Unit One

Introduction and Architecture of Memory

- Learning and memory involve several stages of processing.
- The three stages are encoding, storage and retrieval
- Encoding is the process by which information contained in external stimuli is transformed
into a representation that can be stored within the memory system
- Long term vs Short term
- Short term memory: limited (few items), few seconds
- Long term memory: unlimited, can span decades
- Multistore Model
- Atkinson Shiffrin (1968)

- Sensory Stores
- Iconic Memory and Echoic Memory
- Iconic memory lasts for 1000 ms
- Echoic memory lasts for 2000-3000 ms
- Iconic memory was initially thought to not be attention drives but Mack et al
proves it is. They made participants report the letters in the center of a visual
array or whether four circles presented close to the fixation point were the same
colout
- Echoic memory lasts longer in the left hemisphere
- Short Term Memory
- Short-term memory has a limited capacity, with the maximum number of items
typically recalled without error being about seven.
- However, this capacity is influenced by chunking, where smaller pieces of
information are integrated into larger units or chunks, as well as by the ability to
detect patterns or regularities in the material presented.
- Short-term memory is also influenced by interference, which can come from
items on previous trials or during the retention interval, and decay, which occurs
when information is not rehearsed and fades over time.
- Empirical studies have shown that spontaneous detection of patterns can greatly
enhance short-term memory, while interference from previous trials can disrupt
short-term memory performance.
- The findings suggest that interference is the most important factor causing
forgetting from short-term memory, although decay may also play a part.
 - Chekaf et al. (2016) found that participants' short-term memory was greatly
enhanced by spontaneous detection of patterns
- Chen and Cowan (2009) found that rehearsal prevented by articulatory
suppression resulted in only three chunks being recalled
- Berman et al. (2009) claimed that interference is more important than decay in
causing forgetting from short-term memory.
- Campoy (2012) pointed out limitations in their experimental design, and obtained
strong decay effects at shorter time intervals.
- Endress and Potter (2014) found that short-term memory was greater in a unique
condition with much less interference than in a repeated condition.
- STM is typically separate from LTM: double dissociation:redearch supports
- Amnesia patients have impaired LTM but intact STM and brain damaged patient has vice
versa
- Evluation
- Most amount of proof comes from brain damaged patients
- However, limitations
1. Oversimplified: assume that STM and LTM stores are unitary
2. Assumption that STM is a gateway between sensory and LTM is incorrect
3. Model assumes info in STM represents contents of consciousness but evidence there for
implicit learning (unconscious learning)
4. Assumption that items within STM have equal status is incorrect. Item that is being
accessed is much quicker to be retrieved
5. Notion that most info is transffered to LTM via regearsal exggerates its role in learning
6. Notion that forgetting from STM is caused by displacement minimises role of interference
Unitary Store Model
- Some theorists suggest that a unitary-store model should replace the multi-store
approach to memory.
- This model posits that short-term memory is temporary activation of long-term memory
representations or recently perceived items.
- Advocates of the unitary-store approach focus on the similarities between short-term
and long-term memory, rather than the differences.
- Amnesic patients have essentially intact short-term memory but severely impaired
long-term memory because they have special difficulties forming novel relations in both
types of memory.
- The hippocampus and surrounding medial temporal lobes are crucial for forming novel
relations, and unitary-store models predict their involvement in short-term memory tasks
requiring novel relations.
- Studies assessing amnesic patients' short-term memory performance have been
criticized for also involving long-term memory.
- Neuroimaging studies have generally been unclear about whether hippocampal
activation during short-term memory tasks is due to encoding for long-term memory.
- However, a study by Bergmann et al. (2012) found that the hippocampus was involved in
encoding face-house pairs remembered in both short-term and long-term memory, but
 not during successful short-term memory for word pairs that did not subsequently
become long-term memories.
Limitations
1. the claim that short-term memory consists only of activated long-term memory is
oversimplified.
2. we must distinguish between the assumption that short-term memory is only activated
long-term memory and the assumption that short-term and long-term memory are
separate but often interact. Most evidence supports the latter assumption rather than the
former.
3. the theory fails to provide a precise definition of the crucial explanatory concept of
“activation”.
4. the medial temporal lobes (including the hippocampus) are of crucial importance for
many forms of long-term memory (especially 246 Memory declarative memory – see
Glossary). Amnesic patients with damage to these brain areas have severely impaired
declarative memory. In contrast, amnesic patients typically have intact short-term
memory (Spiers et al., 2001).

Working Memory
A limited-capacity system used in the processing and brief holding of information. It includes:
1. a modality-free central executive, which “is an attentional system” (Baddeley, 2012, p.
22);
2. A phonological loop processing and storing information briefly in a phonological
(speech-based) form;
3. A visuo-spatial sketchpad specialised for spatial and visual processing and temporary
storage;
4. An episodic buffer providing temporary storage for integrated information coming from
the visuo-spatial sketchpad and phonological loop; this component
Assumptions:
1. If two tasks use the same component, they cant be performed successfully together
2. If two tasks use different components, they can be performed well (dual task paradigm:
remember a list of numbers while completing a visuospatial task
Robbins: Chess experiment
Chess players selected continuation moves from various chess positions while also performing
one of the following tasks:
- repetitive tapping: the control condition;
- random letter generation: this involves the central executive
- pressing keys on a keypad in a clockwise fashion: this uses the visuo-spatial sketchpad;
- rapid repetition of the word “see-saw”: this is articulatory suppression and uses the
phonological loop
The quality of chess moves was impaired when the additional task involved the central
executive or visuo-spatial sketchpad but not when it involved the articulatory loop.

Phonological Loop
Two parts to it:
1. Passive phonological store directly concerned with speech perception
2. Articulatory process linked to speech production

People use the phonological loop to engage in verbal rehearsal. Proof:

1. The phonological similarity effect refers to the reduced ability to recall a list of words
when they are phonologically similar (e.g., pan, cat, bat, ban, pad, man) compared to
when they are phonologically dissimilar (e.g., man, pen, rim, cod, bud, peel). Baddeley et
al. (2018) found that short-term memory was much worse with phonologically similar
words. It is unclear whether the phonological similarity effect is influenced more by
acoustic similarity (similar sounds) or articulatory similarity (similar movements involved
in speech). Schweppe et al. (2011) discovered that the effect is more related to acoustic
similarity, but there is an influence of articulatory similarity when recall is spoken.
2. The word-length effect is the phenomenon where individuals are able to recall more
short words in immediate serial recall tasks than long words. This effect was first
demonstrated by Baddeley et al. (1975) using visually presented words. When
participants were asked to repeat a sequence of short and long words, they were found
to remember more of the shorter words than the longer ones. However, when
participants were asked to repeat a sequence of numbers while simultaneously
remembering the words, the word-length effect disappeared. This suggests that the
 effect is due to the articulatory rehearsal process in the phonological loop of working
memory. Jacquemot et al. (2011) found that a brain-damaged patient with impaired
verbal rehearsal abilities showed no word-length effect, further supporting the
importance of the phonological loop in this effect.
Brain Areas
The phonological loop is associated with brain areas in the parietal and frontal lobes. The
supramarginal and angular gyri are associated with the phonological store, while Broca's area is
associated with the articulatory control process. Direct electrical stimulation during a digit-span
task revealed that stimulation within the parietal lobe disrupted the storage of information, while
stimulation within Broca's area disrupted the rehearsal of items in the correct order. The
phonological loop is useful in learning a language, as demonstrated by a patient with a small
digit span who was unable to associate Russian words with their Italian translations. The
phonological loop (inner voice) is also used to resist temptation, as shown by a study where
articulatory suppression reduced participants' ability to control their actions.

Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad
Two separate components
1. Visual Cache: visual form and colour
2. Inner Scribe: spatial and movement information

Research suggests that there are separate visual and spatial systems in the brain. Smith and
Jonides (1997) found that participants showed more activity in the right hemisphere during a
spatial task, and more activity in the left hemisphere during a visual task. Areas within the
occipital and temporal lobes were activated during visual processing, while areas within the
parietal cortex were activated during spatial processing (Zimmer, 2008). Klauer and Zhao (2004)
found that when performing a spatial or visual task, interference tasks that matched the type of
task disrupted performance more than interference tasks that did not match. However,
Vergauwe et al. (2009) found that interference tasks had comparable effects on both spatial and
visual tasks, suggesting that interference effects are more general when tasks are demanding.

Morey (2018) discussed the theoretical assumption that the visuospatial sketchpad is a
specialized system separate from other cognitive systems and components of working memory.
She identified two predictions:
(1) Some brain-damaged patients should have selective impairments of visual and/or spatial
short-term memory with other cognitive processes and systems essentially intact.
(2) Short-term visual or spatial memory in healthy individuals should be largely or wholly
unaffected by the requirement to perform a secondary task at the same time (especially when
that task does not require visual or spatial processing).

However, evidence suggests that brain-damaged patients with impaired visual and/or spatial
short-term memory often have other cognitive impairments as well. Furthermore, Morey's
meta-analytic review found that short-term visual and spatial memory was strongly impaired by
demanding secondary tasks, suggesting that the visuo-spatial sketchpad interacts extensively
with other cognitive and memory systems, casting doubt on the theoretical assumption that it
often operates independently from other systems.

Central Executive
The central executive is an important part of working memory, which is like an attentional
system that is involved in almost all complex cognitive activities. It is not a storage system for
information. The prefrontal cortex is generally assumed to be heavily involved in the central
executive's functions, but it is not the only region involved. The central executive is associated
with several executive functions, such as focusing attention, dividing attention between two
stimulus streams, switching attention between tasks, and interfacing with long-term memory.
Patients with impaired central executive functioning suffer from dysexecutive syndrome, which
causes problems with response inhibition, rule deduction and generation, maintenance and
shifting of sets, and information generation, leading to difficulties in holding a job and functioning
in everyday life.

Episodic Buffer
Added later on because
1. the original version of the model was limited because its components were too separate
in their functioning.For example, it was unclear how verbal information from the
phonological loop and visual and spatial information from the visuo-spatial sketchpad
was integrated to form multidimensional representations.
2. it was hard to explain within the original model the finding that people can provide
immediate recall of up to 16 words presented in sentences. This high level of immediate
sentence recall is substantially beyond the capacity of the phonological loop.

The episodic buffer is an important addition to Baddeley's working memory model because it
provides a way to integrate information from different sources into a multidimensional
representation. This helps to explain how people can recall more information than the capacity
of the phonological loop alone would suggest. The episodic buffer acts as a buffer between the
other working memory components and also links to perception and long-term memory.

Initially, Baddeley suggested that the episodic buffer could only be accessed via the central
executive, but it is now believed that it can be accessed by all three components of working
memory: the visuo-spatial sketchpad, the phonological loop, and the central executive.

Our understanding of working memory has been divided into two major theoretical approaches:
1. Working Memory Capacity
2. Executive Functions: Unit/Diversity Framework

Working Memory Capacity

- Working memory capacity is an assessment of how mych info can be processed and
stored at the same time. Higher WMC → high intelligence and high attention
- Can be measured through:
- Reading Span
 - Operation Span
- Correlated positively with intelligence (specifically fluid intelligence)
- Engle and Kane argued that people with diff WMC vary in two aspects of attentional
control:
- Maintenance of task goals
- Resolution of response competition or conflict
- Differs from Baddeley because the focus of Bad is underlying structure of WM whereas
WMC focus is on individual differences
- Higher WMC → higher executive functioning (correlation)
- High capacity WMC → greater additional control
- Distraction by aeroplane flying
- In low WMC external distraction hinders performance
- Internal task unrelated thoughts also disrupt performance
- Robinson and Unsworth collated this by saying
- Low WMC individuals → less attentional control → mind wandering
- Low WMC → Less motivation → voluntarily indulge in mind wandering
Limitations
1. the finding that working memory capacity correlates highly with fluid intelligence means
many findings ascribed to individual differences in working memory capacity may
actually reflect fluid intelligence.
2. research on working memory capacity is somewhat narrowly based on behavioural
research with healthy participants. In contrast, the unity/diversity framework (discussed
next) has been strongly influenced by neuroimaging and genetic research and by
research on brain-damaged patients.
3. there is a lack of conceptual clarity. For example, theorists differ as to whether the most
important factor differentiating individuals with high- or low-capacity is “maintenance of
task goals”, “resolution of conflict”, “executive attention” or “cognitive control”. We do not
know how closely related these terms are
4. inferior attentional or cognitive control of low-capacity individuals might manifest itself
consistently throughout task performance or only sporadically. Relatively little research
(e.g., Unsworth et al., 2012) has investigated this issue
5. the emphasis in theory and research has been on the benefits for task performance
associated with having high working memory capacity. However, some costs are
associated with high capacity. These costs are manifest when the current task requires a
broad focus of attention but high-capacity individuals adopt a narrow and inflexible focus

Levels of Processing
Argues that attentional and perceptual processes of learning determine what information is
stored in long-term memory. Levels of processing range from shallow or physical analysis of a
stimulus (e.g., detecting specific letters in words) to deep or semantic analysis. (basically
perceptual goes to semantic). The greater the extent to which meaning is processed, the deeper
the level of processing
Theoretical Assumptions:
1. Level/depth of stimuli processing → Large effect on memorability
2. Deeper levels of analysis → More elaborate and long lasting memory traces

Later on, this was moved away from and rather argues that richness or elaboration of encoding
is crucial for long-term memory.
- Research has shown that recognition memory was more than three times higher with
deep than with shallow processing.
- This holds true even with simple tasks like remembering one word after ten seconds
- Baddeley and Hitch found that this effect is smaller with objects like doors than with
verbal materials
- Morris disproved the LOP theory: The study involved participants answering semantic or
shallow questions for words, followed by a memory test using either a standard
recognition test or a rhyming recognition test. The results showed that deep processing
led to better performance on the standard recognition test, but worse performance on
the rhyming recognition test, which goes against the transfer-appropriate processing
theory. This is because the demands of the rhyming test require rhyme information to be
relevant, rather than semantic information.
- This characterises memory traces that are distinct or different from other memory traces
stored in long-term memory.
Testing Effect
The finding that longterm memory is enhanced when some of the learning period is devoted to
retrieving to-be-learned information rather than simply studying it.
Forgetting
- Ebbinghaus- first person to study forgetting in detail
- His basic measure of forgetting was the savings method – the reduction in the number
of trials during relearning compared to original learning.
- Forgetting is a cognitive concept that refers to the loss of information or memories over
time.
- Benefits of forgetting:
- Can enhance wellbeing by blocking painful memories
- Useful to forget outdated info so that it does not interfere
- Useful to forget specific details and focus on gist
- It is a natural and normal process that occurs in everyone's life, although some
individuals may experience it more frequently than others.
- There are several different types of forgetting that can occur. One common type is called
decay, which occurs when memories fade over time due to disuse.
- Another type is interference, which occurs when new information interferes with the
retrieval of old memories. For example, if you learn someone's new phone number, it
may become more difficult to remember their old phone number.
- Two types of interference:
- Proactive interference occurs when previously learned information interferes with
the ability to remember new information. Retroactive interference, on the other
hand, occurs when new learn eg Imagine you are learning a new phone number,
 but you keep accidentally recalling an old phone number you used to use. This is
an example of proactive interference, where your previous learning of the old
phone number is interfering with your ability to learn and recall the new phone
number.
- Retroactive interference, on the other hand, occurs when new learning interferes
with the ability to recall previously learned information. Eg Imagine you are
learning a new language and you start learning French, but then switch to
learning Spanish. Later on, when trying to speak French, you keep accidentally
using Spanish words instead of French words. This is an example of retroactive
interference, where the new learning of Spanish is interfering with the recall of
previously learned French vocabulary.
- RI can happene because
- Learning material similar to Og
- distraction involving expenditure of mental effort during the retention
intervalF
- Forgetting can also occur due to encoding failure, which is when information is not
stored in memory properly in the first place. This can happen if someone is distracted or
not paying attention when information is presented to them.
- In some cases, forgetting can be caused by neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's
disease or head trauma. However, for most people, forgetting is a natural and normal
part of the cognitive process.
- Strategies such as repetition, organization, and retrieval practice can be used to improve
memory and reduce the likelihood of forgetting important information.
- Motivated forgetting
- Reoression: Motivated forgetting of traumatic or other threatening events (especially
from childhood).
- Recovered Memories: Childhood traumatic memories forgotten for several years and
then remembered in adult life.
- Directed Forgetting: Reduced long term memory caused by instructions to forget
information that had been presented for learning
- Anderson and Green (2001) developed the Think/No-Think paradigm to assess
whether individuals can actively suppress memories.
- Most individuals can actively suppress unwanted memories making them less
likely to be recalled on purpose or involuntarily
- Cue dependent forgetting: However, forgetting often occurs because we lack the
appropriate retrieval cues (cue-dependent forgetting). For example, suppose you
have forgotten the name of an acquaintance. If presented with four names,
however, you might well recognise the correct one.
- Encoding specificity principle: The notion that retrieval depends on the overlap
between the information available at retrieval and the information in the memory
trace.
- Consolidation: A basic process within the brain involved in establishing long-term
memories; this process lasts several hours or more and newly formed memories are
fragile.
 - Reconsolidation: This is a new process of consolidation occurring when a previously
formed memory trace is reactivated; it allows that memory trace to be updated.
Long Term Memory
- Declarative memory:
- Episodic and Semantic
- Non-declarative memory:
- Procedural
- Priming
- Simple classical conditioning
- Habituation, sensitization
Declarative vs non-declarative
1. Declarative memory refers to conscious, intentional recollection of factual information,
whereas non-declarative memory refers to implicit, unconscious memories that are
expressed through behavior.
2. Declarative memory is typically acquired through conscious effort, while non-declarative
memory is acquired through repeated exposure and practice.
3. Declarative memory is associated with the hippocampus, while non-declarative memory
is associated with the basal ganglia and cerebellum.
4. Declarative memory can be easily verbalized or written down, while non-declarative
memory is often difficult to put into words.
5. Declarative memory is susceptible to forgetting over time, while non-declarative memory
can be relatively stable.
6. Declarative memory is flexible and can be updated or modified, while non-declarative
memory is more resistant to change.
7. Declarative memory is involved in episodic and semantic memory, while non-declarative
memory is involved in procedural memory and classical conditioning.
8. Declarative memory is impaired in conditions such as amnesia, while non-declarative
memory is often preserved.
9. Declarative memory is used in tasks such as recalling names, dates, and events, while
non-declarative memory is used in tasks such as riding a bike or playing an instrument.
10. Declarative memory can be consciously retrieved and manipulated, while
non-declarative memory is often accessed unconsciously.
Episodic vs Semantic
1. Episodic memory involves the recollection of personal experiences and events, while
semantic memory involves knowledge of facts and concepts.
2. Episodic memory is subjective and based on personal experience, while semantic
memory is objective and not tied to personal experience.
3. Episodic memory is associated with the hippocampus, while semantic memory is
associated with the cortex.
4. Episodic memory is typically acquired through direct experience, while semantic memory
can be acquired through various sources, such as reading and conversation.
5. Episodic memory involves mental time travel and the ability to mentally relive past
experiences, while semantic memory does not.
6. Episodic memory is context-dependent, while semantic memory is context-independent.
 7. Episodic memory is susceptible to forgetting over time, while semantic memory can be
relatively stable.
8. Episodic memory is used in tasks such as recalling personal events and experiences,
while semantic memory is used in tasks such as recalling definitions and facts.
9. Episodic memory is affected by aging and neurodegenerative diseases, while semantic
memory is less affected.
10. Episodic memory is associated with emotion and affective responses, while semantic
memory is not.
Recall
- Recall is a cognitive process that involves retrieving information from memory. It is the
ability to bring to mind previously learned information, experiences, or knowledge. Recall
is crucial for everyday functioning, as it allows us to remember important facts, events,
and procedures, such as remembering our own name, a phone number, or how to tie our
shoes.
- Recall involves several important cognitive processes, including encoding, storage, and
retrieval. Encoding is the process of transforming sensory input into a form that can be
stored in memory. Storage is the process of maintaining the encoded information over
time. Retrieval is the process of accessing the stored information when it is needed.
- There are several factors that can affect recall, such as the type of information to be
remembered, the context in which it was learned, the level of attention and processing
given to the information, and the strength of the memory trace.
Semantic Memory
- semantic memory is another important aspect of cognitive functioning. Semantic memory
is the long-term memory system that stores knowledge about the world, including
concepts and categories. Concepts are mental representations of a category or class of
objects, events, or ideas. For example, the concept of a "dog" includes knowledge about
the physical appearance, behavior, and characteristics of dogs. Categorization is the
process of grouping objects or events into categories based on shared features or
characteristics.
- Semantic memory is organized hierarchically, with broad categories at the top (e.g.,
animals), and more specific categories at the bottom (e.g., dogs). This hierarchical
structure allows for efficient processing and retrieval of information, as well as the ability
to make inferences and generalizations about new information based on existing
knowledge.
Priming
Two kinds fo priming
- Perceptual priming A form of priming in which repeated presentations of a stimulus
facilitates its perceptual processing.
- Conceptual priming A form of priming in which there is facilitated processing of stimulus
meaning.
There are two major differences between priming (also known as repetition priming) and
procedural memory:
- Priming often occurs rapidly whereas procedural memory or skill learning is typically
slow and gradual (Knowlton & Foerde, 2008).
 - Priming is tied fairly closely to specific stimuli whereas skill learning typically generalises
to numerous stimuli. For example, it would be useless if you could hit a good backhand
at tennis only when the ball approached you from a given direction at a given speed!

- Repetition suppression The finding that stimulus repetition often leads to reduced brain
activity (typically with enhanced performance via priming).
- Repetition enhancement The finding that stimulus repetition sometimes leads to
increased brain activity.

Everyday Memory
There are three assumptions in Neisser’s approach to everyday memory
1. It is purposeful
2. It has a personal quality to it
3. It is influenced by situational demands
- He says that what we remember in everyday life is determined by our personal goals.
Compared to this in traditional memory research, what we remember is determined by
what the researcher demands
- Memories in everyday life can be deliberately distorted.
- The conept of saying is believing effect falls in this category and says that tailoring a
message about an event to suit a given audience causes subsequent inaccuracies in
memory for that event.
- Research on human memory should ideally possess ecological validity:
- It should have representativeness (naturalness of experimental situation and
task)
- It should be generalizable (The extent to which a study’s finding apply to the real
world

Autobiographical Memory
- Long-term memory for the events of one’s own life.
- Three main functions of it:
1. Social function: bonding with others
2. Directive function: Using past as a guide to the future
3. Self function: Creating a sense of self-continuity over time
4. Highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM): Exceptional ability to remember
autobiographical memories in detail, generally accompanied by only average ability to
recall other memories

Autobiographical Memory Episodic Memory

Concerned with personally experienced events

Both proactive and retroactive interferences affect them

 Unusual and distinctive events are remembered

Relates to events of personal significance Can relate to trivial events

More complex and more brain areas Less complex and less brain areas

Excellent autobiographical memory Average episodic memory

More motivation Less motivation

Involve semantic memory as well No semantic memory involved

Flashbulb Memories
- Vivid and detailed personal memories of dramatic events
- The following information is included in flashbuld memories:
1. Informant
2. Place where news was heard
3. Ongoing event
4. Individuals own emotional state
5. Emotional state of others
6. Consequences of the event for the individual

- Research shows that flashbulb memories are not that special except perhaps when their
formation is associated with high emotion
- Flashbacks are intense emotional memories of traumatic events that are recalled
involuntarily by patients suffering frmo PTSD

Self-Memory System Model

Conway argues that we possess a self-memory system having two major components
1. Autobiographical memory knowledge base: this contains personal information at three
levels of specificity:
a. Lifetime periods: defined by major ongoing events and generally cover
substantial periods of time
b. General events: include repeated events and single events. Related to each
other and to lifetime period
c. Event specific knowledge: images, feelings and details relating to general events.
Can last from seconds to hours
2. Working Self: concerned with the self and what it may become and the individual’s
current goals.
There are two ways in which autobiographical memories can be retrieved:
1. Generative retrieval Deliberate or voluntary construction of autobiographical memories
based on an individual’s current goals; see direct retrieval.
2. Direct retrieval Effortless recall of autobiographical memories triggered by a specific
cue (e.g., being in the same place as the original event); see generative retrieval.
Eyewitness Testimony
- Being an observer of a crime that happens in front of you
- Typically very fallible
- Accurate for many reasons
- Confirmation bias: tendency for memory to be distorted by their prior
expectations
- Misinformation effect: distorting effect on memory of misleading information
presented after a crime or other event
- Anxiety induced by weapon focus and violence
- Own-age bias: The tendency for eyewitnesses to identify the culprit more often
when they are of similar age to the eyewitness than when they are of a different
age.
- People find it hard to recognize unfamiliar faces
- Unconscious transference: The tendency of eyewitnesses to misidentify a familiar
(but innocent) face as being the person responsible for a crime.
- Other Race Effect: The finding that recognition memory for same-race faces is
generally more accurate than for other-race faces

Others

Retrospective memory: Memory for events, people and so on experienced in the past; see
prospective memory.
Prospective memory: Remembering to carry out some intended action in the absence of an
explicit reminder to do so; see retrospective memory.
1. Time based prospective memory: A form of prospective memory which involves
remembering to carry out an intended action at the appropriate time.
2. Event-based prospective memory: A form of prospective memory that involves
remembering to perform an intended action (e.g., buying groceries) when the
circumstances are appropriate.
Stages in prospective memory (Zogg)
1. Intention formation
2. Retention Interval
3. Cue detection and intention retrieval
4. Intention recall
5. Intention execution
Memory Strategies
- Performing mental activities that cna help improve your encoding and retrieval
- In accordance with the levels of processing, one can assume that deeper the
processing, the more accurate the recall of info
- Thus, the two processes that facilitate two levels of deep learning are:
1. Elaboration: Focussing on the specific meaning of a particular concept. Will
include relating concept to prior information.
a. NOT rehearsal, would be a waste of time
2. Distinctiveness: One memory trace should be different from all other memory
traces
a. Make it special
encoding-specificity principle: which states that recall is often better if the context at the time
of encoding matches the context at the time when your retrieval will be tested.

Strategies Emphasizing Practice

1. Total-Time Hypothesis: The more time spent practicing a task, the better the
performance will be. Example: A student studies for 8 hours straight before an exam.
 2. Retrieval-Practice Effect: Practicing recalling information from memory leads to better
long-term retention than simply rereading the information. Example: Taking practice
quizzes to prepare for an exam.
3. Distributed-Practice Effect: Spacing out practice sessions over time leads to better
long-term retention and learning than massed practice. Example: Studying a little bit
each day instead of cramming before an exam.
4. Testing Effect: Taking practice tests can improve long-term retention and learning of
information. Example: Taking a practice test after studying a topic to reinforce the
information.
Mnemonics
- mental strategies designed to improve your memory
- Two kinds
- Mnemonics using mental Imagery
- Mnemonics using organization
1. Chunking: combine several small units into larger units.
2. Hierarchy Technique: A hierarchy is a system in which items are arranged in a
series of classes, from the most general classes to the most specific.
3. First-Letter Technique: you take the first letter of each word you want to
remember, and then you compose a word or a sentence from those letters
4. Narrative Technique: , instructs people to make up stories that link a series of
words together

Metacognition
- refers to your knowledge and control of your cognitive processes.
- important function of metacognition is to supervise the way you select and use your
memory strategies.
- metamemory, a topic that refers to people’s knowledge, monitoring, and control of their
memory

Factors that influence metamemory accuracy:

1. Estimating the Accuracy for Total Score Versus the Accuracy for Individual Items: In
general, people tend to be overconfident if you ask them to predict their total score on a
memory test. In contrast, people tend to be accurate if you ask them to predict which
individual items they will remember and which ones they will forget
2. Estimating the Score Immediately Versus After a Delay: Researchers have discovered
that people do not provide accurate memory estimates for individual items, if they make
these estimates immediately after learning the items. In contrast—if they delay their
judgments—they are reasonably accurate in predicting which items they will recall
3. Estimating the scores on essay questions vs MCQ: students were generally more
accurate in estimating their scores on the multiple-choice questions

Individual Differences: Metamemory and ADHD

ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that
affects attention, impulse control, and hyperactivity. Metamemory refers to our knowledge about
our own memory and how we monitor, regulate, and evaluate our own cognitive processes.
ADHD can have a significant impact on metamemory, leading to difficulties in the ability to
self-regulate and self-monitor cognitive processes related to memory.
Individuals with ADHD often have deficits in executive functioning, which includes
working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. These deficits can lead to difficulties
in monitoring and regulating memory processes, including encoding, retrieval, and storage. For
example, individuals with ADHD may have difficulty organizing information into meaningful units
or using effective memory strategies.
In addition, individuals with ADHD may have difficulty accurately assessing their own
memory abilities. They may overestimate their memory abilities, leading to poor performance on
memory tasks or relying on strategies that are not effective. Alternatively, they may
underestimate their memory abilities, leading to reduced engagement and effort on memory
tasks.

Metamemory and the regulation of study strategies

1. Allocating time when the task is easy
a. students allocated somewhat more study time for the items that they believed
would be difficult to master
2. Allocating time when the task is difficult
a. students spent the majority of their study time on the biographies that they
considered easy, rather than those they considered difficult. Notice that this
strategy is wise, because they can master more material within the limited time
frame.
3. Conclusions about the regulation of study strategies
a. students often regulate their study strategies in a sophisticated fashion. When
they have time to master a relatively easy task, they allocate the most time to the
difficult items. On a more challenging task—with time pressure—they realistically
adjust their study strategies so that they focus on the items they are likely to
master in the limited time frame

Metamemory and Likelihood of remembering a specific Target

1. The tip-of-the-tongue effect describes your subjective experience of knowing the target
word for which you are searching, yet you cannot recall it right now
2. The feeling-of-knowing effect describes the subjective experience of knowing some
information, but you cannot recall it right now
Unit 2

Defining Language
- Language use is intimately connected to cognition
- Language processing can be automatic or deliberate
- Language is used as a communication system but not all communication systems are
language eg bees and bids
- For something to be a language, there are two rules:
- Should be regular: governed by a system of rules
- Should be productive: infinite combinations should be expressed
- Typically arbitrary: lack of necessary resemblance bw signifier and signified
- Typically discrete: can be divided into recognizable parts
- Different structures of language:
- Phonemes: sounds
- Morphemes: smallest meaningful units of language
- Syntax: structure of a sentence
- Semantics: study of meaning
- Pragmatics: reading between the lines
- Our knowledge of rules is not explicit but more implicit
- We can express the prescriptive rules but not the descriptive ones
- Prescriptive grammar focuses on upholding rules related to speaking and writing a
language, a way to say how things should be. Descriptive grammar focuses on how
speakers and writers actually use the language, not on how they should use it.
- Linguistic competence is the system of unconscious knowledge that one knows when
they know a language. It is distinguished from linguistic performance, which includes all
other factors that allow one to use one's language in practice.
Phonology
- Phonology is the study of systematic ways in which speech sounds are combined and
altered in language
- Phonetics is the study of speech sounds and how they are produced
- English language has 40 phonetic segments
- Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound that makes a meaningful differencein a given
language
- Differs from language: english distinguishes between \l\ and \r\ but chinese does not
- Vowels vs consonants, difference ni speech
- In vowels no obstruction of airflow, depends on position of tongue and lips
- In consonants at least a part of lips are closed, airflow is obstructed
- Certain rules are there called phon
- If two true consonants are used (consonants other than h, w , y, r, or l) then it
MUST be preceded with an s
- If s is preceded by p t k f then sound is \s\; otherwise s produces \z\ sound
Syntax
- Refers to the arrangment of words within a sentence
- Synantic rules govern the ways in which different words can be combined to produce
legal sentences
- Two requirements that syntactic rules must meet are
- Should describe every legal sentence
- Should not describe any illegal sentence
- Sentences have structure means that it can be divided into groups (constituents)
- Depicted using a tree diagram that have different nodes
- Overarching is noun phrase and verb phrase
- Second level is determinants, nouns, verbs, auxiliary and NP can be second level under
VP
- Phrase structure rules
- Rewrite rules
- Lexical-insertion rule
- Transformational rule
Semantics
- The study of meaning, plays an imp role in language use
- Theories of meaning
1. Anomaly: cannot say coffee ice cream can take dictation
2. Self-Contradiction: cannot say my dog is not an animal
3. Ambiguity: i need to go to a bank is unclear
4. Synonymy: the rabbit is not old enough same as rabbit is too young
5. Entailment: pat is my uncle → pat is male
- Syntax also gives clues to what a sentence means.
- The professor failed the student vs the student failed the professor
- Failed has diff meanings in both
- The study of semantics also involves the study of truth conditions of sentences and of
the relationships between sentences
Pragmatics
- Social rules of language
- Include etiquette conventions
- Different kinds of utterances demand different responses
- Kinds of utterances:
- Assertives: its so hot
- Directives: close the door
- Commissives: i promise to close the door
- Expressives: I am sorry
- Declarations: you are fired

Psycholinguistics
- Most of psycholinguistics hinge on and around english
 - English is focussed on because:
- Simple grammar, negative correlation between # of speakers and complexity of
language
- Many irregular pornounciations, considerably more than most others
- English word meaning does not depend on relative pitch of syllables. In chinese ‘ma’ can
mean mother or horse based on intonation
- The specific part of the frontal lobe that is activated in english speaker does not activate
in german- diff lang., diff brain parts
- History started with india and Greece debating nature of language
- Centuries later Wundt and Hames delved in the same
- Primary research in 1960s with chomsky

Chomsky’s Universal Grammar

- Chomsky proposed that there is more to a sentence than meets the eye
- While behaviorists argued for the observable aspects of language, Chomsky argued that
there must be mental schemas that represent these complex rules and principles that
are ingrained in us
1. He said that language is innate. Children do not need to learn basic generalizable
concepts that are universal to all lang
2. Language is modular: people have a set of specific linguistic abilities that are separated
from other cog processes
3. Pointed out the diff between deep and surface structure
a. Surface structure: ignifier: how are words spoken or written
b. Deep structure: abstract meaning of sentence, signified
4. People use transformational rules to convert deep structures to surface structures to
communicate
5. Ambiguous sentences: same surface structure but different deep structures: The
shooting of the hunters was terrible
Evaluation
1. research failed to support Chomsky’s prediction that people would take longer to
process sentences that required numerous transformations
2. Research has demonstrated that many non-European languages do not show the
proposed universal patterns of grammar
Chomsky's more recent linguistic theories propose that young language learners have limited
hypotheses about their language's structure. His newer approach also emphasizes the
information contained in individual words and how they affect the rest of the sentence. For
example, the word "discuss" not only conveys meaning but also requires a noun later in the
phrase, as seen in the sentence "Rita discussed the novel”

In the 1970s, psychologists developed theories that focused on the meaning of language rather
than just its grammar. One theory, the cognitive-functional approach, emphasizes that
language's purpose is to communicate meaning to others and that our cognitive processes are
intertwined with language. Michael Tomasello points out that young children have powerful
cognitive and social learning skills that help them master language, and adults use language
strategically to focus listeners' attention on important information. The cognitive-functional
approach suggests that people can use language creatively to communicate subtle shades of
meaning.

Theoretical Approaches
- Heavy debate on influence of language on other cognitive processes. Two positions
exist:
- Language and other cognitive processes operate completely independently
- Language and other CP are completely related, with one determining other
Modularity Hypothesis
- The philosopher Jerry Fodor argued that some cognitive processes, like perception and
language, are modular, meaning they are domain-specific and operate independently of
other cognitive processes. The modularity hypothesis suggests that certain language
processes, like sentence parsing, are separate from other cognitive processes like
memory and problem-solving.
- These modular processes operate automatically and are specialized to work with only
certain kinds of input.
- The experiment by Swinney on lexical ambiguity resolution supports the modularity
hypothesis, showing that all possible meanings of an ambiguous word are triggered
automatically and independently of other cognitive processes.
- Modularity of a process also implies that it is an informationally encapsulated process: It
operates independently of the beliefs and the other information available to the
processor.
- The MH argues that certain perceptual and language processes are modules that are
set apart from other CP like memory, attention, thinking and problem solving
Whorfian Hypothesis of linguistic relativity
- Posits that there are strong relations between language and other cognitive processes
- Argues that the language which one learns determines the way that they view the world
- Language diff can limit information available to speakers: english speakers cannot
distinguish between types of snow which eskimos have words for
- Heider proved this with the focal and non-focal colour experiment
- These findings suggest that the focal colors of a language can affect how its speakers
perceive and categorize colors, providing support for the Whorfian hypothesis. However,
the effect appears to be stronger for some languages than others, and further research
is needed to fully understand the relationship between language and color perception.
- Alfred Bloom proposed a weaker form of the Whorfian hypothesis, suggesting that the
presence of certain linguistic markers makes some kinds of comprehension and thinking
easier or more natural.
- He noticed that Chinese language lacks a structure equivalent to those in Indo-European
languages that marks a counterfactual inference, and hypothesized that Chinese
speakers would have more difficulty drawing counterfactual inferences than speakers of
English.
 - However, later investigations disputed Bloom's findings and argued that various artifacts
or unrelated aspects accounted for his results. There is also a debate over whether
speakers of different languages encode spatial directions differently.
Lateralization
- Hemispheric specialization refers to the idea that each hemisphere of the brain has somewhat
different functions. While most neurolinguistic studies find greater activation in the left hemisphere
for language processing, for about 5% of right-handers and about 50% of left-handers, language
is either localized in the right hemisphere or is processed equally by both hemispheres.
- The left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for most of the work in language processing for
the majority of people. It is especially active during speech perception, reading, and
understanding the meaning of a statement. In contrast, the right hemisphere performs some
tasks, such as paying attention to the emotional tone of a message and appreciating humor. The
right hemisphere is generally responsible for more abstract language tasks.
- The left and right hemispheres often work together on tasks such as interpreting subtle word
meanings, resolving ambiguities, and combining the meaning of several sentences. This
complementary fashion is fortunate for people with normal brain functions.

Bilingulalism
- Bilingual is used to cover multilingual as well
- Two kinds of bilinguals:
- Simultaneous Bilingualism
- Sequential Bilingualism
- Factors that influence success in acquiring a second language are motivation and attitude
towards the language speakers
- Attitude is just as important as aptitude
- IAT measured attitude
- Found that arab students more positive about jews when researcher was speaking hebrew than
arab
- Advantages to bilingualism
1. Acquire more expertise in their first language: learning french after english gives structural
strength
2. More awareness that names assigned to concepts are arbitrary
3. Excel at paying selective attention to relatively subtle aspects of a language task. If you give them
sentence like apples grow on noses, bi will identify that semantically correct
4. Perform better on stroop
5. Better at following complicated instruction and performing tasks
6. Perform better on concept formation tasks and on non verbal intelligence tests that require
reorganization of visual patterns.
7. Score higher on problem solving tasks that require them to ignore irrelevant info
8. Bilingual kids are more sensitive to some pragmatic aspects of language eg. blind kids might
need more info was identified by bi and not mono
9. Dementia signs manifest later than in monolingual ppl with dementia
Disadvantages
1. can include bad pronunciation.
2. Slow language processing
3. Smaller vocabularies for words in a house setting
Language Production:Speaking
Producing a word
Three kinds of information retrieved: grammatical, semantic and phonological
Two lines of argument:
1. All three retrieved together at the same time
2. All three accessed independently (evidence shown that grammatical gender accessed
40 ms before phonological properties
Speech Errors
Slip-of-the-tongue errors:
1. Sound errors: snow flurries → flow snurries
2. Morpheme errors: self destruct instruction → self instruct destruction
3. Word errors: writing a letter to my mother → writing a mother to a letter
Typically, errors occur across items from the same category eg. initial consonants with initial
consonants
Explanation
Dell and his colleagues have proposed a theory for speech errors that includes spreading
activation and is similar to the connectionist approach. When planning to speak, each element
of a word activates the sound elements it is linked to. The most highly activated sounds are
usually the ones that are uttered, but incorrect items can also have high activation levels. This
can lead to speech errors, where a speaker may select an incorrect sound in a sentence.
Demonstration 10.1 can be used to investigate common slips-of-the-tongue.

Using Gestures: Embodied Cognition

- Gestures are visible movements of any part of your body which you use to communicate
- Also called the mental image’s witness
- Your gestures can influence how you think
- Study showed that with rod in hand naming object score was lesser than free hand
- Embodied cognition is the use of bodies by people to express their knowledge
- It emphasizes on a link between motor and language systems

Producing a sentence
There are three stages:
1. Mentally planning the gist: the overall message that we want to convey (top down)
2. Devising the general structure of the sentence without selecting the exact words
3. Using the specific words we want, abandoning others eg eating and not eat
- Linearization Problem: Mental representations are usually shapeless and the
conundrum is arranging it in an ordered and linear manner
- One must also plan the prosody (melody of what you are speaking)

Discourse
- Language units that are larger than a sentence
 - One category is the narrative: wherein a series of actual or fictional events is described
- Six parts in narrative
- Overview
- Summary of characters and setting
- Action that complicated situation
- Point of the story
- Resolution of the story
- Final signal that the narrative is complete

Social contexts of speech (Comprehension)

Effective communication is crucial in our personal and professional lives. It enables us to convey
our thoughts, ideas, and emotions effectively and efficiently. However, communicating effectively
is not an easy task, and it requires skill and practice. One way to improve communication is by
using common ground, directives, and framing.
1. Common ground refers to the shared understanding between two or more people. It is
the basis for effective communication because it helps to create a connection between
the parties involved in the conversation. Establishing common ground involves finding
areas of agreement and shared interests with the person you are communicating with.
This can be achieved by asking questions, listening actively, and showing empathy.
For example, if you are discussing a project with a colleague, you could start by
acknowledging their expertise and experience in the field. This can help to establish
common ground and create a positive tone for the conversation. By showing that you
value their opinion, you are more likely to gain their trust and cooperation.Add
experiment
2. Directives are instructions or commands that guide the behavior or actions of the person
you are communicating with. They are an important tool for effective communication
because they help to clarify expectations and responsibilities. Directives should be clear,
concise, and specific to avoid confusion and ensure that the person understands what is
expected of them.
For example, if you are delegating a task to a team member, you could provide them
with clear instructions and deadlines. You could also explain the purpose and importance
of the task to help them understand its significance. By providing clear directives, you
can help to ensure that the task is completed on time and to the desired standard.
3. Framing refers to the way in which we present information or ideas to influence how they
are perceived by others. It is a powerful tool for communication because it can shape
people's attitudes and behaviors. Framing involves presenting information in a way that
emphasizes certain aspects while downplaying others. This can be achieved by using
language, visuals, or other cues to influence how the information is received.
For example, if you are presenting a new product to a potential customer, you could
frame it as an innovative solution to their problem. You could highlight its unique features
and benefits to show how it can improve their life or business. By framing the product in
a positive light, you are more likely to persuade the customer to make a purchase.
Writing
- Writing takes more time than speaking because writing uses more complex syntax
- Differ in social factors as well, can establish more common ground while speaking
- College students report being able to write better when they can read the draft out loud
- Writing has three stages (Chenoweth & Hayes)
- Planning
- Sentence Generation
- Revising
- Further, this was revised into more stages:
- Proposer: proposes ideas for expression
- Translator: converts message into word strings
- Transcriber: Word strings into word processed texts
- Evaluator/Revisor: monitors and evaluates what has been produced
Why was a transcriber added?
- They did this because Hayes and Chenoweth (2006) found that transcribing or
copying texts from one computer window to another utilized working memory
resources and resulted in slower transcription.
- New model is more comprehensive and includes the task environment, additional
control and resource levels, and motivation as a factor.
- Additionally, the natural sequence of the four main writing processes is proposer,
translator, transcriber, and evaluator, but writers often deviate from this sequence
and switch rapidly between processes.

- Pauses account for half of writing time

- Directed Retrospection: A technique in which individuals (e.g., writers) categorise their
immediately preceding thoughts.

Hayes and Flower (1980) proposed that writers have a monitor that controls their writing
processes, similar to the central executive component of the working memory model. The
monitor has two functions: to switch attention between tasks and inhibit unwanted responses.
Quinlan et al. (2012) tested this idea and found that when processing demands were high,
writers were less likely to switch to correcting errors and instead focused on completing the
sentence first.

Cognitive Components of Writing

1. Working Memory
- It coordinates mental activities
- Kellogg and colleagues tried to see which components of WM are active while wrigin
- Phonological loop played an important part in remembering the syllables
- The working memory has a component called the visuospatial sketchpad, which
processes visual and spatial information. Kellogg and his coauthors studied this
component by testing the visual information processing during writing. They
 found that students took longer to remember the visual shape of concrete nouns
than abstract nouns while writing. Visual information is important for defining
concrete words as it helps create a mental image. However, visual activity is
minimal when defining abstract words. The authors also tested the spatial part of
the sketchpad by requiring students to remember a location while writing. They
found that writing does not require us to emphasize locations.
- The central executive is a part of our brain that controls and combines
information from different sources, such as what we hear and what we see. It
also helps us with attention, planning, and coordinating different activities. Writing
is a complex task that involves many different processes, so the central executive
is active in almost every part of it. This includes planning, sentence generation,
and revision. However, because the central executive has limited capacity, many
people find writing to be a stressful task.

Dysexecutive agraphia Severely impaired writing abilities in individuals with damage to the
frontal lobes whose central executive functioning is generally impaired

2. Long Term Memory

Several important factors that influence long-term memory include the following: the
writer’s semantic memory, specific expertise about the topic, general schemas, and
knowledge about the writing style to be used for the particular assignment

Planning the writing assignment

- Involves something called prewriting: difficult and strategic.
- Good writers are more likely to spend high quality time in planning during pre writing
- Some people prefer to outline a paper before they begin to write

Revision Phase of Writing

- During the revision phase, writers need to focus on organization and coherence and
ensure that their paper achieves the goals of the assignment.
 - It is essential to use flexible revision strategies and make substantial changes if
necessary to accomplish the paper's goal.
- However, college students typically spend very little time revising their papers, with
observation showing that they consistently spend less than 10% of their time on
revisions.
- Students' metacognitions about the writing process are also inaccurate, similar to their
metacognitions about reading comprehension.
- Expert writers are skilled at making appropriate revisions, whereas novice writers tend to
fix minor problems with spelling and grammar and ignore issues of organization, focus,
and transition between ideas.
- Novice writers are also less likely to identify the source of a problem in a sentence.
- Proofreading is another crucial aspect of the revision process
- Daneman and Stainton found that people can proofread someone else's writing more
accurately than their own.
- When writers are familiar with their paper, they often overlook errors in the text, and
waiting at least one day can help them detect those errors.

Language Comprehension
- Parsing is the analysis of the syntactical or grammatical structure of sentences
- Focuses mostly on english language because other languages have a richer morphology
- Globally ambiguous: whole sentence is ambiguous; i saw her duck
- Locally ambiguous: part of sentence is ambiguous; they are making apple and squash
- Context is useful in understanding information about sentence meaning
- One way in which listeners can work out the syntactic or grammatical structure is
prosodic cues.
- Prosodic cues refer to the various patterns of stress, intonation, rhythm, and other vocal
features that are used in speech to convey meaning beyond the literal interpretation of
the words themselves. These cues are an important aspect of communication and help
to convey emotions, emphasis, and other subtleties in language.
- Valuable in unearthing ambiguously spoken sentences
- Speech provides this not written language
- Prosodic patterns are activated during silent reading using their inner voice
- Implicit prosody helps reading quality
- However, prosody is complex in three ways
1. Overall pattern of prosodic phrasing within a sentence must be considered rather than
just one particular point eg. if a speaker says "I didn't say he stole the money", the
overall pattern of prosodic phrasing might indicate that the speaker is emphasizing the
word "say" to imply that although they didn't say he stole the money, they may have
implied it in some other way. Focusing solely on the word "didn't" would miss this
important nuance.
2. Evidence that shows that individual speakers differ considerably in their production of
prosody
 3. Assumption that implicit prosody in reading is similar to spoken prosody is not always
supported. Thus, limited applicability

Theoretical Approaches: Parsing and Prediction

A lot of research revolves around figuring out relationship between syntactic and semantic
analysis. Four possibilities:
1. Syntactic analysis generally precedes (and influences) semantic analysis.
2. Semantic analysis usually occurs prior to syntactic analysis.
3. Syntactic and semantic analysis occur at the same time.
4. Syntax and semantics are very closely associated and have a hand-in glove relationship

Early theories of parsing focused on the first possibility, while later theories focused on the other
three.

There are two main categories of parsing models: two-stage, serial processing theories and
one-stage, parallel processing models. The garden-path model is the most influential in the first
category, assuming that sentence parsing initially uses only syntactic information. The
constraint-based model is the most influential in the second category, assuming that all
information sources are used from the outset to construct a syntactic model.

There are apparent inconsistencies in research findings on parsing due to the sensitivity of
individuals to language subtleties, resulting in variations in sentence parsing even with minor
differences in sentences presented. Researchers assume that nearly all adult native speakers
have fully mastered the grammar of their language, leading to inaccurate sentence parsing
being attributed to deficient processing rather than deficient grammatical knowledge. However,
non-verbal IQ correlates with grammatical knowledge, meaning individuals with low non-verbal
IQ may have severely deficient grammatical knowledge. Nonetheless, deficient grammatical
knowledge is rarely considered as an explanation for poor parsing performance.

Garden Path Model

The garden path model is a theory in psycholinguistics that explains how people process and
understand sentences. It suggests that when people encounter a sentence, they initially try to
parse it based on the simplest and most direct interpretation of its grammatical structure, but
sometimes this initial interpretation turns out to be incorrect, leading to confusion or
misunderstanding. For example, consider the sentence "The horse raced past the barn fell." At
first glance, it seems like a simple sentence with a subject ("The horse"), a verb ("raced"), and
an object ("past the barn"). However, the sentence actually contains two separate clauses: "The
horse raced past the barn" and "fell." The initial interpretation of the sentence leads the reader
down a garden path of assuming that "fell" is the past tense of "race," but in reality, it is a
separate clause.
Assumptions of Garden Path Model
1. Only one syntactical structure is initially considered for any sentence.
2. Meaning is not involved in the selection of the initial syntactical structure.
 3. Two general principles influence the initial syntactical structure: minimal attachment and
late closure.
4. According to the principle of minimal attachment, the structure producing the fewest
nodes (major parts of a sentence such as noun phrase and verb phrase) is preferred.
5. The principle of late closure is that new words encountered in a sentence are attached to
the current phrase or clause if grammatically permissible.
6. Conflict between the above two principles is resolved in favour of the minimal attachment
principle.
7. If the initial syntactic structure is incompatible with additional information (e.g., semantic),
it is revised during a second processing stage.
The garden path model is based on two main principles:
1. Minimal Attachment Principle: The minimal attachment principle states that people tend
to interpret a sentence using the simplest grammatical structure possible. In other words,
people try to form a sentence structure with the fewest number of phrases or clauses.
This principle assumes that the human brain is wired to process language as efficiently
as possible, and so it tries to avoid unnecessary complexity.
Example: "The horse raced past the barn fell." This sentence is initially interpreted as
"The horse raced past the barn." However, the sentence is actually "The horse [that was]
raced past the barn fell." The minimal attachment principle leads people to initially
interpret the sentence as having a simple structure, without the embedded relative
clause "that was."
2. Late Closure Principle: The late closure principle states that people tend to attach new
words to the current phrase being processed, rather than to a new phrase. In other
words, people assume that any new words encountered in a sentence are related to the
current phrase, rather than a new one. This principle assumes that people use their
existing knowledge of language and syntax to guide their interpretation of a sentence.
Example: "Before the police stopped the Toyota crashed into the parked car." This
sentence is initially interpreted as "Before the police stopped, the Toyota [was] crashed
into the parked car." The late closure principle leads people to attach the verb "crashed"
to the phrase "the Toyota" rather than creating a new phrase "Toyota crashed."
Limitations of model
1. Assumes inflexible parsing that starts from scratch when initial structure is incorrect.
2. Assumes syntactic processing occurs in isolation from other forms of processing.
3. Assumes readers will ultimately generate correct syntactic structure even for complex
sentences.
4. Difficult to test due to inconsistencies with evidence of nonsyntactic information being
used early in sentence processing.
5. More applicable to English than other languages, as principles like minimal attachment
and late closure are not relevant to languages like Mandarin.

Factors affecting comprehension

1. Negatives: Negative phrasing can be harder to comprehend than positive phrasing. Eg.
the product will work vs the product wont not work
 2. Passive Voice: Passive voice can obscure the actor in a sentence, making it harder to
understand. Eg the dog bit the man vs the man was bitten by the dog
3. Complex Syntax: Sentences with convoluted structures and multiple clauses can be
difficult to comprehend. Eg I ate an apple vs After having finished my work for the day, I
sat down at the kitchen table and ate the shiny, red apple that I had purchased from the
grocery store earlier that morning
4. Ambiguous: Ambiguity can arise when a sentence can be interpreted in multiple ways,
causing confusion in understanding. eg . I saw her duck

Reading processes

Reading Writing

Visual and spread across space Auditory and spread across time

Can control rate of input Cannot control rate of input

Can rescan Heavier reliance on WM

standardized, error-free input need to cope with variability, gramatical

errors, sloppy pronunciation, and interfering
stimuli.

can see discrete boundaries between words often encounter unclear boundaries in spoken
language

encounter only the stimuli on a page listeners encounter both nonverbal cues and
auditory cues

Children require elaborate teaching to master Easier to learn spoken languages

some written languages

New words learned faster reading

Two theoretical approaches:

1. Direct access
2. Indirect Access

The Direct Access Route (also known as the "lexical route") theory posits that skilled readers
recognize words by directly accessing their stored representations in the mental lexicon. This
approach assumes that word recognition occurs in a bottom-up fashion, where the reader's
visual input is matched to a stored representation of the word in the mental lexicon. For
example, when reading the word "cat," the reader directly accesses the stored representation of
"cat" in their mental lexicon, and quickly recognizes the word without needing to sound it out.
The Indirect Access Route (also known as the "phonological route") theory posits that word
recognition occurs in a top-down fashion, where the reader first processes the visual input of a
word and then uses that information to access phonological representations of the word. This
approach assumes that word recognition occurs in a sequential, multi-step process, where the
reader first identifies the individual letters in a word, then uses that information to build a
phonological representation of the word, and finally accesses the meaning of the word. For
example, when reading the word "cat," the reader first identifies the individual letters "c-a-t,"
builds a phonological representation of the word (/kæt/), and then accesses the meaning of the
word.

Discourse processes
The processing of individual sentences works when they are bundled together into connected
passages. Just and Carpenter (1987) have conducted studies on how people read and often
use computer-driven instruments to measure and record eye fixations on parts of the written
text. Fixations are brief pauses that everyone makes as their eyes scan text. Reading consists
of a series of fixations and jumps between fixations. Just and Carpenter's model of reading
assumes that as soon as readers encounter a new word, they try to interpret it and assign it a
role. The researchers presented college students with passages from magazines and found that
more time is spent on the meaningful or semantically rich parts of the text. Further research
suggests that semantic factors influence the reading task. Haviland and Clark (1974) described
what they called the given–new strategy, a pragmatic approach to processing sentences,
whereby listeners and readers divide sentences into two parts: the given and the new. The
given–new strategy can work only if the information in the given part of the sentence
corresponds to some information in the listener’s memory, called the antecedent.
Story Grammar: comprehension
Story grammar is a framework for understanding the structure of a story, including its key
components such as characters, setting, plot, and theme. It helps to organize the elements of a
story into a coherent and meaningful narrative.
The basic components of story grammar include:
1. Setting: The time and place in which the story takes place.
2. Characters: The people or animals who play a role in the story.
3. Plot: The sequence of events that make up the story.
4. Conflict: The problem or challenge that the main character faces.
5. Resolution: The way in which the conflict is resolved.
6. Theme: The underlying message or lesson that the story conveys.

Gricean Maxims
set of conversational principles proposed by philosopher H.P. Grice. These maxims are based
on the idea that speakers and listeners in conversation have certain expectations about how
information is communicated.
Maxims include:
 1. Maxim of quantity: The speaker should provide as much information as is needed, but no
more, to fulfill the purpose of the conversation. Eg provide directions if asked dont do
extra
2. Maxim of quality: The speaker should tell the truth and avoid saying things that are false
or that lack evidence.
3. Maxim of relation: The speaker should stay on topic and make sure that their
contributions are relevant to the conversation.
4. Maxim of manner: The speaker should communicate in a clear, concise, and orderly
manner.

Unit Four
Concepts and Categorization
- A concept is a mental representation of some object, event, or pattern that has stored in
it much of the knowledge typically thought relevant to that object, event, or pattern.
- A category can be defined as a class of similar things (objects or entities) that share one
of two things: either an essential core (example: why all science courses are considered
“science”) or some similarity in perceptual, biological, or functional properties
Theoretical Descriptions of the Nature of Concepts
1. Classical View: According to the Classical View, concepts are defined by a set of
necessary and sufficient features. A necessary feature is one that must be present for an
object to be considered a member of a particular category, while a sufficient feature is
one that alone is enough to determine whether an object is a member of a particular
category or not. For example, the classical view of the concept "triangle" would include
the necessary feature of having three sides and the sufficient feature of having internal
angles that add up to 180 degrees.
2. Prototype View: The Prototype View suggests that concepts are organized around
mental prototypes. These prototypes are typical examples or representations of a
concept that share a family resemblance structure with other examples in the category.
The basic level of categorization refers to the level at which people are most likely to
group objects together based on shared features, and is often the level at which we use
the names of objects (e.g., "chair" instead of "furniture"). Superordinate levels of
categories are more general (e.g., "furniture" instead of "chair"), while subordinate levels
are more specific (e.g., "rocking chair" instead of "chair").
3. Exemplar View: The Exemplar View suggests that concepts are represented by multiple
examples of the concept rather than a single prototype. People categorize objects by
comparing them to previously encountered exemplars of the concept. For example, if
someone encounters a new bird, they might compare it to previously encountered birds
in order to categorize it.
4. Schemata View: The Schemata View suggests that concepts are organized into larger
structures or frameworks called schemata. Schemata are mental frameworks that allow
people to organize information and experiences into coherent and meaningful
categories. For example, the concept of "going to the doctor" might involve a schema
that includes expectations about what happens during a typical doctor's visit.
 5. Knowledge based view: The Knowledge-based View suggests that concepts are
organized based on people's knowledge and experiences. People use their prior
knowledge and experience to form and organize concepts. For example, a person who
has extensive knowledge of cars might have a more detailed and nuanced
understanding of the concept of a "car" than someone who has never driven or owned a
car.

Forming New concepts

Concept Attainment Strategies
Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin (1956) conducted a study on how people form concepts. They
saw several components in the process: acquiring the information necessary to isolate and
learn a concept, retaining the information for later use, and transforming the information to make
it usable when testing ideas about new possible instances. In a study by Bruner, Participants
were shown cards depicting different shapes, colors, and numbers and asked to determine the
nature of a certain concept. The study identified three strategies:
1. simultaneous scanning: strategy used to attain concepts where a person uses each card
to test and rule out multiple hypotheses at the same time. An example of this could be a
participant in the Bruner et al. (1956) study trying to determine the concept of "black
circles." They may use a card with a black circle to test whether the concept is "black
figures" and then use the same card to test whether the concept is "circles." This
strategy requires the participant to consider carefully how to eliminate the maximum
number of hypotheses by choosing the optimal card at each point in the process.
2. successive scanning: strategy where a person tests one hypothesis at a time, eliminating
the ones that do not work until they find the correct concept. An example of this could be
a participant in the same study who initially tests the concept of "black figures" and then
tests the concept of "circles" if the previous concept does not work. They continue to test
one hypothesis at a time until they attain the correct concept.
3. conservative focusing: strategy where a person finds a card that illustrates the concept
(called the "focus" card), then chooses to test other cards that vary from it in only one
aspect. An example of this could be a participant in the same study who has a focus
card with two black crosses and one border. They may then select a card with two black
circles and one border to test whether color is a defining feature of the concept. If the
card with two black circles and one border is not a member of the category, they may
then test a card with one black cross and one border, and so on, until they have enough
evidence to determine the correct concept.
Acquiring Prototypes
-

Problem Solving
- Problem solving is used when you want to reach a specified
- The initial state describes the situation at the beginning
- The goal state is reached when you solve the problem
 - Obstacles describe the restrictions that make it difficult to solve the problem
- Thinking requires you to go beyond the information that you were given the information
you were given to reach a goal.
- understanding means that you have constructed a well-organized mental representation
of the problem, based on both the information provided in the problem and your own
previous experience
- Topics related to understanding a problem:
1. Paying attention to the relevant Information
2. Methods of representing the problem
a. Problem representation refers to the way you translate the elements of
the problem into a different format
b. Your representation of the problem must show the essential information
that you need in order to solve it.
- Can be represented as symbols
- Can be represented in matrices
- Can be represented as diagrams eg hierarchical tree diagram
- Can be represented as visual images
3. Situated Cognition which emphasizes how context helps you understand a
problem
a. According to the situated cognition approach, we often use helpful
information in our immediate environment to create spatial
representations. For instance, we make decisions about the up–down
dimension more quickly than decisions about the left–right dimension
4. Embodied Cognition which emphasizes how your own body helps you
understand a problem
a. According to the embodied cognition approach, we often use our own
body and our own motor actions, in order to express our abstract thoughts
and knowledge (Kirsh, 2009; Reed, 2010; Thomas & Lleras, 2009a). For
example, suppose that you are trying to remember a word that is on the
tip of your tongue, such as metronome. You are more likely to succeed if
you are allowed to use gestures, such as waving your hand back and
forth, using the same motion as a metronome

Problem Solving strategies

1. Analogy approach: This strategy involves looking for similarities between the current
problem and a previously solved problem in order to apply the same solution to the
current problem.
a. Researchers use the term problem isomorphs to refer to a set of problems that
have the same underlying structures and solutions, but different specific details
b. surface features such as the specific objects and terms used in the question

Examples: For example, Wilbur and Orville Wright designed some of the features of their
airplanes by creating an analogy between the wings of a bird and the wings of an airplane.
Specifically, they noticed that birds could control their flight patterns by making small
adjustments in the orientation of their wing tips. They therefore designed airplane wing tips so
that pilots could make subtle adjustments by using metal rods and gears

2. The Means-Ends heuristic: Two main components:

a. Dividing the problem into number of subproblems or smaller problems
b. Try to reduce the difference between the initial state and the goal state for each
of the subproblems
This strategy involves breaking the problem down into smaller sub-problems and finding
ways to reduce the difference between the current state and the desired end state. For
example, if a person wants to save money to buy a new car, they might break this
problem down into smaller sub-problems such as reducing expenses and increasing
income.

Example: imagine you need to fix a leaky faucet in your kitchen. You might use the means-ends
heuristic to accomplish this task by breaking it down into smaller steps: turn off the water supply,
unscrew the faucet handle, remove the valve stem, replace the washer, reassemble the faucet,
and turn the water supply back on. By breaking the task down into these smaller steps, you can
focus on the means (i.e., the actions required to accomplish each step) that will help you
achieve the end goal (i.e., fixing the leaky faucet).

Computer Simulation: Computer simulation involves writing a computer program that mimics
human problem-solving strategies, and testing the program to ensure that it takes similar steps
as a human would in solving the problem. Newell and Simon's General Problem Solver (GPS)
was a classic computer simulation program that used means-ends analysis to solve problems,
but was eventually discarded due to its limited generality. More recently, John Anderson and his
colleagues have developed and tested computer simulations for problem-solving in various
domains, including math, and have even applied these simulations as "cognitive tutors" in
real-life educational settings. Computer simulation can be a valuable tool for understanding
human cognition and improving education. It breaks down a problem into smaller sub-problems
and applies the means-ends heuristic to solve each sub-problem. By focusing on the means to
achieve each sub-goal, GPS is able to find a solution to the larger problem. Similarly, the
means-ends heuristic can be used in other computer simulations, such as those used in artificial
intelligence and robotics, to help solve complex problems by breaking them down into smaller
steps and focusing on the means to achieve each step.

3. Hill-Climbing Heuristic: This strategy involves making small changes to a current solution
in order to move towards a better solution. This involves evaluating the effectiveness of
each step to ensure that it brings the problem solver closer to the solution.

Example: Assume that you are in an unfamiliar city and you want to find the shortest route from
your current location to a nearby landmark, such as a museum. You might start by taking a guess
and moving in a particular direction that seems to be closer to the museum. As you move, you
continually check whether you are getting closer to the museum or not. If you find that you are
getting closer to the museum, you continue moving in that direction. If, on the other hand, you realize
that you are moving further away, you retrace your steps and choose a different direction to move in.
Using the hill-climbing heuristic in this situation, you continue moving in the direction that brings you
closest to your goal, i.e., the museum, until you reach your destination.

4. Generate and Test Technique: This strategy involves generating potential solutions and
testing them to see if they work. The problem solver continues to generate new solutions
and tests them until a satisfactory solution is found.

Example: Another example of the generate and test technique in problem solving is in the
development of new products. Companies may generate multiple potential designs for a new
product and test each one through prototypes and user feedback to determine which one is the most
effective and desirable.

5. Means-End Analysis: This strategy involves identifying the current state, the desired end
state, and the obstacles that need to be overcome in order to reach the end state. The
problem solver then finds ways to reduce the difference between the current state and
the end state by overcoming the obstacles.

Example: Suppose you are a student who wants to become a doctor. The end goal is to become a
doctor, but there are several barriers in the way, such as the high cost of medical school, the
competitive admissions process, and the need to maintain good grades. To overcome these barriers,
you could use means-end analysis to identify the steps necessary to achieve the goal of becoming a
doctor. By breaking down the goal of becoming a doctor into smaller, more manageable steps,
means-end analysis can help you create a plan to achieve your objective. For example:

1. Identify the goal: Become a doctor

2. Identify the current state: A student with high school qualifications
3. List the barriers: High cost of medical school, competitive admissions process, need to
maintain good grades
4. Generate means to overcome the barriers: Apply for scholarships, study hard, volunteer at a
hospital or clinic to gain experience, and network with doctors and other medical
professionals
5. Take action: Apply for scholarships, study hard, volunteer at a hospital or clinic, and network
with doctors and other medical professionals.

6. Backtracking: This strategy involves retracing steps in order to identify where a mistake
was made and correcting it. It involves undoing the most recent step or steps until a
mistake is found, and then making a new plan to move forward from that point.

Example: An example of backtracking is solving a Sudoku puzzle. The goal is to fill in the grid with
numbers from 1 to 9 so that each row, column, and 3x3 square contains all the numbers from 1 to 9
without repeating any. To solve the puzzle, one can try filling in the grid one cell at a time, starting
with the easiest cells. If a number choice leads to a conflict (e.g., repeating a number in the same
row, column, or 3x3 square), the solver must backtrack and try a different number in the cell. By
going back to the previous cell and trying a different number, the solver can eventually find a solution
to the puzzle.

Factors that influence Problem Solving

1. Expertise (Helps): An individual with expertise demonstrates consistently exceptional
skill and performance on representative tasks for a particular area
a. Knowledge base: Experts and novices vary on their knowledge
b. Memory: Experts differ from novices with respect to their memory for information
related to their area of expertise
c. Problem-Solving Strategies: When experts encounter a novel problem in their
area of expertise, they are more likely than novices to use the means-ends
heuristic effectively
d. Speed and Accuracy: experts are much faster than novices, and they solve
problems very accurately,, More automatic processes)
e. Metacognitive Skills: Experts are better than novices at monitoring their problem
solving. Can apply resources more effectively.
2. Mental Set (Interferes): Mental set is a cognitive tendency or habit to approach a
problem or situation in a particular way based on past experiences, even if it is no longer
the most appropriate or effective strategy. It is a type of rigidity in thinking that can lead
to difficulty in problem-solving.

Example: A good example of mental set is a person who always uses a particular route to go to
work every day, even if there is a faster or more efficient route available. They are accustomed
to the old way and may not consider alternative routes because of the mental set that they have
developed.

3. Functional Fixedness (Interferes): type of cognitive bias that limits a person's ability to
see an object's potential functions or uses beyond its typical or customary use. It occurs
when a person is unable to think creatively about an object, and instead, they fixate on
its traditional use.

Example: A good example of functional fixedness is the "candle problem," a classic experiment
in psychology. In this experiment, participants were given a box of thumbtacks, a candle, and a
book of matches and were asked to attach the candle to the wall in a way that it would not drip
wax on the table below. Many participants attempted to attach the candle to the wall with the
thumbtacks, but were unable to think of the solution that involved using the thumbtack box as a
platform for the candle. The functional fixedness on the box as a container for the tacks
prevented them from seeing it as a useful platform.

- Fixed mindset: you believe that you possess a certain amount of intelligence and other
skills, and no amount of effort can help you perform better. You give up on trying to
discover new ways to improve your abilities
 - Growth Mindset: you believe that you can cultivate your intelligence and other skills. You
challenge yourself to perform better, whether you are trying to learn how to play tennis,
how to adjust to a new roommate, or how to perform better on your next examination in
your course in cognitive psychology.

Creativity and Problem Solving

- Creativity requires solutions that are both novel and useful

- What is creativity? A huge debate
- Could be ordinary thinking or maybe ordinary people can never produce creativity
- First approach came from Guilford: proposed that psychologists should measure
creativity in terms of divergent production, or the number of different responses made to
a test item

Nature of creativity
1. Creativity includes convergent and divergent thinking.
Creativity involves both convergent and divergent thinking because it requires
generating novel and useful ideas, which involve both generating a range of possible
options (divergent thinking) and evaluating and selecting the best one(s) (convergent
thinking).
2. Creativity is associated with many regions within the left hemisphere as long as regions
within the right brain
3. Creativity can occur when we use focused attention (conscious attention) as well as
defocused attention (altered states of consciousness).

Creativity and Motivation

- Extrinsic motivation refers to engaging in an activity in order to receive an external
reward or to avoid punishment. There is some evidence that extrinsic motivation can
have a negative effect on creativity. One example of this relationship comes from a study
by Amabile and colleagues (1985).
- In the study, participants were asked to come up with creative uses for a set of objects.
Some participants were told that they would receive a reward if they came up with a
certain number of ideas, while others were not offered any reward. The results showed
that the participants who were offered a reward came up with fewer creative ideas than
those who were not offered a reward.
- This finding suggests that when people are motivated by external rewards, they may be
less likely to engage in the type of exploratory thinking that is necessary for creativity.
Instead, they may focus on generating ideas that are more likely to be rewarded, which
can limit the range of ideas they consider. In contrast, intrinsic motivation, or engaging in
an activity for its own sake or because it is personally rewarding, has been found to be
positively associated with creativity.
Unit Four
- Reasoning is often used interchangeably with thinking, and there is overlap
- Reasoning is the process with which you take a set of given information (premises) and
reach conclusions
- Some situations that require inferences do not have logical principles that apply. This is
called analogical reasoning task. Eg washington is to one and jefferson is to what
- Types of Reasoning
1. Deductive Reasoning: General to Specific (all college students like pizza, terry is a
college student, terry likes pizza)
a. No new conclusions are reached to all information is implicit
b. Results have deductive validity (impossible for premises to be true and
conclusion to be false)
2. Inductive Reasoning: Specific to general (Brian is a college student, Brian lives in a
dorm, All college students live in a dorm)
a. You jump to conclusions
b. Deals with probable truth
c. If IR has true premises and follows acceptable principles, it has inductive strength
3. Everyday Reasoning
a. Is a type of informal reasoning people use in their daily lives.
b. Uses heuristics and personal experience to make decisions.
c. Often involves cognitive biases.

Formal (ind and ded) Everyday

All premises are supplied Some premises are implicit, some are not
supplied

Problems are self contained Problems are not self contained

Only one correct answer Several answers taht differ in quality

Established methods of inference (step by Rare for ONE appropriate method to exist
step solving)

Unambiguous when problem is solved Unclear if any answer is optimal

Content of problem is limited Content of problem has potential

Academic interest Personal relevance

Problems are solved for sake of it Problems are solved as means of attaining
goals

Under Deductive Reasoning

1. Propositional Reasoning
d. Drawing conclusions from premises that are propositions
 e. Proposition is an assertion: A likes cats, B eats a lot
f. Simple propositions can be lumped together into complex/compound proposition
using logical connectives
g. Truth table shows truth value of a compound proposition for all combinations.
Each row represents a possible combos of TV and final column shows that truth
value of compound proposition for that combination

h. Tautology is a compound proposition that is always true regardless of

propositional variables
i. Contradiction is a compound proposition that is always false
j. A fallacy is an argument that contains a mistake in reasoning or flaw in logic
resulting in an incorrect conclusion
k. Modus Ponens: If A → B, if A is true, B is true. Eg if rain then streets wet. It is
raining thus streets must be wet
l. Modus Tollens: If A → B, If B is false, A is false. Eg. if rain then street wet. If
street not wet, not raining
m. Denying the antecedent: Logical fallacy that says if A → B and A is false, B must
be false eg. if rain then streets wet. If no rain then street dry (false because
someone can just spill water)
n. Affirming the consequent: logical fallacy that says A→B then if B is true A must
be true
Wason Card
Participants might be shown four cards with the letters D, F, 3, and 6 on them, and they are told
the following rule: "If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other
side." Participants are then asked to select which cards they need to turn over to test this rule.
The correct answer is to turn over the cards with the letter D and the number 6, because if the
letter D does not have an even number on the other side, then the rule is violated, and if the
number 6 does not have a vowel on the other side, then the rule is also violated.
1. Card with letter D: "The letter is D and the number is odd."
This statement is the negation of the conditional statement "if a card has a vowel on one side,
then it has an even number on the other side."
2. Card with letter F: "The letter is F and the number is even."
This statement does not provide any information about whether the card satisfies the given rule.
 3. Card with number 3: "The number is 3 and the letter is a consonant."
This statement is the negation of the conditional statement "if a card has an even number on
one side, then it has a vowel on the other side."
4. Card with number 6: "The number is 6 and the letter is a vowel."
This statement satisfies the given rule, which states that "if a card has a vowel on one side, then
it has an even number on the other side."

Logical connectives What it meas

Conjunction (^) And, both statements are true

Disjunction (∨) Even if one statement is true

Negation (‘ or ~) Not true

Conditional ( → ) If A is true then B is true

2. Syllogistic Reasoning
- Presenting two or more premises and asking the reasoner to draw a conclusion or
evaluate a conclusion
- Categorical syllogisms present premises that deal with two categories or classes of
objects (all birds/ some humans/no dogs)
- These premises have quantifiers: all none or some; provide info about classes.

Types of inductive logic include

1. Analogical reasoning:
- Can be vernal or pictorial
- Example is A is to B as B is to C
- Ravens is an example
- Also called series completion or matrix completion

2. Hypothesis Testing
- Developed by Wason
- Given numbers 2, 4 and 6 and told they follow a rule
- Your job is to determine what rule it is
- Confirmation bias is when guessing follows a pattern of trying to confirm their rule is true
rather than testing the rule

Patterns of reasoning performance

- Attempt to understand why people’s reasoning can sometime go astray
1. Premise Phrasing
- Negatives can make it difficult
- All or none quantifiers easier than some
2. Alteration of Premise Meaning
 a. People make assumptions or alter meanings of certain items that their
interpretatino does not align with what the problem posits
b. Premise 1: Only dogs are allowed in the park.
Premise 2: My cat is not a dog.
Conclusion: Therefore, my cat is not allowed in the park.
If someone alters the meaning of the first premise to mean "only some dogs are
allowed in the park," the conclusion would be invalid, and it would become a
fallacious argument. This alteration of the premise meaning changes the logical
structure of the argument and makes the conclusion unsound.
3. Failure to consider all possibilities
a. The preceding discussion implies that when people interpret premises, they often
fail to think of all possible meanings
4. Content and Believability Effects
a. Two people reasoning with exactly the same kind of premises will perform
differently, depending on what the premises are “about.” This is called a content
effect. This can be explained by memory cueing explanation: certain contents of
the problem cue personal experiences relevant to the rule
b. Believability Effects implies that people are likely to judge a solution that
reinforces initial assumption as more valid.
Biases
- Tendency to perform in a certain way regardless of what info is provided.
- Error that disorts way of thinking

Three Approaches to the Study of Reasoning

1. Componential Approach
- The componential approach to the study of reasoning proposes that reasoning involves
several distinct mental processes or components, which work together to produce a
conclusion or decision. These components include encoding of information,
comprehension, inferencing, decision-making, and evaluation.
- Encoding of information involves understanding the facts and premises presented in a
problem or argument. Comprehension involves integrating and interpreting the
information. Inferencing involves using logical rules and reasoning to draw conclusions
or make inferences based on the available information. Decision-making involves
selecting an appropriate response or conclusion. Finally, evaluation involves reviewing
the decision or conclusion to determine whether it is accurate and reasonable.

For example, consider the following deductive reasoning problem:

Premise 1: All birds have wings.
Premise 2: Penguins are birds.
Conclusion: Therefore, penguins have wings.

- The componential approach suggests that the problem solving process involves
encoding the information presented in the premises (e.g., that all birds have wings and
that penguins are birds), comprehending the meaning of these statements, using
 inferencing to draw the logical conclusion that penguins have wings, making a decision
to accept this conclusion, and then evaluating the accuracy and soundness of the
conclusion.

Another example is the following inductive reasoning problem:

Observation 1: Every time it rains, the road outside becomes wet.
Observation 2: The road outside is wet.
Conclusion: Therefore, it must have rained.

- The componential approach suggests that the problem solving process involves
encoding the observations presented, comprehending their meaning, using inferencing
to make an educated guess based on past experiences that it has likely rained, making
a decision to accept this conclusion, and then evaluating the accuracy and soundness of
the conclusion.
- . Components that consist of individual cognitive processes are called performance
components and include those given earlier. Metacomponents are “executive” processes
used in the planning and monitoring of a task

2. Heuristic/Rules Approach
- The rules/heuristics approach to reasoning involves using a set of guidelines or
principles to determine whether an argument is valid or not. These guidelines can
include formal rules of logic, as well as informal heuristics or "rules of thumb" that are
commonly used to evaluate arguments.
For example, one formal rule of logic is the law of non-contradiction, which states that a
statement cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same respect. Another
formal rule is the law of excluded middle, which states that a statement must be either true or
false; there is no third option.
An example of using formal logic to evaluate an argument is:
Premise 1: All men are mortal.
Premise 2: Socrates is a man.
Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
- This argument follows the rules of deductive logic, and the conclusion logically follows
from the premises.
An example of using informal heuristics to evaluate an argument is:
Premise: Eating organic food is better for you.
Conclusion: Therefore, we should only eat organic food.
- One heuristic that can be used to evaluate this argument is the principle of charity, which
involves giving the argument the benefit of the doubt and interpreting it in the best
possible way. However, even with the principle of charity, this argument may still be
weak because it assumes that organic food is always the best choice, which is not
necessarily true in all cases.

Different Kinds of Fallacies

- Equivocation: This fallacy occurs when a word or phrase is used with multiple meanings,
which leads to confusion or misinterpretation of the argument. For example:
- "I've never seen a stone that was hard until I saw my boss's heart." In this
sentence, "hard" is used in two different senses, which makes the argument
confusing.
- Illicit content: This fallacy occurs when the conclusion of an argument is not supported
by the premises. For example:
- "All birds can fly. Penguins are birds. Therefore, penguins can fly." This argument
has an incorrect conclusion because not all birds can fly.
- Argument by innuendo: This fallacy occurs when an argument relies on insinuations or
suggestions rather than explicit statements. For example:
- "I'm not saying that my opponent is a liar, but many people have suggested that
he has a tendency to stretch the truth." This argument implies that the opponent
is dishonest without actually saying so directly.
- Loaded question: This fallacy occurs when a question is phrased in a way that assumes
something to be true without evidence. For example:
- "When did you stop beating your wife?" This question assumes that the person
being questioned has beaten their wife, which is an unwarranted assumption.
- Fallacy of continuum: This fallacy occurs when a distinction is made between two things
that are not actually different, but rather exist on a continuum. For example:
- "If we allow people to park for five minutes, then they will start parking for ten
minutes, and then they will start parking for an hour, and soon there will be no
parking spaces left." This argument assumes that there is a clear distinction
between parking for five minutes and parking for ten minutes, but in reality, these
two things exist on a continuum.
- Fallacy of composition: This fallacy occurs when it is assumed that a property that
applies to individual parts of a whole also applies to the whole itself. For example:
- "Each brick in the wall is lightweight, therefore the whole wall must be
lightweight." This argument assumes that the lightweight property of individual
bricks applies to the wall as a whole, which may not necessarily be the case.

3. Mental Model Approach

- The mental models approach to reasoning is a cognitive framework used to understand
how people reason and make decisions. It proposes that individuals create internal
models or representations of the world that allow them to reason about specific
situations and problems.
- These models are used to represent and organize information in a way that helps
individuals make sense of the world and make informed decisions. Mental models are
developed based on past experiences, knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions. They are
not always accurate, but they serve as a framework for reasoning and decision-making.
- Here are some examples of how mental models approach of reasoning works in
practice:
1. Medical Diagnosis: A doctor uses a mental model to diagnose a patient's illness based
on their symptoms, medical history, and other relevant information. The doctor creates a
mental model of the patient's condition, and then uses this model to make an informed
diagnosis and develop a treatment plan.
2. Navigation: A driver uses a mental model of the city's roads to navigate from one place
to another. They create a mental map in their mind that helps them to remember the
turns, landmarks, and other important details of the route.
3. Engineering: An engineer uses a mental model to design a bridge or a building. They
create a mental representation of the structure in their mind, and then use this model to
make decisions about the design, materials, and construction methods.
4. Sports: A basketball player uses a mental model of the game to make split-second
decisions on the court. They create a mental model of the other players, the court, and
the ball, and then use this model to anticipate and react to movements and changes in
the game.
Decision Making
- Refers to mental activities that underly choosing among alternatives
- Decisions are always made in the face of uncertainty
- Yardstick for how good a decision is classed as is rationality of the decision
- Decisionmakin might not be optimal when info available overwhelms cog capabilitiesL
cognitive overload
- Decision making can be divided according to five different stages.
- They take place in a particular order
- There are cycles to an order, in which certain tasks are done and redone

1. Setting goals: Decision makers takes stock of future plans, their own principles, their
priorities and collating this information: set a goal
2. Gathering information: Exploring various options, what are consequences of all of them?
Who is affected? Will it hold over time? Does one decision close doors or open dors?
3. Structuring the Decision: Organizing the information that they have gathered. Especially
important when the # of options are high. The way an individual determines how to
manage all the information that they have gathered is called decision structuring
4. Making a final choice: How to make choose from one of the options: can be arbitrary like
flip a coin or more complex.
5. Evaluating: Helpful and often omitted. What went well, what could be worked upon etc

Basic Concepts of probability

- Since you dont know outcome, and nothing is definite, most real-life decisions involve
estimating chances or odds of events
 - Probability can be thought of as a measurement of a degree of uncertainty.
- Lies between 0 to 1
- Usually people’s intuitions about the rules of probability are way off the mark
- Most people estimate probability to be much higher than what it is
- Two kinds of probabilities:
- Subjective probabilities
- Objective Probabilities

Expected Utility Theory

- Models of decision making are of two kinds
1. Normative Models: Describe ideal performance under ideal circumstances
2. Prescriptive models: How we ought to make decisions: take circumstance into account
3. Descriptive models: dont tell us what to do, simply detail how people make decisions

- The expected utility model is a normative kind of a model

- Take example of gambling money. We could combine info about probabilities and
amounts that can be won or lost, by calculating the expected value of the outcome
- If we could choose bw two gambles, we could calculate this expected value and choose
whichever option gives the higher expected value (EV)
- EV= Σ(pi x vi)
- This means expected value is the summation of every possible value and corresponding
probability
- For example imagine a lottery with ten tickets numbered 1 through 10. If the ticket drawn
is numbered 1, you win $10. If the ticket drawn is numbered 2, 3, or 4, you win $5. Any
other numbers drawn are worth nothing.
- The EV of this lottery, then, is (.1 $10) (.3 $5) (.6 $0) $1.60
- The term value is interchangeable with utility, which captures more intangible things like
happiness, pleasure etc

While one would assume all decisions could follow expected utility theory and maximize gains,
studies established that participants failed to make the best choices, whether it was a sure gain
of $800 or an 85% chance of gaining $1,000 and a 15% probability of gaining nothing OR would
you prefer a sure loss of $800 or an 85% probability of losing $1,000 with a 15% probability of
avoiding any loss?

To understand this seemingly irrational decision making, kahneman and tversky came up with
the prospect theory.
Prospect Theory
- It suggests that people do not make decisions based solely on outcomes
- They focus on perceived value of gains and losses
- Risk averse when it comes to gain
- Risk seeking when it comes to losses
- Also posits that people rely on heuristics/mental shortcuts to simplify the decision making
process
It works under two broad assumptions:
1. Individuals identify a reference point representing their present state
2. Individual are loss aversive: more sensitive to potential losses than potential gain.
Thus, the model of decision making hypothetically looks like this:

- However, the model does not predict people will always avoid risky decisions.
- People are risk seeking, they are confident of avoiding losses
- After this, they put forward the cumulative prospect theory, which was more
comprehensive
- Theoretically, people have been shown to overweigh improbable events → explains why
people buy lottery tickets
Framing Effect
- A lot fo research considers the framing effect where decisions are influenced by
irrelevant aspects of the situation
- For example, consider a scenario where a doctor is presenting treatment options to a
patient with a certain medical condition. The doctor could present the information in two
different ways:
Option A:
1. If programme A is adopted, 200 people will be saved.
2. If programme B is adopted, there is a 1 in 3 probability 600 people will be saved,
and a 2 in 3 probability that no people will be saved.
Option B:
1. If programme C is adopted, 400 people will die.
2. If programme D is adopted, there is a 1 in 3 probability that nobody will die, and 2
in 3 probability that 600 people will die
Even though the two statements convey the same information, they are framed
differently. Option A emphasizes the positive outcome, while Option B emphasizes the
negative outcome.
- Studies have shown that people are more likely:
- to choose Option A over Option B (Focus on gains)
- Choose option D over option C (risk averse)
- The theoretical logic for this is that people focus on gains in the gain frame conditions
(option A) and are motivated by loss aversion in loss-frame condition (Option B)
 - An argument against the prospect theory is that it de-emphasizes morals and social
factors
- Research showed that when asked to choose between definite survival of two-thirds of
the patients (deterministic option) versus a 1/3 probability of all patients surviving and a
2/3 probability of none surviving (probabilistic option), they chose deterministic option
when it was strangers (concerened about best definite outcome) and probabilistic option
when relatives were concerned (concerned about fairness)
Sunk Cost Effect
- Investing additional resources to justify a previous commitment that has so far proved
unsuccessful
- It is found in long term relationship
- Eg. people paid non-refundable hotel but on the drive fell sick. Decided they might feel
better. What to do? Participants majorly said drive on and use money invested
- A possible explanation for thi is feelings of potentially being judged and feeling
embarrassed if other realized how many resources were waster in this process
- It could also be because choosing the sunk cost option satisfied their need to feel
competent more than the alternative option
Loss Aversion
- Greater sensitivity to potential losses than potential gain.
- Two cases
1. 50% to win £1 (1.15 euro); 50% to lose £1 (1.15 euro)
2. 50% to win £5 (5.75 euros); 50% to lose (5.75 euros)
- According to prospect theory people would choose 1 because they are risk averse
- However typical finding is that people do not favour one over the other unless stakes are
high - contrary to prospect theory
- Attentional processes influence loss aversion
- People who focus more on losses show more loss aversion
- People who focus more on gains show less loss aversion
Description Experience Gap
- Description based approach: explicit presentation of outcomes and associated
probabilities
- Experience based approach: information about outcomes and associated outcomes are
acquired through sampling
- Individuals overweigh probability of rare events when described and given explicitly
- Experience based approach less consistent with prospect theory: attributed to sampling
error
- Understanding description experience gap is important because
- Most research is descriptive but irl is experience
- PT cannot provide coherent account of diff DE gaps
- Descriptions have been used to test most aspects, need to incorporate
experience based
Individual Differences
- Prospect theory de-emphasizes individual differences
- Take example of deal or no deal, participants are universally risk aversive
 - However, narcissistic individuals have different outcomes: high sensitivity to gains and
less risk averse

Multiattribute Utility Theory

- Another way to avoid using EU and not oversimpify decision
- decision-making framework that helps individuals or organizations choose among
different options by considering multiple criteria or attributes that are important to them.
- The basic idea behind MAUT is that each option can be evaluated based on how well it
performs on each of these criteria, and that these evaluations can be combined into an
overall assessment of the option's desirability or utility.
- It involves six steps:
1. Breaking a decision into independent dimensions (attributes relevant to decision)
2. Determining the reactive weight of each dimensions (how important is it to you)
3. Listing all the alternatives (which options are you considering?)
4. Ranking the alternatives along the five dimensions (rate each option on each attribute)
5. Multiplying the ranking by weighting of each alternative to determine its final value
(obtain utility)
6. Choosing the alternative with the highest value
For example,
- Let's say you're trying to decide which car to buy. You've identified several important
attributes, including price, fuel efficiency, safety, and style. You've also assigned weights
to each attribute to reflect their relative importance to you. For example, you might
assign a weight of 0.4 to price, 0.3 to fuel efficiency, 0.2 to safety, and 0.1 to style,
indicating that price is the most important factor for you.
- Next, you rate each car on each attribute using a numerical scale. For example, you
might rate Car A as a 9 out of 10 on price, a 7 out of 10 on fuel efficiency, a 8 out of 10
on safety, and a 6 out of 10 on style. You would do the same for each car you're
considering.
- Finally, you use a mathematical formula to calculate the overall utility of each car based
on its ratings and the weights you assigned to each attribute. For example, the utility of
Car A would be calculated as:
- (0.4 x 9) + (0.3 x 7) + (0.2 x 8) + (0.1 x 6) = 3.6 + 2.1 + 1.6 + 0.6 = 8.9
- You would repeat this process for each car you're considering, and the car with the
highest utility score would be the best choice for you based on your criteria and
preferences.
When there are too many options, simple strategies are chosen first like:
1. Satisficing: Simplifying the decisionmaking process by using heuristics and ignoring
some relevant information sources; the term represents a blend of the words satisfactory
and sufficing
2. Elimination by aspects: One can also look at just one aspect and eliminate the units with
undesirable qualities without comparing it to others eg house hunting mei high rent
completely rejected despite other factors.
Only then is MAUT applied (two stage theory)
Heuristics and Biases
1. Representativeness Heuristic
- The representative heuristic is a mental shortcut that we use to quickly categorize things
or people based on how closely they resemble our preconceived ideas or stereotypes
about that category.
- Gambler’s fallacy:The Gambler's Fallacy is a cognitive bias that refers to the mistaken
belief that if something has happened repeatedly in the past, then it is less likely to
happen in the future, or vice versa
- For example, if someone looks like a typical librarian, we might assume that they are a
librarian, even if we have no other information about them. This heuristic can be helpful
in making quick decisions, but it can also lead to errors and biases if our assumptions
are not accurate.
- It is so persuasive that people ignore important info they should incorporate in decision
making
a. Sample size and representativeness: we pay so much importance to
representativeness that we ignore sample size eg. two hospitals, one with 15
babies and one with 45 babies. Which hospital has higher chances of reporting
that 60% are boys? Most people say equal, which is not true
- Small sample Fallacy: people assume that a small sample will be representative
of the population from which it is selected

b. Base rate and representativeness: we ignore how often the item occurs in the
population. Eg. you are given description of a person and asked their major.
People will look at description and stereotype rather than look at higher
enrolment rates
- Base Rate Fallacy: not paying attention to how often item occurs.

c. Conjunction fallacy and representativeness: According to the conjunction rule:

the probability of two events happening together can never be greater than any
one occurring in isolation.
- Conjunction Fallacy: We choose conjunction wala event because it aligns with
our image of person eg linda ko feminist dikhaya and options were (1) is a bank
teller and (2) is a bank teller and involved in feminist movement

2. Availability Heuristic
- You guess the frequency or probability based on how easy it is. Basically, you have to
guess whether it is A or B and you say B because it is more than A, not because of valid
stuff. Eg you are at christ and chick asks you to guess her major. You say psych because
many psych students are felames
a. Recency and availability: more recent items are more available. After 9/11
muslim hate high. Rn not that high. After BLM guessing crimes against black
high, before that low
 b. Familiarity and availability: example: if a person keeps hearing the term
psychological jobs, they will estimate there are as many job opportunities as
computer science
c. Recognition Heuristic: If someone asked you who has the higher net worth
between harry styles and akash kolte, they would say harry because they
recognize that name
d. Illusory Correlatoin and availability: people believe that two variables are
statistically related, even though there is no actual evidence for this relationship
eg. bad experience with doctor → doctors must be evil
3. Anchoring and adjustment heuristic: we begin with a first approximation, which serves as
an anchor; then we make adjustments to that number, based on additional information.
Eg bargaining
4. Framing Effect
- Posits that a question can be influenced by two things:
- The context of the question: lost ticket will you buy another vs lost money will you
still buy
- The way that the question has been framed: asian disease thingy
- Another big aspect other than these heuristics is the overconfidence about decisions
- It means that confidence judgements are higher than they should be
- Eg. person who believes they are a skilled driver and overestimates their ability
to drive safely in difficult conditions, such as in heavy rain or snow. This person
may ignore the potential risks and dangers of driving in these conditions and may
continue to drive as if they are in normal conditions, putting themselves and
others at risk
- Overconfidence in political decision making can lead to flawed judgments and
incorrect policies.
- The crystal ball technique is a project management tool used to estimate the
completion time of a project. It involves analyzing past project data and making
predictions based on that data to determine the expected completion time of a
current project.
- planning fallacy is a cognitive bias in which individuals underestimate the time
and resources required to complete a project. This bias leads people to make
overly optimistic predictions about the completion time of a project, even when
there is evidence to suggest that the project may take longer than expected.
- Reasons for overconfidence:
1. Unaware that their knowledge is based on tenuous and uncertain assumption
2. Dont search for for counterexamples
3. Difficulty remembering other possible hypothesis
4. Dont treat other hypothesis seriously
5. Researchers do not educate public about overconfidence
5. Hindsight bias
- Judgement about things that have already happened
- “I knew it along”
- Barbara and Jack
Ecological Rationality edscribes how people create a wide variety of heuristics to help
themselves make useful and adaptive decisions about the world

Naturalistic Decision-Making
- Making decisions in more unstructured situations where individuals have to generate
their own option
- Galotti proposed a theory of naturalistic decision making that had five phases
1. Setting goals
2. Gathering info
3. Structuring decision
4. Making a final choice
5. Evaluating decision
Descriptive Models of Decision Making
1. Image theory
- The descriptive model of decision-making suggests that people make decisions based
on their perception of the situation, rather than on a rational analysis of all available
information. One aspect of this model is image theory, which suggests that people make
decisions based on the image they have of themselves, rather than on the actual
consequences of the decision.
- Image theory proposes that people have a self-image that they want to maintain, and
they make decisions that support this self-image. For example, a person who sees
themselves as a responsible and reliable individual may choose to work late every night
to complete a project, even though it may not be necessary or efficient. This decision is
made to maintain the person's self-image as responsible and reliable
- Image theory also suggests that people have multiple images of themselves, and the
decision made will depend on which image is more salient at the time. For example, a
person who sees themselves as a caring and compassionate individual may choose to
donate money to a charity, even if it means sacrificing their own financial well-being.
However, if the person's self-image as financially responsible is more salient at the time,
they may decide not to donate.
2. Recognition-Primed Decision Making
- experts are most likely to rely on intuition, mental simulation, making metaphors or
analogies, and recalling or creating stories
- Much of the work in expert decision making is done, Klein argues, as the experts “size
up” a situation. As they take stock of a new situation, they compare it to other situations
they’ve previously encountered, calling to mind narrative stories about what happened in
those situations and why.
- Firefighter sixth sense

Emotions and Decision-Making

Prospect theory se two points emerged:
1. The theory assumes there is diminishing sensitivity to changes in value as gains and
losses increase
 2. The theory assumes the subjective value of a given loss is greater than the impact of an
equivalent gain
Impact Bias: Overestimation of the intensity and duration of negative emotional reactions to
losses and positive emotional reactions to gains.
Omission Bias: A biased preference for risking harm through inaction compared to risking
harm through action.
Status quo Bias: A preference for maintaining the status quo (present state) rather than acting
to change their decision.