final exam

Question 1

memory, different abilities, three systems

Answer 1

MEMORY: retention of information over time

memory reflects different abilities (its not just one thing)

** memory is RECONSTRUCTED not REPRODUCED **
- you dont reproduce memories exactly how they happen, you rebuild them
- memory is very fluid
- Memories change everytime you remember them and you rebuild them
- Photographic memory doesn’t exist?

3 general systems:
- 1) Sensory memory
- 2) Short-term memory
- 3) Long-term memory

Question 2

memory system overview

Answer 2

Each system differs in SPAN/capacity and DURATION

Question 3

sensory memory (span, duration)

Answer 3

SENSORY MEMORY: holds sensory information (very briefly) so it can be transferred to short-term memory
- Short duration, but large capacity
- Each sense has its own system
- Iconic (vision, ½ a second long)
- Echoic (hearing, 2-4 seconds)
- Allows more elaborate perceptual processing

Question 4

short-term memory (span, duration, decay, interference)

Answer 4

SHORT-TERM MEMORY: holds information temporarily in your mind
- Aka working memory
- Duration of information lasts about 20-30 seconds (without rehearsing) (because you’re constantly refreshing what you’re thinking about from moment to moment)
- Capacity is limited to 5-9 items
- DECAY: short term memories fade away after a while when untouched
INTERFERENCE: short term memories disappear because our memories get in the way of each other.

Question 5

long-term memory (explicit + implicit)

Answer 5

LONG-TERM MEMORY: information acquired across lifespan
- Perhaps unlimited (?) duration and capacity
- Different types

1) EXPLICIT/DECLARATIVE LONG-TERM MEMORY: memory that is consciously recalled
- EPISODIC: events in our lives we’ve consciously experienced (events you’ve consciously lived through first-hand) (e.g. remembering what you wore yesterday)
- SEMANTIC: facts of the world (knowledge and concepts) (e.g. 9/11)
- These two divisions exist in different parts of the brain because you can have one and not the other
- Episodic memories can turn into semantic memories

2) IMPLICIT/NON-DECLARATIVE LONG-TERM MEMORY: memory that does not require conscious thought
- PROCEDURAL: habits and how to do things (skills and actions) (e.g. playing piano without thinking about it) (e.g. tying your shoes)
- PRIMING: exposure to a stimulus influences future response to a different stimulus (information you’re exposed to earlier influences what information you recall later on) (e.g. imagining the colour yellow so you think of banana)

Question 6

primacy and recency

Answer 6

Tendency to remember different words based on where they are on the list (beginning or end) because of short and long term memory

PRIMACY: remembering things at the start of a list well (long-term affects?)

RECENCY: remembering things at the end of a list well (short-term effects?)

Question 7

3 memory processes

Answer 7

1. ENCODING
2. STORAGE
3. RETRIEVAL

Question 8

memory process 1: encoding (attention + mnemonics)

Answer 8

1. ENCODING: process of getting information into our memory

ATTENTION
- Unless you pay attention, it won’t be encoded (it won’t encode to long-term memory) (e.g. what direction does the sail face on a dime?)

MNEMONICS
- Learning aids/strategies that enhance later recall (e.g. BEDMAS)

Question 9

memory process 2: storage (engrams + consolidation + schemas purpose in future situations)

Answer 9

2. STORAGE: maintaining information over time in memory

ENGRAMS
- Physical trace of memory in the brain (the memory itself)
- Physical changes in our brain as a result of experience (memory traces)
- Structural + functional changes in our CNS as a result of experience

CONSOLIDATION
- Stabilizes memory traces in CNS

SCHEMAS: Mental models or knowledge structures (e.g. what a sofia is, how to order at a restaurant)
- Gained through experience (the general idea of an object is encoded in your CNS) (e.g. you know what a car deos even though you dont remember every single car you’ve ever seen)
- Frames of reference for interpreting new situations (knowledge you have for the new observation of an object)

Question 10

memory process 3: retrieval ( recall + recognition + retrieval cue)

Answer 10

3. RETRIEVAL: accessing information when you need it
   Whatever circumstance you’re in when encoding, that’s the best circumstance to be in for retrieval
   - Reactivation or reconstruction of memories from storage

2 types:
- RECALL: generating remembered information on your own (e.g. generating the correct response on short answer)
- RECOGNITION: selecting previously remembered information from several options (e.g. recognizing the correct multiple choice option)

• RETRIEVAL CUES: hints that make it easier for us to recall informationE

Question 11

encoding and retrieval (context-dependeant, state-dependent, and mood-dependenet memory)

Answer 11

CONTEXT DEPENDENT MEMORY: match in physical/external context between encoding and retrieval
- e.g. where you learn information is where you’ll retrieve it best
- e.g. divers encode on load, recall best on land, encode underwater, recall best underwater

STATE-DEPENDENT MEMORY: match in internal/mental context between encoding and retrieval
- e.g. learning sober/drunk vs recalling sober/drunk

MOOD-DEPENDENT MEMORY: match in mood between encoding and retrieval
- e.g. if you learn it happy then your best recall is when youre happy

Question 12

Karl Lashley

Answer 12

ENGRAM: physical changes in our brain as a result of experience (memory traces)

• Tried to find where engrams are stored
• Trained rats to run mazes
• Create lesions in the brain
• No one area when lesioned created memory problems

LEARNED ABOUT MEMORY THAT:
- Engrams are not stored in a single place, but they’re distributed in the brain

Question 13

Donald Hebb (LTP + LTD + affect on synapse)

Answer 13

• Lashley’s student
• LTP and LTD represent enduring changes in synaptic strength
• Basis of memory relies on how synapses and neurotransmitters work together
• When a pair of neurons are stimulated at the same time, they fire together
• the more you stimulate a pair of neurons so they’re firing together, the more action potentials are happening at the same time, and cause changes in th eysnapse itself such that it installs more neurotransmitters itself and synapses, or uninstall those things with LTD

LONG-TERM POTENTATION (LTP): strengthening of connections between two neurons after they are repeatedly activated
- increases the efficacy of synaptic transmission
- “Neurons that fire together wire together”
- The more a pair of neurons is stimulated the more action potentials that pair fires together, increasing the amount of neurotransmitters released into the synaptic cleft which results in enhanced learning

• Neurons that fire together lead to an increase in vesicles containing neurotransmitter, and more receptors on the post-synaptic dendrite

LONG-TERM DEPRESSION (LTD): weakening of connections between two neurons after they are both activated
- reduces the efficacy of synaptic transmission

Question 14

hippocampus (where and what it is + its role in memory)

Answer 14

• Memories are stored across the entire brain
• Hippocampus acts as the “memory index” in temporal lobe
• Takes in information before it installs it into the cortex

Question 15

synaptic theory of memory

Answer 15

SYNAPTIC THEORY OF MEMORY: memories as relative weights (connection strength) between neurons
- the storage of information in the brain is based on changes to the connections between neurons

Question 16

brain regions and types of memories (hippocampus + cerebellum + prefrontal cortex)

Answer 16

Hippocampus:
- codes EXPLICIT memories
- Forming new memories
- In charge of explicit memory

Cerebellum:
- related to IMPLICIT memories

Prefrontal cortex:
- semantic memory
- working/short-term memory

Entire cortex:
- Forms of EXPLICIT memory

Question 17

H.M. and Amnesia (anterograde amnesia + retrograde amnesia)

Answer 17

H.M. was a patient diagnosed with anterograde amnesia
- Had his bilateral temporal lobe (two hypocampi) removed due to seizures
- Brenda Milner discovered H.M. and treated him with anterograde amnesia

AMNESIA: loss or disorder of memory

ANTEROGRADE AMNESIA amnesia: inability to form new long-term memories

RETROGRADE AMNESIA: can’t access old memories

H.M. performed the drawing star from mirror task three days in a row and with each day he showed less mistakes

• This proved evidence of learning (his implicit memory- cerebellum, was still intact)

Question 18

Elizabeth Loftus + Misinformation effect

Answer 18

MISINFORMATION EFFECT: creating fictitious memories by providing misleading information after the event takes place

Stop sign vs yield sign experiment
- Influence of verbs: The severity of the verb made people misrememebr the speeds they saw the car moving
- Changed the verb to describe what happened: contacted smashed or hit (agressive words + fast speed) vs bumped or collide (gentle words + slow speed)

Lost in the mall example
- Its possible to remember information that didn’t happen

• All of her experiments proved that memories can be altered

Question 19

factors that affect eyewitness testimony (confidence, race, fixation on weapons)

Answer 19

• Mistaken eyewitness testimonies
• Testimonies are less accurate when the accused is a different race
• Testimonies are better at the time of alleged crime, and worse as time goes on
• People fixate on weapons, not a person’s appearance

Question 20

flashbulb memories

Answer 20

FLASHBULB MEMORIES: vivid and detailed emotional memories
- E.g. remembering where you were when you learned about 9/11

Believed to be stable, but how accurate are they?
- There’s a chance for that memory to be corrupted before you recall it again, so not that accurate

Question 21

language (arbitrariness , purpose)

Answer 21

LANGUAGE: communication system that relies on patterns and rules of symbols (i.e. words or gestural signals)
- Patterns and rules help us organize communication symbols (e.g. pattern of subject + verb + adjective + direct object to describe what people are doing)
- Combines patterns and rules to provide meaning

Language is arbitrary
- the sounds, words, and sentences of language bear no clear relation to their meaning
- symbols dont match objects
- The symbols we use in language don’t always reflect the properties of the concepts we are trying to represent
- e.g. the word dog doesnt describe what a dog looks like or does

Purpose of language is to convey information, socialize, express emotions, create art

Question 22

language levels (phonemes, morphemes, syntax, extralinguistic information)

Answer 22

1. PHONEMES (ingredients)
   - Smallest units of sound in a language, produced by vocal apparatus
   - Let us make different types of sound that CONTRAST with one another
   - Related to sounds and pronunciation of language
   - English has about 40-45
   - Phonemes correspond to letters in the English alphabet, but a lot are organized by the types of sounds that we have (e.g. the sound “S” is a phoneme that starts the word S, and the sound “oi” is a phoneme but not consisting of a single alphabetical unit)
   - Breaking down sounds into individual phenomes is exactly how we can help teach young children to use language and teach ourselves to learn new languages
2. MORPHEMES (menu items)
   - Smallest units of meaning in a language
   - Related to meaning and structure of a language
   - Created by combining phonemes (more than one phenome is often needed to make a morpheme)
   - Can be words themselves or parts of words
   - e.g. “ish” “re” “‘cat” “happy”
   - E.g. the word cat is broken down into three phonemes: c-a-t. But the word cat is also a morpheme because when putting those phonemes together, which apart they wouldnt have meaning, creates meaning of cat. Also, the letter S is a morpheme because it adds meaning as it signifies a plural. So, cat is a morpheme, and s is a morphine, that combine to create cats
   - E.g. the word “play” is a morpheme, but “re” is another morpheme that changes the meaning
3. SYNTAX (putting the meal together)
   - Set of grammar rules used to construct meaningful sentences
   - The sentence construction rules make it easy to follow meaning
   - E.g. Subject-Verb-Object pattern (“The boy eats the apple” and not “the apple boy eats”)
   - Syntax is specific to the language, and languages don’t often share a common syntax
4. EXTRALINGUISTIC INFORMATION
   - Non-verbal and context cues that add meaning to language
   - Not part of the language itself but help us interpret the meaning of the language
   - i.e. Mannerisms, general body posture, tone of your voice, context of the surrounding situation all factor into how we extract meaning from what a person is trying to communicate
   - E.g. “I am refusing this date” can have three meanings based on context (romantic, calendar, fruit) (syntax, morphemes, and phonemes are identical, but extralinguistic information can help determine which it is)
   - E.g. “Go clean your room” can have different meanings based on tone of voice

Question 23

morphemes vs phonemes

Answer 23

phoneme = smallest unit of sound in a language
morpheme = smallest unit of meaning in a language

phoneme = related to the sound and pronounciation of a language
morpheme = related to the meaning and structure of a language

Question 24

dialect

Answer 24

DILAECT: language variations specific to geographical/ethnic groups
- Dialects aren’t distinct languages, but about variation in pronounciation and word choices
- E.g. people in Boston might have distinct accent compared to other places in North America
- E.g. people might refer to the description of a summer house/hoodie as differen words

Question 25

opposing views of language development (BF Skinner, Noam Chomsky, critical period)

Answer 25

B.F Skinner’s view
- Language is learned through operant conditioning using punishment and reward

Noam Chomsky’s view
- Language is biologically detrmined; Our brains are hardwired for a language, despite what it is
- Language acquisition device; a hypothetical language organ in the brain; findings that the brain is prewired for language at birth; all children make similar grammatical mistakes– universal grammar ; yet to find a specific region in the brain that is resposinsible for acquiring language

CRITICAL PERIOD: language development is maximized early in life

Question 26

language stages

Answer 26

1) PRENATAL
- Language develops before birth
- Newborns show preference for mother’s voice (already starting the process of language learning when they hear mother’s voice)

2) BABBLING ~ 6 months
- vocalization that lacks meaning
- Produce and repeat single syllables trying to communicate
- Babies exploring the noises they can make and exercising their vocal apparatus
- Strengthening motor control of their voices
- Fine tuning their ears to hear language differences

3) COMPREHENSION VS PRODUCTION
- Children comprehend basic language rules before being able to produce them
- e.g. they may understand that the word elephant refers to a big grey animal with a long trunk, but they have limited ability to coordinate sounds to produce this word

4) FIRST WORDS ~ 1 year
- Still produce and repeat single syllabi/words
- Holophrases: single word utterances often carry larger and more complex meanings
- E.g. child says “up” to convey that they wished to be picked up

5) TELEGRAPHIC SPEECH~ 2 years
- Simple sentences (e.g. “me up” instead of “up”)
- Over generalization of rules (over applying language rules to many situations where there are exceptions)
- e.g. toddlers applying phoneme of “ed” to words that don’t express past tense (e.g. “I goed there” instead of “I went there”)

6) CONVERSATIONS ~ 4-6 years
- Clear understanding of rules (grammar and syntax)

• Between ages of 1-5/1-6 years, language develops from the use of single words into more complex sentences and expanded vocabulary

Question 27

cognitive economy (heuristics, oversimplifcation)

Answer 27

COGNITIVE ECONOMY: resources allocated to thinking and decision making
- allows us to simplify what we deal with to a manageable minimum
- allows us to keep the information we need for decision-making to a manageable minimum
- Allows balance between the resources used to make small decisions and big decisions, making sure we have enough resources/currency for the decisions that are huge/life altering
- i.e. fast thinking

HEURISTICS: mental shortcuts to simplify decisions (making fast decisions)
- Enhances our survival
- Heuristics can sometimes lead us astray– oversimplification

OVERSIMPLIFICATION: incorrectly attributing a quality to a person/situation
- E.g. when climbing a mountain, if we rely on heuristics to tell us to just go straight up without any decisions/thoughts about food, water, best paths, the dark, weather, etc. (decisions that require cognitive economy), we can run the risk of getting into a dangerous sitation

Question 28

systems 1 and 2 of thinking

Answer 28

Derived by Tversky & Kahneman

SYSTEM 1 THINKING: Brains automatic/intuitive/unconscious way of thinking (auotpilot)
- Fast and automatic thinking
- Necessary for survival
- Require little energy & saves lots of cognitive economy
- E.g. tying your shoes, understanding simple sentences/math, knowing someone is being hostile toward you, forming a first impression of someone based on their appearance
- Allows us to make simple associations between things
- E.g. associating Paris with the country of France, learning associations through classical conditioning
- PRO: is usually intuitively accurate based on your feelings
- E.g. assessing somebody in a short amount of time and predicting the longevity of relationships with little time observing them
- CON: basing decisions off the way you feel/your snap judgments will not always be beneficial when making decisions
- E.g. making a decision on buying stock in a car company needs serious research, etc.

SYSTEM 2 THINKING: Brains analytical/slow/controlled way of thinking
- Slow and systematic thinking
- Considers all options
- Requires a lot of energy
- E.g. think about walking faster than normal, looking for a person in a crowded train station, checking for spelling mistakes in an assignment, checking the validity of a complex logical argument, forcing yourself to be calm wehn you’re infuriated

There must be a balance between using system 1 and system 2 thinking
- We need to know how and when to counteract our own fast intuitions, personal biases, and heuristics that can put us in danger of making hasty decisions with well planned thinking

Question 29

representativeness heuristic + base rates

Answer 29

REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTIC: judging the probability of an event based on similarity/prototype (how prevalent it was in the past)
- Make decisions based on how representative something is
- E.g. a jury trying to deliberate whether or not a defendant is guilty dependant on how well that person represents a criminal in their mind plays a huge role. System 1 thinking suggests that iIf the defendant appears to look like a criminal, then they are one.
- E.g. we might say it’s intuitively right that Steve, who is described as very shy, helpful, meek, organized, and withdrawn, is a librarian rather than a farmer because he’s more representative of our image of a librarian than he is of our image of a farmer

BASE RATES: how common something is
- In representative bias, we tend to ignore base rates and rely on how representative a person/something is to the prototype
- E.g. base rates tell us that male farmers are more common than male librarians, but our representative heuristic believes Steve to be a librarian
- System 2 thinking can try to override the represnetativeness heuristic that humans naturally use
- E.g. Linda can be one thing, another thing, or the combination of both, based on a description. Without knowing the base rate, one can note that the probaability that a given person has two specific qualities is lower than the probability of them having one specific quality.

Question 30

availability heursitic

Answer 30

AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC: estimating the likelihood of something happening based on how easily it comes to mind or how “available” it is in our memories
- Influenced by news or global events
- Perceived importance of an issue is related with the ease of memory retrieval (things you know more about are perceived to occur more often than issues you know less about)
- E.g. most people are afraid of flying a plane than driving a car– even though car fatalities are much more common, because of the increased attention to airplane crashes in the media which makes the negative aspects of flying more available in our memories than the dangers of driving, increasing our fear of airplanes
- E.g. more people have fear of sharks than they do of cattle– event houghc battle are more likely to kill you, because the information of shark attacks is more readily available in the media and therefore more readily available in our memories

Availability heuristics bias/shape our view of the world all the time
- E.g. Trump addressed immigration as a very prominent issue in the 2016 election, and as a result, because that information was so salient in the minds of the Trump supporters, they believed that the issue of immigration was the most pressing concern
- E.g. the side effects of the covid vaccine got lots of attention in the media, and people overestimated the risks and believed its more common than it was

Question 31

hindisght bias

Answer 31

HINDSIGHT BIAS: overestimating how well we would have predicted something after it occurred
- People only see things clearly after the event has occurred
- E.g. on a test, if you got a question wrong because you were uncertain and guessed, you might think to yourself “ugh I knew that was wrong”

• When we have hindsight bias, things that were unexpected appear no longer surprising because you convinced yourself that you knew it from the beginning
• E.g. you knew your team was going to win only after they won, you knew the stock price would go down but only after you didn’t invest

Question 32

SUMMARY

Answer 32

We make decisions based on how well concepts represent what they should

We use what’s available to us to assign importance to things or how often they should occur

We frequently justify to ourselves that we were right all along but only after an event happened

System 2 thinking can override problematic thinking and make logical/rational decisions by knowing base rates & probabailities of what is truly likely, being aware of what is available & what information is limiited, and by acknowledging we can be wrong about predictions

We need a fast system to help us throughout the day, but beware of the limitations and heuristics that we use and use system 2 thinking to cross checl your beliefs

Question 33

framing

Answer 33

FRAMING: how information is presented to you (e.g. gains/losses) affects decisions
- E.g. raffle ticket problem: Vendor A tells you that 1 of 5 tickets wins, and vendor B tells you that 80% of tickets are duds. Even though the outcome is the same in both situations (20% chance of winning), you are more likely to choose vendor A because of the way it’s presented (vendor A framed the raffle in terms of how often you win)
- E.g. “you will save $__” instead of “you will spend $__”)

Question 34

obstacles to problem solving (competing information, mental sets, functional fixedness)

Answer 34

DISTRACTION BY IRRELEVANT/COMPETING INFORMATION: Failure to focus on the important stuff
- E.g. math problems with unnecessary information

MENTAL SETS: Getting caught-up in a particular problem solving strategy
- Dont see alternatives/dont think outside the box
- E.g. using a - b - 2c wont work on all problems
- E.g. only restarting when your computer glitches but it doesn’t work; look at other solutions

FUNCTIONAL FIXEDNESS: Difficulty perceiving an object being used for something other than what it was designed for and not seeing all possible uses for an object
- E.g. affix a candle to the wall using only a tack and candle; use the box the tack’s came in as a platform to hold the candle

Question 35

strategies for prolem solving

Answer 35

TRIAL AND ERROR:
- Searching different solutions until it words ad problem is solved
- Commonly used
- E.g. if restarting your phone doesnt fix your phone glitches, then try clearing your storage

ALGORITHM:
- Step by step solving formula
- Must be followed exactly to produce correct result
- Systemic
- E.g. following algorithmic solving approach when assembling an ikea set

HEURISTIC:
- Shortcut for problem solving using mental models (e.g. schemas)
- General problem solving approach
- Rule of thumb
- Work most of the time, but not all the time
- E.g. travelling to a foreign country and need internet; your heuristic here is to solve the problem of Wifi by going to the centre of town where busy intersections are so you can find a coffee shop and get free wifi; you understand through experience that coffee shops have free wifi

DIVIDE AND CONQUER:
- Break down large complex problems into smaller more manageable problems
- E.g. solving a long math equation by breaking it down into smaller parts
- E.g. cutting bread into gradually smaller pieces to get equal pieces

INSIGHT:
- The sudden recognition of a solution to a problem
- The “A-ha!” moment
- E.g. a chimp gains insight on how to get food after sitting for a while and thinking

MEANS-END ANALYSIS:
- Reaching a major end goal by managing smaller goals along the way, while also adjusting and planning based upon intermediate steps and changes
- A form of divide and conquer
- E.g. setting sub-goals (writing down dates of each assignment) to help reach goal (realistic schedule) when starting a new semester
- E.g. the Tower of Hanoi