Cognitive Psychology

Question 1

Creativity

Answer 1

A cognitive ability that results in new ways of viewing problems or situations. There isn’t much emperical evidence about the creative process. The most famous attempt to measure creativity is Guilford’s test of divergent thinking.

Question 2

Stage Theory of Memory

Answer 2

Has been very influential in cognitive psychology. Holds that there are three different memory systems and that each system has a different function. Furthermore, the theory suggests that memories enter the systems in a specific order. The three memory systems are called sensory memory, short-term (or working) memory, and long-term memory.

Question 3

Elizabeth Loftus

Answer 3

Has studied eyewitness memories and the tendency for eyewitnesses to be influenced or confused by misleading information. She has found that much of eyewitness memory (and testimony) can be erroneous for myriad reasons. Her work has been influential in both legal and psychological fields. More recently, she has studied the accuracy of repressed memories that return later in life. Together with Allan Collins, Elizabeth Loftus devised the spreading activation model of memory.

Question 4

When did the study of memory for meaningful material begin?

Answer 4

The study by Hermann Ebbinghaus was so influential that for the next several decades, when psychologists studied memory for verbal material, they tended to use nonsense syllables. For the most part, although there were exceptions, the study of memory for meaningful material didn’t really begin until the 1950s.

Question 5

The 3 Mental Processes
Involved in Memory

Answer 5

• Encoding: putting information into memory
• Storage: retaining information in memory over time
• Retrieval: recovery of stored material at a later time; the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, where you feel on the verge of remembering something but continue to be unsuccessful in doing so, is a problem with retrieval

Question 6

3 General Research Methods

of Cognitive Psychology

Answer 6

• Reaction time (or chronometry): the measurement of the time elapsed between the presentation of a stimulus and the subject’s response to it
• Eye movements: have been used to study reading and language comprehension; especially useful because eye movements are an “on-line” measure––that is, they can be measured as the subject is actually performing tasks
• Brain imaging: has become increasingly important as researchers have tried to associate specific cognitive processes with specific parts of the brain

Question 7

Capacity of Short-Term Memory

Answer 7

George Miller found that 7 (+ or - 2) pieces, or chunks, of information can be stored in short-term memory. Chunks are meaningful units of information. Chunking allows much more “raw information” to be stored in short-term memory than would otherwise be possible.

Question 8

2 Types of Rehearsal

Answer 8

• Maintenance Rehearsal: Repeating the information; used to keep the information in short-term memory (this is where chunking comes in handy)
• Elaborative Rehearsal: Organizing the information and associating it with information already in long-term memory; used to get the information into long-term memory

Question 9

Partial-Report Procedure

Answer 9

Method devised by George Sperling to test the capacity of sensory memory. Like earlier researchers, Sperling used a 3x3 matrix of letters flashed for a fraction of a second. However, unlike earlier researchers, he asked the subjects to report only one row of the array. Immediately after the presentation of the array of letters, a high, medium, or low tone was presented, indicating to the subjects which row to recall. The subjects didn’t know beforehand what row they had to recall, so they couldn’t focus on just one row. It turned out that, regardless of which row Sperling asked for, the subject’s recall was nearly perfect, suggesting that the capacity of sensory memory was at least 9 items. In fact, other experiments with larger arrays have confirmed that the capacity of sensory memory is ~ 9 items.

Question 10

Whole-Report Procedure

Answer 10

Method used by early researchers to find out how much information could be retained in sensory memory. Subjects looked for a fraction of a second at a visual display of 9 items (such as a 3x3 array of letters). They were then asked to recall as many of the items as they could. On average, subjects could remember only about 4 of the 9 items. Researchers interpreted this as evidence that the capacity of sensory memory was only 4 items. However, a young researcher by the name of George Sperling suspected this might not be accurate…

Question 11

Clustering

Answer 11

Memories are naturally “clustered” into related groupings. For example, if asked to memorize a list of words containing animals, fruits, and colors, you would probably break the list down into 3 clusters, and when asked to recall the list, you would probably state the words in groups that go together.

Question 12

Metapsychology

Answer 12

“Meta” refers to the ability to reflect upon something. Metacognition and metamemory refer to a person’s ability to think about and monitor cognition and memory, respectively.

Question 13

Learning Theory of Language Development

Answer 13

Holds that language is acquired through classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and/or modeling. B. F. Skinner was a proponent of this perspective.

Question 14

Syntax

Answer 14

Deals with the grammatical arrangement of words in sentences.

Question 15

J. P. Guilford’s Test of Divergent Thinking

Answer 15

The most famous attempt to measure creativity. The test-taker is presented with an object and asked to brainstorm as many possible uses for the object as possible.

Question 16

Noam Chomsky

Answer 16

A linguist who paved the way for modern cognitive psychology with his critique of B. F. Skinner’s 1957 book Verbal Behavior. Chomsky opposed the behaviorist’s position that speech is best explained by operant conditioning and that language is acquired by reinforcement. Chomsky argued that since children say things that they could not have heard adults say (e.g., errors in growth), and that since even adults use language in novel and creative ways, speech could not possibly be due to reinforcement. Chomsky believed that language study is the most viable route to understanding the mind. He is credited with inspiring much work on cognition.

Question 17

J. P. Guilford

Answer 17

Devised divergent thinking test to measure creativity. Coined the terms convergent and divergent production. Convergent production is the deductive generation of the best single answer to a problem. Divergent production is the creative generation of multiple answers to a problem.

Question 18

Noam Chomsky’s Work

Answer 18

Chomsky critiqued the behaviorist perspective on language, and proposed a nativist theory of language acquisition. Because children across the world produce speech so early (12-18 months) and become fluent by about 5 years, Chomsky believed there must be some sort of innate, biologically based mechanism for language acquisition. Chomsky proposed a language acquisition device (LAD), which is built-in advanced knowledge of rule structures in language. He elaborated a theory of grammar, which among other concepts involves a distinction betweendeepandsurface grammatical structure, andtransformational rules.

Question 19

Howard Gardner

Answer 19

Created theory of multiple intelligences, with 7 abilities defined: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spacial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic,interpersonal, andintrapersonal. Argues that Western culture values linguistic and logical-mathematical over the others (these are the two abilities tested for by traditional IQ tests).

Question 20

Long-Term Memory

Answer 20

The “permanent” storehouse of your experiences, knowledge, and skills. Information can remain in long-term memory indefinitely. One of the ways we get information into long-term memory is by elaborative rehearsal, which involves organizing the material and associating it with information already in long-term memory.

Question 21

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Answer 21

In 1885, kicked off modern memory research. His unusual experiments are among the most well known in the field of psychology. He used meaningless strings of letters to study the capacity of our memory system.

Question 22

Short-Term Memory

Answer 22

Information that you attend to goes from your sensory memory into your short-term / working memory. Short-term memory can be thought of as the link between our rapidly changing sensory memory and the more lasting long-term memory. How long information remains in short-term memory depends on what is done with it. If nothing is done with the information, it will remain in short-term memory for only ~ 20 seconds. However, if the information is rehearsed, it can stay in short-term memory for a relatively long time, as long as you keep rehearsing the information. This is called maintenance rehearsal.

Question 23

Cognitive Development Theory

(Jean Piaget)

of Language Development

Answer 23

Language development has to do with the child’s capacity for symbolic / representational thought, which develops toward the end of the sensorimotor period. Language continues to develop according to the child’s cognitive level. For example, the acquisition of comparison terms like “more than” or “less than” occurs at about the same time that cognition develops from preoperational to concrete operational thought.

Question 24

Factor Analysis

Answer 24

A statistical method used to describe variability among observed, correlated variables in terms of a potentially lower number of unobserved variables called “factors.”

Question 25

Transformational Rules

Answer 25

Transformational rules tell us how we can change one linguistic structure into another. For example, the sentences “The house is green” and “Is the house green?” are related by a transformational rule indicating methods for changing a statement into a question.

Question 26

Sir Frederic Bartlett

Answer 26

(1886 - 1969) Conducted a classic study of memory involving the “War of the Ghosts,” a Native American folk tale. Bartlett found that subjects reconstructed the story in line with their own culture, expectations, and schema for a ghost story. In other words, prior knowledge and expectations influence recall.

Question 27

Semantic Feature-Comparison Model

Answer 27

The Semantic Feature-Comparison Model was proposed by Edward Smith, Edward Shoben, and Lance Rips in the early 1970s. Concepts are associated with sets of features, some of which are required and some of which are merely “typical.” In the semantic verification task, if there is much overlap between the lists of features, then subjects should respond TRUE quickly. If there is no overlap, or very little overlap, subjects should respond FALSE quickly. On the other hand, if there is “some” overlap, it should take longer to reach a decision.

Question 28

Louis Leon Thurstone

Answer 28

(1887 - 1955) Identified 7 abilities which he called primary mental abilities: verbal comprehension, word fluency, number facility, spatial visualization, associative memory, perceptual speed, and reasoning. Used factor analysis with factors more specific than g but more general than s.

Question 29

Allan Paivio’s Dual-Code Hypothesis

Answer 29

Another theory of memory, according to which information can be encoded (i.e. stored) in 2 ways: visually and verbally. Abstract information tends to be encoded verbally, whereas concrete information tends to be encoded both visually (i.e. as an image) and verbally. For example, the word “virtue” would be encoded verbally while the word “elephant” would be encoded both visually and verbally.

Question 30

Recency Effect and Primacy Effect

(i.e., Order Effects)

Answer 30

When asked to memorize a list of words, those words presented at the end of the list are remembered best. This is called the recency effect. The items presented first are also remembered fairly well, although not as well as things presented last. This effect is called the primacy effect. It’s the stuff in the middle that we most often forget.

Question 31

Generation-Recognition Model

Answer 31

According to the generation-recognition model, a recall task taps the same basic process of accessing information in memory as does a recognition task. However, a recall task requires an additional processing step. You have to generate information rather than simply recognize information presented.

Question 32

The 2 most common methods of memory retrieval

Answer 32

• Recall: involves independently reproducing the information that you have been previously exposed to; short-answer and fill-in-the-blank questions tend to test recall
• Recognition: involves realizing that a certain stimulus event is one you have seen or heard before; multiple-choice questions tend to test recognition

Question 33

Method of Savings

Answer 33

Method used by Hermann Ebbinghaus in his memory experiments. After initially memorizing the list, he compared the number of times he had to read the list in order to re-memorize it. If he re-memorized the list faster than he originally memorized it, he concluded that he had remembered something from the first time. To quantify the amount of savings, Ebbinghaus subtracted the number of trials it took to re-memorize the list from the number of trials it originally took to memorize the list. He then divided this quantity by the original number of trials and multiplied the fraction by 100 to get a percent.

Question 34

Memory is NOT a Tape Recorder

Answer 34

Memory is much more complex than that; what comes out doesn’t necessarily look like what went in. Memory is the result of a dynamic interplay between what we experience and what we already know. An important concept here is schema (the plural form is schemata).

Question 35

Schema (plural Schemata)

Answer 35

Schemata are conceptual frameworks we use to organize our knowledge. We interpret our experiences, and therefore remember them in terms of our existing schemata. Trying to make our experiences fit into our existing schemata can lead to distortions in our memories. Furthermore, if we have a tough time matching up our experiences with a schema, we will have difficulty remembering them.

Question 36

Inhibition Theory

Answer 36

Much modern research on long-term memory has focused on forgetting. One such theory, inhibition theory, suggests that forgetting is due to the activities that have taken place between original learning and later attempted recall. There are two basic types of inhibition: retroactive and proactive.

Question 37

Retroactive vs. Proactive Inhibition

Answer 37

Retroactive inhibition occurs when you forget what you learned earlier as you learn something new. In proactive inhibition, what you learned earlier interferes with what you learn later.

Question 38

The Method of Loci

Answer 38

A mnemonic device in which you associate information with some sequence of places with which you are familiar.

Question 39

Functional Fixedness

Answer 39

The inability to use a familiar object in an unfamiliar way.

Question 40

Mental Set

Answer 40

A tendency to approach situations in the same way that worked in the past.

Question 41

Phonemes

Answer 41

The smallest sound units of language. For example, the word “field” consists of 4 phonemes: the “f” sound, the “e” sound, the “l” sound, and the “d” sound.

Question 42

Availability Heuristic

Answer 42

Used when we try to decide how likely something is based on how easily examples come to mind.

Question 43

Morphemes

Answer 43

The smallest units of meaning in a language. For example, the word “walked” consists of 2 morphemes: “walk,” indicating action, and “ed,” indicating that the action took place in the past.

Question 44

Semantics

Answer 44

Deals with the meaning of words and sentences.

Question 45

Base-Rate Fallacy (or Base-Rate Neglect)

Answer 45

Using new information about a specific case (for example, an eye-witness report) while ignoring what is more broadly known to be true, i.e. ignoring the statistical “base-rate.”

Question 46

Representativeness Heuristic

Answer 46

Involves categorizing things on the basis of whether they fit the prototypical, stereotypical, or representative image of the category.

Question 47

Heuristics

Answer 47

Shortcuts, or rules of thumb, for making decisions.

Question 48

Decay Theory

Answer 48

An early explanation for why we forget, according to which, if the information in long-term memory is not used or rehearsed, it will eventually be forgotten. One of the problems with this theory is that it assumes that what you’ve learned in the time that has elapsed between memory formation and attempted retrieval makes no difference. However, we now know that it does.

Question 49

Allan Collins and Elizabeth Loftus

Answer 49

Devised the spreading activation model of memory.

Question 50

Mnemonic Devices

Answer 50

Techniques that we use to improve the likelihood that we will remember something. One example is chunking. Another example is the method of loci.

Question 51

Deep (or Abstract)
vs.
Surface Grammatical Structure

Answer 51

The surface structure of a sentence is the actual word order of the words in the sentence. The deep or abstract structure is an underlying form that specifies the meaning of the sentence. For example, the following sentences all have different surface structures but similar deep structures:

1. The boy picked up the book
2. The boy picked the book up
3. The book was picked up by the boy

Furthermore, sometimes sentences with the same surface structure have different meanings. For example, “They are eating apples” can mean that “some people are eating apples,” or that “those apples are for eating.”

Question 52

Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin

Answer 52

While gender studies remain controversail, Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin found evidence of better verbal abilities in girls in their studies.

Question 53

Types of Long-Term Memory

Answer 53

• Procedural memory: remembering how to do things
• Declarative memory: remembering explicit information
  
  • Semantic memory: remembering general knowledge
  • Episodic memory: remembering particular events you have personally experienced

Question 54

Spreading Activation Model of Semantic Memory

Answer 54

Proposed by Allan Collins and Elizabeth Loftus in 1975. Every conecpt is a node in a web. The closer the distance between two concepts, the closer the words are related in semantic memory. For example, “ambulance” and “fire-engine” are in general more closely related than “ambulance” and “street.” So in the semantic verification task, subjects should respond to questions about “ambulances” and “fire-engines” more quickly than to questions about “ambulances” and “streets.”

Question 55

Semantic Verification Task

Answer 55

Method used to investigate how semantic memory is organized. Subjects are asked to indicate whether or not a simple statement presented is true. The experimenter measures the time it takes the subject to respond, or the response latency. The idea is that the pattern of response latencies will provide information on how semantic knowledge is stored in memory.

Question 56

Raymond Cattell

(research on intelligence)

Answer 56

(1905 - 1998) Divided mental abilities into two major types: fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is the ability to quickly grasp relationships in novel situations and make correct deductions from them. Crystallized intelligence is the ability to understand relationships or solve problems that depend on knowledge acquired as a result of schooling or other life experiences. Argued that crystallized intelligence increases throughout the lifespan, whereas fluid intelligence gradually increases throughout childhood and adolescence, levels off in young adulthood, and begins a steady decline with advanced age.

Question 57

Raymond Cattell

(overview)

Answer 57

(1905 - 1998) British / American psychologist whose work explored the basic dimensions of personality and temperament, the range of cognitive abilities, the dynamic dimensions of motivation and emotion, the clinical dimensions of abnormal personality, patterns of group syntality (disposition) and social behavior, applications of personality research to psychotherapy and learning theory, predictors of creativity and achievement, and many multivariate research methods for investigating and measuring these domains. As a personality researcher, Cattell was a trait theorist; he used factor analysis to identify 16 basic traits, or relatively stable reaction tendencies, that constitute the building blocks of personality. As an intelligence researcher, Cattell divided mental abilities into two major types: fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. He argued that crystallized intelligence increases throughout the lifespan, while fluid intelligence gradually increases throughout childhood and adolescence, levels off in young adulthood, and begins a steady decline with advanced age.

Question 58

Perceptual Set,

also called

Perceptual Expectancy

Answer 58

A predisposition to perceive things in a certain way.

Question 59

Encoding of Verbal Material in

Short-Term vs. Long-Term Memory

Answer 59

Encoding of verbal material in short-term memory is likely to be based on phonology (i.e., sounds). Encoding of verbal material in long-term memory is likely to be based on meaning.

Question 60

Edward Titchener

Answer 60

(1867 - 1927) Belonged to the system of thought referred to as structuralism. The goal of structuralism was to break consciousness down into elements, or specific mental structures. To accomplish this, Titchener used the method of introspection: he asked subjects to report on their current conscious experiences. He studied the higher mental processes, and he did so in a laboratory setting. Titchener’s work spawned three other systems of thought in reaction to structuralism: 1) functionalism, 2) behaviorism, and 3) Gestalt psychology. Titchener trained under Wilhelm Wundt, who also relied on the method of introspection.

Question 61

The Experiments of Hermann Ebbinghaus

Answer 61

(1850 - 1909) Used nonsense syllables (for example, QAS and CEG) to study memory using himself as subject. He would memorize the items in the list, one at a time and in the order they appeared on the list. After one list, he distracted himself by trying to learn many other such lists. Ebbinghaus then measured how much of the original list he remembered by using what he called the method of savings. By using this method over various time intervals, Ebbinghaus came up with his forgetting curve. The horizontal axis indicates the number of days between the time the list was originally learned and the time the list was relearned. In general, the percent savings would originally decrease rapidly, but then would reach a plateau after which further decrease in percent savings would be slow.

Question 62

The 3 levels of

Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart’s

Levels-of-Processing Theory, also called

Depth-of-Processing Theory

Answer 62

• Physical (visual): focusing on the appearance, size, and shape of the information
• Acoustical: focusing on the sound combinations of words
• Semantic: focusing on the meaning of words; also, connecting the information with other information in memory

These three ways demand different amounts of mental effort. “Physical” demands very little effort, “acoustical” demands more effort, and “semantic” (the deepest level) demands the most effort. The deeper the processing, and the greater the effort, the better your memory of the material will be.

Question 63

Set

Answer 63

A set is a group of expectations that shape experience by making people especially sensitive to specific kinds of information.

Question 64

Sensory Memory

Answer 64

Sensory memory contains fleeting impressions of sensory stimuli. Visual memory is sometimes called iconic memory, and auditory memory is sometimes called echoic memory. Information does not last long in sensory memory; at most, for a few seconds.

Question 65

Abraham S. Luchins

Answer 65

(1914 - 2005) Used the water-jar problem to study the effect of mental sets on problem solving. In this task, subjects are presented with three empty jars and a list of capacities of each jar, and are asked to obtain a particular amount of water in one of the jars. (Abraham S. Luchins was one of the most important American Gestalt psychologists and a pioneer of group psychotherapy.)

Question 66

James McClelland

and

David Rumelhart

Answer 66

Accounts of human information processing used to assume that the brain processed information serially (that it performs one stage of processing at a time). In the mid-1980s, James McClelland and David Rumelhart published a two-volume book about parallel-distributed processes (PDP), proposing that information processing is distributed across the brain and is carried out in a parallel fashion. James McClelland is not to be confused with David McClelland, who identified a personality trait referred to as the need for achievement (N-Ach).

Question 67

Arthur Jensen

Answer 67

(1923 - 2012) Prominent educational psychologist who studied intelligence. Claimed that intelligence as measured by IQ tests is almost entirely genetic and that you cannot teach someone to score higher on IQ tests. Focused on differences in IQ score across racial lines, and provoked a great deal of controversy with this line of inqiury.

Question 68

Fergus Craik

and

Robert Lockhart

Answer 68

Developed the levels of processing theory of memory, sometimes called the depth of processing theory, as an alternative to the stage theory of memory. This theory suggests that what determines how long you will remember material is not what memory system it gets into (they suggest there is only one memory system), but the way in which you process the material. They postulate three levels on which information can be processed: physical (visual), acoustical, and semantic. Wikipedia lists four sensory “modes”: vision, hearing, touch, and smell.

Question 69

Amos Tversky

Answer 69

Psychologist who has investigated how our decision-making process can sometimes go awry. Specifically, investigated the use of heuristics in decision making; studied the availability heuristic and the representativeness heuristic.

Question 70

Daniel Kahneman

Answer 70

Psychologist who has investigated how our decision-making process can sometimes go awry. Specifically, investigated the use of heuristics in decision making; studied the availability heuristic and the representativeness heuristic.

Question 71

Zeigarnik Effect

Answer 71

The tendency to remember incomplete tasks better than completed tasks. For example, it’s easier to remember chores you haven’t completed than the chores you have completed.

Question 72

Encoding Specificity

Answer 72

Encoding specificity is the assumption that recall will be best if the context at recall approximates the context during the original encoding. A special case of encoding specificity is state-dependent learning. State-dependent learning suggests that recall will be better if your psychological or physical state at the time of recall is the same as your state when you memorized the material.

Question 73

Charles Spearman

Answer 73

(1863 - 1945) Suggested that individual differences in intelligence are largely due to variations in the amount of a general, unitary factor, which he galled “g.” Also posited a second factor to describe individual differences in ability in performing specific tasks; he called this factor “s.”

Question 74

Benjamin Whorf

Answer 74

Proposed the Whorfian Hypothesis, also called the linguistic relativity hypothesis, which suggests that our perception of reality is determined by the content of language. In other words, language affects the way we think and not the other way around. This is a somewhat controversial notion, and there is evidence both for and against it.

Question 75

Robert Sternberg

Answer 75

Developed the triarchic theory of intelligence:

• Componential: analytical giftedness / academic proficiency
• Experiential: creativity / intellectual flexibility
• Contextual: practical street smarts / business sense

Sternberg also developed the triangular theory of love:

• Intimacy
• Passion
• Commitment