Memory and Cog Exam 1

what is cognitive psychology?

a topic of mental processes and a point of view about how to study mental processes

what are the origins and history of cognitive psychology?

reaction to behaviorism's denial of mental processes (really started to grow around 1970)

who started the first psychology lab?

wilhelm wundt

what is structuralism?

goal was to determine the elements or structure of conscious experiences (what are the component parts of thought when we think; structure of conscious thought)

what are the criticisms of early psychology methods?

not valid methods to analyze the contents of the mind; very subjective and can't be verified

what was introspection?

experimental self-observation (including: self-reports, reaction-times, word associations)

what was the imageless thought controversy?

can you think without imagery? different labs found different results and people argued that others aren't doing introspection the right way, but how do you prove this?

what is behaviorism?

theoretical goal is prediction and control of behavior; stimulus-response (S-R) says it should be possible to predict behavior because each stimulus produces one response (1:1); no mental processes play a role in a behavior chain, all just inputs and outputs

pavlov's classical conditioning

ring bell, give food, dog salivates (unconditioned reflex); eventually: ring bell, dog salivates (conditioned reflex)

thorndike's law of effect

responses that have led to a desirable consequence (like access to food) are more likely to be repeated; responses that have led to an undesirable consequence (like electric shock) are less likely to be repeated; trial & error learning

operant conditioning

consequences of behavior determine whether those behaviors increase or decrease in frequency/intensity;

reinforcement: increase frequency

punishment: decrease frequency

what were the contributions and criticisms of behaviorism?

pros: emphasis on objective (observable) data; experimental right; advances in animal (and human) learning; made psychology scientific

cons: ignores cognitive and biological influences & genetics; S-R is overly simplistic (ignores the role of the organism); could not adequately explain higher level cognition (reasoning, and language) & received less attention; only in learning

early heroes of the cognitive revolution

cognitive psych existed before it had a name;

william james

european psychologists (ebbinghaus, donders, gestaltists)

even some behaviorists (tolman)

linguistics (chomsky) and computer science (newell and simon and others) also contributed to its growth

william james

the father of american psychology and a famous philosopher; primary and secondary memory (precursor to short and long term memory) & attention; described phenomenological experiences (not introspection into component parts);

functionalism: mental phenomenon have a purpose

contrast to structuralism's elemental conceptions of human experience (wundt, titchener)

hermann ebbinghaus

used scientific techniques to study memory and forgetting; he called "stream of consciousness"

nonsense syllables - not tainted by length, familiarity, or meaning; dependent variable was number of nonsense syllables recalled and number of trials it took (objective) lots of independent variables

franciscus (f.c.) donders

mental chronometry - can we measure how long mental processes take; reaction time as objective dependent variable; subtractive method (simple reaction time - detect & respond; choice reaction time - detect, discriminate, respond; then subtract the time it took for both and infer that discriminating takes 150 ms)

gestalt psychology

the whole is other than the sum of parts (arguing behaviorism's one stimulus \= one response and says that one stimulus \= multiple responses); more arguments against basic S-R theories; research on problem solving and creative thinking (like insight and epiphany); verbal protocols "talk aloud" "tell me what you're thinking while you solve this problem; images of vase or two faces

e.c. tolman

latent learning: learning can occur, even without rewards; people can learn things and not enact it in their behavior (strip mall ex: not rewarded, still learned); rats learning a maze - they learned without the reward but didn't have "motivation" until they received food as the reward; they had a mental map

cognitive maps

a type of mental representation; S-O-R psychology (stimulus-organism-response); use behavior to infer mental states; behaviorism predicted that rats would use a different path bc it was reinforced last time, but the rats chose a different path because they had a cognitive map from when they wandered the first time

behaviorists' simplistic view of speech production vs. the productivity of language

behaviorism: people are shaped to learn language through reinforcements and sentences are just a sequences of words that are learned through chains of responses

now: children's sentence production abilities are too advanced to be explained by only what they've heard; there are an infinite number of sentences that can be generated and understand with finite knowledge and resources; have a hierarchical design (grammar, recursion, etc.)

how did linguistics contribute to the cognitive revolution in psychology?

linguistics: human language is a sophisticated, hierarchical system that involves storage and manipulation (stored process, not from outside stimuli) of hierarchical phrase structures; is infinitely creative, innate, and modular (rules for language are separate from rules for other skills; independent); chomsky

how did computer science contribute to the cognitive revolution in psychology?

information processing approach: computer analogy to explain how the mind works; programs are modular; newell & simon; parallel distributed processing (PDP) / connectionism; parallel processing (humans)--serial processing (one, then next, then next, etc.); nervous system and neurons connected to each other; knowledge is "distributed through connections;

bayesian models of cognitive processes

statistical; based on conditional reasoning (if...then) and probabilities; inferring causal relationships and categories; learning models for visual perception, categorization, language

ex: long blonde hair consistent with female - barbie vs. van halen lol

ulric neisser

father of cognitive psychology (coined the phrase); use behavior to make inferences about mental states and processes; computer metaphor & information-processing approach (some input then sent and create some output)

what are the themes of the new cognitive psychology?

1. cognitive processes are knowledge-based!!! (constructive, interpretative, and active); both experience and knowledge play a role

2. infer hidden mechanisms through many methods (infer the hidden cause of an observed effect); successfully used in many sciences; reaction time, mistakes, neurophysiological evidence

3. creative tension (or balance) between empiricism and scientific realism (empiricism is directly observed and stay close to the observations; scientific realism explains phenomena in terms of deeper structure, even if they can't be directly observed)

bottom-up processing

sensory data is processed; driven by senses, not by background knowledge (ex. rote rehearsal; new language)

top-down processing

prior knowledge influences how we process incoming information (ex. scripts)

what is cognitive science and what are its contributing disciplines?

cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of the mind/brain; cognitive (mental) processes: perceiving, remembering, language understanding, learning, thinking, acting, etc.; frequently uses a computation or information-processing view--math!

constituent disciplines: philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, psychology

^converging evidence rom multiple disciplines

cognitive neuroscience

studies of brain structure & function; doctrine of localization: specific brain areas control specific parts of the body

cerebral cortex

frontal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, temporal lobe

frontal lobe

planning, selective attention, inhibition of responses, memory strategies, problem solving; contains motor cortex; speech production

located at front

parietal lobe

contains somatosensory cortex; integration of sense, visual attention, and coordination of motor movement

located on top towards back

occipital lobe

visual processing

located at back

temporal lobe

memory, object recognition, auditory processing, speech comprehension (left)

located at bottom

what methods do cognitive scientists use to study mental processes?

dissociation method, brain imaging techniques structure, measures of brain activity

dissociation method

double dissociation: a complementary pattern involving two tasks in two patients with lesion in two different brain areas; tasks a and b are modular (separate mechanisms) and neurologically distinct

brain imaging techniques

CT, MRI, diffusion tensor imaging, fMRI

CT (computerized tomography) scan

x-ray technique provides 'slices' of brain structure, but does not show what is active

magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

shows how molecules respond to a strong magnetic field to produce detailed structural images

diffusion tensor imagining

a type of MRI that uses water flow to show the orientation of white-matter tracts; sued to detect lesions and traumatic brain injury (TBI)

fMRI

measures changes in the magnetic properties of blood as it undergoes changes in oxygenation levels and glucose from blood in real time as the subject performs different tasks

it provides insight into brain structure and activity!!!

blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD)

uses donder's subtractive method

revolutionizes cognitive neuroscience, but must be careful bc sometimes brain inhibits

measures of brain activity

microelectrodes, EEG, TMS, PET

microelectrodes

measure brain activity of individual neurons in animals only

electroencephalography (EEG)

measures which parts of the brain are electrically active during various tasks; measures activity over very large areas

transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

(electrical stimulation of brain areas) apply electrical currents to brain to see which parts of brain are responsible for different functions; may cause seizures

positron emission tomography (PET)

(aka cerebral blood flow) measure glucoses uptake or blood flow during an activity

memory

not one single "thing"; it has several functions:

record of our experiences & work-space for our moment-to-moment thoughts

does NOT have one single capacity, structure, or process

what is memory span and what factors influence its size?

the number of items (letters, digits, words,) you can remember in order

it is a measure of short-term (working) memory

adult average is 7

factors for better influence: related, concrete (vs. abstract), rhythmic presentation, faster presentation rate, auditory presentation (vs. visual), short production time (shorter words), no distractions

how can memory span limitations be overcome?

encoding (chunking) & retrieval (hierarchical organization)

encoding

transformation of sensory input that allows it to be entered into memory

storage

the operation of holding or retaining information

retrieval

the process by which stored information is extracted from memory

chunking (encoding)

chunking of groups of digits (or other information) into meaningful units

hierarchical organization (retrieval)

organize the chunks into groups, use the hierarchy for retrieval cues; example of active top-down processing;

people self-report that they do this and people's speech patterns are slower between chunks which also gives evidence for this

what data supports existence of these encoding and retrieval strategies?

verbal protocols (asked him) and behavioral evidence (recorded how long) induced that he used a combination of encoding and retrieval strategies

what metaphor do information processing models use for cognition?

mind is like a computer \-- it takes in information, changes it, and creates an output

what is the multi-store model?

classic example of an information-processing theory of cognitive phenomena (boxes are the processes and arrows are the information movement)

three memory stores

sensory registers, STS, and LTS with distinct:

capacity, duration, and code

control processes: rehearsal, elaboration, development of retrieval cues

sensory store

information is held in a modality-specific "buffer" until it is attended to or forgotten (seeing, hearing, smelling, etc. all separate);

different stores: iconic, echoic, haptic

iconic memory

code: visual

capacity: all sensory input (for a short time)

duration: .3 - 1 sec (short)

echoic memory

code: auditory

capacity: all sensory input (for a short time; length of a sentence)

duration: 2-4 seconds (sentence-ish)