Psychology Unit 5-8

What does the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model say? How many types of stores?

Stores: Retain information in memory without any specific purpose.

Control Processes: Allow memory information to move from one store to another

3

What are some sensory memory attributes? 3

Information from our senses. First step.

A VERY large store/bank.

ONLY holds it for a short duration.

Is long-term memory a large store?

Yes

What does iconic sensory memory mean?

Visual information

What does echoic sensory memory mean?

Sound information

What does the sperling task analogy attempt to tell us?

That we receive all kinds of information, but we can only retain it for a small time. We are only allowed to take one bucket-full and hold onto it.

What does spotlight of attention do? Why is it important?

Only some information (spotlighted by our attention) is held onto. What our brain deems important.

How long is the storage capacity of short-term memory?

<1min

What is the rule of thumb for STM?

7 +- 2

How (one technique) are you able to increase your STM capacity?

Chunking. Making smaller units into larger, more meaningful units.

What does rehearsal do for STM?

Allows information to enter long-term memory storage.

What is the Brown-Peterson Task? Why does it try to show?

Its when a participant is given a trigram and is told to memorize. Then given a math task to inhibit them from rehearsing. Shows that STM declines rapidly without rehearsal.

What does LTM allow us to do?

Allows us to hold information for long periods of time and is a large memory store.

What are encoding, storage, retrieival?

Respectively:

Getting info in

Keeping info in

Accessing/getting info out.

What is forgetting actually important?

Allows our brain to get rid of things that aren't needed so the brain doesn't need to sift through useless things when retrieving something important.

What are long-term memories stored according to?

Similarity. Relatedness.

How is memory represented in the "brain". What does that explain Tip-of-the-tongue phenomena.

As related nodes. When one related node is activated, other nearby are also activated.

What is the serial position effect? What is the graph shaped as?

The tendency for people to recall the starting or ending items from a list and forgetting the ones in the middle. The graph is shaped as "U".

In the serial position effect? How do STM and LTM fit in?

STM explains the last few words and LTM explains the first few because you devoted more rehearsal to those first few.

What is retroactive interference? proactive

When old information interferes with new information. When new interferes with old.

How can the serial position effect be proven? 2 Points

Delayed recall

Rapid presentation.

What part of the brain activates for LTM?

Hippocampus?

When STM is being used, what part of the brain is being activated? What can happen if brain is damaged?

Sensory and association areas.

If damaged, it can impair one memory system.

What is the working memory model an elaboration of? What does it do?

The STM component of Atkinson-Shiffrin model. Allows for actual use of that STM information.

How many stores and control processes in Working Memory Model?

3 Stores:

Phonological loop: Working memory for sound

Visualspatial sketchpad: Working memory for visual memory.

Episodal Buffer: Holds onto info from other two and keeps track of which order each happened in.

1 Control Processes:

Central executive. Keeps track of whats happening where? What needs to be prioritized.

How does the phonological loop work?

Relies on rehearsal and stores information as sounds. Without rehearsal, the information fades.

What is the word-length effect?

People remember more one syllable word because the length of the phonoligcal loop is about 2 sec and allows for more repetition.

Our visualspatial sketchpad provides us with feature binding. What is that?

When we look at the object, we chunk the information instead of remembering everything.

What part of the working memory system is related to LTM?

Episodic buffer.

What does the episodic buffer do? What is a good thing to think of it as?

Stores the combination of sounds and visuals into "coherent episodes".

A youtube buffer?

What does the central executive do?

Central executive. Keeps track of whats happening where? What needs to be prioritized.

What are declarative memories? Explicit memories

Memories we are consciously aware of. Aware we are being influenced by these memories.

What are nondeclarative memories? Implicit memories?

Memories not dependant on conscious awareness.

2 attributes/sub-types of declarative memories:

Semantic memories: Memories about the general facts of the world. Captial of Manitoba is Winnipeg

Episodic memories: Memories from personal experiences recalled in a first-person perspective. Mental time travel.

What types of declarative memories fade away quicker?

Episodic.

2 attributes/sub-types of nondeclarative memories:

Classical conditioning.

Procedural memories: muscle memory. skill learning. biking.

Can declarative memories be changed? What is that process called?

Yes. Primed. Previous exposure to a stimuli influences our later behavior.

What is Long-term potentiation? LTP?

Cells that fire together, wire together.

What part of the brain is important for LTM?

Hippocampus.

What is consolidation?

Converting STM into LTM. Any part of the brain that was involved in the memory holds onto it and when they fire together enough, it consolidates.

What does retrograde amnesia entail?

Memories from past fade/are impaired. Short-term, usually.

What does antegrade amnesia mean?

Unable to form new memories.

What happened to Henry Molaison? What are the key takeaways?

Have bilateral lobectomy and couldn't form new memories.

More than the hippocampus removed and brain doesn't work in isolation.

What is maintenance rehearsal?

Just prolonged exposure. Repetition.

What is shallow processing?

Just looking at shallow/obvious qualities of something. Sounds of a word, etc.

What is deep processing?

Focusing on the deeper meaning of something or connecting it to something?

What is elaborative rehearsal?

Leaving breadcrumbs for yourself to trace back.

What are flashbulb memories? Some attributes of it

Mmeories with emotions attached to them.

They decay just like normal memories

Just differences in belifs and accuracy.

What do stress hormones do for STM or LTM?

Enhance STM but impair LTM.

What does the encoding specificity principle say? And what are 3 types?

Retrieval is most effective when it occurs in the same context as encoding.

Context-dependent learning

State-dependant learning

Mood-dependent learning

Example of context-dependant forgetting?

Going from one place to another and forgetting why you went there.

What is dual coding?

Coding information in more than one form.

What is cue overload?

Using visual imagery.

Method of loci?

Connecting items to be remembered along location on a familiar path.

Some study techniques:

Testing effect

Spacing effect

Interleaving

What is the generation effect?

When we produce something, it stays with us longer. Taking notes.

What are schemas and why are they important?

Organized categories of information that get activated by an event, object or ideas.

Mental shortcuts.

Help us fill in the gaps in our memory.

Contribute to stereotypes.

Ex: Car, fast, engine, etc.

How do we construct memories?

We first recall a schemas and then add specific details as needed.

What does schema-consistent?

Going with our inital idea of normal. Biker is a white guy with a big beard, etc.

What is schema-inconsistent?

When our initial idea doesn't fit the normal scenario.

What is the misinformation effect?

When we take the information occurring after the event as true and say it was part of the event.

What is the critical lure?

When a related piece of memory intrudes into the remembered event.

What is imagination inflation??

Increased confidence in a false memory due to repeated imagination of the event.

What is the reality monitoring error?

When we can't distinguish between reality or imagination

What is source memory? You can imagine accordingly what a source memory error will be then.

Our ability to recall where the memory comes from.

What is the destination memory error?

Not realizing that the action being done was done by your before.

Friend telling story over and over again.

What percent of wrongful convictions attributed to mistaken eyewitnesses?

>75%

How to improve eyewitness testimony?

• Careful instruction - possibility the culprit is not in the lineup.

• Double-blind procedures

• Lineups need to be composed of people that fit the description not people that look similar.

• Control for distinctive features.

What are the two types of lineups? How do they differ?

Sequential line up: Showing the person one by one. Reduce the number of hits and reduce the number of false alarms.

Simultaneous lineup: Suspects shown together. In one frame. More hits but also more false alarms.

What are confidence statements? Why are they important?

How confident the eyewitness is in their selection. If the confidence is low and then increases then it could be wrong because seems like the familiarity bias/imagination inflation is at work.

What does learning allow us to do?

Do things we didn't/weren't able to do before

What type do we associate with learning usually?

Cognitive learning

Who was primarily working on classical conditioning?

Ivan Pavalov.

What is classical conditioning?

Learning that occurs when a neutral stimulus elicits a response.

What does conditioned stimulus mean?

That you learnt/associated something with the stimulus. Stimuli learned to cause a response. Something that illicits a response that usually isn't connected.

This isn’t just “you learned something,” but specifically a previously neutral stimulus that has been learned to trigger a response after being paired with something else.

What does unconditioned stimulus mean?

Stimuli that naturally causes a response. Salivating when you see food.

This is something that naturally and automatically triggers a response without any learning.

What are the difference stages of classical conditioning? Explain each briefly. In order.

Association. Repeated temporally contiguous pairings. More parining the more closely related they become.

Extenction. Losing a response when not paired anymore

What is spontaneous recovery?

It is when a subject - after a break - still associates two stimuli.

However, if continued to not pair, extinction will still proceed.

What is the generalization response?

Responding to not just the exact stimuli but similar stimuli.

What is discrimination response?

Responding to the only original stimuli, not similar ones.

What do generalization and discrimination allow us to do?

Helps us distinguish between what actually helps our survival and what doesn't.

Bird and berry example.

What does preparedness tell us? What is it?

The biological disposition to rapidly learn a response to a particular type of stimuli.

If it was dangerous for our ancestors, we learn and have a higher sensitivity to conditioned fear.

What are conditioned taste aversions?

The acquired dislike to a food or drink because it was paired with illness.

How does conditioned taste aversion break the normal rules of conditioning?

Often learnt in one trial

Occurs even when the illness was delayed.

New foods are more likely to be conditioned taste averted?

What is higher-order classical conditioning?

Chain of responses paired with multiple stimuli.

What is the conditioned emotional response?

Emotional response that are associated with a specific object or a situation.

What does the Little Albert and Phobias show?

You can condition an emotional response to neutral stimuli.

What is the evaluative conditioning?

That you can take a stimuli on and associate it's emotional valence to another stimuli.

How you evaluate something.

What is one way evaluative conditioning used negatively as?

Negative political advertising.

What is the third person effect?

People thinking that conditioning principles wouldn't work on them but it will on other people.

What is operant conditioning?

Processes of how reward and punishment change our (frequencies) of behavior.

Difference between operant and classical conditioning?

In classical conditioning, our physiology is automatically conditioned.

In operant conditioning, we make the choice as to what to do.

What is law of effect?

If a behavior is followed by a feeling of satisfaction, it will be repeated.

What is reinforcement in conditioning?

Something that causes the behavior to become more likely to occur again

What is punishment?

A reduction in behavior.

What are primary reinforcers?

Things that satisfy our BASIC needs. Like feeling safe, validated, have food, etc.

What are secondary reinforcers?

Something that we learn has value. Like money. In by itself, it is meaningless.

What part of the brain is being activated when something is reinforced?

Nucleus Accumbens. Because it has a lot of dopamine receptor?

What are positive, reinforcement and punishments?

when you add something pleasant or add something aversive.

What are negative reinforcement or punishments?

When you remove something aversive or remove something pleasant.