Intro to Psychology

About: Memory, thinking, problem solving, decision-making, Language, Personality, Child development, social psychology, clinical psychology

Which activity requires memory?

• silently singing yourself a lullaby

• recalling what you did for your birthday last year

• understanding the difference between a cat and a mous

• riding a bike

Phases of Memory

1. ENCODING: learning new information or forming a new memory trace

2. STORAGE: maintaining a memory trace, a neural code in the brain

3. RETRIEVAL: activating a memory trace via a cue (probe for that memory)

Multi-store model of memory

1. sensory input

2. sensory memory (a second)

   1. information lost is not transferred

3. short term memory (30 seconds)

   1. information lost if not rehearsed

4. long term memory (+30 seconds to life)

Sensory Memory

• short and specific

• automatic reflection of a sense

• separate and short stores for each sense

• echoic memory (held for 3 sec.) & iconic memory (millisecond visual memory)

Echoic Memory

• sound-byte held for about 3 seconds

• located in echoic store (ear)

• sound memories

• delay time —> several seconds

• ex. recalling the specific words someone just said to you

Iconic Memory

• millisecond visual memory

• located in the iconic store (eye)

• delay time —> half a second

• afterimages

• ex. seeing a car pass by and still being able to picture it in your mind’s eye for a few seconds before it’s gone. 

Afterimages

the persistence of vision

Short Term Memory

• attended information moves from sensory to short term memory (unattended information is lost)

• limited time capacity: 20-30 seconds

  • dialing a phone number

  • remembering the beginning of a sentence

• limited capacity: magical number seven plus or minus two

Strategies to overcome short term memory limits

• Chunking strategy:

  • grouping items together in a meaningful way so multiple items are perceived as one

Long Term Memory

• Consciousness

• 2 types of long-term memory:

  • Implicit memory

  • Explicit memory

Implicit Memory

• non-declarative

• non-conscious

• when something in the past affects you without knowing

• procedural, priming, fear

• ex. playing the piano, tying your shoelaces

Explicit Memory

• Declarative

• Conscious

• when you think about something

• episodic, semantic

• ex. remembering your first piano lesson, knowing the French word for burrito when ordering at Taco Bell, thinking about the ski trip you took last weekend

Episodic Memory

• recollecting unique events within their specific time and place

• retrieving what, where, when of an event

• ex. specific episode of a show

Semantic Memory

• knowledge about the world or self that isn’t attached to a time and place

• no retrieval of learning, just what you know

• ex. fan knowledge about the show

Patient HM

—> helped our knowledge about dissociations in memory

• experimental neurosurgery to reduce seizure activity; removed the medial temporal lobes of the brain (including the hippocampus)

• could not remember the people, places, and objects he saw (even after repeated encounters)

• forgot conversations

Result:

• Intact short-term memory: can remember a short list of words for 30 seconds

• intact procedural memory: could learn new skill-based tasks

• Intact semantic memory: could recall major historical events of childhood

• profound episodic memory loss: he couldn’t learn new information BUT could recall his past in sparse detail

Anterograde Amnesia

The inability to form new episodic memories

Retrograde Amnesia

The loss of memories from before the onset of amnesia

• Ribot’s Law: Remote memories are less affected than recent memories

Hermann Ebbinghaus - nonsense syllables study

—> tested memory at various intervals and examined what was retained/forgotten

• created over 2000 cards of nonsense syllables and learned them

• learned sets of the syllables under strict testing conditions:

  • read the syllables without any inflection

  • read them at a consistently fast pace (2.5 items per second)

  • he did nothing else while running these experiments.

Result:

• the forgetting curve is exponential

• memory loss is largest early on (soon after learning) and slows down with time.

Spacing Effect

• way to optimize memory

• forgetting is reduced when learning is spread over time

  • repeated information is more valuable and stored more strongly in memory

Encoding Specificity Hypothesis

• memory retrieval is better when there is overlap in some source with encoding

• context overlap between learning and remembering

  • context: internal state (ex. mood) or external envrionment

Deep Sea Divers Study

• participants were separated into different environments where they were encoded and then told to recall the words.

• Encoded vs retrieved words:

  • encode on LAND — recall on LAND

  • encode UNDERWATER — recall UNDERWATER

  • encode on LAND — recall UNDERWATER

  • encode UNDERWATER — recall on LAND

Result:

• external context helps a lot to recall the words (meaning being encoded, the word increases the chances of recalling the words in the same environment) that

Decay Theory

• memories are lost over time due to disuse

  • like a muscle you don’t use, a memory gets weaker

Interference theory

• interference is responsible for much of forgetting

• newly encoded memories are susceptible to disruption and effects of interfering information

Proactive interference

• “forward in time”

• prior information interferes with encoding a new memory

  • ex. trouble learning a new phone number because your old number keeps popping up in your memory

Retroactive interference

• “backwards in time”

• Newly learned information interferes with a prior encoded memory

  • ex. trouble remembering an older password after you formed a new password

Proactive interference study

• experimental group: 1) learned recipe for Mulligatawny soup. 2) learned recipe for best ever broccoli cheese soup

• control group: 1) rest. 2) learn recipe for best ever broccoli cheese soup

• both were then asked: What are the ingredients for the best-ever Broccoli cheese soup?

Result:

• experimental group will remember fewer ingredients than the control group

• this is because prior information, other soup recipe, is interfering with the memory of the Broccoli soup

Retroactive interference study

• experimental group: 1) learned recipe for vanilla cupcakes. 2) learn recipe for cheesecake

• controlled group: 1) learned recipe for vanilla cupcakes. 2) rested.

• both were then asked: what are the ingredients for those cupcakes? 

Result:

• experimental group will remember fewer ingredients than the control group

• this is because new information is interfering with forming a memory for the vanilla cupcake recipe 

Memory retrieval

• construction of memories

• process of accessing stored information from long-term memory and bringing it into conscious awareness

False memories effect

• Memory “sin”

• Study example:

  • asked people to recall childhood experiences recounted by their parents over 3 sessions

  • a false memory was added to these experiences by the experimenter

Result:

• over time, 20% of people had a false memory during the second interview

Adaptive future thinking

• memory virtue

• the same brain regions that are engaged are construct the past overlap with those active when imagining the future

• memory is not about the past but the future. 

Congruent stimulus

one where the different components of a task or perception match or agree with each other

• the word “orange” written in orange ink

• easier and faster to identify

Incongruent Stimulus

experience conflict between two levels of processing

• the word “orange” in blue ink

• harder and slower to identify

Stroop Effect

• fist observed in 1935 by John Ridley Stroop

• cognitive phenomenon where it takes longer to name the ink color of a word than to read the word itself

• includes congruent & incongruent stimulus

Representation

refers to a symbol or thing which represents (‘refer to’, ‘stands for’) something else

• rats use some form of internal mental representation of a maze in order to navigate to a reward (cheese)

Categories (type of representation)

• categories have many functions:

  • Classification: allows us to treat different things as the same

  • communication: we communicate using words that refer to more abstract ideas/concepts

  • conserve “mental space”

• Usefulness:

  • if you know what you see (red, shiny, round, has a stem), you can then infer what an apple is (has seeds, sweet, edible, healthy)

Hierarchies of Categories

• Superordinate level (ex. furniture)

• preferred level/basic level (ex. chair)

• subordinate level (ex. windsor) 

The Fortress Problem

• an army general wants to attack a fortress in center of forest

• many roads lead to a fortress like spokes of a wagon wheel

• all the roads have land mines that are triggered by heavy traffic

• if the entire army travels down a road, land mines will go off.

Solution:

• the general sends small groups of soldiers down each of the roads, coordinating their movement so that they all arrive at the fortress at the same time.

The Tumor Problem

• patient has an abdominal tumor (in the center of the body)

• radiation will kill tumor, but rays are also strong enough to kill tumor will also destroy healthy tissue that rays pass through on way to tumor

Solution:

• focus several rays so that they all converge upon the tumor, providing the necessary amount of radiation at the same site.

Dual Process Theories

• controlled processing system (turtle):

  • conscious, explicit

  • effortful, requires motivation

  • slower

  • often more accurate

• Automatic processing system (rabbit):

  • often unconscious, implicit

  • requires little effort

  • fast

  • can be error-prone

Heuristics

• process of inference by intelligent guesswork, relying on general knowledge gained by experience

  • using a “rule-of-thumb” or “mental shortcut”

  • heurstics are mental shortcuts that are quick, effortless, intuitive, and automatic

  • ex. availability — we tend to make estimates/judgements based on what comes to mind easily

Availability Heuristic

• we tend to make inferences and estimates based on what comes to mind easily

  • traffic accident deaths are much more likely to be reported in mass media than stomach cancer deaths

  • this leads to a person deciding on the basis of availability would say death by traffic accident is more likely because that is the most accessible information we have

Representativeness heuristic

• people think something is more likely if it reflects their beliefs about a situation

  • ex. traits given in the description of jack are representative of peple’s beliefs about engineers

The framing effect

• loss framing: message emphasize the negative consequences of taking that action

  • involves losses of something — prefer risky option

• gain framing: message focuses on the benefits of a certain behavior

  • involves gaining something — prefer sure thing

Choice overload

• too much information to process makes people unwilling to decide between the options

• too much choices can also lead to being less satisfied with their options due to regret

  • ex. 6 jam options vs. 24 jam options

Regret

• a negative psychological state that involves blaming ourselves, feeling a sense of loss at what might have been, or wishing we could “undo” a previous choice that we made

• while regret can feel unpleasant, it could be helpful for decision making

  • (when deciding how to act, we often try to minimize the regret that might arise from our decision in the future. 

• actions: tend to generate more regret in the SHORT term

• inaction: tends to geerate more regret in the LONG term

Status quo bias

• preference for maintaining one’s current situation (and opposing actions that may change the state of affairs)

• Why? regret avoidance— greater regret for action than for inaction

• ex. organ donation study

Confirmation bias

• the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs

2-4-6 task

• each subject come into the lab, figures out the lab that creates the three-number sequence

• only told that the sequence 2 4 6 is produced by this unknown rule

• subjects are instructed to test 3-number sequences and are told whether the rule “fits” or “does not fit” 

Result:

• the correct rule is: three numbers in an ascending sequence

• people tend to give options that will confirm that they have the correct answer 

Varieties of Intelligence

• Crystallized intelligence: accumulated knwoledge over the lifetime

  • facts, vocabulary, language

• Fluid intelligence: ability to solve new problems quickly and reason abstractly

  • making inferences, finding patterns

Modern Intelligence tests

• a useful intelligence test satisfies 3 criteria

  • standardization

  • reliability

  • validity

• ex. Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS - modern IQ test)

Criterion 1 - Standardization

• a score should be interpreted in relation to some pre-tested group of people

• scores on the WAIS are distributed according to a normal distribution (bell curve-symmetrical curve)

  • most people fall into the middle of the curve near the average

  • extremely high and low scores are rae (<5%)

Criterion 2 - Reliability

• does a test produce consistent results when administered to the same person?

• test-retest reliability: does giving a person the same test twice should result in very similar scores

• spit-half reliability: does splitting the test into two parts result in similar scores between the two halves? 

Criterion 3 - Validity

• Predictive validity: what real-life outcomes does an intelligence test predict?

  • ex. elementary school achievement (GPA) predicts IQ test midlife.

• Content validity: What relevant real-life behavior does a test measure?

Language

• Textbook: a shared system of symbols (including spoken, written, and signed words and gestures) and a set of rules for how to combine those symbols to communicate meaning 

• a social act whereby we accomplish specific interpersonal goals 

• the neurocognitive processes involved in producing and understanding linguistic symbols

• fits within all other areas of pyschology (perception & sensorimotor control, cognitive neuroscience, varieties of long-term memory like vocabulary or grammatical, different memory stores, development, social and cultural psychology, attention & decision making)psychology

Features of human language

• symbols convey meaning

• arbitrary symbol/referent relation

• structured; rule-governed

• multilayered: levels of representation

• productive: rules are generative

• evolutionary: changes over time

Levels of representation (multilayered)

Includes:

• sentence

• phrase

• word

• morpheme

• phoneme

Pragmatics

• real-life use of langauge

• rules that govenr the practical aspects of language use

• such as:

  • taking turns

  • using intonation and gestures

  • talking to different types of people (ex. internet language)

Babbling (language development)

• Production of speech sounds by infants

• usually beginning around 6-7 months of age

• often takes the form of repeated consonant-vowel combinations

Language development (after Babbling)

• around 10 months of age: babbling begins to more loosely reflect the sounds of the home language

• 12 months: speaking single-word utterances

• 2 years: speaking two-word utterances

• 3 years: producing sentences with grammatical function words (ex. “of” and “the”)

• 5 years: speaking words similarly to adults in vocabulary and grammar

  • Overregulization error: extending the rules of word formation incorrectly to irregular exceptions. Those errors reveal children’s understanding of grammar (ex. I goed to the store)

Language acquisition

Begins with understanding and producing the phonemes of speech

Operant conditioning

researchers use this to determine whether babies differentiate between speech sounds or words

—> babies are trained to look in a certain direction when they perceive a difference

Comprehending (language development)

• 1-2 months: infants recognize differences between phonemes

• 1 year of life: babies can differentiate between the phonemes of all languages, but by 12 months, they only hear speech differences that are relevant to their home language

  • ex. complex speech sounds (like consonants), infants do not initially discriminate between language-specific vs. other language contrasts (L vs R in distinct english but not japanese)

• 6-9 months: know the meaning of many common nouns

  • Children track a speaker’s eye gaze to determine the referent of their words

  • 3 years: use grammatical context to determine the referent of a word heard

Word detection

• before 12 months of age, babies can determine when the words in speech begin and end

• this is great feat because speech sounds are continuous, and silences are more likely to occur within words than between words. 

How are we (babies) able to comprehend?

• babies statistically track which syllables are likely to occur with other syllables and develop expectations for how long words should be

• the segment that are initially demarcated might actually be multiword seuqnces rather than words per se

What makes human language special?

• only humans recombine all sorts of linguistic elements (phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, sentences)

• humans communicate about entities not immediately present in time or space; only using contextual nuance

• humans communicate with sensitivity for, and intent to alter the minds of others (ex. theory of mind, mentalizing, perspective-taking)

How do adults process language?

Three key features:

1. Human language processing occurs automatically, obligatorily, and below the level of conscious awareness (ex. Stroop effect, decision framing, anchoring effect)

2. Language processing is context sensitive across all linguistic levels,

   1. local & global content effects can trigger automatic or controlled processing (makes us vulnerable to misunderstanding/misinformation)

3. multilingualism:

   1. increases controlled processing demands; tied to sociocultural concerns

Local and Global context effects

• Local coherence: how well you understand relationships between adjacent pairs of sentences

• Global coherence: how well all the sentences relate to a theme

*Very vulnerable to misunderstanding & misinformation

Aphasia

loss of language function after neural insult

Traits

• characteristics that describe who a person is and explain how they typically behave

• Shape how a person interprets the world and can lead people to behave in similar ways across different situations

• Gordon Allport popularized the study of personality

Types of Traits

• Cardinal: those that dominate a personality

• Central: general dispositions that describe a person

• Secondary: relevant in only certain contexts

Lexical Hypothesis

• traits that provide useful ways to differentiate among people’s personality characteristics are necessarily encoded in language

• this hypothesis produces an unwieldly number of traits by which people can be described.

Factor analysis

• Analyzes the interrelations among different tests to look for the common factors underlying the scores.

• a statistical technique developed by Charles Spearman

Assessment

• The process of developing and validating tools to accurately measure and quantify traits and other features of personality

  • Self-reports: measure what people are willing and able to describe about themselves

  • Informant reports: Rating of a person made by their family and close friends.

The Big Five-Factor Model

The dominant model in the trait approach to personality.

—> Includes (OCEAN):

• Open-mindedness to experience

• Conscientiousness

• Extraversion

• Agreeableness

• Neuroticism

Facts about trait to remember:

• traits are BIPOLAR
  we are near the mean on most traits

• we will not like our scores on some of the traits

• we tend to care about and focus on EXTROVERSION

• the Big 5 were designed to BE INDEPENDENT of one another

Changes in personality stability across young adulthood

• increases in agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability

• increases in open-mindedness

• extraversion is mixed:

  • Social vitality stays the same

  • social dominance increases in adulthood.

• Life changes (ex. love or work) and formal counselling can change trait levels for the better.

Cultural Variation in Personality

• differences exist in the average levels of traits across cultures

  • political and cultural forces also shape how someone perceives average trait levels in their own culture (not always accurate)

• differences also exist in how much people are trying to change some aspect of their personality

Key concepts in developmental psychology

• nature vs. nurture

• continuity vs. discontinuity

• stability vs. change

• risk vs resilience

• plasticity/neuroplasticity

Plasticity

refers to an individual’s capacity to change and adapt in response to new experiences

neuroplasticity

refers specifically to the brain’s ability to change and reorganize in response to experiences, learning, and environmental changes

research methods for development

• qualitative & quantitative research

• experimental and correlational designs

• cross-sectional, longitudinal & sequential designs

Longitudinal designs

• individual or group is observed over time

• Pro: Most powerful design for studying developmental changes

• Cons: Research question might require lengthy observations over months or years; susceptible to period effects

Cross-sectional designs

• individuals or groups of different ages are observed over a short period of time

• pros: studies take less time to complete

• cons: developmental change is inferred but not actually observed; age differences are confounded with period and cohort effects

Example of period effect

• “Sesame Street” first aired in 1969 & revolutionized children’s television

• Blended entertainment with structured, researched-based educational content

• suddenly, millions of children were exposed to high-quality early learning through television

• this is a period effect —> improved school readiness & early educational outcomes; narrowed achievement gaps among low-income children

sequential design

• follow multiple cross-sectional samples over time

• ex: a researcher recruits a sample of 5-9 years old in a study in 2025. they are followed over 3 years with annual assessments (6-10, 7-11)

• pros: easier to separate age, period, and cohort effects; change can be observed without the wait (5 to 11 in 3yrs)

• con: can still be costly an take a long time to complete

Little Albert experiment (1920)

• John B. Watson & graduate wanted to show that emotional responses could be conditioned through association learning

• at first 9-month-old Albert showed no fear of a white-rat, dog, rabbit, or other furry animals

• researchers then paired a rat with a loud noise

• after several pairings, Albert would cry and when seeing the rat than any other animal.

• it gets worse: Albert’s fear was never systematically deconditioned

• there was no informed consent by parents, nor protection from harm

• died at age 6 from hydrocephalus, indicating neurological impairment before the study

—> therefore these kind of studies requires consent (from child or parent) and an oversight by IRB

stage theories of development

• Jean Piaget’s stage theory of Cognitive development

• Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development

• Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development

Cognitive Development

• Jean Piaget (1896-1980), Swiss psychologist

• children are not simply “little adults” with less knowledge; they are unique thinkers who actively construct an understanding of the world

• Key concept: object permanence, assimilation, and accommodation

• identified stages of cognitive development, each characterized by specific ways of thinking and understanding

Different stages of cognitive development

• Sensorimotor

• preoperational

• concrete operational

• formal operational

Sensorimotor

• 0-2 year old

• coordination of senses with motor responses

• sensory curiosity about the world

• language used for demands and cataloguing

• object permanence is developed

Preoperational

• 2-7 years old

• symbolic thinking

• use of proper syntax and grammar to express concepts

• imagination and intuition are strong

• complex, abstract thoughts are still difficult

• conservation is developed

Concrete Operational

• 7-11 years old

• concepts attached to concrete situations

• time, space, and quantity are understood and can be applied, but not as independent concepts (theory of mind)

Formal Operational

• 11 years old and older

• theoretical, hypothetical, and counterfactual thinking

• abstract logic and reasoning

• strategy and planning become possible

• concepts learned in one context can be applied to another

Criticism of Piaget’s theory

• underestimated children’s ability

• overemphasis on stages

• neglected cultural and social influences

• relied on small, non-representative samples

• ignored later cognitive development in adolescence and adulthood

• neglected emotion and motivation

Psychosocial development

• Erik Erikson (1902-1994) trained in psychoanalysis but rejected Freud’s focus on the primary caregiver

• Key concepts: identity crisis, lifespan development

• proposed that throughout the life course, we encounter certain crises that contribute to our psychosocial development

• he presented these crises as 8 stages of psychosocial conflicts. 

8 stages of psychosocial conflicts

Approximate age; crisis; virtue developed

• infant-18 months; trust vs mistrust —> hope

• 18-month-3 years; autonomy vs shame/doubt —> will

• 3-5 years; initiative vs guilt —> purpose

• 5-13 years; industry vs inferiority —> competency

• 13-21 years: identity vs confusion —> fidelity

• 21-39 years; intimacy vs isolation —> love

• 40-65 years; generativity vs stagnation —> care

• 65 and older; integrity vs despair —> wisdom

Moral development

• Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987), an American psychologist, was inspired by Piaget’s work and was interested in children’s reactions to moral dilemmas

• identified 3 stages of moral development:

  • preconventional

  • conventional

  • postconventional

Preconventional

• 3-7 years

• moral reasoning focused on avoiding punishment and personal gain

conventional

• 8-13 years

• moral reasoning focused on conforming to social norms and maintaining social order

• law and order morality, good boy attitude