Psych Exam 3

What is Metacognition? Why is it important?

Our thinking about our own thinking

• reflecting inward on ones own cognition

• We monitor our own cognition & use this information to guide behavior

  • you read a book b4 bed → realize you aren’t comprehending (monitoring) → realize you’re tired (monitoring) → close the book & go to bed (control)

What is the tip-of-the-tongue state? What causes it?

Subjective experience of knowing the target word for which you are searching, but cannot recall

• Occurs because information is available, but not accessable

What is metacognitive monitoring?

• What is metacognitive judgement?

• What is monitoring accuracy?

• What is the difference between prospective & retrospective monitoring?

Assessments about our ongoing cognitive process

• Using monitoring judgements to guide the decisions about how to complete a task

• Comparing between judgement & performance - how accurately did they monitor their cognition?

• Prospective - predicting the likelihood of some future outcome

  • “How many items will you remember on a future test?”

• Retrospective - estimating how you did on something that happened previously

  • “How many items did you correctly remember on the test you just took?”

What is metacognitive control? Know some examples.

Decisions about how to regulate cognition

• How we regulate our cognitive activity

• Decisions about what to do

• What to do (e.g., study)

• When to do it

• How to do it

What is the agenda-based model of metacognitive control? What kinds of things influence agendas?

People create a plan (agenda) for how they will complete a task

• Influenced by:

  • Incentives

  • Time pressures

  • Difficulty of material

  • Interest

Metacalfe (2002) conducted some important research. What did she do? What did she find? What does it mean?

Examined metacognitive control

• Method:

  • studied English-Spanish word pairs

  • Easy (family—?)

  • Medium (lie—?)

  • Difficult (skylight—?)

  • Cued-recall test (e.g., lie—?)

• Conditions:

  • High time pressure: 5 sec per set

  • Moderate time pressure: 15 sec per set

  • No time pressure: unlimited time per set

• Results:

  • When time pressure is high, people prioritize easy times

  • When there is no time pressure, people prioritize hard items

Theide & Dunlosky (1999) conducted some important research. What did they do? What did they find? What does it mean?

Examined the relationship between Monitoring & Control

• Method:

  • study easy & difficult word pairs

  • make a Judgement of Learning (JOL) for each prospective monitoring judgement

    • how likely they’d be able to remember that pair

  • Choose half to restudy

  • Cued-recall test (e.g., book—?)

• Results:

  • Negative relationship between JOLs & amount of time studying

    • more time studying items they predicted would be harder to remember

  • Consistent with the monitoring affects control hypothesis

What is the monitoring affects control hypothesis?

People use their monitoring judgement to guide the decisions about how to complete a task

Dunning, Johnson, Ehrlinger, & Kruger (2003) conduced some important research. What did they do? What did they find? What does it mean?

Monitoring learning in the classroom - how good are students at monitoring their own leadership?

• Methods:

  • Participants: students in a sophomore psych class

  • Students took an exam & immediately after they estimated how many questions they got correct (retrospective judgement)

  • Students divided into 4 groups based on their exam performance:

    • A — B+ students

    • B- — C+

    • C — D

    • F

• Results:

  • Students who performed well made accurate monitoring judgements

  • Students who performed poorly were overconfident in their performance

What is the unskilled & unaware effect?

Students struggling in class also were more inaccurate when monitoring their learning

• Why?

  • Poor cognition may be related to poor metacognition

  • Wishful

Carpenter, Wilford, Kornell, & Mullaney (2013) conducted some important research. What did they do? What did they find? What does it mean?

Monitored learning in the classroom — how does the way a professor delivers a lecture influence monitoring & learning

• Method:

  • Participants - undergrad students at ISU

  • Students were given a short lecture explaining why calico cats are usually female

    • Fluent Delivery: speaker stood upright before a desk, maintained eye contact, & spoke fluently

    • Disfluent Delivery: speaker was hunched behind podium, read from notes, no eye contact

  • Primary measures:

    • Prediction (prospective judgement): “how much information will you be able to remember in 10 minutes?” - metacognitive measure

    • Actual memory test: “write a detailed explanation for why calico cats are almost always female” - free-recall, cognitive measure

• Results:

  • Lecture fluency impacted students’ predictions about learning, but not their actual learning

  • learning was the SAME, but predictions differed

What is metacognitive illusion? Know some of the examples discussed in class.

Errors in monitoring caused by inaccurate beliefs (both of ourselves & others)

• Explanatory depth phenomenon

  • The feeling that you understand a complex system or phenomena more than you actually do

  • How confident are you that you understand how a toilet flushes?? Now explain it

• Deja vu

  • A feeling that you’ve lived through a situation before

• Planning fallacy

  • The tendency to underestimate the amount of time required to complete a project

What is metacomprehension? Know the research by Pressley & Ghatala (1988)

Refers to your thoughts about about language comprehension

• Research focuses on reading comprehension

Pressley & Ghatala assessed student’s metacomprehension & performance on tests of reading ability

• Took reading-comprehension tests from the Scholastic Aptitude Test → answered multiple-choice questions & rated how certain they felt about their accuracy

• Students are highly overconfident - when wrong, thought they did better than actually did

• When correct, had same amount of confidence as those incorrect

• Students aren’t very accurate in estimating whether they’ve understood the material that they’ve just read

Know the statistics from Simons & Chabris (2011).

Administered a survey to educated adults & cognitive psychologists

• Asked the statement, “Do you believe that human memory works like a video camera, accurately recording the events we see & hear so that we can review & inspect them later?”

  • 63% of the general public agreed

  • 0% of cognitive psychologists agreed

• Asked, “In my opinion, the testimony of one confident eyewitness should be enough evidence to convict a defendant of a crime.”

  • 37% of general public agreed

  • 0% of experts agreed

What is the constructivist approach?

We construct memories by integrating information to form a coherent event

• memory isn’t like a tape recorder - it’s reconstructive

Loftus (1974) conducted important research? What did they do? What did they find? Why is it important?

Examined how important is an eyewitnesses

• Presented a hypothetical case

• Three groups

  • No eyewitness - 18% conviction

  • Eyewitness - 72% (WAY more likely)

  • Discredited Eyewitness - 68% (Should have been ~18%, but it was still so high!)

• Showed that eyewitness memory has a large impact on conviction

Wells et al. (1998) conducted important researchh. What did they do? What did they find? Why is it important?

Examined the importance of eyewitnesses in real-world cases

• First 40 cases in the US in which DNA was used to exonerate the inmates

• Each case represents an innocent person who was convicted & served time in prison

• Examined rate of eyewitness ID that led to their false conviction

  • 90% involved eyewitness ID

  • 5 on death row

How strong is the relationship between confidence & accuracy in eyewitness memory?

Examined by Leippe & Eisentadt (2007)

• correlation btw confidence in memory & accuracy of memory in eyewitness situations in low (.3-.5)

• However, jurors are more likely to believe a confident eyewitness than unconfident eyewitness

  • this can have serious consequences if the confidence is misplaced

What is the case of Ronald Cotton?

He was wrongfully convinced because of an eyewitness who felt absolutely certain that it was him

• he was eventually released from DNA evidence

• She felt horrible, he forgave her

What are estimator variables?

What are system variables?

Know examples of each.

• Estimator: not under the control of the justice system

  • characteristics of the witness or event

  • media coverage of an event

• System: under control of the justice system

  • line-up composition

  • line-up instructions

Know the sources of memory distortion that can come from each phase of memory

• Encoding

  • Quality of the viewing conditions (light vs dark)

  • Emotional stress

• Storage

  • Introduction of new information (sometimes misinformation)

  • Misleading/suggestive questioning

• Retrieval

  • Retention-interval - time btw event & testimony

  • Line-up composition/format

How does arousal influence memory?

What is the Yerkes-Dodson Curve?

How does the type of arousal matter?

Yerkes-Dodson Curve - Inverted U shape relationship btw performance & arousal

• Moderate arousal improves memory

• Low & high arousal impair memory

• Type of arousal

  • Low arousal

    • Invisible gorilla

  • High arousal

    • High stress can impair memory

Loftus et al. (1987) conducted important research. What did they do? What did they find? Why is it important?

Examined the presence of a weapon

• Participants viewed a series of slides at a “Taco Time” restaurant

• Measured eye movement while viewing the slides

  • Location & duration of eye fixation

• Control Group: saw a man go to the cashier & pay

• Weapon Group: A man pulls a gun on the cashier

• Results:

  • Eye fixation & duration: The presence of a gun increases looking time & location

  • Gun draws out attention

Follow-up study - shown same slides as first experiment

• 15 min later, given a MCT

• then, given a 12 person line up to ID the person from the crime

• Results:

  • memory & line-up ID were worse when a weapon was present

What is the weapon focus effect? What causes it?

People tend to focus more on the weapon relative to a mundane object

• Why?

  • unexpected or unusual object

  • Pulls attention from other aspects of the event (including the perpetrator)

  • Highly stressful event

Morgan et al. (2014) conducted important research. What did they do? What did they find? Why is it important?

Researched the influence of stress of ID accuracy

• Method

  • 50 military personnel undergoing POW training

  • 1 day after leaving training, participants viewed a 15 person line-up to ID interrogator

• Conditions

  • High stress - physically confronted

  • Low stress

• Results

  • High stress = more errors, fewer correct ID

  • vise versa for low stress

What is the social contagion effect?

Others’ memory can “infect” ours

• produces false memories

Principe et al. (2006) conducted important research. What did they do? What did they find? Why is it important?

Examined the social contagion effect

• Method

  • Preschoolers saw a magic show & during it, the magician failed to pull a rabbit out from his hat

  • Intervening interview

    • Suggestive interview - planted info… “What did the rabbit eat when he got loose in your school?”

    • Neutral interview

  • Final interview: did you see a rabbit with your own eyes?

• Groups

  • Overheard - overheard rumor of rabbit loose at school from adults

  • Classmate - overheard rumor from classmates

  • Control - didn’t overhear any rumor

  • Witness - saw a live rabbit running loose

• Results

  • neutral interview

    • high rate of errors for classmates & overheard groups

  • suggestive interview

    • even HIGHER rates of errors

  • More false memories when influenced by others’ memories

What is the misinformation effect?

Distorts memory for the original event

• retroactive interference

• Btw the witness event → recall of event

Loftus et al (1978) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, & why is it important?

Researched post-event encoding - could they make the participants see a yield sign that wasn’t there?

• Method

  • Students were shown a series of slides of a car at a stop sign & the car later hit a pedestrian

  • Completed a questionnaire about what they had witnessed. Critical question:

    • Consistent info: Did another car pass the car while it was at the STOP SIGN

    • Inconsistent info: did another car pass the car while it was at the YIELD SIGN

  • 20 minutes later, given a pair of slide photos & told to ID which they had previously seen

• Results

  • Those given inconsistent info falsely remembered & picked the photo with the yield sign

Loftus & Palmer (1974) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, & why is it important?

Researched suggestive questioning

• Method

  • Watched videos of a traffic accident

  • Completed a questionnaire about the accident they just saw, including a critical question focused on the speed of the vehicles

  • “How fast were the cars going when they ______ each other”

    • smashed/collied/bumped/hit/contacted

• Results

  • Memory for higher speeds when using more violent words (smashed/collided)

• Follow-up experiment

  • Participants retested 1 week later

  • Asked if they saw any broken glass

    • Higher rate of false memories of broken glass when more “violent” verbs were used

Wade et al. (2002) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, & why is it important?

Tested false memories of personal memories

• Participants were shown 4 pics from childhood events

• 3 were real; 1 was fake (photoshopped)

• By the 3rd interview, participants said they remembered the event that never happened & added details to the story

What are the 4 possible outcomes of a lineup identification? Which ones are possible when the perpetrator is present? Which is correct when the perpetrator is absent?

• Correct ID (hit)

• Incorrect ID (false alarm - picking anyone other than the actual perpetrator)

• ID failure (person isn’t there) - these 3 are for when they are present

• Correct rejection (rejecting lineup correctly) - correct when perpetrator is absent

Perfect & Harris (2003) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, & why is it important? What is unconscious transference? What is the own-age bias & what causes it?

How does confirmatory feedback influence eyewitness identification?

What is a sequential lineup? What is a simultaneous lineup? How do they relate to correct & mistaken ID?

• Sequential - one pic/person @ a time → make a yes/no decision

• Simultaneous - see all b4 making a decision

Wells (1984) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, & why is it important?

What is semantic memory?

What is a category? What is a concept? What is an instance/exemplar? What is a feature?

How do we classify novel objects? What are the theories of concept formation? For each, know what you would compare the new object to to make a classification decision

What is the classical view? What are limitations of it?

What is the typicality effect?

Rosch & Mervis (1975) conducted research. What did they do, what did they find, & why is it important?

What is the prototype approach? What is abstraction? What is a prototype? How does it handle typicality effects? What are limitations of the prototype approach?

What is family resemblance?

What makes prototypes special?

Know the structure of categories & examples for each (superordinate, basic, subordinate). What are basic-level categories special (see book)

Posner et al (1967) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, & why is it important?

What is the exemplar approach? What are the limitations?

Know examples of when we might use an exemplar approach vs. a prototype approach

What are network models of semantic memory? What are nodes? What is spreading activation?

Collins & Quillian (1969) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, & why is it important?

What is parallel distributed processing? What are connection weights? How are connection weights influenced by frequency of pairing items together?

Know the evidence for network models

What is a lexical decision task?

Bargh et al (1996) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, & why is it important?

What is a script? What is a schema? Know examples of each.

How do schemes & scripts influence cognition

Brewer & Treyens (1981) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, & why is it important?

What is memory integration? How is it related to stereotyping? What is the implicit association test & why is it used? How do people perform on congruent vs. incongruent trials

What is boundary extension & how do schemas influence this?

What is the pragmatic approach to memory? How does this differ from the constructive approach?