Psyc 2150 - Exam 2

Properties of attention

- limited

- selective

attention is limited

not all sensory stimuli simultaneously get continued processing

attention is selective

attention is selective because it is limited

consequence of selectivity (in attention)

you attend to the wrong thing

two models of attention

- early filter

- later filter

early filter model

every thing is processed for physical characteristics; the only way to get past the filter is to pay attention to it

late filter model

you process physical characteristics and semantics/meaning

Early results from cherry (about the early filter model)

- people dont remember words from unshadowed ear

- people dont notice if speech is played backwards or if language changes

- people DO notice a pure tone/gap in speaking

cocktail party phenomenon

ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli; works but only 1/3 of the time in lab

Indirect measures of the late filter model - GSR response (galvanic skin response) as a response to shock (classical conditioning)

results: participants showed GSR when stimulus was in unattended ear

Load theory

both early and late happen; the extent to which you hear/attend to the stimulus from the unattended ear depends on the perceptual load of the attended task

bottom up selection

attention that is driven by properties of the objects themselves

salience

feature of the object that determines selective attention

one selectively attends because the feature is

-physically salient

-meaningful

what strategies can be employed to avoid distraction?

1) avoid distracting stimuli

2) habituate

two types of top down selection

-overt (moving eyes)

- covert (not moving eyes)

top down- overt

- visual search

- you have a specific thing in mind that you want to attend to

in top down (over) search, searching by __ is relatively easy, searching by ___ is difficult

color, meaning

Top down selection (covert)

attention without moving eyes

posner's beam metaphor

- said that attention is like a spotlight that enhances perceptual processing

neural basis of the beam metaphor (top down- covert)

damage to different parts of the brain support three separate processes: disengage, move, engage

damage to "disengage" process is due to ___; results?

posterior parietal cortex

results:

-valid trial: ok on either side

- invalid: really bad on contralateral

damage to "move" process is due to ____; results?

superior colliculus

results:

-valid trials: very slow to show advantage of cue, but still show it

- invalid trials: slow but not a special problem

damage to the "engage" process is due to; results?

thalamas

results:

- valid: don't seem to use cue

- invalid: dont seem to use cue (easily distracted)

how to deal with limited attention

- automaticity of visual perception

- switching in complex tasks

Can you practice switching from task to task and get generally better at it?

- even though younger people are better at multitasking, it is a result of their working memory, not practice

high multi-taskers have ____ attentional control because...

worse ; because multitasking always carries a cost

is attention necessary for perception

YES; as shown by movie continuity mistakes and change blindness

conjunctive search

searching for a target that is not defined by any single unique feature (but by a combo of 2+)

- serial search (you go through each thing in a scene)

disjunctive search

focuses on the search of one feature

- parallel (you search everything at once)

feature integration model

when perceiving a stimulus, features are registered early and automatically, while objects are identified separately ; we perceive individual features as part of the same object

span of apprehension

the number of items a person can apprehend or process simultaneously

early span of apprehension studies

used beans on a tray

span of apprehension can be lost through :

- delay in tone cue

- masking

sperlings experiment on span of apprehension

when shown entire block, immediate response --> 4 words right (33/% of entire)

when shown entire block, given cue for row, and asked immediately --> 3 words (75% of row)

when shown entire block, given cue, but delayed --> 1 word (25% of row)

properties of sensory memory

- large capacity - can be pretty accurate on arrays up to 20 characters

- physical properties (little semantic)

- lost through delay or masking

sensory memory is also called __

iconic memory

short term memory

The system involved in storing small amounts of information for a brief period of time

Most info gets lost, some info gets into LTM

working memory

limited capacity system for storage (short term) and manipulation of information for complex tasks (storage + thinking)

phonological loop

one of the main components of the working memory model; represents a brief store of mainly verbal information together with a rehearsal mechanism

The 2 components of the phonological loop

- phonological store

- articulatory control process

the phonological store

stores about 2 seconds worth of auditory information

- info can enter store through the environment or through the articulatory control process

articulatory control process

process of talking to yourself

episodic buffer

- coding in terms of meanings

- has links to the two components of the working memory as well as long term memory

Visuo-spatial sketchpad

- similar to mental imagery

- part of working memory model that works with visual and spatial information

coding in working memory (3 ways)

- acoustically

- visually

- semantically (meaning)

central executive

helps maintain information in working memory stores, also important as a coordinator of other cognitive processes

reading span

Measured both storage and processing functions of WM, measures the max number of sentences that a person can read while simultaneously holding the last word of each sentence in memory

encoding

process of info getting into LTM; the phase when information might go into LTM

what factors determine what goes into long term memory

- imagery

- emotion

- repetition

- thinking about meaning (depth)

- effort/desire to learn

flashbulb memories

- happen in high emotion

- resulting memory is complete

- resulting memory is accurate

- resulting memory is immune to forgetting

flashbulb memories of 9/11

- not especially consistent

- high confidence

repetition and encoding

sheer repetition does NOT lead to memory ; has to be the right type of repetition

thinking about meaning

- depth (there are degrees of depth)

depth

refers to thinking about meaning and how the "to be remembered" material relates to the things that you already know

shallow processing

thinking about the physical characteristics of a stimulus

the effort/desire/intention to learn is ______ in terms of encoding

irrelevant

transfer appropriate processing

when processes are the same at encoding and retrieval, then memory will be successful; when they are different, memory will not be successful

anterograde amnesia

old memories are mostly intact, can't encode new memories

retrograde amnesia

new memories are encoded normally, but old memories are lost

retrograde amnesia has a temporal gradient: what does this mean..?

not all memories from the past are affected equally; recent memories are very affected; distant memories not as much

consolidation

the process by which memories become more stable, even if they are not practiced (it takes years for a memory to be fully consolidated)

The parts of the brain that encode new memories are ____ (the same as, separate from) the parts of the brain that consolidate mems

the same

if you have ____ amnesia, you always have some degree of ____ amnesia

anterograde, retrograde

measures of memory

- free recall

- cued recall

- recognition

- savings in relearning

free recall

minimal info from experimenter; experimenter says "remember" and the context is usually implied (occasionally described)

cued recall

experimenter also gives part of the information, or some related information when asking the subject to recall info

recognition

the to-be-remembered information is presented, along with other distractors, and the subject must distinguish new from old

savings in relearning

subject learns some material to a criterion, an the # of trials required is noted; later subject relearns the material to the same criterion; if fewer trials are required, that is savings

measures of difficulty (in terms of recall measurements)

free recall (hardest) > cued recall > recognition > savings

ranking of sensitivity of recall tests

savings > recognition > cued recall > free recall

recognition depends on ____

the difficulty of distracters

what is a better way to think about cues? (instead of sensitivity of test)

different cues are more or less likelt to make you think about material the way that you though about it at encoding

memory is a construction... what does this mean?

memory is almost always a combination of the actual event plus relavant prior knowledge (schemas)

schema

a memory representation of a type of event, characteristics generally true of the event, not of a specific event

scripts

event schemas

things that ___ with schema are attended to and remembered

conflict

things that ____ are not attended to and remembered

are not part of the schema but are irrelevant

at encoding, schemas...

schemas make atypical things stand out, and they are memorable

at retrieval, schemas...

make it seem that likely things happened, even if they did not

implicit memory

type of long term memory that does not require conscious thought

HM, along with other anterograde amnesic patients ARE NOT able to learn these things

- words

- stories

- faces

- rhythms

HM along with other anterograde amnesic patients ARE able to learn these things

- motor skills

- repetition priming (Gollin figures, tachistoscopic presentation, stem completion)

repetition priming

improvements in a behavioural response when stimuli are repeatedly presented

explicit memory

conscious memory, tested directly, accompanied by awareness that youre remembering something

people gave up on the idea of two memory systems (implicit and explicit) because of

separability in the brain

memory systems include

- motor skills

- repetition priming

- skeletal conditioning

- emotional conditioning

what is an important source of evidence for the separability of the brain?

the different brain basis of the 4 different components of the memory system

the brain basis of repitition priming, motor skill learning, skeletal conditioning, emotional conditioining

repetition priming- visual cortex

motor skill learning - basal ganglia

skeletal conditioning- cerebellum

emotional conditioning- amydgala

where in brain does explicit memory happen?

hippocampus

episodic memory

-autobiographical

- spatial and temporal context

- learned in single exposure

semantic memory

- factual

- no context

- possibly learned in single exposure but usually not; typically strengthened with repetition

category

all of the "cherries" in the world

categorization

deciding that an object belongs to a category

concept

your mental representation that defines a certain category

definitional view

a concept is a list of necessary and sufficient features - to be classified in that category, you have to meet those features

problem with definitional view:

it is difficult to come up with a satisfying set of rules to define an object

typicality affects :

- how quickly you categorize

- how you reason

typicality categorization

more typical exemplars come to mind first- you are also better at confirming that they are a member of a category

3 levels of categorization

- basic

- superordinate

- subordinate