module 32-40

Module 32: Storing and Retrieving Memories 

• Memory Storage 

  • Despite the brain's vast storage capacity, we do not store information as libraries store books in a single location. Instead brain networks encode, store, and retrieve the information that forms our complex emotions.

  • Memories that are explicit conscious memories are either semantic (facts and general knowledge) or episodic (experienced events)

    • Storage: Hippocampus and frontal lobes

    • Recalling: Many brain regions work together to send input to your prefrontal cortex. The left and right cortex are used in different times to recall different kinds of memories.

      • Left Cortex: Recalling a password

      • Right Cortex: Remembering a more visual memory

  • Hippocampus: Termed to be like a “save button” for explicit memories. If damage to this occurs, there would be a disruption to formation and recalling of explicit memories

    • Left-hippocampus damage: Having trouble to remembering verbal information but can still recall visual information 

    • Right-hippocampus damage: Having trouble to remembering visual information  but can still recall verbal information

  • Basal Ganglia: Deep brain structures involved in motor movement (riding a bike, playing a sport, etc)

  • Infantile amnesia: Blank experiences during our first 3 years of life

  • Stress hormones provoke our amygdala to initiate a memory

  • Flashbulb Memories: A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event. We can recall these easily

• Synaptic Changes

  • Long-Term Potentiation: An increase in a cell’s firing potential after brief, rapid simulation

  • Two Memories Systems:

    • Automatic: Implicit memories (no conscious recall)→ Processed in cerebellum and basal ganglia → Space, time and frequency, Motor and cognitive skills, Classical conditioning

    • Effortful: Explicit memories (conscious recall) → Processed in the hippocampus and frontal lobes → Facts and general knowledge, Personally experienced events

• Retrieval: Getting information out

  • Three measures of retention: Recall, Recognition, and Relearning

    • Recall: A person retrieving information (fill-in-the-blank test)

    • Recognition: Seeing information again and finding the answer to it (multiple choice test)

    • Relearning: A measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved 

  • Retrieval Cues: Association with other bits of information about your mood, seating position, etc

  • Priming: The activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations with a memory

    • State-Dependent Memory: Memories that may be able to remember when in a similar state (being drunk and losing your keys)

  • Mood-Congruent Memory: The tendency to recall memories when you are in a similar mood. In a good or bad mood, we persist in attributing to reality our own changing judgement, memories and interpretations 

  • Serial-Position Effect: Better recall of the beginnings of a list and the ends of that list

Module 33: Forgetting, Memory Construction, and Memory Improvement

• Forgetting

  • Anterograde Amnesia: Inability to form new memories

  • Retrograde Amnesia: Inability to recall information previously learned

    • Retrieval failure: When a memory is stored in long-term memory, but cannot be accessed

  • Proactive Interference: When previous learning disrupts recall of new information

  • Retroactive Interference: New learning disrupts recall of old information

• Memory Construction Errors

  • Misinformation Effect: Incorporation misleading information into a memory of an event

  • Source Amnesia: Attribution of a wrong source on an event we have experienced, heard about, read about or imagined

Module 34: Thinking, Concepts, and Creativity

• Thinking and Concepts

  • Cognition: Mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating information

  • Concepts: Grouping together of similar objects, events, ideas or people

  • Prototypes: Mental images or best example of a category

• Creativity

  • Convergent Thinking: Narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single right answer

  • Divergent Thinking: Expands the number of possible answers that can diverge into different directions

  • 5 components to creativity:

    • 1) Expertise

    • 2) Imaginative thinking skills

    • 3) An adventurous personality

    • 4) Intrinsic motivation

    • 5) Creative environment

Module 35: Solving Problems and Making Decisions

• Problem Solving: Strategies and Obstacles

  • Algorithms: Step-by-step procedures that guarantee solutions

  • Insight: A sudden realization of a problem’s solution; contrast with strategy-based solution.

  • Confirmation Bias: A tendency to search information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

  • Mental set: a tendency to approach a problem a certain way due to succession in the past

  • Perceptual set: a tendency to approach a problem a certain way due to expectations and past experiences

  • As a perceptual set disposes what we perceive, a mental set predisposes how we think; sometimes this can be a large obstacle in problem solving

• Forming Good and Bad Decisions and Judgements

  • Representativeness Heuristic: Judging the likelihood of things based on how they seem to represent certain stereotypes (this can lead to ignoring other relevant information)

  • Availability Heuristic: Estimating the likelihood of events based on availability in memory

  • Belief Perseverance: Clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis of which they were formed that has been discredited 

  • Framing: The way an issue is posted, how we see an issue can affect decisions and judgements 

  • Intuition can be risky, especially when we overfeel and underthink

Module 36: Thinking and Language 

• Language Structure

  • Phonemes: Smallest distinctive sound units in a language 

  • Morphemes: The smallest units that carry meaning in a given language

• Language Development

  • Babbling Stage: Beginning around 4 months of age, hearing sounds of other people and randomly uttering those noises 

  • One-word Stage: When a child speaks with one worded answers

  • Two-word Stage: Learns more words quickly and starting to form new sentences 

    • Telegraphic Speech: “go car”, using mostly nouns and verbs to communicate ideas / thoughts

• Language and Thought

  • Linguistic Determinism: Benjamin Lee Whorf’s theory, says that language determines how we think 

  • We sometimes picture stuff rather than using words to think in our heads

Module 37: Motivational Concepts

• Instincts and Evolutionary Psychology

  • To qualify as an instinct, a complex behavior must have a fixed pattern throughout species and be unlearned

• Drives and Incentives

  • Drive-Reduction Theory: The idea that a physiological need creates an aroused state that drives the organism to reduce the need of for example eating, drinking, etc

• Optimum Arousal

  • Optimum Arousal Theory holds that some motivated behaviors actually increase behaviors

  • Yerkes-Dodson Law: Moderate arousal would lead to optimal performance

Module 38: Hunger Motivation

• The Physiology of Hunger

  • The main source of energy in your body  is the blood sugar glucose, when low your body starts signalling to your brain to eat

  • Set Point: The point at which  an individual's “weight thermostat” is supposedly set