Psych 240 Exam 1

Long-term learning vs. short-term performance

Long term learning is improvement that lasts, short-term performance is immediate improvement from practice

Simon & Bjork key press experiment

Participants learned key press patterns corresponding to letters

Blocking: there were less errors at first and more a week later

Interleaving: more errors at first but less long-term

Desirable difficulties

Harder at first, makes long term learning better

Intuitions about what study strategies will be most effective are often wrong

We often think that blocking will be better because it is for short term performance, but interleaving is better for long-term learning

Highlighting/underlining

Low effectiveness

It restricts attention to highlighted details which are not necessarily correct

It makes it harder to distinguish core ideas

Fowler & Barker study & results (highlighting)

Participants read a highlighted reading, unhighlighted reading, or highlighted their own reading and answered questions

All conditions yielded same result

Peterson study & results (underlining)

Participants underlined article and studied underlined version, underlined article and studied clean version, or did not underline and studied clean version and answered questions

All groups were the same for factual questions

Underlining and studying underlined was worse for inference questions

Rereading

Low effectiveness

Doesn’t improve comprehension

Doesn’t help to reread a second or third time

Mistaken mastery (ability to recognize may mask inability to recall)

Rothkopf study & results (rereading)

Participants read an article for the first time, second time, third time, or fourth time and were asked to fill key words in

There is an advantage in rereading once but not again after that

Generating explanations

Medium effectiveness

You process information more deeply so it is easier to retrieve

Pressley study & results (generating explanations)

Participants were asked to remember sentences after either no explanation, being provided with an explanation as to why the sentence was true, or being asked to come up with their own explanation

They were better at remembering when asked to generate their own explanations

Interleaving

Medium effectiveness

Learning things from multiple different topics and practicing mixed together

Rohrer & Taylor study & results (interleaving)

Learning a bunch of math formulas at once and then practicing interleaved produced worse results initially but better on the test

Distributed practice/spacing

High effectiveness

Spreading studying out

Bahrick study & results (distributed practice)

Participants either took 6 Spanish sessions in one day, each week, or each month

All in one day improved short-term performance (immediate test after last session)

30 days later, 30-day spaced improved long-term performance

Testing

High effectiveness

You are practicing retrieval, getting info out not just in

Quizzed by a friend, flashcards, Cornell notes

Butler study & results (testing)

All participants studied material, one group was given a test on ½ of it and the other group restudied ½ of it, then they took a test on all of it

The practice test group did better on all types of questions

Bjork’s study of interleaving in learning how to recognize artistic styles

Participants learned the styles of 12 artists better when interleaving a certain artist’s paintings among others’ than if they were presented the all of the one artist’s paintings

Varying the conditions of practice (Bjork and Bjork reading)

Varying environmental setting, studying in two different places for a test improves performance

Children who practiced throwing beanbags at different distances performed better at one distance than those that had only practiced at that single distance

Generation effects (Bjork and Bjork reading)

The long-term benefit of generating an answer, solution, or procedure vs. being given it

Repeated testing vs. repeated study (Bjork and Bjork reading)

Repeated studying is better in the short-term but repeated testing is better in the long-term (like interleaving, spacing, etc.)

Metacognitive benefits of tests (Bjork and Bjork reading)

Identifying whether information has or has not been understood and/or learned is possible with a test, is not possible with rereading

Strategies to optimize learning

Starting the semester: organize your time, buy/rent your books before the course, find a quiet place to study

Preparing for each class: answer questions before you read, generate your own questions, read, recite, and review

During class: attend all lectures, no laptop, write notes instead of typing, preread slides

After class: review what you learned

Preparing for tests: study each subject a little bit every day, quiz yourself

Introspectionism (structuralism) & problems

Looking inside ones own mind (Wundt and Titchener)

Wundt: focused on sensation and self-observation, thought of grass as green spikey stuff

Titchener: recorded 42k sensations and categorized them

Problems: difficult to verify, private information, does not solve the black box problem

Behaviorism & problems

Stimulus → response, ignore the black box of the mind

A response to introspectionism

Pavlov: dogs associated him with food and started salivating (classical conditioning)

Watson: said there’s nothing in the black box anyway and you just talk to yourself (extreme behaviorist)

Skinner: rats and

Cognitivism & computational view of mind

Infer what’s going on in the black box

Stimulus → brain as computer → response

Mind processes information like a computer, machine of meat with emotions

Can test what goes on in the brain with similar computer program

Main effects and interactions (interpreting on graphs)

Main effect: one variable effects another (anything other than a straight line) → if there are multiple non-horizontal lines, there is more than one main effect

Interaction: the amount one independent variable effects the dependent variable depends on a second independent variable (the lines are not parallel)

No interaction: the lines are parallel, one independent variable does not affect the other

Mental chronometry

The study of the time it takes to complete mental processes, powerful way to figure out what’s going on inside the black box

Information processing

Happens in stages, stimulus → processing → still processing → response, each stage receives info, transformation the info, and sends it to the next stage

Simple vs. choice reaction time

Simple: the time it takes to detect a stimulus

ex. press button when you see red or green rectangle

Choice: the time it takes to detect a stimulus and decide which of two it is

ex. press right if you see a red rectangle and left if you see a green rectangle

Donder’s subtraction method & problems

Detection + decision (choice) - detection (simple) = decision time

Problems: assumption of pure insertion (adding one stage might impact the time the other takes), assumption of additivity (if stages happen together this would underestimate decision time), assumes you know what the stages are (probably don’t)

Problem with confirming evidence

Hypothesis is never proven, only disproven by eliminating alternative explanations

Huppert & Piercy amnesia experiments

Participants with and without amnesia studied pictures, waited 20 mins, and recognized if they were new or old

Explanation for their worse accuracy could be encoding, storage, or retrieval

Researchers got accuracy to 80% for both initially, now accuracy was the same = falsified storage, storage must NOT be the problem

Functionalism

What do people do AND why, actively engaged in sensation rather than passive (different from structuralism)

Pragmatism

What can we do with our knowledge of what people do?

James: wrote Principles of Psychology, consciousness enables people to adapt to the environment and give them choices for operating

Dewey: educational psychologist, emphasized motivation in education, should learn by experimentation (doing) rather than just being told things

Perception

The means by which info coming in from the environment through the sense organs is transformed into objects, people, etc.

Distal stimulus

The object at a distance in the environment

Proximal stimulus

The pattern made on your sensory organs by the distal stimulus

Percept/representation

Your mental representation of the distal stimulus

Lack of correpondence

When perception does not match the distal stimulus (illusion)

Paradoxical correspondence

When proximal stimulus does not match the distal stimulus but the percept does (moving objects we know are constant)

Perceptual constancies

Our perceptions of an object’s features remain constant even when the proximal stimulus changes (size, color, and shape)

Direct perception

The environment provides cues and our brains

Pre-wired to pick up cues, we don’t have to know a lot

Stimulus information is almost always unambiguous

Bottom-up only

Constructivist theory

Perception uses data from the world and our prior knowledge and expectations

Bottom-up and top-down

Bottom-up processing

Processing driven by external stimulus rather than internal knowledge

Top-down processing

Processing driven by knowledge and expectations as well

Paradoxical correspondence of depth perception

Depth cues help the visual system recover 3D

Monocular vs. binocular depth cues

Linear perspective (M)

Shape (M)

Relative size (M)

Interposition (M)

Shadows (M)

Retinal disparity (B) closer things are displaced more when switching one eye to the other

Accommodation (M)

Convergence (B) eyes cross when object is closest to fous

Patient Dr. P’s deficits (Sacks)

Could not recognize familiar faces or facial expressions unless they had very distinct features

Described objects by isolated features without recognizing the whole

Mistook his wife’s head for a fat

No judgment, only hypotheses

Patient Dr. P’s preserved abilities (Sacks)

Visual acuity and identification of abstract geometric shapes

Recognition through voice, smell, and object use

Music and schematic visualization, such as mental chess or singing to keep on track with routine

Agnosia

Impaired visual recognition despite adequate vision

Dr. P’s relationship to dorsal/ventral distinction (Sacks)

Dr. P had damage in the what/ventral pathway

Retina

Layer in the back of the eye where light goes

Includes ganglion cells, then bipolar cell layer, then photoreceptor layer

Light goes to photoreceptors in the back, neural signals start there and go forward through bipolar and ganglion and through optic nerve to brain

Rods & cones (photoreceptors)

Back of retina, fire when light hits them

Rods = brightness (in periphery)

Cones = color (focus in fovea)

Ganglion cells

Neurons, the output cells of the retina

Neuron

Dendrites: input processes

Soma: cell body

Axon: output processes (punch through optic nerve to brain)

Resting potential vs. action potential

Potential = difference in charge inside vs. outside axon (resting ~-70 and action ~0)

Threshold: reaches action potential at certain charge

All or none: either reaches action potential and fires or does not

Propagation: ion pumping propagates action potential down axon

Refractory period: short period after firing before neuron can fire again

Neurotransmitters

Chemicals sent across small gaps (synapses) between cells that excite or inhibit the next neuron

Electrochemical transmission

Electrical: action potential travels within cells

Chemical: neurotransmitter travels between cells

Summation

If the combined effect of excitatory > inhibitory and raises neuron above threshold, neuron fires

Receptive field

Where the neuron responds to within vision, what causes a cell to fire and where?

Firing rate

High with excitation, low with inhibition, medium at baseline/no response (when light is outside of receptive field)

Center-surround

On-center, off-surround: neuron excited by stimulus inside center of receptive field and inhibited by stimulus on the edges

Off-center, on-surround: neuron excited by stimulus on the edges of receptive field and inhibited by stimulus in the center

Point detection, edge detection, etc.

M-cells/P-cells

Ganglion cells that go to either the magnocellular or parvocellular layer in the LGN

Magnocellular/parvocellular layers

Live inside the LGN

Magno: larger cells and receptive field, transient response (only to movement), movement/location = where

Parvo: smaller cells and receptive field, sustained response (the whole time stimulus is present), patterns/color/form = what

Thalamus

LGN is in the thalamus, the thalamus is the sensory filter of the brain in the center

Lateral geniculate nucleus

Where visual info goes ganglion cells in the brain, contains the magnocellular and parvocellular layers

Cerebral cortex and lobes

Frontal lobe (front), parietal lobe (top), occipital lobe (back), temporal lobe (bottom)

Primary visual cortex

In the occipital lobe (back of brain), where visual info goes after the LGN

Simple/complex/hypercomplex cells

Cells in the primary visual cortex

Simple: respond to oriented bar at a particular retinal position

Complex cells: respond to edges and movement in an oriented bar at a particular retinal position

Hypercomplex cells: respond to specific configurations such as corners and gaps at a particular retinal position

What/where

Ventral stream goes down to the temporal lobe = what

Dorsal stream goes up to the parietal lobe = where

PET scanning

Way to measure active areas of brain by injecting person with radioactive tracer

Mental activity → neural activity → blood flow → radioactive tracer → more positrons emitted in active area

Kohler experiment

Participants were presented with either a spatial task (are objects in the same/different location?) or object task (are objects the same/different?), corresponding lobes were activated according to PET results

Population coding

There is no grandmother cells, patterns of activation across a population are what allow for recognition

Patient A.H. (McCloskey)

Modality-specific localization impairment: cannot localize objects in the left/right or up/down direction, flips things across both axes, only in vision and not in hearing

Impaired in tasks even without movement and was not bad eye control

Suggests that location and direction are separate from other visual aspects

Identification vs. localization (McCloskey)

Identification and location are processed separately, AH could get identity right

Visual experience is indirect (McCloskey)

Location is processed separately from direction

Perception is constructive of multiple different aspects of visual experience separately

Patient AH relationship to dorsal/ventral distinction (McCloskey)

He has a deficit in the dorsal/where pathway but the ventral/what pathway is undisturbed

Pattern recognition

Distal stimulus → percept → match to representation in memory

Template theory

Matching: match the percept to a template in memory

Problems: transformation (moving objects have changing proximal stimulus) and obstructed objects (proximal stimulus only represents part of object but we perceive all)

Feature theory

The visual system decomposes scenes into primitive features

Evidence: physiology (neurons respond to specific orientations/locations), stabilized retinal images (eyes shake, when pic moves with eye, features disappear), visual search (finding things with similar features is more difficult than those with different features)

Problems: does not acount for spatial relationships between features

Visual search

Evidence for feature theory, finding one letter among letters with similar features is more difficult than finding a letter among letters with very different features

Pandamonium model

Feature demons that see individual features excite cognitive demons which correspond to letters, decision demons choose the cognitive demons that are most excited

Caricatures

People can recognize them faster because they exaggerate features, evidence for feature theory

Structural descriptions

Models that support that features and their spatial arrangements combine to create visual perception (RBC theory)

RBC theory

36 geons make up most things with their specific spatial relationships and non-accidental properties

Evidence: partial non-accidental features make recognition harder, object complexity makes objects easier to recognize (maybe memory is complex like geons are), unusual orientation makes objects hard to recognize because non-accidental properties are obscured

Problems: faces are similar but we are great at telling them apart, still only bottom-up, no brain evidence for it

Geons

36 of these 3D shapes make up everything

Non-accidental properties

Properties that are not an accident of viewpoint, like straight edges, curved edges, parallel lines, symmetric shapes, and cotermination

Geons are recognized this way

Signal detection theory

Signal: a beep

Noise: white noise

Hit: detect beep when there was a beep

Miss: do not detect beep when there was a beep

Correct rejection: do not detect beep when there was not a beep

False alarm: detect beep when there was not a beep

Sensitivity

How easy or difficult the signal is to detect (depends on differentiation from the noise and also strength of the person’s sense)

Bias

Your tendency to say “yes” or “no”

Bias/payoff effects

Adding incentive for hit: biases the person toward yes, accuracy is the same but more hits

Adding incentive for correct rejection: biases the person toward no, accuracy is the same but more correct rejections

Bias is separate from sensitivity, sensitivity isn’t changing because accuracy isn’t but the person is answering differently

Context effects

How the surrounding environment impacts perception (subjective contours/ambiguous letters)

Subjective contours

The context of other make contours appear that aren’t really there (triangle illusion)

13 appears as 13 between numbers and B between letters

Word superiority effect

People are better at recognizing a letter as part of a word than by itself after being presented with the word/letter for a short amount of time

Psuedo-word superiority effect

Subjects are better at recognizing a letter as part of a non-words than letters only if they are pronounceable

Interactive activation model

Features inhibit/excite letters which inhibit/excite words (bottom-up), but words inhibit or excite letters too (top-down), which explains the word superiority effect

Smith & Kosslyn (pattern recognition) reading

Bottom-up: template-matching models, feature-matching models, RBC model

Top-down: interactive activation model

Stroop task

Speed of reading colors while black/naming colors is fast, while selectively attending to color while words are different is much longer because reading is an automated process that is difficult to suppress

Focused vs. divided attention

Focused: multiple channels in, focused on just one of them

Divided: multiple channels in, focused on multiple (ex. driving + talking)

Dichotic listening

Hearing two different messages, one in each ear, and repeating one (shadowing) back