Cognition

Question 1

What is memory?

Answer 1

Memory is any learning that has occurred in the past that persists over time, whether it is for seconds or years.

Question 2

What are the three components of the information-processing model of memory?

Answer 2

Also called the three-box model, the information-processing model includes:

1. sensory memory (or sensory register)
2. short-term memory (or working memory)
3. long-term memory

Question 3

What is the function of sensory memory?

Answer 3

Sensory memory is a buffer between what is in the world and what we actually take into our minds. This information is held for less than a second before it is lost or transferred to short-term memory.

Question 4

What did Sperling’s letter recall study find?

Answer 4

It found that we possess iconic memory, which holds an exact picture of a stimulus in our sensory memory for a split second.

Question 5

What is echoic memory?

Answer 5

Like iconic memory, echoic memory holds an exact copy of a sound in our sensory memory for a few seconds.

Question 6

If you are playing a video game and your mother asks you to take out the trash, which are you more likely to pay attention to/remember and why?

Answer 6

The video game will likely be remembered due to selective attention. Selective attention allows us to encode into short- or long-term memory the things that are important to us at the time they enter our sensory memory.

Question 7

What kind of memory is used when you say a number over and over (rehearsal) before you dial it into your phone?

Answer 7

Short-term memory is used, and lasts in your brain for roughly 10-30 seconds. Information in short-term memory is lost due to interference.

Question 8

What does George Miller’s phrase, “the magical number seven, plus or minus two” refer to?

Answer 8

This phrase refers to the idea of chunking, which states that we can recall roughly seven chunks of information from our short-term memory, plus or minus two chunks.

Question 9

If we can only hold seven chunks of information in our short-term memory, does that mean we can’t remember a list of more than seven words?

Answer 9

No. Bits of information, like words or letters, can be chunked together. This is why we can remember words with more than seven or so letters: the letters are combined into one chunk (the full word).

If we want to remember a list of more than seven words, we can arrange them into fewer than seven categories or chunks.

Question 10

What kind of memory is used when remembering your own phone number?

Answer 10

Long-term memory, which can last for days, weeks, years, or life. Very little gets transferred from your short-term to your long-term memory.

Question 11

What are the three types of long-term memory?

Answer 11

1. episodic memory
2. semantic memory
3. procedural memory

Question 12

What makes episodic memory different from semantic memory?

Answer 12

Episodic memory involves the self, like remembering your first kiss or other episodes from your life.

Semantic memory does not involve the self, but rather facts, like directions from your home to school.

Question 13

What kind of memory is used when riding a bike?

Answer 13

Procedural memory is the part of long-term memory that remembers how to perform an action.

Question 14

What kind of memory accounts for the fact that you know how to tie your shoes, even though you can’t remember when you learned it?

Answer 14

Implicit memories are unconscious, and sometimes you don’t even know you have those memories.

Question 15

While some amnesics can learn new things, they will not remember how or when they learned these facts. This means they cannot form new __________ memories.

Answer 15

explicit

Question 16

What is another term for photographic memory?

Answer 16

eidetic memory

Question 17

According to the levels of processing model of memory, why do we remember the plot to a movie we saw a long time ago?

Answer 17

We would remember the movie because we were cognitively invested in it, so it was deeply (or elaboratively) processed.

Question 18

What is retrieval, and what are the two types of it?

Answer 18

Retrieval is the act of pulling up stored memories for use.

The two types of retrieval are recognition and recall.

Question 19

What is the difference between recognition and recall?

Answer 19

They are both just as they sound. For example, in an experiment to remember a list of words, recognition is just remembering if you saw a word. Recall is remembering what word you saw. Recognition is much easier than recall.

Question 20

If you are given a long list of words, you will likely remember the first few and the last few, and forget the ones in the middle. Why?

Answer 20

You remember the first words because nothing else was inhibiting your memory when you learned them (primacy effect).

You remember the last words because they were the ones you learned most recently (recency effect).

Together, this is known as the serial position curve, or serial position effect.

Question 21

Who first established primacy, recency, and the serial position curve?

Answer 21

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)

Question 22

“Oh, what’s that actress’ name? The blonde one, she’s in all those romantic comedies, she was married to that other actor, and she was on a soap opera as a kid. Why can’t I remember her name?”

What is happening in this sentence?

Answer 22

The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon is preventing us from recalling information we already know.

The semantic network theory believes we are trying to connect cues we hold about the identity of the actress until we can link the cues to her name, even though we are unable to recall the name immediately.

Question 23

What is a flashbulb memory?

Answer 23

A flashbulb memory is like your brain taking a picture of an event and storing it in your memory. It can help explain why people can recall where they were during an important event in a culture, like September 11, 2001, or when President Kennedy was killed.

Question 24

When you are sad, why could your memory make you even sadder?

Answer 24

Mood-congruent memory is the process of recalling memories that match our moods. So if you are sad, you will remember other sad memories, but if you are happy, you will recall other happy memories.

Question 25

What phenomenon says you should sit in the same seat on a test day that you sat in when you learned the material that will be on the test?

Answer 25

State-dependent learning research shows that we recall memories better when we simulate the environment in which we made them.

Question 26

Why might someone’s previously repressed memory of child abuse be unreliable in court?

Answer 26

Research has shown that memories that have been recovered may actually be constructed (or reconstructed) memories.

Constructed memories can be inaccurate or made up, or they could even have been implanted by a therapist, family member, or from something like a television show, even though the person recalling it believes the memory is accurate.

Question 27

What is the relearning effect?

Answer 27

When you have learned something before but have forgotten it, it will take less time for you to relearn it than it did for you to learn it the first time.

Question 28

If you learn two pieces of information and forget the first one, what caused this forgetting?

Answer 28

Retroactive interference caused this. When you learned the second piece of information, it interfered with your ability to recall the first piece of information.

Question 29

If you learn two pieces of information and forget the second one, what caused this forgetting?

Answer 29

Proactive interference likely caused this. If you learn a song one way and then are asked to sing it a different way, it may be difficult for you to do because your memory of how the song was learned interferes with the new information.

Question 30

If an amnesic can remember events before he got amnesia (but not after), what kind of amnesia does he have?

Answer 30

Anterograde amnesia prevents patients from making new autobiographical memories, but allows them to recall memories from before the onset of amnesia.

Question 31

If an amnesic can form new memories but is unable to recall any memories from before the onset of amnesia, what kind of amnesia does he have?

Answer 31

Retrograde amnesia prevents recall of memories before onset of amnesia.

Question 32

What does long-term potentiation mean?

Answer 32

It means that the parts of the brain that fire together wire together. When two areas of the brain fire from the same stimuli, they grow stronger neuronal connections.

Question 33

What is the difference between a phoneme and a morpheme?

Answer 33

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a given language.

A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaningful sound in a given language.

Phonemes combine to make morphemes, and morphemes combine to make words. Words are put into order to convey meaning, which is called syntax.

Question 34

What are the stages babies go through when learning language?

Answer 34

Babies start by babbling, then progress to the holophrastic (one-word) stage, followed by the two-word phase (telegraphic speech). After that, vocabulary grows and grammar rules are learned and applied.

Question 35

When young children say things like, “I gived mommy a hug,” what are they doing grammatically?

Answer 35

They are overgeneralizing. As children learn the rules of grammar, they frequently apply these common rules incorrectly until they learn the nuance of their primary language(s).

Question 36

How did Noam Chomsky believe we learn language?

Answer 36

While he believed there was a critical period of time where we are more susceptible to language acquisition, Chomsky believed we are born with an innate ability to learn language, or a language acquisition device.

Question 37

What is Benjamin Whorf’s linguistic relativity hypothesis?

Answer 37

It is understood that language is highly involved in thought, so Whorf hypothesized that our thinking may actually be limited by the language we use.

Question 38

What are cognitive prototypes and what is the benefit of using them?

Answer 38

Prototypes are the most basic examples of concepts. They help lessen our cognitive load by allowing us to put concepts into different categories.

Question 39

Why are cognitive images poorly named?

Answer 39

They don’t have to be related to vision, but can be attached to any sense. They are imprints on our senses to help us conceptualize the outside world.

Question 40

Why would psychologists be interested in algorithms?

Answer 40

Algorithms are one way of solving problems, which is a way to study how the brain works.

Algorithms are an exhaustive problem solving search that go through every possible answer in order to find the correct one. The harder the problem, the more impractical it is for our brains to use algorithms.

Question 41

What is a heuristic? What are its benefits and drawbacks?

Answer 41

A heuristic is a way of solving a problem that uses common sense, rules of thumb, or educated guesses. It is not always accurate, but it is faster than an algorithm.

Question 42

What is an availability heuristic?

Answer 42

When you use an availability heuristic, you judge the first things that come to mind as the most important because they are more salient.

For example, people may think air travel is more dangerous than car travel because they see more news stories about plane crashes than car accidents, so plane crashes come to mind first.

Question 43

How can a representativeness heuristic lead to stereotyping?

Answer 43

Representativeness heuristics take information we have already conceptualized with prototypes and applying them to all situations to make a judgment.

If your prototype of a specific group is negative because of one person in that group, it could lead to incorrectly stereotyping the whole group.

Question 44

What two concepts are used to maintain confidence in a judgment even when shown evidence to the contrary?

Answer 44

Belief bias uses illogical information we get to confirm our existing belief.

Belief perseverance speaks to our unwillingness to change our beliefs even when the evidence disproves those beliefs.

Question 45

How might the idea of functional fixedness hinder innovation?

Answer 45

Functional fixedness is our tendency to see objects or concepts as they were learned. This cements them in place in our minds so we may be unable to find alternative, innovative uses for these objects or concepts.

Question 46

If your mother accuses you of something and then uses every aspect of your arguments and body language to prove that you did it, what is she using?

Answer 46

She is employing confirmation bias, which looks for any piece of evidence (even if it’s wrong) to confirm a belief or solution to a problem.

Question 47

Playing a piece of music exactly as it’s written could be an example of __________ thinking, while playing free-form jazz may be considered __________ thinking.

Answer 47

convergent; divergent

Convergent thinking is thinking that results in only one solution, while divergent thinking believes that there may be many answers to a problem.