PSYC 380 Exam 1

Cognitive psychology definition and how it’s measured

Abstract, daily mental processing; often automatic and effortless

• Measured by observing behavior to make inferences about mental processing

Areas of interest for cognitive psych

• Attention

• Memory (working, longerm, false)

• Decision-making

• Problem-solving

• Language (reading, speech)

Qualities of cognitive psych (5)

• Multidisciplinary

• Involves basic and applied research

• Involves multiple parallel processes

• Measured by accuracy and reaction time tasks

• Splits into lower- and higher-order processing

Disciplines that cognitive psych can interact with (12)

• Cultural psych

• Clinical psych

• Developmental psych

• Social psyc

• Personality psyc

• Abnormal psyc

• Intelligence

• Personality

• Econ

• Linguistics

• Anthropology

• Neuroscience

Basic research

Breaking down complex mental processes to understand how things work, simple understanding of ideas

Applied research

Finding generalizability of science to the real world, connecting ideas to other questions or demographics

Multiple parallel processes

Multiple cognitive inputs that are serving one cognitive output behavior

• Ex. Language, attention, memory all feed into teaching

• NOT multitasking, which generates separate cognitive outputs

Lower-order processing

Focuses on basic intake of info from environment

• Ex. Sensation, perception, attention

Higher-order processing

Involved in more complex behavior than simple intake of stimuli

• Ex. Learning, language, decision-making

Sensation

Information about stimuli taken in from environment that travels from sensory receptor cells (in sensory organs) to brain by neural impulses

Perception

Mental processing and interpretation of sensory info in brain, making judgments and appropriate responses to stimuli

Depth of processing effect

The strength of encoded memories depends on the level of processing that occurred when encoded and the attention you pay to stimuli

• Deep analysis produces long-lasting, strong memories

• TYPE of rehearsal is important for memory not DURATION of rehearsal

• 1972 idea from Craik & Lockhart

Shallow vs. deep encoding

• Shallow: Surface characteristics, giving little attention

• Deep: Meaning-based processing, attention involved

Depth of processing used for studying

Don’t use shallow encoding methods (highlight, color code), use methods where you’re paying attention to material

Types of transfer of learning (2)

• Near transfer: Taking from class → applying to exam

• Far transfer: Taking from class → applying to real world, which is the goal

Memory is enhanced if you study in a way that matches how you’ll be tested

Maintenance rehearsal

Just trying to maintain working memory by repetitive information recycling for a couple of seconds

• A form of shallow, low-level processing

• Useful for holding info to transfer it to a permanent form

Structural processing

Low-level processing based on the structure of words, such as whether letters are curved or capital

Phonological processing

Low-level processing based on auditory traits of letters within words, such as what they rhyme with

Elaborative rehearsal

Building a rich network of meaningful association between concepts, connecting new things you’re learning to older information which is more effective than maint. rehearsal

• Uses semantic (meaning-based) processing

• Creates consistent cues for information

Why are exams cumulative?

Relies on elaborative rehearsal, which links new info to old information

Rank the kinds of processing in terms of how much info is remembered

1. Graphemic (letter-based) → least memory

2. Phonemic (rhyming)

3. Semantic (meaning-based) → most memory

Active learning cognitive strategies (5)

• Self-reference effect

• Generation effect

• Enactment effect

• Production effect

• Testing effect

Self-reference effect

Relating info to your everyday or personal experiences, helps apply concepts

• Most effective (more than semantic processing)

Generation effect

Examples you create are better remembered than those that you’re given (don’t need to be self-referencing)

Enactment effect

Learning by doing, people remember things better if they do it themselves, involves spatial/motor component

Production effect

Memory is better for things you produce

• Most shallow due to the possibility of verbatim repetition during re-writing or reciting aloud

Testing effect

Retrieving information from memory (rather than rereading) solidifies memory traces

• Just as good as self-referencing

Recall tasks (3)

• Free recall

• Cued recall

• Serial recall

Free recall

Recall all of the words you can from what you saw previously

Cued recall

A prompt or hint is provided to activate your recall of info

Serial recall

Need to recall order of listed items as well as their names

Self-regulation

Monitoring what you know, don’t know, and how well you learned

Labor-in-vain effect

Spending too much time on difficult items yields less progress than reviewing items you have some knowledge about

Origins of cognitive psych (4)

• Reductionism

• Ebbinghaus’ research

• Behaviorists couldn’t solve certain war problems

• Development of computers → metaphor about mind

Reductionism and pros/cons

Reducing behavior to certain observable components that represent larger cognitive processes behind it

• Pros: Can be precise and incremental (online measurements)

• Cons: Lower generalizability, may not capture complexity of behavior, takes time/resources

Hermann Von Ebbinghaus

Pioneered scientific study of memory (not academic)

• First person to measure memory objectively, not through introspection

• Discovered the forgetting curve, saving score, and spacing effect

Forgetting curve

Defined forgetting as a function of time between two learning sessions

• Gives evidence for spacing effect

• Savings (learned material staying in memory) decreases then stabilizes after a while

Overlearning

Practicing skills past the point of mastery so that muscle (aka procedural) memory can take over and the info doesn’t need to be verbalized/retrieved through language

Better to use nonsense or meaningful stimuli in study?

Nonsense, because certain stimuli is made stronger due to semantic relatedness (ex. rain-storm are easier words to remember)

• Should start from a blank state in research

Spacing effect

Shorter, frequent sessions of learning the same info boost declarative memory rather than cramming

Saving score

Calculated by (time for initial learning - time for relearning) divided by (time for initial learning)

• Used to study how associations form and encode, generalizable by using nonsense syllables so there were no previous associations

• Learning a list of syllables and testing memory between trials

How did wars lead to the development of cog psych?

• Wars cause all scientists to focus efforts toward solving problems

• During WWII, people researched pilot training/attention

• Behaviorists did applied military research about training and performance but couldn’t address attention, perception, judgment, thinking, etc.

Computer metaphor (sim/diff)

The computer developed at the same time as people were starting to conceptualize the mind

• Both of their internal “systems” are unseen

• Flow of input (senses) to output (behavior)

• Mind has emotions, mental heuristics, unconscious learning, parallel processing, morality, etc. that computers don’t

Role of computers in cog psych today

• Artificial intelligence

• Computational modeling

• Machine learning (“brainprint” by showing you images and taking averaage output of your brainwaves when you see them)

Parallel processing

Multiple cognitive input processes → single tasks

• NOT multitasking where mult inputs → mult tasks

Differences between behaviorism and cog psych

Behaviorism

• Just interested in relationship between S → R

• Conditioning to change behavior freq through feedback

Cognitive psych

• Interested in mental processes BETWEEN S → R

• Wondered how we learn things that were never reinforced

• Ebbinghaus and his nonsense syllables showed that language is special and not just reflexive

Process of collecting research data

• Manipulate stimuli (cognitive task)

• Measure RT or accuracy (or both!)

• Make inferences about what processing results in the behavior response observed

How mental processes are tracked in research

Observable behavior that shows RT or accuracy

Reaction time

Speed of observable behavior aka time from stimulus → response

• Indicates task difficulty or thinking (depth of processing)

• Starts with one-step tasks then build to see what causes a slow response

Facilitation

Developing a faster RT due to familitarity with a task

• Must ensure it’s not due to practice effects with the exact same stimuli

Cost

Developing slower RT due to new, refreshed stimuli or increasing difficulty over trials

How to manipulate RT (3)

• Changing task difficulty

• Changing task type

• Changing stimulus

Type of stimulus changes for RT (3)

• Increased complexity → more info to process → longer time

• Familiarity → preparation and expectations → shorter time

• Modality → different RT for each sense

Types of task changes for RT (3)

• Simple task

• Choice task

• Selection task

Simple task

Asking for a single response for a single stimulus

• Measures RT

Choice task

Asking for different responses to different stimuli

• Ex. “Go-no-go” asks for YES or NO response to indicate which of two types of stimuli are presented

• Measures RT

Selection task

Asking for a response only to one type of various stimuli

• Ex. Asking for response only to real words among nonsense ones

• Measures RT

The point of measuring accuracy

Shows us memory capacity (how much people can store correctly) and which items are more likely to be remembered

Ebbinghaus’ accuracy for trigrams

Shows whether words are more likely to be remembered accurately based on previous associations

• Also shows info on saving scores

How lists affect accuracy

Can encounter serial position effects (primacy, recency)

Stories’ effect on accuracy

Longer stimuli can improve the depth of meaning remembered (exact words don’t need to be memorized, the person needs to get the gist for proof of full understanding)

Co-activated associated concepts aka intrusions

Present in the DRM paradigm which causes participants to recall a related but absent word known as a memory lure

• Shows that people do have associations between words’ meanings

• Ex. Listing bed, rest, awake → recall sleep

Bottom-up processing

Stimulus interpretation driven by data from environment, building perception based on basic features of stimuli

• Goes from sensory organs up to brain

• Occurs with no prior experience in memory associated with stimuli

Top-down processing

Stimulus interpretation driven by info from memory that travels down from our brains to inform our responses to our environment

• Occurs when we have context (conceptual info based on prior experience) that helps us interpret

McGurk effect

Perceptual illusion where visual cues from a person’s mouth movements alter how a listener hears spoken sounds

• Example of how we generate inferences to interpret “fuzzy” environmental data (when language isn’t clear)

• Auditory signal isn’t ambiguous (bottom-up), but it shifts when put alongside visual contex (top-down)

Disambiguating cue

Another piece of information that shifts an interpretation from having multiple ambiguous, potential outcomes → having one concrete explanation for the stimuli

• Ex. The letters “A” and “C” next to a linear symbol allow us to see it as a “B”

Role of light in visual processing

We’re constantly making guesses about the shapes of objects based on edges, shadows, etc. that we recognize

• We have a single light source (Sun) so we’re built to rely on shadows to understand spatial positioning

Encoding

Storing new info in long-term memory

Orthographic processing

Related to how info is written (changing a word’s visual presentation)

Semantic processing

Related to the info’s meaning (relating info to different contexts, very strong but not as strong as self-ref)

Two potential mechanisms involved in testing effect

• Active retrieval of a memory reinstates all previous contexts, cues narrow down the search for the memory and make it quicker to find

• Testing causes two memories to be created, a study memory and a test memory

Three potential mechanisms for spacing effect

• Contextual drift

• Study-phase retrieval

• Multiple learning time scales (info is rep’d over fast and slow scales)

Contextual drift

The diversity of contexts at each study time point (the more diverse, the stronger the memory)

Study-phase retrieval

The reactivation of a prior memory (more encounters of info, stronger memory)

Consolidation

Stabilization of long-term memories after initial encoding

• Protects against interference from new memories

• Aided by sleep

Hermann Ebbinghaus in history of psych

Expanded experiments studying human memory, suggesting we lose info rapidly at first then slowly over time

Gestalt psychology

Focused on the whole of each experience rather than individual aspects (opposed introspection because that broke down consciousness into smaller parts)

• The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

• Mind processes info simultaneously, not one piece after another

Cognitive revolution, how it started

New ideas about linguistics, neuroscience, and computer science brought the field’s focus back to the mind

• Sparked by invention of computers and new evidence for mental processes (against behaviorism)

New evidence for mental processes in cog revolution

• Tolman’s rat experiments → cognitive map

• Chomsky’s child studies → minds have built-in structures for language

Experimental research

• Most common due to ability to establish causal relationships

• Requires random assignment

• Confounds such as placebo effect, participant demand, and experimenter expectations can influence a study’s outcome

Qualitative analysis

Analyzing participant-generated responses (looking at content of recalled memories, strategies used to problem-solve, etc.)

Transfer measures

Assess whether skills acquired in one context can be applied to new situations (finds generalizability)

Sensory transduction

The process of converting raw energy to electrical signals

• Receptor cells → neural signals → thalamus (sorted out and sent to the right part of the cortex) → brain

Binocular vs monocular depth cues

• Bi: Created by retinal image disparity (space between eyes), requires coordination of both

  • Convergence: Turns eyes inward to focus on close objects

• Mono: Perceiving depth using only one eye

Sensory interaction

Working together of different senses to create a full experience

• Can lead to McGurk effect

Sensory adaptation

A decreased sensitivity to a stimulus after constant exposure (ex. pool)

Perceptual constancy

The ability to perceive a stimulus as constant despite changes in sensation (ex. door swing)

Illusions and what they indicate

When perceptual processes are fooled by a particular situation, we see something incorrect or that doesn’t exist

• Shows top-down processing

Embodied

Built into and lined with cognition

• We become so in touch with our environment that our body which with we sense becomes embodied