Exam #3 Cognitive Psychology Terms

Memory

anterograde amnesia

brain damage with impaired ability to remember new things after the onset of amnesia

*Remember things before

*Patients usually have an easier time with nondeclarative memory tasks

declarative memory

long-term memory for facts and events

• ex: “Tell someone how hot it is outside today”

• mostly memories you can describe verbally (explicit memory)

• Schacter and Tulving (1994) four major long-term memory systems

non-declarative memory

long-term memory demonstrated in behavior

• ex: “Show a child how to take a dog for a walk”

• implicit memory

• Schacter and Tulving (1994) four major long-term memory systems

procedural memory

know how to do something

• basal ganglia (skills and habits)

• ex: playing the piano, riding a bike, etc.

• builds up gradually (mirror tracing task)

priming

presented before target and helps in processing it

• neocortex

episodic memory

memory for personal experiences and what, where, and when information

• formed from a single experience

• medial temporal lobe (diencephalon)

• important for future planning and to get the gist of the information

• impaired in retrograde amnesia

• come from sematic memories

Semanticization: Episodic memories change into semantic memories

semantic memory

memory for general knowledge, concepts, and language (what)

• medial temporal lobe (diencephalon)

• acquired overtime in multiple instances and strengthened by repetition

• intact in retrograde amnesia

• comes from episodic memory

concepts

mental representations of categories of objects

• part of sematic memory

Superordinate (animals)

• general broad category with several lower levels, abstract, most informative

Basic level or natural (reptiles)

• everyday items and experiences and is what we usually talk about and have experience with

Subordinate (lizards)

• least informative but most distinctive

schema

general; packet of information about the world, events, or people stored in long term memory

• Sporting event for example and going to school

script

specific; information about the order of events in a particular situation with some specific purpose

• meeting with an advisor for example, attending classes, and completing homework

repetition suppression

less brain activity when presenting a stimulus many times

• brain region is working more efficiently therefore less brain activity is required

semantic dementia

brain damage with impaired semantic memory but intact episodic memory

saying-is-believing effect

presenting inaccurate information and retrieving those inaccuracies later; believing your own lies

• for example, when telling a story to your friends, you may catch yourself making it more entertaining

autobiographical memory

memory for events of your own life without where and when information

• experiences that are important to us like graduating high school and meeting your best friend

• activation in the left ventromedial prefrontal cortex

• help in directing future behaviors

• creates a sense of self

• retrieved through generative retrieval (voluntary) or direct retrieval (involuntary triggered by a specific cue)

flashbulb memories

vivid and detailed emotional memories of major events

• includes place where the event happened

• personal emotional state of self and others

• not very accurate

flashbacks

intense, emotional memories of traumatic events recalled involuntarily by people with PTSD

• part of flashbulb memories

• PTSD

childhood amnesia

adults don't remember events prior to the age of 3

• cognitive self must be developed alongside language skills and emphasis on culture for children to remember these memories

reminiscence bump

older people recall most memories from the ages 10 and 30

• 15-30 yrs of age respectively

• more positive memories are remembered (life scripts)

confirmation bias

eyewitness memory distorted by expectations

misinformation effect

eyewitness memory distorted by misleading information after an event

• can’t prepare for being an eyewitness and happens unexpectedly

• source misattribution- retrieve information inaccurately that activated different memory traces from the question being presented

• reconsolidation- new and incorrect information not from the original memory is added

• conformity and group pressure

*To overcome this, have eyewitnesses retrieve information after the event and only once

weapon focus

eyewitnesses focus on one important aspect of an event and ignore details

unconscious transference

eyewitness identity familiar but innocent face as suspect

• other-race effect: we are generally more accurate at identifying faces of people our same race

retrospective memory

memory for things in the past

• associated with poor memory “remembering what you did over last summer”

prospective memory

remembering that you have to do something in the future

• planning ahead

• flaky person “thinking about what you are going to do over winter break”

Intention formation- What you will do linked to specific cue

Retention interval- delay between plans and plan execution

Cue detection and intention retrieval- recognize the cue to execute plan and then retrieve plan information

Intention recall- retrieve original plan from retrospective memory

Intention execution- automatically performing the action

Event-based

• remember to perform an intended action when an external cue (personal or something) reminds you to carry out intended action (pay your tuition when you get a bill)

• less demanding and tend to be remembered better

Time-based

• remembering to carry out intended action at the appropriate time (going to the bank before it closes at 5pm)

• cues are more predictable

*Individuals with OCD have impaired performance in this kind of memory

meta-memory

beliefs and knowledge about your own memory

orthography

letters and word spellings

phonology

part and whole word sounds

lexicon decision task

quickly decide whether a string of letters forms a word

• aided if some of the words in the task had been seen previously

naming task

rapidly pronounce out loud visual words

word superiority effect

target letter rapidly identified when presented in a word rather than non-word letter string

1. See stimulus- P A R T

2. Detect letter features- ) - \ I

3. Detect letter- P-A-R-T

4. Detect word- orthographic word layer (Part)

pseudoword

string of letters that can be pronounced

surface dyslexia

impaired ability to read irregular or exception words but intact regular word reading

• route 1 with non-lexicon route (converting letters into sounds)

• damage to the semantic system

lexicon

mental store of detailed information about words

deep dyslexia

impaired ability to read unfamiliar words and pseudowords with semantic errors

homophones

words spelled differently but pronounced the same

semantics

meaning conveyed by words, phrases, and sentences

syntax

set of rules about word order within sentences

grammar

set of rules about acceptable word orders and parts of speech

parsing

how people take apart and understand syntactical or grammatical structure of sentences

pragmatics

real world understanding of language; intended meaning

amnesia

brain damage in which there is severe impairments in long term memory

retrograde amnesia

Difficulty in remembering events before the onset of amnesia

*Remember things after the onset

Korsakoff syndrome

Amnesia caused by chronic alcohol use and thiamine vitamin deficiency

*Gradually gets worse over time

hippocampus

Important brain region for forming and temporarily storing memories

familiarity vs recollection

familiarity is when you know what something is but you are not sure exactly on all its aspects whereas recollection involves remembering something

types of recall

Free recall

• write down all items from list you can remember in any order

Cued recall

• given a word to help you remember the word on the lost

Serial recall

• recall words from list in order without cues

polymorphous concepts

not all items in the world have the same combination of features (different kinds of trees) however many do have the same features

• stimuli must meet 2/3 criteria

perceptual priming

repeated presentations of a stimulus (like a line drawing of a camel) facilitate its perceptual features and helps in identifying the picture at an earlier level

conceptual priming

use priming for words or pictures at study whereas sematic association is used to help identify target word faster

• Ex: FLOWER being a target word and semantically associated with PETAL 

everyday memory

we remember things that happened a long time ago

• has a purpose and helps you in some way that is influenced by personality and personal characteristics

• cognition was designed to help us survive

hyperthymestic syndrome

an exceptional ability to remember events of your own life (autobiographical memory)

self-memory system model

composed of lifetime periods (undergraduate years), general events (meeting your core friends), and event-specific knowledge (episodic memories with lots of information

working-self

• current and future goals that influence what kind of memories your store

own-age bias

tendency for eyewitnesses to identify the culprit more often when the suspect is of similar age to the eyewitness than when they are of a different age

• young adults are way more accurate

enhancing eyewitness memory

Simultaneous line-up (all suspects at once)

• less accurate

• choose one or none

Successive line-up (one suspect at a time)

• more accurate

• more preferred option

***Give eyewitnesses an option to say that they are not sure and give them a warning that the suspect might not be in the line-up***

whorfian hypothesis

theory about the interrelationship between language and thought

• does language determine or influence our thinking?

Strong position

• language causes differences in thought

Intermediate position

• language influences some aspects of cognition like perception and memory

Weaker position

• language may cause different preferences for ways of thinking but are relatively not useful

• support for this position

phonological neighbors 

each neighbor is one sound away from the target word by more than one letter or syllable sound

• target: pain

• pace, lane, sane, stain

orthographic neighbors

change one of the target words letters

• target: lime

• dime, line, life

semantic priming

a word is recognized or identified faster when immediately preceded by a word that is similar in meaning

• may occur with or without expectations

dual-route cascaded model for reading

route 1

• non-lexical route

• converting letters to sounds

• grapheme-phoneme conversion (converts spelling into sounds)

route 2

• lexical route

• looking up word in dictionary

• (lexicon and semantic knowledge)

route 3

• lexicon only

• meaning of the word and sound from parallel processing of route 1 and 2

phonological dyslexia

condition involving problems with reading unfamiliar words and non-words

• lexicon and semantic route (2 and 3)

• damage to phonology

connectionist or triangle model

Semantics

Phonology

• Spelling to sound

Orthography

• indirect pathway to semantics then phonology