Cognitive Flashcards
Describe how Cognitive Psychology is an interdisciplinary field
- different questions can be investigated using techniques and perspectives from a variety of disciplines
- draws heavily from a number of different fields
- Linguistics - Psycholinguistics - example of new discipline formed by the marriage of cognitive psychology and linguistics
- Anthropology - cross cultural research examples
- Computer sciene - can develop computational models of general learning principles?
- Development - how children learn language, social structures and interactions with adults and other children
- Neuroscience / Cognitive Neuroscience - as technology (brain imaging techniques) have become more available, theories can be connected to the underlying biology
What is a phoneme?
- the basic unit of spoken language
- the smallest distinctive sound of language
What is a morpheme?
- basic unit of meaning
- smallest distinctive unit of meaning within a language
What is a word?
smallest independent grammatical unit
- can stand alone!
What is syntax?
grammatical rules that govern how we organise words into sentences
What is grammar?
encompasses more grammar and morphology
- examines both word structure and sentence structure
Are phonemes, morphemes and words universal to all languages?
YES
- they are regardless of other features they may or may not have as some languages do have features that others do not use
What is a phrase?
- a string of words that is dependent on a head word
- a noun is usually associated with a noun phrase
- ‘the’ and ‘boy’ = “the boy”, a noun phrase
What is a sentence?
the largest independent language structure
Briefly describe Chomsky’s approach to language
- behaviourist approach
- felt that language abilities must be explained in terms of a complex system of rules and principles that were represented in your mind
- we have these innate language skills
- modular - felt that we had a set of specific linguistic abilities that are separate from other cognitive abilities like memory
Briefly describe the Standard Cognitive Approach to language
- language is not modular
- it is interconnected with other cognitive processes, such as working memory
- according to this approach, we are skilled at language because our powerful brains can master many cognitive tasks
- language is just one of these cognitive tasks and it has the same status as other tasks such as problem solving and memory
Briefly describe the Cognitive-Fucntional Approach to language
- emphasises that the function of human language in everyday life is to communicate meaning to other individuals
- also emphasises that our cognitive processes (like attention and memory) are intertwined with language comprehension and production
Chomsky - sentences
deep structure of sentence = the underlying, more abstract meaning of the sentence
surface structure = represented by the words that are spoken and written into a surface structure that they can speak or write
- people use transformational rules to try and convert deep structure
- two sentences may have the same deep S but a different surface structure - ‘Sara threw the ball’ and ‘the ball was thrown by Sara’
- english speakers know ‘deep down’ that the sentences have identical core meanings (Harley 2008)
Reactions to Chomsky’s theory
- initially was well accepted by many psychologists
- but some of the research did not support his theories
- e.g. did not support his prediction that people would take longer to process sentences that required multiple trasnfromations
- also he argued that all languages share the same universal patterns of grammar however research has shown that many non-European languages do not show these patterns
- many psycholinguistics became discouraged with the emphasis on language structure and became more focused on the human mind and the semantics so developed theories based on meaning - cognitive functional approach
Describe Tomasello’s (1998) contributions to language
- young children have extremely powerful cognitive skills and social-learning skills
- during the years in which they are developing and mastering language, they will hear several million adult sentences
- they can analyse these and adopt flexible strategies to create increasingly complex language
- adults also use language strategically
- we use it to focus and order our listener’s attention onto the information we want to emphasise
What is the ‘Good-Enough’ Approach to language?
- we frequently process only part of a sentence
What are phonemes?
- the sounds / phones used in language
What is phonemic variation?
- when there is meaning attached to the variation
- meaningful variation
- e.g. voicing - whether the vocal chords are vibrating or not
- say sip - voicing is off - feel vibrations in your vocal chords halfway through saying the word
- say zip - voicing is on - can feel vibrations in your vocal chords at the very beginning of the word
What is allophonic variation?
- non-meaningul variation
e. g. saying cats and dogs
- cats - voicing is off in the final position
- dogs - voicing is on all the way through
- the ‘s’ at the end does not change, it represents the same thing of being plural
Describe morphemes
- smallest unit of language that can carry meaning
- the little building blocks of language
- individual words can be morphemes or you can have morphemes that attach to words as they can’t stand on their own
- eg ‘play’ + ‘er’ = player
root word -> attach a morpheme = becomes a verb!
can be done in a variety of ways - can attach more than 2 morphemes and can make it into past tense
Linguistic Knowledge
- speech is continuous (for the most parts)
- we don’t really pause between words in a sentence, although we do sometimes have that illusion that words are discrete so there must be boundaries between them
(eg ‘grade A’ vs ‘grey day’) - no two speakers every say the same thing identically (rate, pitch, volume, tempo differences)
- speakers of foreign languages - seems to us as if they run all of their words together
- the physical utterance of a sentence shows that there are no boundaries between words - no physical cues to tell you where one word stops and the next begins
Briefly describe the human vocal tract
- has hundreds of muscles which operate different parts of the tongue at the same time
- tongue itself has lots of different jobs at any one time; controlling air flow, the volume that opens in the mouth, the jaws having to move in concert with the tongue, the lips too and the tip of the tongue constantly moving
- hundreds of commands coming from the motor cortex informing the articulators where they need to be at any one time
- fluent speakers - all happens with very little effort?
planning of an utterance, what to say afterwards, articulating them, controlling everything
Language Development in Children - Birth
- even hours after birth, children can distinguish different phonemes, even very close ones from each other
- eg ‘ba’ and ‘fa’ - differ only in one feature
Language Development in Children - 0-6 months
- can distinguish the phonemic variations (not meaningful yet) in all different languages
- all the variations / sounds are available to the child
Language Development in Children - 6-9 months
6 months - seems to be a change in the child’s perception
- begin to focus mostly on meaningful variations
- play with sound - babbling sounds begin to narrow their scope to the ones that are meaningful for that language
Language Development in Children - 12 months
- starting to distinguish between phonemic variations that are relevant to the language
- those that aren’t relevant begin to disappear from their repertoire
Describe the McGurk Effect
- visual cues contribute to speech
- in the illusion, what we see overwrites what we hear
- shows us that what we hear may not always be the truth
- helps us to understand what happens when our senses conflict; depending on the modality provided, some information may combine or override other information
- shows that we are not just using what we hear to interpret language, we also use other cues
- if these cues happen to conflict, the brain loos for a way to resolve that conflict
How do children learn to connect a word with an object or an action in the world?
by using Symbolic Function
Describe briefly the background / details to Symbolic Function
- not just restricted to language - memory and brain too
- plays an important role in our ability to use memory - can perhaps use this to make the link between how the brain supports it to help explain the ways it works in language and memory?
Sinclair (1970)
- demonstrated how symbolic function plays an early role in the development of children going from pre-verbal to verbal actors
How do we use symbolic function?
eg an image of a phone - shared image / picture regardless of how it is said
a picture and a word - two different forms that map onto the same function - they all refer back to the same thing!!!
What actually is symbolic function?
the ability to use symbols to represent or stand for perceived objects and events
How do children start to form symbolic functions?
example with the telephone
- observe the use of them
- don’t know how it works but they will engage in symbolic play
- picks up phone and holds it to face and babble into it - this is what they have seen people doing
different components to this behaviour - things that look similar / have similar features, begin to get aspects of things and pull them all together
How do newborns start symbolic function off then?
one of the main functions of their articulations is to get our attention as they cannot take care of themselves (getting hungry or uncomfortable)
normal response when they are uncomfortable or want something - start to cry!
serves as communication - we don’t get a sense of specific desires, it is more of a generalised response to discomfort, pain or hunger
What is shared reference when it comes to symbolic function?
- crying is communicative, but when there are specific desires, its more complicated
- a communicative function in which the speaker and listener understand that a particular symbol refers to a particular things / goal
- can be really unique, especially between parent and child or sibling
KEY THING - the speaker and listener need to understand that a particular symbol refers to a particular thing or goal
How does a child use symbolic function and shared reference to communicate?
- child - may have heard lots of words but they have not begun to put them all together
- no utterances - just babbling, no speech
SO, they begin to gesture and point
- have pretty good manual controls
- good at manipulating the world with their hands
- learn that people around them respond to things that they do
Describe shared reference and symbolic function over time in a child (between 6-8 months)
6-7 months:
- see something, gesture towards it and point / focus on it
- minder - name or give the object to the baby
- starting to get the links between things
- object is now shared with the naming, its been given a reference
7-8 months:
- shift in this social interaction
- more fluid and dynamic
- points at the object and looks at the minder
- key social link here
- if its something you can give, you name it and give it to the baby
What do pre-lingusitic functions serve as?
in the same ways as the kinds of functions that we have words for
Symbolic Functions - Protodeclarative
- pointing and naming
- pre-verbal
- function of a declarative, i.e. naming
Symbolic Functions - Protoimperative
- desire for something
- demand or request
- want to obtain something but you need help to get it as babies cannot get it themselves
Developmental Milestones - Language
0-1 years
- pre-symbolic gestures come online
- 10/11 months - these become quite fluent
- sets the stage for first words; occur around 12 months give or take
- pre-verbal stage of gesturing - child is trying to put together methods of establishing shared reference
Developmental Milestones - Language
1-2 years
around 12 months - first words
- gradual process at first
- vocabulary grows during the 2nd half of the first year to around 50 items
- rate of learning steadily increases until about 18 months where is dramatically increases (vocabulary burst)
Up until 2 years
- gone from roughly 50 words to 400 words
- qualitative learning - seems to be different in some way after this rapid enhancement in lexicon
20/24 months:
- child add words rapidly as well as combining words begin to start
- begin to combine words in productive, rule-governed kind of ways
Developmental Milestones - Language
2-5 years
- once combinations have begin, syntax (elaborate, complicated and useful structuring of language) begins to flower
- develops rapidly from about 2 years to about 4-5 years (only takes 2/3 years to happen)
- no instructions - getting it all from normal everyday experiences
rapid rate of adding words to vocabulary still happens
Developmental Milestones - Language
5+ years
- really rapid increase in lexicon begins to slow down
- but by this time, the child has around 14,000 words in their vocabulary - probably most of what they need to get through the day
Describe how a child’s pattern of learning language is influential with reference to how language is an important feature to our species
- children - not awake all the time, so probably are learning around 9/10 a day - impressive
- language - different from all other cognitive abilities
- especially due to the rapid and complete acquisition of syntactic structures about about 20 months of age and ending a few years later
- kids do make errors - over-generalisations
- is there some part of language that is hard-wired? is there a specific gene for this?
- or does it all come from our environment?
Describe Hagen’s (1971) research into memory strategies in younger and older children
2 groups - 4-6 years and 7-9 years
- all sat down to do a memory task
- within each group, split into 2 subgroups
- half were asked to name the animals whilst the other half were simply instructed to just look at the animals
- animals were then taken away
later did a recall test:
- young kids - no matter what condition, there was no differences in how many they recalled
- older kids - those who named were better at recalling whilst those who looked were not just the worst, they were overall the worst
What are the implications of Hagen’s (1971) research?
suggests that there is something about this naming function that is available to help older children, but it does not seem to play a role yet with younger kids
- younger kids performed just as well whether they looked or named the animals
What is Verbal Meditation?
- if you rehearse something, you are applying a symbol to it
- working with a set of symbols mentally to remember visual images
- gives you a big benefit if you have the machinery / mechanisms to use it
What is Eidetic Memory?
- another form of memory - basically photographic memory
- very good skill to have when learning 14,000 words???
game called memory:
- array of cards with pairs of things on it
- take turns turning over a pair of cards and there is no pattern whatsoever as to where something may be
- adults try to impose patterns or strategies but that does not work very well
- children around 2-5 years can remember where things were - they can do memory tasks where categorisation does not help
Developmental Milestones - Memory
0-1 years
- motor, sensory experience mainly leading to object permanence
- 4-5 months- change in the way children intact with objects in the world
- 5 months - OP - whether the child can establish a representation of an object when its there or not there - takes place in the first half through the first year, when we begin to see symbolic gestures
Developmental Milestones - Memory
1-2 years
- representation emerges
- Piaget’s daughter - used representation skills to try and solve the problem
- have these sophisticated, almost adult-like skills to remember a representation
- involve networks in the brain and become fairly well integrated mid-way through the 2nd year, at the same time as lexicon starts to rapidly increase
Developmental Milestones - Memory
2-5 years
- photographic memory
- no spontaneous verbal meditation - Hagen’s research!
- doing things somewhat differently
Developmental Milestones - Memory
5+ years
- eidetic memory fades
- verbal recoding aids recall
- change occurs around the same time that we see a slowing down in lexical pace
Nature vs Nurture debate for language
Chomsky vs Piaget
Chomsky - language organ in the brain?
- has its own function without any intervention
- syntax occurs the same way
BUT WHAT’S THE ROLE OF LEARNING?
Piaget - extreme case - child is a black box who brings some general learning experiences
- exposure to social contexts is the way language develops
14,000 words learnt - surely there has to be a function of memory involved?
Links between the human brain and other brains
- human brains share a lot of structures with species that we are related to
- auditory cortex, visual cortex etc
- human brain - majority of cortex is not dominated by sensory parts, instead by the more higher order areas
Example of differences between human brains and other species brains on certain tasks
Teaching a monkey how to differentiate between 2 different signs
- dependign on which sign it responds to, it will get a reward
- over time the monkey learns to just indicate to the sign that will give it a reward - it learns the r’ship between the stimuli and reward
- change the task - not being learnt on a screen, rather they have to touch the object
- does prior learning in the visual modality transfer into the haptic modality? NO!
- has to re-learn the relationship
Do this with a 5 year old child - their prior learning in the visual modality does get transferred into the visual modality
- evidence for verbal or at least symbolic encoding
- learn to differentiate between the visual as well as what can be encoded to differentiate between the perceptual features
Developmental Milestones - Brain
0-1 year
primary sensory areas mature
Developmental Milestones - Brain
1-2 years
secondary areas mature
Developmental Milestones - Brain
2-5 years
cross-modal areas mature
- by the 5th year, the cross-modal / association cortex have matured
Developmental Milestones - Brain
5+ years
- child’s brain has roughly reached 90% of an adult brain weight
- not all the connections have been made yet, but the majority of growth has taken place
6 years
- rapid lexical growth has slowed down
- aspects of memory function (eidetic memory) have hanged
- rapid brain growth slowed down
if language has not been learnt by age 6, have they missed a critical period?
What is hemispheric lateralisation?
- the distinction between functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain
- basically are some tasks lateralised to a specific part of the brain
What functions are usually associated with the left hemisphere of the brain?
maths, language, global processing
What functions are usually associated with the right hemisphere of the brain?
spatial processing, spatial locations, aspects of language that add contours to speech, music
Where are the areas associated with language found in the brain?
along the central sulcus - areas dedicated to speech
- occupy lots of the motor strip
- jaw, tougue, mouth etc - attached to the motor strip near Broca’s area
Broca’s - direct connections to the motor strip
Wernicke’s - near the parietal lobe, adaject to the auditory projection area (ears)
What does Broca’s area do?
- it is responsible for the structuring of language
- it plans the structure and sends signals to the motor strip
- this then sends signals to the articulators to speak
What does Wernicke’s area do?
- speech sounds are dealt with specifically here
- region of the brain where the connection is made between the physical form of the word(s) and its meaning
What are the different types of neuropathologies?
Cerebrovascular disease - stroke, aneurysm
Neoplastic disorders - tumours
Degenerative disorders - Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s
Toxic conditions - alcohol
Demyelinating disorders - MS
Infections diseases - meningitis
How can a psycholinguist tell if you if there is something wrong? i.e. you cannot repeat a word
- suppose the individual cannot repeat a word
- give them the a particular word and then ask if they can point to the object, e.g. brush
- if they get it correct, you can assume that the information has been processed
- can isolate the problem to the transmission from broca’s, wernicke’s or the articulators
can say the word but can’t identify the object - wernicke’s area?
- info may still be intact, it just that the meaning has not been attached to the word
What is aphasia?
- the loss or impairment of language function caused by damage to language and association areas
- there is an acquired deficit in the capacity to interpret and formulate language symbols
- muli-modal - affects speaking, reading and writing
- relative impairment differs across syndrome but all aphasics shows some loss in comprehension, formulation and expression
What is apraxia of speech?
Disruption of motor programme which determines the sequences of muscle contraction required to produce individual sounds and words
What is Broca’s aphasia?
difficulties in forming the language but have pretty good comprehension
- speech is halting, slow and lacking many function words
remember! broca’s area is responsible for structure, located next to articulation centres on the motor cortex!
What is Wernicke’s aphasia?
speech tends to be well-formed, rapid but can be word salad, the meaning content is very low
- comprehension is severely impaired
remember! wernicke’s area is responsible for connecting symbols to their referents, located behind the auditory projection zone
Broca’s research
- had a P who could only utter one word / syllable
- could understand the majority of what was being said to him
- autopsy revealed damage in Broca’s area, in the prefrontal cortex adjacent to the motor strip
Wernicke’s research
- P’s comprehension was very poor but could produce speech at a relatively normal pace
- sounded like he was speaking relatively normal but was not
- found damage in the parietal part of the brain, behind the auditory system
What has the study of aphasia allowed us to do?
it has allowed us to look at the notion of a double dissociation
- e.g. looking a lesson studies - some mental processes are disrupted by a particular lesion in a particular area of the brain suggesting that that area is responsible for that function
Example of an aphasiac patient - Mr Eastham
- asked to tell a story - spontaneous speech production
- asked to tell the story of little red riding hood
- asked to write down the story - similarly affected
shows that comprehension is largely in tact, however when it crucially depends on interpreting some of the small function words, the broca’s aphasics have trouble
How does sign language compare with aphasia?
the same thing occurs
- it is a natal language learnt wiiht the same pattern of learning as any other natural language
- does have a lot of different features
- space and temporal relationships have to adapt - they have adapted very well!
Describe the relationships between other parts of the brain and language processing
damage to the RH - output tends to be grammatically well formed
- patients don’t really suffer like people with LH damage but their speech tends to be flat as well as having some word finding difficulties
Memory Reproduction Task - Children with a LH lesion
Task - showed models which are figures composed of smaller parts which are different in shape to the larger parts
5-9 years old
- told to memorise the images
- LH lesion early on in infancy - good prognosis
- get the overall configuration but miss out the micro details
is the part of the brain specialised to do this fine grain level of detail that is impaired in these children?
Memory Reproduction Task - Children with a RH lesion
Task - showed models which are figures composed of smaller parts which are different in shape to the larger parts
5-9 years old
- consequences of early damage - tend to retain a lot of the fine grain detail but the ability to retain overall structure is impaired
What can the Memory Reproduction task tell us about the different tasks associated with different areas of the brain with regards to language and aphasia?
language - we use a lot of things when pulling everything together
LH - highly specialised, Broca’s area pays close attention to the fine grain detail where other functions help to pull it all together
RH - necessary to retain the overall pattern
aphasiac but no damage to RM - yes there is difficulty in some aspects of language but do they compensate for what they have lost?
What did Berndt (1990) suggest that aphasics are trying to do?
- they are attempting to communicate a maximum amount of information with a minimum amount of words
- in order to plan communication, there are lots of things that you need to do
- missing some of those words - need to work around this!
- calculating what you need so that the listener(s) succeed in understanding what you are trying to communicate
What is the map task and what is it used to study?
- to see how aphasics plan what they are trying to communicate
- schematised map
- speaker and a listener - one is aphasic and the other is a researcher, take it in turns to describe the map
- speaker - has to describe the map and guide the listener along the pathway that they have on their map to reach the end point
- lots of markers on it
- have to negotiate directions on the map
- distance - cm or inches
- the listeners map is not the same as the speakers - have to make compromises
- task is complete once the end point has been reached
- lay the maps over each other and calculate a success score / rate
- want a smaller score - less deviant from the original map
What were the results of the map task?
- highly diverse group of participants
- all had a more broca type of aphasia
- yes they were impaired / had worse scores than the the controls
- eg engineer who had suffered a stroke had planned what he wanted to measure by etc
- if we do this task with normally healthy 12 year old children than they will get the same results as the aphasiacs
- production / output was not very good but comprehension was seen to be quite good / normal
context plays a key role!
- people learn to adapt
Aphasia in multi-lingusists?
- broca’s area does not really change
- other parts of the brain are involved in some broca activity
- children - there is a difference, in at least the distribution in the function of the cortex for language - both more lateralised in the LH?
- adults - bilateral distribution in the second language rather than the first
Is there a critical period for language acquisition?
Development of bird song
- particular species of sparrow
- birds of these species were isolated from any kind of external output after being hatched and were exposed at certain periods of development
35-50 days - some similar features, not quite the same though
50-71 days - first found is longer
3-7 days - pattern does not look normal at all
once it has matured - does not look similar at all
- somewhere between 30-70 days, a minimal amount of input may be needed to produced a similar (not the same) kind of pattern?
Descrbe brain development in humans - patterns of neural connectivity
- these patterns dramatically change in the first 6 years of life
- at birth, the cortex is largely well structured by the neurones are really connected with each other
- around 6 years - highly connected, even over-generation of connectivity which coincides with the rapid lexical learning
- 6 years - reach maximum connectivity and start to prune
- 14 years - adult-like connectivity - less connections than the 6 year old brain
- is language biologically determined with some input from the environment?
Describe the issues with investigating a critical period with first language acquisition
- haven’t been a lot of studies as it is not ethical or moral - can’t just take a group of kids and isolate them
- instead we have to look at second language acquisition
- do have rare cases e.g. Genie - but is there perhaps more going on there?
Lenneberg (1967) Critical Period for Language Acquisition
- similar view to Chomsky - we have some sort of language organ
- first language acquisition is biologically constrained - it has a specific timetable that ends at puberty
- so, if a person starts to learn a second language after puberty, it will require a lot of conscious effort and will not be very successful
What are the critical period hypothesis predictions from second language acquisition?
- there should be a clearly specified end point for the period with a decline in L2 acquisition at the end
- there should be evidence of different kinds of learning within and outside the critical period
- environmental factors should not influence learning within the critical period
What are the issues with Lenneberg’s (1967) Critical Period for Language Acquisition?
- this is not the case with young children - learning a second language for them does not require a lot of conscious effort
- in many cases yes learning a second language when you are older is difficult
- comapring to the standards of native speakers, people are not as good
- not at the tip of their tongue with regards to phonology and syntactic structure
- BUT you do get individuals who start learning their second language quite late and well after puberty and they are remarkably successful
- CP Prediction - There should be a clearly specified end point for the period, with a decline in L2 at the end
- there should be some discontinuity
- 2 learner groups - Chinese and Spanish base language
- degrees of proficiency were measured in English years after acquirement
- drop in proficiency die to age but no evidence of an abrupt change at any point in time
- no discontinuity at puberty found
- no real evidence found for a critical period
- CP Prediction - There should be evidence of different kinds of learning within and outside the critical period
- should see evidence of different kinds of L2 learning
- adults vs children learning English as their L2
- assessed on grammatical morphology - ‘ing’ and how its used, different forms of the verb ‘to be’ etc
- in terms of ability to acquire and correctly use the different grammatical morphology forms, adults showed the same the whole way through
- children - rank order of accuracy was exactly the same as the results of the adults
- overall patterns were the same for both groups regardless of the native language
- no support found for a CP!
- CP Prediction - Environmental factors should not influence learning within the critical period
Before puberty - if the learner is exposed to a “threshold amount” of stimulation, learning will be complete
After puberty - SES, years of education etc play a role
Chinese speakers who move to an English speaking environment:
- eventual proficiency is higher the younger the immigrant it - age makes a difference
- no discontinuity
- the more education, the more proficient
- environmental factors show the same effect within and outside the CP
- no evidence found to support the CP!
So is there a critical period for language learning?
- evidence in support of it is fairly sparse
- above and beyond it there are clear differences between children and adults
- but there is no critically defined end point
- are cases of people learning L2 after any form of critical period who are highly successful
- large environmental differences on outcomes
little support to show that language acquisition is:
- biologically constrained
- independent of other cognitive faculties
What is declarative memory?
explicit memory
- conscious memory
- about things you know, learnt, experienced, things that you can remember to have happened to you or another person
- memory for faces, places, musical patterns, words, syntactic structure?
What is non-declarative memory?
implicit memory
- includes aspects of memory that tend to be highly automatic, unconscious and that can be manipulated with methods such as habituation and sensitisation
- include memories for behaviours through procedures learnt through classical conditioning
Describe HM’s background
- the first and best analysed example of a person with no declarative memory
- suffered an accidence which caused damage to the brain, resulting in seizures
- as a treatment, he had both of his medial temporal lobes resected
- after the surgery, his memory radically changed
Describe HM’s behaviours after his surgery
- continued to give the data as March 1953 and his age as 27 years old
- had to constantly be re-introduced to people that he had worked with every single day and couldn’t remember what had happened the day before
- basically was unable to form new memories - what we have learnt is that the areas of his brain that were removed were associated with declarative memory (especially the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe)
- motor learning was in tact
What are the two categories that declarative memory can be divided into?
Memory for facts
- semantic memory
- talk about information we know
Memory for events
- episodic memory
- information we remember
Describe the relationship between repeated exposure and semantic and episodic memory
Semantic memory is strengthened by repeated exposure
- the more events of that particular exposure, the stronger the memory becomes
Episodic memory is often weakened by reported exposure
- the more times you’ve had breakfast since that one time, the more likely the memory is to be weaker
What can declarative memory be broken down into - what are its four subprocesses?
Encoding, Storing, Retrieving and Forgetting
Encoding
Craik and Tulvig
- in order for any information to enter memory, you attention system has to be engaged
- need to pay attention to the information
- whilst you attend to the information - there is some form of processing of the information going on
- the more you process, the less it will be forgotten
Craik and Tulvig:
- examined the nature of encoding
- better memory = deep / elaborative encoding
- less successful memory = less elaborative encoding
- the way in which memory is encoded has consequences for the success of that memory
- depressed p’s?
Storing
- memories are stored in many areas of the brain
- areas that process certain information (visual, auditory system) and parts of the neocortex that are involved in the processing may also be involved in the storing of some information
- research on visual scene processing - not just the neocortex or prefrontal cortex, also involved regions adjacent to the visual areas of the brain
- some aspects of storage are also involved with areas of the brain involved in processing
- record of experience - kind of internal context that can help with encoding, recalling and doing functional things with these memories
- e.g. functional knowledge of patterns of play when it comes to chess
- don’t even need to be an expert, just need to have some knowledge
- some of the internal states interact with external information to encourage successful storage and recall
Retrieval
important features:
- memoruy is a very active process of reconstructing something that took place in the past rather than it just being a recollection
- a number of internal and external states contribute to this process
- ‘chunk’ information as we are exposed to lots of it
- internal states may modify retrieval e.g. biases - depressed people?
- can we reconstruct something if it is consistent with other things?
Forgetting
- we never really forget anything
- forgetting is limited access rather than limited storage
- when are in the act of trying to recall something, we may generalise and draw inferences out of our general experiences
- have to be careful of biases!
- usually we remember things the way we want to remember them rather than the way that they actually occurred
- issues when it comes to court cases?
Describe Loftus’s research
2005 - Disneyland and Bugs Bunny
other piece of research:
- seeing if you could make someone believe that they saw something that wasn’t there
- videotape of a car collision - asked to guess roughly what speed the cars were going at
- key words - smashed, collided, bumped, hit or contacted each other
- asked a week later - did you see any smashed glass? when there actually was none!
Weapon focus? relevant to as it shows how certain things can affect your memory retrieval?
What are false memories?
failure of reconstruction process?
faulty inferences?
need to be careful if there is misinformation and how it is treated
concern for courtroom cases - highly aware of this and try there best to limit it as much as possible
What is the issue with false memories, everyday communication and misinformation?
- usually when we engage in spoken communication, we assume that everyone is generally telling the truth because if you challenge everything then communication would be difficult
- easier to assume that most things are true which sets us up for believing in misinformation
What is the scary reality of false memories?
- very easy to induce a memory that is not actually true
- controversial memories?
Describe Peters et al (2007) research into False Fame Illusion
2 groups of people - one group stated they had a belief in reincarnation and the other had no belief / subjection to reincarnation therapy
Phase 1: told they would be doing a pronunciation task, given a list of 40 non-famous names
Phase 2: 2 hours later, carried out a discrimination task where they were presented with 80 famous and 40 new and 40 old non famous names
What were the results for Peters et al (2007) research into the false fame illusion?
control - errors were evenly distributed across both names
experimental:
- far more likely to misclassify a non-famous name for a famous name if it had to be used in the pronunciation task
Peters - there is an internal bias
P who believe in reincarnation - have a tendency to attribute fame to non-famous names that they have a degree of familiarity with?
- this familiarity leads to to the misclassification?
Applying Cognitive Psychology - Alzheimer’s
- primary symptom - decline in episodic memory, lose the ability to learn and remember new information
- early diagnosis is problematic, done by a process of elimination
- no formal test for diagnosis, have to be careful to make sure you are diagnosing for the correct brain disease
How does Alzheimer’s disease work?
- impacts episodic memory
- affects neurones and the spaces between them
- places proteins between them which cause them to clump up
- this means the neurone stop working effectively
- also effects the hippocampus - why there is a decline in the ability to learn and remember new information
Alzheimer’s research in Glasgow
developed a task that tries to tap into the task of the hippocampus
- measure brain activity at the scalp using EEG
- got to get the brain, in particular, the hippocampus working
- starting to recognise words, you can already see a difference
- front of the head in the prefrontal cortex - where you should see activity
- in Alzheimer’s P’s - no evidence of activity here, tells us that the underlying generators in the brain are different
- slower or incomplete processes in the brains of these patients
Treatments for Alzheimer’s patients
drug treatments
as time goes on, Alzheimer patients brains start to look more and more like normal brains
the network patterns of electrical activity are being promoted back into the brain
problem - the drugs do not cure the disease, there has been no cure found for it so far
drugs are being developed to try and cure it but none have been developed at the time being
Artist with Alzheimer’s example
William Utermohlen
- can see the disease coming through his paintings
- knew that is was happening and could see it himself
- felt his face was like a mask, creating mask-like figures
- felt outside himself
- memory began to deteriorate; felt like he was losing his head
- as time progressed, the quality of the painting began to change - can still identify the eyes by towards the end of his work they became highly unidentifiable
