Exam #3 CogPsych

Brian Cahill Fall 2025 Cognitive Psychology EXP3064/EXP3604 Exam #3 covering chapters 6, 8, and 11.

Memory Strategies

These are mental activities performed to improve encoding and retrieval of information, like elaboration or mnemonics.

Divided attention

Paying attention to two or more tasks simultaneously, reducing the performance on each task compared to focused attention. For example, studying while listening to distracting music affects introverts more than extroverts.

Levels of processing

The concept of deeper cognitive processing leading to better long-term recall than shallow processing. This emphasizes elaboration and distinctiveness instead of repetition.

Survival processing

A deep encoding strategy where the information you keep is first evaluated for its relevance to survival scenarios like if you were to be stuck on an island and could only keep 3 or 4 items, which creates a stronger memory trace than does pleasantness or semantic ratings as a result of evolutionary roots.

Generation effect

Enhanced memory results from generating your own associations or answers instead of just passively reading it. The effort, not difficulty, in the process of generation is what drives recall, and nearly doubles memory performance.

Elaboration

The cognitive process of connecting new information with things you already know to create deeper understandings and improve memory retention. You do this by adding meaningful details, creating analogies, summarizing, using mental imagery, or making associations. An example of this is relating a personal experience to a term you want to study to give it more neural pathways for you to connect it to.

Rehearsal

Repeating or practicing information to help retain it in memory. Maintains items in short-term memory, then transfers them to long-term memory. Maintenance rehearsal is simple repetition for short-term retention whereas elaborative rehearsal is linking new information with existing knowledge to create meaningful connections and enhance the long-term memory of something. This is ineffective for long-term recall as it lacks meaning.

Distinctiveness

Unique qualities of a stimulus that makes it stand out from its context. Helps enhance attention, memory, and attributing meaning.

Von Restorff effect

The advantage in memory for an item in a list that is particularly distinctive. This is also called the isolation effect. Think about if you were asked to memorize a list of words, most of which were flowers, but one of them is dinglehopper – you’d remember the term dinglehopper especially well since it stands out.

Self-reference effect

Having better memory if something is related to yourself rather than information that isn’t connected to you. This works for linking study habits to your memory strategies especially well, too.

Encoding-specificity principle

When the retrieval context matches the encoding context, memory seems to be improved. Recall is more effective when the cues at the time of retrieval are similar to the cues during learning the information. This is good for studying in a test-like environment to help improve your performance on the exam.

Overconfidence

One’s tendency to overestimate one’s accuracy of knowledge or judgements, ultimately leading to memory errors where you think you’ve studied enough but you haven’t tested your knowledge yet.

How can questioning what you are reading while studying help improve your score on the exam? Think about levels of processing and the generation effect.

Questioning promotes deeper understanding and functions because focusing on the “why” creates connections that create meaningful elaborations. This in turn will enhance long-term encoding and levels of processing, perhaps even triggering the generation effect since self-generated answers formed stronger associations.

Why is using only rehearsal to encode and retrieve information a bad idea?

Rehearsal is a relatively shallow processing method, which is only effective for maintaining information in the short-term memory. It doesn’t always reliably transfer it to long-term storage. This means you can forget things very quickly. Deeper strategies like elaboration or self-reference are needed for recall to be durable.

Which memory strategy would be the most effective when trying to learn names? Explain.

The keyword method would likely be best, since matching a name to a vivid image or keyword would combine with distinctiveness and elaboration to make the processing deeper and unique. Thus, the names would be easier to remember.

To remember the memory strategies presented in this chapter, try relating them to your own studying habits. Which effect is being applied here?

Personalizing strategies and the self-reference effect creates meaningful connections to boost recall. For example, telling myself that I use elaboration by linking terms to my daily routine.

Discuss a possible issue associated with the example of the generation effect discussed in class. How could this be fixed?

Generated associations might be overly personal or idiosyncratic, which means it isn’t generalizable. However, combining generation to a shared discussion can standardize (somewhat) these associations.

Create a list of words in which you test the von Restorff effect.

Apple, banana, grape, pineapple, Léa Pitois, kiwi, plum, cherry.

The exams in this class require you to recall information rather than just simply recognizing information. Given this, which type of studying techniques might be the most effective for this class? Think about the encoding-specificity principle.

Active recall would be best. Self-testing via flashcards in a low-distraction, exam-like environment would probably be the best to study for this exam. Active recall techniques can match test demands, plus it boosts retrieval instead of passive studying.

Think about ways in which you can avoid overconfidence on this upcoming exam.

Distributed practice, self-quizzing to reveal knowledge gaps, track predict accuracy over time, focus on what I don’t know.

Total-time hypothesis

This posits that how much you learn mainly depends on the amount of time you devote to studying for it, with more time correlating to better retention. However, quality often matters more for predicting GPA/scores.

Distributed-practice Effect

Having study sessions spread out over time is better for long-term recall. Massed cramming does not provide the necessary desirable difficulties, nor will it reduce forgetting.

Spaced learning

Distributed practice over intervals. The main focus/impact is enhancing consolidation.

Massed learning

One, long, crammed study session. Might feel efficient in the short-term, but you forget things rapidly.

Desirable difficulties

A moderate amount of challenge during learning to better improve long-term retention by forcing deeper processing. For example, spaced gaps before testing memory is a desired difficulty because the longer you wait, the more chance you have to forget something, meaning that you are more likely to forget it.

Testing effect

Retrieval practice via testing will boost long-term recall more than restudying does, as shown by Roediger & Karpicke, 2006 study where they tested groups outperformed the restudied groups after a week.

Mnemonics

Any memory aid to organize information. This can come in the form of an acronym, image, keyword, or use the first-letter technique.

Keyword method

A new term is linked to a familiar, easily remembered keyword via certain imagery. This can be remembering the name for Ennui from inside out as “on we”.

Organization

Related items are grouped into a meaningful structure like chunking or hierarchy.

Chunking

Grouping a small unit into a larger, more familiar pattern, such as remembering a phone number in 3-3-4 groups instead of 10 random digits.

Hierarchy (Organization)

Organizing information in levels from broad to specific.

First-letter technique

Making an acronym from the initial letters, such as PTOF to stand for the parietal, temporal, occipital, and frontal lobes of the brain.

Narrative technique

Creating stories in order to link certain items, then using that story to later on recall the items you wish to remember. You can remember a fish going to the grocery store to get orange juice, then getting toothpicks to pick the pulp from its teeth if you need to go to the grocery store to buy fish, toothpicks, and orange juice.

Multimodal approach

Having numerous senses and/or channels to encode things. This strengthens traces.

Retrospective memory

Recalling past events or facts.

Prospective memory

Remembering something you need to do in the future.

External memory aid

Anything outside of your own self that you use to offload prospective memory demands, such as how Léa uses Hello Kitty themed checklists/to-do lists to keep track of her assignments.

Use the total-time hypothesis and the distributed-practice effect to write an optimal study plan for yourself and explain why these two concepts are important in your plan.

If I plan to study for an exam for 4 hours in total, then I would split this study time into 4 sessions, each about an hour long over the course of a few days. The importance of total-time means that I will have sufficient exposure, whilst the distributed practice means I can combat the forgetting curves to build retention via spaced retrieval.

To memorize the four lobes of the brain, I created the acronym PTOF – President Trumps Orange Face. Parietal, Temporal, Occipital, Frontal. Which mnemonic technique is this?

This is a first-letter acronym technique. The initial letters form a memorable phrase. Aids in organization and chunking.

This chapter discusses many different types of mnemonics. Which ones work best for you and why? Try to come up with a few of your own while studying for this exam.

The keyword and narrative methods work the best for me because I’m a very image and story based person. It really helps when it comes to elaboration and distinctiveness.

In Spanish class, I learned that the word “hambre” means hungry in Spanish. To memorize this word in Spanish, I matched “hambre” with the English word “hamburger” in my mind. Which memory strategy am I applying? Try coming up with your own example of this method.

This is the keyword method, since the acoustic similarity and imagery link foreign words to ones you already know.

What does Herrman’s multimodal approach suggest?

This approach to memory improvement proposed by Dr. Hermann, refers to how encoding across multiple senses or modalities (kinesthetic, visual, or auditory) helps make the traces richer → improved recall resulting from diverse pathways.

Differentiate between retrospective memory and prospective memory.

RETROspective = REmember. PROSPECTive = future-oriented (like “having prospects”). Failures in prospective memory leads/results from absentmindedness.

To avoid absentmindedness from occurring, I use a weekly planner as an external memory aid. What are a few ways that you can to improve your own prospective memory?

Implementation intentions and external aids can be very helpful, such as if-then plans, phone reminders, or routine cues.

Metacognition

The knowledge and control of one’s own cognitive processes, like the “thinking without thinking” experiences that include regulation and monitoring.

Self-knowledge

Having an awareness of one’s own personal cognitive strengths and weaknesses. For me, I’m poor at auditory learning, but excel kinesthetically.

Metamemory

Monitoring memory accuracy, such as predicting the likelihood of which items from a list you’ll remember.

Foresight bias

Overestimating your likeliness over recalling something based on current ease. This could lead to understudying.

Metacomprehension

Your ability to monitor your own comprehension of a text by, say, rating your understanding of a chapter.

Reading strategies

Techniques to enhance reading comprehension and monitoring. Summarizing what you just read to yourself is a good way to do this.

Distinguish between metacomprehension and metamemory.

Metacomprehension concerns your understanding of a text or video whilst reading or watching it, but metamemory is more focused on the strength of your memory (usually in the future).

Describe the various factors that affect metacomprehension and metamemory accuracy.

Text difficulty, interest, prior knowledge, and feedback. Harder texts might inflate or deflate confidence, familiar topics boost accuracy due to elaboration, gaps cause underestimation, and testing can reveal errors.

Think about strategies you can incorporate into your studying habits to prevent you from engaging in foresight bias on your exam.

I have already pencilled in study sessions to my calendar, each about 3 hours long to make sure I can go through every term at first, then towards the later sessions I will go over difficult terms more often than the ones that come to me more easily.

List ways that you can improve your metacomprehension and metamemory skills.

Rubrics to rate understanding, getting feedback from peers/quizzes, summarizing sections to myself, and practice retrieval in test-like conditions.

Inference

A logical conclusion drawn from general knowledge that goes beyond explicitly given information. You know that a restaurant has menus because of previous experience and social expectations.

Semantic memory

Organized knowledge of facts or concepts or language. A type of declarative memory that stores general knowledge about the world (facts, language, concepts, etc.) that is organized into semantic networks where concepts are interconnected.

Episodic memory

Being able to recall personal, autobiographical events. AKA autobiographical memory. It is personal and specific that provides contextual details. Sometimes described as “mental time travel” and is a type of declarative memory.

Category

A group of similar items, such as birds. It is essentially a set of objects, events, or ideas that are grouped together because they are considered equivalent in some way

Concept

Your mental representation of a category (like birds being feathered and flying) that contains ideas, images, memories, and/or linguistic information.

Prototype

The ideal, typical example for a category. Thinking of robins when you hear the word bird is a good way to demonstrate what a prototype is.

Prototype approach

A cognitive theory that suggests we categorize concepts by comparing new items to a mental “prototype” (an idealized, stereotypical representation of that category) rather than by strict definitions. This “best example” does not necessarily have to actually be a member of the category, it just has to be a good summary of its most common features, and it allows for graded membership where some items are considered more typical than others.

Proto-typicality

How representative an item is for a category.

Graded structure

A category has members ranging from what you’d deem typical to atypical.

Typicality effect

More quickly judging prototypes if they are more typical then less typical. You’d more easily recognize a robin than a penguin for a bird.

Semantic priming effect

Exposure to one word (the prime) speeds up the processing of a related word (the target).

Family resemblance

How items in a category are linked by a series of overlapping features, rather than a single, defining characteristic common to all members.

Superordinate-level categories

A more broad category that can easily be subdivided into multiple smaller levels. FURNITURE → chair → desk chair.

Basic-level categories

Something that is more specific than a superordinate-level category, but not quite as specific as a subordinate-level category. Furniture → CHAIR → desk chair.

Subordinate-level categories

A very specific object/concept. Furniture → chair → DESK CHAIR.

Exemplar approach

The ideas that we categorize things based on how similar they are to previously stored examples, which is flexible for variable categories. When encountering a new item, the brain compares it to numerous stored examples from different categories, and assigns it to the one that has the most similarities.

Exemplar

Multiple specific, individual instances or examples that have been encountered.

Differentiate between semantic memory and episodic memory.

Semantic is factual knowledge whereas episodic is personal. Semantic memory can help episodic memory by providing context, and episodic memory can aid semantic memory by remembering how you came to learn information.

Distinguish between a category and a concept. Explain how they are connected.

A category is the actual group whereas the concept is a mental summary of it. Concepts help organize categories so we can make inferences efficiently.

Why is it important for us to categorize things and make inferences in our daily lives?

This helps us save cognitive effort for things. Categorization can group information while inferences will fill in gaps.

What are some important characteristics of prototypes? How are prototypes affected by semantic priming?

Key characteristics include being the most common example provided for a category, sharing many attributes with other members through "family resemblance," and being judged more quickly than non-prototypical items. Semantic priming makes the identification of prototypes much faster, as a related prime (like "red") can trigger the recognition of a prototype (like "scarlet") more quickly than a less-prototypical example within the same category.

Provide an example of a subordinate-level category and superordinate category for each basic-level word, like piano, tree, or car.

Instrument → piano → Léa’s Yamaha keyboard piano. Plant → tree → the magnolia tree in Léa’s backyard. Vehicle → car → Léa’s Subaru crosstrek.

Which level category of words out of super-, basic-, and sub- in the previous question is most likely to produce the semantic priming effect? Why?

We are more likely to remember the basic-level words because superordinate is too vague but subordinate is too specific. We also tend to use basic-level categories in everyday conversations more often. For example, I would recall that Léa has a cat, not that she has an animal or a gray domestic shorthair.

Provide your own explanation for the exemplar approach with your own exemplars.

I store specific instances for comparison. If I remember a dog in the past barking then it can help me classify a new animal I see barking as a dog. An abstract prototype would not be as helpful in doing this as it is too rigid.

Compare and contrast the exemplar approach and the prototype approach. How might these two approaches coexist? Discuss possible advantages/disadvantages of each.

Prototypes have the single ideal average with the advantage of being simple for loose categories, but at the cost of losing unique details. The exemplar approach can have multiple stored examples with the advantage of variability, but at the cost of memory overload if the category is too large. The hybrid/coexisting way to use them is by defaulting to prototypes quick gist of something but an exemplar for a fine distinction.

Network Models

A network model is semantic knowledge that is interconnected nodes (concepts) have spreading activation. Recalling the word cat can activate areas related to meowing, allergies, and Gucci + Pickles (Léa’s pet cats) for me.

Node

A node is a single concept in a network. It is a fundamental unit representing an idea/concept. It is interconnected by links that form the network.

Spreading activation

The activation of a concept spreads through associative links to related concepts in memory, making them more accessible.

Describe how family feud illustrates spreading of activation.

The prompt animal will activate nodes like hamster and horse, so players are then able to retrieve a related term as activation spreads, showcasing the efficiency of the network.

What do the network models propose?

Knowledge is a web. Meaning comes from connections. Activation is bidirectional. This all allows quick associations.

What are some advantages the network models have over the exemplar and/or prototype approach?

This is able to handle a dynamic, interconnected knowledge system that can explain priming and illusions better than static prototypes or exemplars.

Schema

Abstract knowledge or structures for events and objects. It is a mental framework or structure that organizes our knowledge, beliefs, and expectations about the world, allowing us to interpret and make sense of new information quickly.

Heuristic

These are mental shortcuts or “rules of thumb” that allow people to make decisions and judgments quickly and efficiently, often by simplifying a complex problem.

Schema therapy

This therapy focuses on using schemas to reconstruct and interpret memories in a therapeutic way.

Script

The specific schema you have for a sequence of events. This is a cognitive structure that represents a person’s knowledge of a typical sequence of events or actions in a specific situation.

Boundary extension

This is the general cognitive phenomenon in which people remember more of a scene than was originally shown by mentally extending the view beyond its physical borders

Abstraction

Having a gist for the meaning of something, but not having verbatim details. The mental process of identifying and isolating common features from a set of particular instances to form a general concept or idea.

Verbatim memory

Literal, surface-level, precise recall of information you had previously consumed. It is contrasted with gist memory, which focuses on the core meaning or general idea and is often remembered more easily. Verbatim memory is characterized by being a more detailed and symbolic representation of a stimulus.

False alarm

Mistaking something that is schema-inferred as real, which can be you “recalling” a menu item even though you haven’t seen it for that specific restaurant. Or, when Léa thinks she needs to poop because that is how it feels to her, but it is just a really bad fart in reality.

Constructive model of memory (Constructive approach)

Memories are not stored like perfect recordings but are actively rebuilt each time they are recalled (Bransford & Franks)

Pragmatic view of memory (Pragmatic approach)

Posits/views cognition as tool-based, for action and problem-solving in the real world, rather than a purely theoretical system of mental “representations”

Memory integration

The blending of information into schemas, where cultural biases might shape their integration.

Gender stereotypes

A schema-based assumption about what it means to be or how to treat men as opposed to women. This has multiple levels to it,

Explicit memory task

Directly recalling or recognizing something in a test that requires a person to consciously retrieve and generate information from memory without any cues.

Implicit memory task

An implicit recall task is a cognitive psychology test that measures memory indirectly, by assessing how past experiences influence performance on a task without conscious awareness or intentional recall. Unlike explicit memory tests, such as reciting facts, implicit tasks rely on the unconscious retention of information, which is often demonstrated through skills, habits, or priming effects.

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

A test that measures automatic biases via response times. It works by having individuals quickly categorize words or images, measuring reaction times – faster pairings between two related concepts suggest a stronger subconscious link. This is a key tool for studying implicit bias, which is bias that is present without conscious awareness.