Cognitive Psychology Exam 3

memory over the lifespan

personal milestones, highly emotional events, significant events, transitions in one’s life are more likely to be remembered

• for subjects who are 40+, memory is better for recent events and events occurring between 10-30

reminiscence bump

enhanced memory for adolescence and young adulthood in people over 40

self-image hypothesis

memory is enhanced for events that occur as a person’s self-image or life identity is being formed

cognitive hypothesis

periods of rapid change that are followed by stability cause stronger encoding of memories

• Schrauf and Rubun (1998)

cultural life script hypothesis

distinguishes between a person’s life story, which is all of the events that have occurred in a person’s life and the a cultural life script, which is the culturally expected events that occur at a particular time in the lifespan

• events in one’s life become easier to recall when they fit the cultural life script for that person’s culture

does the amygdala mediate the relationship between emotion and memory?

yes, through memory modulation framework, rather than a direct storage site or basic mediator

cortisol and its effects on memory

enhances memory for emotional pics but not with neutral

• associated with increased amygdala activity

emotions and memory

emotions can impair or enhance memory

• enhance ability to remember that an event occurred and some general characteristics, but does not give detail

flashbulb memory

memory for circumstances surrounding shocking, highly charged events, but shock value isn’t a precondition

• refers to memory for the circumstances surrounding how a person heard about an event, not memory for the event itself

• believed to be vivid/detailed, consistent, and long-lasting, thought they were like photographs

• repeated recall procedure: can change the details

narrative rehearsal hypothesis

flashbulb memories seem highly vivid and salient, but potentially due to news coverage and rehearsal following the event

flashbulb memories are…?

subject to decay over time just like everyday memories

• belief that their memories were accurate and vivid stayed high over time and dropped for everyday memories

• however, some studies find little change from 3-10yrs (short term decline and long term stability?)

the constructive nature of memory

memories are constructed based on what actually happened plus additional factors, such as the person’s knowledge, experiences, and expectations

• mind constructs memories based on different sources of info

source monitoring

process of determining the origins of our memories, knowledge, or beleifs

errors

misidentifying source of memory, or source misattribution

• very common

cryptoamnesia

unconscious plagiarism of the work of others

memory & gender

biased for what typical male and females would say

repeated reproduction

same subjects tried to remember the story at longer and longer intervals after they had first read it

• at longer intervals, reproductions were shorter than original and contained many omissions and inaccuracies, tended to the subjects own culture

pragmatic inference

occurs when reading a sentence leads a person to expect something that is not explicitly stated or implied by the sentence

• inferences are based on knowledge gained through experience

schema

one’s knowledge about some aspect of the environment

script

conception of the sequence of actions that usually occurs during a particular experience

postives & negatives of constructive memory

Positive: allow us to understand language, solve problems, and make decisions

• fill in the blanks when there is incomplete info based on knowledge and experience

• advantageous, otherwise there would be an overload of info and we can use cognitive resources for other tasks

• sometimes results in memory errors

what is it like to have exceptional memory?

• not good at reasoning that involved drawing inference or “filling in the blanks” based on partial information

• people with high autobio

misinformation effect

misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event can change how the person describes the event later

• Retroactive interference

false memories for early events in people’s lives

inaccurate or completely fabricated recollections that feel completely real. Researchers estimate that around 40% of people hold a fictional first memory, largely because the human brain cannot store true autobiographical episodic memories during infancy and early childhood

eyewitness testimony

testimony by a person who was present at the crime about what they saw during commission of the crime

• source monitoring errors

• people are not always accurate

errors due to suggestion

leading questions can influence testimony

post-identification feedback effect

increase in confidence due to confirming feedback after making an identification

conceptual knowledge

knowledge that enables us to recognize objects and events and to make inferences about their properties

concepts

mental representations of a class or individual; the meaning of objects, evetns , and abstract ideas

categories

includes all possible examples of a particular concepts, like different dog breeds

categorization

process by which things are placed in categories

definitional approach to categorization

decide whether something is a member of a category by determining whether a particular object meets the definition

• works well for some things, but not for most objects

• not all members of categories have the same features- variation

family resemblance

things in a particular category resemble one another in numerous ways

prototype approach to categorization

membership in a category is determined by comparing the object to a prototype that represents the category

prototype

“typical member of the category

• not an actual member of a category; an average representation of diverse instances of a category

high typicality

category member closely resembles category prototype

low typicality

category member does not closely resemble category prototype

prototypical objects are…?

named first

priming vs. prototypical objects

prototypical objects are affected more by priming

• priming resulted in faster judgments for prototypical objects

exemplar approach to categorization

involves determining whether an object is similar to other objects by thinking of exemplars of that category

exemplar

actual members of the category that a person has encountered in the past

exemplar approach advantage

by using real-world examples, it can more easily take into account atypical causes

when do exemplar and prototypes work better?

Exemplars → small categories

Prototypes → large categories

levels of categories

global → basic → specific

basic level is…?

psychologically special because going above it to global results in a large loss of info and going below it to specific results in little gain of info

• faster reaction time

the level that is “special” is…?

not the same for everyone

• people with more expertise and familiarity with a certain category focus more on specific information

semantic network approach

concepts are arranged in networks that consist of nodes connected by links that represent a category or concepts

hierarchical model

consists of levels arranged so that more specific concepts are at the bottom and more general concepts are at higher levels

• Collins & Quillian’s

spreading activation

activity that spreads out along any link that is connected to an activated node

• activation also spreads to other nodes in the network

lexical decision task

when words were closely related (ex. bread & wheat), faster to say yes both are words

conclusion: retrieving one word from memory triggered a spread of activation to nearby locations in a network

criticism of the collins and quillian model

theory can’t explain the typicality effect

connectionism

approach to creating computer models for representing cognitive processes

parallel distributed processing (PDP)

propose that concepts are represented by activity that is distributed across a network

circles & lines

Circles → units/concepts and their properties

Lines → connections that transfer info between units

some units can be activated by….?

stimuli in the environment (input), some by signals received from other units

input units → hidden units → output units

connection weight

determines how signals from one unit either increase or decrease activity of the next unit

connectionist approach

activation of units in a network depends on 1) the signal that originates in the input units 2) the connection weights throughout the network

training network

connection weights must be adjusted so that activating the concept unit and the relation unit only activates the correct property

learning process

erroneous responses in property units cases an error signal to be sent back through the network by back propagation

error signals…?

provide information about how the connection weights should be adjusted so that correct property units will be activated

evidence in support of connectionsim

operation of connectionist networks is not totally disrupted by damage

• networks can explain generalization of learning

mental imagery

ability to recreate the sensory world in the absence of physical stimuli, also occurs in senses other than vision

• behaviorism led to a decline in imagery research

visual imagery

seeing in the absence of a visual stimulus

how does visualization influence performance?

by activating the same neural pathways in the brain as physical practice, building muscle memory and sharpening focus before you even move

mental chronometry

moving an object through space in the mind

conceptual peg hypothesis

concrete nouns create images that other words can hang onto

• easier to remember concrete than abstract nouns

Kosslyn’s mental scanning experiments

Kosslyn: demonstrated that mental images preserve metric spatial information and function in a quasi-pictorial manner

spatial representation

different parts of an image can be described corresponding to specific locations in space

Zenon Pylyshyn & imagery and perception

thought that just because we experience imagery as spatial, doesn’t mean the underlying representation is spatial

• challenges Kosslyn

epiphenomenon

something that accompanies the real mechanism but is not actually a part of the mechanism

propositional representation

relationships can be represented by abstract symbols such as an equation or statements

• proposed by Pylyshyn

depictive representations

representations that are like realistic pictures of an object, so that parts of the representation correspond to parts of the object

imagery operates similarly to…?

semantic networks

Pylyshyn proposed that subjects are responding to Kosslyn’s tasks based on…?

what they know about what usually happens when they are looking at a scene

tacit knowledge explanation

we unconsciously use knowledge about the world when making judgments

size in the visual field

The perceived size of an object in the visual field depends on its retinal image size, perceived distance, and where it falls within the central or peripheral vision.

• Mental imagery shares many of these same spatial and size characteristics with real-time perception

is there a way to resolve the imagery debate?

instead of relying on behavioral experiments we should investigate how the brain responds to visual imagery

• can’t completely rule out tacit knowledge explanation

• adapting a multi-model format

imagery neurons

neurons respond to some objects but not others

• fired similarly when person closed eyes and imagined a baseball

• increased activity when imaging and perceiving an object

perception & imagery in brain imaging

• both activated the same areas in front frontal lobe and further back in frontal lobe

• perception activates much more of the occipital lobe than imagery

transcrainial magnetic stimulation

measured RT when TMS was applied to visual cortex and when it wasn’t: stimulation caused subjects to respond more slowly for both perception and imagery

• found that brain activation in response to imagery is not an epiphenomenon, brain activity in the visual cortex plays a causal role in perception and imagery

visual cortex & imagery

removing part of the visual cortex decreases image size

• M.G.S mental walk task

• visual cortex is important for imagery

perceptual problems are accompanied by…?

problems with imagery

unilateral neglect

ignore objects in one half of the visual field, due to parietal lobe damage

hemispatial neglect

when damage to one hemisphere of the brain causes a person to lose the ability to perceive, process, or attend to things on the opposite side of their body

dissociations between imagery and perception

• Guariglia et al. (1993) studied patient who could perceive fine but neglected mental images: mental images were limited to one side for imagery only

• R.M. could recognize objects and draw pictures of objects placed before him: unable to draw objects from memory and trouble answering questions that depended on memory

• C.K could recognize features of objects but couldn’t integrate them into a meaningful whole could draw objects from memory, but couldn’t identify the objects he had drawn after a long delay

  • had visual agnosia: inability to visually recognize objects

visual perception & imagery in processing

• visual perception begins bottom-up and then moves towards top-down

• imagery begins top-down

  • overlap in mechanisms for a brief time

conclusions from the imagery & perception debate

• Imagery and perception are closely related and share some, but not all, mechanisms

• Perception is stable, imagery is fragile

• Harder to manipulate mental images than perceptual images

• Perceptually, it is easy to flip between duck or rabbit but impossible for those who held the image in their mind

imagery can improve…?

memory by creating organized locations at which memories for specific items can be placed

method of loci

things remembered are placed at different locations in a mental image of a spatial layout

pegword technique

visualizing images by associating them with concrete words