Lecture 1

Imagery based (Especially if images involve interaction)

Verbal Elaboration

1) Rhymes & Alliteration

Thirty days hath September...April, June and November

I before E except after C...

Righty-tighty; lefty-loosy

2) 1st-Letter

Every Good Boy Does Fine

FACE (musical scale)

METAL- five countries on northern Africa

HOMES- great lakes

3) Sentence or Story Construction

Cranial Nerves

Olfactory

Optic

Oculomotor

Trochlear

Trigeminal

Abducents

Facial

Vestibulocochlear

Glossopharyngeal

Vagus

Spinal Accessory

Hypoglossal

Possible Values of Verbal Elaboration

Forces Attention

Makes Use of Conceptual Long-Term Memory

Interrelates Items to Create Better Cues

Metacognition

Metacognition: Understanding of cognitive phenomena. E.g.:

-Meta-attention (e.g., avoiding distractions)
-Metacomprehension (e.g., talking to a novice, or knowing when you need clarification)
-Metajudgment (e.g., convincing an investor; realizing when youre being impetuous)
-Metamemory (e.g., judging that youve studied enough, or realizing you never knew a

particular fact.)

Test Performance

Better test-takers are more accurate in their predictions.

Poor test-takers are typically overconfident.

Judgment of Learning

Book-Arrow

Mib-Dax

1776-Revolution

Judgment of Learning
DE-19

Will you remember?

Immediately after list: Predictions 90% accurate.

For delayed test: Prediction less accurate (and differences between peoples metamemory
ability is bigger).

More global prediction:

Percentage easier to predict than item-by-item performance.
Tip-Of-The-Tongue

Tip-Of-The-Tongue

1. Give S a definition.
2. S tries to produce word.
3. If word not recalled but S feels it's on tip of the tongue, assess what S knows about it. E.g.,
- 1st letter
- similar sounding word
- # of syllables
- stress pattern

*****So memory failed, but metamemory (that word is on tip of tongue) is accurate.*****
Feeling-of-Knowing
1. Give general knowledge question
2. If can't answer, try to predict recognition ability
Who was George W. Bushs first Secretary of State? Powell

FOK is accurate if they said they knew and then got this right.
Its also accurate if they said they didnt know and then got it wrong.
SO...

Implications for studying:

Quality matters more than quantity.

Elaborate & enrich; Relate to what you already know.

Anticipate forgetting; build in retrieval cues.

Test yourself often.

Don't overestimate your ability.

Work on learning skills AND metamemory skills.

Lecture 2

Cognitive Neuroscience I

The Case of Phineas Gage

Revealed important role for VPFC (ventral pre frontal cortex) in personality.
Santiago Ramn Y Caja (Nobel Prize, 1906)

Mapped the neural anatomy of insects(like the circuitry of an exquisite pocket watch).

An Elephants Brain...

5 million times bigger than insects.

Inefficient & sprawling.

More brain needed for larger body. (Info from more sensory receptors, etc.)

Signals can take 100x longer than for smaller animals. So:

Cant rely on reflexes

Cant move quickly

Brain spends lots of energy planning each movement.

Why dont brains just keep getting bigger & better?

SIZE

Couldnt the processing power overcome the distance problem?

Maybe, but there are anatomical limits (especially for bipedal humans, with narrow birth canal).

Also, cerebral cortex is just 1.5 5 mm thick. Brain has already cleverly solved that limitation

Why dont mammal brains just keep getting bigger & better?

Increase # of neurons? Increase speed?

But communication in the brain is noisy. Would be like turning up volume on static-filled
radio signal.

Already the greediest body part, using 20% of calories burned at rest. (For newborns, 65%!)

Current density of neurons may be at or near optimal.

Speed of transmission is faster with shorter distance and with insulated (myelinated) neurons.

So ideal to have tightly packed, myelinated neurons.

People with faster neural communication have better working memory.

In the animal kingdom, brains tend to be about power of body mass.

Which species are at their expected brain size based on this logarithmic scale?

Humans have a quotient of 7.5

(i.e., 7.5 larger than typical).

Neuroimaging: Studying The Living, Functioning Brain

Event Related Potentials (ERPs)

Electrical brain activity measured from the scalp following presentation of a stimulus.

Assumption: the larger the signal, the more activity in that region.

Pros:

Can be used easily with human subjects.

Very good time resolution.

Cons:

Very poor spatial resolution.

Greater blood flow in a brain region = more activity.

Two main techniques:

Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

Good space resolution, but not great time resolution. (Blood flow is slow.)