PSYC 10008 - INTRO. TO PSYCHOLOGY : CLASS 6 - 10

Review: Memory, Thinking & Language, Social psychology, Disorders & Therapy.

Memory

Process of encoding, storing, retrieving informations.

Why is memory important

• To retain informations of language, surroundings and survivability

Why study memory

• Learn about how it work or doesn’t work

• Helps improve memory

• Assist with everyday life

• Assistances of alzheimer’s disease

What is Alzheimer's disease

• A condition that severely damages brain and in the process strips away at the memory

Measure of memory

• Recall: retrieves previous learned information

• Recognition: Identify items previously learned

• Relearning: learning it quicker

Memory is not exact

• Information that makes it to our memory might not be retrieved in exact form

• Bias in encoding and retrieval

• Distorted by existing schemas

Memory is active

• An active process that’s goes into reconstruction continuously

Memory models: Information Processing Approach

• Similar to computer operations (human)

• Three processes: encoding, storage, retrieval

Memory models: Connectionism Information Processing Approach

• focused on multitrack, parallel processing

• Views memories as products of interconnected neural networks

Memory models: three-stage information processing model

• To-be-remembered info: sensory memory

• Processing and encode through rehearsals: Short-term memory

• Retrieval and availability: long-term memory

Sensory memory

the retention, for brief periods of time, of the effects of sensory stimulation.

Key features of sensory memory

• Short-lived retention of most/ all of the information that hits our receptors

• Rapid decay of this information within less than a second

Sperling’s experiment

• Sperling’s experiment made to recall letters on a chart

• Exposure of time for the stimulus is so small that items cannot be rehearsed (50ms)

• Stimulus are immediately able to recall immediately after the letters are turned off but forget after mere seconds. (100% recall - 30% recall)

Duration of sensory organs and memory

• Iconic (seeing): 0.5 seconds long

• Echoic (hearing): 3-4 seconds long

• Hepatic/ haptic (feeling): ~ 1 seconds long

Short-term memory

• ‘Memory of the now’

• Storing small amounts of information for a brief period of time

• Short duration and limited capacity

• Most are lost while some reaches long-term memory

What is the duration and capacity of STM

• Duration: 15-20s or less

• Capacity: according to measurements of digit span about 5 - 9 items (7±2)

George miller

• 1954 created the mesurement digit for memory of “magical number 7, ± 2”

STM example possible on multiple choice

A leaky bucket that can hold a certain amount of water for a limited amount of time

How to overcome STM

Chunking: Organizing items into familiar, manageable units

Mnemonics: memory aids, use vivd imagery and organization devices

STM: rehearsal

• Hermann Ebbinghaus studied rehearsal via nonsense syllables

• Effortful learning requires rehearsal and conscious repetition

• The more time practiced, the fewer repetitions required to relearn

Working memory

• Working memory: limited capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of info for complex tasks (comprehension, learning, reasoning).

• Not a passive temporal storage

• Upgrade of STM

Working memory example: Multiply 43×6

Visualize 43×6 and 40+3

Multiple 40×6 hold on memory and 3×6 hold on memory

Add together to reach 258

Contrasting working memory and STM

• STM - Store information for a short period of time

• WM - Store + manipulation of information for a short period of time

Long-term memory

• Sustem responsible for storing info for long period

• Archive of info about past events (episodic) and knowledge(semantic)

LTM - explicit memory

• Episodic: memory of personal events (when where what)

• Semantic: memory of facts and knowledge

Explicit memory system: hippocampus

• Henry molaison

• Removal of most of the hippocampus and surrounding cortex to eliminate seizure

• Can’t form new LTM

• Hippocampus is crucial for LTM

Hippocampus ability (explicit)

• Recollection (ability to vividly recall past details with high confidence)

• Familiarity (know something but can not recall details)

Explicit memory system: Frontal lobe

• Prefrontal cortex - different prefrontal regions are involved in recollection and familiarity

• An interaction between frontal-hippocampus involved in explicit memory

LTM - Implicit memory

Procedural memory: remember how to perform tasks, actions, skills without conscious awareness of knowledge

• Skill memory

• Muscle memory

Implicit memory example

Classical conditioning: neutral stimulus > learning > Cs

Priming: prior exposure to particular stimulus (prime) influence how individuals respond to related stimulus presented later on.

• Subconscious

Long term memory: two memory systems

Explicit memory

• Episodic

• Semantic

Implicit memory

• Procedural

• Priming

• Emotional conditioning

Memory retrieval

Follows principles:

• Memories held in storage by wen of association

• Each pieces of info in interconnected

• Cues aid (priming, context, state)

Retrieval cue: context

Context-dependent memory

• Recall of info improved when contexts present are the same at encoding and retrieval

• Remember better when we’re in the same environment of learning

Retrieval cue: present at encoding

Encoding specificity principle

• Cues present at time of encoding are most effective for retrieval

• Cues: same context, sound, senses

Retrieval cue: state

State dependent memory

• Tendency to recall events consistent with current good or bad mood (mood congruent memory)

Retrieval cue: serial position

serial position effect

• Tendency to recall best the last (recency effect) and first (primary effect) items in a list

Flashbulb memory

• Vivid lasting images associated with surprising or strong emotional events

• Occurs via emotion-trigger hormonal changes and rehearsal

• Emotional events are remembered more vividly and easily

Flashbulb accuracy

• Decay like everyday memories

• Lost if details over time

• Vividness remains high

• Special: our belief in their accuracy remains high

• Not ‘photograph’

Why we forget

• Helps remember what matters most

• Memory system: limited capacity

Key theories

• Storage decay

• Encoding failure

• Retrieval failure

• Interference

• Motivated forgetting

Storage decay

Course of forgetting initially rapid but levels off with time

Bahrick (1984) showed similar pattern of forgetting and retaining over 50 years

Encoding failure

Attention: failure to notice or encode contributes to memory failure

Age: encoding lag linked to age-related memory decline

Retrieval failure

Insufficient info to access memories may put them out of reach

Invalid retrieval cues

2 form of interference

Interference create retrieval problems

Sleep prevent retroactive interference (no new info)

Motivated forgetting

Unknowing revised memory

Repression

• Defence mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, memories from consciousness

When do we forget

Occur at any memory stage

Filter, alter, lose much info during these stages

Abnormal forgetting: injury -> memory loss

Amnesia: memory loss from trauma/ brain injury

Retrograde: Inability to remember past info

Anterograde: inability to form new memory

Memory is constructive

Filter or fill in missing pieces of info to make recall more coherent

Memory errors

• Misattribute source

• Omissions: absence of info

• Commissions: add false info

Misinformation effect

Eyewitnesses reconstruct memories when question about event

Incorporating false/misleading infor into one’s memory of event

Source amnesia

Source memory: process of determining origin of memories

‘Source misattribution’ or source amnesia: memory is attributed to wrong source

Implant false memories

Family photo + hot air ballon = ‘photoshopped’ picture

• Close eye to picture event in mind

• Describe what they remember

• 30-50% recalled they ‘remembered ballon ride

Memories can be altered in powerful ways, leading false memories to surfaced and be believed

Constructed memories

• Research by Elizabeth Loftus shows if false are implanted in individuals, they construct false memories

Improve memories

• Rehearsal (STM > LTM)

• Make materials meaningful: aid in encoding

• Activate retrieval cues: aid in retrieval

• Use diff mnemonic devices: chunking

• Minimize interference: aid in retrieval

• Sleep well: no interference > aid in retrieval

• Test knowledge

Thinking

Cognition

• All mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, communicating info

• What people know and think

Meta cognition

• Cognition about our cognition

• Keep track and evaluate mental processes

• How people think about their thinking

Thinking: knowledge

• Conceptual knowledge

  knowledge that enables us to recognize objects and events to make inferences about their properties

How is info organized in mind

Concept: mental representation used for variety of cognitive function

Categorization: process which things are placed by group

• Knowing something is in a category provides great deal of info about it

Why categories are useful

• Pointer to knowledge in everyday life

• Provide wealth in general information about items

• Allow identification of special characteristic of items

• Help understand individuals new cases

How categories organized in mind

Three approaches

• Definitional approach

• Prototype approach

• Exemplar approach

Definition approach

Determine category membership based on whether the object meets definition of category

• Well on geometry

• Does not work on complicated features

Exemplar approach

concept represented by multiple examples

• Category members

• Compare new items to stored example

Prototype approach

Prototype = ‘typical’ member of category

• Average of category members that are commonly experienced (not actual member)

• Contain most salient features

Prototype/exemplars

May use both

• Exemplars: small categories

• Prototype: big categories

Learning effect

• Novices: use prototypes = average category member

• Experts: use exemplars (incl atypical cases or exception)

Network models of categorization

Represent how concepts are represented in mind

• Concept are not stored in isolation

• Concepts are interconnected in network

Levels of categorization

to understand how semantic knowledge is organized (hierarchy) and accessed. Measure reaction time (rt)

• Bigger the category, more searching (rt take longer)

• More lv you go up, more searching (rugs longer on lv2 than lv1)

Semantic networks (Collins & Quinlan)

Node: category or concept

Link: related concepts are connected

Hierarchy model: lower > higher levels

Problem solving

Algorithm

• Methodical, logical rule, procedure

• Guarantees solution to problem

Heuristic

• Simpler thinking strategy that usually speedier than algorithms

• Mental short-cut

• More error-prone

Problem solving via heuristic

Representative heuristic

Judging likelihood of events in terms of how well they represent, match, particular prototypes

Ignorance of other relevant info (may cause)

Availability heuristic

Judging likelihood of events based on their mental availability in memory

Instances comes readily to mind

Short-sighted

Sunk cost fallacy

Follow through on endeavour if we already invested time, effort, or money into it (sunk cost)

No matter if the current costs outweighs benefits

Anchoring effect

Rely too heavily on early info when making decisions

Action bias

Tendency to favour action over inaction, for benefits

Compelled to act

Are we making rational decisions

Emotion play key rule in decisions

People reject low offers from people compare to AI (less angry with an unfair computer)

Decision making: Brain

Insula and prefrontal cortex

Insula

Insula

• Associate with neg emotion states

• Activation: reject offer > acpt offer

• Evidence: emotion plays key role in decisions

Prefrontal cortex

Weight choices to determine best option

Regulate and implement best decision based on goal

Physiology of decision making

When buying expensive item

• Increase activation of prefrontal cortex during view > buy product

• Increase activation of Insula, amygdala and orbits frontal cortex during viewing > decide not to buy

what’s language

Different from animal vocal communication

Hierarchical nature of human language:

Letters>words>phrases>sentences>texts>story

Rule-based nature of human language

Follows grammar

Is language learn or innate

Both

Some learn, some innate

Heredity of language

Gene known as FOXP2 shown relevancy to language development

KE family: heritable language disorder

Mutation of FOXP2 > impaired language acquisition

Other innate language ability (maybe be quizzed on)

Many animals show some rudimentary communicative skills

Not the same as language, does suggest potential evolutionary development

Comparative BioPsychology

Similarities in neural circuits

• Left hemisphere

• Involve more than one brain region

Learned nature of language

Take time to develop language skills, mostly through exposure

Children under age 7 have better time learning new language compares to adults

Brain and language

• Damage to any one of several areas of brain’s cortex impair language producing aphasia

• Different brain area must serve different language action (broca and wernike)

Nonfluent (Broca’s) aphasia

Left frontal region: Broca’s area

Damage to this region leads to sever impairments of speech production

Fluent (Wernicke’s) aphasia

Left temporal region: Wernicke’s area

Damage to this region leads to severe impairment of speech comprehension

Global aphasia

Very large left-hemisphere lesion: include anterior and posterior language zone

• Loss ability to produce and understand speech

• Poor prediction of language recovery

Brain when speaking

Motor theory of language

hearing speech

• Brain stimulate motor movements required to produce those sound

• AIDS in recognizing and understanding speech

  evidence from deaf

• Use sign-language(movement)

• Heard spoken language (perception)

Activated same language related regions

Perception and production speech closely linked

Person vs Situation

Attribution Theory: propose by Fritz Heider (1958)

Tendency to give casual explanations for someone’s behavious

• Crediting situation

• Crediting person’s disposition

Situation

Attributing someone’s actions to different factor in situation

Person’s Disposition

Attributing someone’s actions to person’s disposition

• Thoughts

• Feelings

• Personality characteristics

fundamental attribution error

Tendency

• Underestimate role of situation

• Overestimate role of dispositions

People tend to blame or credit person more than situation

Fundamental attribution error (personality)

Assume behaviour is due to people’s personalities too much

• Fail to realize how much of an influence situation or circumstances can have in a person

Effects of Attribution

How we explain someone’s behaviour affects how we react to it

Avoiding FAE

• Avoid snap judgments

• Consider situation factors

Attitude

Belief or feeling that predisposes a person to respond in particular way to other events/ people

Attitudes Affect Actions

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

• ‘Beauty in good’ stereotype: falsely assume attractive people are nicer/better (pretty privilege)

Attitudes and Actions

Attitudes affect behaviours

• Stable attitude, specific to behaviour, easily recalled

• External influence

• Action can modify attitude

Actions Affect Attitudes

Foot-in-wrong-door phenomenon

• Tendency for people who have agreed first to small request comply with larger request later

• Prove action affect attitude

Action affect attitudes (roles)

Set expectations(norms) about social position and behaviour

Role playing affect attitude

• Feel like playing dress up but overtime start defining the person

Role Playing Affects Attitudes

Stanford prison experiment (zimbardo,1972)

• College student play role of guard/prisoner

• Develop role-appropriate attitude

• Guard become too aggressive and cruel