Cognitive Flashcards
Encoding
Putting information into memory
Storage
Retaining information in memory
Retrieval
Recovering the information in memory
Whole report procedure
A method of studying memory, where subjects looking for a graction of a second at a visual display of nine items, and were then asked to recall as many items as they could (usually only about 4)
Partial report procedure
George Sperling devised an alternative to whole report procedure where he asked subjects to report only one row of the items they saw and each subject reported the 9 items almost perfectly.
Semantic priming task
The subject has to decide whether two words are a word or not. Response time is quicker if the words were semantically related (e.g. nurse-doctor), than if they were not (nurse-butter).
Semantic verification task
In this task subjects are asked whether or not a simple statement presented is true or false. This was used to proposed the “Spreading Activation Model”.
Semantic feature comparison model
Proposed by Smith, Shoben, and Rips, this model suggests that concepts (e.g., schools) are represented by sets of features, some of which are required (e.g., faculty) for that concept and some of which are typical (e.g., fraternities) of that concept.
Levels of processing theory (depth of processing theory)
The way you process material will determine what memory system it gets into. Physical (visual) and acoustical (sound combinations a word has), will not be a good as semantic (focusing on the meaning of the word). Proposed by Craik and Lockhart
Paivio’s dual code hypothesis
Information can be stored (or encoded) in two ways: visually and verbally. Abstract information tends to be stored verbally (e.g., the word virtue) and concrete information ends to be encoded visually and verbally (e.g. elephant)
State dependent learning
A special case of encoding specificity, where we recall better if your psychological or physical state at the time of recall is the same as your state when you memorized the material.
Luchin’s water-jar problem
A task where subjects are presented with three empty jars and asked to obtain a particular amount of water in one of the jars. Exemplifies problems with having a mental set.
Guilford’s divergent thinking tasks
A participant is asked “What can yo use a brick for” and the number of creative solutions is a measure of divergent thinking.
Kahneman and Tversky
Found that humans use heuristics
Base-rate fallacy
Using prototypical factors rather than actual numerical information about which category is more numerous.
Learning theory of language
A major theoretical perspective in language development which believes that language is acquired through classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and/or modeling. Think BF Skinner
Cognitive Developmental theory of language
A major theoretical perspective in language development which believes language has to do with a child’s capacity for symbolic thought, which develops towards the end of the sensorimotor period. Language continues to develop according to the child’s cognitive level.
Nativist theory of language
There is an innate, biologically based mechanism for language acquisition. Think Chomsky.
Linguistic relativity hypothesis (Whorfian hypothesis)
Our perception of reality, the way we think about the world, is determined by the content of language (e.g., Eskimos are better at differentiating types of snow since they have a variety of names for different types of snow).
Maccoby & Jacklin
Found evidence of better verbal abilities in girls in their studies.
Charles Spearman
Suggested that individual differences in intelligence are largely due to variations in the amount of general, unitary factor which he called “g”. Also posited a second factor to describe individual differences in performing specific tasks, “s”.
Arthur Jensen
Claimed that intelligence as measured by UQ was almost entirely genetic in nature and that you could not teach someone to score higher on IQ tests.
McClelland & Rumelhart
Proposed Parallel distributed processes (PDP), where information processing is distributed across the brain and is done in parallel fashion.
