Cognitive Psychology Exam 3

What is Metacognition? Why is it important?

Our thinking about our own thinking. Includes the ability to predict our own learning and performance, our knowledge of cognitive strategies, use of strategies and choices during learning, our ability to understand others cognition.

It is important because we monitor our own cognition and use this information to guide behavior.

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

Subjective experience of knowing the target word for which you are searching but cannot recall. Occurs when info is available but no accessible. Usually pretty accurate, can recognize TOT words better than not TOT words.

how do nodes influence neighbor units?

inhibition and excitation ex. meows inhibits dog and excites cat

What is metacognitive monitoring? What is a metacognitive judgment? What is monitoring accuracy? What is the difference between prospective and retrospective monitoring?

Assessments of our ongoing cognitive processes. Judgment is when you make a Judgment about how the learning is going. Monitoring accuracy is a comparison between judgement and performance. Prospective: predicting the likelihood of some future outcome (how many items will you remember) 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.

How we regulate or control our cognitive activity. What we do, when we do it, how we do it. (Ex. Study)

perpatrator present perfect and harris results

perfect and harris perpatrator absent results

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, and interest.

Metcalfe (2002) conducted some important research. What did she do? What did she find? What does it mean? Relationship between monitoring and control. Study easy and difficult spanish-english word pairs. Choose half to restudy. Cued recall test. 3 groups 5 s per set, 15, or unlimited

When time pressure is high, people prioritize easy items. When there is no time pressure, people prioritize hard items. (medium the same).

Thiede & Dunlosky (1999) conducted some important research. What did they do? What did they find? What does it mean? Relationship between monitoring and control. Study easy and difficult word pairs. The make a judgement of learning for each (prospective memory judgement). Choose half to restudy. Cued recall test

Negative relationship between JOL and amount of time studying. (more they studied items they predicted they would be harder to remember) consistent with monitoring affects hypothesis.

What is the monitoring affects control hypothesis?

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

Dunning, Johnson, Ehrlinger, and Kruger (2003) conducted some important research. What did they do? What did they find? What does it mean? Sophomore psychology class. Students took an exam and immediately after they estimated how many questions they got correct (retrospective judgement). Students were divided into 4 groups, A to B+, B- to C+, C- to D students, F students.

Students who performed well made accurate monitoring judgements. Students who performed poorly were overconfident in their performance.

What is the unskilled and unaware effect?

Individuals who struggle in a class are also more inaccurate when monitoring their learning. They are overconfident in their performance. Occurs because poor cognition may be related to poor metacognition and wishful thinking.

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

Undergraduate students at ISU were split into two lectures, fluent delivery (maintained eye contact, stood upright before a desk, spoke fluently) and disfluent delivery (hunched over the podium, behind desk, and read info from notes, did not maintain eye contact, read haltingly and flipped through notes several times). Asked students to predict how well they would remember info in 10 minutes (prospective judgement). Also had students rate if speaker was organized, knowledgable, prepared, and effective.

Lecture fluency impacted students’ predictions about learning but not their actual learning. Predicted better performance when speaker was better. Lecture fluency impacted students rating of their teacher even though it did not impact learning. (Lower evaluation of students own learning and lower teacher evaluations)

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

Errors in monitoring caused by inaccurate beliefs.

Explanatory depth phenomenon: the feeling that you understand a complex system or phenomenon more than you actually do (how does a toilet flush?)

Déjà 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.

Know the statistics from Simons & Chabris (2011)

Gave survey to college educated people without memory knowledge and to cognitive psychologists asked them if they agreed memory is like a “video camera”

63% of general public agreed with this statement and 0% of cog psychologists

Asked if they thought one eyewitness was enough to convict a crime (37% agreed from gen public and 0% of cog psychologists)

What is the constructivist approach?

We construct memories by integrating information to form a coherent event

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

The judicial system has the goal to identify and prosecute the guilty and protect the innocent but sometimes this doesn’t work.

How much weight do people put on eyewitness testimony? Presented a hypothetical court case (3 groups no eyewitness, eyewitness, and discredited eyewitness).

No eyewiteness 18% said they should be convicted, eyewitness 72% convicted, discredited 68% (should have been same as no eyewitness). Eyewitness memory plays a large role in conviction

Wells et al. (1998) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, and why is it important?

Looked at first 40 cases of people who were convicted who were innocent and later proven guilty by DNA and looked at parts of the case that lead to decision.

90% of first 40 involved eyewitness identification even though wrongly convicted.

Innocence project looked at first 375 cases turned; on average 14 years in prison, at least 21 people sentenced to death, one of the biggest factors was identification (69%)

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

Low correlation between confidence in memory and accuracy of the memory in eyewitness situations (0.3-0.5) (Leippe and Eisentadt 2007), but juror are more likely to believe a confident eyewitness than a unconfident eyewitness (can have serious consequences)

Be familiar with the case of Ronald Cotton.

Rape case, she studied the pictures for 5 minutes and then she picked him out in a line and he was sentenced to life but the Bobby Pool admitted it but Ronald had the sperm DNA confirmed it was Bobby Pool. Eyewitness memory

What are estimator variables? What are system variables? Know examples of each.

Estimator variables: not under the control of the justice system (characteristics of the witness, characteristics of the event, media coverage of the event)

System variables: under the control of the justice system (line-up composition, line-up instructions)

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

Encoding: quality of viewing conditions, emotional stress

Storage: introduction of new information, misleading/suggestive questioning

Retrieval: retention interval (time between event and 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: Moderate arousal improves memory, low and high impairs memory. Crimes are high, so very much impacts it.

Low arousal: invisible gorilla task (boring) High arousal: eyewitness situations, gun present, scared, etc.

Loftus et al. (1987) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, and why is it important? part 1

Participants watched a slideshow recording at a Taco Time restaurant. Measured eye movements while viewing slides (location of eye fixations and duration of eye fixations), control group saw a man go through the line and hand the cashier a check to pay for the purchase. The cashier returns some money to the man. Weapon group: man pulls out gun

Fixations on gun vs fixation of money across the counter (more likely to look at gun in gun group than check in check group)

Amount of time looking at the gun was higher compared to the check. People tend to focus on a weapon more than a mundane object.

Loftus et al. (1987) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, and why is it important?

Part 2: showed same slides as experiment 1 (weapon and no weapon) and 15 mins later gave a 7 item mc test, then given a 12-person lineup test to identify the person from the slides.

They did worse on both the memory test and made more errors in the weapon group. Memory and line up IDs were worse when the 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. Unexpected or unusual object, pulls attention from other aspects of an event (including perpetrator), highly stressful event

Morgan et al. (2014) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, and why is it important?

50 military personnel undergoing POW survival training. High stress condition included physical confrontation. Low stress condition tricked but not physically confronted. Given lineup and had to identify interrogator

High stress had more errors and fewer correct IDs, low stress fewer errors and more correct IDs.

What is the social contagion effect?

Others’ memories can infect ours, producing false memories ex. Older sibling telling the story of you doing something and remembering the way that your sibling told it.

Principe et al. (2006) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, and why is it important?

Magician did magic show for some kids and the magician failed to pull rabbit out of hat. Kids were interviewed after. Two conditions: suggestive interview (what did the rabbit eat when loose in the school? Carrots or lettuce?) and neutral interview. 4 groups: overheard adults talking about rabbits loose in the school. Classmates of kids who heard adults talking. Control. Witness saw a live rabbit loose in the school. Final interview asked did you see rabbit with your own eyes in the school.

Control in suggestive group 20% said they saw a rabbit, neutral 0 control. Overheard group and classmate group both said they saw a rabbit despite not seeing a rabbit (increased in suggestive). Witness both high.

Neutral interview: high rate fo errors for classmate and overheard groups

Suggestive interview: even higher rates of errors

More false memories when influenced by others memories and true of both neutral and suggestive questioning

What is the misinformation effect?

Any sort of misinformation after the event can change your perception of the event and change how you remember it. Form of retroactive interference. Leads to new encoding.

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

Gave college students a series of slides which included a red Datsun at a stop sign and a car hitting a pedestrian later. Completed questionarie: 2 groups consistent info ( did antoehr car pass the red Datsun while it was stopped at the stop sign?) inconsistent (did another car pass the red Datsun while it was at the yield sign?) gave a pair of slides 20 minutes later and identify which was consistent.

The consistent information they were more accurate in identifying stop sign and the yield sign created false memories.

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

Watched video of a traffic accident and completed questionnaire and asked how fast car was going when cars smashed/collided/bumped/contacted. Follow up asked if they saw broken glass.

Suggestive questioning. Average speed increased as verb aggressiveness increased. Smashed, collided, bumped, hit, contacted.

If they had smashed 16% said yes and hit only 7% control 6% reported yes

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

Contacted parents of participants and got pictures and had one photoshopped picture and the other 3 were normal. Asked participants about each picture and to talk about the experience.

True they remembered a lot of the true memories and some of the false but not a lot at time 1. Time 3 they remembered more false memories and the same amount of true. Memory is reconstructive so created more false memories

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

1. Correct identification (hit) 2. Incorrect identification (false alarm) 3. Identification failure (miss)

When absent, correct rejection. When present, correct identification (hit)

Perfect & Harris (2003) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, and why is it important? What is unconscious transference?

Phase 1: they witnessed an event; perpetrator photos; each person has committed a crime. Given details, told to remember as much as possible. Phase 2: attempt to identify mug shot photos if they’ve seen that person before (all were new faces) 1 week later did a final identification. Given details of one crime, told the suspect might be in the lineup or not. Half the perpetrator was present half it was absent. Had a mug shot of a person from the previous lineups who didn’t commit the crime in both lineups.

Unconscious transference: a witness mistakenly identifies one of the innocent bystanders as the criminal because they have seen the suspect in a different context.

Perpetrator present: Older adults only showed own-age bias. Older adults couldn’t identify perpetrator if they were young. Same explanation as for own race bias (eg. Expertise, exposure)

Perpetrator absent: younger adults had more correct rejections. Older adults have more transference errors (select a familiar but innocent). Young adults had more transference errors looking at older faces (own age effects). Transference errors occur because you have seen the face before.

What is a sequential lineup? What is a simultaneous lineup? How are they related to correct and mistaken IDs?

Sequential: see one picture or person at a time, must decide on each

Simultaneous: see all pictures or people at once (relative process when making decision) Simultaneous make more correct and incorrect IDs

Wells (1984) conducted important research. What did they do, what did they find, and why is it important? Participants viewed a mock crime. ½ viewed 6 person lineup with suspect present, ½ viewed a 5 person lineup with suspect absent.

When the suspect was present, 54% correctly identified, and 24% no ID. When suspect was absent 68% picked the wrong person “filler” and 32% no ID. People are biased to pick someone. Lineups can be biased, there was only one person with a beard in the lineup so stood out.

What is semantic memory? What are the three things it can refer to?

Organized, general knowledge about the world. Does not include contextual elements. Important for making inferences, chunking, building expertise.

Organized knowledge can refer to general knowledge (facts), lexical knowledge (word relations), conceptual knowledge (abstract concepts)

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

Category: set of objects or ideas that have common underlying features (allows for classification tasks) Structured as superordinate level (animal), basic level (dog, cat), subordinate level (lab, pug, poodle, Siamese, persian).

Concept: mental representation of a category, you have a concept of what it means to be an animal that are essential for learning (reduce cognitive load)

Instance/Exemplar: a member of a category

Feature: specific attribute fo an exemplar

Ex. Concept: cat features: purrs, four legs, tail Exemplar: calico cat

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.

Similarity-based approaches: judge the similarity between the target object and some standard memory.

Classical view: must contain specific features (compare to list of features) Prototype view: abstraction to create “prototype” (compare to prototype) exemplar view: use examples for classification (compare to exemplars)

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

Items belong to certain categories if they contain certain features MUST contain certain features (necessary), when classifying a new object, compare to list of features ex. Triangle

Works really well for well-defined categories, but categories have fuzzy boundries does not work well ex. Is bowling a sport or a game and not all categories have “necessary conditions” ex. What is a batchelor? Unmarried male. So are the pope and a 15 year old boy bachelors?

What is the typicality effect?

Some items are seen as better members of a category than others. All members of a category are not created equal; graded structure ex. Penguins cant fly, so are they still a bird? Limitation to classical view

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

Prototype: Idealized “average” example that includes typical features. Represents the best member of this category, formed via abstraction

Abstraction: taking bits and pieces of exemplars and combining them

Benefits: not concerned with necessary features; certain features increase the likelihood it belongs to category. When encountering a new object, you compare it to a prototype

Accounts for typicality because members of a category can be more or less like the prototype.

Limitations: Unclear how prototypes are formed, prototype will never resemble one particular exemplar, not everything that we categorize is compared to some “idealized” mean (an elevator is technically a vehicle)

What is family resemblance?

Objects in a category resemble one another in some way. No single feature is shared by all members of a category but they all share at least one feature. The most prototypical items tend to be the ones that share the most features. Ex. Bus and car high resemblance, wheelchair and elevator low resemblance.

Know the structure of categories and examples for each (superordinate, basic, subordinate).

Superordinate (ex. Animal) is the highest category, basic-level (ex. Dog and cat) is a little more specific, subordinate level (ex. Lab, pug, poodle, Siamese, persian) is the most specific level

Posner et al. (1967) conducted some important research. What did they do? What did they find? Why is it important? Present arrays of dots, prototype never presented, tested recognition with old and new arrays, included “prototype”.

Very high rates of errors for prototype even never seeing it before, shows they created a prototype in their brain

What is the exemplar approach? What can it explain? What are limitations with this approach?

Membership based on similarity to exemplars. Can explain typicality effects.

Problem: cognitive economy; it’s not efficient to compare a new object to every single exemplar we have stored.

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

Exemplar: no abstraction required ex. Prototype, abstraction causes loss of details that may be important, if we store exemplars, do not lose these details.

Are combinations possible? For some catergories, we store exemplars (categories with fewer members eg tropical fruit, for others we store prototypes (categories with many members eg fruit or animal)

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

Networks: concepts represented as nodes (individual units) each node represents a concept, interconnection among related nodes. Spreading activation: nodes communicate and by activating one concept you activate others related to that concept in neural network.

Collins and Quillian (1969) conducted some important research. What did they do? What did they find? Why is it important?

Sentence verification task, presented w sentence and had to say if it was true or not. Manipulated how far individuals had to mentally travel to make a decision (made a theoretical network of how connected). Ex. Canary two levels away from animal (bird, animal). Had both categories and properties

Evidence for network models. Separated by properties and categories, and the longer they had to travel in the semantic network, the longer it took. People were slower to respond to the questions about properties compared to category membership.

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

PDP: a connectionist neural network model. Distribution (activation in many parts of the brain) parallel (activation occurs simultaneously). Addresses how various categories interact (ex. Chicken belongs to food, animal, bird), can take context into account (ex. Talking about a chicken in a restaurant vs. a farmer talking about a chicken)

Connection weights: how much activation one unit passes on to the next. (ex. Feeding your dog and fish at the same time) the more their connected the stronger the association.

What is metacomprehension? What does most research focus on?

Your thoughts about language comprehension. Most research focuses on reading rather than comprehension of spoken speech. Whether or not an individual can assess the degree to which an individual understands information to which they have been exposed.

Know the research by Pressley and Ghatala (1988). Intro psych students took reading comprehension tests from old SATs, answered multiple choice questions, and then rated how certain they were that they got it right. (100% to 20% guess).

When students got the question right, they had an average certainty rating of 73%, but when they answered incorrect, had an average certainty rating of 64%. Shows students are often highly overconfident and are not good at judging if they understood what they read. (bad metacomprehension)

Why are basic-level categories special?

Basic level categories are special because they are more useful than either super or subordinate level categories. Basic level names are used to identify objects, more likely to produce semantic priming effect (made quicker judgements), different levels of categorization activate different regions of the brain (superordinate more than basic prefrontal cortex, subordinate more than basic to active parietal region)

summary of network models

Memory is organized based on meaning, related concepts are activated through spreading activation (this has helped us think about how knowledge is organized)

Know the evidence for network models.

Typicality effects: faster to confirm a robin is a bird then a penguin is a bird because nodes for typical items are close to the concept than less typical items.

Priming effects: nodes for related words respond faster than unrelated words because closer together

What is a lexical decision task?

Participants see two strings of letters and respond yes if both are words and no if not. Ex. Nurse-doctor vs. dog-spoon vs. chair-vaded (not a word)

Faster for related words than for unrelated words (priming effects) (supports network models)

Bargh et al. (1996) conducted some important research. What did they do? What did they find? Why is it important?

Participants completed a word scramble task (implicit memory). When finished, participant finds researcher who is having a conversation. Conditions: polite words, rude words, neutral words. Looking at percent of participants who interrupt the researcher.

Participants were more likely to interrupt if they completed the rude word task. Happened because the task activated rude concepts, which primed participants to be rude (rude behaviors) supports neural network model.

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

Schema: generalized, well-integrated knowledge about a situation, event, or person. Ex. Schema for classroom: things you expect to see, a professor students, clock, door, desks. Not a dog or a cat in classroom schema. Important for all cognitive processes

Script: One type of schema. Sequence of events. Ex. You have a script for how to ask a question in class. High familiarity?

How do schemas and scripts influence cognition?

Can affect what we remember. Memory for schema-inconsistent items (vivid or surprising) when something is out of the ordinary. Reconstruction errors, with our background knowledge, we fill in the blanks for what should be present in a situation from our schema and leads to reconstruction error.

Brewer & Treyens (1981) conducted some important research. What did they do? What did they find? Why is it important?

Participants came into lab room to be in study. Left alone for 35 seconds in researchers office and brought to another room and aske to remember everything in researchers office. Wanted to see if they remembered things consistent with schemas. Ex. Chairs, typewriter, desk, but also inconsistent stuff, bottle of wine, picnic basket, skull.

Good memory for things that were consistent with the schema for office. Forgot items inconsistent with schema ex. Picnic basket. Reconstruction errors for things in schema not present ex. Books.

How does confirmatory feedback influence eyewitness identification?

Eyewitnesses are more likely to make more errors if provided confirmatory feedback, and are more likely to be certain of their decision, even a simple “Ok” can act as confirmatory feedback.

What is memory integration? How is it related to stereotyping?

Memory integration: our background knowledge encourages us to take in new information in a schema consistent fashion 

This is often useful, but can have a negative effect - stereotyping 

Stereotyping: oversimplified image or idea of a particular category of people 

What is boundary extension and how do schemas influence this?

Refers to our tendency to remember having viewed a greater portion of a scene than was actually shown

Our schemas for complete objects help us fill in missing material during a memory task.

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

Constructive: people integrate information from individual sentences in order to construct larger ideas; later they believe that they have already seen those complex sentences because they have combined the various facts in memory; once sentences are fused in memory, we cannot untangle them into their original components and recall those components verbatim

Pragmatic: proposes that people pay attention to the aspect of a message that is most relevant to their current goals