Cognitive Methods Flashcards
What are the 3 basic assumptions of Cognitive Psychology?
- mental processes exist
- mental processes can be studied scientifically
- humans are active participants in the act of cognition
What is the Cognitive Science Approach?
A way of systematically studying people performing tasks
What are the 2 ways we can measure mental processes?
- response times - time between stimulus and person’s response to stimulus
- accuracy
What are strengths of the Cognitive Science Approach?
- it forms a foundation for understanding human mental processes
- informs theorising in research across disciplines
- the source of most theories and tasks used by other approaches
What are weaknesses of the Cognitive Science Approach?
- task impurity issues (most tasks involve multiple cognitive processes)
- ecological validity
- lab-based measures
- paradigm specificity (findings for one task don’t always generalise to other tasks)
What is the Information Processing Approach?
The idea that mental processes are understood as a sequence of independent processing stages
- consists of bottom-up or top-down processing and serial or parallel processing
What is a metatheory?
A set of assumptions and guiding principles to generate research questions
- where to start?
- what to look for?
- what to be aware of?
What are the 7 themes / areas of cognition?
- bottom-up or top-down processing
- attention
- representation
- implicit vs explicit memory
- metacognition
- embodiment
- the brain
What is representation?
A hypothetical entity which stands for a perception, thought or memory. It can be manipulated during cognitive operations such as retrieval or problem solving.
What is the difference between implicit and explicit memory?
Implicit - unconscious memories, remembering things without trying
Explicit - conscious memories, episodic and semantic
What is metacognition?
An awareness of our own cognitive system and how it works
What is embodiment?
The way we think and represent information is a reflection of how we interact with the world
- our interpretation of a stimulus changes the way we interact
What are the 3 stages of memory?
- Encoding
- Storage
- Retrieval
Describe the sensory stores.
- has both iconic (visual) and echoic (auditory)
- only holds info for 1-2 seconds
Describe the short-term memory store.
- limited capacity 7+-2 (Miller, 1956)
- chunking increases ability to remember
- information is lost via displacement
Describe the long-term memory store.
- unlimited capacity (Standing et al, 1970)
- information is lost via interference
Strengths of Multi-Store Model
- widely accepted that there are 3 distinct memory stores
- evidence to support short and long term memory
Weaknesses of Multi-Store Model
- oversimplified
- some people can remember more / less than others
- cannot explain implicit learning
Describe the levels of processing and the main assumptions.
- levels of processing range from shallow (physical) analysis, to deep (semantic) analysis
- the level / depth of processing effects memorability
- deeper levels of analysis produce more elaborate and stronger memory traces
Godden & Baddeley (1975)
- context dependent memory
- recall is better when learning and recall environments are the same compared to different
What are the 4 components of the Working Memory Model (Baddeley et al, 2012).
Central Executive
Visuo-spatial sketchpad
Episodic buffer
Phonological loop
Describe the central executive.
- allocates resources
- dividing attention between tasks
- interfacing with long-term memory
What are the 2 components of the phonological loop?
- phonological store (speech perception)
- articulatory loop (speech production)
What is the phonological similarity effect?
- we have poor recall for similar sounding items than dissimilar ones
- articulatory suppression prevents rehearsal
What are the 2 components of the visuo-spatial sketchpad?
- visual cache (stores info about visual form / colour)
- inner scribe (processes spatial and movement info)
Describe the episodic buffer.
- holds integrated info about episodes / events
- acts a buffer between slave systems
Describe declarative memory.
- conscious recollection
- for episodic and semantic memories
- explicit memories
Describe non-declarative memory.
- unconscious recollection
- for procedural memories
- priming happens
Is episodic memory described as reproduction or construction? Why?
- described as constructive
- we remember important details, are trivial details are omitted
- the episodic memory is prone to error (it is easy to plant false memories)
What type of memory is affected when there is damage to the hippocampus or the para-hippocampal cortex?
Hippocampus - poor episodic memory
Para-hippocampal cortex - poor semantic memory
List some causes of amnesia.
- surgery
- chronic alcohol abuse
- brain tumours
- dementia
What is retrograde amnesia?
- poor recall of memories formed before the onset of amnesia
- poorer recall of personal events than general knowledge
- temporal gradient = older memories are less impaired than newer ones
What are the 3 explanations for the temporal gradient of retrograde amnesia?
- consolidation theory = physiological process in hippocampus leads to formation of long-lasting memories
- semanticisation = episodic memories become more semantic over time (so they are protected from brain damage
- reduced learning opportunity = episodic memory relies on single learning experience so the memory is not repeated
What is anterograde amnesia?
- loss of ability to form new memories after the onset of amnesia
- caused mainly by damage to the hippocampus
What is global amnesia?
- combination of retrograde and anterograde amnesia
Who was patient HM ad why is he important?
- most studied amnesiac patient
- suffered severe epilepsy from aged 10
- underwent surgery to remove the entire temporal lobe (including the hippocampus)
- he developed moderate retrograde and severe anterograde amnesia
What is Korsakoff’s Syndrome?
- known as diencephalic amnesia
- caused by vitamin B1 deficiency from chronic alcoholism
- causes both forms of amnesia
- slight impairment of short term memory
What is semantic dementia?
- causes severe problems with semantic memory, but episodic memory remains intact
- this usually presents as a language deficit
- always involves degeneration of the anterior temporal lobe
What are the 2 reasons for foregtting?
- decay = memory fades over time, less info is available for retrieval as time passes
- interference = similar info gets in the way of memory
What are the 2 types of interference?
- retroactive = new info gets in the way of old memories
- proactive = old info gets in the way of newer info
What is the DRM paradigm?
- causes people to recall words semantically associated with words in the list, which aren’t actually there
- intrusions are prevalent when things are similar
What is the Misinformation Effect?
- memories are easily distorted by misleading information
- source misattribution occurs when memories from one source resemble those from another
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
What is confirmation bias?
- tendency to recall information in a way that confirms pre-existing beliefs
- schemas can lead us to form these expectations
Tucker & Brewer (2003)
- likely to remember infor relevent to bank robbery schemas (male, wore masks)
- less likely to remember irrelevant info (colour of getaway car)
What are the 3 biases / mistakes made during eyewitness identifictaion?
- unconscious transference = misidentify a familiar (but innocent) face as being responsible
- other-race effect = recognition for same-races are more accurate that other races
- own-age bias = more accurate recognition of witnesses similar to yourself
How does anxiety affect memory of violence?
- tunnel vision = narrowing attention to important stimuli
- weapon focus = focus on weapon rather than peripheral details
Cognitive Interview technique (COPR)
Context = mental reinstatement of environment
Order changes = harder to lie, deeper memories
Perspective changes = report from different viewpoints
Report everything
What is Gestalt Psychology?
- means ‘form’ or ‘appearance’
- concerned with perceptual organisation
- describes how we separate and link individual objects
What are the 6 guiding principles (pragnanz) of Gestalt Psychology?
- similarity
- proximity
- good continuation
- closure
- simplicity
- figure-ground segregation
What are the 3 Feature Detection Theories?
- visual search
- feature nets (bottom up and top-down)
- recognition-by-components (RBC)
What is the theory of geometric ions?
- all objects are just a combination of shapes (geometric ions)
What is the difference between recoverable and non-recoverable objects?
Recoverable = have segments of smooth edges missing, but we can still easily recognise the object
Non-recoverable = have vertices (points) missing, so can take longer to recognise objects
What are some weaknesses of recognition-by-components?
- it is tied to bottom-up processing (fails to recognise individual interpretations)
- embodied cognition (our perception of objects is influenced by our expectations of how we will interact with the object e.g. empty / full milk carton)
What is perceptual constancy?
- we perceive constant properties of object despite sensory information changing, based on past experience
What are 3 examples of perceptual constancy?
- size constancy - we can correctly perceive size even when changes in distance make them seem different
- shape constancy - we can correctly perceive shapes even when viewing angle changes
- colour constancy - we can perceive colour even when shadows / reflections distort the colour
What are the 4 depth cues?
- binocular cues - each of the eyes have a different view of the world (difference = binocular disparity)
- oculomotor cues - convergence (eyes turn to focus on object) and accommodation (lens changes shape based on object proximity
- monocular (pictorial) cues - interposition, linear perspective and texture gradients
- motion cues - motion parallax (close objects move quicker) and optic flow (close objects are bigger)
What is agnosia?
- failure to recognise objects
What are the 2 subtypes of agnosia?
- apperceptive agnosia - can perceive features individually but not as a whole to name an object, damage to posterior of right hemisphere
- associative agnosia - can combine the features to identify the object but cannot associate the features with knowledge of the object, damage to temporal and occipital of both hemispheres
What is prosopagnosia?
- poor face recognition
What is focussed (selective) attention?
- selecting one input and ignoring all others
- done by eye movements
- central point of attention falls in the central fovea
WEEK 6 - ATTENTION NETWORKS
What is focussed auditory attention?
- select sounds of interest, while ignoring others
- COCKTAIL PARTY PROBLEM -
What is cross-modal attention?
- coordinating information from 2 or more modalities simultaneously
- VENTRILOQUISM EFFECT - sound and visual are close together so brain combines them together, visual field is more dominant
- MCGURK EFFECT - the way the mouth moves tricks the brain into hearing something different
Development of cross-modal attention (Maidment et al., 2015)
- does having visual stimuli improve speech
- having both audio and visual increased accuracy of hearing
What determines how well we can perform two tasks at the same time?
- similarity between task modality (visual vs auditory)
- similarity between responses (manual vs vocal)