Bing Psych 111 Exam 3

Short Term Memory

• Sensory memory

• Short-Term memory

• Working memory

Sensory memory

• Lasts around 1 second

• Forgetting is good/adaptive when done in the right way

Short term memory

• Lasts 1.5 minutes

Working Memory

• Phonological loop, visio-special sketch pad

• Uses the voice in your head to repeat information (limit of around 7 items)

What is the max amount of numbers we can easily remember?

7

Long Term Memory

• Episodic

• Semantic

• Procedural

Episodic Memory

• A memory for a particular event/episode that happened to you personally.

• Ex. What you had for breakfast, why you come to class. A form of mental time travel.

Semantic Memory

• What you know about the world

• Not tied to a personal experience

• Stores facts, ie. who was the first president, what’s the square root of 144.

Procedural Memory

• How to do things

• How do you tie your shoes, type in a phone number, or ride a bike

• Rarely produce any conscious experience of remembering

• Very hard to report

• Resistant to amnesia

What is your inner voice

• Short term memory

Elaborate Encoding

• To remember something, tie it to something you already know

The Baker-Baker paradox

• To remember things, connect them to things you know

Method of loci

• The memory palace

• Choose a place or path you know well and tie memories to it

Transfer appropriate processing

• Why you can't draw your phone even though you look at it a lot

Retrieval cue

• Something you think of to pull a specific memory at a specific time

• Interference

• Retroactive - learning new info hurts the recovery of old info

• Proactive - old memories interfere with new memories

Elaboration

• Helps establish retrieval cues that ease later recovery

• Creates a distinctive memory record that stands out

Flashbulb Memories

• Rich memory records

• Emotionally significant/surprising events

• What were you doing when…

• Usually not very accurate

Social Psychologists

• Study how people:

• behave in a group

• Behave because of a group

• Interpret other’s behavior

How do we form impressions of others?

Perceptions are influenced by BOTH what we see and what we expect to see

Person Perception

Impressions of others are influenced by:

• Clothing

• Attractiveness

• Facial expressions

• Skin color

• Hygiene

• Physical size

Attribution Theory

How do you explain other people’s behavior ?

Internal:

• You are the cause

• Dispositional attribution

External:

• The environment is the cause

• Situational attribution

Fundamental Attribution Error

• Overestimate internal factors

• Underestimate situational factors

Confirmation Bias

• We are more likely to pay attention to information that confirms our beliefs

• We also tend to ignore/disregard info that contradicts our beliefs

Self-fulfilling prophecy

• When the way tou behave creates your beliefs and influences your behavior

• Eg. I am “bad” at chem, or girls are “bad at math”

The Actor-Oberserver Effect

We tend to attribute:

• Our behavior to external sources

• Behavior of others to internal sources

• One exception:

  • Self serving bias

  • Internal attributions when outcome is +

  • Situation when the outcome is -

Kelley’s Covariation Model

Attributions are based on:

• Behavior (Elliot is late for work)

• Consistency (Is he late rarely, sometimes, or always?)

• Distinctiveness (Is Elliot only late to work or also to dinner, parties, etc..)

• Consensus (Is Elliot the only one who is late?)

Attitude

• A +/- evaluation/belief about something

• May affect behavior

• Cognitive

• Affective

• Behavioral

Cognitive Attitude

• What people know/believe about the object

Affective Attitude

• Feelings that the object produces

Behavioral Attitude

• Predisposition to act toward the object in a certain way

How are attitudes formed?

• Personality factors

• Exposure - just being exposed can lead to liking

• Experience:

  • Classical conditioning

  • Operant conditioning

  • Evaluative conditioning

Cognitive Dissonance

• Tension that is produced when behavior does not = attitude

• When this conflict occurs, attitudes often change

• Ex. Buying a new car, maybe your second choice, but you’ll find reasons why you like it

Social Influence

Social Norms:

• Behaviors that are bound to a situation

• Give you a sense of what you are supposed to do

• How should you behave in class?

• How should you behave at a party?

Social facilitation

• Enhancement of performance because of others

• Ie. Run faster or eat more

Social Interference

• Impairment of performance because of the presence of others

• Choking on words