Cognitive Psychology Exam 3 SDSU Dr. Turner

Aphantasia

~ inability to form mental images rely on verbal, logical, or conceptual thinking

~ doesn't impact intelligence or memory overall. Can still function, but struggle with imaged based working memory, like face recognition

Articulatory Rehearsal

~ Repeating info to maintain it;

~ process within working memory, specifically the phonological loop.

~ maintains verbal info by repeating it (eg: repeating a phone number)

Articulatory Suppression

~ Repeating irrelevant sounds (e.g., saying blah, la la la)

~ disrupts memory performance by occupying the phonological loop.

~ Prevents rehearsal → worse memory

Phonological Loop

~ Stores verbal/auditory info in working memory, helps language comprehension

~ 2 parts: Phonological store, articulatory rehearsal process

(holds sounds briefly) due to limited capacity (-2 seconds of speech

~ IMPORTANT: Stores route descriptions during navigation

Phonological Bootstrapping

~ Using knowledge of legal sound sequences to infer grammatical category of new words.

Phonological Similarity Effect

~ Lists of words/letters that sound alike are more difficult to recall than lists with distinct sounds due to increased confusion in working memory.

Atkinson & Shiffrin (Modal Model)

~ Memory = 3-stage system: Sensory Memory (temporary) → STM (active, limited capacity) → LTM (permanent, vast capacity).

Control Processes (Atkinson and Shiffrin Modal Model)

~ deliberate retention process (rehearsal elaboration etc) that learners voluntarily apply to keep info in STM

~ directly connected w A&K MM, distinguishes between passive and active strategies (structural features of memory, active strategies learners can deploy)

Auditory Coding

~ Encoding info based on sound; dominant in short term memory; even visual info can be converted to sound.

~Better recall for auditory info vs visual, converts sound waves into neural signals

~ turn right onto Mary (e lane ) stands out

Zhang & Simon (1985)

~ STM capacity is primarily constrained by the number of 'chunks' rather than the total info amount.

~ Chinese speakers could recall more digits than English speakers because Chinese number words are shorter, allowing more to be stored within the same time-limited (approx. 2 seconds)

~ Important: STM primarily organized around acoustic rather than visual codes

Baddeley & Hitch Model

~ Working memory = active processing system

~ short-term memory as an active, multi-component system for processing and manipulating information.

Central Executive

~ Controls attention, coordinates working memory, allocates resources from subsystems, handles multitasking and decision making.

~ part of reason for dual coding

~ working memory is most responsible for coordinating competing processes

Visuospatial Sketchpad

~ Processes visual/spatial info; used for imagery and navigation.

~ Used for imagery and navigation (eg: picturing a map, picturing how to get to work through each turn

Episodic Buffer

~ Integrates WM with LTM into a unified experience; integrates information from different sources and links it to long-term memory.

~ verbal visual and long term memory integration

Chunking

~ cognitive process of breaking down large, complex information into smaller, manageable units or "chunks"

~ increases effective STM capacity.

Digit Span

~ A measure of STM capacity — the number of digits a person can recall in order (typically ~7).

~ It measures short-term verbal memory and working memory capacity

Coherence

~ The logical connection between ideas in a text

~ meaningful interconnection between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Situation Model

~ Mental simulation of events

~ Includes: Space, time, causation, characters

~ Imaging what the characters look like in a book, where each character is, what they're doing, the time sequence etc.

Common Ground

~ Shared knowledge and personal common ground that progresses as conversation goes on.

Given-New Contract

~ Known info followed by new info; the speaker links new information to information already established.

Entrainment

~ Aligning speech styles;(ex: voice pitch, intonation, turn lengths,) rhythmic synchronization of behaviors that occurs subconsciously when people talk.

Syntactic Priming / Coordination

~ Speakers reuse grammatical structures they recently heard or used themselves

~ speeds up language production.

~tendency to reuse recently activated structures

Constraint-Based Model

~ Sentence interpretation uses multiple sources (syntax, context, meaning), simultaneously to resolve ambiguity.

~to resolve ambiguity, contradicting strict, modular, one-at-a-time models like the Garden Path model. Constraints can be defined as rules or probabilistic boundaries

Garden Path Model

~ Uses simple heuristics often leading to misinterpretation; leads to garden path sentences and temporary ambiguity.

~ Sentences mislead initial interpretation, the timing of events, actions, & info is unclear, leading to multiple interpretations

Garden Path Sentences

~ Sentences that mislead initial interpretation (e.g., "The horse raced past the barn fell").

Garden path Processing

~ Commits early syntactic structure that later proves wrong, requiring costly reanalysis.

Temporary ambiguity

~ The timing of events, actions, or information is unclear, leading to multiple interpretations.

Heuristics (parsing)

~ Grouping words into structure.

~ Linked to constraint based vs garden path parsing

Conversational Implicature

~ Meaning implied, not stated.

~ Example: "The popcorn was good" → movie was bad

Grice's Maxims

Rules guiding conversation: quality (truth), quantity (enough info), relation (relevance), and manner (clarity).

Pragmatics

~ Study of how context influences meaning.

~ Grice's Maxims, Conversational implicatures, Nonverbal communication

Decay

~ Forgetting due to fading of memory traces over time when not rehearsed.

Proactive Inference

~ Old info interferes with new.

~ ex: old password interferes w new

Retroactive inferences

~ New info interferes with old.

~ new password interferes with old

Visual Imagery

~ Experiencing a sensory impression in the absence of direct sensory input.

Depictive Imagery/ Representation (Kosslyn)

~ Images are spatial/picture-like.

~ represented in a "visual buffer" (early visual cortex) that acts like a computer screen,

Propositional Imagery /Representation (Pylyshyn)

~ Mental info is stored as abstract, language-like symbols or code rather than spatial images.

~ argues that spatial properties of mental images (like: scan time increases with distance), reflect learned expectations about how spatial tasks should be performed rather than picture like storage

Epiphenomenon

~ Imagery is a byproduct, not functional.

~ Physical processes in the brain cause mental events, but mental events cannot affect physical events (fear, pain, etc. are not required to produce behaviors like running or crying.)

Dual Coding Theory (Paivio)

~ Memory improves with Verbal + Visual encoding.

concrete words can be represented both as

~ verbal(semantic) codes, and as visual (imagery) codes. By combining both, the brain creates two pathways for storage and retrieval

Mnemonics

~ Memory aids that enhance encoding and retrieval.

Echoic Memory

~ Auditory sensory memory lasting a few seconds.

Iconic Memory

~ Visual sensory memory lasting ~250 ms.

Sensory Memory (Sperling 1960)

~ Very brief storage, high capacity but rapid decay

~ Iconic (visual) & Echoic (auditory)

~ participants stared at a screen, and rows of letters were flashed very briefly for 50 ms, could recall almost any specific row when cued immediately but recalled only a few letters overall when asked to report everything

Delayed response task (Sperling)

~ Performance drops sharply when the cue is delayed by half a second.

~ Sperling's partial report procedure, participants could accuracy recall and cues row of a briefly flashed grid but performance dropped sharply when the cue was delayed by half a second

Persistence of Vision

~ The brief continuation of a visual image after the stimulus disappears.

Serial Position Effect

~ Primacy effect → early items (LTM),

~ Recency effect → recent items (STM).

Imagery vs Perception Differences

~ Mental Imagery is fragile and weaker, less vivid

~ Mental Imagery requires sustained active maintenance and is easily disrupted by competing demands

~ Perception more vivid, dominant, automatic

~ Images harder to manipulate/reinterpret

~ Perception activates more posterior brain

Imagery vs Perception Similarities

Both activate

~ visual cortex, but perception activates it stronger

~ spatial

~ Scanning time distance

~ Limited field of view

Perky Effect (Mary Perky)

~ People may mistake mental images for real perception, showing overlap between imagery and perception.

~ Participants asked to imagine a banana showed a faint image of a banana projected on the screen. They typically incorporated the external stimulus into what they thought was purely their mental image

Kosslyn (Mental Scanning)

~ Time ↑ with distance → imagery is spatial, suggesting spatial structure.

Lexicon

~ Mental dictionary containing word meanings, pronunciations, and relationships.

Lexical Decision Task

~ Word vs non-word judgment, Participants decide if a string is a word — used to study word recognition.

Word Frequency Effect

~ Common words recognized faster than rare words.

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

A relatively permanent memory store with vast capacity, including knowledge, experiences, and skills.

Referential Communication Task

~ Measures how effectively speakers convey meaning to others.

~Tests clarity in communication

Theory of Mind

Ability to understand others' thoughts, beliefs, and intentions.

Prosody

~ Rhythm, tone, and stress patterns that influence meaning.

Spacing Effect (Ebbinghaus)

Distributed learning over time leads to better long-term retention than cramming.

Method of Loci

~ Associating items with locations in a mental map

Pegword Technique

~ Associate items with number rhymes

Mental Chronometry

~ Using reaction time to infer mental processes.

Shepherd and Metzeler

~ Mental rotation → time ↑ with angle

~ mental rotation is analog and spatial, with reaction time increasing linearly with angle

Lexical Ambiguity

~Words with multiple meanings eg "bank"

Lexical Priming

~ Faster recognition of a word when preceded by a related word.

Meaning Dominance

~ Biased: one meaning more frequent

~ Balanced: meanings equally frequent

Subject-Relative Construction

~ A sentence where the subject performs the action (e.g., "The boy who chased the dog...").

~ Subject relative easier to process than object relative because the more predictable structure requires less revision ("the boy chased the dog" easier than "the boy who the dog chased" (object relative)

Speech Segmentation

~ Process of dividing continuous speech into distinct words, using context and experience