Exam 2 Cognitive Psych (ch. 3, 4, 5)

the ossicles are the

smallest bones in the body

Echoic memory

memory for what we hear

How long does echoic memory last?

on average 2-4 seconds

Modality effect (Crowder & Morton, 1969)

describes how the way information is presented can impact memory and recall
echoic vs iconic

iconic memory

memory for what we see

How long does iconic memory last?

last than half a second (<.5)

What Phenomenon

asking someone to repeat what they said but already remembering or knowing what they said before they respond

suffix effect

inferior recall of final items on a list if an irrelevant item follows the list
if you're given a list of items to buy at the store and then the speaker adds an unrelated comment, you might have trouble remembering the last item on the list.

A suffix can be greater if it is...

more similar to human speech

Conceptually driven processing effects (top-down processing)

perception and identification of speech are dependent on context
we can make sense of what is being said depending on the context
when you read a sentence with a few letters scrambled, but are still able to understand the meaning because your prior knowledge of language allows you to fill in the missing information based on the context
"Pysolchogy is an aaminzg and fsacaintnig sbjucet"

Why does bottom-up processing not work very well for explaining audition?

when people say the same thing with a different tone or dialect we can still understand them because we are using context
this is top-down processing

What are some factors that influence auditory perception?

signal detection theory
McGurk effect

signal detection theory

we have a motivation to hear certain sounds
example: a parent hears a baby crying over a non-parent

McGurk Effect

an error in perception that occurs when we misperceive sounds because the audio and visual parts of the speech are mismatched.

Attention

concentration of mental effort or energy on a stimulus

what are the basic principles of attention?

we are constantly bombarded with information from all senses
we have limits to what we can attend to at any one point
the more learned and practiced the less effort needed

what is selective or focused attention?

focusing our attention on a particular stimulus and taking in a lot of information from the senses but we don't attend to all of it

What is priming?

exposure to a stimulus influences a response to a later stimulus

What is an example of an anagram?

EVCA- CAVE
ARDK- DARK

how does priming relate to attention?

when we are primed it can lead to attentiveness to certain stimuli over another

What is the cocktail effect?

when attention is pulled away from something because our name is called, even when said across a room
we are primed to hear specific things in a busy environment

What is the resource model of attention?

we have limited resources when it comes to attention

Are we good at multitasking/divided attention?

no; texting while driving
however well-practiced activities become automatic processes

What is the dichotic listening task?

when someone is asked to repeat both words or to ignore one ear while listening to music and not the other ear

What three factors influence our ability to do multiple tasks at once?

#1 task similarity
#2 difficulty of the task
#3 practice

What is the correlation between social media use and student grades?

high levels of social media is negatively correlated with student grades

implicit attention

attention without conscious awareness
example:
while you are sleeping
while taking a psychoactive drug

What did Bonebaker et al conclude?

When patients were asked to recall the words heard under anesthesia, they denied hearing any list. Patients demonstrated no evidence of conscious or explicit memory for the words.
They found that the patients completed the stems using words that had been included on the list they heard while anesthetized. Also, a high level of mental arousal and cognitive alertness is not necessary to support basic processing of sensory information.

Explicit attention

focused attention; requires effort

How long can we maintain focused attention?

researchers argue that 8 minutes is the extent of our focused attention

Orienting Reflex

an unlearned response in which an organism attends to a stimulus

What is an example of an orienting reflex?

when lights are flashed in a room and everyone stops abruptly
sudden movements that are made

Visual onset versus visual offset

visual onset- when something suddenly appears (turning on the lights)
Visual offset- when something suddenly is removed (turning off the lights)

What is habituation?

when we stop responding to something

Spotlight Theory of Attention (Spotlight Model)

focusing visual attention to an area by using a cue (visual)
"spotlight" or "zoom lens"
prepares you to encode
expectancy of something
posner's et al study

Posners et al study

In this task, participants are instructed to fixate on a central point on a computer screen, and then a cue is presented briefly. After a short interval, a target stimulus appears in one of two boxes to the left or right of the central point. The participant must respond to the target as soon as they detect it.

What are the two types of cues?

Exogenous
Endogenous

Exogenous (outside generating)

when our attention is automatically drawn but we don't need to interpret anything
more reflexive
based on what is happening in the environment
no interpretation needed
bottom-up processing

Endogenous (inside generating)

higher-level control
instruction is provided
interpretation is necessary
top-down processing

What is the difference between your foveal and peripheral vision?

foveal: uses CONES to zero in on a particular spot
peripheral: uses RODS to scan and search

How do we find a distinct element in a visually busy environment?

visual search

feature search

single, primitive features such as color or shape. when you look for a single characteristic

pop-out effect

found in feature search
we are looking for one characteristic so something pops out and is immediately recognized

conjunction search

combination of features with distractors

inhibition or return

when you scan, you don't go back to a previous spot you have already checked
found in conjunction search

bottom-up versus top-down processing

bottom up- looking for a specific feature
top-down- using context or our expectations of something

search asymmetry

easier to find something that is abnormal than to do the reverse

feature integration theory

a theory stipulating that some features can be processed in parallel and quickly prior to using attentional resources, whereas other visual characteristics require us to use attention and are done serially and therefore less quickly

illusory conjunction

when participants must report on the identity of items in briefly presented arrays of colored shapes, they often report seeing a stimulus made up of the color from one array element and the shape from a different array element. Perceptual features can become unbound from their original objects and can be recombined to form a new object representation.

Treisman and Schmidt (1982)

presented participants with rows of numbers and letters and were asked to say what they saw

Multiple object tracking

experimental technique used to study how our visual system tracks multiple moving objects

change blindness

failure to notice a difference between what's there right now and what was there a moment ago

Simons study (in change blindness)

had someone ask for directions and some people with a large board and people with a large board walked by separating the two people and seamlessly replacing the other original person with another one
they tested to see if they noticed

inattentional blindness

failure to notice something that is fully obvious right in front of you when your attention is engaged in something or someone else

Neisser study (inattentional blindness)

had someone through a basketball game with a red umbrella to see if they noticed

Haines (inattentional blindness)

pilots did a simulator task of landing a plane and normally they would have someone clear their landing but this time they did not this time so the pilot did not realize there was a plane in the landing strip

Why do we fall subject to inattentional blindness?

when we are focused on a task and fail to notice something that is fully visible but unexpected

What is inattentional amnesia?

when we see something but we immediately forget it
-below level of consciousness (implicit)

What was interesting about the Hyman et al. 2009 study?

people on their phones did not see the clown
people by themselves saw the clown more than they did on their phones
people saw the clown most with another person present
people by themselves with music saw the clown more than people did by themselves without music

attentional bias

typically the involuntary tendency to attend to a particular type of (often emotional) stimulus over other ones

dot-probe task (attentional bias)

asks participants to stare at a computer screen that has a snarling dog (threatening image) on one side and a spoon (non-threatening image) on the other
if the dots are on the side that has the threatening image we respond quicker

What is the important take away from the dot-probe task?

things you are more fearful of tend to be noticed more than things that are non threatening because you are focused on the threatening image more

Boraden and build theory

positive emotions widen the range of information people attend to; in contrast negative emotions narrow the range of information people attend to

Simultanagnosia (aka Balint's Syndrome)

inability to perceive more than one object at once

What are the two types of simultanagnosia?

Dorsal and Ventral

Dorsal Stimultagnosia

can only attend to one object at a time and nothing else in the environment
occurs when there is damage to the occipital and parietal lobe
cannot count or navigate a room
more severe

Ventral stimultagnosia

trouble putting multiple stimuli together in a meaningful whole
occurs when there is damage to the occipital and temporal and lobes
they can count, navigate a room, and attend to multiple stimuli but they cannot put together what is happening in a picture in terms of telling a story

Cognitive control (controlled attention)

deliberate, voluntary allocation of mental effort or concentration
(much like how you are studying and doing an amazing job at it)

executive control

used to exert control and keep the mind from wandering
mechanisms that support goal-directed behaviors by regulating thoughts and actions that facilitate

What does cognitive control require?

selective attention
filtering
inhibition
ability to switch between task
retention of information

selective attention

ability to attend to one source of information while ignoring other ongoing stimuli around us
example: a fire alarm is going off but we are so focused that we do not even notice

Filtering

the mental process of eliminating distractions

How is the cocktail party effect a good example of filtering?

it is the ability to focus your attention on a particular stimulus like talking to one person while ignoring or filtering all the other conversations

Inhibition

the ability to suppress information, thoughts, or actions that may interfere with ongoing behavior

Stop signal task

procedure in which a person responds as quickly as possible to a signal but inhibits the response in the event of a second signal

Spatial interference task (Simon task)

a cognitive experiment that measures how well people can ignore irrelevant information and respond to a task-relevant stimulus. The task involves presenting a stimulus to one side of the body and asking the participant to respond with a button on the same side. The Simon effect is the name given to the phenomenon where participants respond more slowly and less accurately when the stimulus and response sides are not aligned

Flanker Task

a cognitive psychology experiment that measures a person's ability to focus on a target stimulus while ignoring distracting information
3 different types of tasks:
-congruent
-incongruent
-neutral
biggest takeaway: incongruent factors are the most distracting

dichotic listening task

A task in which a person hears two or more different, specially recorded messages over earphones and is asked to attend to one of them.

What affects how easy it is to use selective attention?

distractions

How good are participants at reporting the unintended message?

people do not remember much of what has been repeated out loud from the messages
participants were pretty monotone while repeating the messages
participants noticed verbal speech versus someone having a tone
participants noticed when there was a male or female voice change, language change

What makes it more difficult to filter distractions?

a lot of conversations happening at one time
when it relates to you, what you know / like
when you name has been called

automatic processing

cognitive process can be done with little or no conscious involvement
example: a newscaster saying the wrong thing because they are automatically reading off the teleprompter

how do practice and memory influence automatic processes?

the more you practice a task the more automatic it becomes
how many times you have performed the task can affect this too

action slips

Unintended, automatic actions that are inappropriate for the current situation

Why do action slips occur?

#1 too routine
ex: passing by where you should have stopped on your way home
#2 environment gets altered in some way
ex:
-the environment was changed so the incorrect action was performed
-running a new stop sign
-closing of bridge
#3 starting something automatic but it gets interrupted
ex:
-when you are doing something and you go back to another automatic response

dual tasks

more than one task at the same time

How is automatic processing related to dual tasks?

if something is automatic you may be able to multitask

Is it possible to truly multitask "well"?

it is hard but possible if the task is well learned

divided attention

share our attentional capacity across MULTIPLE of information at the SAME time
this is the idea that you cannot attend to 2 or more things at the same time

continous partial attention

attending to more than one thing. partly focus on one and partly focus on another

Who was Clive Wearing and what happened to him?

had the worst case of amnesia.
he only remembered 7-20 sec of information
long and working memory affected
only recognized his wife
*long term and working memory was affected*

What is memory?

learning that has been reinforced

What are the three ways our memories are assessed?

recall, recognition, relearning

What is the difference between recall, recognition, and relearning?

recall: pulling info from memory on demand
recognition: identifying when presented with something
relearning: recapping of information learned before

What are the three stages of memory?

encoding, stored, retrieved

What is rehearsal?

repeating info to remember

How long does short-term memory last if rehearsal is not used?

30 seconds

What is working memory?

ability to take memory from long term to short term and vice versa

What is the difference between explicit and implicit memory?

explicit- information we actively try to remember and put into long term
implicit- information we don't actively try to remember goes into long term

What is procedural memory?

how we remember to do things