Module 2 Cognitive Psychology

Flashcards of vocabulary terms and definitions about attention and memory from lecture notes.

Different processes of attention

Voluntary action, attentional capture, and divided attention.

Outward attention

When you are paying attention to what is going on around us.

Inward attention

When you are paying attention to what is going on in your mind.

Inattentional blindness

Failure to notice a stimulus, even though you are looking right at it, because attention is elsewhere; a product of selective attention.

Change blindness

Failure to notice visual changes, typically when they occur during a disruption, because attention is elsewhere; a product of selective attention.

Early filter (early selection)

When told to pay attention to X and not pay attention to Y, you are able to filter out what you are not supposed to attend to early on in the process.

Late filter (late selection)

Everything receives relatively complete processing, and attended input makes it to consciousness.

What captures attention?

Stimuli with some personal importance or relevance.

Cocktail Party Effect

You can be paying attention to the conversation with your friends, but when you hear somebody else say your name it captures your attention.

Attention as a limited capacity system

We pay attention to things, which implies that attention is a limited resource and the allocation of those resources to things.

Valid cue

An arrow that points to where the target will appear.

Invalid cue

Arrow that points to the opposite side that the target will appear.

Spatial attention studies results

We are less efficient to perceive and respond to a stimulus, if we are misled (invalid cues).

Task Switching

Compared to completing two tasks separately, when you switch back and forth between two tasks, tasks take more time to complete and you make more errors on tasks.

General Resources: Executive Control

An executive control mechanism that allows control over thoughts and behaviors, used whenever we consciously or voluntarily direct attention toward something, limited in capacity.

Practiced tasks and resource use

As tasks become more practiced, it requires fewer resources or less frequent use of these resources (i.e. driving a car).

Automaticity

A well-practices task requiring little or no control; tasks can become automatic with enough practice, meaning they can move forward without executive control (auto-pilot mode).

Distracted driving examples

Three main types include: taking eyes off the road, taking your hands off the wheel, and cognitive distractors (taking your mind off of driving).

Stroop effect

Occurs when there is a conflict between font/ink color and meaning of word, and the task is to ignore meaning of the word

Stroop effect Definition

Slowing in response times when naming font/ink color of words whose meaning is incongruent with font/ink color, in comparison to when there is no conflict between font/ink color and meaning of words.

Why is the Stroop task important?

Demonstrates that inhibiting well-practices tasks can use attentional resources as well; a great tool to better understand attentional control.

Sensory memory

Temporary store of incoming information from your senses, info decays rapidly, and has nearly unlimited capacity.

Short-term memory

The sensory info that we attend make it here; has limited capacity and short duration; with rehearsal, info re-entered into STM.

Short-term memory (STM)

Involves temporarily and passively storing information.

Working memory (WM)

Involves temporarily storing information and working with that information, often in the face of distractors.

Central executive

Used for inhibition, response selection, task switching, and directing attention.

Phonological loop

For verbal information.

Visuospatial sketchpad

For nonverbal information.

People who have higher WM capacity have…

Better reasoning skills, better grades in school, better problem-solving skills, better at standardized tests, less cocktail party effect, reduced Stroop effect, and mind-wander less.

Long-term Memory

Info makes it into LTM from WM through encoding, info transferred back into WM through retrieval, capacity is nearly unlimited, and duration is nearly unlimited.

Amnesia

Memory loss due to some event (disease, accident, surgery, etc.).

Primacy effect

Better memory for first few items in a list; related to LTM.

Recency effect

Better memory for last few items in a list; related to WM.

Maintenance rehearsal

Rehearsal where you repeat things constantly in WM (repetition to recycle items in WM).

Active/Relational/Elaborative rehearsal

Thinking about meaning of items, how they are related to each other or to things you already know.

Levels of processing (LOP)

Deeper and more meaningful processing to to-be-remembered material will lead to better memory for the material later on, compared to shallower and less meaningful processing.

Explicit memory

The intentional effort to access past experiences; includes free recall, cued recall, and recognition.

Implicit memory

The unintentional manifestation of past experiences without conscious recollection.

Anterograde amnesia

Not forming new memories after incident (antero = after).

Retrograde amnesia

Not remembering things from before incident (retro=old….before).

When accompanied with poor diet, alcoholism leads to thiamine deficiency, which can lead to anterograde amnesia.

Korsakoff's syndrome

Transience

Forgetting information over time.

Blocking

When information is temporarily inaccessible, despite proper encoding and availability in long-term memory.

Proactive interference

Prior learning disrupts recalling new information (older memories impairing retrieval of newer memories).

Retroactive interference

New learning disrupts recalling old information.

Absentmindedness

Is related to lapses of attention during encoding or retrieval; without proper attention during encoding of to retrieval cues, retrieval might fail.

Prospective memory

Remembering to complete an intention in the future.

Misattribution

Failure to remember source of a memory; memory is misattributed to incorrect source.

Suggestibility

Tendency for memory to be reshaped due to misleading external information.

Bias

Tendency to display memory errors influenced by prior knowledge, beliefs, expectations, and current state (a schema).