Psychology 3030 Exam 3

Describe evidence from research on peoples' memories from college that suggests that autobiographical memory is better for transition points.

○ "We are exploring peoples memories of experiences while in college. In the space below, please describe a memory that you have of your freshman year in college. We are not interested in any particular type of experience; just describe one"

○ There is a strong tendency to choose a memory from September, early in there freshman year

- September of your freshman year is the transition point into college

What is the reminiscence bump?

When people who are 40 or older are asked to recall events in their lives, memory is best for events occurring between the ages of 10 and 30

How do the self-image hypothesis explain the reminiscence bump?

Self Image Hypothesis: Memory is enhanced for events that occur as a persons self image or life identity is being formed

- People assume more identities during adolescence and young adulthood (Rathbone 2008)

® "I am a parent" "I am politically engaged"

- More last memories 10-30 because of identity formation

How do the the cognitive hypothesis explain the reminiscence bump?

Encoding is better during periods of rapid change followed by stability

- Ages 10-30: los of changes happening; exciting

- More cognitive resources expending toward encoding memories of the events Ages 30+ not as many changes happening, stable (boring)

- Rehearsal and consolidation of earlier memories

Schauf and Rubin 1998: reminiscence bump is shifted in people who emigrated in their 30s

- Late emigration= less stability in their 30s= later and smaller reminiscence bump

How do the cultural life script hypothesis explain the reminiscence bump?

Cultural Life Script: a set of culturally expected events that occur at a particular time in the lifespan

- Bernstein and Rubin 2004: our cultural life script is most pronounced for adolescence and early adulthood

- Ask people to make predictions about a hypothetical person

- "This 100 year old person experienced a very happy event, sad event, and important even how old do you think they were during each event"

- People tend to assume the positive events happened between 10 and 30

Describe Schrauf & Rubin's research on the reminiscence bump in immigrants who moved to the US at different times in life. Which hypothesis do these findings support?

the reminiscence bump is shifted in people who emigrated in their 30s, late emigration equals less stability in their 30s, making a later and smaller reminiscence bump

- supports the cognitive hypotheses

How does emotion affect memory? Distinguish between effects on information that is itself emotional and effects on neutral information that is encountered in an emotional context.

emotional information is generally better remembered than neutral information.

- the amygdala is the brain region linked to emotion

stress hormones (cortisol) are only released when information itself is emotionally arousing

- emotion does not enhance memory for all information

- focusing attention on emotionally salient information results in worse memory for non emotional information

- example of this is weapon focus: tendency to focus attention on a weapon during the commission of a crime and not remember other details of the crime scene

Describe the role of the amygdala and the role of stress hormones in influencing memory for emotional and neutral information.

the amygdala is a brain region linked to emotion

- strong structural connections to hippocampus

- damage to the amygdala= no memory advantage for emotionally salient materials

Stress hormones, such as cortisol, released after encoding enhance memory consolidation, but only for emotionally arousing information

- Cahill test, ice water, warm water, the ice water caused cortisol to be released, these people had a memory advantage for the emotional pictures, but not for neutral pictures

What is the weapons focus?

tendency to focus attention on a weapon during the commission of a crime and not remember other details of the crime scene

What are flashbulb memories? In what ways are flashbulb memories the same as other types of memories, and in what ways are they unique?

flashbulb memories: memories related to shocking, highly charged events, such as 9/11 or the kennedy assassination.

- it is the memory for the circumstances surrounding how a person heard about an event, NOT memories for the event itself

- experienced by the rememberer as vivid, distinctive, and very detailed

flashbulb memories are special in that people mistakenly think they are very accurate

- lesson from flashbulb memories: the most confident memories are not always the most accurate

Describe the repeated recall technique for studying autobiographical memories.

technique that involves comparing later memories to memories collected immediately after the event

- way to verify these memories

- idea is that the immediate memories will be the most accurate

- can see if/how memories of the event change overtime

What does it mean to say that memory is constructive?

memory= what actually happens + persons knowledge, experiences and expectations

- memories are reconstructed not just retrieved

What is source misattribution?

source monitoring errors: misidentifying source of memory

- you thought you met with Sue at Chimes, but really it was Jen

What is cryptomnesia?

cryptomnesia: previously stored memories are mistaken for original creations

- example of this is Vanilla Ice song "ice ice baby" is very similar to The Chiffons "under pressure" but Vanilla Ice swore he came up with it on his own

Describe Jacoby and colleagues "Becoming famous overnight" experiment. What do the findings tell us about the role of the familiarity in source misattributions?

Becoming Famous Overnight: participants read lists of made up, non famous names, recall immediatley who is famous and who is not, then again in 24 hours

- participants did not mistake names on the list for famous names if recalled immediately, but did if recalled 24 hours later

- participants were wrong about the source of the familiarity.

when a stimulus seems familiar, misattribution errors involve erroneous assumptions about why that thing feels familiar

How can information from stereotypes influence source memory?

missatribution stereotype information to memory of the speaker

- mechanism by which stereotypes are reinforced without the target of the stereotypes doing anything to enforce them

- example: feminine versus masculine statements, guessing if its pat or chris

What is an event schema/script, and how does it differ from a scene schema? How do schemas and scripts influence memory?

event schema or script: knowledge about a sequence of actions that usually occurs during a particular experience

- scene schemas is knowledge about what typically appears in some aspect of the environment

What is the misinformation effect? Describe work by Loftus and colleagues that demonstrate the role of misleading post-event information (MPI) in distorting memories of events.

Misinformation effect: misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event can change how the person describes that event later

Loftus:

1. see the event, auto accident at yield sign

2. present misleading information

- group one asked "did another car pass the red saturn when it was stopped at the yield sign?"

- group two asked "did another car pass the red saturn when it was stopped at the stop sign?"

3. memory test

- group 1: 75% said yield

- group 2: 41% said yield

Describe evidence that false memories can be created for autobiographical events.

an example of false memories being created is the childhood memory experiment

- asked college students to try to remember childhood events

- they acquired 3 true events and 1 fake event from the students parents

- result: students were able to recall and describe in some detail up to 20% of the false events

other examples:

- false confessions

- false memories of childhood sexual abuse through suggestive interviewing

What roles can familiarity misattribution and memory suggestibility play in distorting eyewitness testimony? What role can post-event identification feedback play?

familiarity misattribution: misidentification of suspect, suspect was seen in an innocent context by eyewitness, witness knows the person is familiar, and assumes

memory suggestibility: "which one of these men did you see", the problem is it implies perpetrator is definitely in line up, the witness will choose who looks the most familiar

post event identification: increase in witness confidence due to confirming feedback after making an identification, raises level of confidence later on

Describe four "best practice" recommendations for constructing and administering police lineups, and the reasoning behind each of them.

Recommendation 1: when asking a witness to pick from a lineup, warn that the perpetrator may not be on any particular lineup

- reduces likelihood that witness will rely on familiarity

Recommendation 2: when constructing a lineup, use "fillers" who are similar to subject, seems counterintuitive but think about the penny identification

Recommendation 3: when presenting a lineup, use sequential rather than simultaneous lineup, encourage relative judgments

Recommendation 4: use a "blind' line up administrator and get an immediate confidence rating from witness, the administrator should not know who the suspect is, reduces possibility of distortion from post ID feedback

What are the four guiding principles of the cognitive interview, and how do they take advantage of what is known about human memory to improve interviewing techniques?

Cognitive Interview:

1. reestablish the context within which the crime took place

- encoding specificity

2. let the witness tell their story

- ask open ended questions

- encourage completness

3. ask witness to recount events in different orders, starting from different locations or times

- provide as many retrieval cues as possible

- less reliance on references based on scripts and schemas

4. ask witness to try changing perspectives and retelling.

What is the narrative rehearsal hypothesis of memory for life events?

tragic events (but not in the context in which you learned about them) are rehearsed, replayed on TV, etc, creating an illusion of a vivid memory

- also evidence that emotion can increase subjective belief in memory accuracy

What does it mean to say that members of a category have family resemblance? How is this different than using definitions to categorize things?

something belongs to a category if it similar to members of the category overall, characteristic features, not necessarily defining features

- standard category representation (prototype)

- every other category member we know of (exemplar)

What is a prototype? Describe four pieces of evidence that are consistent with the idea that people use prototypes during categorization.

Prototype: mental representation of the ideal or typical category members

- has all characteristic features

- doesn't actually exist in the world

Evidence:

- general agreement on which category members are most prototypical

- high typicality= lots of common features

- sentence verification, judging sentences as true or false, apple is a fruit is faster than pomegranate

- typicality effect: ability to determine category membership

What is the typicality effect in sentence verification?

the typicality effect is the ability to determine category membership, ability to determine category membership more rapidly for highly prototypical objects

sentence verification:

"apple is a fruit"

"pomegranate is a fruit"

- apple is faster

How does the exemplar approach to categorization differ from the prototype approach?

Exemplar approach: suggests that instead of a hypothetical prototype, people categorize by comparing a new item to a series of exemplars

- an exemplar is an actual member of the category that has been encountered in the past

What types of categories are handled better by the exemplar approach than the prototype approach?

- dealing with atypical category members (penguins)

- dealing with categories with no clear prototype (games)

- dealing with small categories (US presidents)

What types of category members are handled better by the exemplar approach?

atypical category members such as penguins

What are basic categories

Basic categories: the level of categorization that is used most often to refer to individual items

- chair

What are superordinate categories?

also know as global level

broad or general categorization

- piece of furniture

What are subordinate categories

specific level

specific or narrow categorization

- Adirondack chair

Give three pieces of evidence that people typically prefer to use basic categories. When are basic categories not preferred?

1. People will name an object by the basic level term by default

2. Children learn basic level words before more specific or more general terms

3. people are faster to verify category membership at the basic level

For example: features common to all or most furniture, people say about 3 features, features common to all tables, people say about 9 features, features common to all kitchen tables people say about 13

- going above the basic level results in a large loss of information

- going below the basic level results in little gain of information

Not Preferred:

- people with significant expertise with a certain category (ex. bird or car experts)

- experts would tend to say "sparrow"

- non experts tend to say "bird"

What does it mean to say that the basic level is the most efficient level of categorization?

people are faster to verify category membership at the basic level

Describe the structure of the Collins & Quillian hierarchical semantic network model. How does sentence verification work according to this model?

for every category there is a node, a node is a category or concept, concepts are linked to other concepts, and those concepts are also linked to properties

- to search semantic memory, access the relevant node and then trace the network, some categories are also mutually exclusive

Sentence Verification: distance effects, more "distance" between two concepts= more time needed for processing, so when asked, "pomegranate is a fruit" it takes longer to verify then "apple is a fruit" because the distance is greater

Explain the principles of cognitive economy as they relate to the Collins & Quillian model.

Cognitive economy: properties are stored at the highest possible level of categorization

- to maximize efficiency

- lower nodes inherit properties of nodes above them

- exceptions stored at lower nodes

Explain the principles of distance effects as they relate to the Collins & Quillian model.

Distance effects: more "distance" between two concepts= more time needed for processing

- sentence verification

- prediction: more links, more time

- "canary is a bird" should be faster than "canary is an animal"

- "canary can sing" should be faster than "canary can fly"

Explain the principles of spreading activation as they relate to the Collins & Quillian model.

Spreading activation: activation of concepts within the network "spreads" to related concept

- a node is activated when a person reads, sees, hears, thinks about a concept

- when a node is activated, activation spreads to adjacent nodes

- concepts that receive activation are primed, which makes them easier to process

example:

- lexical decision task, say yes or no if the word is a real word or not, decide whether the probe (the second word in each pair) is a word

(related, non related, non word)

- related has the fastest reaction time

- non word has the slowest

What is the lexical decision task? How has it been used to provide evidence for spreading activation?

lexical decision task, say yes or no if the word is a real word or not, decide whether the probe (the second word in each pair) is a word

(related, non related, non word)

- related has the fastest reaction time

- non word has the slowest

shows nodes activate related nodes (priming)

Describe two experimental findings that Collins & Quillian's model cannot account for.

Typicality effect in sentence verification: cannot explain why apple is faster than pomegranate, when pomegranate should be closer according to Collins and Quillians model

Reverse distance effects in sentence verification: suggests that semantic memory organization should not be hierarchal

"a dog is an animal"

"a dog is a mammal"

- dog is an animal is faster, led to alternative ideas about how best to model semantic organization

Describe the following elements of the connectionist model of semantic memory: representation units, relation units, hidden units, property units. Which units receive input from the outside world? Which units receive input from other units?

representation units: the input units, activated by stimulation from environment

relation units: weights of connection

hidden units: stimulation by specific combinations of input units

property units: the ouput units such as "is a bird"

relation and representation units receive input from the outside world

hidden and property units receive input from other units

Example:

representation unit: Canary

relation unit: can

hidden unit: connects them

property unit: fly

the inputs are "canary" + "can"

What are connection weights in a connectionist model? How do connection weights allow the connectionist model of semantic memory to account for typicality effects?

connection weight determines activation, heavier weight= stronger activation

connection weights are relation units, strong connection weights and weak/no connection weights

- connectionist models suggest that weights between units become updated with experience

example:

strong connection weight: "canary can fly"

weak/no connection weight: "canary has fly"

typicality effects:

What is back propagation? What purpose does it serve?

Back propagation: error signal transmitted back through the network when weights need to be updated

example: "canary has, gills"

its purpose its to update the weights

What are mirror neurons? Where are they located in the brain?

neurons that respond both when a monkey observes someone else grasping an object such as food on a tray and when the monkey itself grasps the food

concluded: mirror neuron area is involved with understanding intentions behind the actions

located in the premotor cortex

What does it mean to say that language is hierarchical?

there is a hierarchy of sounds and meaning in language

example: phonemes, morphemes, etc, each being larger and having more meaning

In what ways is language "universal" for humans?

all humans with normal cognitive capacity learn and follow the rules of language

What is syntax?

rules that determine word order

What are semantics?

meanings of words and word grouping

What are phonemes?

smallest unit of speech sound

- there are around 40 in the english language, but some languages have from 11 to 100+

- order matters when combining phonemes into words

What is the phonemic restoration effect? Why is it an example of top-down processing?

phonemic restoration: "fill in" missing phonemes bases on contexts of sentence and portion of word presented.

this is top down processing because we use the knowledge of our experiences to fill in blanks, its all about perception

What are morphemes? Be able to parse simple words into their component morphemes.

smallest unit of language that signals meaning

- prefixes, suffixes, roots

Examples:

table 1

beds 2

bedrooms 3

locate 1

dislocate 2

dislocating 3

What is the word frequency effect? How has it been studied using the lexical decision task?

the frequency with which a word appears in a language

- faster to comprehend high frequency words such as home, than low frequency words like hike

lexical decision tasks, saying yes or no if a present word is a real word or non word

- response for high frequency words are the fastest

Define the following terms: lexical ambiguity, biased dominance, balanced dominance.

Lexical ambiguity: the existence of multiple meanings for the same word

biased dominance: one of the meanings is used more frequently than the other

- ex. pen, tin, ruler

balanced dominance: all meanings are used at about the same frequency

- ex. cast, bat, park

How do meaning dominance and context jointly determine which meanings of ambiguous words are accessed during sentence processing?

biased dominance: only the dominant meaning is activated, unless context is provided

balanced dominance: multiple meanings are activated, whether context is provided or not

What is parsing? What are garden-path sentences?

parsing: mental grouping of words into phrases to determine meaning

- example: (The french) (bottle) (smells) or

(the french bottle) (smells)

garden path sentences: sentences that begin appearing to mean one thing, but end up meaning something else

Compare and contrast the syntax-first approach and interactionist approach to parsing.

syntax first approach: as people read a sentence, their grouping of words is governed by a set of rules about syntax

interactionist approach: syntax and semantics are taken into account simultaneously during parsing

What is the principle of late closure?

assuming that each new word is part of the current phrase

- reeanalyze if we reach impasse

- do not consider meaning until syntax fails

Describe how the interactionist approach to parsing is supported by evidence from: 1) the use word meaning to guide parsing

meaning can override the principle of late closure

- the defendant examined the evidence

- the defendant examined by the lawyer

- the evidence examined by the lawyer

Describe how the interactionist approach to parsing is supported by evidence from: 2) the use of knowledge about language structure/use to guide parsing

knowledge of how a language is used can help to resolve ambiguity

- the soldiers warned about the dangers conducted the midnight raid

In english, it is much more common for "warned" to be used as a main verb:

- the soldiers warned about the dangers before the midnight raid

Describe how the interactionist approach to parsing is supported by evidence from: 3) the use of information from a visual scene to guide parsing

visual information can help to resolve the ambiguity in parsing

- the spy saw the cop with the binoculars