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Flashcards by Rachel Vince, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by Rachel Vince
almost 8 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| What is the definition of Cognition? | Pertaining to the mental processes that include knowing, thinking, learning, judging and problem solving. Includes sensation/perception, attention, working memory, concepts and knowledge representations - networks. NOT awareness, as not all a conscious process. |
| Who developed the first psychology lab? | Wilhelm Wundt (1879) Goal was to study the mind scientifically. |
| Who conducted one of the first cognitive psychological experiments? | Franciscus Donders (1868) Dutch psychologist looked at the time-course of cognitive processes. Measured RT between presentation of a stimulus and persons response to the stimulus. Simple RT Trial vs Choice RT Trial |
| Franciscus Donders (1868) 1) Hypothesis (& rationale) 2) Results 3) Difficulties | 1) choice RT trials would take longer than simple RT trials (due to time it takes to make the decision) 2) It took 1/10 sec longer to respond in the choice RT trials (indicating how long it took to make the decision) 3) No-one had done this before and no computers to time it. |
| Why was Donder's (1868) experiment important? | Demonstrated that mental process/responses can not be measured directly, but must be inferred from participants behaviour. This led to the rise of behaviourism. |
| What is Behaviourism? Founded by... Declined... | Observable behaviour is the only valid data for psychology. Looked at stimulus response connections. Therefore, rejected the study of mental processes because they are not directly observable. Declined in 1950's as it could not acccount for most complex behaviours (language dvpt/production etc) Founded by John Watson. |
| Describe the rise of Cognition. | Stimulus - Mental Processes - Response Bvrists did not study the mental process. 'Underground Studies' were conducted in response to the strong Behaviourists. |
| Describe the parrallels between Information Processing and Cognition. What are the limitations? | Computer became metaphor for brain - mental processes involves step-by-step process - product of one step passed on to next Limitations 1) don't necessarily think in step-by-step processing (we do parallel processing) 2) Memory not as straightforward as 'request information' |
| What is the difference between Basic Cognition and Applied Cognition? | 1) Basic Cognition - looks at theory (contributes to fundamental knowledge) 2) Applied Cognition - looks at practical application (solves a specific problem) |
| What did Baddeley et al (1975) study? What did Ellis and Hennelly (1980) study? | 1) The longer it takes to say a word, the less that can be remembered (memory span is greater for short words) 2) Used the above to study lower scores of Welsh speaking children in IQ tests (digit names in Welsh have the same no of syllables, but tend to have longer vowel sounds, therefore longer to say, therefore more difficult to remember) BASIC AND APPLIED COGNITION WORKING TOGETHER |
| What are the two basic types of perceptual processing? | 1) BOTTOM-UP - Processing based on incoming data - starts at point of perception 2) TOP-DOWN - processing based on knowledge - can be aware or unaware of use of knowledge |
| What does the 'context' mean in terms of perceptual processing? | Part of top-down processing. Using information/knowledge of a situation to interpret situation. |
| What are the three approaches to Bottom-Up pattern recognition? | 1) Feature Approach - objects are analysed into smaller components (features) and compared to info stored in memory. Occurs early in the process of recognition. No meaning (top-down) is occuring. Stimulus - Feature Analysis - Letter Analysis |
| What are the problems with Feature Approach? | 1) Can a limited no of features account for complexity of evt? 2) Research shows at least some meaning is processed at an early stage. |
| What is the Word Superiority Effect? | Letters are easier to identify when part of a word than when seen in isolation or in a string of letters that don't form a word. Form of Top-Down Processing. |
| Study by Reicher (1969) | Studied the WSE. Findings: 1) Letters in words not processed letter-by-letter (processed in parallel) 2) Regularity of pronunciation impacts on WSE (e.g. 'i' in mint easier than pint) 3) Letters easier to ID in pseudo words than alone or in non-words |
| Describe the interaction between bottomup and top down processing. | Pattern recognition is a combination of bottom up and top down. E.g. WSE: Basic components (letters) help to ID whole word (bottom up) and high level components (words) help to ID letters. |
| Study by Vokey and Read (1985) | Subliminal Messages Demonstration. Findings: 1) hearing messages in backwards music is due to active construction (top down) 2) Still has to match somewhat the stimuli given (bottom up) 3) Do not impact on bvr (subliminal perception) as unable to descriminate between meaningful and nonsensical. |
| What are Framing Effects in Decision Making? | Judgments are affected by the way the choices are stated. |
| When a choice is framed in terms of gains, people use ... strategy. When a choice is framed in terms of losses, people use ... strategy. | 1) risk aversion strategy 2) risk taking strategy |
| What is Attention? | Process of concentrating on specific features of evt, or on certain thoughts or activities. |
| What is Selective Attention? | The ability to focus on one message and ignore all others. |
| What is divided attention? | The ability to pay attention to, or carry out, two or more different tasks simultaneously. Reduced memory when doing this. Distracted driving laws based on this. |
| What are two general types of Attention Models? | 1) Early Selection Model - explain selective attention by early filtering out of unattended messages - filtered BEFORE incoming info analysed for meaning. 2) Late Selection Model - selection of stimuli for final processing doesn't occur until AFTER info in message analysed for meaning |
| Describe Broadbent's (1958) Filter Model of Early Selection. | |
| What is the Sensory Store? ... Detector? ...Memory? | 1) holds incoming info for short period and transfers all of it to filter - filter ID's attended message based on physical characteristics. 2) info (attended message only) processed to determine higher level characteristics (e.g. meaning) 3) output of detector enters memory - used immediately or t/f'd to LTM |
| What is the evidence for Broadbent's Filter Model? | DICHOTIC LISTENING TASK Procedure of presenting a different message to each ear. Condition 1 - report in any order - tended to report all letters in one ear and then all letters from the other (65% accuracy) Condition 2 - report in order of each pair (20% accuracy) |
| What are the findings of the Dichotic Listening Task? | It is difficult to switch between channels. Cond 1 - easier to report all info from one channel and then the other Cond 2 - Low performance as you can't attend to both channels at the same time.(i.e. they can't both make it through the detector at the same time) |
| Study by Gray & Wedderburn (1960) | 'Dear Aunt Jane' - Evidence against Broadbent's Filter Model - Shadowing Task - repeating a message out loud with a dichotic listening task - Conclusion - attention jumped to unattended message because meaning of the words was being taken into account. - Explains Cocktail Effect |
| Study by Mackay (1973) | - Evidence for Late Selection - Ambiguous Sentences in one ear; biasing word in the other - meaning of biasing word influenced sentence choice - indicates participants aware of biasing word; therefore, it must have been processed at level of meaning |
| What is Task Loading? | How much of a person's cognitive resources are used to accomplish a task. - high load vs low load - under high load conditions, all resources being used therefore only selected items attended to - under low load conditions, additional info can be processed as not all resources being used |
| What is Automaticity? | - associated with easy or well-practiced task - can be beneficial but can also make a task more difficult - e.g. stroop effect - names of word interferes with ability to name color of ink |
| What is Highway Hypnosis? | - 'time gap' or 'driving without awareness' - Chapman et al (1999) 90% had experienced HH 5sec-25mins HH terminated by requirement for relatively complex driving - Cerezuela et al (2004) EEG differences between motorways and conventional roads |
| What are the arguments against HH being due to attention/automaticity? | 1) memory for everyday drilving is poor - hard to distinguish between one trip and the next - we don't need to remember this info 2) even relatively complex driving situations may be forgotten soon after they occur |
| What is the relationship between Automaticity and Task Difficulty? | When task difficulty increased, performance decreases on the easier (or less important) task. - Tyler et al. (1979) Automaticity still affected by resources. |
| What are Mnemonic Devices? | Active, strategic learning devices or methods; rehearsal strategies. |
| What are Informal (Naive) Mneumonics? | Generally less elaborate, more suited to smaller amounts of info and more personalised; devises you invent yourself. |
| What are Formal Mnemonics? | Rely on pre-established set of memory aids and considerable practice on the to-be-remembered info in connection with the pre-established set (e.g. peg word device, method of loci etc.) |
| What 3 things does a mnemonic device do to improve memory? | 1) Provides a structure for learning 2) Helps form a durable and distinctive memory 3) Guides you through retrieval by providing effective cues. |
| What are two problems with the use of mnemonics? | 1) Often work well only with lists of items that do not have a lot of meaning 2) Takes a lot of time/effort to use effectively |
| What four principles in cognition can be used to help improve memory? | 1) Attention 2) Organisation 3) Elaborative/Deep Processing 4) Encoding Specificity |
| What is Encoding Specificity? | We learn information together with it's context. Takes into account relationship between encoding and retrieval. |
| What is the Levels of Processing (LOP) Theory? | Memory depends on how info is encoded, with better memory being achieved when processing is deep than when it's shallow. |
| Study by Godden & Baddeley (1975) | - Studied the relationship between conditions for encoding and conditions for retrieval. - 2 study conditions - on land and under water - 2 test conditions - OL and UW - When encoding conditions same as retrieval conditions = better results |
| What is Transfer-Appropriate Processing? | Memory performance is enhanced if the type of processing at encoding matches type of processing at retrieval. |
| Study by Morris et al (1977) | - 2 encoding conditions (meaning acquisition and rhyming acquisition) - Completed rhyming memory test - Greater memory for those with rhyming acquisition - Results support Transfer-Appropriate Processing (TAP) but not Levels of Processing (LOP), as LOP predict deeper processing leads to improved memory; therefore, Memory Acquisition should have performed better. |
| What is Judgement of Learning (JOL)? | Person rates the likelihood (typically during encoding) that s/he will remember a recently studied item in the future. |
| What is the difference in accuracy for immediate vs delayed JoL? | 1) Immediate JoL - correlate modestly with future performance 2) Delayed JoL - correlate almost perfectly with future performance Difference due to immediate JoL based on STM, whereas test based on LTM (Nelson & Dunlosky (1991). Delayed JoL more accurate as it's treated like a delayed recall (Spellman Bjork, 1992) |
| What is Autobiographical Memory? | Memory for dated events in a person's life. - type of episodic memory (ep. memory is broader category - not all episodic is autobiographical) - memories that are part of 'life story' (5mins to 30 years) |
| What are Conway's (1996) three Layers of Knowledge within Autobiographical Memory? | 1) Event Specific Knowledge: Individual events in a person's life that happen on a time scale of minutes or hours 2) General Events: Things that happen over days or weeks or, at the most, months 3) Lifetime Periods: Span over many years Used to explain some aspects of clinical disorders (i.e. difficulty remembering event specific knowledge during depression. |
| What is the Reminiscence Bump? | Empirical finding that people over 40 have enhanced memory for events from adolescence and young adulthood. |
| What are the two hypothesis for the Reminiscence Bump? | 1) Life Narrative Hypothesis - people assume their life identities (and a time people return to when nostalgic) 2) Cognitive Hypothesis - encoding is better during periods of rapid change followed by stability |
| Study by Schrauf & Rubin (1998) | - Studied the Cognitive Hypothesis for the Reminiscence Bump - Looked at people who emigrated to the USA in their 20's/30's. - Those in their 30's had a reminiscence bump correlating in their 30's |
| What is Childhood Amnesia? | The difficulty, experienced by most adults, in remembering events that took place before one's 3rd or 4th birthday. Waldfogel (1948) - college students recalled memories from childhood. Increased as age increased. |
| What are three explanations for childhood amnesia? | 1) Freud 2) Schema - c 3) Neurological |
| What is Freud's explanation for childhood amnesia? | Childhood is filled with many painful events, but memory of this pain is prevented by a number of mechanisms. - e.g. repression - process through which anxiety-provoking thoughts are denied access to the conscious mind |
| What is the Schema explanation for childhood amnesia? | Children lack schematic framework that guides and structures adult memory. Without this schematic framework, children store poorly organised and integrated memories; therefore, retrieval is hard. |
| What is the Neurological explanation for childhood amnesia? | The brain structures critical to memory are too immature during the first few years of life to record LTM. - This is the physical/chemical version of Schema explanation. |
| What are Flashbulb Memories? | Memories of emotionally charged or especially memorable events that have been claimed to be particularly vivid. |
| Study by Brown & Kulick (1977) | Brown & Kulick (1977) - flashbulb memories different to normal memories. They are especially vivid and detailed, don't require rehearsal. Consequentiality is important (i.e. Margaret Thatcher resignation in US and in UK (Conway et al, (1994))). |
| What is the argument against the idea of a special mechanism for Flashbulb Memories? | Ratings of vividness stay high for the memories, but accuracy decreases similar to other memories. |
| What is confabulation? | - Spontaneous production of false memories. - May occur in certain cases of brain damage. - Person not lying/misleading; often not aware memory is not true. |
| When are recollections experienced as a memory? | If it is accompanied by a subjective feeling of remembering (a feeling of 'pastness') |
| Constructivist Approach to Memory | The subjective experience of recollection is the end product of an attributional process. Feeling of remembering occurs when information in the present is attributed to a source in the past. |
| Jacoby & Whitehouse (1989) | Study a list of words; followed by a recognition test. For some test words, a context word flashed just before presentation of the test words; for some, a short duration (16millisec - unaware condition) and for some a long duration (aware condition) Context word the same (match condition) or different (mismatch condition) as test word. Correct recognition for matched trials higher in the unaware condition, due to more fluent processing. Correct recognition for matched trials lower in the aware condition because sometimes participants attributed their fluent processing to the fact they had seen the item in the context word. |
| What other factors influence memory? | 1) Schema 2) Source Monitoring |
| How do Schemas influence memories? | We often won't judge a recollection as a true memory if it doesn't fit with our schemas. Brewer & Treyens (1981) - recalling office scene; often report items not present, but which fit with an office schema. |
| What is Source Monitoring? | The process by which we determine the origins of memories, knowledge or beliefs. Source Monitoring Framework: characteristics of the mental experience (i.e. quality and amount of info activated) determine our decision. Perceived (real) events contain more semantic (details), affective (emotional) and temporal (date) info than imagined. |
| What is Source Misattribution? | Attributing an event/memory to the wrong source. Jacoby et. al. (1989) Becoming Famous Overnight Study Participants incorrectly attribute familiarity to fame, when it was only familiar from previous day. |
| Wade et al (2002) Autobiographical Study | A Picture is worth a thousand lies. Doctored photos can lead to the creation of false memories. Results provide support for constructivist approach to memory. |
| What is Reasoning? | Cognitive processes by which people start with information and come to conclusions that go beyond that information. |
| What is Deductive Reasoning? | Involves syllogisms in which a conclusion logically follows from premises. Goes from the general to the specific. |
| What are Syllogisms? | Includes two statements, called premises, followed by a third statement, called the conclusion. |
| What is Inductive Reasoning? | Reasoning in which a conclusion follows from a consideration of evidence. Conclusion is stated as being 'probably true' rather than definitely true (as deductive reasoning) Goes from specific to general. |
| What factors determine the strength of an argument/conclusion in Inductive Reasoning? | 1) Number of Observations - adding observations strengthens the argument 2) Representation of Observations - how well do observations about a particular category represent all members? 3) Quality of Evidence - stronger evidence leads to stronger conclusions |
| How is Inductive Reasoning used in science? | Basic procedure used to make scientific discoveries. Start by making systematic observations, then try to generalise to a larger population. |
| How is inductive reasoning used in everyday life? | Any time we make predictions about what will happen based on our observations about what has happened in the past, we are using inductive reasoning. |
| What are two general approaches to solving problems? | 1) Heuristics 2) Algorithms |
| What is an Algorithm? | A specific rule or solution procedure (e.g. formula) that is guaranteed to provide the correct solution. e.g. arithmetic and mathematics We are not good at applying them as we often don't know what formula to use or there is no formula for the problem. |
| What is a Heuristic? | When we use past experience to guide present behaviour. |
| What is an Availability Heuristic? | When we base our judgments of the frequency of events on what events come to mind (i.e. what is portrayed more often in the media etc.). |
| What is Illusory Correlation? | Occurs when a correlation between two events appears to exist, but doesn't (or is much weaker than assumed). When we expect two things to be related, we pay selective attention to instances that support our expectation. (e.g. full moon effect) |
| Are Availability Heuristics reliable? | Often reliable at estimates, but because judgments are based on what we can bring to mind, any factor that affects encoding/retrieval can influence our reasoning (based on memory). Context will effect our reasoning. |
| What is a Representative Heuristic? | Judge things as being similar based on how closely they resemble each other. Often based on superficial qualities. (e.g. Henry - farmer or librarian...) |
| What is the Base Rate? | Relative proportion of different classes in the population. In decisions, stick with base rate until info given that is not superficial. |
| What is a modern version of base rate fallacy? | Racial Profiling. Assumption that a certain type of criminal fits a certain profile. Harris (1999) Observed highway traffic over two days... |
| What is the Conjunction Rule? | The probability of a conjunction of 2 events (A and B) can't be higher than the probability of the single constituents (A alone or B alone) |
| What is the Law of Large Numbers? | The larger the number of individuals that are randomly drawn from a population, the more representative the resulting group will be of the entire population. |
| What is Confirmation Bias? | Our tendency to selectively look for info that conforms to our hypothesis and to overlook info that argues against it. |
| What is the Utility Approach in decision making? | Optimal decision making occurs when the outcome of the decision causes the maximum expected utility. Similar to deductive reasoning or algorithms. Utility: refers to outcomes that are desirable. Takes into account the odds (e.g. gambling) |
| What are Framing Effects? | Judgments are affected by the way the choices are stated (framed). |
| When a choice is framed in terms of gains, people use ... strategies. When a choice is framed in terms of losses, people use ... strategies. | 1) risk-aversion strategies 2) risk-taking strategies |
| What is the Psychological Accounting Principle? | People will make different decisions depending on how the outcome is felt or perceived. Kahneman & Tversky (1981) $10 ticket loss study - determined by how they think about the extra $10 |
| Decision Making Keeping in Mind vs Ignoring Irrelevent Info | Keeping irrelevant info in mind may help us see the impact it has on our decisions. |
| What are the benefits of writing down Pros and Cons? | 1) Lets you weigh the information 2) help reduce problems such as confirmation bias 3) Actively look for negative or disconfirming evidence. |
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