Working Memory Flashcards
Why do we categorise things?
Adds structure and simplifies information, reducing time to think - we’re cognitive misers (Fiske and Taylor, 1991)
Human brain cannot cope with how many friends?
more than 150 Dunbar, 2006
What is temporal primacy?
features encountered first
What is perceptual salience?
when differences are very salient
What is chronic accessibility?
when we’re very used to classifying using particular categories
Despite social categorisation helping us to navigate our world…
it leads to stereotyping
Hutter and Crisp (2005) found…
frequency analysis of traits used to describe gender social categories
When is categorisation not used?
when there’s a poor fit
may be a sub-type of original category
may be individuated
Person perception is based on…
…a continuum running from categorisation to individuation (Fiske and Neuberg, 1990)
Hutter and Crisp (2005) gave the example of a bricky from Oxford Uni as…
poor compositional compatibility
What does poor compositional compatibility result in?
Causal reasoning
What is a naive scientist? (Heider, 1958)
looking for cause in our social world to achieve coherence
What is dual processing?
actively switching processing styles when forming impressions
Who’s continuum model is widely used?
Fiske and Neuberg’s (1990)
What is a key aspect of the continuum model?
allocation of attention
Working memory was developed by…
Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
What are executive functions concerned with? (LaDoux, 1996)
co-ordinating direction and operations of working memory
Where are executive processes associated with?
the frontal lobes - the prefrontal cortex
What’s the social brain hypothesis?
Dunbar (1998) human intelligence did not evolve to solve information about the world in the environment, but a means to live in large and complex social groups
What were Dunbar’s (1998) assumptions based on?
Humans have large prefrontal cortex (neanderthals had larger visual processing areas and we less successful group wise)
What do social skills allow for?
Group co-ordination and communication of ideas
Why has social cognition incorporated WM?
to understand social perception
What are five methods for testing executive processing in social perception?
dual tasking populations with involvement ageing populations substances brain neuroimaging techniques
Hutter and Crisp (2006) dual tasking study…
found perceiving incongruent social conjunctions requires executive resources
Hutter, Wood and Dodd (2011) ageing study…
Older vs younger adults describe a male midwife. Older found it harder to resolve inconsistency through use of existing social categories
Why are older perceivers more likely to maintain categorical boundaries?
Incorporating a target would involve changing their current categorical structure
Two additional measures of executive ability are…
digit symbol substitution test (attention)
stroop (inhibition)
