Cognitive Psychology

*Random Notes:

rTMS in Boulder?!
Mindstorm Youtube vid
Psi Chi CU MUEN D442 How to go to grad school & other presentations

Me - We are less entrained than animals maybe the creation of/listening to of music is a surrogate for our
entrainment, to keep us sane or harken back to an older form-shaping influence?
Gustav Becker (spelling? The clockmaker?) did pendulum movement, math equations, logarithmic scale
b/w physical and mental world proved that the world is spiritual (you can convert them to each other - he
was a mystic of sorts).
Richard Corey Twilight Zone.
Creative people produce variation & pick the best of it! Artists are passionate, obsessive and bold.
Galton influenced Freud. He was like Athanasius Kircher, a nutty polymath with just as many bad ideas as
good ones.
Memes came from Dawkins books i.e. the religious gene could be a meme. The meme idea has not
worked out well in cognitive psych. (Nevertheless Berta, viral memes in culture are a very real phenomena).
BF Skinner made a language-generating machine and people would hear words from the nonsense
generated by it; this is the basis for EVPs in the parapsychology world, supposedly.
Clones don't share MT DNA like identical twins, there are concordant and discordant traits.
The ventricles are larger in schizophrenia.
Boxers get large ventricles from brain damage - dementia pugilistica.
iPad has higher resolution than eyes on the Retina Display ??!!!
Broca-Sulzer effect/curve.
High fidelity = turn up the volume & wont hear background noise.
REM intrusion = sleep paralysis, including breathing difficulty. Grey ghost of Vietnam, old hag, etc.
Epilepsy seeing auras, dj vu, etc. A seizure is in the brain only = rhythmic brain activity. Convulsions are
technically in the rest of the body. Sub-convulsive temporal seizures = psychic phenomena, alien abductions,
auto-scoping.
The Memory Book Jerry Lucas techniques
The Ancient Greeks read forwards, then backwards the next line, then forwards again (for efficiencys sake)



The retina develops out of the brain embryologically and evolutionarily.
Mary Merry Marry test for American dialects.
256 shades of grey between black and white.
A large correlation in social science is 0.5.
Prototype theory = a cognitive formation of a Platonic Ideal. I.e. your ideal of the most beautiful woman
can stay with you as a prototype that informs future events and encounters.
Tethitoscope (?) flashes words on a screen for milliseconds & tests your recognition, memory ability.
80% of the prison population are bad readers but good artists & musicians. (?)
Human factors engineering..
Take 5 Beatnik song
matters of fact = actually what the person thinks they know
Random numbers are the most difficult thing to remember
Our textbook written by Matlin is written in the first-person active voice (we, our etc.) instead of third person
passive voice, which is boring to read & harder to pay attention to.
nondirective therapist Liza was a therapist computer program. Perry the paranoid was another computer
program.
Hypnosis enhances confidence, not memory.
Malthus - the population is increasing geometrically while food production is increasing arithmetically.
Darwin confirmed this theory.
Creativity is because of youth. Mathematicians are typically done by age 40. A new look at stuff means less
entrained mental connections
Clark Hull - psychological equivalent of Principium Mathematica to predict all learning and behavior.
If you're not hungry in the morning, that means the pH of your stomach is off.
You don't have pictures in your head, but a code of high and low voltage. You can't directly see pictures in
your head. You have a verbal and auditory code along with a visual code and a code for all the senses. How
are they translated to one another in the brain?




History of the cognitive approach

Modern stimulus to cognitive psychology

Ren Descartes (1596 to 1650)
Themes that influence modern psychology

1) Thinking is the essence of humans

2) Mind and body both exist and interact
a. Yes, extended in time, but not space
b. Mind-body problem - how can two entities interact that by their nature
cannot interact.
c. Materialism - only the physical realm is real. Mental phenomena are
merely functions are aspects of the physical world (especially the brain).
Mine is a function not a thing. Epiphenomenon - something produced
that doesn't have an effect on the world.
d. Libet oscilloscope experiments - experiments that showed that our
brains respond to events quicker than our minds even realize (and thus
our bodies respond before we 'make decisions') causing mindless
reactions and thus disproving free will. A controversial theory, but kind
of interesting - using oscilloscopes as a clock in looking at brain activity.

3) The body is a machine
a. Can study the body as a material object
b. Optics had a big effect on physiology psychology
c. Clocks were the big deal back then, getting more precise hydraulics,
pneumatics
d. Cognitive process theory > theory of mind in cognitive psych

4) Difference between derived and innate ideas
a. Derived ideas - due to experience
b. Innate ideas - not due to experiences; built into us
i. (God, infinity, -1)

You are your own brain, there is no free will.
Influence of derived and innate ideas:
- British empiricists
- Knowledge is obtained through the senses
o All ideas are derived ideas
o Innate ideas do not exist
- tabula rasa
- You can't really conceive infinity, nothingness, imaginary numbers etc. yet
they can be mathematically extracted. You don't really have/grasp the
conceptualization of the concept, but you can use the abstract
representation concept of it to work with the idea.
o Impedance formula
o Georg Cantor showed mathematically that some infinities are bigger
than others

Irresistible impulse & attractive nuisance distinction (not pertinent to this subject)

Association: - connecting ideas together

David Hartley - laws of association (untested, armchair)
Bishop George Berkeley rationalist: we can't know the external world; all we
have are ideas.
David Hume - cause-and-effect, the notion of self is lost because of this.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) (influenced Hume)
- We do have any (innate?) knowledge
- Categories - forms by which the mind structures experience
- Influence - we impose order on the world
- His work Critique of Pure Reason = the most boring book ever (great for
insomnia!)

*In the mind, color and pitch (which are perceived) are not actually in the world, only
wavelength, frequency and amplitude

Science of Psychology

Wilhelm Wundt (1832 - 1920)
- Germany
- Last part of 1800s
- Brought philosophy and physiology together as the science of psychology
- Studied structure of immediate conscious experience
- Introspection: analyzing one's own sensations and reporting them as
objectively as possible

He designed clarity scales etc. which were very strict measures for introspection.
He said that you can't scientifically study memory so he did social
anthropology instead.


American Functionalism opened up /changed psychology

- Influence of:
o Practicality make $ with psychology
o Evolution & natural selection
Influence of Charles Darwin (What is the survival value of a
trait? Random variation and selection.
- Subjects:
o Children, animals, different sexes, members of different cultures

- Subject Matter:
o Behavior, thinking, problem solving, emotions

- Methods:
o Introspection, observation, physiology

William James (1842 1910) Medical doctor who brought physiology & psychology
together & a Pragmatist philosopher
- Principles of Psychology (1890) hugely influential 2-volume textbook
- Never did research himself, but was a great synthesizer
- Promoted many methods to study many topics
- Discussed many modern topics
- Most of our behavior is out of habit learning

Behavioralism - focuses only on observable, objective reactions

- Problems with introspection
o Paying attention to thinking may change the line of thinking
o Relies on memory
Memory can be faulty
o May not know what's going on in your own mind
o You can't use introspection with infants, nonhuman animals, some
people with mental problems
o Different results with different researchers
o Wundts way around difference in introspection was to train graduate
students in it for two years - this is also problematic. To whom do the
results generalize to?

- Contribution to Psychology
o Rigour in research, statistical methods developed during this time
o Operational Definition - defining a concept by the way it is measured

Rise of modern Cognitive Psychology (1950s to 1960s)
- Disenchantment with behaviorism
- Noam Chomskys attack on BF Skinner's book Verbal Behavior - he said that
we have deep cognitive structures that generate syntax, grammar rules etc.
Psycholinguistics.
- Popularity of Jean Piaget's Stage Theory of cognitive development (made
while trying to refine IQ tests)
- Rise of computers and information theory
o vacuum tubes transistors integrated circuits (ICs)
o Alan Turing (1936)
Universal Turing machine - can imitate any information
processing device
If human thinking is information processing, then thinking can
be imitated on a Turing machine

Computer influences on modern cognitive psychology
- Information processing approach (2 components)
o 1) A mental process can be best understood by comparing it with the
operations of the computer
o 2) A mental process can be interpreted as information progressing
through the system in stages, one step at a time, like flow diagrams,
which are serial, not parallel)
ex) Atkinson Schiffrin memory model = serial
Attention theories are often filter theories

- Parallel distributing processing (PDP) similar to connectionism or neural
networks
o Modeled on computers
o Based on brain functioning
o Characteristics of the PDP approach
mental operations occur simultaneously (in parallel)
ex) visual sense = color, shape, motion, depth. There is yet to
be found the binding site of vision in the brain.
A thought process occurs over a large area of the brain's
cortex (it is distributed)
A node is the mental equivalent of a neuron
An activated node can affect another node
Forming networks
Networks can learn
A network can fill in incomplete information


*Neurons can feed back into themselves through autoreceptors (TINNITUS RELEVANT
INFO)

AI and PDP models use matrix algebra, iterations.
The complexities of these things are impossible for humans to understand on the meta
or whole/holistic level. They are hard to conceptualize and conceive, like certain
mathematical proof conjectures which can be understood abstractly but not actually
comprehended.

Biological Innovations
- Psychologists assume we are our brains
o By studying the brain, we can study thinking

- Biology influence on modern cognitive psychology
o Cognitive Neuroscience
Combines the research techniques of psychology with
methods for assessing the structure and function of the brain
If we are our brains, cognitive psychology theories are limited
by what the brain can and cannot do

o Methods of Cognitive Neuroscience

1) Brain Lesions - destruction of brain tissue
Cautions
o Not neatly controlled with humans
o With animals, you can neatly control
destruction, but difficult to associate with
thinking

2) Brain Imaging Techniques taking pictures of a living
human brain (not always! MRIs of the dead)
Some show structure > activity, some activity >
structure
A) CT Scans (Computerized Tomography) - compiles
slices of brain into 3-D graphic. Differences in shades
of gray can be detected by a computer, not by the
naked eye. ~ 22 year old technology.
o Shows structure but not activity
B) PET Scan (Positron Emission Tomography) -
radioactive glucose is injected into the carotid artery.
o Shows activity (actually, the glucose/blood
flow take-up, not direct activity)
o The brain uses glucose and oxygen
o Radioactive tag glucose is put into the brain
o Positrons collide with electrons and emit
gamma radiation
o Gamma ray detectors that color code
o Red = lots of activity
C) MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) magnet
applied protons line up, pulse of radio waves goes
on & off (?)
o Gives image of structure, not activity
D) fMRI (functional MRI) looks at ratio of oxygenated
and deoxygenated blood. Costs ~ $2.5 million.
o Gives an image of activity
o Special one for babies
o fMRI used more than PET scans in cognitive
psych. Advantages of it over PET:
1) No radioactive injections
2) Can measure activity across shorter
intervals of time (better temporal
resolution) things that are 0.5 seconds
long
3) Can measure activity over smaller
areas of brain (better spatial resolution
like high pixels, HD)

Claustrophobia/weird experience of being inside MRI machine could be affecting
cognition. Sometimes outliers are more interesting than the means. The colors (in
fMRI or PET or both?) are enhanced, averaged out to be more obvious to the doctor,
there isnt as much difference in brain activity as the spectrum shown suggests.

3) EEG Electroencephalogram graphical representation of
activity in the brains cortex (the change in baseline level of
brainwaves). Shows altered consciousness states, etc.

4) ERP (Event-Related Potentials) a type of EEG
Records tiny fluctuations in the brains electrical
activity in response to a stimulus
Present stimulus many times to the subject and record
the responses. The clicks (snapshots of the
waveform) are averaged over many trials to see the
real waveform change (sort of like Fourier analysis to
eliminate background noise and detect the real
signal). (Could it be flawed in that the brain might
respond slightly differently to the stimulus after the 1
st

incident?)

5) TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) rTMS an
magnetic field is applied & at the right angle to that is the
electrical field. Parts of the cortex are inhibited or stimulated.
Can stimulate or inhibit activity in parts of the brain
(creating reversible lesion)
Used to be illegal in US but tested in Canada
Mixed results in depression, shock therapy is more
effective still in severe cases (yet it is a crude/broad
effect across the whole brain, while this is more
specific)
Limitations
o Can influence only cortex of the brain
o Influences a relatively large area of the cortex
(cannot affect a tiny area of the cortex alone)

What about EMG for peripheral nerves? MR-guided HIFU brain lesions also..

Cognitive Science: Interdisciplinary field that examines questions about the mind
- Includes cognitive psychology, neuroscience, computer science, philosophy,
linguistics, anthropology, sociology, economics
- Cognitive sciences work on the basis that thinking involves internal
representation of the external world

Cognitive Psychology: Branch of psychology that emphasizes peoples knowledge and
their mental processes
- The psychological study of thinking (including attention, perception,
memory, etc)
- Does cognitive psych apply to the real world?
o Ecological validity the conditions in which research that is
conducted should be similar to the natural setting in which the
results would be applied
Does the research apply to real life?


Chapter 2: Perception

Perception use of previous knowledge to gather and interpret the stimuli registered
by our senses
- Add meaning to incoming stimulation
- The information is changed

Object Recognition (Pattern Recognition): Identification of a complex arrangement of
sensory stimuli
- Should not confuse the stimulus with what is in our heads
o Distal stimulus: from the actual object
o Proximal stimulus: information registered on sensory receptors
- Retina and brain supplying some information we think is in the world.
o Information is altered
- Blind spot area where the optic nerve exits the eye
o No receptors present, yet we see things in this area
o Retina guesses what is there
- Contrast effects enhancement of perceived difference between stimuli
next to one another
- Saccades ballistic eye movements. 1-3 per second
o Put together scenes from these moments
o Blur during saccades is suppressed during reading
- Blinking
o Usually dont notice your own & most others
o Average = 10-12 blinks/min
o Reading: blink when moving eyes from line to line and when turning
page
o If you turned the light on and off the same amount of time as
blinking, it would be irritating
o Brain activity suppresses visual processing during blinking

- We organize what we see
o Emphasized by Gestalt psychology (which developed against other
German types of psychology who were trying to break the mind
down to its parts as if it were a car)
o Gestalt Psychology the whole is more (or different) than the sum of
its parts

o Figure-Ground we organize two areas sharing a common boundary
into figure and ground
Figure
usually seems to have a definite shape
seems closer to us
seems more dominant
Ground
Seems to continue behind the figure
ex) vases-faces effect

o Illusory Contours figures in which we see edges even though they
are not physically present
Cells in our visual systems respond to the illusory contours as
if theyre really present

Theories of Object Perception

1) Template-Matching Theory
a. Compare a stimulus with templates
i. Choose the closest match
ii. Templates: specific patterns stored in memory
iii. Cookie Cutter Theory
1. stimulus is in the cookie
2. template is the cookie cutter
3. The template is in the head & the visual object is
identified as that (interpreted). Kantian theory we
have a predisposition for this
iv. Problem: we would need an astronomical number of
templates
1. Theory is inflexible
2. Recognition is flexible

2) Feature Analysis Theory
a. A visual stimulus is composed of a number of distinctive features
i. Distinctive feature = a characteristic or component of a
stimulus
ii. We store a list of these for each object
iii. When we see something we compare its features with the
lists of stored features
iv. The closest match is recognized as that object
v. Image, Feature, Cognitive, & Decision demons theory based
on Miltons Paradise Lost later these demons understood
as neurons
b. Research supporting Feature Analysis Theory
i. It takes longer to decide of two letters are different if they
share more features. The more characteristics they share, the
slower the reaction time
ii. David Hubel and Torsten Wiesels features detection research
1. Feature Detector a neuron that responds selectively
to a specific stimulus
a. E.g. horizontal bars, vertical bars, certain
angles, movements
c. Problems
i. A list of features alone does not describe an object
ii. The relationship of features to one another is essential
1. L T
iii. Important features of complex objects can be difficult to
specify

3) Recognition by Components Theory
a. Developed by Irving Biedermann
i. Object are represented by arrangements of simple 3D shapes
geometrical icons
1. Geons: simple 3D shapes
a. 24 Geons
b. This is similar to language
i. A few sounds (36-46 in English, depending on accent and
dialect) can be put together to produce a staggering number
of sentences
ii. A few Geons can be put together to produce a huge number
of objects
c. Support for theory
i. Incorporates feature analysis theory
ii. Can recognize objects easier if integrity of Geons is
maintained in degraded pictures
d. Advantages
i. Simple theory
ii. Can recognize partially covered objects
1. fill in the Geons
e. Some Problems
i. Recognition can take longer from some viewpoints (visual
perspectives)
ii. Viewer-centered approach (based on this theory) we store a
small number of views of 3D objects
1. If object is at an unusual angle we rotate the image to
match a stored view
iii. Some objects dont have specific shapes but we easily
recognize them
1. E.g. water, sand (which take on the shape of their
container)
2. Can the theory explain how we easily recognize many
objects in a complex scene?
a. Rather than isolated cups and stools (?)

Bottom-Up and Top-Down Processing
- Weve mostly been talking about:

- Bottom-Up Processing (Data Driven Processing) cognitive processing that
emphasizes the information obtained from physical stimuli
o Parts of a stimulus are built up to form a representation of an object
Performed state-by-stage until recognition occurs
Feature analysis and recognition by components theories are
Bottom-Up theories

- Top-Down Processing (Conceptually Driven Processing) cognitive
processing that influences the influence of concepts, expectations and
memory
o Information already stored influences perception
o Examples:
Mistakes often show the effect of stored information
Misheard song lyrics
Reading if we process every feature of every letter of
every word, we would have to analyze about 5,000
features per minute
Word Superiority Effect a single letter can be
identified more accurately and rapidly when it appears
in a word than when it appears alone or in a string of
unrelated letters.
o [WORK] = fastest
o [ORWK] = slowest
o [R] = fast
o A Research Study
Words or almost words were flashed on a screen (1/10 sec)
Subjects recognized 57% of the words
Only 10% of almost words were recognized
E.g. droam, mitor
42% of the time almost words were recognized as words
DROAM DREAM
MITOR MOTOR, MITER, MIRROR

o Proofreaders Illusion proofreader overlooking spelling errors
because of the difficulty suppressing higher level processing
They know what should be there in their heads & so they see
it as if it were already correct

o Ambiguous Figures they have the same pattern on the retina but
the perception of them changes
E.g. Necker Cube (forward/backward cube illusion)

o Monocular Cues to Depth Perception
Requires only one eye
It is Top-Down because youre adding depth to a 2D picture
Due to experience (?)
Overlap: objects behind other objects are perceived as further
away
Linear perspective: parallel lines appear to converge in the
distance
Aerial perspective: nearby objects are brighter and sharper
than distant objects
Relative size: objects appear smaller the further away they are
Shadows: were set to see shadows from overhead light
(because of the sun)

- Both Top-Down and Bottom-Up processes are used in object recognition
o Most theories address one or the other but not both
An exception is PDP approach

- Face Perception
o Differential Inversion Effect greater difficulty in recognizing unusual
features of human faces than in images of other objects

- Infants
o How to study what babies perceive
o Preferential Looking Method if an infant looks longer at one
stimulus or feature than another then the infant is discriminating
between the two
o Results
Infants prefer more complex stimuli
E.g. a target over a circle, a face over text
One subject = 53-minute old infant preferred face-like
drawing over scrambled features
This effect increases from a couple days old to 6
months old
What attracts infants attention?
5-7 weeks = dramatic increase in looking at real adults
eyes (even over their lip movement)
They can discriminate happy expressions from angry
ones (and prefer happy ones)
They can perceive difference between male and
female faces
They prefer attractive to unattractive faces
o Both adult and infant faces of both sexes
o Attractiveness is based on college students
ratings of it are the babies attracted to
symmetry, averageness, etc.?
We like babies faces
o They have a bulging cranium/big forehead
o Their eyes are relatively larger
o Their nose is relatively smaller
o Their features are lower on their face
o Wall-E is a cute robot because of baby
proportions. Mickey Mouse became more
baby-like over time.

- What is beauty?
o Physiognomy: the pseudoscience of judging personality from
features of the face
Character actors elicit specific responses because of their
faces
There is a criminal face and a tuberculosis face
Francis Galton (1822-1911) believed in it and tested out this 2-
face theory. He invented..
Composite photography (portraits) combinging images of
faces to produce a face that is their average
Disproved 2 faces reality
Modern times: One can digitally average images pixel-
by-pixel
Generally the most averaged face is the most
attractive
Explanations smoothing, blending, removing
blemishes
o Controlled for the blemishes
o No big difference when skin issues were
present
o Youthfulness
Little correlation between raters
judgments of age & attractiveness
o Symmetry looks more healthy & will make
better children
Little correlation between ratings of
symmetry and attractiveness
Produced symmetrical faces from less
attractive faces & still ratings didnt
change. They were rated lower in
attractiveness than less symmetrical
composite faces.

o Familiarity
Strong correlation between familiarity and attractiveness
Subjects were asked how familiar a face looks
Correlation = ~ 0.75 (accounting for variation)
Generally we like the familiar (unless it is associated with
something bad)
Mere exposure effect
We like the familiar
We see ourselves mostly in the mirror
We prefer mirror images of ourselves (pictures that are
flipped)
Friends prefer direct pictures of us
Is recognizing faces different than recognizing other
patterns?
Neurological evidence
o Agnosia: impairment of the ability to recognize
or identify familiar objects, entities or people
Even odors (you lose the ability to
recognize what you formally could
identify as a specific smell)
Prosopagnosia: impaired ability to
recognize once familiar faces
Usually one can identify a face
as a face
Cannot identify the person
Jane Goodall & sister had it
Usually associated with damage
to a part of the posterior
hemisphere of the brain
Inferotemporal cortex (fusiform
facial area)
fMRI shows increased activity in
this area while looking at faces
But this part of the brain is
associated with identifying
many over-learned objects
EXAM 2

Chapter 3: Perception Pt 2: Attention & Consciousness

People who study with music use it as a barrier for other sounds.
Background knowledge/expertise greatly informs memory, attention, memory tasks,
problem solving.
New eyes on something (moving to a new location) = innovation more so than
expertise or having a young mind.
Information theory information = a decrease in entropy.

Attention - a concentration of mental activity
- Allows for efficiency
o Brains are relatively slow processors
o Limited by how much info can be processed at a time
o Attention allows cognitive processes to take place in selected aspects
of the sensory world
(Daydreaming = not part of the sensory world)
- Divided Attention
o Divided Attention Task subject must attend to two or more
simultaneous messages, responding to each as needed
o Driving & talking on cell phone
In terms of order of distractiveness, cellphone > passenger >
radio
3 different studies were done (Details??). The best controlled
research was with a joystick, yet use of joystick = the least
amount of ecological validity.
Conclusion: cellphone use seems to interfere with driving
ability
o Divided Attention Study
2 college students (a male and a female) performed 2 tasks
simultaneously
1) read short story silently
2) took dictation at the same time
Subjects were good at reading for comprehension but
poor at taking dictation
With practice
o They could read with comprehension and
categorize dictated words
E.g. write furniture when they heard
chair
Encyclopedia Britannica was just as
good as short stories for usage
Conclusion one can get better at some divided
attention tasks with practice

Selective Attention
- Selective Attention Task
o Subjects must respond selectively to certain sources of information
while ignoring other sources of info
o Dichotic listening: listening simultaneously to 2 different messages
Each ear is presented with a different message
Sometimes subjects are asked to pay attention to only one of
the messages
How can you be sure that they do?
Shadowing: listening to a message and repeating it
aloud (playing mockingbird)
Original research (1953)
People could answer questions about the content of
the shadowed message easily and accurately
But they didnt notice much about the unshadowed
message (which is??)
o They couldnt report the meaning of the
message
o They didnt notice if the message changed
from English to German
o They didnt notice if the message was played
backwards
o They did notice if it changed from male
female voice
Later Research
o 35% of subjects noticed if their names were in
the unshadowed message
o Cocktail Party Effect: when paying attention to
one conversation, a person often notices if his
or her name is mentioned in a nearby
conversation. This happens in visual material
too when one sees a familiar written name,
their hometown, etc.
o Subjects are told to shadow one message
But the meaning of the shadowed
message is switched to the
unshadowed ear (the perception of it
goes from one side of auditory region of
temporal cortext to the other?)
The person shadows the
message, not the ear (huh?)
They must be processing the
meaning to some degree in the
unshadowed ear
Ex) people hearing about river
banks in one ear & credit cards,
$ and banks in another ear mix
up the ambiguous message to
be/mean only one of the
messages.
i.e. the unshadowed message
can influence the perception of
the shadowed message

- Stroop Effect: a delay in naming the ink color of a word when the word is the
name of a color that doesnt match the ink
o Variations on the theme bilingual, backwards words, etc. Used for
after concussion tests sometimes + the digit span test
o Some results:
Original research:
Subjects took almost twice as long to name words
colored with incongruent correspondent colors as
solid-colored squares
Older adults do worse than younger adults (which may
be because of motivational reasons moreso than
senility)
People with schizophrenia do worse than people
without it (they have no filter)
o Emotional Stroop Effect: people with phobias name the color of ink
of words related to their fear slower than non-phobic words and do
so slower than people not suffering from that phobia. (A phobia = an
extreme dread of things)
A Stroop Effect occurs without seeing words
One can improve on the Stroop test with practice
Explanations of Stroop Effect
o PDP: activation of two computing pathways
simultaneously
1) A non color-naming pathway
2) A word-reading pathway
o Because both pathways are active at the same
time, they interfere with one another &
performance is poor
o Practice
We are good at naming colors &
reading (but better at reading)
Little kids dont show the Stroop effect
because they cant read yet
We cant help but read words, so
we cant help but try to read the
names of the colors
Weirdly those with dyslexia perform
poorer on the Stroop test

o 2 visual search effects
Visual search: searching for a target
among distractors
1) Isolated Feature/Combined Feature
Effect (the Wheres Waldo Effect)
If a target differs from
distractors on one simple
feature it is as easy to detect if it
is among many distractors as it
is among only a few
o E.g. a letter that is a
different color from the
distractors
o The item seems to pop
out
o If a target possesses two
properties + some of the
distractors have one of
the properties & the
other distractors have
the other property, the
task (to find the target)
becomes more difficult
with more distractors
present.
2) Feature-Present/Feature-Absent
Effect: a search is faster when looking
for a feature that is present than for one
that is absent
Takes longer to find a feature-
absent target among more
distractors
Also works with movement
o It is easy to find one
moving target among
stationary distractors no
matter how many
distractors are present
o It is more difficult to find
a stationary target
among moving
distractors with more
distractors present


- Theories of Attention

-------------------\\\________________________

information bottleneck (filter)
________________________
-------------------///
Lower-level processing Higher-level processing

o Bottleneck Theories: a narrow passageway limits the quantity of
information to which people can pay attention
As one or a few messages are processed at higher levels,
other information is left behind
The unattended message is blocked from higher-level
processing
Especially the meaning
Can set bottleneck early in processing (Early Filter Theory)
some information is blocked from high-level processing
Or late in processing (Late Filter Theories): all
information is processed at a high level
Early Filter Theory: explains early dichotic listening
results
o They dont remember much from the
unshadowed ear
o But later results are difficult to explain
1/3 of people noticed their name in the
unshadowed ear
They followed the meaning to the
unshadowed ear
Late Filter Theory: theory cant explain why with
dichotic listening you dont consciously know about
the message in the unshadowed ear
Simple bottleneck theories had intuitive appeal, but
they could not account for the wide range of findings

- Automatic and Controlled Processing
o Classifies attention by the type of processing required
Based on how easy the task is or how familiar the items are
o Processing: 2 types

1) Automatic Processing: used on easy tasks & on tasks that
use highly familiar items
Parallel Processing can handle 2 or more items at the
same time
Used with easy or well-learned tasks
Fast
Less impaired by fatigue or alcohol

2) Controlled Processing: used on difficult tasks or tasks that
use unfamiliar items
Serial Processing can handle only one item at a time
Often requires conscious attention
Slow compared to automatic processing
Easily impaired by fatigue and alcohol
Often can improve with practice

Explain attention phenomena
Divided attention tasks
o Can do 2 easy tasks because they require only
automatic processing
o With practice one can turn control processing
into automatic processing (like singing &
playing guitar simultaneously)
Selective attention
o Dichotic listening
Noticing your name because it is
automatic
Following a message to the
unshadowed ear because that is
automatic
Stroop task: reading is automatic

- Feature Integration Theory
o Anne Treisman
o 2 types of processing or stages (ends of a continuum)

1) Distributed Attention: metaphor of a field & anything in it
you will pick up by being in it
Registers features automatically
o Often not aware that youre doing it
Uses parallel processing across the entire field
o Effortless
Similar to automatic processing

2) Focused Attention
Used for complex tasks
Requires serial processing
o Effortful
Similar to controlled processing
What the theory can explain
o Isolated-feature/Combined-feature effect
Processing one feature requires only
distributed attention (done fast & in
parallel)
Processing 2 features requires focused
attention (slow & serially)
o Feature-present/Feature-absent effect
Feature-present search is closer to
distributed attention end of the
continuum
Feature-absent search is closer to the
focused attention end of the spectrum

o Illusory conjunction: an inappropriate combination of features
E.g. a red pen & a blue x are next to each other
If a person is distracted or overloaded with information, the
letters may switch colors
The visual system processes many characteristics of an object
separately
E.g. color, shape, location & motion
A person uses distributed attention when overloaded (like a
difficult match or Sudoku problem)
So the perceptual system can put objects together
inappropriately

[attenuated message diagram] : the weak stuff flicks off in
the dictionary unit (HUH??!)

- The brain and attention
o Several regions of the brain are involved in attention
o 2 regions of the cortex have been implicated in attention
o 1) Posterior parietal lobe
Active in visual search tasks
Evidence:
Brain scans performed during visual search task
Case studies of people with lesions in this area
o Suffer from Unilateral Neglect: spatial deficit
for one half of visual field. Damage to one
hemisphere results in attentional neglect to the
opposite visual field
They arent blind, they can see all but
neglect half of it
o 2) Anterior frontal lobe
Involved with inhibiting responses in order to attend to other
stimuli
Stroop task is one example
Extreme frontal lobes show increase in activity during such
tasks
Problems with inhibition in some pathologies
o E.g. schizophrenia, people with lobotomies
Do poorly on Stroop task
Have problems with the frontal lobes

Attention = what youre attending to memory = the core of cognitive psych


Chapter 4: Working Memory
- Working Memory (a.k.a. short-term memory, although actually theyre not
the same as working is active, not passive like short-term): brief immediate
memory for material currently being processed; also coordinates ongoing
mental activity
- George A. Miller (1956) wrote the article The Magical Number 7 +/- 2: Some
Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information in The Psychological
Review
o Miller proposed that we can hold 5-9 pieces of info for a brief period
of time (random #s and letters)
CIAFBIMTVCBSNFL
CIA | FBI | MTV | CBS | NFL
1 2 3 4 5
o We can hold more information if it is organized
o Chunk: the basic unit of short-term memory consisting of several
components that are strongly associated with one another
o Why Millers paper is important
It brought together seemingly unrelated data
Suggested a limitation to human information processing (5-9
being the capacity of short-term memory)
Showed how humans transcend this limit
o By chunking information
What is the duration of short-term memory?
Brown/Peterson & Peterson technique
Gave the person 3 unrelated numbers, letters or words
To prevent the person from repeating the items, they
had the person count backwards by 3s from a 3-digit
random #
Meaningful letters like ones initials (KPB) would be
remembered regardless of the exercise, so have to be
counted out
Results:
o Steady decline in memory over time
o Most information is gone at about 20 seconds
(~24 seconds)

- Serial Position Effect: items near the beginning and end of a list are recalled
last
o Those in the middle are recalled worst
o Recency Effect: better recall for items at the end of a list
o Primacy Effect: better recall for items at the beginning of a list
o Explanation:
Recency Effect: items at the end of the list are in short-term
memory (STM)
Evidence:
o Subjects give items at the end of a list first
o They recalled 5-9 items (STMs capacity)
o Recency effect disappears after 20 seconds if
the subject counts backwards by 3s before
recall
Primacy Effect: items at the beginning of the list are more
likely to be rehearsed & so stored longer
This does not explain all serial position effects
o E.g. Americans remembering various US
Presidents names

- Atkinsons & Shiffrins (1968) Model of Memory



o Sensory Memory
Visual: iconic store
Lasts less than one second
Auditory: echoic store
Lasts 2-4 seconds
o Short-Term Memory (STM)
Lasts ~ 20 seconds
Can be extended by repeating (rehearsal)
Holds 5-9 chunks of information
o Long-Term Memory (LTM)
Permanent memory storage
Could hold more than we could fill it up with (unless it is truly
infinite)

- Some problems in classical view of short-term memory
o 1) Pronunciation Time
STM holds the # of items that can be pronounced in 1.5-2.5
seconds, not necessarily 5-9 chunks
Can hold more short words in STM than long words
Because it takes less time to say these
Are we more familiar with short words than long ones?
It is probably not because of familiarity that more can
be remembered when words are familiar.
People speaking different languages seem to have different
capacities for #s in STM
Digit span: # of digits that can be held in STM.
o = language dependent
o An inverse correlation exists between
pronunciation time & digit span
o Chinese people can hold more digits in their
head because their words are shorter. Asians
stereotypically are better at math, could this by
why? Specificity is also ingrained in their
culture (such as proportions to grow enough
rice to feed x # of people). Also, in Europe
math was divorced from religion & society at
large in the Middle Ages.
o 2) Semantic Similarity
Originally it was concluded that STM uses an acoustic code
We mix up letters that sound alike (B, V), not those
that look alike (O, Q)

(prof notes)
-Some problems with the classical view of short-term memory
(1) Pronunciation time
-Hold 5-9 chunks of information but further research showed:
-Hold number of items that can pronounce in 1.5 to 2.5 seconds
-Can hold more short words in STM than long words
-Because takes less time to say them

WIT TECHNOLOGY
END ENCYCLOPEDIA
CUB UNIVERSITY
BOX CONVENTIONAL

-Get same result if hold familiarity constant
-Found for consonants, nouns, shape names, color names, nonsense
words, and names of countries
-People speaking different languages seem to have different capacities
for numbers in STM
-Textbook describes English, Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic study
-Digit span depends on language spoken
-Digit span: number of digits that can be held in STM
[-Also a subset in IQ tests
-How many digits can recall
-Both forward and backward]

Digits span Pronunciation time (average)
Chinese: 9.9 digits 265 msec
English: 6.6 digits 321 msec
Welsh 5.8 digits 385 msec

-Inverse correlation between pronunciation time and digit span




(2) Semantic similarity
-Originally concluded that STM is acoustic (sound)
-E.g., mix up letters that sound alike (B, V) not look alike (O, Q)
-Even when presented visually
-But further research shows sound is not solely used for STM
processing
-Proactive interference: people have trouble learning new material
because previously learned material interferes with new material
-E.g., Cant remember someones name because knew someone
else with that name
-E.g., Have trouble learning student number because social
security number interferes
-Do a Brown/Peterson & Peterson task
-3 letters, count backwards by 3s
-Stop and ask for letters
-4 trials each have 3 letters
XCJ
HBR
TSV
KRN
-Subjects do progressively worse at remembering letters
(% correct)
-But if give numbers (e.g., 529) on 4
th
trial
-Do almost as well as on first set of letters
(XCJ)
-STM is not cleared after each use
-Old information is affecting it
-Proactive interference occurs
-Release from proactive interference: proactive
interference is reduced by switching to a new stimulus
category, producing increased recall
-Works with meaning
-Give 3 trials with the following:
-Each set to a different subject

(1) All fruits (e.g., banana, peach, apple)
(2) All vegetables (e.g., onion, turnip, corn)
(3) All flowers (e.g., daisy, rose, iris)
(4) All meats (e.g., salami, pork, chicken)
(5) All occupations (e.g., lawyer, doctor, firefighter)
-On the 4
th
trial give all subjects the name of fruits
-Release from proactive interference follows similarity of
items
-Results:
-Least remembered to most remembered:
-Fruits (given during first 3 trials)
-Vegetables
-Flowers
-Meats
-Occupations
-The more similar to fruits the worse people
performed on the 4
th
trial

So, STM is not just chunking and coding information by sound
-But depends on how long it takes to say the word and by the
words categorical meaning

-STM has evolved into a more complex cognitive structure

-Alan Baddeley
-British
-Reformulated STM into working memory during the 1970s
-He and others have modified working memory since
-Not just a store for items until put into LTM or lost
-Actively works on information
-Not just passively storing it
-Focuses on what working memory accomplishes
-E.g., holding beginning of sentence until get to end to
understand the whole sentence
-E.g., Bob caught . . .
-a fish.
-a cold.
-the ball.
-hell.
-E.g., hold numbers while doing mental arithmetic
-E.g., hold results while reasoning or solving problems
-Working memory is active, not passive
-It works on information

-Proposed that there are 4 parts to working memory
-One involved with sounds; one involved with visual information; one that
combines auditory, visual information, and old information, and a part that
processes the information

-Why Baddeley concluded that there are separate stores for auditory and visual
information:
-People can do 2 working memory tasks without much interference if one is
acoustic and the other is visual
-More than 9 chunks of information are processed
-Shouldnt happen if STM can only hold 5-9 chunks of information
-E.g., Subjects repeat a string of random numbers
-Numbers are in a random pattern
-Up to 8 numbers in length
-E.g., 7-3-5-1-6-2-0-8
-At the same time, shown two letters and had to answer
questions about them
-BA
A follows B (press yes button) or
B follows A (press no button)
-Subjects did well on these tasks
-Subjects given 7 or 8 digits to rehearse reached
the upper limit of STM
-Yet performed well on 2nd task
-Number of digits didnt matter
much
-So, concluded that two stores exist in working memory:
(1) Phonological loop: stores a limited number of sounds
for a short period of time
-2 functions:
(1) Storage of acoustic information
(2) Rehearsal of information
-Maintains the information beyond
a few seconds
-Phonological loop uses sound code
-So, early results showing confusion of
similar sounds is due to phonological loop
-Brain imagines studies show the left hemisphere
more active in phonological tasks

(2) Visuospatial Sketchpad: stores visual and spatial
information
-Stores images from perception
-And visual information derived from verbal
descriptions
-Also used in locating objects in space
-Brain imaging studies show right hemisphere
becomes active during tasks requiring the
visuospatial sketchpad
-Part of the right hemisphere depends on
the task
-More on visual imagery in a later chapter

(3) Central Executive: integrates information from the
phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and the
episodic buffer
-Plays a big role in attention, planning strategies,
and coordinating behavior
-Suppresses irrelevant behavior
-So, helps decide what to do next
-What not to do next
-Limited in how much it can do at any time
-Cannot work effectively on two tasks
simultaneously
-Doesnt store information itself
-Central executive is associated with the frontal
lobes
-Many areas of frontal lobes seem involved
-Damage result in problems planning,
attention, and coordinating behavior
-E.g., Phineas Gage
-E.g., some results of lobotomies
-Rey-Osterreith Complex Figure Test: Involves copying a
complex drawing; requires planning and persistence
-A test of the health of the frontal lobes and central
executive

(4) Episodic Buffer: a temporary storehouse for gathering
and combining information from the phonological loop,
the visuospatial sketchpad, and long-term memory
-Actively manipulates information to interpret an
earlier experience, solve new problems, and plan
future activities
-Baddeley added the episodic buffer 25 years after
the other 3 parts
-So, not as well worked out

-What part of working memory is involved in daydreaming?
-Stimulus independent thoughts: streams of thoughts and images
unrelated to current sensory input
-Includes daydreaming
-Experience Sampling Method: people record their experiences
throughout the day by responding to randomly-occurring
prompts; prompts are often delivered and responses recorded on
electronic devices such as smart phones
-Amount of daydreaming varies in people
-Young adults average about 1/3 of waking life
(end prof notes)

Baddelys System

Left hemisphere phonological loop
Right hemisphere visualspatial sketchpad
Central executive doesnt store information, mostly in frontal lobe (?)

Episodic buffer stores info briefly from others (sensory stuff) & puts it together into a
composite (also pulls from long-term memory) then the central executive works on it

Daydreaming a type of stimulus-independent thoughts
What brain structures are involved in it? What part of working memory? (To find
out, engage a part of working memory and see if the subject can still daydream)
What information is being worked on?
It is healthy, it helps you cope.
= 1/3 of the day.
If one is good at a random # task, one is worse at daydreaming, bad at the
random # task and good at daydreaming. Therefore daydreaming involves planning. It
seems that the central executive is necessary for daydreaming but the phonological
loop & visiospatial sketchpad arent necessary for it. (This research was done before
episodic buffer research, which is probably an area that is also necessary for
daydreaming).


Experiencing sampling methods


FINAL EXAM

Chapter 5: Long-Term Memory

H.M. case study (1926-2008)
- Suffered from grand mal seizures
- Damaged area of brain removed
- included:
Hippocampus & adjacent area
- Decreased the # of seizures
o But:
Amnesia for a couple years before the surgery (retrograde
amnesia) was present
He could not put new items in LTM
Consolidation: process of putting new information into
permanent storage
- Working memory seemed intact
o He could store 5-9 random digits
o He could learn some things, through:
Habituation
Classical conditioning
Operant conditioning
Skills
Therefore, there are different parts/divisions of memory
He didnt know he knew these things
- His case suggests:
o There is a difference between short-term and long-term memory
o Long-term memory has several aspects
General knowledge, life memories
Skills, predispositions, reflex learning
o Different types of memories are stored in different parts of the brain

Watching a happy movie increases happiness in a kid but he cant remember anything,
while a sad movie decreases happiness but he can remember.

LTM permanent memory storage

- Research: on fruit flies, which only have 4 chromosomes

- Some common divisions of LTM

o Episodic Memory: memories of events that happen to a person.
Describes episodes in a persons life
o Semantic Memory: organized knowledge about the world
o Procedural Memory: knowledge about how to do something

o Why make these distinctions?
Different types of memories have different characteristics
Different brain injuries can affect different types of memory

o 3 basic memory processes
1) Encoding: getting information into storage
2) Storage: holding information
3) Retrieval: getting information out of storage

- Why do we remember some information and not other info?
o One approach: Crick & Lockhart (1972)
o Depth of Processing (levels of processing): deep meaningful
information processing leads to more permanent retention than
shallow, sensory processing
For words:
Shallow processing:
o Visual appearance of a word
o E.g. color of ink, type font, upper or lower case
letters
o Sound of the word
Deep processing: meaning of the word

o Classic test of depth of processing
Results:
Subjects remembered fill-in sentence words better
than the physical characteristic words (HUH??)
The meaning is deep processing

o Why is memory better for deep words?
2 factors
1) distinctiveness: a stimulus is different than other
memories
Either in capital or small letters versus all possibilities
and nuances with meaning.
2) elaboration (elaborative rehearsal): processing new
information by associating it with other concepts in
permanent memory
To get into LTM, associate info with other stuff
(structures already present in loci)
o Maintenance rehearsal: repeating a stimulus
less likely to be permanently stored than with
elaborative reversal

o Memory for faces
Subjects shown many photos of faces
Asked to make judgments about either
o width of the nose
o honesty of person
o male or female sometimes (?)
Later, asked to identify ones they had seen
o Not told they would be asked
o Correctly recognized more faces judged for
honesty
Why?
Distinctiveness
Elaboration

- Is meaning the deepest level?
o Self-reference affect: enhancement of long-term memory by relating
the material to personal experiences
See it across the board with all ages
Explanations of the effect
1) Self has a rich set of queues
o Allows for elaboration and distinctiveness
o We have a complex network about ourselves
o Part 2?


- Consistency bias: we tend to exaggerate the consistency between our past
and present beliefs
o We often have trouble identifying the source of our information
o Source monitoring - trying to identify the origin of our memories and
beliefs
Useful for checking plagiarism
ex) Helen Keller, George Harrison

Eyewitness testimony and memory
- How valid is eyewitness testimony?
o Major details for memory are fairly accurate
o Smaller details are often mistaken
o Mistakes are made

o Misinformation effect - people view (watch) an event
Afterward, they are given misleading information about the
event
Later they recalled the misleading info
Later they recalled what they were told rather than what they
actually saw
Form of retroactive interference: trouble recalling old
material because recently learned new material interferes (a
source monitoring issue)

Elizabeth Loftus study (1978)
- Showed subjects a series of slides showing a car stopped at an intersection
- The car then hits a pedestrian
- Half of the subjects saw a stop sign at the intersection, the other half a yield sign
- 20 minutes to one week later, the subjects answered a questionnaire (length of
time has a big effect)
- One question: did another car past the red Datsun while it was stopped at the
stop sign, or the yield sign?
- Every possible combination was used. Stop stop, stop yield, yield yield, yield
stop.
- Some were consistent with the sign they saw
- Some were inconsistent with the sign they saw
- Some were neutral (sign not mentioned)
- They had to select which slides they saw
o Results (chance = 50%)
Neutral - 50 to 60% correct
Consistent - 75% correct
Inconsistent - 25 to 40% a week later
- Percent correct decreased with time
o Stronger misinformation effect

- Factors found to influence eyewitness testimony
o 1) Errors are more likely if the witnesses attention has been distracted at
the time of the event
o 2) Errors are more likely if the misinformation is plausible
o 3) Errors are more likely if there is social pressure
o 4) Errors are more likely if eyewitnesses have been given positive
feedback

- Loftus Study # 2
o Memory can be subtly influenced
Subjects viewed a film of a car accident
Then answered a questionnaire
Question included was About how fast were the cars going when
they smashed into each other?
Subjects estimated lower speed if she used the word collide or
bumped or contacted instead of smashed
One week later those who read smashed were more likely to
answer yes to Did you see any broken glass?
There was no broken glass in the film

- Constructionist approach: recollections change as people revise the past to satisfy
their present concerns and knowledge
- Actually change memory

- Recovered memory/False memory controversy
o Two views
1) Recovered memory perspective: these memories of abuse
were forgotten, then recovered
The memories are of real events
2) False memory perspective: many recovered memories are
mistaken; they are constructed stories about events that never
occurred

- Evidence supporting false memory perspective
o Potential for memory errors is high
o Therapists specializing in recovered memories often inadvertently
suggests that a repressed memory may exist
o Real life implanted memories do occur
o Laboratory
Elizabeth Loftus Lost in the mall study
3 real stories
1 made up
Lost in the mall, plausible details from relatives
1 to 2 weeks later, subjects were interviewed
About 2 weeks later, subjects were interviewed again
Results:
o 68% remember true events
o 29% remember made up event

- Frederic Bartlett (1886-1969)
o Used term schema with its present meaning
o Developed method of serial reproduction
Subjects heard exotic stories
Bartlett noticed that the inaccuracies had patterns
Subjects filled in strange gaps
They changed bizarre sequences to casual ones
They dropped difficulties to assimilate information
They revised stories to resemble Western type stories

- Schemas and scripts influence correspondents of memory
o Help us to:
1) Select material to be remembered
2) Instructions encourage people to see how their traits are
related to one another
3) We may rehearse material more if it is related to us
Elaborative rehearsal

- Brain and depth of processing
o Brain scan studies
o Meaning tasks were performed
Increased activity in the left prefrontal cortex
But activity did not increase in this area during shallow encoding
o Self reference tasks
Left and right areas of the prefrontal cortex show increased
activity (?)

- Context
o Subjects do have good memories about shallow items if the memory test
is different
Subjects are tested using the original task
o Encoding specificity principle: recall is better if the retrieval context is
similar to the encoding context
o ex) male or female voice as ones teacher
o Often there seems to be a bigger effect of context in real life than in the
lab
Why?
Lab often uses recognition tasks, real life work requires
recall
Context usually has a bigger effect on recall then
recognition
Recall: reproduction of items that had been presented at
an earlier time
o Few memory cues
o e.g. essay tests
Recognition: identification of items that had been
presented at an earlier time
o e.g. multiple-choice questions
- Real life is often a recall in context
- T/F questions - students tend to do worse on them by studying more
- Because given the time, you can conceive of why it is false
- Context effects are small if other learning cues are strong
o e.g. well-learned material
o (studying wipes out context effect)
o Often in the lab, learning cues are strong
- Context usually has a bigger effect on older material
o Memories in real life are often old memories
o Memories in the lab are often about something learned an hour so earlier
- Mental context may be more important than physical context
o i.e. how similar a person thinks something is or feels rather than the
actual physical environment
- Lab research usually manipulates the physical surroundings
o Recognition test are usually used in the lab = easy to grade
o Faces = recognition names = recall (usually)
- Why do context effects exist?
o Perhaps, let us easily recall information for a given situation that we are
in now
Efficient
Allows for survival

- Emotions, mood and memory
o Emotions: reaction to a specific stimulus (feeling)
o Mood: general long-lasting experience

(prof notes)
- Emotion = complex
-Pollyanna Principle: pleasant items are usually processed more efficiently and
accurately than less pleasant items
-We tend to remember pleasant things (not a huge effect)
-E.g., childhood memories
-E.g., college memories
-Especially if the delay between learning and testing is long
-How tested?
-Have people keep track of events in their lives
-Rate pleasantness of events
-Test at memory different intervals
-E.g., 3 months, 1 year, 4 years
-Pleasant items are more likely to be remembered
-Pleasant items over time seem a little less pleasant
-Unpleasant items seem considerably less unpleasant

-Laboratory
-Ask people to list items from memory
-E.g., animals, colors, teachers
-First recall those items they like best
-Subjects learn a list of words that are pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant
-Rated by other people
- People with depression rate their abilities accurately, but something
other than depression causes it!
-Recall or recognition of words is tested several minutes to months later
-Mood
-Mood congruence: memory is better when the material to be learned is similar with a
persons current mood
-An encoding phenomenon
-Good mood: easier to learn/remember nice items
-Bad mood: easier to learn/remember nasty items

-Retrieval in Long-term Memory
-What affects getting information out of LTM?
-So far, mostly looked at purposely getting information out of LTM
-But can use information from LTM and not know it
-Explicit memory task: subjects are specifically instructed to remember information
that they have previously learned
-Subjects are making a conscious effort to remember material
-E.g., most recall and recognition exams in school
-Implicit memory task: past experience with material facilitates performance on a
cognitive task
-Person does not make a conscious effort to recall the information
-E.g., Give a list of words for subjects to read
-Includes BAT
-Later, give them a word completion test
-More likely to complete with words from the original list than if they had not seen the
list
-Even when not consciously remembered
-Fill in B_T with A
-Could have used BET, BIT, BLT BOT, BUT
-Repetition priming task: recent exposure to a word increases the likelihood the word
will later come to mind when given a cue that could evoke many words
-E.g., Name 3 rooms in a typical house
-E.g., Name 3 different kinds of stores
-E.g., Name 3 items associated with Christmas
-Works with fonts
-Read faster if use same font
-If read even a year earlier
-Dont remember

-Amnesia and retrieval
-Retrograde amnesia: loss of memory for events that occurred prior to brain damage
-Anterograde amnesia: loss of memory for events that have occurred after brain
damage
-Do much poorer on recall and recognition tests after reading target list of words
(explicit memory task) than normal subjects
-Not surprising
-But are influenced just as much as normal subjects when doing word completion tests
(implicit memory task)
-So, something is getting into LTM for people with anterograde amnesia

-Childhood (infantile) amnesia: older children and adults inability to remember events
that occurred in their lives prior to the age of about 2 or 3 years old
-Infantile amnesia: Freuds term
-Some people remember earlier events
-But may be memory of someone telling about event or dream of earlier experience
-Jean Piagets (1896-1980) kidnapping memory:

I was sitting in my pram, which my nurse was pushing in the Champs Elysees, when a
man tried to kidnap me. I was held in by the strap fastened round me while my nurse
bravely tried to stand between me and the thief. She received various scratches, and I
can still vaguely see those on her face. Then a crowd gathered, a policeman with a
short cloak and a white baton came up and the man took to his heels. I can still see the
whole scene, and can even place it near the tube station. When I was about fifteen my
parents received a letter from my former nurse saying that she had been converted to
the Salvation Army. She wanted to confess past faults, and in particular to return the
watch she had been given on the occasion. She had made up the whole story, faking
the scratches. I, therefore, must have heard, as a child, the account of the story, which
my parents believed, and projected it into the past in the form of a visual memory.


- Confabulating - not telling the truth, yet trying to (not lying)
o Evidence supporting recovered memory perspective
o Some people whose hospital records show were treated for sexual
assault as children don't recall the assault as adults
o Most traumas are remembered by kids
o So, memories of molestation can be forgotten and recovered
o Lab results may not apply to real life
o Many psychologists have concluded that the majority of recovered
memories are false memories
- Childhood Amnesia:
o Problem with childhood amnesia may be a retrieval problem
o Information may be stored but not accessible
- Autobiographical memory: Memory for events and topics related to oneself
o What do you remember about your life?
o Focus on:
What is remembered?
How accurate are the memories?
Some general conclusions from the research
Memories are usually accurate for major details
Mistakes usually occur with incidental details about
everyday events
The most recent experiences are recalled
Older people: recall adolescence and young adulthood
Memories can be constructed at the time of retrieval
Memories are actively blended form the similar sources
Mistakes can be made by inappropriately combining
memories
Transitioned firsts are recalled
o Graduations, weddings, first baby
Narrative: Keep a running story of yourself

Autobiographical memory (cont)
- Strong memories for emotional and surprising events
- Flashbulb memory: memory for a situation in which you first learned of a
very surprising and emotionally arousing event
o Includes incidental details
o 6 kinds of incidental information are usually recalled:
1) Place you first heard the news
2) Ongoing event interrupted
3) The person who gave the news
4) Your own feelings
5) Emotions of others
6) The aftermath
Results in surprise in emotion

- 2 views of flashbulb memory
o 1) Flashbulb memories are different from other types of memories
Remember details not remembered with other types of
memories
Animal studies shows stress hormones are related to better
memory (adrenaline versus saline control)
Within limits
o 2) Flashbulb memories are like other memories
Surprising and emotional memories are more likely to be
repeated and elaborated upon
Strengthens the memory and allows for changes in the
memory itself
The longer the time between the event and recall the
more mistakes there are (just like other memories)
- Conclusion: flashbulb memories may be enhanced
o But by method used to store other types of memories

- Chapter 8: General Knowledge
o Our background knowledge that helps us get along in life
o Stored for use by cognitive processes
o General knowledge can be divided 2 ways
1) semantic knowledge
2) schemas

Structure of Semantic Memory
- Semantic memory: organized knowledge about the world
o Includes
Matters of facts
Conceptual knowledge
o Function of concepts
To help make sense of the world
- Category: class of objects that belongs together
o e.g. chairs, rocks, dogs, shirts
- Concept: mental representation of a category
o What is in a person's hand

How do we decide which objects belong in the same category?
What is the basis of our concepts?

- Feature Comparison Model (based on Aristotle - essence of something plus
accidental or on essential qualities)
o Concepts stored in memory according to a list of features
o The features of an object are compared with the features of the
category
o People decide whether the two match
o Problem: few concepts in real life have necessary features
o Necessary feature: essential qualities of a bird (for instance) =
feathers, wings, beak etc.
o There really aren't necessary features

- The Prototype Approach: a person decides whether an item belongs to a
category by comparing the item to a prototype
o Prototype: the (Platonic) idealized item that is most typical of a
category
Idealized: does not necessarily exist
The closer an item resembles a prototype, the easier and
faster it can be classified
Proto-typicality: degree to which members of a category are
prototypical

- Family Resemblance (Wittgenstein or Leibniz?): No single attribute is shared
by all examples of concept; however, each example has at least one
attribute in common with some other example of the concept
o Prototype face study
Subjects were shown composite faces
Made using Identikit
Each face showed features with the prototype that is never
shown to the subjects
Later subjects were given recognition tasks and asked how
confident they were in their answers
Subjects did well with one exception
o All identified prototype face as seen before and
with the most confidence
But it was not shown before
Advantages to prototype approach
Avoids defining categories by essential characteristics
Accounts for developing categories from loosely
structured resemblances (family resemblances)
Shows how we can store a vast amount of information
in a single prototype
Problems
Sometimes a prototype is not the most typical item in
a category
So they have different networks

- We often do store a vast amount of specific information
o Categories are treated as fuzzy by the prototype approach
o But categories are often not fuzzy
o The Exemplar Approach: people first learn some specific examples of
a concept, and then classify a new stimulus by deciding how closely it
resembled those specific examples
Exemplars: specific examples of a concept stored in memory
Real examples
Advantages:
Avoids problem of necessary features
Don't have to devise a prototype
o Just store examples
Can explain why we categorize unusual examples
Problems:
Explaining why we store some examples and not
others
Exemplars for large categories may be unwieldy
- An fMRI shows different parts the brain are activated in thinking about a
prototype versus an exemplar

- Network Models
o A netlike organization of concepts in memory with many
interconnections
Meaning of a word or concept is determined by the
connections
o Collins and Loftus network model (1975)
Each concept is represented by a node
Nodes are connected by links (how close is each link?)
When a node is activated by the name of the concept,
activation spreads throughout the links to other nodes
Called Spreading Activation
The more times concepts are associated, the stronger the
connection
o Model can explain:
Sentence verification results
Individual differences
People have different experiences
o So they have different networks
Seemingly unusual associations (individualistic, personality-
based)
Context Effects: links between incidental items in a place
where something is learned and the items that are learned
State dependent learning (altered states etc.)
Some jokes (huh?)
Creativity (original/fresh links)

- Network Models (cont)
o Mistakes of coming up with the wrong answer
o PDP / connectionism
Advantages:
Takes into account the workings of neurons
Can use both bottom-up and top-down processing
Can explain how we draw generalizations
Spontaneous Generalization: drawing inferences about
general information on individual cases

- Schemas and Scripts
o Schema (plural schemas or schemata): generalized knowledge about
a situation or an event, based on experience and used to facilitate
perception, thinking and to interpret new informata
o Script: a simple, well structured sequence of events associated with a
highly familiar activity
A type of schema

- Schemas and scripts help us
o 1) Select material to be remembered
o 2) Boundary Extension: tendency to remember having viewed a
greater portion of the scene than was actually shown
o Extends the bounds of items we've seen that are covered up (children
like to draw every item separately in a scene instead of representing
how they overlap in terms of perspective)
o 3) Abstract the meaning of material rather than the details
o 4) Interpret the material
o 5) Helps us to integrate separate memories into a coherent whole

Chapter 7: Mental Imagery and Cognitive Maps

- Sir Francis Galton
o First to scientifically study memory
o Photographic memory
Elizabeth
Art dealer at Harvard (1960s to 70s)

- Eidetic imagery in children
o Eidetic Imagery - a mental image or memory that is extraordinarily
clear and vivid, as though actually being perceived
o Between 5 to 10% of children are eidetikers
o 2nd to 6th graders
o Not related to IQ scores
o Reading achievement
o Personality
o 3 to 5 seconds needed to form an image
o No better with familiar pictures
o Images of letters and numbers are not as detailed as other images
- Imagery = the mental representation of stimuli that are not physically
present
o Relies exclusively on top-down processing
o Mental imagery has a long and contentious history in psychology
o Modern controversy revolves around how images are stored
o Are images like a picture, or a verbal description?

- Analog code (depictive or pictorial representation): representation that close
resembles the physical object
o Map, globe, blueprint

- Propositional code (descriptive representation): an abstract language-like
representation
o Stored information is not visual or spatial

- Does not resemble the original stimulus
- We all know we have pictures in our heads
o These may be epiphenomenal
o Epiphenomenon: mental phenomena are real but don't affect thinking;
byproducts of the brain
o ex) smoke is an effect of manufacturing cars, but it does not affect their
make

Mental imagery and rotation
- Mental Rotation: the imagined turning of a form from one orientation to
another
- ex) gloves = mirror images of each other
- Usual Test: decide if pictures of two objects are the same or mirror images
o Measure: reaction time
o Result: the larger the angle of rotation, the longer the reaction time

- Some other findings
o Large individual differences in model rotation
o Elderly people are slower than young people
o Fluent signers of American Sign languages
o Tetris players are better at rotating objects than non-Tetris players (just
limited to Tetris-like objects, not other stuff like organic chemistry
molecules)

- Conclusion: mental rotation is smaller to rotating real objects

- Imagery and Size
o When examining real objects or pictures of objects, the bigger the item,
the easier to make out the details
Stephen Kosslyn (1975)
Ask people to imagine a big and small object at the same time
E.g. a rabbit and an elephant
Reaction time to questions about the elephant = faster
In imagining a fly & a rabbit, reaction time is faster for the
rabbit (a bigger object)
Result: it takes longer to answer questions about the
smaller image