Cognition and Memory Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards on cognition, memory, and reading.

Endogenous/Top-down Attention (Executive Attention)

Intentional, goal-driven attention.

Exogenous/Bottom-up/Stimulus-driven Attention

Stimulus-driven attention (e.g., spatial, object-based).

Dichotic Listening Task

Laboratory analog of the cocktail party problem where participants listen to different messages in each ear.

Shadowing

Repeating back the message in one ear (attended/relevant message) while ignoring the other (irrelevant message).

Cocktail Party Effect/Phenomenon

Participants notice their own name being mentioned in the unattended ear.

Bottleneck Models of Attention

Assumes information flows from a large capacity sensory register to a limited capacity short-term memory store, necessitating a bottleneck.

Broadbent’s Filter Model (1958)

Assumes a selective filter that is all-or-none, blocking unattended information to prevent overloading STM.

Treisman’s Attenuation Model (1964)

Instead of an all-or-none filter, it uses an attenuator that turns down processing of unattended information, but doesn't block it completely.

Deutsch & Deutsch’s Late Selection Model (1963)

No bottleneck between sensory register and STM. Information is fully analyzed (physical and semantic) even for unattended messages. Bottleneck occurs late, at selection for action.

Flexible Bottleneck View (Johnston & Heinz, 1978)

Location of the bottleneck is flexible (early or late). Unattended messages are not always processed fully to meaning.

Task (Dis)similarity

Tasks that are more dissimilar in stimulus modality (e.g., visual vs. auditory) or response modality (e.g., manual vs. vocal) interfere less.

Practice (Dual Task Performance)

Tasks become more automatic and easier to perform simultaneously with practice.

Characteristics of Automaticity

Fast, require little attentional capacity, inflexible, unavoidable, unavailable to consciousness.

Consistent Mapping (CM)

Targets and distractors do not overlap across trials.

Varied Mapping (VM)

Targets on one trial could be distractors on a subsequent trial.

Stroop Interference Effect

Slower response to incongruent conditions (e.g., 'GREEN' in red) compared to neutral or congruent conditions.

Logan’s Instance Theory

Each encounter with a stimulus is encoded, stored, and retrieved as a memory episode.

Procedural Memory

Memory for actions, perceptual, and motor skills (e.g., riding a bicycle).

Declarative Memory

Factual information, verbalizable.

Semantic Memory

General knowledge about the world, concepts, language; largely shared across individuals, not tied to a specific time/place (e.g., 'dogs have four legs').

Episodic Memory

Dated recollections of events; personal/autobiographical; tied to a specific temporal and spatial context (e.g., what I had for breakfast this morning).

Encoding

Transforming input into a suitable format.

Maintenance (Rote) Rehearsal

Simply repeating items is not a good way to form durable LTM.

Craik & Lockhart’s Levels-of-Processing (LOP) Framework (1972)

Retention is a function of the depth of processing.

Generative Note-Taking

Summarizing, paraphrasing, concept mapping: Deeper processing.

Non-Generative Note-Taking

Verbatim copying; shallow processing.

Free Recall

Recall studied items in any order.

Serial Recall

Recall studied items in original order.

Cued Recall

Recall item given a cue (e.g., paired associate learning: 'cat- ___ ').

Forced Choice Recognition

Choose from options (e.g., 'ballet or monk?').

Yes/No Recognition

'Did you study ballet? Yes/No'

Implicit Memory Tests (Indirect)

Do NOT make explicit reference back to the study episode. Reveal Repetition Priming Effect: Facilitation (better performance) as a result of prior exposure.

Encoding Specificity Principle (Tulving, 1978)

Forgetting occurs when there's a poor match between memory-trace information and retrieval information.

Anterograde Amnesia

Inability to lay down new memory traces/retain new facts since the trauma.

Inhibition Function

Stopping habitual responses or resisting distractor interference.

Shifting Function

Task switching (e.g., color → shape).

Updating Function

Monitoring of working memory representations.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

Brief magnetic pulse disrupts brain activity, creating a temporary lesion.

Orthography

Spelling of words (letter identity and order).

Phonology

Sound of words.

Syntax

Rules for combining words (grammar, word order).

Discourse Processing

Higher-level pragmatics, making inferences using world knowledge.

Lexical Decision Task

Measure reaction time to determine if a letter string is a word or non-word. Taps orthography and phonology.

Alphabetic Writing System

Individual phonemes (sounds) represented by graphemes (letters or letter clusters, e.g., 'b', 'ee', 'sh').

Orthographic Depth

Predictability of letter-to-sound mapping.

Pseudowords/Nonwords

Can be read by applying spelling-to- sound rules.

Non-Lexical Route (Route 1)

Uses grapheme-phoneme (spelling-to-sound) rules. Used for nonwords and regular words.

Phonological Dyslexia

Difficulty with grapheme-phoneme conversion. Relies on the lexical route for real words. Intact word reading, but poor nonword reading.

Patient JBR (Warrington & Shallice, 1984)

Showed impaired knowledge of living things (animals, plants) but preserved knowledge of inanimate objects (furniture, tools) in picture identification.

Saccades

Rapid, jerky jumps of the eyes during reading (e.g., 7–8 characters, 20–30 ms). No visual information is extracted during saccades.

Regressions

Infrequent, backward eye movements (e.g., right-to-left in English, 2–5 characters). Usually to correct errors or miscomprehension.

End-of-line Sweep

Long saccade from end of one line to beginning of next.