Unit 3: Cognitive Psychology Flashcards
What concept refers to acquiring or encoding information, putting infromation into memory
learning
what concept refers to holding onto info and getting it back out (or retrieving)
memory
What are the three most commonly used types of memory test?
Free recall
cued recall
recognition
What type of memory test?
recall as many words as you can from the list you just saw
free recall
what type of memory test?
recall the word that started with “m” or recall the word that is a type of animal.
cued recall
what type of memory test?
say yes or no as to whether the word appeared in the earlier list.
Tree: yes or no
Food: yes or no
recognition
The conceptual difference between short-term memory and long-term memory is not based on time, but based on ________.
status of information
In short term memory, is the duration limited or long-lasting?
limited
In short term memory, is the capacity limited or high?
limited
In short term memory, is the format commonly acoustic (verbal) or semantic (meaning based)?
acoustic
In long term memory, is the duration limited or long-lasting?
long-lasting
In long term memory, is the capacity limited or high?
high
In long term memory, is the format commonly acoustic (verbal) or semantic (meaning based)?
semantic
What memory consists of the Content of our current thoughts. in other words, “online memory”
Short term memory
what memory consists of stored memory, not in our current thoughts and requires encoding/retrieval.
long-term memory
What were the patterns of deficits in patients with damage to the hippocampus?
Intact Short Term memory
Intact Long term memory for information already in place prior to damage.
Deficits include remembering new info for long term memory.
Seeing a different pattern for STM vs. LTM.
dissociation.
memory from one’s own personal life
autobiographical memory
autobiographical memories tied to an event that is especially emotional and/or shocking.
flashbulb memory
What did Talarico and Rubin study in terms of the effect of emotion on memory?
Overtime, memory details decreases in accuracy, but confidence and vividness ratings increased.
memories for highly emotional events are not perfectly preserved like a snapshot. Emotion creates strong beliefs about memory, but not especially well-preserved memories.
We don’t just fail to recollect things; our memories can actually change and become distorted.
What were the methods, results, and interpreatation of Roedigar and McDermott’s study on false recognition?
They presented lists of related words (bed, rest, awake, tired, dream, snooze) and were later given a recognition test. Some items on the tests didn’t appear in the original lists, but were highly related to the words that did not appear.
related words prime one another and activates in the mind.
What influences schemas on memory as supported by research?
schema, or knowledge structure, about what tends to be involved. (e.g. an armed robberies consist of disguises, weapons, and money)
In Holst & Pezdek study, participants recalled schema-consistent elements that were never stated as the recording purposefully left out the schema-consistent elements.
What influences post-event information on memory as supported by research?
exposure to:
- info in subsequent questions
-info from subsequent conversations
-info from subsequent media reports.
In Loftus & Palmer study, participants watched a video and were asked to make speed estimate. One week later, The particpants were asked memory questions (e.g. broken glass). Participants that were primed with “smash” were more likely to report the broken glass.
What are three potential sources of memory distortion?
- Activation of Stored Information
- Exposure to Post-Event Information
- Thoughts and Imaginations
what is meant when we say “memory is dynamic, integrative, reconstuctive, and subjective”?
dynamic: constantly changing
integrative: mixing together process
reconstructive: piecing together process
subjective: based on the individual’s knowledge, experiences, thoughts, etc.
We often retrieve bits and peices of past events, with gaps in our memory, and we have a tendency to fill in these gaps with elements from other sources.
How is “activation of stored information” a potential source of memory distortion?
related words prime one another. We can confuse info activated in our mind.
how are “thoughts and imaginations” a source of memory distortion?
when we concoct events in our head, we can come to believe those things happened.
This applies to:
-trying to piece together past events
-imagining events
-dreaming of events
-creating fictional stories
What factors contribute to success in problem solving?
practice and experiences
what factors influence the efficiency with which individuals are able to arrive at appropriate solutions?
Acquired knowledge and skills
Summarize the role of knowledge and experience in expertise
Allows for a deep understanding of the problem
allows us to draw on relevant concepts/principles
Allows us to deraw on comparable problems weve encountered in the past
Allows for solving by analogy.
What is the 10,000 hour rule?
Offered 10,000 hour rule that says if you want to become an expert in an area, 10,000 hours of practice is required
Is the 10,000 hour rule true?
10,000 hour rule is an oversimplification. There’s not a specific amount of practice/experience that’s needed to become an expert.
Quality of practice is more important that quantity.
What concept is defined as “tendency to keep approaching a problem in a certain way”
(often do this because the approach worked in the past)
Mental Set
What did Luchins’ research on mental set summarize?
Luchins used a set of “water jug” problems. He intentionally set up the problem set so the first several problems involved the same solution. Problem 5 required different thinking, but most participants still used an inefficient solve. Problem 6 couldn’t be solved by 64% even though the solution required different thinking and less steps.
What concept is defined as “tendency to use an object only in its customary or usual way”.
(can think of this as a mindset with regard to the use of objects).
Functional Fixedness
How do breaks and sleep help us overcome rigidity of thinking, as evident by research?
Problem solving is sometimes hindered by rigidity of thinking, by getting stuck in a mindset. To come up with a good solutions, we often need to break out of our current thinking and adopt a new perspective.
With breaks, we’re more likely to approach problems in a new way and overcome a mindset. Breaks involving sleep is especially effective to approaching problems in a new way.
what is meant by problem solving transfer?
someone who takes what they learned in one context and extends it to a new one to achieve results. research shows that problem solvers show a failure to spontaneously transfer (meaning without a hint).
What is a major cause of transfer difficulties?
Not enough focus on attaining a conceptual understanding and learning underlying principles.
i.e. too much memorizing and too much focus on surface features of problems.
What are two effective ways to overcome transfer difficulties?
Problem solvers need to focus more on a conceptual understanding and on underlying principles. methods that encourage a focus on principles:
- Prepare for explaining
- compare and contrast problems.
What are two ways in which we are irrational/inconsistent in our decision making?
- Preference Reversal: Different measures produce different preferences.
- Framing Effect: principle that our choices are influenced by the way they are framed through different wordings, settings, and situations.
i.e. Framed as gains = people tend to avoid risk. Framed as losses = people tend to choose riskier.
How do we use availability heuristics when it comes to making decisions?
to judge the likelihood of an event according to the ease with which examples come to mind.
things that come to mind more readily are judged as more likely.
How does the use of the availability heuristic produce problems and biases?
things that come to mind more readily (and for which examples are more “available”) are not necessarily more common or likely.
Exposure in the media can skew things. memory factor can cause some examples to come to mind more readily even though they’re not more common
How do we use representativeness heuristic to make decisions?
to judge the likelihood of an event by how well it matches our prototype or stereotype or preconceived notion of the type of event in question.
Events that better match our prototype/stereotype are judged to be more common/likely.
How does the use of the representativeness heuristic produce problems and biases?
People misjudge likelyhood of sequences.
People expect short sequences (small samples) to be representative of long-run outcomes.
What was Tversky & Kahneman’s experiment on ignoring base rates and how was representative heuristic involved?
Tversky and Kaneman’s experiment presented participants a scenerio with a set of base rates (30/70 engineersand lawyers) and followed up with a second question regarding a single person with a stereotype of an engineer. Participants were asked if the person was a lawyer or engineer. Participants selected engineer based on the stereotype regardless of base rate manipulation.
People use the representative heuristic (focusing on stereotypicality) and ignore base rate information.
What is known about the base rate effect in clinical decision making (including Heller and Saltzstein’s study)?
The more experience the clinician has, the greater insenstivity to base rate.
Use of the representativenss heuristic resulted in medical professionals not facoring in base rates enough (base rates effect) cause
What effect is defined as achored by initial assessment and don’t adjust enough based on new evidence.
anchoring effect
what type of bias is defined as seeking confirming evidence, but not disconfirming evidence.
confirmation bias
How is the anchoring effect and confirmation bias apply to clinical decision making?
Physicians and clinicians are human and often use heuristics when making judgements, perhaps more often with greater experience. They are not immune to misjudgements, despite education, training, and experience.
