Cognitive Psych Exam 1

William Wundt

Focused on introspection; criticized for being too subjective.

Herman Ebbinghaus

Tested people on memorizing nonsense words like 'G5B'.

Mary Whiton Calkins

Studied the recency effect; first female president of the APA.

William James

Known for the 'tip-of-the-tongue' phenomenon and principles of psychology.

The Gestalt Approach

Emphasizes that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; involves principles like closure, proximity, continuity, and similarity.

Gestalt

 an overall quality that transcends the individual elements

Gestalt Psych

emphasizes we have basic tendencies to organize things and that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Behaviorism

Led by John B. Watson; focuses on observable reactions to stimuli rather than introspection.

Operational Definition

A precise definition specifying how a concept is to be measured.

Why did the Cognitive Revolution start…

people were disappointed with the behaviorist approach

Well known Cognitive Psychologists…

Jean Piaget with his focus on children’s thought processes & Noam Chomsky with linguistics and the concept of universal grammar

The birth of modern Cognitive Psych began in…

1956

Cognitive Psych in Present Times…

Enormous influence on the discipline of psych; issues with ecological validity; study of real life issues.

Cognitive Science:

an interdisciplinary field whose principal concern is answering questions about the mind and how it functions

Cognitive Psych Interdisciplinary Fields

cognitive psych, neuroscience, computer science, philosophy, linguistics (in some cases), sociology, anthropology, and economics 

Cognitive Psychology

Synonym for cognition and refers to the cognitive approach in psychology

Cognition

Refers to mental activity, involving acquisition, storage, transformation, and use of knowledge. Related to knowledge processes.

Attention

concentration of mental activity

Top-down processing

Mental focus directed by objectives; attending to specific stimuli.

Bottom-up processing

Attention captured by stimuli from the environment.

Recency Effect

observation that our recall is especially accurate for the final items in a series of stimuli

Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve

A graphical representation of how information is lost over time when there is no attempt to retain it.

Saccadic Eye Movement

 series of little jumps of the eye bring the center of the retina (Fovea) over the words being read

Fixation

period between two saccadic movements where your visual system pauses briefly in order to acquire information that is useful for comprehending the written text

Working Memory

Brief immediate memory for the limited amount of material that you are currently processing

Working-Memory Approach

Our immediate memory is a multipart system that temporarily holds and manipulates information while we perform cognitive tasks

Long-term Memory

Memory system that retains information accumulated throughout one's lifetime.

Chunking

Grouping information into larger units to enhance memory + strongly associated components

Cognitive Neuroscience

Combines research from cognitive psychology with brain structure and function assessments.

Phonological Loop

Component of working memory that processes auditory information for a short period of time.

What impairs visual search tasks…

The isolated-feature/combined feature effect & the feature present/feature-absent effect

The isolated-feature/combined feature effect

the target differed from the irrelevant items in display w/ respect to a simple feature such as color, observers could quickly detect target

The feature present/feature-absent effect

people can typically locate a feature that is present more quickly than a feature that is absent.

Cerebral Cortex

Outer layer of the brain crucial for cognitive processes.

Social Cognitive Neuroscience

Exploration of cognitive processes in social interactions using neuroscience techniques.

Brain Lesions

destruction of the brain in an area most often by strokes, tumors, or blows to the head and other accidents

Mind Wandering

Shift of thoughts from external environment to internal processing.

Mindless Reading

Your eyes may move but you’re reading without processing the meaning of the text.

Thought Suppression

the attempt to eliminate thoughts, ideas, and images related to an undesirable stimulus

Ironic Effects of Mental Control

a term used by Wegner to describe how our efforts can backfire when we attempt to control the contents of our consciousness

Empirical Evidence

scientific evidence obtained through careful observation and experimentation

Introspection

Carefully trained observers analyzing their own sensation and report them

AI (Artificial Intelligence)

branch of computer science that seeks to explore human cognitive processes with computer models that show “intelligent behavior” and can accomplish the same tasks that humans do.

Pure AI

an approach which designs a program to accomplish a cognitive task as efficiently as possible

Computer Modeling

Attempts to take human limitations into account and thus create a program that performs a cognitive task in an analogous way to how humans would solve the problem.

The Computer Metaphor of the Mind and Information Processing

a metaphor for human cognitive processes that describes them like a computer. Receiving input, storing memory, performing operations on it and producing an output.

The Connectionist Approach

argues that cognitive process can be best understood in terms of linked networks

Spreading Activation Theory

 an analogous model for the association of ideas, memories, and the like, based on the notion that activation of one item stored in memory travels through associated links to activate another item.

 Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve

a graphical representation that shows how quickly info is forgotten over time.

Gradual Decay

After the initial drop, the rate of forgetting slows down over time

Cognitive Psych in Present Times:

Enormous influence on the discipline of psych; issues with ecological validity; study of real life issues.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) / rTMS

Uses magnets to introduce activity in a certain region of the Brian. Likened to a “temporary brain lesion.” Only works on outer brain regions

Event-Related Potential Technique (ERP)

Uses electrodes on the outside of a person’s skull…even through hair.

Positron Emissions Tomography (PET scan)

• Similar to an MRI

• Uses radioactive tracer chemicals to allow the study of blood flow

• Allows us to see areas using lots of blood.

• Higher Spatial Resolution Data

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

• Uses oxygen to track brain activity

• Using high blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) contrast

• More precise that PET & no need for radioactive tracer

Divided-Attention Task

trying to pay attention to 2 or more simultaneous stimuli

Multitasking

trying to accomplish two or more tasks at the same time

Task Switching Delays

It takes us time to change tasks, causing us to work more slowly and make more errors during the transitions

Selective Attention

paying attention to certain kinds of info, while ignoring other ongoing info

Cocktail Party Effect

Even if you are paying close attention to one conversation, you may notice if your name is mentioned in a nearby conversation

Working Memory Capacity

the brief, immediate memory for material that we are currently processing

Phobic Disorder

an excessive fear of a specific object or situation

Attention Bias

 situation/phenomenon in which people pay extra attention to some stimuli or some features

Cognitive-Behavioral Approach

psychological problems arise from inappropriate thinking (cognitive factors) and inappropriate learning (behavioral factors)

Fixation

period between two saccadic movements where your visual system pauses briefly in order to acquire information that is useful for comprehending the written text

Perceptual Span

the number of letters and spaces that we perceive during a fixation

Parafoveal Preview

the fact that readers can access information about upcoming words even though they are currently fixated on a word to the left (in English) of those words

Regressions

moving your eyes backward to earlier material in the sentence or passage. Rereading

Parietal Lobe

an area of the brain which processes your sense of touch and assembles input from your other senses into a form you can use

Unilateral Spatial Neglect

 A condition in which a person ignores part of his or her visual field often as result to damage to the Parietal lobe

The Orienting Attention

a network of brain regions responsible for the kind of attention required for visual search, in which you must shift your attention around to various spatial locations

The Executive Attention Network

a network of brain regions responsible for the kind of attention we use when a task focuses on conflict (inhibition)

Split-phrase Switching

in dichotic listening task If you were told to attend to the right ear, you should just repeat that message with no problems, even though it is a confusing sentence. INSTEAD, almost all participants inadvertently switched to shadoring the other ear because that message “finished”

 Consciousness

the awareness people have about the outside world and about their perceptions, images, thoughts, memories, and feelings

Dichotic Listening Task

1 message presented to left ear & a different message is presented to the right

The Stroop Task

• Online questionnaire related to female body image (shape, weight, & eating + neutral words)

• Women took longer to read words related to shape v.s. to control words

• They were especially likely to have high scores on the Eating Attitudes Test (risk for developing eating disorders)

Visual Search Task

• Find a target in a visual display w/ numerous distractors

• More accurate @ identifying targets if it appears frequently

• Variables influencing visual search

Illusory Conjunction

wrong combo of features; occurs during attention overload or distraction. Features are processed independently. Role of top-down processing

Blindsight

• Vision w/o awareness; damage to the visual cortex.

• People can still identify some visual attributes of stimulus reported a “not seen,” perception of stimulus (w/o conscious awareness) may be possible

• Small portion of the info from the retina travels to other locations on the cerebral cortex, outside the visual cortex.

• Research on consciousness demonstrate that “how things seem” is not necessarily “how things are”

• Visual stimulus may be identified by info registered in other cortical locations

  Damage to the visual cortex. Has no vision but still possesses the ability to move in ways that mimic those with sight. (not bumping into objects) Typically seen in cases with people who’ve gone blind later in life

Bottleneck Theory’s:

Models: 1.Broadbent’s, 2. Treisman’s, 3. Split-phrase Switching, 4. Deutsch & Deutsch

• Narrow passageways

• Info either passes through bottleneck or is lost

• Too simple; underestimate flexibility

• Info not lost @ just one phase of the attention process

Broadbent’s Model

• Series of info-processing channels

• Sensory buffer processes physical characteristics

• Limit processing to a single stream

• Everything else is blocked out

Treisman’s Model

• Similar to Broadbent, but the filter is different

• Other info isn’t completely blocked

• Value analogy: other info gets less attention unless you reach a threshold

• Still can’t focus on everything

Split-phrase Switching Model

• Recieving different info in each ear

Deutsch & Deutsch Model

• Late selection model

• We can process all stimuli for meaning

• No filter

• We can only respond to a limited subset of stimuli

• Allows for subliminal messaging

Short-term Memory

 the memory system responsible for holding on to a small amount of information that has been recently taken from the environment

Rehearsal

repeating the items to remember silently

Serial Position Effect

The U shape relationship between a words position in a list and its probability of accurate recall.

Primacy Effect

Better recall for items at the beginning of the list

Semantics

the meaning of words and sentence

Proactive Interference (PI)

 When people have trouble learning new material because previous material interferes with new learning

Sensory Memory

a storage system that records information from each of the senses

Control Processes

intentional strategies, such as rehearsal, that people may use to improve their memory

Acoustic Confusions

when people confuse similar sounding stimuli

Visuospatial Sketchpad

processes both visual and spatial information

Episodic Buffer

temporary storehouse that can hold and combine information from the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad, and long-term memory

Central Executive

 integrates information from the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad, the episodic buffer, and long-term memory

Atkinson and Shiffrin's Model of Information Processing

Info processing approach

• mental processes are similar to the operations of computer

• Info progresses through a series of stages, one step @ a time

Baddeledy’s Model of Working Memory

people performed quickly & quickly and accurately on both these 2 simultaneous tasks

Dr. Oberauer’s Model

1. Maintianing structural representations by dynamic bindings

2. Manipulating structural representations

3. Flexible configurations

4. Partial decoupling from long-term memory

5. Controlled retrieval from long-term memory

6. Encoding of new structures into long-term memory

Brown/Peterson & Peterson Technique

present some items to be remembered; count backwards by 3 then attempt recall. Material held in short term is frequently forgotten in a minute.