Psychology
Day 1:
Ethical guidelines for research
Getting informed consent for participants
Nonmaleficence- no physical or mental harming in a person
Debreif afterwards
Keeping confidentiality
Hw: Making Memories Notes:
Using insideout as an example
Types of Memories:
Different types of memories
Some might be an event
Memories of facts
Memories of actions
Memories of do-to lists
There are two main categories of Memory-explicit and implicit
Explicit Memories
Known as Declarative memory
Long term memory that can be consciously recalled
Are memories are ones that you know
Require effortful processing
Mental activity that requires deliberation, control, and involves a sense of effort
Episodic memories: Personally experienced events
Semantic memories: Memories of general factual knowledge
autobiographical memory: Memories about yourself and can be interchangeably with episodic memory
Implicit Memories
Produced indirectly and potentially without awareness of that memory creation
Can be more challenging to describe to explain to others
Automatic processing: mental processes that can be carried out rapidly and without a sense of intention
Main type: Procedural memory: long term memory for the skills involved in a particular tasks
Examples include:
How to play tennis
How to tie a shoelace
How to swing on a swing
How to play guitar
Generally what people say as “muscle memory”
Could be mixed up with episodic memory but remembering a specific time for episodic but along with learning over time is procedural memory
Others that don’t fall into procedural could be the incidental information that one picks up during their normal day without realizing it or doing it on purpose(No specific vocab term connected)
Example could be the airpod and retracing steps of places you have been that could be where the airpods are
There is a third type: prospective memory: Remembering to do something in the future
Examples include remembering to do homework or take medicine before bed
Steps of Long-Term Memory:
Long term memory is equivalent to long term information storage system
limitless
Steps for how long term memory is made:
Encoding: Putting information into our memory
Storage/Retention: Holding on and maintenance of memory
Retrieval: Recovering the memory
For memory that is not long term:
There are two models for explaining the brief, limited in capacity information in our minds
The traditional terms is short-term memory and will be explained by the multi-store model of memory
Newer term is working memory and will be explained by the working memory model of memory
Multi-Store Model of Memory:
Sensory memory needs attention to get to short term and then goes from short term to long term memory
Two types of sensory memory: Brief, unprocessed information from a stimulus that turns into a short term memory when we pay attention to it
Iconic memory: Visual sensory memory
Echoic memory: Auditory(Hearing/echo) sensory memory
Short Term Memory:
The recognition or recall of a limited amount of material after about 10-30 seconds
Pretty limited in capacity in duration and time
7+/-2 items, static(can’t be changed)
Some people can hold 7 items of memory + or - 2 (so 5 for minimum or 9 for maximum items)
According to the Multi-Store model, we must use effortful or automatic processing to move short-term memory into long-term memory
Working Memory Model of Memory:
Newer understanding of how memory works because the theory assumes that we can actively manipulate the information in our conscious awareness
Short-term memory explains hearing your teacher reads aloud a Kahoot code to join
Working memory explains listening to your friends talk while also formulating your response to them
Working memory: brief retention of information that can be manipulated
Three Components:
Visuospatial sketchpad
Component of working memory that holds information about objects and their location in space
Examples include visualizing if your room would look better by flipping your bed against another wall or picturing flipping letters around in Wordle before typing it out
Phonological loop
Component of working memory that holds auditory information for short intervals of time
Examples: silently rehearsing something before saying it and hearing your dad’s voice in your head reminding you to take the dog out for a walk
Central executive
Component of working memory that manages the visuospatial sketchpad and phonological loop
The central executive is responsible for focusing our attention, switching our attentions between multiple tasks and concentration
Example is when your central executive is what shifts attention from your phone to your mom when you realize she is talking to you
College board doesn’t need you to know what episodic buffer is so therefore searching a model up may be wrong or have excess information
Key for Image:
“Inner eye” is visuospatial sketchpad
“Inner ear” is phonological loop
Day 2: Memory Storage and Retrieval:
Memory and the Brain
Long-term potential: the process by Which synaptic connections between neurons becomes stronger with frequent activation, which is considered the biological process for how memory works
“Frequent Activation" is why teachers want you to study and practice the skills and knowledge from class, or you’ll forget
Hippocampus: brain structure in the limbic system responsible for processing explicit memories for storage
The storage of memory itself is in different parts of the brain
Example is an auditory memory
Cerebellum: brain structure in the hindbrain responsible for coordinating muscle movements and balance; plays a big role in procedural memories
Working memory is a bit less understood than long-term memories, but research shows that our prefrontal cortex is active in many tasks related to working memory, such as decision-making
Improving Retrieval
Long term memory is equivalent to long term information storage system
limitless
Steps for how long term memory is made:
Encoding: Putting information into our memory
Storage/Retention: Holding on and maintenance of memory
Retrieval: Recovering the memory
Learning how memory works is going to improve your memory retention and retrieval and give you a science backed tips for remembering context for tests
Two main types of retrieval:
Recognition: a sense of familiarity when one encounters something that they have learned in the past.
Recall: Correctly reproducing what one has learned in the past
A multiple-choice test requires recognition whereas an essay/short answer/fill in the blank requires recall
Information is easier to retain and retrieve when organized in some logical fashion
Hierarchies: organizing concepts or terms into categories and subcategories
An example of remembering the three types of authoritarian government are a dictatorship, oligarchy, and absolute monarchy
Hints:
Mnemonic device: memory aids that typically rely on what the words look like or sound like
Some good examples include HOMES, Dear King Phillip Claps Often For good Science, Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally, the ABC song and more
Method of Loci: memory Palace where objects are visualized and associated with specific locations
Example of remembering what you need to buy at the grocery store by visualizing what you normally keep in the fridge, freezer, then pantry.
Retrieval cue: a stimulus used to guide recall
Chunking: more short term by organizing items into familiar, manageable units
Often occurs automatically and considered more for short-term memory compared to the other methods
Examples:
FB IUS ACI A
FBI USA CIA
Encoding Specificity Principle
Mood-Congruent Memory: the tendency to better recall experiences that are consistent with one’s current mood
State-dependent memory: the tendency to better recall experiences when in the same biological/physiological state
Context-Dependent memory: the tendency to better recall experiences when in the same physical space
Rehearsal=Practice
Massed Practice: Trials that occur in a single lengthy session
Distributed practice: practice trials that are separated by the rest periods or studying other material
Way better for retention because of long-term potentiation occurs when we sleep
Social Position Effect
Serial Position Effect: our tendency to recall best the beginning(primacy effect) and the end(Recency effect) of a long list
Day 3: Forgetting and Studying
Hippocampus: brain structure in the limbic system responsible for processing explicit memories for storage
The storage of memory itself is in different parts of the brain
Example is an auditory memory
The Hippocampus is a brain structure that is located in the limbic system that processes explicit memories for storage in different parts in the brain.
HW:
Forgetting at Each Stage
Storage Decay:
Forgetting Curve: forgetting is initially rapid and then levels off with time
Tip-of the Tongue Phenomenon: the experience of trying to retrieve the memory of specific words or name but not being able to do so
Usually, the name or word will eventually be retrieved, but while experiencing this phenomenon, it seems to hover tantalizingly just out of reach
Levels of Processing
Encoding failure usually happens when we aren't paying attention, but we can also encode something at a surface level and hinder our memory
Levels of Processing Theory States that one has better memory retention when we use deep processing(Based on the meaning) compared to shallow processing(Based on the appearance)
Rehearsal
Maintenance rehearsal: Repeating items over and over to maintain them in our short-term memory
Example with Dad telling you five items and them repeating them in your head until you can pull up the notes app to write it down
Elaborative rehearsal: linking new information to what one already knows(This is a deeper level of processing)
Studying Tips(Mrs. Duvall)
Pay attention to class
Review early and often
Spacing effect: distributed practice is more effective than massed practice in durable memory retention because it supports long-term potentiation
Mix up the order in which you review content
Make connection with and between the content
How words relate to each other
Mnemonic aids can help group items
More shallow level
Study at the recall level so that retention is easy in comparison by getting quizzed
Testing effect: Testing oneself leads to better memory recall than other restudying methods
Interference and Amnesia
Interference happens all the time because it’s easier to confuse information that;s similar, whereas amnesia is rare due to being caused by brain damage(Injury or stroke affecting certain areas)
Retroactive interference: forgetting the older information when you’ve learned something new
RETRO=The Past and Pro= Forward
If learning latin makes you forget the spanish from 8th grade
Protective interference: trouble learning new information because the old information is getting in the way
If your device requires you to change your login password but you can’t remember it and keep initially typing your old password, this is proactive interference
Amnesia:
Retrograde amnesia: Inability to recall prior memories
Retro=past
Most temporary and easier to happen
Example is Karims car accident that made him lose all his memories of his past
Antreograde amnesia: inability to learn new memories
More permanent amnesia
Amnesia can be permanent or temporary
Because memory is stored in different lobes of the brain(the outer pink layer), a brain injury is more likely to affect the lobes
It would take a severe injury to the hippocampus to be unable to form new memories and the hippocampus is very well protected(The yellow part is the hippocampus)
When Memories Don’t Align with the Truth
Constructive memory: remembering that involves the use of general knowledge to construct a more complete and detailed account of an event to fill any gaps of the memory
Example of your friend’s version of what happened during that MAVtime fight becoming part of your memory
Memory consolidation: as memory is stored and retrieved over and over again, some of the details get lost
If an embarrassing moment happened to you in middle school, at the time you could recount it in excruciating detail but now, only some details about it remain
Misinformation effect: occurs when a person mistakenly incorporates post-event information into their memory
Eluizabeth Loftus did a famous study regarding the misinformation effect, where participants all watched the same video of a car accident
Half were asked open ended questions and half were given leading questions
The participants who were asked the more leading questions believe that the cars were going faster than the control group nand recalled inaccurate details like glass breaking
Big impact on eyewitness territory
Source Amnesia: impaired memory for how/when/where the information was learned, even if the memory itself is accurate
Examples rumors, tiktok health information, true or false statements
Day 4: Problem Solving:
Problem Solving Strategies:
4 Main ways:
Algorithm: a well-defined procedure or set of rules used to solve problems by trying every possible solution
An example would be guessing at a passcode with 0000, 0001, 0002, 0003, 0004… Until one works
Upside that it guarantees that you will find the solution but it may take forever
Heuristic: using experiences or logical best guesses to solve a problem
Let's say that you generally use family members’ birthdays for passcodes, so you try 2371, then 5974, 9453
This is faster problem solving but it is fallible
Intuition: using emotions, perceptions, and “gut feelings” to solve a problem
Intuition and insight are additional problem-solving strategies which are not connected to critical thinking like algorithms and heuristics
Many people use the word instinct as a synonymous of intuition, but FYI the word instinct with be a separate AP Psych vocab term
Insight: the sudden realization of an answer to a problem
Generally, insight occurs when you are not actively trying to solve a problem (and a different part of the brain is activated right before the moment of insight than the problem-solving prefrontal cortex)
Both Intuition and insight demonstrate that our brains can be working on problems when our attention is elsewhere
Cognitive Biases(A lot of them):
A cognitive bias is an umbrella term for all the many ways our thinking and decision making can be flawed
We make many quick decisions all day, often without realizing and we are prone to errors
List Covered Today: metal set, functional fixedness, availability, heuristic, framing, priming, confirmation bias, belief perseverance, imagination inflation, gambler’s fallacy, and sunk-cost fallacy
List:
Mental set: our tendency to approach a problem with the mid-set of what has worked for us in the past
If freshman year, you got 89% bumped up to an A after sending your teacher a Schoology Message, that is likely the first thing you would try again
Functional Fixedness: the tendency to perceive an object only in terms of its most common use
Availability heuristic: Making judgments on the likelihood of an occurrence based on how available or salient the information is in their memory
Salient means standing out/conspicuous
Things can stand out to us because they are visually dramatic, connected to something close to use, or a wild anecdote
We sometimes make quick decisions that what comes to mind quickly must be significant
Examples
Believing people get mugged in X Neighborhood all the time because you heard your barber’s cousin got mugged there (When in fact it was an anecdote worth sharing because crime there is low)
Framing: we are influenced by the way an issue or event is presented
Example: You have torn your ACL and consulted with two surgeons. Dr. Jones says that the surgery has a 95% complete success rate. Dr. Addams says that even when the surgery goes flawlessly, 5% of patients will never see full recovery. Which doctor are you going with?
Priming: the activation (often without our awareness) of associations that influence our thinking
Example of being given a yellow paper and when asked to brainstorm a list of fruits, you list banana
Cognitive Biases: the tendency to gather information that confirms preexisting expectations, typically by emphasizing or pursuing supporting evidence while dismissing or failing to seek contradictory evidence
Example:
Only following people on social media who share your viewpoints
Getting your news from your tiktok algorithm
Paying attention when an event aligns with your viewpoint and ignoring if it doesn’t
If you choose to search “are cats evil” you will find articles that agree with you
Belief Perseverance: more extreme version of confirmation bias: the tendency to maintain a belief even after the information that originally gave rise to it has been refuted or shown to be inaccurate
The inability to accept facts= Conspiracy theories
Imagination inflation: the increased likelihood that a person will judge an event as actually having occurred when they imagine the event
Relates to the misinformation effect, where our visualization of an event will sometimes make us believe it happened\
One theory is that our memories are not stored in frameworks dividing up real versus imagined
Gambler’s Fallacy: a failure to recognize the independence of chance events, leading to the mistaken belief that one can predict the outcome of a chance event
If you toss a coin and it lands 5 times on tails, the 6th toss is still and independent event, and the odds have not changed
Sunk-cost fallacy: the tendency to continue a course of action if you have already invested money, time or effort
Example: putting money into fixing up and old car and continuing to put more and more money in
It becomes illogical when you feel reluctant to abandon something even when it would be beneficial to
Executive functioning:
Executive functions: Cognitive processes that allow individuals to generate, organize, plan, and carry out goal-directed behaviours and experience critical thinking
The three main executive functions are working memory, cognitive flexibility (such as answering a colleague’s question while writing and email), and inhibition control (such as powering though doing your math homework when you’d rather watch tv)