Cognitive Psych Exam 3

Atkinson Shiffrin 3 store model says we must distinguish what 3 things

Sensory memory, Short term memory, and Long term memory

Sensory memory

refers to the persistence of all stimuli following transduction for a very brief period of time. It’s function is to permit stimuli to be perceived, recognized and entered into the short-term memory.

visual sensory memory

called iconic memory, it has a large capacity but a brief duration of about 250 milliseconds. In rare case of identic imagery, details persist for longer durations.

auditory sensory memory

called echoic memory, it’s duration is longer, about 2 seconds as compared to 250 millisecond, however the amount stored is less.

Short term memory

capacity for holding a small amount of information in mind in an active, readily available state for a short period of time. Duration is 15-30 seconds and it serves as a bottleneck between sensory storage to long term memory

• Miller proposed the magic number, which says we can only receive, process, and retrieve about 7 pieces of information at a time

chunk

well learned cognitive unit made up of a small number of components representing a frequently occurring and perceptual pattern

Free recall

participants are shown a list of 10 sequentially presented words and have to recall as many as possible afterwards. Some are required to perform a task before recall. Serial recall is if they name in the same order as presented.

Serial position curve

A curve to depict position of a word (item in a list on x axis) for either free or serial recall and percent correct in the y axis

Serial Position effect- Serial position effect

the tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst

Primacy effect

when memorizing a list people often remember the first part

Recency effect

The last couple of words are remembered because they are still in working memory

factors affecting recall

• length of words

• pronociations

• length of list to remember

• presentation rate

• delay of recall

• hard vs easy words

Cued recall

the retrieval of memory with the help of cues, which are often semantic. Words or cues are presented that relate to the infromation being remembered

why do we forget

• decay loss of information over time

• interference or learning one information affects or hurts learning of other information

Proactive interference

means that people have trouble learning new material because previpusly learned material keeps intervening with their new learning

Retroactive interference

means that people have trouble recalling previously learned material because new material keeps interfering with their new learning

why do we forget

because the information is not well-encoded, not frequently used, or that is deemed, redundant, less important or interesting by the brain. If we couldn't forget, our minds would be overwhelmed with every experience, thought, and emotion, making it difficult to focus on the present and potentially leading to anxiety and difficulty in processing new information.

• lack of attention and effort

• disuse

• motivated forgetting

• small capacity of short term memory

• decay and interference

decay

Decay theory proposes that memory fades due to the mere passage of time. Information is therefore less available for later retrieval as time passes and memory, as well as memory strength, wears away

interference

learning one information (past or present) affects (hurts) learning of other information

Brown Peterson Task

Presented 3 letters called trigrams (eg DYX)

● along with a distracter - count backward by 3 from a given number say 999- 2 per second

● varied the retrieval delay from 0-18 secs

Waugh and Norman

• gave 16 digits read at the rate of 1/sec (slow) or 4 /sec (fast) followed by a Probe (any number)

• task name the digit that followed the probe (last digit that was repeated once before int he series)

Delay interpretation: Recall better at faster presentation rate

Interference interpretation: Recall similar for both presentation rate

*Interference will depend on whether in the list the probe occurred

Wickens Release from Proactive Interference

Two groups of subjects given 3 trials following the Brown- Peterson task (letters) - Memory performance declined with each trial

• Control group given a 4th trial using letters

• Experimental group switched to remembering digits

• Experimental group, but not control group, performed perfectly; they were released from proactive interference (changing the nature of the items to be remembered reverses the decline in performance caused by proactive interference)

recognition memory

the ability to recognize previously encountered events, objects, or people.

• Sternberg Task looks at what type of search do we do during a recognition test

long term memory

• Storing information relatively permanently

• Stored on basis of meaning and importance

Explicit (declarative) memory (facts)

Explicit memory is the conscious, intentional recollection of previous experiences and information

Semantic Memory

Impersonal facts and everyday knowledge

Episodic Memory

Personal experiences linked with specific times and places

Implicit Memory

(also called "nondeclarative" memory) is a type of long-term memory that stands in contrast to explicit memory in that it doesn't require conscious thought

procedural memory

responsible for knowing how to do things, also known as motor skills. As the name implies, procedural memory stores information on how to perform certain procedures, such as walking, talking and riding a bike

prospective memory

form of memory that involves remembering to perform a planned action or intention at some future point in time. Prospective memory tasks are highly prevalent in daily life and range from relatively simple tasks to extreme life-or-death situations

• setting a new years resoluton

• remembering a birthday or resolution

types of processing

Automatic processing: memory processing that occurs subconsciously and does not require attention.

Example: How many of you can sing the theme song Mambo # 5?

How many learned it on purpose?

Effortful processing: memory processing that occurs consciously and requires attention

Example: How many of you can name all of the divisions of the

nervous system? How many learned it on purpose?

levels of processing- Craik and Lockhart

This levels-of-processing approach argues that deep, meaningful processing of information leads to more accurate recall than shallow, sensory kinds of processing. (This theory is also called the depth-of-processing approach.)

shallow processing

Physical memory processing: encoding the word “birthday” by the way it is spelt,

b – i – r – t – h – d – a – y

Acoustic memory processing: encoding the word “birthday” by the way it sounds

two factors of deep level processing

distinctiveness (something stands out from other information, making it more memorable because it’s unique or unusual) and elaboration (adding meaning to information by connecting it to what you already know, creating richer, deeper processing)

self-reference effect

tendency for people to encode information differently depending on the level on which the self is implicated in the information. When people are asked to remember information when it is related in some way to the self, the recall rate can be improved

factors responsible for this effect:

• rich elaborate reference cues

• personal trait associations

• frequent rehearsal

encoding specificity effect

memory is best when the context at retrieval matches the context at encoding (learning), such as the enviroment where you studied matching the environment of where your taking the test

outshining hypothesis

When stronger, more effective retrieval cues are available, weaker cues become less useful or are “outshined.”

mood congruence

We typically recall material more accurately if our mood matches the emotional nature of the material

• After a bad day, you might think: "Nothing ever goes right for me

Pollyanna Principle

Pleasant items are usually processed more efficiently and more accurately than less pleasant items (also known as positivity effect)

Bushman- emotion for advertizements

• significantly better recall for commercials that had appeared in the nonviolent film

• Anger and violence in a program typically reduce memory accuracy for information in a commercial

Baddeley and Hitch

Working memory is a system for temporarily storing and managing the information required to carry out complex cognitive tasks such as learning, reasoning, and comprehension

*divided into phonological store and articulatory loop

phonological store

the inner ear, which holds auditory memory traces that are speech based for 1-2 seconds before they decay.

• Information fades quickly unless rehearsed

• Stores sounds, not meanings

• Known as the ‘inner ear’ because it remembers vocal sounds in order

articulatory loop

Used to rehearse verbal information from the phonological store. also known as the ‘inner voice’ which has a limited capacity of 3-4 items

• Actively repeats information subvocally (in your head)

• Refreshes memory traces in the phonological store

• Converts visual input into a phonological form

articulatory loop

word length effect

Presented words for very brief periods of time. One condition – 5 words, one syllable, familiar. Two condition: 5 polysyllabic words. Average correct recall over several trials showed participants remembered the short words much better. This is the ‘word length effect’

Articulatory suppression through Sub vocalization

• If participants in a study are asked to say something aloud (example la la la)

• the same time as they are rehearsing material in a phonological loop, then memory for the rehearsed material is impaired. This provides evidence for the articulatory rehearsal process playing a key role in memory for words

Studies on phonological store Acoustic confusion-word similarity

people’s memory errors can often be traced to acoustic confusions; study: Conrad (1964)

• People confuse letters that sound alike (B, D, G, P, T)

• Even when presented visually, errors are phonological

• Shows information is stored by sound, not visual form

brain imaging studies

• Left hemisphere regions involved:

• Broca’s area → articulatory rehearsal

• Supramarginal gyrus → phonological storage

Functions of Phonological-articulatory loop

1.Everyday cognitive functions that requires verbal/auditory memory

2.Transient storage of verbal representations

3.Maintains active memory via rehearsal mechanisms of inner speech.

4. acquisition of language

Visuo-spatial sketchpad

Closely related to visual imagery and It temporarily stores and manipulates:

• Visual information → shape, color, appearance

• Spatial information → location, movement, layout

Components of Visuo-spatial sketchpad

Logie (1995) has proposed that the visuospatial sketchpad can be further subdivided into two components:

• The visual cache, which stores information about form and color.

• The inner scribe, which deals with spatial and movement information. It also rehearses information in the visual cache helps with in planning movements and transfers information to the central executive

Dual Task Studies

Participants were given a visual tracking task: Participants performed: 

• A visual task (tracking a moving light) 

• A verbal task (digit span) 

Findings:

• Performance was fine when tasks were different types 

• Performance dropped when tasks were both visual (play tic tac toe )

Functions of visuospatial sketch Pad

• Forming mental (cognitive map)

• Transient storage of visual and spatial representations

• Tells about relative position, direction, angle and movement

• Mental rotation of images

Sample Spatial Manipulation Task

• First, form an image of the capital letter J. Then imagine capital D. Now rotate the D through 90 degrees to the left and place it on top of the J. What does it look like

• Articulatory suppression was used to disrupt the phonological loop and spatial tapping was used to disrupt the visuo-spatial sketchpad

Central executive

The central executive is a term that refers to one part of the three components of working memory that were proposed by researchers Baddeley and Hitch.

 In this system the central executive functions as a supervisory system that controls information flow from and to its hypothesized subordinate or "slave" systems that are known as the phonological loop, the visuo-spatial sketchpad and the episodic buffer.

Studies: the central executive

I. Baddeley (1996) – Switch task 

Asked participants to think of random digits that bore no connection to each other (by tapping in numbers on a keyboard). Either carried out on its own, or with one of the following tasks:

1. Reciting the alphabet

2. Counting from 1

3. Alternating between letters and numbers e.g. A1 b2 c3

Studies on central executive

II. Dual-Task Performance (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974)

• Participants performed: 

  • Reasoning task (central executive) 

  • Digit span task (phonological loop)

• Performance only slightly decreased when doing both

• III. Dual-Task Interference (Baddeley, 1996)

• When two tasks both require attention: 

  • Performance drops significantly

Studies on Central Executive continued

• Case Study: Patient EVR (Eslinger & Damasio, 1985)

• Damage to frontal lobes 

• Normal IQ and memory test scores 

• Severe problems with planning and decision-making 

• Shows central executive is linked to planning and control, not storage

Functions of central executive

1. Attention Control

• Focuses on relevant information 

• Ignores distractions 

2. Task Switching

• Shifts attention between tasks 

  Example: Switching between reading and answering a question

3. Dividing Attention

• Handles multiple tasks at once (dual-tasking) 

4. Updating Working Memory

• Monitors and revises stored information

Episodic buffer

A temporary storage system that integrates information

• It Combines data from: Phonological loop (verbal)Visuospatial sketchpad (visual/spatial)Long-term memory (LTM)

• Stores information in multiple formats at onceVisual + verbal + semantic

• Links working memory with long-term memory

How working memory works

• The image of your house will be set up and manipulated in your ‘Visuo-spatial Sketchpad’.
  
  

• The tally of windows will be held in your ‘Phonological Loop’ as you count them under your breath.

• The whole operation will be supervised by the ‘Central Executive’ which will allocate the tasks and recognise when the final total has been reached.

anterograde amnesia

loss of the ability to create new memories after the event that caused the amnesia, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact..Caused by damage to the hippocampus or other brain structures involved in memory consolidation

retrograde amnesia

type of memory loss where a person is unable to recall events, information, or experiences that occurred before a specific event or injury

autobiographical memory

memory system consisting of episodes recollected from an individual's life, based on a combination of episodic (personal experiences and specific objects, people and events experienced at particular time and place) and semantic (general knowledge and facts about the world) memory

schema

consists of your general knowledge or expectation, which is distilled from your past experiences with someone or something During recall, we tend to exaggerate the consistency between our past feelings and beliefs and our current viewpoint, this is known as consistency bias

flashbulb memory

refers to your memory for the circumstances in which you first learned about a very surprising and emotionally arousing event. Many people believe that they can accurately recall all the minor details about what they were doing at the time of this event

false memory

the psychological phenomenon in which a person recalls a memory that did not actually occur

eyewitness testimony

account a bystander gives in the courtroom, describing what that person observed that occurred during the specific incident under investigation. Ideally this recollection of events is detailed, however this is not always the case. This recollection is used as evidence to show what happened from a witness' point of view. Memory recall has been considered a credible source in the past, but has recently come under attack as forensics can now support psychologists in their claim that memories and individual perceptions are unreliable; being easily manipulated, altered, and biased

source monitoring error

type of memory error where a specific recollected experience is incorrectly determined to be the source of a memory. This error occurs when normal perceptual and reflective processes are disrupted, either by limited encoding of source information or by disruption to the judgment processes used in source-monitoring

reality monitoring

the ability to distinguish between memories for events that have actually occurred and memories for imagined events, with actual events characterized by higher levels of sensory-perceptual information.reality monitoring, the incorporation and distinction of internal thoughts and imaginings from external experiences and memories, typically happens seamlessly for most individuals. However, there are times when we cannot recall if someone else told us about that interesting article or whether we read it ourselves, or if we remembered to lock the door before leaving the house or not. Common problem in patients with schizophrenia

Synaptic Plasticity

The process of forming long-term memories involves strengthening connections between neurons (synapses) through a process called synaptic plasticity

Long-Term Potentiation

LTP is a type of synaptic plasticity where repeated stimulation of a synapse leads to a long-lasting increase in its strength

Neural Networks

Memories are encoded in circuits of neurons (neural networks) that are strengthened by repeated activation

memory consolidation

the process by which short-term memories are transformed into long-term memories, involving the strengthening of memory traces and their integration into existing knowledge networks, often occurring during sleep

reactivation

During sleep, the brain replays memory patterns, strengthening the connections and making the memories more stable

amnesia

memory impairment that can result from brain damage or dysfunction, leading to the inability to recall past events or form new memories

causes of amnesia

Neurological: Head injuries, strokes, brain tumors, infections, and

degenerative brain diseases (like Alzheimer's) can cause amnesia

Psychological: Traumatic experiences, severe stress, and certain

psychiatric conditions can lead to dissociative amnesia

Other Factors: Alcohol intoxication, certain drugs, and toxins can

also cause temporary or permanent memory loss

post traumatic amnesia

temporary state of memory loss that occurs after a traumatic brain injury (TBI). It is characterized by an inability to recall events that occurred during and immediately after the injury

dissociative amnesia

mental health condition characterized by a significant inability to recall important personal information, typically related to traumatic or stressful events

Localized amnesia

Inability to recall a specific event or period of time

Selective amnesia

Inability to recall specific aspects of an event while retaining other memories

Generalized amnesia

Loss of all or most personal identity and life history

Dissociative fugue

Wandering or traveling away from home without any recollection of their identity or past

transient global amnesia

sudden, temporary memory loss that typically lasts up to 24 hours, characterized by an inability to form new memories and difficulty recalling recent events, but with preserved other cognitive functions

Wernicke Korsakoff Syndrome

neuropsychiatric disorder caused by a severe deficiency of thiamine (vitamin B1) (chronic alcohol intoxication)

Infantile amnesia

refers to the common inability of adults to recall specific events from their early childhood, typically before the age of 2, despite the fact that infants can form memories

childhood amnesia

refers to the scarcity of personal memories that adults can recall from the period between the ages of 2 and 6