Cognitive Psychology B – Key Researchers, Concepts & Findings

A comprehensive set of Question-and-Answer flashcards covering researchers, classic findings, models, neural evidence, reasoning biases and decision-making principles from the Cognitive Psychology B course (Memory, Working Memory, Reasoning & Decision-Making).

What are the three classic stages of memory?

Encoding, Storage/Maintenance, and Retrieval.

According to William James, what is Primary Memory?

The fleeting ‘back of the present,’ comparable to short-term memory, containing information that is still in consciousness.

According to William James, what is Secondary Memory?

The durable store of information that is outside immediate awareness but can be brought to mind - analogous to long-term memory.

In Sperling’s iconic‐memory experiments, what did the partial-report condition show?

Participants had near-perfect access to the entire visual array briefly, but needed attention to report a specific row.

Roughly how long can echoic (auditory sensory) memory hold information, according to Sams, Hari, Rif & Knuutila?

Up to about 10 seconds.

What is MMN (Mismatch Negativity)?

An ERP response 150-200 ms after a deviant sound, indexing sensory-auditory memory.

Who proposed the ‘three-store’ modal model of memory (sensory → short-term → long-term)?

Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968).

In Rundus & Craik’s primacy-effect study, what variable best predicted recall?

The depth/meaningfulness of processing, not sheer rehearsal time.

What does Miller’s 7 ± 2 refer to?

The typical capacity of verbal short-term memory (or the phonological store).

Which hemisphere is more engaged for verbal material during encoding/retrieval?

The left prefrontal hemisphere.

Which hemisphere tends to be more activated by non-verbal pictures?

The right prefrontal hemisphere (though both can be involved).

Baddeley & Hitch’s model of working memory contains which three slave systems?

Phonological loop, Visuo-spatial sketchpad, and (later) the Episodic buffer.

What are the two subcomponents of the phonological loop?

Passive phonological store and the subvocal rehearsal mechanism.

What behavioural effect supports the existence of a phonological store?

The phonological similarity (acoustic confusion) effect - similar-sounding items are harder to recall.

How can articulatory suppression be demonstrated?

Repeating an irrelevant word while trying to remember a list eliminates the word-length and acoustic-similarity effects.

What developmental evidence supports the phonological loop?

Children’s ability to repeat non-words predicts later vocabulary growth; acoustic similarity emerges only after reading acquisition.

What double dissociation exists inside the visuo-spatial sketchpad?

Visual form information (visual cache) vs. spatial/kinesthetic rehearsal (inner scribe) can be selectively disrupted.

Which PFC area fires during the delay of an oculo-motor delayed-response task in monkeys?

Area 46 (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex).

Funahashi et al. showed lateralised PFC lesions impair memory for which hemifield?

Damage to left PFC impairs memory for right visual-field locations and vice versa.

According to ACT* (Anderson), what two factors determine a memory’s activation (Ai)?

Its base-level activation (Bi) and the summed associative activation (Σ Wj × Sij).

What is semantic priming (Meyer & Schvaneveldt)?

Faster lexical decisions for word pairs that are semantically/associatively related (e.g., BREAD-BUTTER).

What is the Power Law of Learning?

Performance (speed/accuracy) improves as a power function of practice; large gains early, diminishing returns later.

Which cellular mechanism mirrors the power law at the neural level?

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP) growth in hippocampal synapses (Barnes, 1995).

What is Transfer-Appropriate Processing (TAP)?

Memory is best when the cognitive operations at retrieval match those used at encoding, regardless of ‘depth.’

Give an example where shallow processing outperforms deep due to TAP.

A rhyme study improves performance on a later rhyme recognition test more than a semantic study does.

What is Encoding Specificity (Tulving & Thomson)?

Retrieval success depends on the overlap between the encoding context/cues and the cues available at test.

Give an example of intrinsic context affecting recall (Light & Carter-Sobell).

PIANO is recalled better with the cue ‘something heavy’ if encoded in the sentence “The man lifted the PIANO.”

State-dependent memory can be induced with which substances?

Alcohol, marijuana, or the sedative midazolam (Goodwin et al.; Eich et al.).

What is Mood-congruent memory?

Tendency to recall material whose valence matches one’s current mood state.

What is the Method of Loci?

Mnemonic that places to-be-remembered items along an imagined spatial route to exploit ordered retrieval cues.

Tulving’s three long-term systems are…

Episodic (autonoetic), Semantic (noetic), and Procedural (anoetic).

Which famous amnesic demonstrated spared procedural but impaired episodic memory?

Patient H.M. (Henry Molaison).

What pattern is seen in semantic dementia?

Progressive loss of semantic knowledge while episodic memory can remain relatively intact early on.

What is the Remember/Know distinction (Tulving)?

Remember = conscious recollection with contextual detail; Know = mere familiarity without recollection.

Déjà vu illustrates which memory phenomenon?

A strong feeling of familiarity (Know) without recollection (Remember).

Implicit memory is typically measured with what kinds of tasks?

Indirect tests such as word-fragment completion or perceptual identification that do not ask for conscious recall.

Graf, Squire & Mandler showed amnesics are impaired on but normal on .

Explicit recall/recognition; implicit priming tasks.

Midazolam produces what pattern of memory performance?

Temporary anterograde amnesia for explicit tests but preserved priming - mimicking hippocampal damage.

Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve shows what shape?

Logarithmic/power-law decay - rapid forgetting early, then a gradual asymptote.

Wickelgren’s power law of forgetting can be expressed how?

d′ = c · T^-b (memory strength declines as a power function of time).

Proactive interference (PI) refers to…

Earlier learning impairs memory for new information.

What classic task demonstrates release from PI?

Brown-Peterson trigrams followed by a switch to a different category (e.g., digits instead of letters).

Anderson’s fan effect shows what trade-off?

More facts connected to a concept slow verification because spreading activation is divided among many links.

Smith & Jonides linked the phonological loop to which PFC hemisphere?

Left prefrontal regions; the sketchpad to right-lateral prefrontal areas.

What is RIF (Retrieval-Induced Forgetting)?

Practicing some items (FRUIT-ORANGE) improves recall for practiced items but suppresses related unpracticed items (FRUIT-BANANA).

Prospective memory depends heavily on which lobe?

The prefrontal cortex for cue monitoring and intention execution.

Wisconsin Card Sorting Test assesses what executive ability?

Task-switching and set-shifting mediated by the dorsolateral PFC.

What are the three stages of creative insight (Wallas)?

Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, Verification.

Define the Confirmation Bias (Wason’s 2-4-6 task).

Tendency to seek evidence that confirms rather than falsifies one’s current hypothesis.

Which ERP component indexes detection of rule violations in auditory sequences?

The Mismatch Negativity (MMN).

In Wason’s selection task, which two cards must be turned to test ‘If a vowel, then an even number’?

The vowel card (e.g., E) and the odd-number card (e.g., 7).

Social-contract versions of Wason’s task improve performance because of what mechanism?

A domain-specific ‘cheater detection’ module (evolutionary psychology view).

Base-rate neglect refers to…

Ignoring prior probabilities when evaluating evidence (e.g., engineer-lawyer diagnostic problem).

Bayes’ theorem combines which two probabilities to yield a posterior?

Prior probability and likelihood (conditional probability of evidence given the hypothesis).

Conservatism (Edwards) describes what Bayesian deviation?

People update priors insufficiently, weighting new evidence too little.

Availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman) predicts frequencies judged by…

Ease with which examples come to mind (e.g., words starting with R vs. R in third position).

Representativeness heuristic leads to what conjunction fallacy?

Linda problem - people rate ‘bank teller & feminist’ as more probable than ‘bank teller’ alone.

Gambler’s fallacy is the belief that…

After a run of zeros, a roulette spin is ‘due’ for red—misapplication of the law of averages.

Prospect Theory’s value function is for gains and for losses.

Concave (risk-averse); convex and steeper (risk-seeking).

What is loss aversion?

Losses loom larger than equivalent gains; typically λ ≈ 2 in Prospect Theory.

Framing effects show preference reversal when outcomes are framed as vs. .

Gains/survival vs. losses/deaths (Asian disease problem).

Decoy (attraction) effect demonstrates what anchoring?

Adding a clearly inferior option shifts preference toward the adjacent superior option.

Ventromedial PFC damage leads to what decision profile on the Iowa Gambling Task?

Persistent selection of high-immediate-gain, long-run-loss decks (A/B), indicating impaired affective evaluation.

Dopamine activity in nucleus accumbens correlates with…

Subjective utility/expected reward value.

Which two brain regions track different parts of expected value?

Nucleus accumbens tracks reward magnitude; ventromedial PFC tracks reward probability.

Power law of practice in skilled performance predicts performance time ∝ what?

k · Practice^-α (α ≈ 0.3).

Kolers showed what after 200 pages of upside-down reading?

Reading speed approached that for normal text; retained a year later, even better than regular reading

Ericsson’s concept of ‘deliberate practice’ entails…

Effortful, feedback-driven practice targeting weaknesses to stay in the cognitive/associative phase.

How many hours of deliberate practice are often cited for world-class expertise?

Roughly 10,000 hours (≈ 10 years).

Relative-age effect (Gladwell) attributes sports expertise partly to…

Age-cut-off grouping giving older children more practice and attention.

Chunking explains chess experts’ memory advantage only for…

Meaningful game positions, not random arrangements.

Long-term working memory (Ericsson & Kintsch) refers to…

Domain-specific retrieval structures that allow rapid access to vast LTM during skilled task performance.

System 1 vs. System 2 (Kahneman): give a key distinction.

System 1: fast, automatic, heuristic; System 2: slow, effortful, analytic.

Anchoring effect arises when…

Numeric estimates are biased toward an initial reference value, even if arbitrary.

Endowment effect shows that…

a cognitive bias where people tend to value something more once they own it than they would if they didn't own it.

Describe the recognition heuristic (Goldstein & Gigerenzer).

If one object is recognized and the other is not, infer that the recognized one has the higher value.

What is Probability Matching?

Choosing options in proportion to their reward probabilities rather than optimally maximising reward.

Describe the Hot-hand fallacy.

Belief that a person who has experienced success has a higher chance of continued success, despite randomness.

Explain correspondence bias (fundamental attribution error).

Tendency to attribute others’ behaviour to dispositional factors underweighting situational causes.

What is hindsight bias?

After an event, believing one ‘knew it all along’ and overestimating prior predictability.

Ventromedial PFC patients often fail to generate which physiological signal before risky choices?

Anticipatory skin-conductance response (SCR) indicating a somatic ‘gut feeling.’

Somatic Marker Hypothesis (Damasio) posits what?

Emotional bodily signals guide decision making via ventromedial PFC linking feeling states to outcomes.

Give an example of attribute substitution.

Judging frequency of shark attacks by vividness of media reports instead of actual statistics.

What is conservatism bias in probability updating?

Reluctance to revise prior beliefs adequately when presented with new evidence.

Describe the escalation of commitment (sunk-cost fallacy).

Investing more resources in a losing course of action because of prior non-recoverable costs.

Which bias can be reduced by presenting information as natural frequencies?

Base-rate neglect (Gigerenzer & Hoffrage).

Explain the Law of Small Numbers.

People expect small samples to represent the parent population and over-infer from few observations.

What is attribute framing?

Different evaluations when the same attribute is described positively vs. negatively (e.g., 80% lean vs. 20% fat).

What is option framing (menu dependence)?

Preferences change when an irrelevant alternative (decoy) is added to the choice set.

Name a neural correlate of cognitive conflict in reasoning.

Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) activity increases when evidence conflicts with prior belief.

Define the illusion of invulnerability.

Unrealistic optimism that negative events are less likely to befall oneself than others.

What does ‘ego depletion’ research suggest about self-control and System 2?

System 2 resources are limited; exerting self-control can temporarily impair subsequent analytic decisions.

Describe bounded rationality (Simon).

Humans suffice rather than optimize because of limited cognitive resources and information.

Gigerenzer argues heuristics are ‘fast and frugal.’ What does that mean?

They use minimal information yet often yield decisions as accurate as complex algorithms within ecological niches.