Week 8 - Information Processing Flashcards
Explain the information processing model:
- what our minds do with incoming info (Sensory input -> sensory store-> short term & working memory -> long term memory)
- get sensory input (hearing, smelling, tasting, touching) and send it to sensory store (have to decide what to select for further processing, most of it is lost in 5 seconds), the selected info gets stored in short term & working memory (repeat and remember it) but some gets unrehearsed so it is lost in 10-15 seconds, if we use these repeating strategies enough we can cause this info to be stored permanently in our long term memory (we might lose it or misplace it though)
Information processing in infants. Memory may be present at birth, but weak. Explain the classical conditioning experiment with the stroking of foreheads and sugar water on lips.
- got very young babies (within the first week of life) and they stroke their foreheads gently and put sugar water on their lips, they did this repeatedly and after several trials the baby would suck when they stroked their forehead
- showed that the babies could remember this simple stimulus response relationship
Information processing in infants. Memory improves with age. Give evidence:
- mobile studies: kicking lead to pleasant stimulus- do they kick at a higher rate than expected?
- > 3 months can remember for a whole week, 6 month olds can remember it for 3 weeks
- reactivation experience: try to extend the length of time that the memory survives- remind them of it without retraining them (no string) or extinction (different position)
- > found that it could cause the memory trace to last much longer
Short term memory capacity increases with age, by about age __, were pretty much adult like in terms of holding information (number of items that someone can remember)
12
What is automaticity?
- cognitive ability that requires virtually no effort
- allows you to think about other things
- process lots of things at once
ex: you know your multiplication tables automatically so you can do a harder math problem that entails other things
What is metacognition?
-awareness and understanding of our thought processes
Metacognition. Explain Cuvo’s experiment with word money association.
- 5th grade, 8th grade and university age
- each word was associated with an amount of money (1 cent and 10 cent words)
- your job to remember them to earn money
- 5th grade tend to remember the same proportionate words for 1 cent and 10 cent words
- 8th graders tended to remember more 10 cent words than 1 cent words
- university remember lots of the 10 cent words
Name three memory strategies:
rehearsal, organization and elaboration
Memory strategies: rehearsal. Talk about Flavell’s card-memory task.
- Task with pre-school, gr2 and gr5 kids
- Cards of animals, show them and then cover them (they need to remember what order they are in)
- Film them for several minutes to see what they would do
- Some rehearsed the order of the cards and some did not
- Found that very few preschool children made a solid attempt at remembering the sequence of cards (about 10%)
- More than half of the Gr2 kids rehearsed
- More than ¾ of gr5 kids rehearsed
- Training possible and effective but production deficiencies
- When he saw that the younger kids weren’t rehearsing, he taught them how to rehearse and they did it on the next try (performance improved), but did not remember for very long b/c young?
- You can train them to use it on one task but he changes the task, it doesn’t occur to them to use it (production deficiency)
Memory strategies: what is elaboration?
- making information that would otherwise just sort of seem random, meaningful
- spelling mnemonics
- list order acronyms
- number mnemonics
What is the information-processing theory?
human cognition consists of mental hardware and mental software
What is sensory memory?
where information is held very briefly in raw, unanalyzed form (no longer than a few seconds)
What is working memory?
site of ongoing cognitive activity
What is long-term memory?
a limitless, permanent storehouse of knowledge of the world
What is the central executive?
coordination of sensory, working and long term memory
