Cognitive Psychology & Memory – Exam Review

Flashcards covering key concepts from the 2021 cognitive psychology lecture on memory, aging, intelligence, heuristics, and brain lesions.

What type of interference is illustrated when a person learns a new phone number and can no longer recall the old one?

Retroactive interference – new information disrupts retrieval of previously learned material.

Which kind of memory is defined as remembering to perform an action in the future (e.g., take medicine at 8 PM)?

Prospective memory.

Which cognitive ability tends to remain relatively intact in healthy aging: semantic knowledge or processing speed?

Semantic knowledge (crystallized abilities) remains relatively intact, whereas processing speed declines.

After our early 20s, which type of intelligence shows the steepest decline?

Fluid intelligence (reasoning, problem-solving independent of prior knowledge).

What is mood-congruent memory?

The tendency to recall information whose emotional tone matches one’s current mood (e.g., positive words in a positive mood).

In Sperling’s classic partial-report paradigm, what aspect of memory is being measured?

Iconic (visual sensory) memory and its rapid decay.

What is the ‘g factor’ in intelligence research?

A general intelligence factor underlying positive correlations among diverse cognitive tasks.

Name the secular trend showing that average IQ scores rise by roughly 3 points per decade worldwide.

The Flynn effect.

In a large sample, why do people who score high in one cognitive test often score high in others?

Because of the positive manifold produced by the underlying g factor.

Immediately after a memory is reactivated, it becomes labile. Roughly within how many minutes is it most susceptible to change?

Within the first few minutes (≈6 minutes) after reactivation, during the reconsolidation window.

According to multiple-resource theory, will listening to a podcast interfere with pressing a green button in a purely visual task?

Interference is reduced because the tasks tap different sensory modalities, but some central-attention cost can still occur.

What famous neurological case demonstrated that ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) damage can alter personality and impulse control?

Phineas Gage.

Which ability is NOT typically impaired after damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex?

Working memory performance is usually preserved.

What is the ‘fan effect’ in memory?

Slower retrieval when one concept is associated with many facts, due to interference among the associations.

Do experts rely more on intuitive or analytic processing in their domain of expertise?

They employ more intuition (rapid pattern recognition) but can switch to analytic reasoning when needed.

Within Baddeley’s working-memory model, what does the ‘inner scribe’ (spatial rehearsal mechanism) do?

Stores and refreshes spatial location and movement information of objects.

Define the Endowment Effect.

Tendency to value an item more once one owns it, compared to when one does not.

Give one key difference between episodic and semantic memory.

Episodic memory is tied to personal time and place (autobiographical), whereas semantic memory is context-free factual knowledge.

What did Elizabeth Loftus demonstrate with the misinformation effect?

Post-event information can alter and distort a person’s original memory of an event.

Reasoning from ‘All the children in the class like Bamba; therefore, the new child probably likes Bamba’ is an example of what type of inference?

Inductive inference.

What clinical condition provides evidence that semantic and episodic memory can be separately impaired?

Semantic dementia – severe loss of factual knowledge with relatively spared recent episodic memories.

In Gestalt problem solving, which obstacle is considered most detrimental when a solver fixates on one ineffective strategy?

Mental set (functional fixedness / thought fixation).

What does Ribot’s Law (temporal gradient) state about retrograde amnesia?

Recent memories are more likely to be lost than older, consolidated memories.

Which memory type is explicitly linked to a sense of self and is typically easier to forget: episodic or semantic?

Episodic memory is self-referential and is generally more fragile than semantic memory.