Wk 11 & 12 Cognitive Psych

Question 1

What is cognitive psych?

Answer 1

Study of mental processes (involved in making sense of the world)

Question 2

What is sensory memory?

Answer 2

Preserves information briefly (0.5 – 2 seconds)

Question 3

What is short-term memory?

Answer 3

holds information in
verbalizable (speech) format

Question 4

What is long-term memory?

Answer 4

retrieved after attention has been diverted

Question 5

What is primary memory?

Answer 5

information held in immediate consciousness ≈
short-term memory

Question 6

What is secondary memory?

Answer 6

Vast store of memory which gets called back into
primary memory ≈ long-term memory

Question 7

What is the evidence for distinction between
short and long-term memory?

Answer 7

1. Serial position effect in free recall
2. Neuropsychological data

Question 8

What is the relationship between STM and LTM?

Answer 8

1. Chunking
2. Mechanism of transfer from STM to LTM:
   Maintenance rehearsal?

Question 9

what processes lead to more durable
memory?

Answer 9

-encoding
-retrieval

Question 10

What does encoding involve?

Answer 10

-Levels of processing
-Organization: Schemas
-Flashbulb memory (?)

Question 11

What does retrieval involve?

Answer 11

-Retrieval failure
-Reconstructive processes

Question 12

What is organic amnesia due to?

Answer 12

brain damage

Question 13

what is anterograde amnesia?

Answer 13

Impaired learning of information since onset of amnesia

Question 14

What is retrograde amnesia?

Answer 14

Loss of
information learned prior to onset

Question 15

What may amnesia involving frontal damage show?

Answer 15

-source amnesia
-confabulation (accompanies by agnosia)

Question 16

what is source amnesia?

Answer 16

forgetting how information was acquired

Question 17

what is confabulation?

Answer 17

“honest lying”

Question 18

what is anosognosia?

Answer 18

lack of concern/insight into the
(memory) deficit

Question 19

what does the neocortex do?

Answer 19

Stores sensory experiences in a distributed manner, different for various senses (visual, auditory, olfactory)

Question 20

what does the limbic system do?

Answer 20

Binds outputs of processing modules to the temporal and spatial context of episodes

Question 21

what is the limbic system made up of?

Answer 21

-hippocampus
-thalamus

Question 22

what does the prefrontal cortex do?

Answer 22

-strategic retrieval (reconstructive process)
-checking consistency of retrieved material (confabulation, source amnesia, unconscious plagiarism)
-metamemory for monitoring your own memory performance

Question 23

what is priming?

Answer 23

exposure to one thing (like a word or an image) makes it easier for your brain to recognize or recall related things

Question 24

what are the long-term memory modules?

Answer 24

-declarative memory
-procedural memory
-semantic memory
-episodic memory

Question 25

what is declarative memory?

Answer 25

verbalizable memory

Question 26

what is procedural memory?

Answer 26

action, perceptual, and motor skills

Question 27

what is semantic memory?

Answer 27

general knowledge

Question 28

what is episodic memory?

Answer 28

childhood events

Question 29

what is attention?

Answer 29

process of focusing conscious awareness

Question 30

what is the filter model of attention?

Answer 30

mental filter that helps you focus on one thing while ignoring others

Question 31

what is pre-attentive processing?

Answer 31

brain's automatic, quick scan of information before you consciously focus on something

Question 32

What is Treisman's Attenuation Model?

Answer 32

suggests that even when you're not paying full attention to something, your brain still processes it to some extent

Question 33

What is the Late Selection Models of Attention

Answer 33

your brain fully processes all incoming information, and the selection of what you consciously perceive happens at a later stage, closer to conscious awareness

Question 34

What is the capacity theory of attention?

Answer 34

is like a limited resource. It suggests that you can only pay attention to a certain amount of information at a time

Question 35

What is the biased competition model of attention?

Answer 35

Processing of relevant information is enhanced, while processing of irrelevant information is inhibited

Question 36

what is bottom-up attention?

Answer 36

Stimulus properties that capture your attention (e.g., a flash of light, loud noise)

Question 37

what is top-down attention?

Answer 37

Goal-driven selection of information (e.g., finding your keys on a cluttered desk, searching for Wally)

Question 38

what are two failures of attention?

Answer 38

-change blindness -inattentional blindness

Question 39

what is change blindness?

Answer 39

failure to retain and/or compare information across time or views

Question 40

what is inattentional blindness?

Answer 40

failure to notice a fully-visible, but unexpected event/object when attention is engaged on another task

Question 41

what are the 2 eye movements?

Answer 41

-overt attention -covert attention

Question 42

what is overt attention?

Answer 42

selectively processing something by directing your eyes to it

Question 43

what is covert attention?

Answer 43

selectively processing something without moving your eyes to it

Question 44

what are 2 abnormalities in attention?

Answer 44

-spatial neglect -simultagnosia

Question 45

what is spatial neglect?

Answer 45

after damage to one hemisphere of the brain, a deficit in attention to the opposite side of space is observed

Question 46

what is Simultagnosia?

Answer 46

inability to perceive more than a single object at a time