MBB
8/21
History of psych is plagued by pivoting back and forth between camps and trying to figure out whats important and how to study it.
Cognitive neuroscience answers how and why questions because they believe in understanding whats going on in the brain.
All types of psych agree that research is a main pillar of making it a science.
Wilhelm Wundt (1879) germany, first experiment, simple processes, began formal studies introducing principles of sensation and perception. How long until someone perceives a stimuli.
Edward titchener (late 1800s) studied under Wundt, Cornell University, Structuralism (we need to be like biology and chemistry we need to use units, if you simply over and over then you can get a standard unit of measurement and remove bias), Units.
VERSUS…
William James (late 1800s), Harvard, Functionalism (everything must have a function, “we will be a science if we can figure why we do things not if we can break things down”, why do we care), NOT units, behavior must serve a function to continue to exist.
Many modern day psychologists will identify as either or and you can see it in their research in how they design studies and interpret data.
Freud, stressed the unconscious, developed the psychoanalytic perspective-unconcious motives and conflicts, his significance in psych is debated, bias and lacking rigor in some aspects regarding research like classism, racism and misogyny.
Freud DID introduce the unconcious: psychoanalysis is the interaction of conscious and unconscious it brings fears and conflicts into the concsious mind. Id, ego and superego, free association and modern day implicit bias (implicit social cognition, thoughts and feeling outside of conscious awareness).
Behaviorism argues that you need to focus on obseravable behaviors and not the unconscious.
John Watson (1878-1958), only observable responses can be studied; cant see thoughts, cant measure them; to be like other natural sciences, need the rigor of observing and analyzing measurable behaviors.
Modern behaviorism: B.F. skinner (1904-1990) Harvard; reinforcement (how you raise a child, as an example, like money for chores and other positive reinforcement is all Skinner); sometimes determined “radical behaviorism”; we are what has been reinforced; we will revisit when we discuss nbehavioral genetics and the modern beleif that it is not JUST reinforced behavior that shapes who we are. Each person starts as a blank slate and is molded by their environment. (this guy was operant conditioning).
Psych may have to be studied differently than other hard sciences.
“An important implication of Helmholtz’s work was that there is a psychological reality and a physical reality and that the two are not identical.” (from reading)
While structuralism may be more similar to other hard sciences-breaking down processes into the simplest elements.
Functionalism (purpose of function of actions) and Behaviorism- “overt and observable behavior” are also of great value.
8/23
The study of the neural mechanisms underlying cognition: Cognitive neuroscience.
Psychophysiological methods are used across a variety of disciplines in order to answer diverse questions about psychology, both mental events and behavior.
These work because when your brain responds to something you get a systematic pattern, when you do any activity a uniform pattern of neurons fire and its nearly the same evey time you do that activity.
CN methods based on premise that cognitive or mental state consits of a pattern of activity distributed over any neurons.
Spatial is the type of tissue, temporal is the time it takes the neuron to fire. SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL RESOLUTION IS ON THE EXAM.
Spatial and temporal resolution refer to how accurately the tol reflects the pattern of activity distributed over many neurons.
VIDEO:EEG fMRI and PET
EEG (electroencephalogram): use surface electrodes to record the activity pf underlying brain tissue. Ex: if your sleeping ten hours but your still exhausted you’ll do a sleep study which requires one of these to record massive, continuous brain waves. However in cognitive science we dont use those waves, we associate it with an event → ERP.
ERP (event-related potential): averaging across repeated stimuli allows event-related activity to be identified.
ERP: like EEG, but related to an event (a task, e.g. making a decision, reading a word, etc.). The ERP (a few uV is small in relation to the EEG (about 50uV)).
There’s a “oh shit” brain reaction in the first second, any response beyond that is emotional or something like that. We study the first second.
ERP components: unsually labeled by polarity and latency, P300, P3. Each has a sensory or cognitive function it describes.
This is an electrical way to look at your brain.
EEG has turned out to be the ideal tool for communicating with technology. Whenever you think something you produce an electrical signal, computers pick up electrical signals. You can train a comuptor to understand someones brain activity and then the computor can identify problem areas.
EEG is the cheapest and easiest tool to do this.
8/26
EEG and ERP have very good temporal resolution by lower spatial resolution. Because it has to move around tissue. The idea of these is tracking which part of the brain is burning more energy when doing a certain task must be the part of hte brain being used for that task.
Other neuroimaging techniques:
PET Scans (posititon emission tomography scan, radioactive glucose, relatively high spatial resolution (a few millimeters), relatively poor temporal resolution)), basically during the scan your seeing where in your brain it’s eating this radioactive glucose, alot like EEP and ERP. PET does a good job with basic tasks of people with alzheimers to see if the brain is metabolizing sugar like it should.
s(structural)MRI or functional)MRI (were more interested in fMRI, sMRI just shows you brain anatomy, fMRI studies function obviously, same issues as with PET, good spatial, poor temporal, with fMRI you look at changes in bloodflow associated with oxygen concentration, so a little different from the previous examples, in an fMRI study the regions of color you see in the photos is showing increased bloodflow to those areas of the brain, showing more activity, to do a study you have to make them do a fake task to subtract whatever part of the brain activates when doing that and if the patient has anxiety you have to subtract that also before you do the real task, etc, it’s called subtracting.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) also referred to as New Lesion Studies or Old Lesion Studies, every other technique is a dependent variable (how does brain activity change by task) but TMS you change the area of the brain and see how it changes the behavior. “Old” lesion studies, these are experiments of nature you can;t induce them, old scientists used this to identify where tumors were in the brain and stuff way back when. “New” lesion studies you go in and change an area of the brain to what it would be like if there was a tumor there or whatever and then you study what it does to speech or motor skills or whatever you want. It is not thought to be dangerous but we do stay away from the brain stem.
Multiple methods can pair together.
8/28
When you pare EEG and fMRI, for example, you can be sure of your results. Mixing methods is a good way to get more accurate information.
The future of cognitive neuroscience is moving into genetics.
While the brain is forming these connections, your experiences will shape the brains response. Ex: maybe you had a bad experience with a hammer.
For many researchers we don’t care about genetics, especially in psychology. So for a lot of fields genetics play no role, but clinical psychologists, neuroscientists, addiction counselors and anyone like that then genes will play a big role.
Understanding genetic contributions help us not only understand the role of genes (nature) but also the role of nurture.
It will help more with things like substance abuse rather than GAD (anxiety).
Twins may have the same genes which is great but they also have the same environment which is a limitation. Twins separated at birth are the best for twin studies. Even better if they have siblings in their homes.
Genotype, phenotype. Your brains response to things is a phenotype.
Allele: different forms of a trait that a gene may have. You have a gene and then alleles of that gene.
Punnett squares are great for single gene traits, but in psychology we are not interested in single genes.
When we try to look at genes and predict behaviors/traits it gets very complicated. Genetic mutations cause issues, there are so so many. Ig whatever were looking at has a genetic contribution then at the end of the study you would be able to account 200 percent of the variation, ex: genes account for 40%, behavior 20%, and so on. But that never happens. Especially when the gene mutates because its misbehaving.
Another one is polygenic inheritance. We are interested in complex things. When I am trying to figure out what genes are playing, polygenic pairs are problems because there are so so many genes when you handle them. “It could be ANY of these combinations”.
Another one is epigenetics. A fairly new idea. Nature can change the expression of genes, so you could potentially interact with the environment. Answers questions like “why do these identical twins looks different”. Makes things even MORE complicated.
But the most complicated it the multiplier effect (small changes in environment). Ex: Extroverts are social and feed off of them, introverts do not. How do we predict who will be when they are 25. Were given 10 mil to figure out. What are some variables? A: family size, how much their parents socialize them, rural vs urban environment, what extracurriculars they did in school (were they individual or group activities?), level of familial stress/anxiety, personality traits, indirect or direct genotypes and phenotypes. Were looking at 25 year olds, we break apart those variables and we get to 100% (some being familial, some being environment and so on). We turn it in and they come back and bring up new research about temper tantrums in 6 month olds to one year and a new gene was found, what percent do you want to pull to give to this new gene? You could give it 0% because its such a small percent of life, maybe 5% maybe it is more important, maybe more. You can’t control tis effect.
Huntingtons disease helps us. Because only one copy is needed to exhibit the trait.
8/30
Genes are more important when you can not only identify them but modify them and cure disorders.
Heritable disorders are 50% in identical twins and 1% in general population with no family history.
Old genetics: rare conditions. Extra damaged or missing chromosome (down syndrom for example).
New genetics: not diseases, normal traits. When we start looking at genetics in terms of characteristics interesting to everyone then the market value goes up, think 23andme.
When we start thinking of genes on a wider scale like that we start running into manipulation. We are still figuring this out. These are issues with manipulation: genetic stratification (you would have a stratified society based on genetic characteristics, rich people would have the money to modify), genetic engineering (people would go in a tamper with things they shouldn’t), cloning. Egg donor stories are the best example right now. CRISPR.
9/4
Evolutionary psychology has been around a very long time. We look at natural selection, the evolution of behavior in the brain. What genes are around today that are associated with traits and characteristics that are in turn associated with survival and reproduction.
We are interested in aspects of what these traits are, they are usually dating and mating behavior.
Why do we find certain characteristics attractive in a potential mate?
Physical attractiveness is one of the easiest things to study.
Symmetry is universally attractive.
Evolutionary theories are untestable in a traditional way.
More recent area of evolutionary psych is behavioral genetics.
Nature vs nurture.
Behavioral genetics factors in jury sentencing, if you can show that youve inherited genes associated with characteristics or tendencies that support getting into criminal activities. If you have those genes you are less responsible for your actions. Voluntary manslaughter→involuntary manslaughter.
Another issue is that we don’t allow talk about bad socioeconomic status or neglectful parents, we say that because it says genetics then it sounds more supported even though “i committed this crime because thi is what I grew up around it was the norm” is just as, if not more, valid than the genetic argument.
NEURODEVELOPMENT SWITCH
In other countries they have socialized healthcare so the government has access to all records, so once we had computors to handle all of that data neurodevelopment took a huge step forward.
Once we understood early infancy was critical we started looking at neurodevelopment disorders, we viewed most neurodevelopment disorders as beginning at age 5. You also start school at five so it is easier to identify these disorders because we have a standard that comes from teachers who notice these things. When the environmental push of school came, the disorders popped up. But they were there from birth, most of them.
Brain architecture- “bottom up”- sequence.
Higher capacities difficult to develop without solid development of lower-level capabilities. Like setting good soil for house foundation, you don’t see the state of the foundation in a child until a few years later when the cracks come when there is weather and stress on that foundation.
The reason that perinatal period is so important is the most wiring and synaptic connections happen as a fetus, that’s the most potential you will ever have. At 4 weeks after conception brain cells form at 250,000 every minute for the next 4 months and then it slows and connections begin forming. Language is the best example of this, when you get older you cannot pick up languages nearly as quick if at all.
9/9
Digital technology for babies (learning tools) were peak in early 2000s and the national pediatric whatever was like “no no don’t have children on technology all the time, mainly TV”. These tools do not make a difference in cognitive growth in babies.
AAP came down hard on this because increased screentime was not the same between a 3 year old (when thats all you see) versus 5 (when you have social interaction along with screentime, balance).
3-5 years old they found a slight benefit in visual processing but decline in many things like empathy and cortical thinning. Not a good thing overall.
Having a conversation with someone in person is the most beneficial to your brain, all parts of your brain are moving
Biggest argument in this is that you cant lump ages together, every year a childs brain is different.
Reading and pretend play are really useful and free!
9/13
Rewards system is still maturing, we used to be concerned about addictive substances on adolescents brains but now we know its phone addiction.
ABCD funding by NIH: found thinner cortex, mood changes, trouble sleeping.
Reward is malleable: if there are things you don’t like in your life that is not rewarding then you can change your reward, you can make things that aren’t rewarding, rewarding.
Adulthood (35-55): in adulthood we have this idea of compensation and adaptability so they do a bit of that re-wiring but nnot nearly as much asin neonatal and adolescent.
Compensation and adaptability, positivity bias (starting in mid-adulthood we remember positive experiences better, they come up more), “invest in your own cognitive and physical resources, so you can buffer agains the effects of older age.”(Reuter-Lorenz).
Late adulthood: alzheimers is growing and is still underdiagnosed. Our brains shrink we start to have loss in some types of cognition and gain in some types. Fluid (represents this type of skill that is pre-frontal mediated that allows you to do things on the spot, fluid) vs crystalized (or wealth of knowledge, you can only pull from your experiences, you’re not fluid and adaptive and creative) intelligence. Inductive reasoning is fluid intelligence it decreases with age. Verbal ability increases steadily.
Remote memory (memory from the past) vs new memory. You can hold onto remote memory in alzheimers you just can’t make new memory.
Speed of processing goes down.
Gene related dementia is very rare, usually it’s something else. You have buffers to dementia too because you have an intelligence gene too.
Pathological aging buffers: Nutrition, cardio (health in general), not smoking, intellectual engagement, social engagement.
Older people begin caring what others think and stop having social engagement due to cognitive decline, but they never stop talking to their family so it is on the family to provide social engagement.
The nun study.
Cognitive reserve is what you build throughout your life
9/16
Motivations are usually feuled by rewards. Motivation is the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way. Reward is reinforcement to the individual for behaving in particular manner.
Finding “reward”: James Olds and Peter Milner (1954), electrodes in 15 male rats. First study that suggested we have this hardwired reward system in our brain. They did this by sending electrical sensations to the Nucleus Accumbens and the rats would do nearly anything for that pulse.
Reward pathways.
Your body rewards you for doing things associated with survival, reward pathways originally were there to hep us survive and still are.
Homeostatic mechanism: maintains body. We have these set points, like a comfortable weight.
Not always straightforward, people have lost the ability to intuitively eat.
Regulatory behaviors are behaviors required to meet the basic need, controlled by homeostatic mechanisms. This is how we measure this type of research. We count these behaviors.
Brain pathways: higher order: mesocortical connects the mesencephelon with the frontal lobe or cortex. The Accumbus triggers that dopamine from reward but these other pathways contribute to the pathway it takes to get to that reward. Decisions like doing homework instead of watching TV and going to class is the mesocortical pathway. These are usually future oriented.
Lower order pathway is the mesolimbic, connects mesencephelon with the limbic system, emotions. This is when you decide to stay home and skip class, which has it’s own set of rewards too. However they aren’t usually future oriented.
The neurotransmitter dopamine is associated with many functions, associated with drug-seeking behavior, the rats were stimulating the release of dopamine.
Drugs: fixed and super-potent reward vs fluctuating lower value of natural rewards.
What happens with motivation and drugs? Cognititve and frontal, pathway one, go out the window. No one wants drug treatment on their own. The drugs offer an easy big reward so natural small rewards like drinking water and eating do not feel as rewarding.
This trade-off is called motivation toxicity: a disruption of the motivational hierarchy. We all inherit an internal reward system. Drugs disrupt it.
Social media has the same effect as drugs.
There are predisposing factors for using substances, people who use drugs aren’t bad people they are usually actually extroverted because of the social aspect of drugs. Risk-taking is another trait that puts you at risk even though it is a good trait to have. A family history of addiction and substance abuse also increases risk, this is the biochemical side.
Psychological: trait
Biochemical: genetic
9/20: Professor Switch
This is the mind part of this course, Dr. Davalos was brain.
The study of brain is the study of physiological processes, within psychology is how things like how brain structures relate to behavior. And the relationship between brin activity, development, etc and behavior.
Studying mental processes but the focus is on understadning things on an abstract and conceptual level is study of MIND.
Analogy example of the difference between brain and mind: when asked “how does a computer work” a computer genius could describe the underlying electronic components involved or describe what those components do, etc. The genius could also talk about how a comuptor works by describing what a person can do with a computer, functions and operations and what it can do for them. This is a more abstract level. Describing things at a user or functional level.
Levels of analysis. Study of the brain vs study of mind. Describing via circuit vs functionality.
Cognition vs. sensation and perception
Cognition are the mental processes by which we do things like learn from incoming information remember information and use information to dolce ptobkrmd and make choices.
S and P isprocesses by which we receive and perceive information from the environment.
Approaches towards understanding the mind: if you want to understand mental processes there are multiple options. You could take a philosophical approach, think Plato (memory works like a wax tablet), aristotle (learning theory based on the idea that we associate things together when they occur close in time and place). Their ideas were based on intuition, personal insight and logic and reasoning. They offered these theories and ideas but they had to be based on these things since they were first. There are problems with this: personal axperiences tend to be unique, not universal; no research, at least not empirical which creates more issues like no evidence as to whether you’re correct, you could be bias. This type of approach is just overall inaccurate.
Approaches to studying the mind: in psychology we use a scientific approach, not a philosophical one. We use the scientific method. The key to the scientific method is the gathering of empirical evidence (evidence based on careful observations).
Step one is forming a hypothesis: that may be base don intuition or personal insight. A philosopher stops here, a scientist doesn’t.
Step two is coming up with predictions.
Step three is research: conducting studies based on careful observation: THIS is the key difference from philosophical approach.
The research methods used in the study of mind (empircal methods): self reports (questionnaires for example), case studies (in-depth analysis of just one or a few individuals, this is done a lot in neuroscience), naturalistic observation (observe people in their natural environment). These three are NON-EXPIRIMENTAL.
The expririmental method is by far the most dominant in cognitive psychology. Still a type of empirical approach, but dominant and what you need to focus on. This approach buys you causal inferences (you can make inferences whether a factor of interest causes an observed outcome).
Key characteristics of an exipriment: manipulation of a factor of interest (for example, study method, if you were usingthat you’d change the study method in the experiment), random assignment of participants and conditions, control of extraneous factors that are not of interest.
Sample experiment: give students word pairs (ex: boat-tree) to memorize, but then manipulate the doctor of interest, some students would be told to use repetition, some may be told to use imagery. And then randomly assign these students to the conditions. And then control other factors, make equal everything else about the study to the best extent possible.
The goal of an experiment is to end up with groups that only differ with regard to strategy used and not any other factors, that allows you to infer causation!
Does the independent variable have a causal effec ton the dependent variable?
Quasi experiments: sometimes our question of interest involves a factor that cannot be manipulated. You have to use existing resources or groups. Like age, gender, ethnicity, ect. So we do all the same stuff but the thing being manipulated cannot be assigned. Sometimes it isn’t ethical: drugs, trauma, etc. You have to study people who have already been traumatized you cannot traumatize them, for example.
There are limitations: can’t to random assignment of participants then therefore groups may differ in other ways, besides the factor of interest (like if you are studying gender then another factor may be how they are raised and stuff). You need to be more cautious in making casual inferences.
There are different types:
non experimental: sometimes use out of necessity, can be good for generating hypothesis, can be used to see if experimental results generalize.
Experimental: good for testing hypothesis, can infer probably causation.
Converging evidence: seek evidence using a variety of approaches that points to the same conclusion.
9/23
Monkey business illusion: inattentional blindness.
The information is getting into the visual system but they are not attending to something happening in the scene so it doesn’t register in the brain.
Change blindness is noticing something has changed. Inattentional blindness is a failure to detect and report something that occured at all, change blindness is the failure to report a change.
Whodunnit video: example of change blindness.
The door study: change blindness.
Why? When people are paying attention to one thing and not other things, those other things may not register.
We have the ability to focus in on some elements of our environment and not others.
You have this ability because of our attention systems.
This type of focusing tunes out things, its adaptive.
When we do this tuning out it is sometimes called the cocktail party effect.
In tuning out information we my not be able to report the information or even be consciously aware of it at a later time.
Perceiving and becoming aware of something in the environment doesnt only require that it be picked up by our sensory receptors. That is not enough, our mind must allso be receptive to the information.
It is our attention system that determines what our minds are receptive to nd to what degree our mind is receptive to that thing.
Core concepts: what do we mean by attention? Set of processes by which we direct our mental resources toward a subset of information that is present in a given moment (whether the environment or our internal thoughts). You can look at something but not perceive it and be consciously aware.
Aspects of attentions: focusing of attention (this is the focus of today’s class), shifting attention is another aspect but it is covered in upper division classes, dividing attention which will be covered on wednesday :).
Focusing attention: what is going on when we focus on some things and “tune out” other things? What is the fate of information that is tuned out? What happens to it?
Dichotic listening task: a person wears a set of stereo headphones (meaning that you have one channel of info coming into one speaker and a separate channel going into the other ear)so that researches can deliver different messages to each ear, one of the two messages is designated the attended message (pay attention to this sound, ignore the other one….the unattended message). People are asked to shadow the attended message, meaning they have to say it back out loud as it is coming in not after the sentence is finished.
Cherry (195) was the researcher who initially developed this task. He asked “can they tell you anything about the unattended message after the experiment”. People could report very little about the unattended message. He varied the unattended message, sometimes it was words and sometimes it was sentences, sometimes it was non-words (ploof, words with no meaning), sometimes they were in a different language, sometimes the language would change mid string. Could people even report the jist of the unattended message? They could not report the content of the speech signal at all. Could not identify whether they were words or non-words couldnt report language change, etc. So Cherry concluded that unattended info is not identified or processed for meaning at all. People could say they could hear speech or just a static noise sound, but when asked about the content of the speech they couldn’t tell you.
Unattended information is blocked from any sort of meaningful process…the all or none processing is what it is called. There is no middle ground, it is either processed or not.
Scientists begane testing this idea.
Moray (1959) used the same dichotic task but the unattended sound was their name and they could report that their name was said.
Treisman (1960) tested this as well but found: that people could mix the attended channel and unattended channel.
Meaning that it does get processing, so an alternative theory was proposed: Treismans theory.
This theory: non-selected information is attenuated in strength (weakened) but not blocked.
She says attention is not an on or off switch, it is more like a volume control.
Woldorff (1993) ERP data showed that our wavelengths in our brain are literally stronger for attended information, higher magnitude. There is still a singla or the unattended message just not as much, it is weakened.
MacKay (1973) used the dichotic listening procedure but attended channel was sentences where the meaning was not clear and simultaneously they get a word repeated in the unattended ear that is tied to one meaning of the ambiguous sentence but not the other meaning. So what meaning did the people give? They could not report the word that was chanted but later they were given a recognition test later where they identified sentences they were given and they were given both meanings of the ambiguous sentence and those people chose according to the repeated word and the meaning tied to it.
9/25
Focusing vs. dividing attention.
In studying the focusing of attention, researchers seek to understand what happens when we try to focus on one task or one stream of information.
In studying dividing attentions, researchers are trying to understand what happens when we try to do multiple tasks or take in multiple stream sof info at once.
What happens when people are trying to multitask?
Multi-tasking: we are capable of it but its an issue of whether and to what degree performance on one or more of the tasks is compromised.
Sometimes it is easy and sometimes it is difficult. Sometimes tasks compete or interfere with each other, these are called performance trade-offs. One task will suffer.
Example: participants in a study are asked to perform two tasks at the same time: a visual tracking task and a monitoring task (watching a computer screen while a small circle moves around the screen in a random pattern) they are asked to move their mouse and keep the cursor on top of th removing circle. They also must monitor (as they are watching the screen, if they see the letter X pop up they click the mouse). Assuming participants are able to track with an accuracy with 90% and monitoring with 90% accuracy.
What do you think would happen if individuals are instructed to increase their tracking accuracy to 100%? Monitering would go down. Performance trade-off.
Why are some task combinations easy with less trade off than others? There are three major factors:
Distinct vs. overlapping resources: we have different types of mental resources (language-based, spatial, motor, etc.). Some task combinations have different or distinct resource requirements making it easy to multi-task (ex: walking on a treadmill and listening to a podcast). Other task combinations will overlap and compete for those resources (ex: listening to a podcast and reading).
Allport (1972): presented words to one ear for shadowing, simultaneously gave a second list of items to memorize for a later test. Sometimes that list was said auditorily in the other ear or shown on a screen or no words at all, just pictures. Condition 1 has the most overlap in resources, 2 has less and 3 has even less. Highest number in errors in condition one.
Demands a central resource: Pashler (1989) conducted a study in which people were given a task. Task 1 people heard tones, pressed one button for high-pitched tones, another for low-pitched tones. Task 2, simultaneously viewed digits shown on a screen, vocally name the highest number shown. Auditory and visual, not at all any sharing of resources so it should be easy right? Wrong, you still get performance trade off. Even in circumstances in which task resources do not overlap you can still get performance trade-off’s. Tasks are placing demands on a central resource that’s in common for all tasks. So in that way they compete for access to the central resource. Think of it as our reserve of mental energy. Other researchers have suggested a central control mechanism for all tasks.
Practice and experience: with practice, there is less need to deliberately work through tasks, you can do things automatically. Theres a shift from controlled to automatic processing. Spelke (1976) had people read short stories for comprehension and also engage in dictation. They are hearing words and they have to write them down along with reading the book carefully. Massive overlap. People were asked to practice an hour a day, 5 days a week over 17 weeks (different atories and words). After 6 weeks there was o interference at all, absolutely none.
Driving while operating a cell phone: performance trade-offs, usually to the detriment of the driving not the phone use. 4x higher risk of crashing, missed twice as many red lights, delayed braking response. It is just as bad maybe even worse than driving at the legal limit of alcohol use.
What is the cause of that driving decrement? Not enough practice or experience? No. Overlapping resources? Motivated the development of hands-free units (touch screen GPS and spotify and stuff) but still NOT the cause.
So what is it? The task of driving and attending to a cell-phone conversation competes for a central resource. Inattention blindness!
So what about conversations with a passenger? They are different. Cell phone conversations hurt driving but in-person conversations don’t. What is the difference? Somebody who is in the car with you can adjust based on the conditions, if you enter a busy intersection or are entering a highway, etc, they stop talking or slow down their talking.
9/27
What are learning and memory?
Learning refers to acquiring or encoding information; putting informatio into memory.
Memory refers to holding onto that info and retrieving it and getting it back out.
Highly intertwined.
You can’t remember information unless its been learned. The only way to test if someones learned something is to see if they remember it.
There are varieties of learning and memory:
Recalling studied information.
Recounting past events.
Holding information online, holding information in our current thoughts (ex. When you hold each word someone says long enough to piece the words into full sentences, listening uses memory).
Emotional responses (ex. You see a colorful box with a bow and your name on it and you get excited, you’re using memory because you’re only excited because eof past experiences with colorful boxes with bows on top).
Forming impressions and making judgements. Stereotypes come in here.
Producing skilled or learned movements (ex. Writing, typing, ect.).
One thing that researchers do in this learning and memory field is bring the study into the library, so that all remembering occurs in the context of the study. Reduces the chances of inaccuracy.
Typical study will have a learning phase where information is provided and people have to encode it to memory, then there may or may not be a delay (retention interval), then the people are tested to retrieve their encoded information.
This use of experimentation allow inference of caustation!
Types of common memory tests (concious memory):
Ex: Present many words and ask how many words the person can recall. This is called a Free Recall Test. It’s called FREE recall because no clues or triggers are given to help.
Ex: If you say “recall the word that started with M”. This is now Cued Recall.
Ex: “say yes or no as to whether this word appeared earlier in the list. Tree? Food?”. This is called a Recognition Test.
STM vs. LTM
Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) were trying to gather everything researchers had learned about learning and memory and create a model. They proposed that information we pay attention too, those things get into short term memory (current thoughts). Then information can potentially, doesnt always, encode into long-term memory (stuff that is shelved away).
When we retrieve we are grabbing it from long-term memory and bringing it back into what we are currently thinking.
The difference is not with how much time has passed, the difference is that they refer to whether it is in our current thoughts or has been shelved away. Even if it was something you heard 5 mins ago it is still long-term memory because you aren’t currently thinking of it.
STM tends be limited in duration, very limited in capacity and commonly acoustic (sound-based, like talking to yourself in your head).
LTM is longer lasting, higher capacity and commonly semantic (meaning).
9/30
Duration of STM Peterson and Peterson (1959): How long after attention has shifted does the memory of the original thing receiving attention disappear? people were shown three letters, on at a time on a screen and then after the three wer shown there was a dely and they had to count backwards. The counting backwards interval was varied.The longer the delay, the less retention of the three letters. This shows that the duration of short term memory is a few seconds, forgetting is immediate.
Capacity of STM Miller (1956): The capacity of STM is very limited. Gave people a set of items to remember then they got an immediate recall test. He varied the number of items in the set, how many of these items can they hold at once? The average is 7 +/- 2 (the plus or minus two is capturing variability in the population). This applies whether the item was letters, words, pictures, ect.
Format in STM Conrad (1964): The typical format of information in STM is acoustic. People got a short list of letters to try to remember and then they recall immediately. Conrad analyzed the errors people made when they recalled the list of letters. Almost always the errors were based on sound, acoustic confusions. Maybe they were given “D” but they recall “E” because it sounds the same. Even if you present the items visually rather than orally they still make acoustic confusions. This means we see the letter and we convert it to sound in our minds, we talk to ourselves in our mind.
LTM gets semantic confusions like if they are given the word “frog” they recall “toad”.
Patient Henry Moliason (HM). Got his hippocampus removed to stop getting epileptic seizures (it worked) but he could no longer remember information told to him after the procedure for more than a few minutes. He could remember his life before the procedure. Meaning that the hippocampus makes LTM from STM. He retained his intelligence and conversing skills as well. His STM was fine and his LTM,a s I said, was fine for the memories prior to the surgery. But LTM failed for new information. These symptoms are reoccuring in other people with damage to the hippocampus (Clive Wearing was another).
This is called a dissociations, the STM and LTM are dissociated. What does this dissociation suggest?
Suggests that the hippocampus must be important for commiting new information to long term memory.
STM and LTM are conceptually different, operate differently, and are served by different parts of the brain.
Working memory (similarities to STM) is online memory,a new term for STM essentially but a bit different. Both pertain to the active contents of mind or online memory, i.e., the stuff you’re currently thinking about.
Both are dealing with a form of memory that is proposed to be of very limited capacity and duration.
There are differences: whereas STM focuses on holding info, WM emphasizes the holding AND manipulation of info:
STM function isnt only to passively hold information but also to process/analyze/manipulate information.
Ex: mental math.
STM operates as our “mental workspace”; thus the new term, working memory.
The change in the conceptualization of onlinememory is reflected in how we measure capacity:
Simple span tasks (i.e. Miller, 1956): only measure the passive holding of information (in line with STM).
Complex span tasks: require the participant to hold and process information online at the same time (in line with WM).
Complex span task ex: reading span task. People have to read and understand something and at the same time they have to hold onto the last word of each sentence and recall them at the end. For STM the capacity was 7 +/- 2, but this is WM so now the capacity is 3.
That is the major difference, online memory acts as oru workspace.
Another thing is now we understand that short term memory is much more flexible than we used to think. Although we often hold things online in a verbal format, we are capable of holding information online in other ways. Baddeley and Hitch (1974) made a model proposing that there is a phonological loop that holds and processes acoustic information but there is also a visuospatial form that we can hold information in.
0.5% of the population cannot hold a mental image but thats not important, most people can.
LTM: Explicit and implicit memory. Patient H.M. revisited. He drew the outlines of a star without looking at the star but looking at it through a mirror. After three days and ten trials his performance was perfect. He has no memory of the other trials but still improved. He retained motor skills, showing that there are different kinds of working memory.
10/2
There are other realms of the brain where hippocampus injure patients show retention of longterm memory.
Repetition priming: Given a word fragment (i.e. d_ _) what word comes up first (i.e. dog)? If people have been exposed to a three letter word that begins with the letter “d”, then when asked what word comes up first is that word they saw or heard before. Repetition priming. What this shows us is that there is memory for the experience of having seen a word recently. That experience of having seen that word must’ve been retained and is now affecting their behavior. It just happens it’s not recall (is it a different type of recall when it is intentional vs not intentional?.
Graf et l. (1985): Studied a group of patients with amnesia (korsakoffs: selective damage to hippocampus). Everybody got a list of words and then they either got a free recall test or a fragment completion. A normal person would show priming, we would fill in the fragments with the words we were exposed to earlier. The patients showed the same degree of tendency to fill in fragments with previously exposed words! The free recall they sucked at but we knew that.
Concluding that hippocampus damage patients have normal memory when not conciously deliberately trying to use LTM. A dissociation.
This all revealed we have explicit and implicit memory.
Explicit: conscious memory with awareness, used for recall and recognition tests.
Implicit: unconscious memory, memory without awareness, used for motor skills, repetition priming.
The hippocampus must be critical for explicit long-term memory.
Converging evidence: population (i.e. patients) dissociations, expirmental (i.e. Graf et al.) dissociaitons, developmental dissociations (different areas of the brain develop at different rates), drug-induced dissociations (drugs can affect memory).
SLIDE SWITCH
Encoding: acquiring information and getting it into LTM, processes occurring during initial learning/exposure.
Retrieval: getting information out of LTM.
Effect of simple exposure: Nickerson and Adams (1979). A set of the head of 12 pennies, only one is correct the rest are wrong and theres been a change in it somehow. Only 42% chose the correct one, when drawing 90% left out liberty and 50% had the person facing the wrong way…all this even with the amount of exposure people have had with a penny. (correct answer is A btw if you are looking at slides).
Repeated exposure, even at a very high level, does not ensure that information will be well retained. Passively soaking in info through simple exposure is not an effective encoding activity for producing good long-term memory.
What about repetition or re-reading?
Craik and Watking (1973): People are given a presentation like “G- - - -”, target words are those that start with the letter G. Then they saw words on a screen one at a time, and if they saw a word that started with the target letter they start repeating that word until a new one with the target letter showed up and they start repeating that one. Then they report the last word they needed to repeat. Some words got repeated during more word presentation than others. Maybe it’s GROW LEAF TIN GAIN, grow is repeated twice, but then maye GAIN LIFT EAR CANDY LOVE GET, gain is repeated four times. That means some words got more repetition than others. Results showed that there is no difference with repetition, maingin that repetition is not a valid way to encode something. (They got a free recall test at the end of all the words).
10/4
Maintenance rehearsal is repetition, what we’ve already looked at. Elaborative rehearsal is thinking of meaning and making meaningful connections.
Researchers, looking at elaborative processing, varied the type of encoding people engaged in. They learn the material in different ways. Like a visual analysis (if the word is YACHT then “is it uppercase?”) vs sound-based analysis (YACHT “does it rhyme with “hot”?”) vs meaning-based analysis (YACHT “is it a type of boat?”).
Craik and Tulving (1975, experiment one) they did this^. Give a word and vary asking each person a different questions and then after a time delay asked them to recall the word. They did another version of this experiment as well. When people thought about the meaning of the word had the best memory outcome, 5x better than other ways.
Follow up study by Craik and Tulving. They gave people sentence frames and each fram was followed by a word. They were asked “would this word fit in the sentence?”. Sometimes the sentence frams were simple and other times they were more complex with more context. How well did people remember the words when it fit into a simple sentence vs complex sentence? They are always thinking of the meaning of the words just the sentence type is changing. 33% simple and 63% complex, complex showed better recall. The complex sentence has words that hint at the word and we have memory of these words in our LTM so we can use that to remember the word.
The more meaningful the elaborative rehearsal, the better memory recall and encoding in LTM.
Have you ever had it happen that you’re unable to remember something while you’re taking a test, then later on it comes to you? It shows that you acquired the information, you just couldn’t get it out when neede; you experienced a retrieval failure.
Successful memory performance requires effective acquisition and effective retrieval.
Have you had a song come flooding back to you after hearing the first few notes? Or a memory come flooding back to you after encountering a strong smell? These are triggers or cues which guide retrieval.
Memory is cue dependent: retrieval success is highly dependent on the cues or triggers that are used to probe memory.
Retrieval cues: any element of the retrieval situation that trigger information stored in memory.
Tulving and Pearlstone (1966): they give words, all kinds of words all intermixed. Free recall (no cues) had a 40% success rate. A cued recall test where the categories of the words was mentioned had a 75% success rate.
Mantyla (1986): some types of cues are more effective than other. People were given 600 nouns, come up with three words when you see each noun (associates). Recal test using the associates had a 90% success rate. The other haf got recall test using someone else’s associates and it had a 55% success rate. Its not just whether you are given cues or not, it is also that the particular cues matter. Some cues are more effective than others.
How do encoding and retrieval work together?
Fisher and Craik (1977). During the presentation of words people are trying to encode, they got one of three rienting questions: question about whether the word rhymed with another word, or a question about whether the word belongs to a category, or the question asked about whether the word fits into a sentence (they answered yes or no). On a later memory test gave people different types of retrieval cues: rhyme cues, category cues or sentence cues. They used all possible combination of these two aspects of the experiment. The results showed that however they learned it is how they best recalled it (rhyme question and rhyme cue, category question and category cue, sentence question and sentence cue).
Implications: interaction between encoding and retrieval, memory performance is dependent on the combination of how it was learned vs retrieved. Memory is best when the cues correspond to the ways it was encoded.
Encoding specificity principle^^^
10/7
Autobiographical errors, contributing factors andimplications for how memory works.
Brown and Kulik (1977): they heard people claiming that they had exceptionally vivid memories for events in the past, such as JFk assasination (where they were and what they were doing). So they examined autobiographical memories tied to major historical events. Not dealing witht he details of the historical events themselves, we are interested in what they personally were doing when this event occurred. Quite frequently people gave high detailed reports of vivid memories in this experiment. So Brown and Kulik coined the term Flashbulb Memories (autobiographical memories tied to surprising or emotional events). Problems: self-reporting, could be inaccurate but cannot be checked.
Neisser and Harsch (1992) did an experiment to avoid this bias. They asked seven autobiographical memory questions relating to the time of the space shuttle explosion (challenger). The questions were given within 24 hours of the event and then the same people got the same questions 2 and a half to 3 years later. Subjects showed accurate recollection on only 3 of 7 questions. Memories were not like a snapshot! Sometimes when tested 2 and a haf to 3 years later some people may have left the question blank or said I don’t know, but often times they did report something but it was different then what they had reported before. They misremembered, Memory Distortion.
Ex: one person said they were in their classroom, 2 and a half years later they said they were in their dorm.
Criticism: maybe your typical college student was not emotionally traumatized or impacted by the explosion.
Therefore, follow-up studies use more emotionally impactful events like 9/11, Oklahoma city bombing, U.S. bombing of Iraq, Shooting at Columbine High School. Still–it was found that memories are not like a snapshot
Flashbulb memory is a misnomer.
Emotion creates strong BELEIFS about memories but not especially well-preserved memories. We don’t just fail to recollect things; our memories can actually change and become distorted.
What are the sources of these distortions?
Contributing factors:
Factor 1: Activation of Stored Information. Roedigar and McDermott (1995). Presented with lists of highly related words that relate to one idea or word or whatever. Later on they got a recognition test of Yes or NO as to which a presented word appeared earlier. 81% of the time they said a word on the recognition test that related to the words on the list but WAS NOT on the list, was on the list. Why? Maybe the first three words on the list were Bed ,Rest, and Awake. These words PRIME the word sleep so that we think it was on the list.
Factor 1: Holst and Pezdek (1992). People listened to a trial proceeding for an armed robbery. Mos tof us psess a SCHEMA about robberies, a knowledge-structure about whats tends to be involved. The audio left out some schema-consistent elements (ski mask, hodie, ect.). A week later they were asked to recall the details on the trial. In the recall, people recalled schema-consistent elements that were never stated. Schema gets activated while listening to the audio recording, then confuse that activated information with what they heard. In the same way words are primed.
Factor 2: Exposure to Post-Event Information. Loftus et al. (1978). She had people view a set of slides, after viewing some of the viewers were given a question with correct info and other were given a question with incorrect info. Then they had a recognition test they were asked to pick the correct slides that they were originally given, people given correct info question picked the right slides, but the ones who got misinformed question picked the wrong slides most of the time. Misinformation effect. These finding show the distorting effects of post-event information. Other ways memory can be altered by: information in subsequent questions (Loftus), information from subsequent conversation, information from subsequent media reports.
Factor 3: Thoughts and imaginations. Loftus (1993). Interviewed parents of college students and in the interview she got information about a real childhood event that happened to their kid and then a second. She also used these interviews to make sure that none of these kids ever got lost from their mom in a mall. The students themselves are given 3 events their parents “said they happened to you” when only two were correct. College students said with the event that did not happen “oh I don’t remember that happening”. All good, right? They were asked to come back a week later after being told to try to remember details of all three events, now the students gave details for all 3 events (the third one being that lost in the mall situation) when it didn’t happen. When we concoct events in our head, we can come to believe those things happened! This applies to: trying to eice together past events, imagining events, dreaming of events, and creating fictional stories (and remember and believe their bullshit is true!).
What does this tell us about how memory works?
We used to believe memory was like a filing cabinet, we store away memories in our memory banks and it is static and unchanging and when we retrieve it we retrieve the whole “file” the whole memory. This would suggest memory is reproductive: when retrieve events from memory, we reproduce them in much the same form as when they were first put into memory.
However, we believe now that memory is dynamic (constantly changing), integrative (mixing together process), recontructove (peicing together process). We often retrieve bits and pieces of past events, with gaps in our memory and we have a tendency to fill on these gaps with elements from other sources.
Memory is subjective, our mind is like a prism that bends and distorts incoming information from our environment.
10/9
Students usually use repetition to study.
When you want to figure out what is good study methods you cannot reply on beliefs or intuition you cannot rely on perception an you cannot rely on anecdotes (hey this is what I did and I got an A)...you have to turn to science.
The big 3:
Learning and memory through elaboration: maintenance vs. elaborative rehearsal: Craik and Watkins (1973). Maintenance rehearsal is the simple, rote repetition of information, not effective. Elaborate rehearsal is processing meaning, seeking a conceptual understanding and forming meaningful links and connections, effective. Elaboration with examples: Balch (2005). Conducted an experiment where the people learned 16 psychology terms, these were not psych students, there were two conditions. In one all 16 terms were studied twice, and the other conditions subjects studied the definition only once but were also given a concrete example of the concept. They then got a multiple choice test with definition questions and new example questions. The people who gto the definition and example did better on both types of questions overall. There is also elaboration by connecting to oneself: Rogers et al. (1977). The subjects were given different orienting questions were given along with words. Sometimes they were case judgements (capital letters), or rhyme judgements, or meaning judgements, OR self judgements (does the word describe you?). During the free recall test the self judgememnts recalled the words better than all others. This is called the self-reference effect, what it tells us is that linking information to things in our personal life makes that information more memorable. Another form is elaboration by connecting to other knowledge: an example would be the concept of elaboration, ive been learning about other things related to that concept, as I learn this new information related to elaboration and make connections it will help me remember all of iti because of those connections. Implications for study habits is that it helps to seek a conceptual understanding. Forming connections and associations: connect to concrete examples, connect to yourself and personal experiences, connect to other information being learned and existing knowledge, also connect to images, figures and illustrations. Why is it so beneficial? Lets say im learning a concept and I use these tools to study, it provides me with so many more retrieval routes and cues.
Learning an dmemory through testing: when you think of quizzes and tests we think of them primarily as an assessment tool of how much you’ve learned. Similarly, they are usually thought of as a form of evaluation that teachers use to assign grades. Roediger and Karpicke (2006) they had their learners read passages on scientific topics, there were three different conditions. Some studied the passages in four consecutive sessions, some did three consecutive study sessions and then a test, another group did one study session and three tests. A recall test showed three practice tests was the best. The results were also plotted by how much the people forgot information when they are finished with the experiment, a week later. Again, the three tests people forgot significantly less. Rowland (2014) examined 159 comparisons of tested information vs restudied information. On average subjects were 2.5 times more likely to remember tested info than restudied info. This is now called the Testing Effect. Tests are not only a tool to se ehow much someone has learned but it’s also a studying/learning tool. McCabe (2011) described a learning scenario and described options of restudying vs. practice testing, 70% favored restudying over practice testing. Karpicke et al. (2009) asked students to list the study methods they use over half listed simply re-reading and repetition of information as their #1 strategy, practice test listed by only 11%. Testing is substantial. Reliable, generalizes and extends to all different types of material. Things college students can do to take advantage of testing affect: take instructor-provided practice quizzes and tests, go over chapter questions if provided by your test, engage in self-testing, using things like lists of terms, bolded terms, and/or your highlights as cues, use flashcards/quizzing apps, get together and test one another.
Learning and memory through spacing: massed vs. spaced study refers to the distribution of study, with the amount of study held contant. Massed study (study occurs back-to-back) or spaced study (study is spread out). In the research the amount studied is always kept the same but one is spread out and one isn’t. McCabe (2011) described learning scenario and described options of massing vs. spacing. 93% favored massing over spacing. Kornell and Bjork (2008), goal: learned the style of different artists, viewed six paintings by each artist, six paintings from the artist were massed or spaced. Spaced has 62% success rate, even though the people said massed would do better. Substantial, reliable, generalizes and extends. Best practices: don’t cram, even if you have limited time, it is best to use the remaining time you have in a spaced manner. Spacing throughout the day is better than nothing.
10/11
Problem solving:
What is the role of knowledge and experience in problem solving?
What factors contribute to success in problem soling, what factors ocrease efficiency?
The main contributing factor is practice and experiments. The knowledge and skills aquired through practice and experience.
Expertise in problem solving: Ericsson and CHarness (1994) what is the baseline to becoming an expert in an area? They did an extensive literature review and determines that expert performance is predominantly a function of (years of) extended practice. They reported that elite performers have typically completed 10+ years of sustained practice. This holds across many disciplines: arts, academics, sports, ect.
Gladwells 10,000 hour rule. Gladwell was spinning off of Ericssons work. This is an oversimplififcation.
Research literature of modern times would say the key factor of expertise is extensive deliberate, goal-driven practice and experience (mindful practice). Through this extensive practice one acquires the knowledge and skills that enables them to tackle future problems and challenges.
Creativity in problem solving: Weisberg (1986). Book: creativity: genius and other myths. It is extremely rare to find a creative individual who can be considered a genius. Common myths: creativity is based on genius or special talent/ability, creativity comes about as a flash of brilliance. Concluded that the moat important factor in creative problem solving is actually the acquisition of knowledge. Creative solutions usually arise from ordinary thinking processes (not about special talent or ability). BUT those ordinary thinking processes are working with or acting one extraordinary knowledge (these creative people have more knowledge to work with).
How does knowledge/experience help expertise? Allows for a deep understanding of the problem, and allows us to draw on relevant concept/principles, this allows us to draw on comparable problems we’ve encountered in the past. Taking what we know and using it on a new problem is Solving By Analogy.
Problems with rigid thinking when solving problems: Luchins (1942) developed the water jug problems. Containers of 3 different sizes and what the problem solver has to do is taking those containers they have to come up with a given goal amount but you have to have exactly that quality. People were given multiple problems to work through, but Luchins intentionally set up the problems where the first four problems required the same solution. After solving the first four where the same solution was involved, the people got a new problem that could be solved in the way problem 1-4 was but there is a simpler way to do it but by this point peoples minds were so closed because of 1-4 solution they couldnt see the simpler option and 80% stuck with the longer solution. They were then given another solution where the equation from 1-4 no longer works AT ALL so it inst even a cop out option, there is a simple solution but they, again, did not see it. The term for this thinking is Mental Set.
Functional Fixedness: a form of Mental Set, this is however a tendency to use an object in only its customary or usual way. An example is two-string problem Maier (1931) people are brought into a room, there are two strings hanging from the ceiling. Theres a table, chair and variety of tools in the room. The problem people are asked to solve is to tie the two strings together. However, the strings are placed too far apart to just grab them and tie. Most people tried to move the string and nail it closer to the other one with the tools. The solution the researchers wanted was you could use the hammer as a weight, tie to the end of one of the strings and it would swing and you could grab one string and wait until the other one swings to you and you could grab it and tie them.
How do we get stuck in a mental set? Preconceived notions, pre-exsisting biases and beliefs, adherence to past experiences.
10/14- MISSED CLASS
10/16
Are we rational decision makers?
Economists were the first to study this: they suggested we are rational decision makers and we make optimal choices that maximize value in the long run.
Edwards (1954): an economist, said people act as “intuitive statisticians”, we make decisions consistent with statistical rules and we do it intuitively.
Once psychologist got into this topic they started to evaluate these ideas:
The approach mos psychologist took was to address this questions: Are we logically consistent? Lichtenstein and Slovic (1973), people were given two different bet options. One was: 99% chance of winning $4, 1% of losing $1. The other option was: 33% chance of winning $16 and 67% chance of losing $2. Majority chose A BUT majority said B is worth more (i.e. has more value). Then why didn’t they pick that one? What people say is more attractive is different from what they pick. Preference Reversal is what its called. Its when different measures of preference produce differentchoices.
Tversky and Kahneman (1981). They told people this: Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for an outbreak of an unusual disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimate of the consequences of the programs are as follows: There was an A and B program option and a C and D, this is C and D example (the numbers in each are exactly the same just framed differently): If program C is adopted, 400 people will die. If program D is adopted, there is a ⅓ probability that nobody will die and a probability that 600 people will die. Which program do you favor? Choices were A>B, but D>C. This is called the Framing Effect: gains avoid risk but losses are riskier.
Assume you go to see a boring movie, would you walk out if it was free? Would you walk out if you paid $50? Sunk Costs. What you should do is say “what is best for from this point forward?” most people stay if they paid but you should leave.
So how do we commonly make choices?
Heuristic decision making vs. algorithmic decision making.
Algorithmic: use systematic, step-by-step reasoning to make choices.
Heuristic: use heuristics, i.e., mental shortcuts or “rules of thumb”; simple and efficient but not foolproof. We do this one more. Often used to determine likelihoods like buying a car or even deciding whether or not to enter your apartment.
Availability heuristic: when you judge the likelihood of an event according to the ease with which examples come to mind, things that come to mind more readily (i.e., things for which more examples comes to mind, things are more memorable) are judged as more likely. Like if you hesitate to enter your apartment door because it is open and then ultimately decide to go in because you know you often leave the door open when leaving or your landlord told you he was stopping by.
A study was done where it was asked which are more common, words that begin with the letter “r” or words that have “r” in the third position? What is the thinking process? They will start generating examples and of course they can come up with alot, its harder to come up with words with “r” in the third position. So they say words starting with the letter “r” are more common, when the reality is that there are more words with the letter “r” int he third position.
Another study was done where pairs were given of types of death and they were asked to choose the one that they think is the cause of more deaths. For example: Homicide or Appendicitis. The choices they made was the more popular option that is mentioned in media more often, homicide and cancers and accidents rather than stroke or diabetes.
Conclusions: things that come to mind more readily are not necessarily more common or likely,, exposure in the media can skew things, in addition, memory factors can cause some examples to come to mind more readily even though they’re not more common.
PROFESSOR SWITCH
10/23
Sensation and perception:
Sensory systems:
Sensation is like the process of perceiving something, perception is becoming aware of what that incoming information means (i.e., interpreting sensory info into something meaningful). They will not always be the same.
Each sensory system has specialized receptors (i.e., the brain wiring is different) that respond to a physical signal from the environment. Receptors conert physical signals into neural responses, i.e., into electrical signals; we call this conversion transduction.
The neural impulses created by transduction are so often sent to a sense’s primary receiving area in the cortex.
The sensory information is then interpreted, and the subjective sensation/ perception is introduced.
Somatosensory system:
Processing of touch, vibration, temperature, and position.
Sensation from different parts of body processed in different areas of somatosensory strip.
Body parts hae differing levels of sensitivity to touch, and subsequently different allocation od processing in this area.
Perception v. physical reality:
Perception does not necessarily equal the reality, perception is your interpretation of sensory information.
Think Muller-Lyer illusion:
Different wavelengths of light are perceived as having different colors.
A wavelength is the distance over which an electromagnetic wave repeats.
Wavelengths of any type possess no color themselves, color is constructed by the mind!
Expectations and experience:
Perceptions reflect the incoming data from the environment, plus other factors.
Perceptions are heavily influenced by expectations, which arise from prior experiences and stored knowledge.
Studying sensory and perception:
How do you determine capabilities in how we detect things in the environment? What may be the stimulus intensity that our sensor systems are capable of detecting? This is the kind of question that Gustav Fechner was interested in…
Fechner and psychophysics:
Many consider Gustav Fechner to be the true founder od experimental psychology; did his work in the mid 1800s.
Proposed that the mind could be studied by examining the relationship between physical stimulation and a persons experience.
Psychophysics is the study of the quantitative relationship between physical stimuli andn the sensations they produce.
Early contributions:
Fechner’s law: a mathematical formula describing the relationship between stimulus, intensity, and perceptual intensity.
As stimulus intensity increases, larger changes are required for the changes to be perceived.
E.g., can easily detect a 3lb change in weight from 10 to 13 lbs; can’t detect a 3lb change inweight from 200 to 203 lbs!
Proposed several methods to measure absolute threshold (the smallest stimulus intensity that can be detected).
Fechner’s method of limits:
Measuring the threshold of a tone:
Present tones in descending order of intensity, respond “yes”