Psych Exam 1 Flashcards
Why were scientists worried about studying memory?
Worried about controlling for individual experiences; questions about exploring the processes involved and accuracy of memories reported
Who was Herman Ebbinghaus?
An early psychologist who sought to prove that we could examine the concept of memory scientifically
What did Ebbinghaus use?
He worked with nonsense syllables to control for stimulus differences
What was the focus of Ebbinghaus’s work?
The focus of his work was to determine how we acquire and forget information
What did Ebbinghaus study?
Varies list sizes, varied time after learning material, varied time after reading material, and varied number of reads
What did Ebbinghaus discover?
Memory capacity (7+/- 2); learning and forgetting curves
Where did Ebbinghaus’s work lead us?
Showed that we could scientifically study the topic of memory; gave info on memory capacity and the malleability of our minds
What did Ebbinghaus’s work not explore?
1) ability to display memory of information when we are asked to reproduce it in approach
2) different types of memory that potentially exist
3) if memory capacity changes for meaningful information
4) if/how we alter our memory of information
What were Ebbinghaus’s tests called?
Free recall test
What is the cued recall test?
A test where you are given hints to remember
What is the recognition test?
When you are asked to assess memory of something by being able to identify info from a list (ex. mc test)
What are the savings tests?
When people are able to remember something easier that was already learned in the past
What did the savings tests reveal?
They suggested that Ebbinghaus missed some things in his studies
What are the implicit memory tests?
They are stimulus/response pairs (classical conditioning) and learned motor tasks (anterograde amnesia-50 first dates)
What are the three steps that we undergo when we display memory?
1) Encoding
2) Storage
3) Retrieval
What is encoding?
The process of converting information into a form that will allow us to retrieve that information later
What is storage?
The process of retaining critical information for later use
What is retrieval?
The process of assessing the stored information that we have encoded in order to use it in a situation
What are the temporal memory stages?
External events + sensory input = sensory memory
sensory memory + attention to important info = STM
STM + encoding = LTM
LTM + retrieval = STM
What is sensory memory?
All of the information taken in by the senses in a split second which is then reduced to only the important aspects
What was Sperlings sensory memory experiment?
A screen would flash a list of words and the participant would have to read off a line indicated to the best of their capabilities after hearing a tone
What did Sperlings tests give us?
The evidencce that sensory memory exists
What is the serial order effect?
The primacy effect and the recency effect
What is the primacy effect?
The ability to remember information at the beginning more easily
What is the recency effect?
The ability to remember information at the end more easily
What is the interference effect?
When information gets lost or less accurate due to an overlap of similar information
What is proactive interference?
When new material is lost due (not easily stored) due to old material
What is an example of proactive interference
When the names of new classmates are easily forgotten
What is retroactive interference?
When old material is lost (forgotten) due to new material
What is an example of retroactive interference?
Forgetting old lock combinations
What is the reconstruction effect?
When the mind fills in gaps in memory with events that never happened
Who was Elizabeth Loftus?
She tested people’s memory by asking them certain questions that pushed them to remember events in certain ways
What is hindsight bias?
When we remember our own thoughts incorrectly
What is memory dependence work?
The overlap of the encoding stage and the retrieval stage can show memory of more information
What did the language studies prove?
That it was easier to remember the language if given the list and the test in the same language
What is situation dependency?
Being in the place where you learned the material helps you remember the information more easily
What is state dependency?
Can remember thoughts/ideas more easily if you replicate the state of mentality you were in when you learned
What is the method of loci?
When you pair something familiar with the thing you need to remember
What is the ‘definition’ of intelligence?
The ability to solve problems and adapt and learn from the environment
What did Spearman come up with?
The ‘g’ factor-general intelligence of an individual
What did Sternberg come up with?
The triarchic theory of intelligence
What is the triarchic theory of intelligence
3 main levels of intelligence with no correlation to each other
What did Gardner come up with?
His theory of multiple intelligences: linguistic, psychological and mathematical, musical, spatial bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal (knowing oneself), and intrapersonal (knowing out-self)
What are intelligence tests?
They established techniques that allows researchers to compare an individual to their age and cultural equivalent peers in order to determine how much more or less ‘intelligent’ a person is
Who was Alfred Binet?
He was one of the first psychologists to scientifically explore intelligence
What did Binet test?
It examined basic mental skills; sentence generation, naming body parts, and remembering number things
What did Lewis Terman do?
He designed the Stanford-Binet test that looked at a wider range of ages and asked more complex questions; topics asked were fluid reasoning, knowledge, quantitative reasoning, visual-spatial reasoning, and working memory
Included the IQ
What was the IQ
MA/CA x 100: a persons inborn ability to learn
What did David Wechsler do?
He standardized the scoring system so it could now control for age
What forms did the Weschler scales come in?
WAIS: Wechsler adult intelligence scale
WISC: Wechsler intelligence scale for children
What did the Wechsler scales do
They asked a series of questions and tasks that broke down intelligence into different dimensions: verbal skils, non-verbal/performance-based skills, and general v. categorical intelligence debate revised
What is the Flynn effect?
Worldwide increase in intelligence test performance over several decades
What are algorithms?
Mechanical, procedural, and accurate (looking at every possibility to find the best), but time consuming
What are heuristics?
The variables we implement when making a decision; use shortcuts and are based on experience; prone to human error but quick
What is maximizing?
Searching for the best possible choice; can be unfulfilling; a heuristic approach
What is satisficing?
Searching for the first satisfactory choice; may regret choice later; a heuristic approach
What are cognitive errors?
Representative heuristic, availability heuristic, and confirmation bias
What is a representative heuristic?
The assumption that an item that resembles members of some category is probably also in that category; includes base-rate information such as generic and specific information
What is availability heuristic?
The assumption that if we can easily think of examples of a category then that category must be more common
What is confirmation bias?
The tendency to accept a hypothesis and then look for evidence to support it instead of considering other possibilities or disconfirming information
What did Piaget do?
He was the leader in cognitive development; believed that children were constantly adapting to their environment through the demands that are put on them
What is a schema?
A cognitive state of mind that comes from harmony between a child’s environment and present schema
What happens when a child encounters disequilibrium?
Assimilation or accommodation
