Sem 2 Weeks 4-8 Flashcards
Transduction
getting sensory info to the brain
Perception
process of taking neural signal and creating a psychological reality
How do chemicals become smell
Chemicals do not become a smell until they attach to a receptor in the nose, and the nose takes the chemical, generates an action potential, and the brain creates the feeling of the small
Why can humans only see a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum
Large waves go around objects, small waves go through objects, and visible spectrum waves bounce off objects - this is the “sweet spot” in the electromagnetic spectrum that contains waves that we can see.
What does temperature translate to in the physical world
Kinetic energy
What does colour translate to in the physical world
Wavelength
What does texture translate to in the physical world
vibration
What does aroma translate to in the physical world
Smell
What does pitch translate to in the physical world
Frequency
What does loudness translate to in the physical world
Amplitude
What does pain translate to in the physical world
Tissue damage
Absolute threshold
How low can you go (how quiet, how dim, how soft)
Discrimination threshold
Can you tell the difference (how big does the difference have to be for you to tell that two things are actually different from each other)
Signal Detection Theory
Allows us to separate sensitivity from response bias
Sensitivity
How well can you distinguish between when the stimulus is present or absent. Sensitivity means you have a high hit rate AND a low false alarm rate
Response Bias
Some participants are biassed towards saying either yes or no
Just Noticeable difference
The amount something must be changed in order for a difference to be noticed.
The discrimination threshold increases proportionally to baseline/reference stimulus increases (must be 8% more intense)
How do we translate light into vision
Rod and cone receptors captures photons, which triggers a change in the polarity of its membrane which causes the photoreceptor to generate an action potential (electrical signal that the brain can interpret)
Rods
- Many rods
- Mostly in the periphery.
- Respond to light of all
- High sensitivity (good in dim light, respond to everything)
- Low resolution (fuzzy in the periphery)
Different cone wavelength sensitivity related to colour
- S-cones, short waves, blue
- M-cones, medium waves, green
- L-cones, long waves, red
Cones
- Centred in the middle of the retina (fovea)
- Respond to different wavelengths (red/green/blue)
- High resolution
- Low sensitivity (doesn’t work well in bad lighting - needs a lot of photons to activate)
Why is Peripheral vision colourblind
no cones are in the periphery and rods are colourblind
Trichromatic Theory
Colour perception is mediated by cones which are wavelength specific (therefore colour specific). Your brain perceives colour based on the combination of photoreceptors that are activated at a specific location.
Monochromat vs dichromat
2 types of colour blindness, mono = only 1 type of cone. di = 2 types of cone (more common)
How to test for colour blindness
Ishihara Plate
Dark Adaptation
The transition of the retina from the light-adapted to dark-adapted state - threshold will lower (the eyes will become more sensitive) as cones adapt to darkness and begin to work.
Colour Opponency
Suggests that colour vision is based on three opposing pairs of colour cells in the brain red/green, blue/yellow, and black/white.
Perceptual Constancy
Objects maintain their properties even when the context changes their physical characteristics
Gradient, lighting condition in room, can all change our perception of colours but our brain does mini calculations to compensate this (colour is not NECESSARILY a direct reflection of wavelength
Selective Attention
The ability to prioritise some information while ignoring other information
Change blindness
Without attention, nothing is really stored in our memory.
Plane image experiment - have to look for a change. This is difficult as without direction of your attention, you have to scan every bit of the scene until your vision passes over the change. Once attention is directed for where to look, these changes become obvious
Simons and Levin (1998) - Door swap pedestrian study
Investigates: Change Blindness
Findings: 50% of people did not notice the difference. The people who noticed the difference were young adults (similar age to experimenters). People who didn’t notice the difference were older adults.
- They hypothesised that this may be because we pay more attention to people from our own social group
Simons and Levin (1998)
Door swap pedestrian study with construction workers
Investigates: are we more likely to be change-blind to our social out-groups?
Findings: 75% of young adults did not notice this change since construction workers = outgroup to most young adults
Feature integration theory
- Searching for one feature (colour, shape) can be done automatically. It “pops out”. It takes the same amount of time, no many how many items you have to search.
Searching for a combination of features requires controlled attention. You need to apply attention to each item, one at a time. More items requires more time.
Features of automatic processes
- Fast
- Effortless
- Occurs without intention
- Inflexible
- Uncontrollable
Features of controlled processes
- Slow
- Effortful
- Requires intention
- Flexible
- Controllable
Advantages of automaticity
- We don’t have to think too much about easier things
- Can put our attention towards more complex things that require more thinking
- Useful for repetitive long tasks
- Streamlining
- Dual tasking
- Survival - automaticity in emergency situations
Disadvantages of automaticity
- Hard to unlearn things
- Lack of control
- Error-prone
- Dangerous if not appropriate
Dichotic Listening
A task used in many attention experiments. Shadowing (say what someone else is saying while they’re saying it)
What do people notice and not notice in dichotic listening experiments
People notice: Changes from male to female, forward to backward
People don’t notice: English to german, Any content that was said
Broadbent’s Filter Theory
Early selective filtering out of relevant information, only selected information get meaning analysis
A limitation of Broadbents filter theory
People notice their name if it appears in their ear (breakthrough effects) This suggests Broadbent must be wrong because at some level you must be processing all your sensory information
Treisman’s Attenuation Model
- Attended messages pass through clearly. Unattended messages are weakened. Sometimes they break through
- Names breakthrough
- In the experiment telling a story about a dog that switches ears halfway through, the word “house” in the wrong ear breaks through because it is temporarily relevant and you are primed to be thinking of houses
In treismans attenuation model, the things that break through (have a low threshold) are:
- Expected
- Important
- Relevant - or strong, intesne signals (broken glass)
MacKay (1963) dichotic listening (subliminal perception experiment)
- Used ambiguous words in one ear (they threw stones at the bank)
- In the other ear, would play suggestive to either option of ambiguous word (river or money)
- Then would ask participants to chose another interpretation of certain test sentences after subliminal perception
Deutsch & Deutsch late selection model:
We process everything for meaning and filtering occurs later
Load Theory - Nilli Lavie
Spare capacity not required for the primary task is automatically allocated to other, irrelevant stimuli
Load Theory application if primary task is demanding
(going to take up all of your attention, high perceptual load, no resources left to do anything else)
- Early selection
- No distraction
High engrossment
Load Theory application if primary task is easy
(leftover capacity)
- Late selection
Distraction
Forster and Lavie (2008) - Response time “n” or “k” with distractor versus no distractor findings:
- Distractor has lower effect when a high perceptual load
You have control of how you allocate your attention
Pro of load theory
Accounts for early findings and correctly predicts that a more difficult task will lead to less interference
Pro of Broadbents filter theory
Dichotic listening performance - improved detection and ERP amplitudes for attended vs unattended
Bottom up attention
Stimulus-driven attention where we take from the world and bring it into our perceptual system (involuntary)
What things are salient to our bottom-up processing
- Colour
- Movement
- Size
- Loudness
- Pitch
- Emotion (threats and rewards)
Top down attention
Goal-driven, where we use knowledge to guide our perceptual processes (voluntary)
The Biased Competition Model of Attention
Sensory competition between bottom up and top down processes.
How does The Biased Competition Model of Attention work
Bottom up mechanisms feed in (visual system is tuned to things important for our survival, or suggest change), Simultaneous top-down modulation - can bias things towards our goals. We need both system - become aware of changes to our environment but also be able to override this so we can achieve our goals.
Sana et al. (2013)
Lecture experiment 1 (multitasking)
All participants took laptop notes, Multitasking condition ALSO had only tasks to complete whenever they wanted during the lecture. Multitasking scored 55% on final test while the note takers scored 70%
Sana et al. (2013)
Lecture experiment 2 (in view of multitasker)
- Staggered confederates between rows of participants , Confederates act as distractors by doing alternate tasks on their laptops (finding flight, shopping etc. (found significant disadvantage being in view of multitasker (55% compared to 75%)
The Switch Cost
When we switch tasks, we have to activate a whole new set of cognitive processes
Switching takes time (seconds to minutes) - to get to same level of engagement that you were at previously
Fitz et al study on phone notifications design
Assigned participants to 4 different experimental conditions (as usual, batched hourly, batched 3x a day, no notifications)
Fitz et al study on phone notifications findings
Batched 3x a day
- Significantly less inattention
- Less stress
- More perceived productivity
- Fewer negative feelings
- More happiness
Greater control over phone
Iconic Memory
Updating snapshot of the world - for example, movies when we move from one frame to the next, they blur together so we see as one continuous event
Echoic Memory
- Very long words - sounds can be stored from moment to moment so we experience it as a continuous sound
Create memory of past sounds to get the feeling you hear one word
Short-term/Working memory
What you are aware of in any given moment (“Thought bubble”)
Declarative (explicit) memory
Memories that you can talk about
Semantic Memory
Knowledge about the world
Episodic Memory
Events in our lives
Autobiographical Memory
Things that we know and remember about ourselves, our lives, and our identities
Nondeclarative (implicit) memory
Procedural Memory (skills, motor sequences, priming (piano playing, making sandwhiches))
Modal Model of Memory
In order to be able to recall later, we have to encode into our long-term memory
Retrieval
being able to receive memories to be used
Rehearsal
keep things active in our working memory (repetition)
Sperling (1960) experiment where participants get flashed a snapshot of a 9 letter grid
Found that people can usually report 1-2 items after short snapshot - our memory fades quickly - maybe we did see it all but as we write down the letters it fades away
Sperling (1960) experiment where participants get flashed a snapshot of a 9 letter grid with arrows pointing to a row
The arrows act as a que. Partial report = people can report 2-3 items no matter which row is cued, showing that for a brief period of time (for 2-3 letters) you have a complete mental image of what you just saw
What is the capacity of Short-Term Memory?
7 +/- 2
Chase & Ericsson verbatim digit span experiment
- Practiced digit span 4 days/week for 2 years, Digit span increased from 7 to 79
Why did chase and eriksons participants improve their verbatim digit span memory so much?
- One of the participants was an athlete, and would convert a string of numbers into running time, distance and date. This is called “instant coding” to create chunks out of long strings of digits (allows an increase in working memory)
Created an ability to “chunk”
Chess board (game setup and random setup) experiemnt
GAME: Experts are very good when shown a snapshot from a game, while novices fail. Experts can add MEANING & PATTERN to allow them to remember more information through chunking
RANDOM: Randomly put chess pieces across the board, now chess players are just as bad as the novices
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Peterson & Peterson short term memory test - dependent and independent variable
Independent variable - retention interval (how long the subjects had to hold things in mind)
Dependent variable - percentage correct
Central executive
controls flow of information into and out of LTM
Phonological Loop
auditory store, mostly language-based
Visual spatial sketchpad
visual store, mostly imagery based
Episodic buffer
Mental workspace that holds together all parts of our current perception or though. - keep track of current set of events we’re involved in
Working Memory Model - Baddeley & Hitch (1974)
Working memory is combined of Central executive, Phonological Loop, Visual-spatial sketchpad, and episodic buffer
3 key parts of a memory experiment
Encoding phase, Delay, Retrieval
Encoding phase in a memory experiment
give material to remember - may be manipulated through presentation, instructions (can be incidental - no intention to remember tasks - or intentional)
Retrieval phase in a memory experiment
3 common types; Free Recall, Cued recall, recognition
Delay phase in a memory experiment
may be immediate, minutes, days. May also have interference (other tasks, distraction)
Craik & Tulving (1975) - The Depth of Processing Effect
Had 4 oreinting tasks - structural (upper or lower case), phonemic (does it rhyme?), category (living or non living) and sentence (does it fit in this sentence)
Craik & Tulving (1975) - The Depth of Processing Effect findings
Increased complexity of the task = better memory (higher memory for category and sentence tasks compared to structural)
Levels of Processing Theory
The strength of encoding depends on the level of elaborative rehearsal
3 parts of elaboration
- Amount of attention paid
- Amount of meaning information extracted
- Connection to pre-existing knowledge
Generation effect
When you generate and link your own knowledge, you can have much better memory (tested in the experiement where you generate your own words (ie. Pass, ___) rather than just being given the word “fail”)
Bower, Clark, Lesgold, & Wincenz experiment into how organisation structures can assist in long-term memory
Structured vs random
First trial: 73% vs 20%
Third trial: 100% vs 52%
Method of Loci
- Imagine to-be-remembered items in familiar locations
Retrace your steps
What does it mean when you say that Visual cortex is retinotopic
spots in visual field correspond to spots in visual cortex.
Split brain lab experiment
Left hemisphere can produce speech
Only the right side saw the shape, only the left side can talk - so the participant would say they see nothing.
However, if you ask the patient to reach under the screen and pick up the shape they saw, they can do that very accurately. (Left hand could find it, right hand couldn’t)
Uncrossed disparity
Light will end up in a different part on the retina depending on its distance - Brain interprets retinal disparity as depth
Vergence
When we look at things that are very close, our eyes stop moving in parallel and move inward - brain can use this eye muscle movement to guess how far away things are
Monocular cues: Linear perspective
parallel lines come closer together off into the distance (street narrows)
Monocular cues: Relative height
things that are close to us are in bottom of visual field, things that are far away are at the top
Monocular cues: Relative size
size of objects depending on their distance from the eye
Monocular cues: Texture gradient
Things that are closeup (high resolution, good detail) things that are further away (low resolution, less detail)
Monocular cues: Ariel perspective
- water molecules in the air, things that are further away, have to look through more water molecules, makes them hazy and slightly grey/blue)
Monocular cues: Interposition/occlusion
things closer to me will block things further away from me
Monocular cues: Light and shade
shadows allow us to know where light is coming from and make judgements about size and distance.
Motion Parallax
Things far away from your position will seem to be moving with you, Things closer than our fixation point will feel as though they are quickly moving past us - - Use change in motion perception to make inferences about how far away something is.
What does it mean to have information available
item is in memory
What does it mean to have information accessible
item can be retrieved from memory
What does failure of availability mean
Forgetting
What does failure of accessibility mean
Retrieval failure
State-dependent memory (Godden & Baddeley) experiment
Those who remembered words on land performed better when tested on land compared to water, and vice versa
Cue dependency principle
The strength of a memory depends on the number and informativeness of its cues
Encoding specificity principle
Memories are linked to the context in which they are created i.e better test results if you sit the exam in the classroom where u learnt the information
The Forgetting Curve
Learn the list once, rapid forgetting, relearn the list, less rapid forgetting, Repeat process, each time you re-learn, less forgetting.
Conclusion we can gather from the forgetting curve
Overlearning leads to stable remembering
Ebbinghaus definition of “savings”
the reduction in time required to learn a second time
Free vs cued recall (tulving & pearlstone)
- Improved performance on cued recall, which shows that participants did remember the words, they just were not able to retrieve that memory
State-dependent memory (Godden & Baddeley)
Used scuba divers, made them try to remember words on land or underwater, found improved performance when tested in the environment that the information was encoded. This also holds for the classroom, mood, and drugs.
Cue dependency principle
The strength of a memory depends on the number and informativeness of its cues
Encoding specificity principle
Cues are most effected if they are encoded along with the to-be-remembered information.
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885) Non-sensical words & forgetting
Had lists of non-sensical “words” (PAB, DAX, RUS, WUD) than retested himself after different interval
- Learn the list once, rapid forgetting
- Relearn the list, less rapid forgetting
(each time you re-learn, less forgetting)
Found that overlearning leads to stable remembering
whos so cute and funny and cool
ashlyn lol x
Bahrick et al (1975) - Memory & yearbook
Used participants ages 17-70
- Found high rates of memory for name and picture recognition, but low (and increasingly lower as u age) rates of memory for free recall. This shows that information can be retain over long period of times, just need retrieval cues to access it
Retroactive interference
Recent memories interfere with the ability to retrieve older memories
Proactive interference
Old memories interfere with the ability to retrieve newer memories
Intentional forgetting (Nardo & Anderson, 2024) Findings
Facilitation (FE)
- Words that have been recalled during testing are better recalled than baseline words
Suppression-induced forgetting (SIF)
- Words that have been suppressed during testing are more poorly recalled than baseline words.
Suppression
- Is conscious process (compared to unconscious repression)
- Exerting control over memory
- Adaptive
Supported by experimental evidence
Repression
- Unconsciously block memory from awareness
- Maladaptive
- Not supported by experimental evidence
H.M Hippocampus removal
Removal of hippocampus in 1953 for treatment of seizures at age 26. For the rest of his life, he had NO memory
Anterograde Amnesia
Amnesia for events that happen after the trauma
Retrograde Amnesia
Amnesia for any events that happened prior to the trauma
What was lost in H.M after removal of his hippocampus
- The ability to form new, episodic memories
- The ability to learn new words (with a few exceptions)
Events several years before the surgery
What was preserved in H.M after removal of his hippocampus
- Short term memory
- Can hold present moment
- Sense of current time until smth changes
- Semantic memory of everything prior to surgery
- High intelligence
- Sense of self (although he had difficulty recognising himself in the mirror later in life)
Mirror tracing task (Milner, 1965)
H.M Improved in lowering number of daily errors but could not consciously recall doing the task. THIS is implicit memory
Hippocampus role in memory (H.M shows evidence)
- NOT where memories are stored
- Creates memory traces by binding ideas together
- Consolidates memories and transfers them to the cortex for re-perception
Galan figures test on H.M
After an hour bring back the same set of images, found that his accuracy was much better than initially - even tho he couldn’t recall
Barllett - tested real world memory through stories
With repeated reproduction
- Narrative gist remained the same as first report
Omissions
- Stories got shorter
- Culturally unfamiliar details omitted (become more conventionally western)
Normalisation
- Details changed to match participant culture
- Culturally appropriate words substituted (Canoes and paddles –> Boats and oars)
Schema Theory (Bartlett)
Memories are not reproduced, they are reconstructed
- We use schemas to understand and remember the world
Bransford & Johnson (1972) - gave participants a difficult paragraph than given context of washing clothes - findings
Being provided context (I.e. WASHING CLOTHES) guided participants, lead to better comprehension and recollection.
- Concluded that schemas aid in putting information into structure of knowledge
Brewer & Treyens (1981) Office Waiting room scheme study
- Schema inconsistent items were much lower on the list
- People remembered things that were schema consistent with an office, even tho they were actually absent
What is a script
Shared knowledge to help us interpret the world & stories & communicate - Tells us how to behave and what to expect
How do we encode drawing from scripts and schemas
We encode our inferences/assumptions (drawn from our scripts and schemas)
New information is incorporated into our existing memory
Retrieval based on scripts and schemas
We reactivate the script/schema - Every time we retrieve a memory, we revise it based on our current script/schema (there is an opportunity for it to change)
What is a phoneme
A single unit of sound that changes meaning
What does allophonic mean
words that are acoustically different but not functionally different
What is a morpheme
The smallest language unit that carries meaning, can be words (unbound/free) or affixes/suffixes (bound)
What are content words
Words that represent something (dog, justice, war, food). New words are added to represent new ideas (open)
What are function words
Words used to help us understand sentences (in, to, of) - CLOSED
Function morphemes
Bound morphemes
- Plural - s
- Regular past tense - ed
- Comparative - er
-Superlative -est
Aphasia
The inability to produce and understand language
Brocas aphasia characteristics
- Inability to process syntax
- People speak slowly
- Use content words easily (helps to convey gist)
Brocas area location
Located near areas of the brain that control speech muscles. For right handed people: left hemisphere, mostly lower edge of frontal lobe and upper edge of temporal lobe
Syntax
Refers to the structure of a language –> Phrases and sentences. The implicit rules for ordering words
Wernicke’s Aphasia Charactertistics
- Feels fluent
- Difficulty with language but completely able to speak
- Few content words
- Long sentence, many function words, yet devoid of meaning
Wernicke area location and function
- Left temporal lobe
- Next to primary aufitory cortex
- Translates sound into meaning
What is HAS in infant testing
HAS: Hight amplitude sucking procedure. Involves giving infants dummies connected to transducers - higher sucking = higher interest in sound
Infant Speech Perception - Sucking respone to “ba” and “ga”
Following habituation to the “ba” sound, they play the “ga” sound and find that their sucking rate increases again. This shows that infants can detect acoustic differences between sounds in the early period of their life
Categorical Speech Perception
- Perception of consonant sounds becomes categorical –> different categories of sounds. We hear slight variations of the sound as still belonging to the same categories
VOT
the time interval between release of consonant and onset of voicing (distance between release period and voicing period)
How is VOT associated with categorical perception
At 10-25 VOT we hear “ba.” Once it reaches threshold of 30 onwards, you will hear that as “pa.” This only applies across speakers of the same language, but not between them (i.e., a non-english speaker will not hear a difference). This shows that detection of phonemic change is modified by experience
Older Infant speech perception (Hindi and Salish speech sound experiment)
As they gain experience in their own language, they begin to lose the perception of a difference and allocate the slightly different sounds to the same phonemic category. 6-8 months, 100% rate of differentiation. 11-12 months, cannot differentiate the sounds.
What does Cooing (at 2 months) involve
- Try to produce sounds
- Play with their vocal cords
- Exploration
What does Reduplicated babbling (6-7 months) involve
- Same syllable over and over
- Train articulators
- Begins to approximate to sounds in their primary language
What is variegated babbling (8-12 months)
Making sounds that are syllables with different consonants and vowels
What happens at 10 months in terms of baby sounds
They have adapted to the language it hears - adults can tell which language baby is learning
Why can infants produce only a limited set of sounds
- Shape of the vocal tract (tongue protrudes forward)
- Development of motor cortex
Comprehension Versus production
Word comprehension (repetitive vocabulary) precedes productive vocabulary by an average of 4 months
Findings of Communicative development inventory
This is where the parent ticks the words your child understands versus produces. Found that for language comprehension, there is a steady gradual increase from the age of about 1.0. For language production, there is a slow to start, exponential increase from the age of around 1.5
What is The vocabulary burst
Major increase in productive vocabulary acquisition rate after first 50 words are learned
Why does the vocabulary burst occur
- Understand the symbolic nature of language (naming bias)
- Control over articulation
- Easier retrieval
What is under-extension
- “dog” only for family dog but not other dogs
Overextension
Using a single word to generalise to a range of words in the same category
Holophrases
A single word that stands for an entire statement
What are some examples of specific semantic relations children convey in early sentences
Possession (MY), Naming (THAT), Attributes (BIG), Actions (GO)
Schema Theory
Memories are not reproduced, they are reconstructed based on our own schemas surrounding them.
