midterm 2 notes Flashcards
what is the primacy effect
the observed memoery advantage for the early lists items since they do not have to share attention with other words and they were given longer time devoted to reherseal
what is the recency effect
the last list of words that are detected in their immidete recall as it is dumping out the information rom the working memory
what is ionic memory
apart of the sensory memory as it is in charge of visual inputs
what report is ionic memory present
The partial report is how much memory you have stored in your sensory memory. When given a list of random letters, if you are asked the letters of the third row, and you list them all, it is assumed that you had access to all the rows at one point
what does ionic memory have
Large capacity and breif duration
Why does a delay affect partial report
because you aren’t aware of what you need to retrieve
what is the modal model
The working memory serves both as a storage site for material now being contemplated and as a loading dock for long-term memory. information can reach WM through the process of perception, or it can be drawn from LTM
what is the working memory
The storage system in which information is held while that information is being worked on all indications are that the WM system, not a single entity, and that information is held there through active processes, not a passage storage
What is the whole report
When you are given a list of letters and asked to memorize as many as you can and repeat them back, you can normally only remember 3-4 letters because by the time you finish reporting the first couple, you lose access to the new raw material
what are the types of memory
declarative and non declaratice
what is declarative memory
explicit memory that is a form that you can conciously talk about
what is non declarative memory
implicit memory that you can do with consiously thinkning about it
what is a subcategory of declarative memory
eposidic and semantic
what is episodic memory
knowledge about events, including events from childhood
what is semantic memory
knowledge about things in the world
what are the subcategories of nondeclarative memory
procedural memory and priming
What is procedual memory
knowing how to do something
What is priming
recalibration of preceptual systems, just things that come to mind. the more you are exposed the more you will remember how to do without thinking about it
what is visible persistence in sensory memory
Like an afterimage, things remain visible briefly after its physical presentation
what is the whole report
when you are given a group of letters to memorize and need to recall them after. with breif exposure you can only remember 3-4 words because by the time you are done reporting the first few, you lose access to the raw material
what is the partial report
when you are given a group of letters to memorize and you need to recall only one row. If you are able to recall the row, then it is assumed that you fully accessed the whole of it at one point
how does a dely affect partial report
since you are not aware of what you need to retrieve
what is working memory capacity
a measure of working memory derived from operational span tasks. Although termed ‘a memory capacity, ‘ this measure can perhaps just be understood as a measure of a person’s ability to store some materials while simultaneously working with other material
what does the modal model imply
that working memory is something of a box in which information is stored or a location in which information can be displayed
what is the central executive like
the CEO of the mind, keeping its goal in mind
what does the central excutive branch to
visuospatial sketchpad, episodic buffer, phonological loop
what is the phonological buffer
a passive storage system used for holding a representation, essentially an internal echo of sound
what is the episodic buffer
helps the executive organize information into a chronological sequence to keep track of a story or film
what is the visospatial sketchpad
used for storing visual materials such as mental images
what prevents recency effect
a mask that distracts you
what is levels of processing
deeper processing leading to better memory
The more you focus on meaning, the better you will remember the information
what are the levels of processing
shallow, moderate, and deep
what is shallow processing
trying to engage in the material in a superficial way
what is moderate processing HAD TO JUDGE WHETHER EACH W
had to judge whether each word shown rhymed with another word
what is deep processing
This requires some thought about what the words mean
what is transfer approproate processing
memory performance is better when the cognitive process you used during encoding matches those during retreival
what is intentional learning
learning that is deliberate, with the expectation that memory will be tested later
what is incidental learning
learning in the absence of any intention to learn
how is deep processing better
because you will begin to make connections that can lead to other connections
what is context dependent learning
a pattern of detail in which materials learned in one setting are well remembered when the person returns to that setting, but are less well remembered in other settings
what does the area say in context dependent learning
The area you learn the material for the test will likely help you develop specific thoughts which help you connect the thoughts to the target material and if you take a test and not in the area, it is difficult to trigger the related thoughts to the target material
what is context reinstatement
recreating the thoughts and feelings if the learned episode event if your in a different place at the time of recall
what is memeory retrival based on
the mental context not the physical context
what are nodes
an individual unit within an associated network. In a scheme using local representation, nodes represent single or concepts in a scheme using distributed representation, ideas or concepts are represented by a pattern if activation across a wide number of nodes.
what is autobiographical memory
Neurobiological skills in the brain that link things that develop with age
- memory is unreliable from events that happened before you were four due to the lack of language
what is the reminiscence bump
enhanced memory for episodic and semantic facts of adolescence and young adults.
what does involvement in an event do to memory
overall information relavent to the self is better remembered
how can bias of the past memories form
Most adults believe that they have been reasonably consistent and stable over their lifetime.
what are associative links
functional connections that are hypothesized to link nodes within a mental networl or detectors within a dectector network; these associations on other hypothesized as the carriers of activation from one node to the next
what is the speading of activation
activation of one concept ‘primes’ the activity of related concepts
- when you think of one thing that thing makes you think of another
- when you think of the colour blue, you start to think about sadness
why is subthreshold activation important
even though it is below the response threshold, subthreshold activation can accumulate, leading eventually to an activation level that reachs the response threshold
what is summation
the addition of two or more seperate inputs so that the effect if the combined i put is greater than individually
what is the lexical decision task
participants are shown a series of letter sequences and press yes if the sequences spells a word and no if it doesnt
what does the lexical decision task tell us
People are faster to indicate the given word if it is primed
what is semantic priming
the priming results from the fact that the words in the pair are related in meaning
- reaction time to target is faster when preceded by a related prime (butter and bread)
what is semantic priming influenced by
automatic spreading activation and controlled expectations
what is source memory
a form of memory that enables you to recollect the episode in which learning took place or the time and place a particular stimulus was encountered
when can you have familiarity without source memory
when you are watching a movie and can not recall the actor and dont know where you have seen them before
what is implicit memory
Memory is revealed by indirect testing and often manifested as a priming effect in which current performance is guided by or facilitated by previous experiences, accompanied by no conscious realization that one is, in fact, being influenced by specific past experiences
What are indirect tests
a form of memory testing in which participants are not told that their memories are being tested. instead they are tested in such a way that previous expereinces can influence current behaviour
in indirect testing what is normally asked and why
When you need to fill in the blanks, will you use a word you saw in the list given, or will you consciously come up with the first thing that came to mind
what happens in sequence learning
Reaction time is faster to trained sequences as compared to random sequences, as implicit sequence learning is often required without any explicit knowledge of the actual sequence itself
how do we know participants are not using explicit memory to complete the stem
if you give them a list of words and then make them fill in the blank of a specific word, if you mention do not use words from the stem, but the participant still does, it shows that they are using implicit memory because they used the first word that came to their head and disregarded the experimenter. We can assume that the participant did not know that the word was present in the stem
what are the two conditions to tease apart implicit vs explicit influences on perfromance
inclusion vs exclusion
what is an example of inclusion
Complete the stem with words from the list or with the first word that comes to mind
what is an example of exclusion
complete the stem using words not in the list
- if you still use the word from the lists it would be implicit memory because it would indiicate that the participant did not learn the word
what happens if inclusion is higher than exclusion
There has to be some kind of explicit memory
what is the difference between baseline and exclusion
how much implicit memory is used
what is the difference between exlusion and inclusion
how much explicit memory is used
what is explicit memories
memory revealed by direct memory testing and usually accompanied by the condition that one is in fact remebering, drawing on some sort of knowledge
What is direct memory testing
a form of memory testing in which people are asked explicitly to remember some previous event. recall and standard recognition testing are both forms.
what is the illusion of truth
an effect of implicit memory in which claims that are familiar end up more plausible
what is source confusion
a memory error in which one misremembers where a bit of information was learned or where a particular stiumulus was last encountered
what are processing pathways
the sequences of detectors, and the connections between detectors, that the activation flows through a recongiizing a specific stimulus
what is amnesia
a disruption of memory often due to brain damage
what do processing pathways do
strengthen the pathway if the nodes are frequently being used
what is retrograde anmesia
distruptive memory for things that are learned prior to the event, patients can not recall events from before the incident
what is anterograde anmesia
Disruption of memory for experiences after the onset of amnesia
what is strange about korgakoffs syndrome
unable to recall episodes theyve expereinces; seem to have no explicit memory, but if theyre tested indirectly they can see that they have a clear indication of memory; so these patients seem to have intact implicit memory
what is neurodegenerative dementia
often begins in medial temporal lobe structures which results in progressive memory decline. the pathological changes can begin 10-20 years before syptoms appear
What is Lewy body dementia
similar to Parkinson’s disease
what memories are first for neurodegenerative dementa
episodic memories because degeneration spreads to other cortical areas, yielding additional cognitive impairment as the disease spreads
What is delusional misidentification
belief that a person, place, or well-known object to the patient has changed in identity
What are delusional beliefs
unsubstantiated by reality, not shared by other people, and resistant to counterevidence and counterarguments
how does the brain allow us to recgonize a familiar person
link a well known person to emotion (amygdala), absence of emotion that should be there is not can impair sense of familiarity
what is semantic dementia
uses semantic memory, they lose all stored memory to line experiences too. It is associated with atrophy in the anterior temporal lobe
what is the sensory functional theory
identification of living things depends heavily on perceptual information, whereas identification of nonliving things depends more on knowledge of function/use
what is brain storage like
modality specific, with bits representing what you SAW being stored in the brain area devoted to visual processing, and what you HEARD stored in brain areas that are devoted for auditory processing
why are memory connections good
without them you might never locate the inforation youre seeking,
how can the connections cause problems
by losinng track of the boundary between the episodes if your keep adding more and more links between epsiodes and bits between that epsiode you can start to get things confused
What are intrusion errors
errors in which other knowledge intruded into the remembered events
what is the DRM paradigm
categorzing words in a memory test to a specific topic like ‘sleep’ even though sleep is not apart of the given words, can lead to frequent memory errors
what are schemas
summarizes the broad pattern of what is normal in a situation
what is the misinformation effect
a term referring to memory errors that result from misinformation received after an event was experienced
what is the retention interval
The amount of time that elapses between the initial learning and the subsequent retrieval as the interval grows you are likely to forget more and more of the earlier events
what is the decay theory of forgetting
proposes rather directly that memories fade or erode with the passage of time
what enhances consolidation
emotions, rest, and sleep
what is flashbulb memory
memories of extraordinary clarity, typically for highly emotional events, referred despite the passage of many years
what does categorization allow you to do
Apply your knowledge to new cases
what is a concept
mental representation of classes of things, the glue that holds our mental world together
what are concepts for
allow us to make sense of the world and to make predictions about novel items of a category
how can concepts be defined
the presence or absence of features
necessity and sufficiency
properties A, B, C, and D are both necessary and sufficient for object X to be categorized an an instance of Y
What does the classical view of concepts predict
all members of a category are equal
how can members of a category differ
how well they represent the category as a whole through typical and atypical factors
what is typicality
how much they resemble the prototype
what is a prototype
a single best example or average identifying the center of a category
what is family resemblence
the idea that members of a category resemble one another. in general, family resemblence relies on some number of features being shared by any category members, even though those features may not be shared by all memebers of that category
when are you more likely to generalize a member
when they are more typical
what is the prototype theory
Categorization is based on the similarity between an exemplar and the prototype for that concept. We reconginize concepts based off the best or most typical example
what do examplars consist of
low and high distorition items from each category
what is graded membership
the idea that some members of a category are better members and therefore are firmly in the category than other members
what members are usually better
those high in typicality, closer to the prototype
what is the examplar theory
nothing special from categorization, it is what is stored in memory. these people do not form an abstract prototype for each category. They use individual examplars that are stored in their memory
what can have a large influence on how people categorize objects
prior knowledge, such that the same object can be categorized differently depending on what knowledge is available
what is categorization based on in the examplar theory
the similarity between a new test item and stored exemplars
what is the scentence verification task
presented with a series of scentneces and their job is to indicate whether each sentence was true or false
what is production tasks
participants are asked to name as many examples of a category as possible
how are concepts organized
through a hierarchy - taxonomic organization. transitivity (all dogs are mammals and all mammals are animals, therefore all dogs are animals). property inheritance (all lower-level categories inherit the properties associated with higher taxonomic levels
what are the levels in how a concept in organized
superordinate (broad), basic, subordinate (specific)
what is basic level categorization
A level of categorization is hypothesized as the natural and most informative level, neither too specific nor too general - people tend to use basic-level terms, chair, rather than armchair or furniture
what is the preferred level of categorization
the basic level because it is most often used when spontaneously naming an object
what is the importance of the basic categorization level
It balances the trade-off between informativeness and distinctiveness
what level of hierachy has the quickest reaction time
basic, and then superordinate, and then subordinate
what is the difference between regular people and expertise with categorization
They take the same amount of time to classify a subordinate category as it does to classify a basic category
what is examplar based reasoning
an examplar being defined as a specific remembered instance
what do prototypes provide
an economical representation of whats typical for a category
what do examplars provide
information that lost from the prototype including information about the variablity
why can an examplar and prototype knowledge vary from person to person
you assess the resemblance between this conceptual knowledge, supplied by memory. and the novel object before you
what happens when you think about a category without being guided by typicality
you focus on the attributes that you believe are essential for each category and your judgement for whats essential depend on your beleifs about what category
what does resemblence depend on
shared properties, but also, more precisely, whether the objects share important and essential properties
what is anomia
when people lose the ability to name certain objects or answer simple questions about these objects
what is anomia based off of
The fact is that the brain has different areas that represent different types of concepts. The brain separates things because of the types of information that are essential for different concepts. The recognition of living things may depend on perceptual properties that enable us to identify living things and functional properties to identify non-living things
what are connectionist networks
This relies on distributed representations in which each idea is represented not by a certain set of nodes but instead by a pattern of activation across the network
what are MRI scans
tell us about the structure of the brain
what are fMRI scans
tell us which portion of the brain are espically active using the scan
what does the fMRI scan enable us to do
track the movement by activity levels in the brain. we can awnser uestions about what a person is reading and which brain regions are activated
what is electroencephalogram (EEG)
a recording of the brain’s electrical activity, it is usually meant to study broad rhythms in the brain’s activity
what are event related potention
changes in EEG in the breif period just before, during and after on explicitly defined events, usually measured by averaging together many trials in which this event has occured
pros and cons od fMRI
tells us about the brain activity, and can locate the activity, but it is less precise about when the activity took place
pros and cons of EEG
gives more precise information about timing but much weaker in indicating where activity took place
pros and cons of MRI
tells us about the shape and size of the brain structures but nothing about the activity levels in these structures
how do you perceive light
light enters through the cornea, the cornea and lens refract the light rays to produce sharp focuses images on the retina, and the iris can open or close to control the amount of light that reaches the retina
what is the retina made up of
cones (perceive colour) and rods (perceive black and whites)
what do cones do
enable you to see fine detail
what is acuity
the ability to see fine detail much higher for the cones than it is for the rods
what is the fovea
the very center of the retina this is the region of the retina with the greatest acuity because it has the most cones
the ventral stream: what system
some activation from the occipital lobe is passed along to the cortex of the temporal lobe. this system plays a major part in the identification of visual objects, telling you whether the objects is a cat, an apple, or whatever
the dorsal stream: where system
some information gets passed down from the occipital love from a second pathway leading to the parietal lobe. this system guides your actions based on your perception of where objects are located, above or below you, yo your left or right
How do we perceive colour
It depends on which light component is absorbed by the material of that object. Material properties absorb these colours except for the colour you perceive. Nothing actually has a colour; it is all wavelengths of lights that are reflected back by the retina
what is spatial frequency
the amount of detail in an image, you can perceive clearer when the spatial frequency is high
how does high spatial frequency develop
because once the eye develops, their optic nerves get better, and they can see better
what is visual agnosia
could not identify visual objects, but could use visual information to guide behaviours
- damage in the ventral stream
what is visual ataxia
could identify visual objects, but could not use visual information to guide behaviour
- damage in the dorsal stream
what is Eddunhaums illusion
when a central circle seems smaller or larger based off the size of th size of the surrounding circles. This happens because of contextual size perception, which is when our brains judge the size of an object relative to its surroundings rather than in isolating circles. We perceive objects in relation to the enviornment
what is early selection
when the sensory input of the attended channel passes through the attentional filter, and the ignored input does not
what is late selection
when both sensory inputs pass through the perceptional analysis and generate meaning, but the attentional filter gets applied at a later stage and only the attended input makes it to awareness
what is control vs automaticity
control requires attention, but with enough practice, it becomes automatic
what is a pop out search
when you don’t really need to search because the distractor items don’t really matter, the target is not by combining features
what is a conjunctive search
the more distractors mean it is harder to find because you need to go by individual elements. and you need to combine features
what is a pop out search carried out in
parrallel processing
what is conjunctive search carried out in
serial processing
what is inattentional blindness
fractionally blind by virtually paying attention to something eles
is an attentional blink always present
no, there is not a blink for highly emotional words
what is controlled processing
a process that requires the conscious use of attentional resources, it allows for purposeful, goal-directed behaviour
what is automatic processing
a process that does not require attention for its execution, can be carried out unconsciously with little awareness
what is the stroop effect
a delay in naming the colour of the word when it does not represent the colour of the word (GREEN being spelt out in blue)
what happened in the stroop effect
faster RTs for congruent (GREEN) relative to incongruent (blue GREEN) items
what do you need to do in the stroop effect
suppress the automatic process of word reading in order to name ink colour - an example of a controlled process. it requires a lot of concentration; it pins automatic control because you want to read the word when, in reality, you’re supposed to say the colour
