Cognition

• What is cognition? (Cognition - subconsciously/consciously processing)

  • concepts vs. prototypes

    • concept - mental groupings of similar objects/things

    • prototype - mental image of the best example of an object

  • schemas - building blocks of intellectual abilities

    • assimilation - interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas

    • accommodate - adapting current schemas to incorporate new information

  • Problem Solving (efforts to achieve a goal not readily available)

    • algorithm - methodical, logical rule that guarantees a solution

    • heuristic - faster, error-prone (compared to algorithm) (simple thinking strategy for efficiency)

    • insight - sudden realization for a problem’s solution (aka “Aha” moments)

    • mental set - using problem-solving techniques that have worked in the past

    • priming - technique in which the introduction of one stimulus affects the introduction of another stimulus

    • framing - how an issue is posed (ex. 1.) condoms have a 95% success rate at preventing HIV vs 2.) condoms have a 5% failure rate at preventing HIV)

  • Forming Judgments and Making Decisions

    • errors in thinking

      • functional fixedness - to focus on the most common use of an object

      • representative heuristic - estimating the likelihood of events in terms of how well they represent a prototype (eg. that “women’s jobs” are flight attendants and nurses)

      • availability heuristic - estimating the likelihood of events based on the availability of our memory (eg. shark attacks)

      • anchoring bias - powerful/emotional thought that clouds the rest of the brain (almost permanent; anchored)

      • confirmation bias - listening to opinions that match one’s beliefs

      • hindsight bias - “I knew it all along”

      • overconfidence - feeling more confident than correct

      • belief perseverance - clinging to original beliefs despite those beliefs being discredited/disproven

      • conjunction fallacy - occurs when people estimate two uncertain things happening together are higher

      • gambler’s fallacy - belief that the odds of winning something/something happening are greater because the outcome hasn’t occurred in a long time

      • sunk-cost fallacy - phenomenon where someone refuses to abandon a strategy because they have invested so much into it

• What is cognition? (part II)

  • executive functions → cognitive processes that work together, enabling us to generate, organize, plan, and implement goal-directed behavior

  • creativity → the ability to create new and valuable ideas

  • aptitude → the ability to learn

    • divergent thinking - part of creativity; diverging, expanding to all possible solutions

    • convergent thinking - part of aptitude; narrowing solutions to one best solution

  • Robert Sternberg

    • imaginative thinking skills - see things in novel ways; see things differently

    • venturesome personality - overcome obstacles, tolerate risks, new experiences

    • creative environment - people who support you!

    • expertise

    • intrinsic motivation - driven by more; satisfaction-driven, inner joys

Memory

• Memory

  • Hermann Ebbinghaus

    • nonsense syllables

    • forgetting curve

      • practicing over time helps memory

  • Long-Term Memory

    • Explicit (hippocampus)

      • episodic - personally experienced memory

      • prospective - remembering to remember (in future)

      • semantic - conscious, effortless, explicit memories of general information

    • Implicit (automatic) (amygdala; basal ganglia)

      • skill learning - muscle memory (ex. riding bikes)

      • conditioning - Pavlov’s dogs (ex. salivating when you see a favorite food)

      • priming - being more likely to use a word heard recently

    • Long-Term Potentiation - increased efficiency of neural firing

  • Structure of Memory:

    • information-processing model (3 stages)

      • sensory memory - immediate, brief, copies sensory input, ~1/4 of a second, feeds active working memory

        • echoic memory - very brief sensory memory of auditory stimuli

        • iconic memory - very brief (1/10 of a second) sensory memory of visual stimuli

      • short-term memory (STM) - very limited life, ~20 sec

      • long-term memory (LTM) - 20 sec → forever, limitless storage

    • working memory model (consciously processing auditory and visual stimuli and connecting with long-term memory)

      • central executive (coordinating focus processing)

        • phonological loop - briefly holds auditory information, stays in the brain longer, trying to convert into long-term memory

        • visiospatial sketch-pad - memory for an object’s appearance and position in space

  • Creating Memory

    • information-processing model:

      • encoding → storage → retrieval

    • Encoding (process of getting information into memory):

      • attention - focused awareness on a narrowed range of stimuli

      • levels of processing

        • structural processing → shallow processing (physical; ex. what a word/letter looks like)

        • phonetic encoding → intermediate processing (auditory; ex. what a word/letter sounds like)

        • semantic encoding → deep processing (meaning; ex. what a word/letter means)

      • effortful processing strategies

        • chunking (organizing items into familiar, manageable units, almost automatic)

        • mnemonics (memory aids) → method of loci (visualization to create a story)

        • encoding over time - spacing effect

          • massed (cramming) vs distributed (4 days ideal) practice

        • repeated self-testing, testing effect

        • serial position effect, primacy effect, recency effect

    • Storing:

      • sensory memory (>1 sec), working memory/STM (~20 sec), LTM (limitless)

      • memory consolidation - neural storage of long-term memory, primarily in hippocampus

        • semantic memory - facts and knowledge (hippocampus)

        • episodic memory - personally-experienced (hippocampus)

        • flashbulb memories - clear memories of emotionally significant events or a moment in your life (amygdala)

      • maintenance rehearsal - repeating information to memorize

      • elaborative rehearsal - more accurate than maintenance rehearsal because you repeat the deeper meaning

      • retrospective memories - remembering things in the past

      • prospective memories - remembering to remember

    • Retrieving: (act of remembering)

      • recall - retrieve information learned earlier with no help

      • recognition - identify already-learned knowledge

      • relearning - the measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material again

        • context-dependent - put yourself back in the context

        • state-dependent - cognitive state

        • mood-congruent - the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one’s good/bad mood

Forgetting

• How do we forget?

  • encoding failures - happens with distractions; information not encoded properly

    • storage decay - natural forgetting of learned information (don’t use it → you lose it) (associated with retrograde and anterograde amnesia, also Alzheimer’s disease and infantile amnesia [we can’t store things as kids])

    • retrieval failure - stored and encoded something but cannot pull it out of our brains (tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon)

      • retroactive interference - new information hurts old information

      • proactive interference - old information hurts new information (ex. speaking Spanish when trying to speak Czech and forgetting a word)

  • Freud - “we have a motivation to forget” (repression)

    • repression - basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, ideas, and memories from consciousness

  • reconsolidation - process of recalling and (unconsciously) manipulating memories

  • misinformation effect - remembering something wrong

  • imagination effect - creating false memories

  • source amnesia - forgetting where information came from

Intelligence

• Theories of Intelligence (the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations)

  • general intelligence (g) - underlies all mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test

    • “g intelligence” or “g factor”

    • Charles Spearman - factor analysis (used to identify different measures of performance that underlie a person’s total score)

  • multiple abilities

    • memory

    • word fluency

    • verbal comprehension

    • inductive speed

    • spatial ability

    • perceptual speed

    • numerical ability

• How to measure intelligence?

  • achievement test - measures what you have already learned

  • aptitude test - predict future performance

  • Alfred Binet - first major intelligence tests

    • mental age - the level of performance typically associated with children of a certain chronological age

  • Stanford-Binet intelligence test

    • Lewis Terman

    • IQ tests → mental age/chronological age * 100

• How do we define intelligence?

  • Howard Gardner → multiple types of intelligence; “in what ways are you smart?” not “how smart are you?”

    • visual-spatial (space and geometry)

    • verbal-linguistic (language)

    • logical-mathematical (math)

    • bodily-kinesthetic (strength, balance, endurance)

    • interpersonal (other people)

    • intrapersonal (self)

    • musical (music, duh)

    • naturalistic (nature)

  • savant syndrome - condition in which a person considered to have limited mental ability has an exceptional ability in computation or drawing

    • CHC Theory - crystallized vs fluid intelligence

      • crystallized (Gc) intelligence - knowledge gathered over time (accumulated)

      • fluid (Gf) intelligence - ability to reason quickly, abstractly; decreases over time

  • Robert Sternberg → Triarchic Theory

    • Analytical (school/academic)

    • Creative (innovation, creation)

    • Practical (everyday use, realism)

• How to measure intelligence?

  • social intelligence - ability to perceive, regulate, understand emotions

  • David Wechsler

    • WAIS (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale)

    • WISC (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children)

      • verbal comprehension, perception, working memory to be widely accepted, it must be:

        • standardized

        • reliabilty

        • validity

          • content validity - content

          • predictive validity - predicts behavior

• Group differences & bias

  • cultural values

    • environmental fact, race, ethnicity don’t change intelligence

    • individualistic cultures - higher scores in individuals

    • collectivistic cultures - higher scores in group biases

  • stereotype threat - self-confirming concern that you’ll be based on negative stereotypes

  • stereotype lift - when people in a group think they’ll do better because they’re in a group

• Is intelligence inherited?

  • cross-sectional - age groups, etc.

  • longitudinal - case study

  • nature or nurture? (both!) - identical twin study

• How does intelligence grow?

  • fixed mindset

  • growth mindset