Cognitive Psych Exam 2:

Encoding-Specificity Principle

Recall is better if the context during retrieval is similar to the context during encoding. Ex: same words or similar phrases

Bilingual Memory Study

Marian and Fausey (2006) studied bilingual speakers recalling stories in a different language from the questions.

Recall Task

A type of memory task where participants must retrieve information without cues.

Recognition Task

A memory task where participants identify previously encountered information from cues.

Levels of Processing

A theory that suggests deeper levels of processing lead to better memory retention.

Physical Context

The actual environment in which encoding occurs.

Mental Context

The psychological state or cognitive environment during encoding.

Explicit Memory

A type of memory that involves conscious recall, such as recall and recognition.

Implicit Memory

Memory revealed without conscious effort, like word completion tasks. A indirect measure of memory. Participants are shown material like words or pics and the cognitive task doesn’t ask about the recall or recognition of those images or phrases.

Dissociation

A situation where a variable affects one memory task but not another. Test A, but little or no effects on Test B; or, when a variable has one kind of effect if measured by Test A, and the opposite effect if measured by Test B.

Own-Ethnicity Bias

The tendency to recognize faces from one's own ethnic group more accurately.

Amnesia

Severe deficit in episodic memory.

Retrograde Amnesia

Loss of memory for events that occurred prior to brain damage.

Anterograde Amnesia

Loss of the ability to form new memories after brain damage.

Patient H.M.

A patient who could not form new memories after the removal of part of his brain to cure epilepsy.

Pollyanna Principle

Pleasant items are usually processed more efficiently than less pleasant items.

Positivity Effect

The tendency to evaluate past events more favorably over time.

Autobiographical Memory

Memory for events, issues and experiences related to oneself.

Schema

Mental frameworks of knowledge or expectations based on past experiences. Ex: Mnemonic

Flashbulb Memory

A vivid memory of the circumstances in which one learned about a significant event.

Source Monitoring

The process of identifying the origin of a particular memory.

Eyewitness Testimony

Testimony given in court by a person who witnessed a crime.

Post-Event Misinformation Effect

When misleading information affects one's memory of an event.

Proactive Interference

Difficulty recalling new information due to interference from previously learned material.

Retroactive Interference

Difficulty recalling old information due to interference from newly learned material.

Distant Stimulus

The actual object or event in the environment.

Proximal Stimulus

The information received by sensory receptors.

Sensory Memory

A large-capacity storage system that briefly holds accurate sensory information.

Iconic Memory

Visual sensory memory that preserves an image of a visual stimulus after it is gone.

Feature-Analysis Theory

A theory where visual stimuli are comprised of distinct features.

Distinctive Feature

An individual visual characteristic that can be identified from a stimulus.

Recognition by Components Theory

A theory that suggests we recognize objects by their basic 3D shapes called geons.

Geons

Simple 3D shapes used in the recognition of objects.

Viewer Centered Approach

The idea that we store multiple views of objects rather than a single view.

Bottom-Up Processing

Processing that relies solely on sensory data.

Top-Down Processing

Processing that uses existing knowledge, concepts, and expectations.

Word Superiority Effect

The phenomenon where letters are recognized more quickly when embedded in words.

Change Blindness

Failing to notice changes in a visual stimulus.

Prosopagnosia

A condition characterized by an inability to recognize faces.

Phoneme

The basic unit of spoken language.

Coarticulation

Overlapping of phoneme articulations during speech production.

Phonemic Restoration

The process whereby listeners perceive missing sounds using contextual clues.

McGurk Effect

A phenomenon where conflicting auditory and visual information leads to misperception of speech sounds.

Cognitive Map

A mental representation of geographic information.

Spatial Cognition

Cognitive processing related to spatial relations and navigation.

Heuristic

General strategies that simplify decision-making but can lead to errors.

Landmark Effect

The tendency to estimate a shorter distance to a landmark compared to non-landmarks.

Border Bias

The phenomenon where people perceive greater distances across geographic borders.

Stevens and Coupe (1978) Study

A study demonstrating biases in geographical distance estimations.

Situated Cognition Approach

Emphasizes the context of learning and cognitive processing.

Mental Rotation

The process of rotating mental representations of 2D and 3D objects.

Imagery Debate

The discussion on whether mental imagery uses analog or propositional codes.

Analog Code

Mental representations that closely resemble the actual physical objects.

Propositional Code

Abstract representations of information that do not resemble the actual objects.

Farah's Research

Explored the brain's response during tasks requiring visual perception and imagery.

Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience

The integration of behavioral data with neural processes related to cognition.

Demand Characteristics

Cues in an experiment that inform participants of the expected outcome.

Auditory Imagery

The mental representation of sounds absent from the environment.

Pitch in Sound Processing

The frequency of a sound stimulus, perceived as high or low.

Timbre

The quality or color of a sound that differentiates different types of sound.

Inter-Speaker Variability

Variation in phoneme pronunciation among different speakers.

Visual Imagery

The ability to create mental images based on memory.

Altering Experiences in Memory

Cognitive distortions influenced by visual perception and memory.

Mental Image

A representation created in the mind of an object or scene.

Cognitive Map Distortion

Errors made while estimating distances or orientations in mental representations.

Alignment Heuristic

The tendency to remember structures as more aligned than they actually are.

Rotation Heuristic

The tendency to remember slightly tilted geographic structures as being more vertical or horizontal than they are.

Cognitive Maps and Heuristics

Cognitive maps constructed using mental shortcuts that may overlook accuracy.

Spatial Framework Model

Explains cognitive maps based on spatial relationships influenced by human body orientation.

Cues in Memory Construction

Elements that can guide or hinder accurate recall of memories.

Working Memory

The brief, immediate memory for material we are currently processing 

Long-term Memory

The high-capacity storage system that contains your memories for experiences and information that you have accumulated throughout your lifetime.

Episodic Memory

Your memories for events that happened to you personally; it allows you to travel backward in subjective time to reminisce about earlier episodes in your life

Semantic Memory

your organized knowledge about the world, including your knowledge about words and other factual information. 

Procedural Memory

your knowledge about how to do something 

Encoding

when you process information and represent it in your memory

Retrieval

Distinctiveness

stimulus that is different from previous memory traces

Elaboration

Deep processing that involves the connection of meaning and interrelated concepts 

The Self-Reference Effect

 You remember more information if you try and relate it to yourself 

 Hippocampus

a structure underneath the cortex that is important in many learning and memory tasks. 

Emotion

a reaction to a specific stimulus

Mood

a more general, long-lasting experience 

Consistency bias

tendency to exaggerate the consistency between our past feelings and beliefs and our current viewpoint 

Monitoring

trying to identify whether an event really occurred or was imagined 

Constructivist Approach

emphasizes that we construct knowledge by integrating new information with what we know

How Do Experts and Novices Differ

Experts are more knowledgeable, better organization of knowledge, and more experience using it.

Novices lack this comprehensive understanding and rely on basic rules or procedures to navigate tasks

Recovered Memory Perspective:

Memory for traumatic events (like child abuse) may be forgotten for many years and then come flooding back into consciousness.

False Memory Controversy

most recovered memories are actually incorrect, stories that never happened.

• Memory is less perfect

• Social pressure enhances the likelihood of memory errors

• The accuracy of childhood memories is not easy to determine.

The Recovered Memory/False Memory Controversy

Roediger and McDermott (1995) listed associated words with the false recall. 55% intrusion errors were found. Research shows that people can create false memories. Some people who have medical documents of sexual abuse as a child don’t remember the situation at all.

Effects of Emotion on Memory

Emotions can enhance memory for details, but can also impair memory for other details. 

Anxiety Disorders effects on Memory Tasks

With recognition tests, anxious and low-anxious people performed similarly. High anxious participants were MORE likely than low anxious people to recall negative, anxiety arousing words, but LESS likely to recall neutral and pleasant words

The Post-Event Misinformation Effect

• Someone views an event

• Then they’re given misleading info about what happened

• Later on, they mistakenly recall the misleading info rather than the event they actually saw

• Ex: Eyewitness Testimony

 The Relationship Between Memory Confidence and Memory Accuracy

Participants are confident about their misinformation based memories as they are about their genuinely correct memories.

• Majority of the law enforcement officers and jurors are not aware that a confident eyewitness is not necessarily an accurate one.

• Often Police techniques can encourage these kinds of errors.

Distal Stimulus

he actual object that is “out there” in the environment

Iconic/Visual-Sensory Memory

preserves an image of a visual stimulus for a brief period after the stimulus has disappeared

Retina

covers the inside back portion of your eye; it contains millions of neurons that register and transmit visual information from the outside world 

Primary Visual Cortex

located in the occipital lobe of the brain; it is the portion of your cerebral cortex that is concerned with basic processing of visual stimuli.

Perception

 uses previous knowledge to gather and interpret the stimuli registered by the senses 

Gestalt Psychology

 that humans have basic tendencies to organize what they see; without any effort, we see patterns rather than random arrangements