Exam 2 Flashcards
Some theorists suggest that semantic memory is organized hierarchically by categories. Describe a model of semantic memory that follows a hierarchical organization and identify its strengths and weaknesses.
The hierarchical network model proposes that the memory system avoids storing unnecessary information connections such as cats and have hearts and dogs and have hearts and so forth with all animals. Instead, hearts is stored in connection as a property of all animals at the top of the hierarchy. Individual animal categories like Birds, Cats, and Fish extend from it with their own individual nodes and property links. The strengths of the model include its cognitive economy making it a very simple model. Where facts that apply to one category are all represented only once at a category level. The model also makes a testable hypothesis using the sentence verification technique. The hierarchy of the model describes a level-to-level thought process in which the less “jumps” a person needs to take to get to their desired concept would be demonstrated through a faster reaction time. The opposite would also be shown if the person took many jumps throughout the hierarchy of information until they got to their desired concept; this would be demonstrated by a slower reaction time. However, the typicality effect demonstrates the weaknesses of the model. Based on the model a canary is a bird should demonstrate the exact same reaction time as an ostrich is a bird because both require the same number of “jumps”. However, this is not the case and an ostrich is a bird receives a slower reaction time than a canary is a bird, indicating that strength of association matters more than hierarchical distance.
Explain what is meant by “spreading activation”. Describe an experiment involving priming that illustrates spreading activation in semantic memory.
The spreading activation model suggests that individual concepts (nodes) become activated when you think about that specific concept. The nodes are connected via associative links, where a shorter link indicates a stronger association such that Fire Engine is closely linked to Red and a longer link indicates a weaker association such that Fire Engine is more distantly connected to Car. The activation of a node can spread to its close neighbors, through subthreshold activation or “warming up” the nodes close by through the links, thus thinking of Fire Engine will begin to activate the neighboring nodes by “warming up” Fire and Red. The lexical decision task measured the reaction times of participant’s decision-making of whether two words were related to each other such as bread and butter, or not related such as doctor and mustard. It was hypothesized that when seeing the first-word bread the node for bread would be activated and because bread and butter are so closely associated they should trigger a spread of activation to the node butter therefore, when participants saw the second-word butter they would indicate yes that the words are related at a faster rate than when participants saw unrelated words like doctor and mustard. The results indicated that there was a semantic priming effect such that the specific prior event of seeing the word bread produced a state of readiness for the word butter and thus a faster response rate.
What is the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon and how does that phenomenon present a challenge to the spreading activation model of semantic memory? How can the TOT phenomenon be explained?
The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon is a state in which a person has a strong feeling of knowing a word but they can’t exactly pinpoint what the word is. People can often remember the starting letter of the word and the number of syllables. This presents a challenge to the spreading activation model as the model suggests that when we think of a concept that node becomes activated and spreads activation to other nodes and priming those nodes. In TOT people experience a high level of activation and yet fail to retrieve their target word. A possible explanation for this interference is the transmission deficit in which spread of activation from semantic to phonological system fails due to infrequent use since time of last activation or aging.
How does learning a language influence the ability to perceive spoken sounds? Describe some research involving speakers of different languages, as well as research involving infants, that bears on this question.
Phonemic perception is influenced by the language that one speaks due to top-down processing effects. The top-down cognitive processing uses prior knowledge, expectations, and context which influence perception, attention, and our interpretation of incoming sensory information. Research involving Spanish and English speakers had participants discriminate between the sound /s/ and the sound /z/ in the words ice vs. eyes. The task was easy for English speakers as the sounds were phonemes. However, the task was difficult for Spanish speakers as the sounds were allophones. The task was also performed with Arabic and English speakers and had participants discriminate the /k/ sound in keep vs. cool. The task was difficult for English speakers as the sounds were allophones in English. However, the task was easy for Arabic speakers because the sounds were phonemes in Arabic. Research involving infants presented them with words that were allophones in English and had them discriminate between the /k/ sound in cool vs. keep. Infants learned that after a sound switch a toy show reward would be presented, researchers inferred that if the infant’s head turned before the toy show started then the infant must’ve perceived the sound difference. If the infant turned his head after the toy show started then he did not perceive the sound difference.
Describe the principle of minimal attachment in sentence comprehension. How does minimal attachment apply to the understanding of garden path sentences such as the horse raced past the barn fell?
The garden path model suggests that when we read or listen to a sentence we tend to construct a bottom-up tree model of our understanding. We interpret the sentence as it arrives to us as sensory information. Minimal attachment suggests that the simplest syntactic structure is preferred when analyzing sentences. Such that the sentence structure would consist of a noun phrase and a verb phrase. When reading an ambiguous sentence such as, the horse raced past the barn fell, the reader tends to read the horse as the noun phrase. The ambiguity lies in the word raced as the sentence arrives individuals tend to interpret it as the main verb however, by the end of the sentence they are left confused about what the sentence is trying to express. The reader then has to revise what they just read to form a more complex understanding of how to interpret the sentence. Such as the horse was raced yesterday.
What is linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity? Describe at least two separate research studies involving perceptions of space, color, gender, memory, or morality whose results appear to be consistent with these concepts.
Linguistic determinism is the hypothesis that the structure of language shapes our cognition, such as our perception, memory, thinking and so on. Linguistic relativity is the idea that people who speak different languages have cognitive differences. The language of an aboriginal community in northern Australia is spoken in terms of absolute cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) unlike English in which these directions are only used in spatial scales. A research study compared English speakers and Australian aboriginal speakers. They gave participants images that showed temporal progressions such as a man aging, a crocodile growing, among others. Participants were all tested facing in different cardinal directions. English speakers tend to always arrange the images from left to right. However, the Aboriginal speakers arranged them from east to west. When they were facing south the images would be arranged from left to right and when facing north they would be arranged from right to left. When they faced east the images were arranged coming towards the body. The Aboriginal speakers were never told in which direction they were sitting they already knew. A separate study had English and Spanish speakers watch videos of two guys breaking different objects on purpose and on accident. The participants then had to say which guy had performed which action. Speakers of both languages described the intentional events with the correct agency. However, when it came to remembering who had performed the accidents Spanish speakers were less likely to accurately remember which guy had performed the action. This was not due to poor memory, but because their language did not naturally incorporate the agent of the events.
*** What is the functional equivalency hypothesis of mental imagery? Describe at least two experiments that have investigated the nature of mental imagery and relate their findings back to the functional equivalency hypothesis.
The functional equivalency hypothesis of mental imagery suggests that imagining and perceiving should “compete” with one another, such that imagining should impair processes involved in perception and vice versa. A study had participants detect faint perceptual signals such as dim visual stimuli and faint tones while at the same time, the participants had to imagine a visual image such as a volcano, or an auditory image such as a phone ringing. Their findings indicated that participants did significantly better in detecting visual signals when engaging with visual imagery and similarly for auditory images.
What are demand characteristics and how might they influence the way that participants perform mental imagery tasks? Are the results of mental imagery experiments anything more than responses to demand characteristics?
Demand characteristics are the elements of a research study that convey its true purpose. These may lead participants to behave in a way that they believe they’re supposed to behave. For example, participants in a study that asks them to perform mental rotations may interpret this as, “The experimenter just asked me to scan a long way, and I’d like to make it look like I’m obeying”. Leading participants to perhaps be controlling the timing of their responses. Multiple sources of evidence have helped deal with this concern allowing researchers to conclude that scanning and rotating data are because of how images represent spatial layout. Multiple studies have been conducted in which the experimenters may suggest the idea of mental travel and others in which they don’t suggest this in both cases the same results emerge.
There are few algorithms to guarantee accuracy in decision-making under conditions of uncertainty. Discuss two judgment heuristics that people seem to use when making decisions under conditions of uncertainty; give at least one example of each heuristic.
An availability heuristic is a form of attribute substitution in which the person needs to judge the frequency of a certain type of object or the likelihood of a certain type of event. For this purpose, the person is likely to assess the ease with which examples of the object or event come to mind; this “availability “ of examples is then used as an index of frequency or likelihood.
which is a strategy in which individuals rely on easily assessed information as a proxy for the information they really need. For example, you are trying to travel and can’t decide whether to drive or fly. Instead of considering statistical data the availability heuristic leads you to believe flying is more dangerous because you recall plane crash stories from past media outlets and have a hard time recalling car crash incidents since they don’t tend to receive as much media coverage. The representativeness heuristic capitalizes on the homogeneity of categories, therefore we expect each individual to be representative of the category they are part of overall. We can use this resemblance to judge the likelihood of category membership. You meet someone who drives an expensive car and assume that they must be very successful and wealthy when in reality the car belongs to a friend but because that person shared a characteristic with a larger group you make an assumption about them.
What is the difference between “near transfer” and “far transfer”? Describe a study that used a dual n-back task to investigate far transfer. What weaknesses exist in that study and what results emerge when those weaknesses are addressed?
Near transfer trains one process and the learned skill generalizes to tasks that use the same trained processes whereas, far transfer is the training of one process and the learned skill generalizes to tasks that use different processes. A study that used a dual n-back task had participants in two conditions: a working memory training group and a no-contact control group. The participants were tasked with responding whenever they saw a black square appear in the same spot 2 screens before in addition to having a dual visual-auditory Back-Task. As the participants mastered the task it got progressively harder. The weakness of the study was that there were procedural differences between the control group and the experimental group and that intelligence was tested by using only one test. When those weaknesses are taken into account in a carefully designed study the results reveal little evidence of far transfer on working memory training.
Some studies using Wason’s four-card selection task suggest that people are not very good at conditional reasoning. Other studies, however, indicate that people can be quite good at this task. How can the theory of evolution via natural selection explain this variability in performance?
Based on evolutionary theory, mental processes evolve over time and they become adaptations that promote genetic survival, which have been passed down through generations. However, these adaptations were formed in an ancestral environment much different than the one we live in today. Modern technologies such as the internet did not exist. Early humans likely had to reason about survival issues such as finding resources, social exchanges, and social contracts such as betrayal and cheating. Therefore, early humans who were skilled in this kind of reasoning were able to detect cheaters. Such that they weren’t stripped of their resources, power, or status. They then had a survival advantage and were able to mate with others and pass on their traits. If this theory is true then certain individuals would be skilled in their cognitive abilities for reasoning about social exchanges and social contracts.
A novice carpenter wants to build a birdhouse with the wood, tools, and nails that she has nearby. Describe how she may achieve this goal using (a) a means-ends approach, and (b) an analogy. How would developing expertise in her carpentry knowledge and skills help her use one of these strategies more effectively?
She may think, I want to build a birdhouse. Her initial state is that of having materials available but not knowing how to build a birdhouse. The goal state is that of having a constructed bird house using the tools she has. What’s the difference between what I have and what I want? A lack of knowledge. What changes this state? Gaining knowledge on how to build birdhouses. This can be accomplished by reading birdhouse building books or other online resources for instructions on how to build. At that point the difference between what she has and what she wants would be a difference of time. She may choose to use a simple design or an intricate one to achieve her goal. She may also use an analogy strategy, she may already have previous knowledge in constructing something similar such as a wooden box. The target problem is to build a birdhouse. The source problem would be using previous knowledge from building a wooden box to apply to building a birdhouse. Both a wooden box and birdhouse require cutting and joining pieces of wood together with nails, however there are also differences. A birdhouse requires more specific dimensions and requires more features than a wooden box. She will be able to use the same tools and techniques in the birdhouse scenario. Gaining more knowledge in both scenarios would aid in problem solving because it would allow the novice carpenter to represent the problem in higher order units rather than focusing on the details and thus free up cognitive resources to analyze the problems’ deep structure.
One idea about problem-solving is that taking a break allows us to work on the problem unconsciously and the solution is revealed to us when we return to the problem and tackle it again. Evaluate this claim of incubation using research on puzzle-solving.
Research involving working on a problem unconsciously while taking a break is not fully supported however, research points more towards forgetting. The forgetting fixation hypothesis suggests that forgetting the mental set aids in problem solving. In a study, participants were presented with panels with a familiar word or phrase and each panel came with a set of clues however, many of the clues were meant to be misleading. The experimental group worked on each puzzle for 30 seconds followed by an interruption and then returned to the puzzle for another 30 seconds. The control group had a minute to work on each puzzle. The interruption did demonstrate improvement in the puzzle problem solving in the experimental group. The researchers also tested all participants memory for the misleading clues. They found that the experimental group who had received the incubation period had forgotten the misleading clues which, seemed to lead to an improved performance in problem solving.
What is the context-dependent fixation hypothesis that Smith and Beda described in the article that we read together? Explain how that hypothesis was tested in one of their experiments. Did the results support that hypothesis? If so, how? If not, why not?
The context dependent fixation hypothesis states that fixated thoughts can become associated with the context of the failed attempts, so reinstating the fixation context continues to block solutions, therefore, changing the context may promote new ideas on how to solve the problem. The participants were tasked to memorize 24 triads of fixation words and the background that the triads were superimposed on. They were then asked to recall the triad of words according to the background presented and write down words they got wrong. Finally a remote associations test and retest was performed where participants were asked to solve problems and each problem was tested twice. The first problem was presented with the context photo corresponding to a word triad. The second test was either also on a fixation context background or on a completely new background that hadn’t been seen ever in this study. The results were consisted with the context dependent fixation hypothesis. Initially fixated RAT problems were solved at a higher rate when retests were given a dely, as an incubation effect and when the restests were given in new contexts, as the context dependent incubation effect.
