Cognition

Question 1

What is memory?

Answer 1

The mental processes of aquiring and retaining information for later retrieval and the mental storage system that enables these processes.

Question 2

What is cognition?

Answer 2

The collection of mental processes and activities used in perceiving, remembering, thinking, and understanding as well as the act of using those processes.

Question 3

What are the major characteristics of cognitive psychology?

Answer 3

There are 3 big assumptions in cognitive psychology (we consider them to be true, they are a framework/metatheory).

1. Mental processes exist
2. Mental processes can be studied scientifically
3. Human beings are active information processors

Question 4

What kinds of processes are there in the information processing approach of cognitive psychology?

Answer 4

The processes in the informaton processing approach are independent stages - sensory, short-term and long-term memory stages

Question 5

What is serial processing?

Answer 5

There are different stages of processing when it comes to mental processes. These stages of processing take place one after another. Only when the first stage is completely finished can the next process continue.

Question 6

What is parallel processing?

Answer 6

The thought in parallel processing is that many stages of processing can occur simultaneously; multiple mental processes can operate simultaneously, in parallel.

Question 7

What does dissociation mean in cognitive neuropsychology?

Answer 7

Tulving (1989) described a patient - called K.C. This K.C. got a brain damage in a motorcycle accident. Some nine years after the accident he still showed pervasive disruption of his long-term memory.
The memory impairment was selective. His intelligence was normal, his ability to use language was normal and he could talk about various topics. But he did not remember any events from his own past. He knows how to play chess but can not remember that he has done it in the past. He knows that his family has a house by a lake, but can not remember that he has ever been there.
The brain damage has destroyed his ability to access his episodic memory (his autobiographical knowledge) but his semantic memory (a system for general knowledge) was left intact. This is called dissociation – dissociation is a disruption in one component of mental functioning but no impairment in another.

Both episodic and semantic memory are long term memory but since one was impaired and the other not in the accident we can probably make the conclusion that they are not be the same (since one was left intact and the other got impaired).

Dissociation (s. 5): Pattern of abilities and performance, especially among brain-damaged patients, revealing that one cognitive process can be disrupted while another remains intact.
In double dissociation, two patients show opposite patterns of disruption and preserved function which is further evidence that the cognitive processes are functionally and anatomically separate.

Question 8

What does association mean in cognitive neuropsychology?

Answer 8

Association is the opposite to dissociation. In a full or complete association (lack of dissociation) disruption of one of the processes always leads to disruption in the other process. This implies (antyder) that process A and B rely on the same region or brain mechanism, such as recognizing objects and recognizing pictures of those objects.

Question 9

What principles of functioning are there in the brain in relation to cognitive processing?

Answer 9

Contralaterality and hemispheric specialization.

Question 10

What is contralaterality?

Answer 10

If we view the neocortex from the top, the neocortex is divided into two mirror image halves – the left and right cerebral hemispheres.
Contra means against or opposite. Contralaterality means that the right hemisphere of the brain receives its input from the left side of the body and also controls the left side. Likewise the left hemisphere receives input from and controls output to the right side of the body.
Example: A person who has a stroke in the left hemisphere will often have some paralysis in the right half of the body.

Question 11

What is hemispheric specialization?

Answer 11

The two cerebral hemispheres do not mirror each others abilites. Each hemisphere tends to specialize in different abilities and tends to process different kinds of information.
This is the full principle of cerebral lateralization and specialization: different functions or actions within the brain tend to rely more heavily on one hemisphere or the other or tend to be performed differently in the two hemishperes. This does not mean that a process or function can happen only in one particular hemispere - it means that there is often a tendency for one of the hemispheres to be especially dominant in different processes or functions. One example of lateralization in humans is the overwhelming incidence of right-handedness across all cultures.

Question 12

What types of measures are used in cognitive science to study mental processes?

Answer 12

There are four important measures (mätredskap) used in cognitive science in order to study mental processes: reaction time, accuracy, verbal reports, and a variety of measures from neuroscience.

Question 13

What is reaction time?

Answer 13

Usually measured in milliseconds since mental processes occur so quickly. Differences in RT can yield interpretations about the speed or difficulty of mental processes – which leads to inferences about cognitive processes and events.

Question 14

What is accuracy?

Answer 14

Accuracy of performance, whether it measures correct recall of a list or accurate paraphrasing of text, also offers evidence about underlying mental processes. When measuring accuracy what is often measured are correctly recalled words (hit), omitted words (miss), errors (false alarms). Usually, accuracy is measured in percentages.

Question 15

What are a variety of measures from neuroscience used in cognitive science to study mental processes?

Answer 15

Studying the behavioral effects of brain lesions
Studying direct stimulance of the brain during brain surgery
Modern imaging teqniques: CT, PET and MRI scans. ERP technology. (can be used on normal intact people). fMRI (functional MRI, called functional since it shows the brain as it is functioning =when it performs some mental task)

Question 16

What are the definitions for agnosia and prosopagnosia?

Answer 16

Agnosia is defined as ”a failure or deficit in recognizing objects”.

Prosopagnosia is a disruption of face recognition.

Question 17

What different types of agnosia are there?

Answer 17

There are many types of agnosia. Every subtype has different kinds of deficits depending on which area of the brain is damaged.
Agnosia isn’t limited to vision. There exists auditory agnosia as well. Two examples of different types of agnosia: aperceptive and associative agnosia

Question 18

What is aperceptive agnosia?

Answer 18

These patients are sometimes unable to detect even elementary features from stimuli and therefore have difficulty in perceiving a whole pattern or Gestalt. Damage has been done to the parietal lobe in this case.

Question 19

What is associative agnosia?

Answer 19

The person can not associate the pattern with meaning. Those with assosiative agnosia can perceive the whole but still cannot associate the pattern with stored knowledge to identify the object. Damage has been done to the temporal lobe in this case.

Question 20

What are the two general definitions of attention?

Answer 20

ATTENTION AS A MENTAL PROCESS
Attention can be thought of as the mental process of concentrating effort on a stimulus or a mental event. (= Attention is a process that occurs within cognition).

ATTENTION AS A LIMITED MENTAL RESOURCE
Attention can be seen as the limited mental energy that powers cognition.There is a limit to how many things we can attend to and do all at once.

Question 21

What is the main argument between the two models of selective attention (Broadbent theory and Treisman theory)?

Answer 21

Broadbent theory (Early selection theory) (1958):
Broadbent proposed an early filter theory of attention. He based his theory on the evidence found that people can select a message based on sensory information: such as loudness, location of the sound source, pitch and so on.
Broadbent meant that attention works like a selective filter. No matter how many messages that fight for our attention, only one message can come through the filter and arrive to the Limited capacity decision channel (short term memory). And only this message affects the person's performance, since it was the only message that broke through the filtering mechanism.
In other words: the attended input is identified and favored already from the beginning and the unattended imput gets very little analysis (attention) and is never percieved by our consciousness.

Treisman (late selection theory):
Treisman (used the standard shadowing task) rejected the ”early selection theory”. She instead meant that all incoming messages receive some amount of low level analysis, including an analysis of the physical characteristics. When the unattended messages yield no useful important information , they are attenuated.
Treisman (1965) felt that it was during this process of semantic analysis that we make our selection among messages , selection at a ”late” stage. Attention is affected by the semantic aspects of the message (which is a top-down effect) according to Treisman.
According to this theory all input gets a relatively complete analysis, but it is only the attended input that actually reaches our consciousness (or gets rememered).
Treisman means that we choose which message that is important depending on its meaning (semantic analysis) rather than early because of pitch, voice, different features in the message (like in Broadbents early selection theory)

Question 22

What is the main argument between the two models of selective attention (Broadbent theory and Treisman theory)?

Answer 22

Broadbent theory (Early selection theory) (1958):
Broadbent proposed an early filter theory of attention. He based his theory on the evidence found that people can select a message based on sensory information: such as loudness, location of the sound source, pitch and so on.
Broadbent meant that attention works like a selective filter. No matter how many messages that fight for our attention, only one message can come through the filter and arrive to the Limited capacity decision channel (short term memory). And only this message affects the person's performance, since it was the only message that broke through the filtering mechanism.
In other words: the attended input is identified and favored already from the beginning and the unattended imput gets very little analysis (attention) and is never percieved by our consciousness.

Treisman (late selection theory):
Treisman (used the standard shadowing task) rejected the ”early selection theory”. She instead meant that all incoming messages receive some amount of low level analysis, including an analysis of the physical characteristics. When the unattended messages yield no useful important information , they are attenuated.
Treisman (1965) felt that it was during this process of semantic analysis that we make our selection among messages , selection at a ”late” stage. Attention is affected by the semantic aspects of the message (which is a top-down effect) according to Treisman.
According to this theory all input gets a relatively complete analysis, but it is only the attended input that actually reaches our consciousness (or gets rememered).
Treisman means that we choose which message that is important depending on its meaning (semantic analysis) rather than early because of pitch, voice, different features in the message (like in Broadbents early selection theory)

Broadbent’s and Treisman’s models of Attention are both bottleneck models because they predict we cannot consciously attend to all of our sensory input at the same time. This limited capacity for paying attention is therefore a bottleneck and the models each try to explain how the material that passes through the bottleneck is selected.

According to Broadbent the meaning of any of the messages is not taken into account at all by the filter. All SEMANTIC PROCESSING (processing the information to decode the meaning, in other words to understand what is said) is carried out after the filter has selected the channel to pay attention to.

Treisman agreed with Broadbent that there was a bottleneck, but disagreed with the location.

Treisman’s ATTENUATION THEORY, in which the unattended message is processed less thoroughly than the attended one, suggests processing of the unattended message is attenuated or reduced to a greater or lesser extent depending on the demands on the limited capacity processing system.

Question 23

What is the Stroop effect?

Answer 23

The stroop effect är en demonstration av störningar i RT gällande en task.
I den klassiska demonstrationen av stroop effekten:
Testdeltagarna får se en rad med ord. Orden är färger så som: röd, grön, gul, blå osv. Orden är skrivna i en annan färg. Exempelvis kan röd vara skrivet i grönt bläck. Testdeltagarna skall säga färgen på bläcket som ordet är skrivet i, inte läsa själva ordet. Detta är svårt för testdeltagaren som gärna läser ordet istället för nämner färgen på bläcket. Misstag begås lätt.

Att namnge färgen på ordets bläck tar längre tid när ordet och färgen på bläcket inte matchar. Och det blir fler fel. Detta är stroop effekten.

En automatic task, är något som övats in och det är nu lätt för personen och den här ”uppgiften” kan med lätthet kombineras med andra ”tasks”. Det finns fördelar med att en task har blivit automatiserad men det finns också nackdelar. Automatic tasks are not controlled och kan därför act as mental reflexes vilket kan vara en nackdel – och detta visar stroop effekten. Där är läsning automatiserad och ställer till det när man inte skall läsa ordet utan nämna färgen på själva ordet.

En person som inte kan läsa (det är inte automatiserat) skulle inte visa någon stroop efect.

Question 24

What is reflexive attention?

Answer 24

The redirection of attention toward an unexpected stimulus.

Question 25

What is spotlight attention?

Answer 25

Är en ”input attention”. Det är en sorts visual attention. There is no necessary movement of the head or eyes. Instead there is a mental shift of attentional focus, som om en spotlight beam fokuserades på en region av visual space – vilket möjliggör att du kan plocka upp information från det området mycket lättare!

Internal mental process that prepare us to a stimulus.

Question 26

What is the main difference between reflexive and spotlight attention?

Answer 26

The main difference is that spotlight attention is voluntary.

Question 27

What is the main argument between two models of short-term memory (Brown-Peterson theory and Waugh-Norman theory?)

Answer 27

Dessa två teorier har lite olika syn på vad som orsakar att memory traces försvinner ur STM.

Brown-Peterson task: Brown-Peterson task vill ta reda på hur länge non-rehearsed information stannar i STM. De kom fram till att information försvinner om vi inte använder den inom en viss tid – och detta kallas decay theory. Decay theory betyder att ”memory trace” försvinner på grund av att tiden passerar/går. TIDEN är orsaken.

Waugh-Norman theory/interference theory
Interference theory menar istället att man förlorar ”memory trace” på grund av ”competition from other events”. Enligt PP spelar interference stor roll, till och med större roll än tiden, gällande ”forgetting” i STM.

Question 28

What are the main ideas and findings of Sternberg’s task in short-term memory?
(Komplett svar finns i min skrivbok + Lindas kognitionstenta)

Answer 28

Sternberg’s (1966) STM scanning task. Han ville ta reda på hur vi får tillgång till informationen som lagras i Short-term memory. Han var intresserad av ”the search process”, the scan through the contents of short-term memory.

Hans huvudresultat är att han övervägde tre olika sorters möjligheter. Och slutligen, efter att ha tittat på sin data i sitt experiment valde han Serial exhaustive search.

Question 29

How can we overcome our limitations for short span in STM?

Answer 29

STM har en begränsad kapacitet. Man brukar tala om att STM rymmer +- 7 items. Vilket betyder att STM’s kapacitet ligger på åtminstonne 5 items och förmodligen inte mer än 9 items.

Item= Ord, siffra, bokstav

Chunking: är att man exempelvis kan sätta ihop flera bokstäver till en chunk/ord och därmed kan man komma ihåg fler än endast högst 9 items i och med att man fortfarande kan komma ihåg +-7 chunks.
På så vis kan man träna upp sin chunking-teknik och få in fler items i sitt STM men man kan inte ändra storleken eller kapaciteten i STM, bara träna upp sin teknik.

Question 30

According to Baddeley, why there is a need for working memory in addition to STM?

Answer 30

I mitten av 1970-talet talade man endast om short-term memory.
Men Baddeley och Hitch (1974) menade dock att short-term memory måste vara en komponent i ett större mer komplicerat system – också kallat working memory.
Så hur kom de fram till den slutsatsen?
De hittade ett case study. Det fanns en patient som hade väldigt dåligt/bristfälligt short-term memory performance men samtidigt inte hade några minnesbrister i andra uppgifter som också de har med short-term memory att göra. Rimligtvis borde inte detta vara möjligt om patientens STM var skadat och alla funktioner var beroende av att STM var intakt. Därmed är det en rimlig slutsats att Det finns ett STM och ett WM

Question 31

What is the recency effect? How can the interval between study list and test influence this effect?

Answer 31

Den här frågan handlar om retrieval av information (återkallning) från short-term memory.

Det finns två tasks som används för att testa folk. Free recall och serial recall. I free recall får försökspersonerna komma ihåg och säga the list items i vilken ordning de vill och i serial recall måste de säga the list items i den ordningen de presenterades. (Serial recall är svårare med andra ord).

Recency effect har att göra med nivån av korrekt återkallning gällande de sista ”items” på den ursprungligen presenterade listan med items. High recency= high accuracy
Low recency = low accuracy.

Försökspersonen kommer gärna ihåg de sista orden på listan. Det finns en ide om att detta beror på att dessa ord lagrats i working memory och därför lätt och snabbt går att återkalla.

Om man lägger till tidsintervall mellan att försökspersonen får höra listan och försöka återkalla orden/the items påverkar det recency effect på följande sätt: Varken primacy eller recency effect påverkas! Recency effect påverka inte då personen under tiden kan repetera orden/items den skall komma ihåg. Inga nya items konkurrerar om platsen i working memory och tiden påverkar inte då personen bara kan ägna tiden åt repetition.

Question 32

How can working memory affect our reasoning according to the Baddeley theory?

Answer 32

Bakgrundsinfo:
Baddeley kom ju fram till att det inte räckte med teorin om STM. Han kom fram till att short-term memory är en del av ett större mer komplext system – kallat working memory. Baddeley kom på en teori över hur working memory ser ut. Huvuddelen av working memory systemet heter: central executive. Central executive har två slavsystem/ hjälpredor under sig. Nämligen phonological loop och visuospatial sketchpad – dessa båda har lite olika förmågor som de hjälper bossen med. De gör lite lower level processing i olika tasks. På senare tid har man lagt till ett tredje hjälpsystem : the episodic buffer. Det är den som integrerar informationen som finns i working memory med information som återkallas frå long-term memory.

Det finns skillnader mellan individer i working memory capabilities och dessa skillnader är relaterade till olika kogntiva processer i sin tur.
High working memory capacity – choices on a more consistent (principled) basis
Greater working memory span leads to more succesfully solved syllogisms

People with smaller working memory spans seem to use simpler strategies (when it comes to reasoning). Kan vara så att större working memory kapacitet leder till förmågan att behålla mer information aktivt i minnet – vilket tillåter en att upptäcka fler alternativ medan man försöker resonera och dra slutsatser.

According to Baddeley: Working memory is intimately related to executive control, to the deliberate allocation of attention to a task, and to the maintenance of efficient, effective cognitive processing and behaviour.

Question 33

What is priming effect in episodic memory? How can we measure this effect experimentally?

Answer 33

Priming effect (repetition priming). A previous encounter with information facilitates later performance on the same information unconsciously.
Lindas svar:
When a previous encounter with an item (prime) facilitiates outcome in following task.
Exempel:
Participants ska göra en word stem completion task. Men först får de läsa en text. I texten förekommer orden police och clock.
I word stem completion task finns det ord som förekommit i texten de redan läst (police och clock) och nya ord. De ord (police och clock – the primes) går fortare för testdeltagarna att fylla i än de ord som är helt nya och inte fanns med i texten.

Question 34

What are the main differences between episodic and semantic memory in the multiple memory systems view of Tulving?

Answer 34

Episodic memory: Mental slide show.
Minnen från händelser man upplevt själv, personligen. Dessa minnen har också med tid och plats att göra. Till exempel namnet på ditt gymnasium, vad du åt till middag igår. Alzheimers och åldrande drabbar framförallt detta långtidsminne.

Semantic memory: My mental encyclopedia. Handlar om generell information, som inte har med din identitet eller ditt förflutna att göra. Det har med koncept, fakta att göra. One week has 7 days, the capital city of Sweden is Stockholm). Barn utvecklar detta minne snabbare än episodic memory.

Question 35

What challenges are suggested by Baddeley and Morris against levels-of-processing effect?

Answer 35

Craik and Lockart (1972) menade att information får någon mängd mental processing. Items som får incidental attention are processed at a shallow level (man hör hur ordet låter men fokuserar inte på ordens mening eller betydelse – tänk att man dagdrömmer under en föreläsning).

Andra items får en deep processing, mer intentional and meaningful processing. This deeper processing kan betyda att man försöker se samband mellan informationen man processar och information/kunskap man redan har.

Information som processas shallowly med endast maintenance rehearsal kommer därför inte att kommas ihåg särskilt väl.

Baddeley menade dock:¨

There is a problem of defining levels independently of retention scores. In essence , no method existed for deciding ahead of time whether a particular kind of rehearsal would prompt shallow or deep processing. Instead we had to wait and see whether it improved recall. If it did it must have been elaborative rehearsal and if not it must have been maintenance rehearsal.

Higher recall is the evidence that elaborative rehearsal was involved in a task, but the same higher recall is also evidence that shows that elaborative rehearsal improves recall.

Baddeley also had a second point of critique concerning task effects. Difficulty arose with the levels of processing approach when different memory tasks were used. The reason for the difficulty was simply that very different results were obtained using one or another task.

Question 36

What is the enactment effect? What is the explanation of motor encoding view for this effect?

Answer 36

Enactment effect means that there is improved memory for participant -performed tasks (compared to those that are not).

A way to engage in deep encoding is to take advantage of the enactment effect.
The additional mental effort needed to engage in the task can be thought of as another form of deep processing because the person needs to spend more effort decoding the sentence and then figuring out exactly what to do.
The enactment effect: subject performed task (SPT effect). The importance of actions and action images in young children and early school years.¨
Glömska är mindre för action-memory.Finns teorier om att action memory är effektivare än verbal memory – och också teorier om varför det är så!

Question 37

What is the context effect in relation to the interconnection between encoding and retrieval? Motivate your answer with an empirical work.

Answer 37

The best way of understanding storage is to consider it in light of retrieval.

Godden och Baddeley (1973). De lät personer lära sig en lista med ord. Hälften lärde sig listan på land och hälften under vatten. Sedan fick de alla göra ett recall test. Hälften fick göra testet i samma context och hälften i en annan context. Alltså några som lärde sig listan på land fick göra testet i vatten och tvärtom. Och vissa som lärde sig på land fick testet på land. Och vissa som lärde sig under vatten fick göra testet under vatten.
Man fann att recall var bättre om man testades i den kontext där man hade lärt sig informationen, i jämförelse med om man testades på land när man lärt sig under vatten.

Question 38

What important findings have been found with weak and strong cues with respect to encoding specificity principle?

Answer 38

The more cues you use the better remembering you would have (cueing effect, context effect).

• High associate cues benefited the subjects’ recall both when high associates had been presented during study and when no cue words had been presented.
• However, when low associates had been presented during learning, high associates were not effective, and only low associates functioned as effective cues.

Question 39

What are the main differences between explicit and implicit memory tests?

Answer 39

Explicit versus implicit memory, Graf & Schacter’s theory

• Explicit memory: -Conscious remembering and retrieving of information -Free recall, cued recall and recognition are different types of explicit tests.
• Implicit memory: -No necessary need for conscious awareness -Word fragment completion, word stem completion and word identification are different types of implicit tests.

Explicit memory test är när vi vet om att vi blir testade – typ en tenta i skolan. Vi försöker medvetet återkalla en viss information.
Implicit memory test är vi inte medvetna om testet på samma sätt. Man testas på kunskap som vi inte är medvetna om på samma sätt.

Question 40

What is the explanation for “recognition failure of recallable words” phenomenon?

Answer 40

Vid inlärning presenteras en svag ledtråd tillsmans med target. Glue – chair. The target (chair) känns ofta inte igen (is not recognized) om det dyker upp i en annan kontext (desk, top, chair). Men om man efter det testar att göra ett cued recall där man ger ledtråden glue blir chair ofta recalled.

Så tar man ordet ur sitt sammanhang kan det hända att det inte blir igenkännt.

Question 41

In the network model of semantic memory, what kinds of relationships are there between concepts?

Answer 41

Concepts/nodes (point or location in semantic space)
Vilka relationer finns det mellan concepts/nodes?

Det finns två stycken sorters relationer mellan the nodes (koncepten). De är ”P” och ”Isa”.

Pathways and Propositions
• Pathways connect two nodes together to form propositions.
• “ISA” pathways express category membership (e.g., A robin is a bird).
• Property pathways express properties that concepts possess (e.g., x has the property of y- a robin has the property of wings).

Question 42

What are Stage 1 and Stage 2 in Smith’s feature model of semantic memory?

Answer 42

Stage 1 comparison: is fast and involves a global comparison of how much the features in each list overlap
Enligt bok: involves a rapid, global comparison of features

Stage 2 comparison: is slow (occuring only when the list have and intermediate amount of overlap. Stage 2 involves only the defining features of each list.

Question 43

What is the main difference between technical and content accuracy in memory performance?

Answer 43

Technical accuracy: Recalling or recognizing exactly what was experienced, eller vad man läste i en mening. Exakt hur meningen såg ut. (generally quite poor). Detta är viktigt i vardagslivet.
Content accuracy: är hur väl testpersonen kommer ihåg the meaningful content of a sentence (hur väl folk kommer ihåg det det meningsfulla innehållet i en mening, inte exakt ordval). Viktig för studier.

Recalling or recognizing the meaning or the content of what was experienced (till exempel hur meningen var uppbygd) (generally quite accurate).

Question 44

What is flashbulb memory? What categories of information are there in this type of memory?

Answer 44

Extremely accurate (seemingly), very detailed memories of particular events, especially when the events were surprising or highly unusual.

The categories of information in this type of memory:

• Informant
• Place
• Ongoing event
• Individual’s own emotional state
• Emotional state of others
• Consequences of the event for the individual

Question 45

What are the main theoretical challenges in flashbulb memory?

Answer 45

Vi tror gärna att våra flushbulb memories är extremt accurate och detailed memories.

Flera studier visar dock att flushbulb memories inte alls skiljer sig märkvärt från vanliga minnen. Att sättet de skiljer sig på från vanliga minnen är att vi uppfattar dem som mer accurate än vanliga minnen.

Christianson (1989) gjorde en studie: Testade svenskars minne angående mordet av Olof Palme. Han testade minnet först 6 veckor efter mordet och sedan en gång till ett år senare. Han fann att endast generell information om mordet blev ihågkommet med accuracy. Detaljer som blev ihågkomna var däremot en kreativ mix av några få specifika detaljer och mer generell information.

Question 46

What is eyewitness memory? Which factors are important in accuracy of eyewitness memory?

Answer 46

Eyewitness memory är minnet av exempelvis vad som hände i en bilolycka eller ett rån - när man blir ögonvittne till en händelse i verkliga livet. Detta är viktigt då det påverkar en själv och andra att man säger rätt/ återger en händelse rätt.
Detta minne kan bli distorted by confirmation bias and self involvement.
• Eyewitness memory is affected by the focus of victims’ attention to the weapon.
• Misleading questions can change eyewitness memories. Peripheral information is distorted more than central information.

Question 47

What types of memory are not deteriorated (impaired) in elderly people?

Answer 47

Semantic long term memory förfaller inte. Prospective minne blir också bättre!
Semantic long term memory is less affected than episodic long term memory in elderly people.

Question 48

What are the language universals?

Answer 48

Hockett (1960) proposed (föreslog, framställde) a list of 13 features or characteristics that are common to all known languages.

The 6 features that were discussed the most in cognition and in the PP:

Semanticity
The term semantic means ”meaning”. Language exhibits semanticity – languages all convey meaning. The sound of human language carry meaning/means something.

2.Arbitariness (godtycklig, arbiträr, slumpmässig)
Arbitariness means that there is no inherent (naturlig) connection between the units (sounds, words) used in language and their meanings. (någon började kalla penna för penna från början).

3.Flexibility of symbols (flexibilitet)
Because the connection between symbol and meaning is arbitrary, we can change those connections and invent new ones.

4.naming (namngivning)
We assign names to all the objects in our environment, to all the feelings and emotions we experience, to all the ideas and concepts we conceive of.

5.displacement (deplacement)
When we talk about something else than the present moment – this is a feature called displacement.

6.productivity/generativity(produktivitet)
Language is a productive and inherently novel activity, that we generate utterances rather than repeat them. This means that language is a creative system, not a repetitive one.

Question 49

What are the Miller’s five levels of language analysis?

Answer 49

According to Miller ( 1973) there are 5 levels of Language analysis.

1 Phonology
Analysis of the sounds of language as they are articulated and comprehended in speech.

2 Syntax
Analysis of word order and gramaticality (tex. Rules for forming past tense and plurals, rules for determining word ordering in phrases and sentences)

3 Lexical or semantic
Analysis of word meaning and the integration of word meanings within phrases and sentences.

4 Conceptual
Analysis of phrase and sentence meaning with reference to knowledge in semantic memory

5 Belief

Analysis of sentence and discourse meaning with reference to one’s own beliefs and one’s beliefs about a speaker’s intent and motivations

Question 50

What is the Whorf hypothesis?

Answer 50

The Sapir-Whorf linguistic relativity hypothesis
The basic idea of the Worf hypothesis is that the language you know shapes the way you think about events in the world around you.

In its strongest version the hypothesis claims that language controls both thought and perception to a large degree – this means that you cannot think about ideas or concepts that your language does not name.

In its weaker version the hypothesis claims that your language influences and shapes your thought - the language can make it more difficult (not impossible) for you to think about new ideas that have no name.

The weak version of this hypothesis is generally accepted now: language exerts and influence on thought, by making it more difficult to think of an idea without having a word to name or express it.

Question 51

What is Aphasia? What different types of Aphasia are there?

Answer 51

Aphasia är när en person har förlorat en del eller hela sin förmåga att använda språk på grund av hjärnskada eller hjärnsjukdom.

Det finns många sorters Aphasia men de 3 vanligaste är Broca’s aphasia, Wernicke’s aphasia and conduction aphasia.

Broca’s aphasia (Disruption of: speech production and syntactic features)
Is also called expressive or production aphasia. Dessa patienter talar tveksamt, det är svårt för dem och uttalet fungerar inte som det skall.

Wernicke’s aphasia (Disruption of comprehension, semantic features)
Man kan säga att försämringarna i Wernicke’s aphasia är motsatsen till Broca’s aphasia. Talar väl men förstår inte språk.

Conduction aphasia (repetition of words and sentences)
De kan inte upprepa vad de hört. Både Wernicke’s och Broca’s area är oskadda.

Andra former av aphasia:
Anomia
Agraphia
Alexia
Pure word deafness

Question 52

What are Stage 1 and Stage 2 in selective attention?

Answer 52

Stage 1: An acoustic analysis based on physical features of the message. Sensory information about the message is attended to; loudness, location of sound source, pitch, etc etc.

Stage 2: Selection of message based on message content (i.e. what the message is about). Grammatical and semantic features are the basis for selection (semantic = meaning).

Question 53

What kinds of features are there in the Smith’s feature model of semantic memory?

Answer 53

Semantic features: Simple, one-element characteristics or properties of the concept.

Defining features: The most defining features for a concept; essential features

Characteristic features: Features that are common but not essential to the meaning of the concept

Question 54

What are the main causes for having a false memory?

Answer 54

Source misattribution and misinformation acceptance.

Source misattribution: The inability to clearly remember the true source of a piece of information.

Misinformation acceptance: acceptance of additional information as having been part of an earlier experience without actually remembering that information.