Exam #2 Review Sheet Psych 240

Working Memory

A system for temporarily holding and manipulating information.

Raven's Progressive Matrices

A non-verbal intelligence test that measures abstract reasoning and working memory.

Reading Span

A measure of working memory that tests how many final words can be recalled after reading a series of sentences.

Anterograde Amnesia

The inability to form new memories after a brain injury.

Hippocampus

A brain region critical for the formation of new memories.

Phonological Loop

A component of Baddeley’s model of working memory responsible for verbal and acoustic information.

Articulatory Suppression

A technique that inhibits memory recall by repeating a sequence of words.

Visuospatial Sketchpad

A component of working memory that processes visual and spatial information.

Central Executive

The part of working memory that coordinates attention and controls the flow of information.

Explicit Memory

Memory that involves conscious recollection of facts and events.

Implicit Memory

Memory that does not require conscious thought, often measured by task performance.

Transience

The tendency for memories to become less accessible over time.

Blocking

Inability to retrieve information due to interference from related information.

Schema

A mental structure that helps organize and interpret information.

Prime

To activate certain concepts or associations in memory.

Cognitive Interview

A technique used to enhance eyewitness memory recall by allowing witnesses to describe their experience without interruption.

Misattribution

Assigning a memory to the wrong source or context.

Depth of Processing

The idea that the more deeply we process information, the better we remember it.

False Memory

A memory that is distorted or fabricated, often influenced by suggestive information.

Proactive Interference

When old information interferes with the learning of new information.

Retroactive Interference

When new information interferes with the retrieval of old information.

Mental arithmetic

Mental arithmetic heavily relies on working memory, the cognitive system responsible for temporarily holding and manipulating information

Hypnosis

• not good at pulling on memories 

• more eager to corporate

• generate a lot of information not necessarily right 

Proactive interference 

• old info affected learning of new information

simultaneous lineups (police)

• more likely for false positive 

• could have a problem with signal detection and have a false alarm

Sequential lineups (police)

less likely to say yes to anyone  

Encoding specificity

memories are tied to context 

Overwriting hypothesis

• misinformation overwrites memory 

• example : Hammer Experiement

Hammer experiment. 

• • video of a man carrying a hammer 

  • group 1 control: man was carrying tool- the correct hammer 

  • group 2 misinformation: The man was carrying a screwdriver - mostly right for hammer identification 

  • group 3:Man was carrying a screwdriver. Hammer or wrench? - people chose hammer. if it was overwritten it should be 50/50 but it was not

Misinformation experiments (Loftus) ( hit v/s smashed )

• hit vs. smashed.

  • video of car crash 

  • 1 groups question had hit and the other had smashed 

  • asked if there was broken glass to all 

  • poeple who saw smashed thogh the ere was broken class and were influenced by misinformation

Misinformation experiments (Loftus) ( yield v/s stop sign )

• video of car crash 

• 1 groups question had yeild sign  and the other had stop sign  

• picture of stop sign and yield sign and asked which one is right 

• poeple who were told stop sign thought it was a stop sign 

 inferences made: encoding

• giving context affects what is encoded and then later recalled 

 inferences made: reterival

• Helen Keller experiment

  • a story was said about a person(random name) 

  • at retrieval it was told that it was about hellen kellar  for 50% of the people

  • peeple were then tested if the sentence” she was deaf and blind” was in the text

  • the helen kellar group asaid yes more often due to prior information

 inferences made: storage

• native american story from lecture 13

  • recall of teh sotry led to more distorted 4 moths fater

  • change in the memory dring storage

  • schemas affect the memory 

  • forgetting happens

• assertion

• asserting a fact 

implication

• ex: Tabcin pills get through eh winter without cold, take tabcin pills, but it never says the two are related but we still make the inference that they are 

• never explicitly  saying something is related

hedges

things that imply something is really good and something but not guaranteed  or factual

comparisons

• unclear 

• ex:  bananas make you healthier! -> healthier than what?

Pragmatic inferences:

somehow useful/helpful and maybe true but not right necessarily 

in comprehension (fixing the bird house):

• didn’t directly say hammer 

• still made an inference do to the “pounding” word 

Logical inference

logically must happen

• Spatial relations example.

  • people make inferences with spatial organization 

  • people do not make incorrect inferences 

Event schema

• script is ually agreed about 

• recalled in order

• faster reading when in that order

• more likely to to recall information from the schema that weren't true

• ex: going to a restaurant

Scene schema

• remember things in a scene that are part of you schema 

• spent less time looking at expected things 

• false memory for thinf that were not there bu where in the schema 

• memory is not good if no expectations

Story (Narrative) schema

• story has an order ‘

• memory when it follows this script 

  • non-example: oppenheimer-out of order hard to remember 

 Prior knowledge hindering comprehension and retrieval:

War of the Ghosts

• the british students used their propior cultutrls ideas to frame their thoughts and recall 

central information

• if its important ad encoding you will remember it otherwise you wont remember it 

• Rating importance.

•  Children extract central info implicitly.

Prior knowledge facilitating comprehension and retrieval

• prior knowledge tlets you organize memory during encoding and make links with what you know 

DRM paradigm

where participants are presented with lists of semantically related words, and then falsely recall or recognize a non-presented, but related, critical lure word

semantic vs. syntactic information: Sachs (Galileo paragraph) study

participants listened to a paragraph that contained a critical sentence; after hearing the passage, they were shown several sentences with varying differences from the original and asked which had appeared in the sentences; conditions: identical, semantic, syntactic, word order

Sachs (Galileo paragraph) study results

recognized semantic changes as new; remembered meaning better than structure; unable to distinguish other changes, especially after a delay; memory for exact wording fades quickly

Verbatim information: vs. gist information:

• we remember the gist of the information not the exact wording

• when more ideas are stung togher the moer likely we are to remember them

•  In-class demonstration of sentence memory and data.

Teachable language comprehender (TLC - Collins and Quillian semantic network model). 

Hierarchical network structure
Feature storage (highest node)
Each category has a "parent" except for the root node
Each node is a category or a concept which has certain properties associated with it

cognitive economy

• highest node that still can take on that definition

• save the amount of info that needs to be saved 

essentially, push the definition to the highest node that can take on the definition so lower nodes do not store repetitive defs

inheritance(TLC)

child nodes take defs from their parents

Sentence verification tasks

Given statements such as "a robin is a bird" or "all birds are chickens"
Distance effects (more links, more time)
The more links you have to follow in the hierarchy, the longer time it should take

Problems with TLC

• reverse distance

• typicality

•  basic-level effects.

reverse distance

problem with TLC

• a dog is an animal versus a dog is a mammal 

• better at the first statement than the other derive the dog-mammal relationship of being closer 

typicality

• problem with TLC

• some exemplars are more common representations but the TLC model says all exemplars of a category are on the same level 

• example: water is a more common exemplar of a drink rather than jaritos

 basic-level effects.

• most people default tot eh most basic level

  • Ex: given an image of a german shepherd but are more likely to say dog versus german shepherd

Revised model with spreading activation

Not hierarchical
Now there are nodes that are connected to any other node
Links vary in strength
Some associations are shorter (stronger) and some are longer (weaker)
Explicit information about relations
Links are labeled to specify the type of relationship (is a, can, has, is not a)
Intersection search:

Spreading activation

A node is activated when person sees, reads, hears, thinks about a concept
Activation spreads to adjacent nodes
Spread of activation permits sentence verification
example: To prove that salmon can swim, we start at both salmon and swim and start spreading activation from both ends, and eventually the activation will intersect (salmon and swim intersect at fish)

reverse distance in revised TLC

• links have determined distances that allow for spread to be slower or faster in all directions 

Priming

Lexical decision: are these both real words?
How long does it take to make the decision
If you've seen "doctor", you're faster to verify that "nurse" is a word because doctor is semantically related to nurse, whereas if you see "butter", it'll take longer to recognize "nurse" as a word

Explicit memory

conscious, verbalize 

Semantic vs. Episodic

Semantic memory

general knowledge, memory of facts 

• not tied to time or place

• fact about the world

Episodic memory

Personal episodes 

• how did you get to campus today

• first kiss?

• Specific time and place form you own POV

Categorization:

• we treat similar things the same 

• Allows inferences about members of the class 

• • 4 categories  

  • pigeon peck on one of the four keys depending on the stimulus(image given)

  • trained for 30 days 

  • become good at identifying what images go in what category w original stimuli 

    • flaw: could be by associations 

  • Gave new examples/stimuli and catorized and pigeons were still pretty good.

Pigeons expriement

• Categorization proof

• 4 categories  

• pigeon peck on one of the four keys depending on the stimulus(image given)

• trained for 30 days 

• become good at identifying what images go in what category w original stimuli 

  • flaw: could be by associations 

• Gave new examples/stimuli and catorized and pigeons were still pretty good.

Experiment on physical similarity vs. conceptual knowledge (milk vs. mashed-up food experiment).

• categories are not always similarity based 

  • ex: hawks are birds but they are more similar to bats 

• Children 4 and older can identify that the black bird(the hawk) mashes up food like the flamingo even though they are not similar looking instead of give milk like a bat

Classical view: 

• defining properties:

  • necessary and sufficient( defined and mutually exclusive)

  • Problem: what defines "game." - is hard to define because there are not clear backgrounds

Modern probabilistic view: 

characteristic properties: properties and features that are in common 

• fuzzy and probabilistic

• similarity between members- some have more or less characters

Typicality evidence: 

• Ratings. 

• Sentence verification

  • more faster to verify typical exemplars then less typical exemplars 

•  Hedges

ratings

• exemplars with more charecteristic properties are seen as more typical in that category

Sentence verification

Judge each of the following as "true" or "false"
A robin is a bird
A bat is a bird
A hawk is a bird
A chicken is a bird

People are faster to verify more typical exemplars than less typical exemplars
Ex. Quicker to say true to "tennis is a sport" than "curling is a sport"

Categorization on the basis of similarity: To exemplars, To prototype

Exemplar Theories
•Exemplar: example of a category
•Multiple examplars are stored in memory
•Categorize new things based on similarity to stored exemplars (e.g., closest exemplar)

Prototype Theories
•Prototype: a best, ideal, or average example
•Only a 'prototype' is stored in memory
•categorize based on similarity to prototype

3 Metric Axioms:

minimality:

symmetry:

triangle:

minimality

dissimilarity between concept and itself must always be smallest possible

disproof: broken by people rating familiar things higher
- Apple-apple more similar than pomegranate-pomegranate

symmetry

- How similar is an apple to a pomegranate?
- How similar is a pomegranate to an apple?
Should have the same number but an unfamiliar category is judged more similar to a familar category than vice versa. Apple is less similar to pomegranate but pomegranate is more similar to an apple

Triangle Ineqalily