions also.. Cognitive Science: Interdisciplinary field that examines questions about the mind - Includes cognitive psychology, neuroscience, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, economics - Cognitive sciences work on the basis that thinking involves internal representation of the external world Cognitive Psychology: Branch of psychology that emphasizes people’s knowledge and their mental processes - The psychological study of thinking (including attention, perception, memory, etc) - Does cognitive psych apply to the real world? o Ecological validity – the conditions in which research that is conducted should be similar to the natural setting in which the results would be applied  Does the research apply to real life?

Chapter 2: Perception Perception – use of previous knowledge to gather and interpret the stimuli ed by our senses

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Add meaning to incoming stimulation The information is changed

Object Recognition (Pattern Recognition): Identification of a complex arrangement of sensory stimuli - Should not confuse the stimulus with what is in our heads o Distal stimulus: from the actual object o Proximal stimulus: information ed on sensory receptors - Retina and brain supplying some information we think is in the world. o Information is altered - “Blind spot” – area where the optic nerve exits the eye o No receptors present, yet we “see” things in this area o Retina “guesses” what is there - Contrast effects – enhancement of perceived difference between stimuli next to one another - Saccades – ballistic eye movements. 1-3 per second o Put together scenes from these moments o Blur during saccades is suppressed during reading - Blinking o Usually don’t notice your own & most others’ o Average = 10-12 blinks/min o Reading: blink when moving eyes from line to line and when turning page o If you turned the light on and off the same amount of time as blinking, it would be irritating o Brain activity suppresses visual processing during blinking -

We organize what we see o – Emphasized by Gestalt psychology (which developed against other German types of psychology who were trying to break the mind down to its parts as if it were a car) o Gestalt Psychology – the whole is more (or different) than the sum of its parts o Figure-Ground – we organize two areas sharing a common boundary into figure and ground  Figure  usually seems to have a definite shape  seems closer to us  seems more dominant  Ground  Seems to continue behind the figure  ex) vases-faces effect

o Illusory Contours – figures in which we see edges even though they are not physically present  Cells in our visual systems respond to the illusory contours as if they’re really present Theories of Object Perception 1) Template-Matching Theory a. Compare a stimulus with templates i. Choose the closest match ii. Templates: specific patterns stored in memory iii. “Cookie Cutter Theory” 1. stimulus is in the cookie 2. template is the cookie cutter 3. The template is in the head & the visual object is identified as that (interpreted). Kantian theory  we have a predisposition for this iv. Problem: we would need an astronomical number of templates 1. Theory is inflexible 2. Recognition is flexible 2) Feature Analysis Theory a. A visual stimulus is composed of a number of distinctive features i. Distinctive feature = a characteristic or component of a stimulus ii. We store a list of these for each object iii. When we see something we compare its features with the lists of stored features iv. The closest match is recognized as that object v. Image, Feature, Cognitive, & Decision ‘demons’ theory based on Milton’s Paradise Lost  later these ‘demons’ understood as neurons b. Research ing Feature Analysis Theory i. It takes longer to decide of two letters are different if they share more features. The more characteristics they share, the slower the reaction time ii. David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel’s features detection research 1. Feature Detector – a neuron that responds selectively to a specific stimulus a. E.g. horizontal bars, vertical bars, certain angles, movements c. Problems i. A list of features alone does not describe an object

ii. The relationship of features to one another is essential 1. L T iii. Important features of complex objects can be difficult to specify 3) Recognition by Components Theory a. Developed by Irving Biedermann i. Object are represented by arrangements of simple 3D shapes – geometrical icons 1. “Geons”: simple 3D shapes a. 24 Geons b. This is similar to language i. A few sounds (36-46 in English, depending on accent and dialect) can be put together to produce a staggering number of sentences ii. A few Geons can be put together to produce a huge number of objects c. for theory i. Incorporates feature analysis theory ii. Can recognize objects easier if integrity of Geons is maintained in degraded pictures d. Advantages i. Simple theory ii. Can recognize partially covered objects 1. “fill in” the Geons e. Some Problems i. Recognition can take longer from some viewpoints (visual perspectives) ii. Viewer-centered approach (based on this theory) – we store a small number of views of 3D objects 1. If object is at an unusual angle we rotate the image to match a stored view iii. Some objects don’t have specific shapes but we easily recognize them 1. E.g. water, sand (which take on the shape of their container) 2. Can the theory explain how we easily recognize many objects in a complex scene? a. Rather than isolated cups and stools (?) Bottom-Up and Top-Down Processing - We’ve mostly been talking about:

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Bottom-Up Processing (Data Driven Processing) – cognitive processing that emphasizes the information obtained from physical stimuli o Parts of a stimulus are built up to form a representation of an object  Performed state-by-stage until recognition occurs  Feature analysis and recognition by components theories are Bottom-Up theories

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Top-Down Processing (Conceptually Driven Processing) – cognitive processing that influences the influence of concepts, expectations and memory o Information already stored influences perception o Examples:  Mistakes often show the effect of stored information  Misheard song lyrics  Reading – if we process every feature of every letter of every word, we would have to analyze about 5,000 features per minute  Word Superiority Effect – a single letter can be identified more accurately and rapidly when it appears in a word than when it appears alone or in a string of unrelated letters. o [WORK] = fastest o [ORWK] = slowest o [R] = fast o A Research Study  Words or ‘almost words’ were flashed on a screen (1/10 sec)  Subjects recognized 57% of the words  Only 10% of ‘almost words’ were recognized  E.g. droam, mitor  42% of the time ‘almost words’ were recognized as words  DROAM  DREAM  MITOR  MOTOR, MITER, MIRROR o Proofreader’s Illusion – proofreader overlooking spelling errors because of the difficulty suppressing higher level processing  They know what should be there in their heads & so they see it as if it were already correct o Ambiguous Figures – they have the same pattern on the retina but the perception of them changes  E.g. Necker Cube (forward/backward cube illusion) o Monocular Cues to Depth Perception

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Requires only one eye It is Top-Down because you’re adding depth to a 2D picture  Due to experience (?) Overlap: objects behind other objects are perceived as further away Linear perspective: parallel lines appear to converge in the distance Aerial perspective: nearby objects are brighter and sharper than distant objects Relative size: objects appear smaller the further away they are Shadows: we’re set to see shadows from overhead light (because of the sun)

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Both Top-Down and Bottom-Up processes are used in object recognition o Most theories address one or the other but not both  An exception is PDP approach

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Face Perception o Differential Inversion Effect – greater difficulty in recognizing unusual features of human faces than in images of other objects

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Infants o How to study what babies perceive o Preferential Looking Method – if an infant looks longer at one stimulus or feature than another then the infant is discriminating between the two o Results  Infants prefer more complex stimuli  E.g. a target over a circle, a face over text  One subject = 53-minute old infant preferred face-like drawing over scrambled features  This effect increases from a couple days old to 6 months old  What attracts infants attention?  5-7 weeks = dramatic increase in looking at real adults’ eyes (even over their lip movement)  They can discriminate happy expressions from angry ones (and prefer happy ones)  They can perceive difference between male and female faces  They prefer attractive to unattractive faces o Both adult and infant faces of both sexes

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o Attractiveness is based on college students’ ratings of it – are the babies attracted to symmetry, averageness, etc.? We like babies’ faces o They have a bulging cranium/big forehead o Their eyes are relatively larger o Their nose is relatively smaller o Their features are lower on their face o Wall-E is a cute robot because of baby proportions. Mickey Mouse became more baby-like over time.

What is beauty? o Physiognomy: the pseudoscience of judging personality from features of the face  Character actors elicit specific responses because of their faces  There is a “criminal face” and a “tuberculosis face”  Francis Galton (1822-1911) believed in it and tested out this 2face theory. He invented..  Composite photography (portraits) – combinging images of faces to produce a face that is their “average”  Disproved 2 faces’ reality  Modern times: One can digitally average images pixelby-pixel  Generally the most averaged face is the most attractive  Explanations – smoothing, blending, removing blemishes o Controlled for the blemishes o No big difference when skin issues were present o Youthfulness  Little correlation between raters’ judgments of age & attractiveness o Symmetry – looks more healthy & will make better children  Little correlation between ratings of symmetry and attractiveness  Produced symmetrical faces from less attractive faces & still ratings didn’t change. They were rated lower in attractiveness than less symmetrical composite faces.

o Familiarity  Strong correlation between familiarity and attractiveness  Subjects were asked how familiar a face looks  Correlation = ~ 0.75 (ing for variation)  Generally we like the familiar (unless it is associated with something bad)  Mere exposure effect  We like the familiar  We see ourselves mostly in the mirror  We prefer mirror images of ourselves (pictures that are flipped)  Friends prefer direct pictures of us  Is recognizing faces different than recognizing other patterns?  Neurological evidence o Agnosia: impairment of the ability to recognize or identify familiar objects, entities or people  Even odors (you lose the ability to recognize what you formally could identify as a specific smell)  Prosopagnosia: impaired ability to recognize once familiar faces  Usually one can identify a face as a face  Cannot identify the person  Jane Goodall & sister had it  Usually associated with damage to a part of the posterior hemisphere of the brain  Inferotemporal cortex (fusiform facial area)  fMRI shows increased activity in this area while looking at faces  But this part of the brain is associated with identifying many over-learned objects EXAM 2 Chapter 3: Perception Pt 2: Attention & Consciousness People who study with music use it as a barrier for other sounds.

Background knowledge/expertise greatly informs memory, attention, memory tasks, problem solving. “New eyes” on something (moving to a new location) = innovation more so than expertise or having a “young mind”. Information theory  information = a decrease in entropy. Attention - a concentration of mental activity - Allows for efficiency o Brains are relatively slow processors o Limited by how much info can be processed at a time o Attention allows cognitive processes to take place in selected aspects of the sensory world  (Daydreaming = not part of the sensory world) - Divided Attention o Divided Attention Task – subject must attend to two or more simultaneous messages, responding to each as needed o Driving & talking on cell phone  In of order of distractiveness, cellphone > enger > radio  3 different studies were done (Details??). The best controlled research was with a joystick, yet use of joystick = the least amount of ecological validity.  Conclusion: cellphone use seems to interfere with driving ability o Divided Attention Study  2 college students (a male and a female) performed 2 tasks simultaneously  1) read short story silently  2) took dictation at the same time  Subjects were good at reading for comprehension but poor at taking dictation  With practice o They could read with comprehension and categorize dictated words  E.g. write “furniture” when they heard “chair”  Encyclopedia Britannica was just as good as short stories for usage  Conclusion – one can get better at some divided attention tasks with practice Selective Attention - Selective Attention Task

o Subjects must respond selectively to certain sources of information while ignoring other sources of info o Dichotic listening: listening simultaneously to 2 different messages  Each ear is presented with a different message  Sometimes subjects are asked to pay attention to only one of the messages  How can you be sure that they do?  “Shadowing”: listening to a message and repeating it aloud (playing “mockingbird”)  Original research (1953)  People could answer questions about the content of the shadowed message easily and accurately  But they didn’t notice much about the unshadowed message (which is??) o They couldn’t report the meaning of the message o They didn’t notice if the message changed from English to German o They didn’t notice if the message was played backwards o They did notice if it changed from male  female voice  Later Research o 35% of subjects noticed if their names were in the unshadowed message o Cocktail Party Effect: when paying attention to one conversation, a person often notices if his or her name is mentioned in a nearby conversation. This happens in visual material too when one sees a familiar written name, their hometown, etc. o Subjects are told to shadow one message  But the meaning of the shadowed message is switched to the unshadowed ear (the perception of it goes from one side of auditory region of temporal cortext to the other?)  The person shadows the message, not the ear (huh?)  They must be processing the meaning to some degree in the unshadowed ear

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Ex) people hearing about river banks in one ear & credit cards, $ and banks in another ear mix up the ambiguous message to be/mean only one of the messages. i.e. the unshadowed message can influence the perception of the shadowed message

Stroop Effect: a delay in naming the ink color of a word when the word is the name of a color that doesn’t match the ink o Variations on the theme – bilingual, backwards words, etc. Used for after concussion tests sometimes + the digit span test o Some results:  Original research:  Subjects took almost twice as long to name words colored with incongruent correspondent colors as solid-colored squares  Older adults do worse than younger adults (which may be because of motivational reasons moreso than senility)  People with schizophrenia do worse than people without it (they have no filter) o Emotional Stroop Effect: people with phobias name the color of ink of words related to their fear slower than non-phobic words and do so slower than people not suffering from that phobia. (A phobia = an extreme dread of things)  A Stroop Effect occurs without seeing words  One can improve on the Stroop test with practice  Explanations of Stroop Effect o PDP: activation of two computing pathways simultaneously  1) A non color-naming pathway  2) A word-reading pathway o Because both pathways are active at the same time, they interfere with one another & performance is poor o Practice  We are good at naming colors & reading (but better at reading)  Little kids don’t show the Stroop effect because they can’t read yet

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We can’t help but read words, so we can’t help but try to read the names of the colors Weirdly those with dyslexia perform poorer on the Stroop test

o 2 visual search effects  Visual search: searching for a target among distractors  1) Isolated Feature/Combined Feature Effect (the “Where’s Waldo Effect)  If a target differs from distractors on one simple feature it is as easy to detect if it is among many distractors as it is among only a few o E.g. a letter that is a different color from the distractors o The item seems to pop out o If a target possesses two properties + some of the distractors have one of the properties & the other distractors have the other property, the task (to find the target) becomes more difficult with more distractors present.  2) Feature-Present/Feature-Absent Effect: a search is faster when looking for a feature that is present than for one that is absent  Takes longer to find a featureabsent target among more distractors  Also works with movement o It is easy to find one moving target among stationary distractors no matter how many distractors are present

o It is more difficult to find a stationary target among moving distractors with more distractors present

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Theories of Attention -------------------\\\________________________  information  bottleneck (filter) ________________________ -------------------/// Lower-level processing Higher-level processing o Bottleneck Theories: a narrow ageway limits the quantity of information to which people can pay attention  As one or a few messages are processed at higher levels, other information is left behind  The unattended message is blocked from higher-level processing  Especially the meaning  Can set bottleneck early in processing (Early Filter Theory) some information is blocked from high-level processing  Or late in processing (Late Filter Theories): all information is processed at a high level  Early Filter Theory: explains early dichotic listening results o They don’t much from the unshadowed ear o But later results are difficult to explain  1/3 of people noticed their name in the unshadowed ear  They followed the meaning to the unshadowed ear  Late Filter Theory: theory can’t explain why with dichotic listening you don’t consciously know about the message in the unshadowed ear  Simple bottleneck theories had intuitive appeal, but they could not for the wide range of findings

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Automatic and Controlled Processing o Classifies attention by the type of processing required  Based on how easy the task is or how familiar the items are o Processing: 2 types 

1) Automatic Processing: used on easy tasks & on tasks that use highly familiar items

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Parallel Processing – can handle 2 or more items at the same time Used with easy or well-learned tasks Fast Less impaired by fatigue or alcohol

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2) Controlled Processing: used on difficult tasks or tasks that use unfamiliar items  Serial Processing – can handle only one item at a time  Often requires conscious attention  Slow compared to automatic processing  Easily impaired by fatigue and alcohol  Often can improve with practice

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Explain attention phenomena  Divided attention tasks o Can do 2 easy tasks because they require only automatic processing o With practice one can turn control processing into automatic processing (like singing & playing guitar simultaneously)  Selective attention o Dichotic listening  Noticing your name because it is automatic  Following a message to the unshadowed ear because that is automatic  Stroop task: reading is automatic

Feature Integration Theory o Anne Treisman o 2 types of processing or stages (ends of a continuum) 

1) Distributed Attention: metaphor of a field & anything in it you will pick up by being in it  s features automatically o Often not aware that you’re doing it  Uses parallel processing across the entire field o Effortless  Similar to automatic processing

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2) Focused Attention

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Used for complex tasks Requires serial processing o Effortful Similar to controlled processing What the theory can explain o Isolated-feature/Combined-feature effect  Processing one feature requires only distributed attention (done fast & in parallel)  Processing 2 features requires focused attention (slow & serially) o Feature-present/Feature-absent effect  Feature-present search is closer to distributed attention end of the continuum  Feature-absent search is closer to the focused attention end of the spectrum

o Illusory conjunction: an inappropriate combination of features  E.g. a red pen & a blue x are next to each other  If a person is distracted or overloaded with information, the letters may switch colors  The visual system processes many characteristics of an object separately  E.g. color, shape, location & motion  A person uses distributed attention when overloaded (like a difficult match or Sudoku problem)  So the perceptual system can put objects together inappropriately

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[attenuated message diagram] : the weak stuff “flicks off” in the “dictionary unit” (HUH??!)

The brain and attention o Several regions of the brain are involved in attention o 2 regions of the cortex have been implicated in attention o 1) Posterior parietal lobe  Active in visual search tasks  Evidence:

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Brain scans performed during visual search task Case studies of people with lesions in this area o Suffer from Unilateral Neglect: spatial deficit for one half of visual field. Damage to one hemisphere results in attentional neglect to the opposite visual field  They aren’t blind, they can see all but neglect half of it o 2) Anterior frontal lobe  Involved with inhibiting responses in order to attend to other stimuli  Stroop task is one example  Extreme frontal lobes show increase in activity during such tasks  Problems with inhibition in some pathologies o E.g. schizophrenia, people with lobotomies  Do poorly on Stroop task  Have problems with the frontal lobes Attention = what you’re attending to  memory = the core of cognitive psych

Chapter 4: Working Memory - Working Memory (a.k.a. short-term memory, although actually they’re not the same as ‘working’ is active, not ive like short-term): brief immediate memory for material currently being processed; also coordinates ongoing mental activity - George A. Miller (1956) wrote the article “The Magical Number 7 +/- 2: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information” in The Psychological Review o Miller proposed that we can hold 5-9 pieces of info for a brief period of time (random #’s and letters)  CIAFBIMTVCBSNFL  CIA | FBI | MTV | CBS | NFL  1 2 3 4 5 o We can hold more information if it is organized o “Chunk”: the basic unit of short-term memory consisting of several components that are strongly associated with one another o Why Miller’s paper is important  It brought together seemingly unrelated data  Suggested a limitation to human information processing (5-9 being the capacity of short-term memory)  Showed how humans transcend this limit o By chunking information

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What is the duration of short-term memory?  Brown/Peterson & Peterson technique Gave the person 3 unrelated numbers, letters or words  To prevent the person from repeating the items, they had the person count backwards by 3’s from a 3-digit random #  Meaningful letters like one’s initials (KPB) would be ed regardless of the exercise, so have to be counted out  Results: o Steady decline in memory over time o Most information is gone at about 20 seconds (~24 seconds)

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Serial Position Effect: items near the beginning and end of a list are recalled last o Those in the middle are recalled worst o Recency Effect: better recall for items at the end of a list o Primacy Effect: better recall for items at the beginning of a list o Explanation:  Recency Effect: items at the end of the list are in short-term memory (STM)  Evidence: o Subjects give items at the end of a list first o They recalled 5-9 items (STM’s capacity) o Recency effect disappears after 20 seconds if the subject counts backwards by 3’s before recall  Primacy Effect: items at the beginning of the list are more likely to be rehearsed & so stored longer  This does not explain all serial position effects o E.g. Americans ing various US Presidents’ names

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Atkinson’s & Shiffrin’s (1968) Model of Memory

o Sensory Memory  Visual: iconic store  Lasts less than one second  Auditory: echoic store  Lasts 2-4 seconds o Short-Term Memory (STM)  Lasts ~ 20 seconds  Can be extended by repeating (rehearsal)  Holds 5-9 chunks of information o Long-Term Memory (LTM)  Permanent memory storage  Could hold more than we could fill it up with (unless it is truly infinite) -

Some problems in classical view of short-term memory o 1) Pronunciation Time  STM holds the # of items that can be pronounced in 1.5-2.5 seconds, not necessarily 5-9 chunks  Can hold more short words in STM than long words  Because it takes less time to say these  Are we more familiar with short words than long ones? It is probably not because of familiarity that more can be ed when words are familiar.  People speaking different languages seem to have different capacities for #’s in STM  Digit span: # of digits that can be held in STM. o = language dependent o An inverse correlation exists between pronunciation time & digit span o Chinese people can hold more digits in their head because their words are shorter. Asians stereotypically are better at math, could this by

why? Specificity is also ingrained in their culture (such as proportions to grow enough rice to feed ‘x’ # of people). Also, in Europe math was divorced from religion & society at large in the Middle Ages. o 2) Semantic Similarity  Originally it was concluded that STM uses an acoustic code  We mix up letters that sound alike (B, V), not those that look alike (O, Q) (prof notes) -Some problems with the classical view of short-term memory (1) Pronunciation time -Hold 5-9 chunks of information but further research showed: -Hold number of items that can pronounce in 1.5 to 2.5 seconds -Can hold more short words in STM than long words -Because takes less time to say them WIT END CUB BOX

TECHNOLOGY ENCYCLOPEDIA UNIVERSITY CONVENTIONAL

-Get same result if hold familiarity constant -Found for consonants, nouns, shape names, color names, nonsense words, and names of countries -People speaking different languages seem to have different capacities for numbers in STM -Textbook describes English, Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic study -Digit span depends on language spoken -Digit span: number of digits that can be held in STM [-Also a subset in IQ tests -How many digits can recall -Both forward and backward] Digits span Chinese: 9.9 digits English: 6.6 digits Welsh 5.8 digits

Pronunciation time (average) 265 msec 321 msec 385 msec

-Inverse correlation between pronunciation time and digit span

(2) Semantic similarity -Originally concluded that STM is acoustic (sound) -E.g., mix up letters that sound alike (B, V) not look alike (O, Q) -Even when presented visually -But further research shows sound is not solely used for STM processing -Proactive interference: people have trouble learning new material because previously learned material interferes with new material -E.g., Can’t someone’s name because knew someone else with that name -E.g., Have trouble learning student number because social security number interferes -Do a Brown/Peterson & Peterson task -3 letters, count backwards by 3s -Stop and ask for letters -4 trials each have 3 letters XCJ HBR TSV KRN -Subjects do progressively worse at ing letters (% correct) -But if give numbers (e.g., 529) on 4th trial -Do almost as well as on first set of letters (XCJ) -STM is not cleared after each use -Old information is affecting it -Proactive interference occurs -Release from proactive interference: proactive interference is reduced by switching to a new stimulus category, producing increased recall -Works with meaning -Give 3 trials with the following: -Each set to a different subject (1) All fruits (e.g., banana, peach, apple) (2) All vegetables (e.g., onion, turnip, corn) (3) All flowers (e.g., daisy, rose, iris) (4) All meats (e.g., salami, pork, chicken) (5) All occupations (e.g., lawyer, doctor, firefighter) -On the 4th trial give all subjects the name of fruits -Release from proactive interference follows similarity of items

-Results: -Least ed to most ed: -Fruits (given during first 3 trials) -Vegetables -Flowers -Meats -Occupations -The more similar to fruits the worse people performed on the 4th trial So, STM is not just chunking and coding information by sound -But depends on how long it takes to say the word and word’s categorical meaning

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-STM has evolved into a more complex cognitive structure -Alan Baddeley -British -Reformulated STM into working memory during the 1970s -He and others have modified working memory since -Not just a store for items until put into LTM or lost -Actively works on information -Not just ively storing it -Focuses on what working memory accomplishes -E.g., holding beginning of sentence until get to end to understand the whole sentence -E.g., Bob caught . . . -a fish. -a cold. -the ball. -hell. -E.g., hold numbers while doing mental arithmetic -E.g., hold results while reasoning or solving problems -Working memory is active, not ive -It works on information -Proposed that there are 4 parts to working memory -One involved with sounds; one involved with visual information; one that combines auditory, visual information, and old information, and a part that processes the information -Why Baddeley concluded that there are separate stores for auditory and visual information:

-People can do 2 working memory tasks without much interference if one is acoustic and the other is visual -More than 9 chunks of information are processed -Shouldn’t happen if STM can only hold 5-9 chunks of information -E.g., Subjects repeat a string of random numbers -Numbers are in a random pattern -Up to 8 numbers in length -E.g., 7-3-5-1-6-2-0-8 -At the same time, shown two letters and had to answer questions about them -BA “A follows B” (press yes button) or “B follows A” (press no button) -Subjects did well on these tasks -Subjects given 7 or 8 digits to rehearse reached the upper limit of STM -Yet performed well on 2nd task -Number of digits didn’t matter much -So, concluded that two stores exist in working memory: (1) Phonological loop: stores a limited number of sounds for a short period of time -2 functions: (1) Storage of acoustic information (2) Rehearsal of information -Maintains the information beyond a few seconds -Phonological loop uses sound code -So, early results showing confusion of similar sounds is due to phonological loop -Brain imagines studies show the left hemisphere more active in phonological tasks (2) Visuospatial Sketchpad: stores visual and spatial information -Stores images from perception -And visual information derived from verbal descriptions -Also used in locating objects in space -Brain imaging studies show right hemisphere becomes active during tasks requiring the visuospatial sketchpad -Part of the right hemisphere depends on the task

-More on visual imagery in a later chapter (3) Central Executive: integrates information from the phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and the episodic buffer -Plays a big role in attention, planning strategies, and coordinating behavior -Suppresses irrelevant behavior -So, helps decide what to do next -What not to do next -Limited in how much it can do at any time -Cannot work effectively on two tasks simultaneously -Doesn’t store information itself -Central executive is associated with the frontal lobes -Many areas of frontal lobes seem involved -Damage result in problems planning, attention, and coordinating behavior -E.g., Phineas Gage -E.g., some results of lobotomies -Rey-Osterreith Complex Figure Test: Involves copying a complex drawing; requires planning and persistence -A test of the health of the frontal lobes and central executive (4) Episodic Buffer: a temporary storehouse for gathering and combining information from the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad, and long-term memory -Actively manipulates information to interpret an earlier experience, solve new problems, and plan future activities -Baddeley added the episodic buffer 25 years after the other 3 parts -So, not as well worked out -What part of working memory is involved in daydreaming? -Stimulus independent thoughts: streams of thoughts and images unrelated to current sensory input -Includes daydreaming -Experience Sampling Method: people record their experiences throughout the day by responding to randomly-occurring prompts; prompts are often delivered and responses recorded on electronic devices such as smart phones

-Amount of daydreaming varies in people -Young adults average about 1/3 of waking life (end prof notes) Baddely’s System Left hemisphere – phonological loop Right hemisphere – visualspatial sketchpad Central executive – doesn’t store information, mostly in frontal lobe (?) Episodic buffer – stores info briefly from others (sensory stuff) & puts it together into a composite (also pulls from long-term memory) then the central executive works on it Daydreaming – a type of stimulus-independent thoughts What brain structures are involved in it? What part of working memory? (To find out, engage a part of working memory and see if the subject can still daydream) What information is being worked on? It is healthy, it helps you cope. = 1/3 of the day. If one is good at a random # task, one is worse at daydreaming, bad at the random # task and good at daydreaming. Therefore daydreaming involves planning. It seems that the central executive is necessary for daydreaming but the phonological loop & visiospatial sketchpad aren’t necessary for it. (This research was done before episodic buffer research, which is probably an area that is also necessary for daydreaming).

Experiencing sampling methods

FINAL EXAM Chapter 5: Long-Term Memory H.M. – case study (1926-2008) - Suffered from grand mal seizures - Damaged area of brain removed - included: Hippocampus & adjacent area - Decreased the # of seizures o But:  Amnesia for a couple years before the surgery (retrograde amnesia) was present  He could not put new items in LTM  Consolidation: process of putting new information into permanent storage - Working memory seemed intact o He could store 5-9 random digits o He could learn some things, through:  Habituation  Classical conditioning  Operant conditioning  Skills  Therefore, there are different parts/divisions of memory  He didn’t know he knew these things - His case suggests: o There is a difference between short-term and long-term memory o Long-term memory has several aspects  General knowledge, life memories  Skills, predispositions, reflex learning o Different types of memories are stored in different parts of the brain Watching a happy movie increases happiness in a kid but he can’t anything, while a sad movie decreases happiness but he can . LTM – permanent memory storage -

Research: on fruit flies, which only have 4 chromosomes

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Some common divisions of LTM o Episodic Memory: memories of events that happen to a person. Describes episodes in a person’s life

o Semantic Memory: organized knowledge about the world o Procedural Memory: knowledge about how to do something o Why make these distinctions?  Different types of memories have different characteristics  Different brain injuries can affect different types of memory o 3 basic memory processes  1) Encoding: getting information into storage  2) Storage: holding information  3) Retrieval: getting information out of storage -

Why do we some information and not other info? o One approach: Crick & Lockhart (1972) o Depth of Processing (levels of processing): deep meaningful information processing leads to more permanent retention than shallow, sensory processing  For words:  Shallow processing: o Visual appearance of a word o E.g. color of ink, type font, upper or lower case letters o Sound of the word  Deep processing: meaning of the word o Classic test of depth of processing  Results:  Subjects ed fill-in sentence words better than the physical characteristic words (HUH??)  The meaning is deep processing o Why is memory better for deep words?  2 factors  1) distinctiveness: a stimulus is different than other memories  Either in capital or small letters versus all possibilities and nuances with meaning.  2) elaboration (elaborative rehearsal): processing new information by associating it with other concepts in permanent memory  To get into LTM, associate info with other stuff (structures already present in loci)

o Maintenance rehearsal: repeating a stimulus less likely to be permanently stored than with elaborative reversal o Memory for faces  Subjects shown many photos of faces  Asked to make judgments about either o width of the nose o honesty of person o male or female sometimes (?)  Later, asked to identify ones they had seen o Not told they would be asked o Correctly recognized more faces judged for honesty  Why?  Distinctiveness  Elaboration -

Is meaning the deepest level? o Self-reference affect: enhancement of long-term memory by relating the material to personal experiences  See it across the board with all ages  Explanations of the effect  1) Self has a rich set of queues o Allows for elaboration and distinctiveness o We have a complex network about ourselves o Part 2?

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Consistency bias: we tend to exaggerate the consistency between our past and present beliefs o We often have trouble identifying the source of our information o Source monitoring - trying to identify the origin of our memories and beliefs  Useful for checking plagiarism  ex) Helen Keller, George Harrison

Eyewitness testimony and memory - How valid is eyewitness testimony? o Major details for memory are fairly accurate o Smaller details are often mistaken o Mistakes are made o Misinformation effect - people view (watch) an event

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Afterward, they are given misleading information about the event Later they recalled the misleading info Later they recalled what they were told rather than what they actually saw Form of retroactive interference: trouble recalling old material because recently learned new material interferes (a source monitoring issue)

Elizabeth Loftus study (1978) - Showed subjects a series of slides showing a car stopped at an intersection - The car then hits a pedestrian - Half of the subjects saw a stop sign at the intersection, the other half a yield sign - 20 minutes to one week later, the subjects answered a questionnaire (length of time has a big effect) - One question: did another car past the red Datsun while it was stopped at the stop sign, or the yield sign? - Every possible combination was used. Stop stop, stop yield, yield yield, yield stop. - Some were consistent with the sign they saw - Some were inconsistent with the sign they saw - Some were neutral (sign not mentioned) - They had to select which slides they saw o Results (chance = 50%)  Neutral - 50 to 60% correct  Consistent - 75% correct  Inconsistent - 25 to 40% a week later - Percent correct decreased with time o Stronger misinformation effect -

Factors found to influence eyewitness testimony o 1) Errors are more likely if the witnesses’ attention has been distracted at the time of the event o 2) Errors are more likely if the misinformation is plausible o 3) Errors are more likely if there is social pressure o 4) Errors are more likely if eyewitnesses have been given positive

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Loftus Study # 2 o Memory can be subtly influenced  Subjects viewed a film of a car accident  Then answered a questionnaire  Question included was “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?”

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Subjects estimated lower speed if she used the word “collide” or “bumped” or “ed” instead of “smashed” One week later those who read “smashed” were more likely to answer “yes” to “Did you see any broken glass?” There was no broken glass in the film

- Constructionist approach: recollections change as people revise the past to satisfy their present concerns and knowledge - Actually change memory -

Recovered memory/False memory controversy o Two views  1) Recovered memory perspective: these memories of abuse were forgotten, then recovered  The memories are of real events  2) False memory perspective: many recovered memories are mistaken; they are constructed stories about events that never occurred

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Evidence ing false memory perspective o Potential for memory errors is high o Therapists specializing in recovered memories often inadvertently suggests that a repressed memory may exist o Real life implanted memories do occur o Laboratory  Elizabeth Loftus “Lost in the mall” study  3 real stories  1 made up  Lost in the mall, plausible details from relatives  1 to 2 weeks later, subjects were interviewed  About 2 weeks later, subjects were interviewed again  Results: o 68% true events o 29% made up event

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Frederic Bartlett (1886-1969) o Used term ‘schema’ with its present meaning o Developed method of serial reproduction  Subjects heard exotic stories  Bartlett noticed that the inaccuracies had patterns  Subjects filled in strange gaps  They changed bizarre sequences to casual ones  They dropped difficulties to assimilate information

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They revised stories to resemble Western type stories

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Schemas and scripts influence correspondents of memory o Help us to:  1) Select material to be ed  2) Instructions encourage people to see how their traits are related to one another  3) We may rehearse material more if it is related to us  Elaborative rehearsal

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Brain and depth of processing o Brain scan studies o Meaning tasks were performed  Increased activity in the left prefrontal cortex  But activity did not increase in this area during shallow encoding o Self reference tasks  Left and right areas of the prefrontal cortex show increased activity (?)

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Context o Subjects do have good memories about shallow items if the memory test is different  Subjects are tested using the original task o Encoding specificity principle: recall is better if the retrieval context is similar to the encoding context o ex) male or female voice as one’s teacher o Often there seems to be a bigger effect of context in real life than in the lab  Why?  Lab often uses recognition tasks, real life work requires recall  Context usually has a bigger effect on recall then recognition  Recall: reproduction of items that had been presented at an earlier time o Few memory cues o e.g. essay tests  Recognition: identification of items that had been presented at an earlier time o e.g. multiple-choice questions Real life is often a recall in context T/F questions - students tend to do worse on them by studying more Because given the time, you can conceive of why it is false

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Context effects are small if other learning cues are strong o e.g. well-learned material o (studying wipes out context effect) o Often in the lab, learning cues are strong Context usually has a bigger effect on older material o Memories in real life are often old memories o Memories in the lab are often about something learned an hour so earlier Mental context may be more important than physical context o i.e. how similar a person thinks something is or feels rather than the actual physical environment Lab research usually manipulates the physical surroundings o Recognition test are usually used in the lab = easy to grade o Faces = recognition names = recall (usually) Why do context effects exist? o Perhaps, let us easily recall information for a given situation that we are in now  Efficient  Allows for survival Emotions, mood and memory o Emotions: reaction to a specific stimulus (feeling) o Mood: general long-lasting experience

(prof notes) - Emotion = complex -Pollyanna Principle: pleasant items are usually processed more efficiently and accurately than less pleasant items -We tend to pleasant things (not a huge effect) -E.g., childhood memories -E.g., college memories -Especially if the delay between learning and testing is long -How tested? -Have people keep track of events in their lives -Rate pleasantness of events -Test at memory different intervals -E.g., 3 months, 1 year, 4½ years -Pleasant items are more likely to be ed -Pleasant items over time seem a little less pleasant -Unpleasant items seem considerably less unpleasant -Laboratory -Ask people to list items from memory -E.g., animals, colors, teachers -First recall those items they like best

-Subjects learn a list of words that are pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant -Rated by other people - People with depression rate their abilities accurately, but something other than depression causes it! -Recall or recognition of words is tested several minutes to months later -Mood -Mood congruence: memory is better when the material to be learned is similar with a person’s current mood -An encoding phenomenon -Good mood: easier to learn/ nice items -Bad mood: easier to learn/ nasty items -Retrieval in Long-term Memory -What affects getting information out of LTM? -So far, mostly looked at purposely getting information out of LTM -But can use information from LTM and not know it -Explicit memory task: subjects are specifically instructed to information that they have previously learned -Subjects are making a conscious effort to material -E.g., most recall and recognition exams in school -Implicit memory task: past experience with material facilitates performance on a cognitive task -Person does not make a conscious effort to recall the information -E.g., Give a list of words for subjects to read -Includes BAT -Later, give them a word completion test -More likely to complete with words from the original list than if they had not seen the list -Even when not consciously ed -Fill in B_T with A -Could have used BET, BIT, BLT BOT, BUT -Repetition priming task: recent exposure to a word increases the likelihood the word will later come to mind when given a cue that could evoke many words -E.g., Name 3 rooms in a typical house -E.g., Name 3 different kinds of stores -E.g., Name 3 items associated with Christmas -Works with fonts -Read faster if use same font -If read even a year earlier -Don’t -Amnesia and retrieval -Retrograde amnesia: loss of memory for events that occurred prior to brain damage

-Anterograde amnesia: loss of memory for events that have occurred after brain damage -Do much poorer on recall and recognition tests after reading target list of words (explicit memory task) than normal subjects -Not surprising -But are influenced just as much as normal subjects when doing word completion tests (implicit memory task) -So, something is getting into LTM for people with anterograde amnesia -Childhood (infantile) amnesia: older children and adult’s inability to events that occurred in their lives prior to the age of about 2 or 3 years old -Infantile amnesia: Freud’s term -Some people earlier events -But may be memory of someone telling about event or dream of earlier experience -Jean Piaget’s (1896-1980) kidnapping memory: I was sitting in my pram, which my nurse was pushing in the Champs Elysees, when a man tried to kidnap me. I was held in by the strap fastened round me while my nurse bravely tried to stand between me and the thief. She received various scratches, and I can still vaguely see those on her face. Then a crowd gathered, a policeman with a short cloak and a white baton came up and the man took to his heels. I can still see the whole scene, and can even place it near the tube station. When I was about fifteen my parents received a letter from my former nurse saying that she had been converted to the Salvation Army. She wanted to confess past faults, and in particular to return the watch she had been given on the occasion. She had made up the whole story, faking the scratches. I, therefore, must have heard, as a child, the of the story, which my parents believed, and projected it into the past in the form of a visual memory. -

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Confabulating - not telling the truth, yet trying to (not lying) o Evidence ing recovered memory perspective o Some people whose hospital records show were treated for sexual assault as children don't recall the assault as adults o Most traumas are ed by kids o So, memories of molestation can be forgotten and recovered o Lab results may not apply to real life o Many psychologists have concluded that the majority of recovered memories are false memories Childhood Amnesia: o Problem with childhood amnesia may be a retrieval problem o Information may be stored but not accessible Autobiographical memory: Memory for events and topics related to oneself o What do you about your life? o Focus on:

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What is ed? How accurate are the memories? Some general conclusions from the research  Memories are usually accurate for major details  Mistakes usually occur with incidental details about everyday events  The most recent experiences are recalled  Older people: recall adolescence and young adulthood  Memories can be constructed at the time of retrieval  Memories are actively blended form the similar sources  Mistakes can be made by inappropriately combining memories  Transitioned firsts are recalled o Graduations, weddings, first baby  Narrative: Keep a running story of yourself

Autobiographical memory (cont) - Strong memories for emotional and surprising events - Flashbulb memory: memory for a situation in which you first learned of a very surprising and emotionally arousing event o Includes incidental details o 6 kinds of incidental information are usually recalled:  1) Place you first heard the news  2) Ongoing event interrupted  3) The person who gave the news  4) Your own feelings  5) Emotions of others  6) The aftermath  Results in surprise in emotion -

2 views of flashbulb memory o 1) Flashbulb memories are different from other types of memories  details not ed with other types of memories  Animal studies shows stress hormones are related to better memory (adrenaline versus saline control)  Within limits o 2) Flashbulb memories are like other memories  Surprising and emotional memories are more likely to be repeated and elaborated upon  Strengthens the memory and allows for changes in the memory itself

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The longer the time between the event and recall the more mistakes there are (just like other memories) Conclusion: flashbulb memories may be enhanced o But by method used to store other types of memories Chapter 8: General Knowledge o Our background knowledge that helps us get along in life o Stored for use by cognitive processes o General knowledge can be divided 2 ways  1) semantic knowledge  2) schemas

Structure of Semantic Memory - Semantic memory: organized knowledge about the world o Includes  Matters of facts  Conceptual knowledge o Function of concepts  To help make sense of the world - Category: class of objects that belongs together o e.g. chairs, rocks, dogs, shirts - Concept: mental representation of a category o What is in a person's hand How do we decide which objects belong in the same category? What is the basis of our concepts? -

Feature Comparison Model (based on Aristotle - essence of something plus accidental or on essential qualities) o Concepts stored in memory according to a list of features o The features of an object are compared with the features of the category o People decide whether the two match o Problem: few concepts in real life have necessary features o Necessary feature: essential qualities of a bird (for instance) = feathers, wings, beak etc. o “There really aren't necessary features”

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The Prototype Approach: a person decides whether an item belongs to a category by comparing the item to a prototype o Prototype: the (Platonic) idealized item that is most typical of a category  Idealized: does not necessarily exist

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The closer an item resembles a prototype, the easier and faster it can be classified Proto-typicality: degree to which of a category are prototypical

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Family Resemblance (Wittgenstein or Leibniz?): No single attribute is shared by all examples of concept; however, each example has at least one attribute in common with some other example of the concept o Prototype face study  Subjects were shown composite faces  Made using Identikit  Each face showed features with the prototype that is never shown to the subjects  Later subjects were given recognition tasks and asked how confident they were in their answers  Subjects did well with one exception o All identified prototype face as seen before and with the most confidence  But it was not shown before  Advantages to prototype approach  Avoids defining categories by essential characteristics  s for developing categories from loosely structured resemblances (family resemblances)  Shows how we can store a vast amount of information in a single prototype  Problems  Sometimes a prototype is not the most typical item in a category  So they have different networks

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We often do store a vast amount of specific information o Categories are treated as fuzzy by the prototype approach o But categories are often not fuzzy o The Exemplar Approach: people first learn some specific examples of a concept, and then classify a new stimulus by deciding how closely it resembled those specific examples  Exemplars: specific examples of a concept stored in memory  Real examples  Advantages:  Avoids problem of necessary features  Don't have to devise a prototype o Just store examples  Can explain why we categorize unusual examples

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Problems:  Explaining why we store some examples and not others  Exemplars for large categories may be unwieldy An fMRI shows different parts the brain are activated in thinking about a prototype versus an exemplar

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Network Models o A netlike organization of concepts in memory with many interconnections  Meaning of a word or concept is determined by the connections o Collins and Loftus network model (1975)  Each concept is represented by a node  Nodes are connected by links (how close is each link?)  When a node is activated by the name of the concept, activation spreads throughout the links to other nodes  Called Spreading Activation  The more times concepts are associated, the stronger the connection o Model can explain:  Sentence verification results  Individual differences  People have different experiences o So they have different networks  Seemingly unusual associations (individualistic, personalitybased)  Context Effects: links between incidental items in a place where something is learned and the items that are learned  State dependent learning (altered states etc.)  Some jokes (huh?)  Creativity (original/fresh links)

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Network Models (cont) o Mistakes of coming up with the wrong answer o PDP / connectionism  Advantages:  Takes into the workings of neurons  Can use both bottom-up and top-down processing  Can explain how we draw generalizations  Spontaneous Generalization: drawing inferences about general information on individual cases

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Schemas and Scripts

o Schema (plural schemas or schemata): generalized knowledge about a situation or an event, based on experience and used to facilitate perception, thinking and to interpret new informata o Script: a simple, well structured sequence of events associated with a highly familiar activity  A type of schema -

Schemas and scripts help us o 1) Select material to be ed o 2) Boundary Extension: tendency to having viewed a greater portion of the scene than was actually shown o Extends the bounds of items we've seen that are covered up (children like to draw every item separately in a scene instead of representing how they overlap in of perspective) o 3) Abstract the meaning of material rather than the details o 4) Interpret the material o 5) Helps us to integrate separate memories into a coherent whole

Chapter 7: Mental Imagery and Cognitive Maps -

Sir Francis Galton o First to scientifically study memory o Photographic memory  “Elizabeth”  Art dealer at Harvard (1960s to 70s)

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Eidetic imagery in children o Eidetic Imagery - a mental image or memory that is extraordinarily clear and vivid, as though actually being perceived o Between 5 to 10% of children are eidetikers o 2nd to 6th graders o Not related to IQ scores o Reading achievement o Personality o 3 to 5 seconds needed to form an image o No better with familiar pictures o Images of letters and numbers are not as detailed as other images Imagery = the mental representation of stimuli that are not physically present o Relies exclusively on top-down processing o Mental imagery has a long and contentious history in psychology o Modern controversy revolves around how images are stored o Are images like a picture, or a verbal description?

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Analog code (depictive or pictorial representation): representation that close resembles the physical object o Map, globe, blueprint

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Propositional code (descriptive representation): an abstract language-like representation o Stored information is not visual or spatial

Does not resemble the original stimulus We all know we have pictures in our heads o These may be epiphenomenal o Epiphenomenon: mental phenomena are real but don't affect thinking; byproducts of the brain o ex) smoke is an effect of manufacturing cars, but it does not affect their make

Mental imagery and rotation - Mental Rotation: the imagined turning of a form from one orientation to another - ex) gloves = mirror images of each other - Usual Test: decide if pictures of two objects are the same or mirror images o Measure: reaction time o Result: the larger the angle of rotation, the longer the reaction time -

Some other findings o Large individual differences in model rotation o Elderly people are slower than young people o Fluent signers of American Sign languages o Tetris players are better at rotating objects than non-Tetris players (just limited to Tetris-like objects, not other stuff like organic chemistry molecules)

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Conclusion: mental rotation is smaller to rotating real objects

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Imagery and Size o When examining real objects or pictures of objects, the bigger the item, the easier to make out the details  Stephen Kosslyn (1975)  Ask people to imagine a big and small object at the same time  E.g. a rabbit and an elephant  Reaction time to questions about the elephant = faster  In imagining a fly & a rabbit, reaction time is faster for the rabbit (a bigger object)

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Result: it takes longer to answer questions about the smaller image