Cognition/Memory AP Psych Notes

morphemes

the smallest units of meaning within a language (ex: "Dog" = a free morpheme. "incoming" has three morphemes "-in," "come," and "-ing.")

aphasia

impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke's area (impairing understanding).

Broca's Area

Controls language expression - an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech.

Wernicke's Area

controls language reception - a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe

Linguist Determinism

Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think

Sternberg's 5 components of creativity

expertise, imaginative thinking skills, venturesome personality, intrinsic motivation, creative environment

associative activation

Ideas that have been evoked trigger many other ideas, in a spreading cascade of activity in the brain (domino effect)

availability heuristic

making a decision based on the answer that most easily comes to mind (many advertising agencies use this; ex: insurance)

representativeness heuristic

we tend to have representations of things (people who have certain characteristics represent certain professions; the lady at the bank example) in our mind that impact our conclusions about how we behave/respond

mental set

a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past

heuristics

Mental shortcuts or "rules of thumb" that often lead to a solution (but not always).

intuition

an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning

insight

a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem

Chomsky's Language Acquisition Device

humans have innate ability to adapt to grammar rules to create new sentences

recognition

identifying items previously learned

storage

the retention of encoded information over time

connectionism theory

Thorndike's theory: learning happens through making attachments between stimuli and responses

working memory

a newer understanding of short-term memory that focuses on conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory (like your mental workspace where you actively process and manipulate information, like a whiteboard where you jot down and rearrange ideas to solve a problem or complete a task.)

implicit memory

Memories we don't deliberately remember or reflect on consciously

procedural memory

how-to-do automatic skills

hierarchies

chunks composed of a few broad concepts divided and subdivided

Explicit Memory: semantic memory

general knowledge/facts (hippocampus)

Explicit Memory: declarative

memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare" (hippocampus)

Explicit Memory: episodic memory

experiences (hippocampus)

memory consolidation

the neural storage of a long-term memory (supported by sleep)

Long-term potentiation (LTP)

an increase in a synapse's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory.

encoding specificity principle

The more specifically related your cues are to the memory the more effective they will be at helping us remember

semantic encoding

the encoding of meaning, including the meaning of words

retrieval failure

the inability to recall long-term memories because of inadequate or missing retrieval cues

proactive interference

things we learned previously that get in the. way of learning new things (You have new combo lock, you keep putting in your old passcode)

retroactive interference

new information makes it harder to remember old info (You can't remember old passwords)

positive transfer

Older information can facilitate the learning of new information

reconsolidation

a process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again

misinformation effect

when we incorporate misleading info into one's memory of an event, they will misremember

source amnesia

faulty memory for how, when, or where information was learned or imagined

how to improve memory:

Rehearse repeatedly--spacing effect, distributed practice, testing effect
Make the material meaningful
Activate retrieval cues--context-dependent and state-dependent memory
Use mnemonic devices
Minimize proactive and retroactive interference--study before sleep, do not schedule back to back study times for interfering topics
Sleep more
Test your own knowledge, both to rehearse it and find out what you don't yet know--test recall rather than recognition

The Cerebellum (specifically the basal ganglia) plays a major part in __________

implicit (procedural, motor) memory

dual coding

occurs when information is stored in more than one form

Important Studies from the memory-hackers documentary

- The case study of Jake, the child who had HSAM
- The case studies with HM (the man with epilepsy, who had his hippocampus removed to stop the seizures) and Brenda Milner (the researcher)
- The Erik Kandel experiment with the neurons of the sea slug
- The Karim study was interesting because he wanted to view how memories are affected and can be changed over time, using rats
- The case with Shaw trying to implant false memories
- Optogenetics - lasers that can turn the memories of a mouse on and off at will. The mouse was genetically engineered to let a drug switch on a gene that fires light sensitive proteins...?

System 1 Thinking

Automatic, fast, little or no effort, no sense of voluntary control

System 2 Thinking

slower, more conscious, logical and critical

Impact of cognitive strain on System 1

Tests that seem simple but are actually hard will use system 1 and often get them wrong

Impact of cognitive strain on system 2

Tests that require system 2 to interpret will enact our system 2 and it will take more time

language

spoken/written/signed words and the ways we combine them to make meaning

Phonemes

in language, the smallest distinctive sound unit

grammar

a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others

receptive language

ability to comprehend speech - babies develop

babbling stage

beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language

one-word stage

the stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words

two-word stage

beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly two-word statements

linguistic influence

Words influence, but do not determine, thinking

prototype

a mental image or best example of a category (ex: we all have prototypes for a dog)

schema

a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information (a generalization)

stereotype

a generalized belief about a group of people (sometimes harmful)

illusion of control

cognitive bias that impacts our behaviors to make us more confident when we think we have power

sunk cost fallacy

we are reluctant to waste something we have paid for

framing

the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments.

cognition

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

concepts

a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

creativity

the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas

convergent thinking

narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution (multiple choice test)

divergent thinking

expands the number of possible problem solutions

priming effect

exposure to a stimulus influences a response to a later stimulus

"florida effect"

words that subconciously make us think of old people prompt us to change our behavior (subconciously walk slower)

"lady macbeth effect"

Feeling that one's soul is stained appears to trigger a desire to cleanse ones body

spotlight effect

the belief that others are paying more attention to our appearance and behavior than they really are

overconfidence

Tendency to overestimate our ability to make correct predictions

metacognition

thinking about thinking

confirmation bias

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

fixation

the inability to see a problem from a new perspective, by employing a different mental set

algorithms

a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem

belief perserverance

clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

pain of paying

adds a moral tax onto our consumption and changes how we enjoy a money spending experience

algorithmic thinking

a type of convergent thinking with only one right answer

Skinner's language acquisition theory

behaviorist (nurture); believes we are reinforced by our
environment to say certain words and not others

"thinking in images"

We can think in images without using languages, but is is more difficult to do so.

recall

retrieving information that is not currently in your conscious awareness but that was learned at an earlier time

relearning

learning something more quickly when you learn it a second or later time

encoding

the processing of information into the memory system

retrieval

the process of getting information out of memory storage

parallel processing

the processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously (ex: we remember where Flan stood when giving a story while also remembering her story)

sensory memory (echoic)

Fleeting sensory memory of auditory stimuli (ex: Flan asking what did I just say and repeating what she said word for word despite not encoding what she said as a memory)

sensory memory (iconic)

Fleeting sensory memory of visual stimuli (ex: shown picture of crocodile, briefly encoded)

short-term memory

activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as the seven digits of a phone number while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten

long-term memory

the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.

automatic processing

unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings

chunking

organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically

mnemonics

learning aids, strategies, and devices that improve recall through the use of retrieval cues

peg-word system

A mnemonic in which the items in a list to be remembered are associated with the sequential items in a memorized jingle and then the list is retrieved by going through the jingle and retrieving the associated items.

spacing effect

the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice

massed practice (cramming)

practice that can produce speedy, short term learning and high feelings of confidence

distributed practice

spacing the study of material to be remembered by including breaks between study periods

testing effect

enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information

shallow processing

encoding on a basic level based on the structure or appearance of words

deep processing

encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best retention

flashbulb memories

a CLEAR memory of an emotionally significant moment or event

retrieval cues

Stimuli that are used to bring a memory to consciousness or into behavior

mood-congruent memory

the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood

serial position effect

our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list

prospective memory

remembering to do things in the future