Psychology 240 Exam 1 Flashcards - University of Michigan

Long-term learning

-Improvement that lasts

-Visible in any context

short term performance

-immediate improvement

-visible in practice context

Simon & Bjork press experiment

Press keys in a certain pattern:

Group 1 - master and then move on

Group 2 -randomized practice

Result

-Group 1 had less errors in practice

-Group 1 predicted less errors in both practice and after

-Group 2 had less errors when tested later by a significant margin

desirable difficulties

strategies that are more challenging/less successful in short term but long term work better

Intuitions about what study strategies will be most effective are often _______

wrong

Is highlighting/underlining common?

yes, it is very common

Fowler & Barker study & results

Highlighting - Tested on article material

G1: Reads the article

G2: Reads and highlights the article

G3: Reads the highlighted article

Highlighting didn't help

Peterson study & results

Highlighting - Tested on article material

G1:

Initially underline article

Review marked article

G2:

Initially underline article

Review clean article

G3:

Initially no underlining

Review clean article

Factual material:

all performed the same

Conceptual material:

Students who underlined did worse

2 reasons highlighting isn't effective

-cause us to focus on ISOLATED FACTS and ignore bigger connections

-struggle to distinguish CENTRAL ideas from PERIPHERAL information

Is rereading common?

Yes, it is extremely common

Rothkopf study & results

Rereading

Asked to fill in missing words of article

G1: never read before

G2: read once before

G3: read twice before

G4: read 4x before

after 2 exposures, no increase in comprehension as you read more

3 problem with rereading

-Doesn't improve COMPREHENSION or performance on INFERENCE-BASED questions

-a SECOND OR THIRD time doesn't help

-give the MISTAKEN IMPRESSION that they've mastered the material (fool yourself)

How are people who use rereading deceived?

ability to recognize may mask inability to recall

Generating explanations

Coming up with explanations for why concepts are true, or how they relate to what you already know

Presley study & results

Generating explanations

The strong man carried a shovel. The toothless man wrote a check.

G1: NO explanation

G2: GIVEN explanation

G3: GENERATE explanation

The group who GENERATED their own explanations performed about twice as well as the other groups

Interleaved practice

Mix up problems and jump back and forth from one topic to another

Blocked practice

Study one topic until you have mastered it and then move on to the next topic

Roher & Taylor study & results

Interleaved practice -Learning volume formulas

Blocked group

vs

Interleaved group

-Blocked group was better in practice

-Interleaved group had better accuracy when tested at the end

Distributed practice/spacing

Spreading out your study over time with breaks

Bahrick study & results

Distributed practice - spanish vocab

G1: 6 sessions in 1 day

G2: 6 sessions in 6 days

G3: 6 sessions in 6 months

Final test one month from last study session

-G1 had best performance in practice, worst in final test

-G3 had best performance in final tes

Testing

One of the most effective ways to learn

Butler study & results

Testing

Phase 1: Study text passages

Phase 2:

-G1: Test on half of the passages

-G2: Re-study half of the passages

Phase 3: Test on all of the passages after a week

Practice Tests performed better in every category

Ways to use TESTING to study more effectively

-Don't just REREAD

- Have a FRIEND quiz you

- Make FLASHCARDS

- Use the CORNELL NOTE-TAKING SYSTEM

Low effectiveness study methods

Highlighting & Rereading

Moderate effectiveness study methods

Generating questions & Interleaved practice

High effectiveness study methods

Distributed practice vs Testing

Desirable Difficulties methods

-VARYING the conditions of learning

-INTERLEAVING instruction on separate topics

-SPACING study sessions on a given topic

-Using TESTS as study events

Varying the conditions of practice

Children who practiced at varying distances throwing a ball were better when tested at a random distance than children who practiced at one distance

Varying environmental setting in which studying happens

Spaced study/practice vs massed

Spaced practice benefit long-term retention

Can produce good exam performance AND good long-term retention as opposed to just maybe producing good exam performance

Seeming better vs actually being better

People in Bjork's art differentiation study thought they did better after blocked practice, when they actually did better after interleaved

Bjork's study of interleaving & results

Participants told to differentiate between artists

Interleaving produced better performance than blocking

Generation effects

Benefits that accompany retrieving information studied earlier

repeated testing vs repeated study

Testing is more beneficial in long term recall while repeated study is better in short-term

Metacognitive benefits of tests

A student's ability to judge whether info will be recallable is severely limited

Can also potentiate the effectiveness of subsequent study opportunities

How can familiarity be deceiving?

-can be confused with understanding

-More effort should be placed on output side versus input side (testing and explaining versus rereading vs studying)

Starting the semester (Putnam)

-Organize your time

-Buy or rent books before the course

-Find a quiet place to study

Preparing for each class (Putnam)

-Answer comprehension questions before you read the assigned chapter

-Generate questions about the important points

-Read, recite, and review

During class (Putnam)

-Attend all your lectures

-Leave your laptop at home

-Write your notes instead of typing them

-Obtain slides before class

After class (Putnam)

-Come back to your classes later in the day

-Reconstruct notes

Preparing for tests (Putnam)

-Study each subject a little bit every day

-Study by quizzing yourself

-mnemonic techniques

-acronyms

-use tests

The final exam (Putnam)

-Study far enough in advance to review all of the material

-Test yourself

-Get a good night's sleep the night before the exam

-DO NOT stay up all night cramming

Introspectionism

Just look inside and see and observe what goes on in the black box the mind

Introspectionism problems

-Difficult to verify

-Private events, not public

-End product, not the process itself

Behaviorism

-Psychology is the "science of behavior"

-Emphasis on what can be directly observed

- Stimuli

-Responses

-Reinforcements

-Rats in mazes

-ignore the mind (inobservable)

Behaviorism problems

-Can't account for diversity of human behavior such as language

-Limiting science to the observable is a bad idea

-Who's ever seen a quark?

Cognivitism

Infer whats going on inside the box; speculating the methods of the mind

Computational View of the Mind

Mainstream underlying assumption: the mind is somehow like a computer program

Dependent variable

What you measure/analyze

Independent variable

What you manipulate

Main effect

the direct effect of an independent variable on a dependent variable

Interaction

the interplay that occurs when the effect of one independent variable depends on another independent variable

Interpreting graphs

-Anything other than a straight horizontal line means a main effect

-if two lines are not parallel than there is an interaction (they cross)

Mental Chronometry

The study of the time course of mental processes (Donders - measuring reaction time)

Simple reaction time

Time it takes to detect a stimulus

Choice reaction time

Time it takes to respond to a stimulus when there are multiple responses from which to choose

Donder's subtraction method

Choice RT - Detection RT = Time it takes to make a decision

subtraction method problems

-Assumption of Pure Insertion (adding one more stage can't have any effect on other stages)

-Adding decision stage could influence detection stage

-Assumption of additivity (all the stages happen in sequence and you can just add up the time each takes)

-Stages might operate in parallel

-Assumes you already know what the stages are and You probably don't

Problems with confirming evidence

evidence is weak - finding some evidence that supports the hypothesis could be wrong

Eliminating alternative explanations

Way to combat confirming evidence

Huppet & Piercy amnesia experiments

Wanted to find part of memory that amnesia was affecting

Strategy: see if improving encoding helps

-Found out it did help

-Storage can not be the problem

Encoding

the processing of information into the memory system—for example, by extracting meaning.

Storage

the retention of encoded information over time

Retrieval

the process of getting information out of memory storage

falsifying storage explanation

equated encoding by having the people study the pictures for longer --> tested them after various amounts of time --> the results were no difference between the amnesics and the control. (This eliminates storage because after time more memory loss should have been seen in amnesics)

Structuralism

(introspectionist)

Contents of the mind

-Wundt

-Titchener

Functionalism, Pragmatism

How do the processes occur and how does it matter

-James

-Dewey

Gestalt Psychology

a psychological approach that emphasizes that we often perceive the whole rather than the sum of the parts

Perception

The means by which information acquired from the environment via the sense organs is transformed into experiences of objects, events, sounds, tastes, etc.

Distal stimulus

an object or event in the outside world that you are trying to perceive

Proximal stimulus

- it is the information our sensory receptors receive about the object.

- pattern projected from the distal to sensory organs (such as to the eyes or ears)

percept/representation

The mental representation of an object - what perception is supposed to deliver

Lack of correspondence

when percept does not correspond to distal stimulus - perceptual illusions

Paradoxical correspondence

when proximal stimulus does not correspond to distal stimulus but percept does

- moving objects, moving eyes

Perceptual constancies

our perception of an object's features remains constant even when viewpoint (and proximal stimulus) changes allowing us to recognize familiar stimuli under varying conditions

-Color

-Shape

-Size

Direct perception

a theory arguing that sensory perception is the direct result of info from the surrounding environment - all info needed is in the environment

direct perception components

-environment provides all necessary cues

-our brains are pre-wired to pick up cues

-stimulus info is almost always unambiguous

-biological motion - there's a lot of info in the stimulus itself

Constructivist theory

- perception uses data from the world and our prior knowledge and expectations

- sensory info is often ambiguous (rely on knowledge/expectations)

Bottom-up processing

information processing that begins at the sensory receptors and works up to perception

- driven by external stimilus

Top-down processing

information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations

- comes from the brain/mind

direct perception claims

only bottom-up processing

constructivism claims

both bottom-up and top-down processes

The paradox of depth perception

Paradoxical correspondence

-Proximal stimulus gets larger and smaller, but does not fool percept (someone walking up to you gets bigger as the approach but we know that the actual person isn't growing)

paradoxical correspondence example

-distal stimulus (the world is 3D

-proximal stimulus (on retina) is 2D

-perceptual experience is 3D

How does the visual system recover depth

Using depth cues

monocular depth cues

depth cues available to either eye alone

-Linear perspective

-Shape

-Relative size

-Interposition

-Shadows

-Accommodation

binocular depth cues

depth cues that depend on the use of two eyes.

-Retinal disparity

-Convergence

retinal disparity

difference in retinal image on the two eyes are larger for things that are closer to you, brain uses this to gauge how far away things are

-small disparity - farther away

-large disparity - closer

convergence

you have to cross your eyes (converge them) to see something really close to you and they straighten out as it moves farther away

Patient Dr. P's deficits

-Visual agnosia

-Damage to 'what?' stream

Patient Dr.P's preserved abilities

no damage to 'where?' stream

Agnosia

inability to interpret sensations and hence to recognize things, typically as a result of brain damage.

Relationship to dorsal/ventral distinction

Dorsal - where?

Ventral - what?

Retina

the light-sensitive inner surface of the eye, containing the receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the processing of visual information

rods and cones

photoreceptors in the retina, receives images that have passed through the lens of the eye

Rods - b/w (periphery)

Cones - color (fovea)

rods

-b/w (periphery)

- detect brightness

- at night things look grey because there is not brightness to detect

cones

-concentrated in the fovea and focus on color

-blue, green, red

Ganglion cells

- axons form the optic nerve

- cell layer is in front and sends info to the brain

Neuron

a nerve cell; the basic building block of the nervous system

Dendrites

Branchlike parts of a neuron that are specialized to receive information.

Soma

cell body