Cognitive Psychology Assessment 2

Dichotic Listening Task

2 different channels to each ear in headset and repeat was is hear from each ear

Selective Attention

Cognitive process of directing awareness to relevant stimuli while ignoring irrelevant stimuli in the environment

Cocktail Party Effect

When you hear your name your attention switches to unattended message

Dopamine

Motivational component of rewards-motivated behavior

Acetylcholine

CNS, plays role in arousal, memory, and learning

Endogenous Attention

Top down/goal oriented, dopamine driven, visual cortex —> prefrontal cortex

Exogenous Attention

Bottom up/stimulus oriented, acetylcholine driven, prefrontal cortex —> visual cortex

Incentive Sensitization Theory

Appetitive cues trigger desire for dopamine release

Spatial Covert Attention

Selection of information based on spatial location in the absence of eye movements

Sustained Attention

Perform a task continuously over a prolonged duration without significant loss in performance on the task

Dot Probe Task

Determine stimuli fixations with dots on L or R of screen

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation Paradigm

Single task (click when you see x), and dual task (x and o)

Attentional Blink

If you are finding specific shape after series of shapes are presented, you will miss the specific shape because of how fast the shapes are being presented

Affects of ADHD on Attentional Blink

Children with ADHD will have a greater attention deficit that will lead to a larger blink

Kahneman Capacity Model of Attention

Humans posses only a limited amount of processing capacity and the extent to which tasks can be performed successfully depends on how much demand those tasks place on the limited capacity processor

Focused Attention

Auditory and visual processing can be the only input for full processing

Divided Attention

Task similarity, task difficulty, and practice help us process multiple inputs

Stroop Effect

Naming printed color of colored words ahs two conflicting tasks (Ian failed at this)

Automatic Process

Fast, effortless, unconscious, heuristic (no interference on other tasks)

Controlled Process

Slow, effortful, conscious, strategic (interference). Can become automatic process with practice.

STM

Set of processes used to hold onto and rehearse information in awareness. Depends on capacity and duration

STM Simple Span Capacity

7 ± 2 chunks of information

STM Digital Span Capacity

4 ± 1 chunks of information

STM Duration

Unless information is kept active, people will forget within 15 - 30 seconds

Decay Theory

Information is forgotten because it becomes weaker or less activated over time

Interference Theory

Information is forgotten because of competition, or interference, from other items, which compromises learning

Waugh and Norman Study

Paper that found that with a 16 digit list when people were asked to retrieve first instance after probe digit strength of recall decayed over time and more digits lead to more interference and therefore more forgetting.

Working Memory Capacity

Information storage in the short term that occurs in the context of other processing

Complex Span Tasks

Involve both storage and processing components

Baddeley’s Working Memory Model

2 slave systems and central executive coordinate mental activities using the slave systems to carry out processing tasks

Phonological Loop

Baddeley slave system that handles processing of verbal info

Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad

Baddeley slave system that handles processing of visual and spatial info

Central Executive

Baddeley’s attentional controller of the system

Episodic Buffer

Baddeley addition that states how episodic information from long-term episodic memory may be stored temporarily in the slave systems and manipulated in working memory

Selective Interference

Similar activities using the same slave system will interfere with each other

Problems with Tripartite Model

Slave systems over look touch and smell

Atkinson and Shiffrin Model

Word Length Effect

Shorter words are recalled faster than longer words

Canberra

Capital of Australia

Availability

Info being stored in the “box”

Accessibility

Info that is able to be taken out of the “box”

Cue Overload Principle

Competition from similar target creates interference (ex: forgetting where you parked your car)

Proactive Interference

Old memories interfere with new memories (PORN)

Retroactive Interference

New memories interfere with old memories (PORN)

Two-List Interference Paradigm

Research method used to study interference in memory, specifically proactive interference and retroactive interference. It involves participants learning two lists of items, with the second list often overlapping with the first, to assess how the learning of one list impacts the recall of the other. 

Retrograde Amnesia

Deficit in learning/remembering events that occurred prior to some event or brain trauma

Anterograde Amnesia

Deficit in learning/remembering events that occurred subsequent to some event or brain trauma

Graded Amnesia

Memory loss is not uniform, but varies depending on the age or recency of the memory

Retrieval as a Reconstructive Process

Using a verbal label to reconstruct a visual memory can lead to distortion

Loftus and Palmer

Participants recalled traffic accidents and were asked questions with different words to prompt a certain kind of answer that didn’t happen (ex: How fast did the cars bump? Was there broken glass? How fast did the cars collide?)

Tulving’s Encoding Specificity

Retrieval success depends on how info is encoded and how the reconstruction process maps onto the encoding process (environment, mental states, processing)

Context Dependency

Memory improves because the retrieval environment recapitulates the encoding environment (ex: scuba divers recall better underwater than on land)

Transfer-Appropriate Processing

Focuses on how well cognitive operations used to encode overlap/match the cognitive operations used to retrieve (semantic and phonemic of same word have different processing that encode differently)

Mood-Dependent Memory

Inducing a happy or sad mood in participants during recall leads to better memory if the same mood was induced during encoding

Simcock and Hayne

Paper that described how encoding specificity for preverbal memory doesn’t allow for language activation. Details described by language required to form memory for language description. Kids didn’t have the vocab to describe the event as kids and were unable to describe the event when they developed language (ex: bilingual kids forgetting memories in one language)

Episodic Memory

Memory for experienced events

Semantic Memory

Memory for general knowledge and facts

Implicit Memory

Unconscious retrieval of skills/procedures like riding a bike

Explicit Memory

Conscious retrieval of info from experiences

Lexical Decision Task

Participants determine whether items are part of one’s mental lexicon (dictionary)

Priming

Procedure to measure implicit influence via response time of activation

Repetition Priming

Faster reaction time to stimulus after seeing it a second time

Semantic Priming

Faster reaction time for stimulus with directly related associations (car/garage)

Positive/Negative Constructs

Faster reaction times for inherent biases and stereotypes (love/friendly, hate/anger)

Roediger and Mcdermont Paper

In word recall test, participants were trying to recall or recognize the the critical lure (sleep) and a false memory was observed

Serial Position Effect

Performance is best for words at beginning and end of list

Primacy Effect

Remembering the beginning of list (LTM)

Recency Effect

Remembering the end of list without retention interval since words are in STM

Associations

Links connecting nodes

Nodes

Idea or representation (conceptual or physical, think of them as lightbulbs)

Active Node

Activation or accumulated inputs is above threshold

Semantic Network

Nodes can receive activation from one or more neighboring nodes

Spreading Activation

Response times depend on association strength and stronger associations have faster responses

Fan Effect

Activation spreads across nodes in fan like manner. Bigger fans mean there is less activation energy available to overcome threshold value

Forward Association

Main node branches to other node

Backward Association

Other nodes branch to main node

Familiarity and Recognition

Bread analogy: Fresh bread are the strong studied words and stale bread is the not studied weak words

False Fame Effect

Individuals mistakenly identify non-famous names as famous due to a familiarity based judgement error

Misinformation Paradigm

Tendency for info you learned after an event to interfere with your original memory of what happened