Cognitive Psychology Flashcards
The history of modern memory research can be said to begin in __ with __ __.
1885, Hermann Ebinghaus
Ebbinghaus used…to study…
meaningless strings of letters to study the capacity of our memory system
What is the goal of structuralism?
To break down consciousness into its elements or specific mental structures
Edward Titchener belonged to the system of thought called __, and he used the method of __ to study this. How did he do it?
Functionalism, Introspection; he asked subjects to report on their current conscious experiences
Titchener’s work spawned what other systems of thought in response to his work?
Functionalism, behaviourism and gestalt psychology
Titchener was a __ trained psychologist, who also relied on introspection
WUNDT
Noam Chomsky paved the way for modern psychology with a critique of what?
B.F Skinner’s 1957 book called Verbal Behaviour
Chomsky opposed what about B.F Skinner’s position?
He argued against Skinner’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.
What are the three general research methods used in the study of human cognition? Describe them.
1) Reaction time: Elapsed time between a stimulus presentation and the subject’s response to it. Can provide insight into the organization of mental processes (sometimes referred to as mental chronometry)
2) Eye movements: An “on-line” measure of info processing (e.g., can be studied as the subject is performing the tasks)
3) Brain imaging: Used to link various cognitive processes with various parts of the brain.
Describe Ebbinghaus’ famous experiment
- Used nonsense syllables to study memory using himself as a subject
- Would memorize items on the list in the order the appeared on the list. After one list, he would distract himself by trying to learn many other lists.
- He assessed how much he memorized of the original list by using what he called the METHOD OF SAVINGS.
- In the method of savings, after memorizing the initial list, he compared the number of times he had to read the list in order to memorize it. If he memorized it faster than he originally memorized it, he concluded that he had remembered something from the first time.
How did Ebbinghaus calculate the method of savings?
He subtracted the number of trials it took to 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 everything by 100 to come up with a percent.
Lets say it takes you 20 trials to memorize a list. On the next day, you re-memorize the list in 8 trials. You would subtract 8 from 20 and divide the result by 20 and multiply by 100. Your savings in this case would be 60%
By using his method of savings over various time intervals, Ebbinghaus created the __ __, which is…
Forgetting curve, which is essentially a relationship between the number of days between the time that a list was originally learned and the time the list was relearned, and the amount of percent savings that was lost. This is expressed in a graph which suggests that, without practice, we forget rapidly, then at a certain point, forgetting occurs at a much lesser rate. With practice however, the forgetting curve would look different
Ebbinghaus’ study was so influential that, for the next several decades…
psychologists used nonsense syllables when they studied memory for verbal material. For the most part, the study of memory for meaningful material didn’t realy begin until the 1950’s.
What are the three mental processes or stages of memory? Describe
1) Encoding - putting info into memory
2) Storage - retaining info into memory
3) Retrieval - recovering the info in memory
A tip of the tongue phenomenon when you feel like you’re on the verge of remembering something but continue to be unsuccessful in doing so is a problem with __
retrieval
Name and describe the two most common methods of retrieval
1) Recall - Involves reproducing information you have previously been exposed to.
2) Recognition - Realizing that a certain stimulus or event is one that you have seen before.
Short answer and fill in the blank questions test __ method of retrieval
Recall
Multiple choice questions test __ method of retrieval
Recognition
What does the generation-recognition model suggest about accessing memory?
It is an attempt to explain why you can usually recognize more than you can recall. It suggests that recall involves the same mental process involved in recognition, with the addition of another processing step in which you have to generate information rather than simply recognizing the information presented.
Researchers have found that under certain conditions, our memory system varies in effectiveness. What are the three specific order effects covered in the book?
Recency effect - words at end of list remembered best
Primacy effect - words at beginning remember best
Clustering - When asked to recall list of words, ppl tend to recall words belonging to same category (e.g., fruits, dogs, colours)
The stage theory of memory suggests that….
Additionally, what does this theory suggest about order?
there are several different memory systems and that each of these systems has a different function.
The theory also suggests that memories enter the various systems in a specific order.
Name and describe the memory systems of the stage theory of memory.
1) Sensory memory - contains fleeting impressions of sensory stimuli (e.g., visual or iconic memory, auditory (echoic) memory
2) Short-term memory (working memory) - contains information that you attend to, which goes from sensory memory to ST memory
3) Long-term memory - Considered the permanent storehouse of experiences, knowledge and skills
To find out how much info could be retained in sensory memory, early researchers used a method called the __ __ procedure; In this method…
Whole-report procedure; subjects looked for a fraction of a second at a visual display of 9 items. They were then asked to recall as many of the items as they could. On average, subjects could only remember about 4/9 items. Researchers interpreted this as evidence that the capacity of sensory memory was only 4 items.
Researcher __ __ suspected that the whole-report procedure might not be an accurate indication of the capacity of sensory memory. As such, he devised a method called the __ __ procedure; in this method…
George Sperling, partial-report procedure; in this method, Sperling had subjects look at the same number of letters for a fraction of a second (same time as whole-report procedure). However, he asked 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 which row they were to remember beforehand, so the subjects couldn’t focus on just one row. Regardless of which row Sperling asked the subjects to focus on, their recall was nearly perfect, suggesting that the capacity of sensory memory was about 9 items.
In the whole-report procedure, what was happening as the subjects were reporting what they saw?
Their sensory memory of the array was decaying. Sterling’s procedure avoided this.
How long does information last in sensory memory?
a few seconds
How long info remains in ST memory depends on what is done with it. If nothing is done with the information, it stays in ST memory for how long? If the information is rehearsed, how long does it stay in ST memory?
- About 20 seconds
- As long as you keep rehearsing the information (also called maintenance rehearsal)
What did George Miller find out about the amount of information that can be kept in ST memory?
That seven (plus or minus two) pieces, or chunks, of info can be stored in ST memory.
What are chunks in the context of memory?
Meaningful units of info
One of the ways we get info into LT memory is by using __ rehearsal, which involves…
Elaborative, organizing the material and associating it with info you already have in LT memory.
Name and describe the two types of LT memory
1) Procedural memory: Remembering how things are done (e.g., tying shoes, riding a bike)
2) Declarative memory: Remembering explicit information (also called fact memory)
Name and describe the two types of declarative memory
1) Semantic memory: Remembering general knowledge, especially the meaning of words and concepts
2) Episodic memory: Remembering particular events that you have personally experienced
Encoding for verbal material in ST memory tends to be __ or __, rather than __.
Phonological or acoustic, visual. For example, when asked to recall letters from ST memory, confusions tend to occur with letters that sound alike (e.g., D and T) rather than letters that look alike (e.g., D and O).
Items in LT memory are more likely to be encoded on the basis of their __. How is this supported?
meaning. Supported in studies of semantic priming (faster to remember word pairs that were semantically related - nurse-doctor versus nurse-butter)
