Psych 10 Final Flashcards
What is encoding?
the process of transforming what we perceive, think or feel into a memory
In the “draw the apple logo” activity, was there a big difference in accuracy for those who owned apple products vs those who didn’t?
- No, it was not a big difference.
- Only 1 person drew it perfectly despite many having high confidence
- Highlights that memory is NOT like a DVD-in-the-head
Why is the “memory is like a dvd-in-the-head” analogy bad?
- Memories are constructed, not recorded
- Constantly updating memories over time
- We don’t remember everything (even things we see frequently like apple logo and penny)
- Memories are imperfect
What was shown in Craik & Tulving (1975)?
- The deeper the level of processing, the easier the information is to recall
- 3 levels are physical (most shallow), acoustic (middle), and semantic (deepest)
What are mnemonics?
Strategies for remembering large amounts of information, usually involving imagining events occurring on a journey or with some other set of memorized cues
What is storage (in memory)?
the information is held in a way that allows it to later be retrieved
What does the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model (1968) say?
memory consisted of three stores: a sensory store, short-term memory, and long-term memory.
What is sensory memory?
- Accurately holds perceptual information for a very brief amount of time
- High capacity, very brief
What is short term memory? Describe it.
- the “space” used to hold information presently required
- limited duration
- About 20 secs (15-30secs)
- capacity: About 7 +/- 2 chunks of information
What is a chunk? (in memory) Give examples.
- Information grouped into a meaningful unit…
- Words are chunks of letters
- Multi-digit numbers are chunks of single digit numbers
- Routes are chunks of locations
What is working memory?
manipulation of presently required information for whatever task you are doing
What is long term memory? Describe it.
- Memory that persists over time without conscious activation…
- Events in your life, facts about the world, motor skills, etc.
- “Long term” sometimes means a few minutes, doesn’t have to be years
- Can last indefinitely
- Can be retrieved and brought into working memory (but we might lose the ability to access that memory)
Describe the serial position effect.
- tendency to remember the first and last items in a list better than those in the middle.
- primacy effect = better at remembering first few in list than those in middle (long term memory)
- recency effect = recent item will be recalled more than those in the middle (short term memory) - no recency effect when there is a delay
How is memory involved in doing mental arithmetic?
- Sensory Store: (maybe)
- Short-term and working memory:
~ holds information about the particular problem
~ applies the rules and strategies retrieved from LTM to the present information
~ transiently stores intermediate outcomes and final
solution - Long-term memory:
~ rules of arithmetic
~ learned strategies for solving problems
What are the two types of long term memory? Describe them.
Explicit memory:
- knowing “what”
- expressed verbally
- conscious awareness
- a.k.a. “Declarative Memory”
- ex: I remember that LA is in California
Implicit Memory:
- knowing “how”
- expressed behaviorally
- awareness not necessary
- a.k.a. “Non-declarative Memory”
- ex: remembering how to ride a bike
What are the two types of explicit memory? Describe them.
Episodic:
- specific time, place
- personally experienced
*Prospective memory: future events
Semantic:
- facts
- general knowledge
- Can be things we know but don’t remember (i.e. a story from when we were a baby that we’ve been told
What are the 3 types of implicit memory? Describe them.
Procedural:
- Skills
- How to do something
- Ex: how to ride a bike
Priming:
- Exposure influences behavior
Conditioning:
- Like classical and operant
- Ex: dog salivating from bell
Compare retrograde and anterograde amnesia.
- Retrograde amnesia: cannot remember events prior to brain damage
- Anterograde amnesia: cannot later remember events that occur after brain damage
Describe patient HM and the test of his procedural memory.
Patient HM:
- Anterograde amnesia
- unable to form new explicit memories
- had difficulty transferring explicit memories from STM to LTM due to removal of hippocampus
Test of procedural memory:
- Performance improved on a mirror tracing task even though he didn’t remember doing it before
Describe Patient KC.
- Severe retrograde and anterograde amnesia
- Old semantic memories intact but not episodic
What is retrieval? (in memory) Describe it.
- the process of bringing to mind information that has been previously encoded and stored…
- NOT like playback of a video
- Retrieval depends on cues/hints that help bring information to mind… evidence: context effect (context helps retrieval)
What is the encoding specificity principle?
- memory is improved when information available at encoding is also available at retrieval…
- The more similar the retrieval situation is to the encoding situation, the better the retrieval
- ex: perform better on test in room where you studied
What are different ways to measure/operationalize retrieval?
- Recall: name everything you need to buy at the market
- Recognition: you see a tomato and decide whether it was on your list
- Savings: can you learn something faster the second time around?
Unlike a video recording, how we store our
experiences in memory depends on __________
our interpretations and expectations of them
What are schemas?
organized knowledge structures or mental models that we’ve stored in memory
Describe the transience of memory.
- Of the forgetting that will happen, most happens fast!
- Memories are susceptible to interference
Compare proactive and retroactive interference.
Proactive:
- Old learning gets in the way of new
- Ex: old phone number interferes w/ ability to learn new one
Retroactive:
- New learning gets in the way of old
- Ex: What’s my old number?
- Tip to remember: “writing over” from RO
What is blocking?
Failing to recall something, even when you know it!
Compare iconic and echoic memory.
- Iconic memory (<1s) = associated w/ visual senses
- Echoic memory (3-4s) = associated with auditory sense
- part of sensory memory
What does decision making involve?
Involves evaluating alternatives and making choices among them
What is availability bias?
items that are more readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently
What are framing effects?
changing how an issue is presented can change people’s decisions
What is loss aversion?
people tend to want to avoid losses more than they want to achieve gains
What is the sunk-cost fallacy?
- People make decisions about current situations based on what they have already invested into it
- ex: going to a concert when sick because it was expensive
What is the anchoring effect?
- the bias to be affected by an initial anchor, even if the anchor is arbitrary, and to insufficiently adjust our judgements away from that anchor.
What is confirmation bias?
Tendency to search for confirming evidence, not disconfirming evidence
What is language? Describe it.
- A system that relates sounds (or gestures) to meaning
- Generativity
- Displacement
- Symbolism
- Structured & meaningful
What are phonemes and morphemes?
Phonemes:
- the smallest unit of sound
- /p/ vs /b/
- Pit vs. bit
Morphemes:
- Smallest units of meaning
- Prefix ‘Un’ means not
- Suffix ‘-s’ means more than 1
- ‘sub’ ‘marine’
What is syntax?
Rules for word combinations…
- The cat chased the dog.
- The dog was chased by the cat.
What is the Behaviorist theory of language development?
- We learn language through reinforcement
- Ex: Child is praised for calling a ball a ball.
What is the Nativist perspective of language development?
- Children are born with innate mental structures that guide their acquisition of language
- Noam Chomsky: Language-acquisition device (LAD)
What support is there for the Nativist perspective of language development?
- Linguistic universals
- Children apply rules of grammar to novel words
- Language is learned more easily in the critical period
~Ex: Genie story (couldn’t speak until 13 b/c of abuse, learned individuals words but not grammar proficiency b/c not in critical period) - Animals don’t learn language as readily or successfully as humans
~ Ex: Noam chimpsky (chimp raised as child, learned individual signs but not complex language like human children)
What is the Interactionalist Perspective on language development?
- Innate capacity for language interacts with experience
- Social interactions are important for language
learning! - Ex: Benefits of “Motherese” or infant-directed speech
At what age can English learners differentiate the Salish & Hindi contrasts? When do they lose this ability?
- Can differentiate at 6 to 8 months old
- Lost this ability by 10 to 12 months
Describe the basic process of early speech production.
- Birth: Crying
- 1 month: Cooing
- Middle of first Year: Babbling
- End of first year: Patterned speech
- 10-15 months: First real worlds
- 18 months: Naming explosion
- 2 years: Combining words
What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
Strong version:
- thoughts and behavior are determined by language
- the language you speak determines the concepts and categories that you use, and, as a result, shapes what you can think about
- only evidence: Inuit words for snow
Weak version:
- thoughts and behavior are influenced by language
- language influences what we pay attention to and this shapes experience, which influences how we think
- most psychologists believe in weaker hypothesis
What is developmental psychology?
scientific study of changes or continuities in an organism between initial conception and death
