Past paper 1 Section B (Learning, Language, Decision Making) Flashcards
A) Proactive interference
Forgetting
Ebbinghaus’s studies suggested that forgetting from long-term memory is very rapid over the first hour or so
after acquisition, then reduces approximately logarithmically. Subsequent studies have suggested that
forgetting from long-term memory is due primarily to interference from other experienced events. For
example, Jenkins & Dallenbach (1924) found greater forgetting during waking hours than during sleep,
suggesting that interference is more important than decay. Similarly, when Baddeley & Hitch (1977) asked
rugby players to recall the names of teams they had played against, the number of games they had played
influenced their memory, rather than the time over which the games were played.
There are two main forms of interference: proactive interference is when previous learning interferes with
later learning, and retroactive interference is when later learning disrupts things learned earlier. An example
of the former comes from Underwood (1957), who found that the more nonsense syllable lists a participant
had previously learned, the more forgetting of new syllables the participant exhibited after 24 hours.
Retroactive interference can be demonstrated in the way that eyewitness memory for an event can be
interfered with by post-event questioning (e.g., Loftus & Palmer, 1974).
B) Negative reinforcement
If the response is followed by the removal of an unpleasant
stimulus - negative reinforcement - the probability of the response increases. If the
response is followed by an unpleasant outcome - positive punishment - or a pleasant
outcome is omitted – negative punishment -, the response decreases. Note that
“positive” and “negative” here do not mean “pleasant or unpleasant” but are used in
the mathematical sense of present or absent, while “reinforcer” and “punisher” denote
the “niceness” of the outcome.
C) Cohort model of speech comprehension
Many words can be uniquely identified even
when they are incomplete. For example,
alligator is the only English word
corresponding to the sequence allig, so we
do not need to listen to the whole word in
order to recognise it. The point at which
words can be reliably recognised is called
uniqueness point
D) Metacognition
A) Triangle model of reading
This model postulates three components: semantic units that encode the
meaning of words; phonological units that specify word sounds (phonemes); orthographic
units that represent word orthography (letters). This is a completely interactive model: the
components are interconnected and contribute jointly to the recognition of words and
pseudowords. Words are represented as patterns of activated semantic, phonological, and
orthographic units. Despite this massive interactivity,
differences would naturally emerge among regular
words, irregular words and pseudowords since
different activation patterns correspond to each of
these classes. Phonological units and their connections
to orthographic units are particularly relevant for
pseudowords (pseudowords have no meanings, so the
contribution from semantic units is necessarily
limited). On the other hand, the orthographic and
semantic units and the connections between them are
critical in the recognition of words with irregular spelling.
B) Yoking
C) The decision weights function in prospect theory
So far we have seen violations of expected utility which suggest a reference-dependent, S-shaped value function which is steeper for losses than for gains.
What about the representation of probabilities? Recall that in EU theory, utilities are weighted by the probability of each outcome. Is this tenable? Extensive violations of rationality suggest not.
Some of the most famous examples come from the economist Allais, whose “paradox” was an early problem for Expected Utility theory. A version of this problem is provided by Kahneman and Tversky (1979).
PROBLEM 1 PROBLEM 2
Option A £2500 with probability 0.33 Option C £2500 with probability 0.33
£2400 with probability 0.66 £0 with probability 0.67
£0 with probability 0.01
Option B £2400 with certainty Option D £2400 with probability 0.34
£0 with probability 0.66
82% chose B 83 % chose C
This pattern of choice again violates rationality and expected utility theory. To see why, note that we can re-write the options as follows:
p = .66 p = .33 p = .01
Option A 2400 2500 0
Option B 2400 2400 2400
Option C 0 2500 0
Option D 0 2400 2400
It’s now clear that A and B both offer a 66% chance of winning £2400, so the choice between them has to be based on the difference between, on the one hand, a 33% chance of £2500 and a 1% chance of nothing, and on the other a 34% chance of £2400. This is exactly the same as for options C and D; both have a 66% chance of winning nothing, so the choice has to be based on the same set of probabilities and amounts as in the former version of the problem. Correspondingly, people should choose the same way in both tasks, and the preference reversal shows a violation of rationality.
D) The visuospatial sketchpad
Visuospatial sketchpad – a slave system for the temporary storage and manipulation of spatial and visual
information, such as the location of a phone number on the page of a phone book
The visuospatial sketchpad is used for the temporary storage and manipulation of spatial and visual
information, including visual imagery. Because of the history of word list learning experiments in the last
century, less research has been done on visuospatial working memory. What has been done has primarily
explored the effect on different tasks of concurrent visuospatial processing. For example, Baddeley et al.
(1975) asked participants to encode material using either rote verbal learning or an imagery-based strategy.
When this task was combined with pursuit rotor tracking (tracking a moving light), performance using the
imagery-based strategy was disrupted, whereas performance using the verbal strategy was unaffected.
Pursuit rotor tracking involves visual perception as well as spatial localization. To assess whether both of
these factors are important, Baddeley & Lieberman (1980) repeated the previous experiment, contrasting
specifically visual (making brightness judgements) and specifically spatial (pointing at a moving pendulum
while blindfolded, guided by an auditory tone) concurrent tasks. Learning using the imagery-based strategy
was most clearly disrupted by the spatial concurrent task. On the basis of data such as this, Logie (1995)
argued that visuospatial working memory could be divided into two components (similar to the distinction
within the phonological loop). The visual cache passively stores information about visual form and colour
and is subject to decay and interference by new visual information. The inner scribe processes spatial
information and allows active rehearsal of information in the visual cache. This distinction is supported by
neuropsychological data. For example, Beschin et al. (1997) reported patient NL, who had preserved
perceptual skills but could not describe details of a scene from memory. Similarly, Farah et al. (1988) reported
patient LH, who performed better on spatial processing tasks than on visual imagery tasks.
A) Rehearsal
B) Habits
The S-R/reinforcement process establishes instrumental habits that are not mediated
by any knowledge of the outcome of the response – it is simply a connection between
a stimulus and a response. Consequently, this process does not allow the purposeful
selection of an instrumental action on the basis of the agent’s current goal. Whether
an instrumental response is the result of an S-R habit or is a goal-directed action can
be determined by an outcome devaluation test.
C) Inattentional blindness
D) Syllogistic reasoning
The study of Aristotelian syllogisms (aka quantitative syllogisms) provides an alternative approach to the psychological processes that underlie reasoning. Syllogisms typically comprise two premises and a conclusion, and involve the quantifiers all, no, some, and some…not.
The following is an example:
All people who teach psychology are psychologists
Jon teaches psychology
Therefore, Jon is a psychologist
Such arguments may be valid or invalid. Validity is determined by the structure of the argument – the relations between the premises and the conclusion. A valid argument is one where, if one accepts the truth of the premises, then the conclusion is also true. The above example is a valid argument. Of course, one might not accept the premises (in fact, Jon doesn’t have a degree in psychology, he just works as one), but that doesn’t change the validity.
The combination of quantifiers (all, no, some, some…not) and order of terms (e.g., all a are b vs all b are a) gives a total of 512 two-premise syllogisms, most of which are regarded by logicians as invalid.
Studies of syllogistic reasoning typically present the two premises and either ask participants “what follows?” or present a conclusion and have them indicate whether it is valid or invalid.
Imperfect performance
Despite their simple structure, syllogistic reasoning problems can be very hard. For example, in a review of the literature, Roberts and Sykes (2005) found that problems of the form: “all a are b; all b are c; what follows?” were correctly solved by 88% of participants (valid conclusion: “all a are c”). However, given a problem of the form: “all b are a; all b are c; what follows?” only 8% of participants correctly concluded that “some a are c” (or, equivalently, that “some c are a”).
By studying how structural features of the problem change performance, we can try to develop models of how people go about solving this kind of problem. We consider four approaches to understanding performance on these kinds of reasoning task.
