Cognitive Psychology Flashcards
Hermann Ebbinghaus
First modern researcher of memory in late 1800s. Used self as a subject to study memory with nonsense syllables.
Edward Titchener
Early structuralist who used introspection to identify forms of consciousness. Trained by Wundt.
Structuralism
Goal is to break consciousness down into its elements/specific mental structures.
Noam Chomsky
Linguist who critiqued BF Skinner saying that speech could not be due to reinforcement due to the creative ways it is used.
Three Research Methods in CogSci
Reaction Time
Eye Movements
Brain Imaging
Method of Savings
Method used by Ebbinghaus. After memorizing the list and then distracting himself, he would see how many times he had to read the list to re-memorize it (assuming the faster he re-memorized it, the more he had remembered).
The Forgetting Curve
Designed by Ebbinghaus. Essentially the curve suggests that we rapidly forget things over the first five days, and then we plateau and forget at a much lesser rate after that.
Mental Processes of Memory
Encoding: putting info into memory
Storage: retaining info in memory
Retrieval: recovering info in memory
Two Methods of Retrieval
Recall: Independently reproducing information you were previously exposed to.
Recognition: Realizing that certain stimulus in is one you have seen before.
The Generation-Recognition Model
Recall task taps the same basic process of retrieval as a recognition task uses.
HOWEVER- recall required the additional step of generating the information rather than just recognizing it.
Clustering
When asked to recall lists, we tend to recall words belonging to the same categories.
Order Effects
Primacy and Recency
Stage Theory of Memory
Asserts that there are several different memory systems and that each system has a different function. Supposes that memory enters each system in a specific order: sensory memory, short term memory (i.e. working memory), and long term memory.
Sensory Memory
Fleeting impressions of sensory stimuli which lasts at most a few seconds.
Types of Sensory Memory
Visual = iconic Auditory = echoic
Whole-Report Procedure
Method used in early memory research to determine what information could be contained in sensory memory. Participants were presented with 9 items on a grid, and researchers presented it quickly then asked what they remembered (usually only about 3-4 items)
Partial Report Procedure
Devised by George Sperling (based off of the whole report procedure) where he asked participants to report a single row of the 9x9 grid (he told them which row after presentation). Recall was nearly perfect- suggesting they had remembered all on the grid. Later this was tried with larger grids, but subjects failed suggesting a 9 item limit.
The reason this worked was that in the whole report procedure, memory decayed quickly for everything, but in the partial report procedure they knew which row to remember before it decayed.
Short Term Memory
If not using short term memory- items remain there for about 20 seconds. However often the information here is rehearsed, and can stay in short term memory for a long time.
Maintenance Rehearsal
When information is rehearsed to remain in long term memory (like repeating a phone number in your head).
How much is kept in Working Memory
7+/-2 chunks of information (determined by George Miller)
Long Term Memory
The ‘permanent’ storehouse of experiences, knowledge and skills.
Elaborative Rehearsal
Organizing the information and associating it with information already in long term memory. Used to move the information from working memory to long term memory.
Types of Long Term Memory
Procedural: remembering how things are done (i.e. typing).
Declarative: remembering explicitly information (i.e. fact memory).
Types of Declarative Memory
Semantic: remembering general knowledge (word meanings, concepts, etc)
Episodic: remembering particular events/episodes you’ve experienced.
Encoding (Short Term v Long Term)
When we remember items, we use different formats. For example, encoding verbal material in short term tends to be phonological, and in long term tends to be meaning based.
Semantic Priming
A semantic priming task is looking at the reaction times of word retrieval, and finds that if words are similar in nature, they are retrieved more quickly, suggesting that they were stored in similar locations.
Semantic Verification Task
Subjects are asked to indicate if a simple statement is true or false. The experimenter measures the time it takes to respond. Patterns of response times will then (theoretically) provide insight into how semantic memory is stored.
Response Latency
How long it takes a subject to respond to a stimuli or question
Spreading Activation Model
Proposed by Collins and Loftus in 1975. Utilized the semantic verification task to make a chart of where they thought different words were placed in a model, with connectors between words being shorter or longer depending on how closely connected they were.
Semantic Feature Comparison Model
Proposed by Smith, Shoben and Rips in early 1970s. This model suggests that concepts are represented by sets of features which are required for that concept, and some which are typical of that concept. Theoretically then on the Semantic verification task, subjects would respond more quickly when item pairs have many/few similarities, and would take longer if there were some overlap, but not total overlap of features.
Decay Theory
Holds that if the information in long term memory is not used/rehearsed it will eventually be forgotten.
Criticism: theory assumes what we learn between encoding and retrieval don’t effect anything.
Inhibition Theory
Suggests that forgetting is due to the activities that have taken place between the original learning and later recall. Two types of inhibition:
Proactive: what you learn earlier interferes with what you learn later
Retroactive: when you forget what you learned earlier as you learn something new.
Encoding Specificity
The assumption that recall will be best if the context at recall approximates the context during the original encoding.
State Dependent Learning
Suggests that recall will be better if your psychological or physical state at the time of recall is the same as the state where you memorized the material.
Mnemonic Devices
Techniques that we use to improve the likelihood that we will remember something.
i.e. chunking
Method of Loci
System of memory where you associate information with a sequence of places which you are familiar.
Sir Frederick Bartlett
Studied memory in famous study called the “War of Ghosts” (a native american folk tale). Bartlett found that when people retold the story they reconstructed it to match their own cultural expectations and schemas for ghost stories
Elizabeth Loftus
Studied eyewitness memories and the ability for eyewitnesses to be influenced by misleading information. Recently, she has studied the accuracy of repressed memories that return later in life.
Zeigarnik Effect
Refers to the tendency to remember incomplete tasks better than completed tasks.
Luchins Water-Jug Problem
Task where subjects are presented with three empty jars (and the capacities of each jar) and are asked to obtain a particular amount of water in one of the jars.
Mental Set
A tendency to keep repeating solutions because they worked in other situations, rather than finding a new solution which is more effective
Functional Fixedness
The inability to use a familiar object in an unfamiliar way.
Creativity
A cognitive ability that results in new ways of viewing problems or situations.
Guilford’s Test of Divergent Thinking
Thinking that involves producing as many creative answers to a single questions as possible.
Guilford used this to test creativity in subjects.
Heuristics
Shortcuts or rules of thumb used to make decisions- often heuristics lead us astray in decision making, but they are also vital to making speedy and effective decisions in our lives.
Tversky and Kahneman
Known for studying the decision making process (and how it can go awry)
Availability Heuristic
Used when we try to decide how likely something is. If we use this heuristic, we make our decision based on how easily similar instances can be imagined.
Representativeness Heuristic
When one categorizes things on the basis of if they fit the stereotypical image of the category.
Base Rate Fallacy
When one uses stereotypical factors rather than actual numerical information about which category is more numerous.
Morphemes
The smallest units of meaning in a language (i.e. walked is two morphemes, “walk” and “ed” since “ed” indicates it’s in the past)
Learning Theory
Believe that language is acquired through conditioning.modeling. (i.e. skinner)
Early Cognitive Development Theory
Believe that language has to do with the child’s capacity for symbolic thought (developing at the end of the sensorimotor period). (proposed by Piaget).
Chomsky’s Grammatical Structure Theories
Structure theories regarding the structure of a sentence.
Surface Structure: the actual work order.
Deep/Abstract Structure: the underlying form that specifies the meaning of the sentence.
Chomsky’s Transformational Rules
Tell us how we can change one structure into another. (aka the set of rules that tell us how to change a sentence to a question, or another type of transformation…)
The Whorfian Hypothesis
AKA The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. Suggests that our perception of reality is determined by the content of our language. (language affects the way we think).
Maccoby and Jacklin
Studied gender differences in linguistic ability and found evidence that verbal abilities are better in girls (this is v controversial though)
Charles Spearman
Suggested that individual differences in intelligence are due to variations in the amount of a general, unitary factor, which he called “g”. He posited also that individuals had differences in ability to perform specific tasks, which he called “s”.
Louis Thurstone
Identified seven abilities he called primary mental abilities (ie numbers, reasoning, verbal comprehension). He analyzed these in a more complex way then “g”, but not completely task specific (so less complex then “s”).
Triarchic Theory
Suggested by Robert Sternberg. Suggests that there are three aspects to intelligence: componential (test-taking), experiential (creativity), and contextual (street smarts).
Theory of Multiple Intelligences
Proposed by Howard Gardner. He defined 7 types of intelligence (i.e. logical, musical, interpersonal, etc). He felt that western culture valued logical and verbal over others since this is what we test on traditional IQ tests.
Cattell’s Two Types of Mental Abilities
Fluid Intelligence: described as the ability to quickly grasp relationships in novel situations and correctly deduce from them. Increases in childhood/teens, plateaus in young adulthood, and declines in advance age.
Crystallized Intelligence: The ability to understand relationships or solve problems that depend on acquired knowledge from experiences/school. Increases throughout lifespan.
Arthur Jensen
Prominent educational psychologist who studies intelligence. He proposes that intelligence (if IQ) was entirely genetic, and you could not teach someone to score higher. He studied how race and IQ interacted, which was super controversial.
McClelland and Rumelhart
Known for publishing a book about information processing, suggesting the parallel distributed process and that information is distributed across the brain and processed in a parallel fashion.
Metacognition/Metamemory
The ability of someone to think about and monitor cognition/memory.
