Cognitive Psychology Terms From Chapter 9-12

Front 1

K.C. sustained brain damage in a motorcycle accident. What type of memories was he unable to access? What memories were intact?

Back 1

Lost episodic memory and has semantic memory.

Front 2

Define dissociation and double dissociation and be able to provide an example for each.

Back 2

Dissociation: disruption in one component of the cognitive system but no impairment of another e.g. A is impaired while B is intact.

Double Dissociation: reciprocal patterns of cognitive disruption e.g. both A and B is impaired.

Front 3

What are the three primary structures of a neuron and what are their functions?

Back 3

a.Soma/Cell body—where the biological activity of cell is regulated.
b.Axon—Track which sends the action potential.
c.Dendrite—Connects to other neurons and releases neurotransmitters.

Front 4

What are the 3 types of Neurons?

Back 4

a.Transduction by sensory neurons e.g. olfactory.
b.Interneuron-transfers.
c.Motor Neuron –causes action.

Front 5

What is the basic brain anatomy?

Back 5

a.Physically Lower Brain (old brain): located in the inner brain, older in terms of evolution, governing basic, primary functions e.g. digestion, heartbeat, and breathing.
a.Neocortex (cerebral Cortex): the top layer of the brain responsible for higher-level mental processes like language and thought. Wrinkled layer covering brain. Most recent structure. 4 general regions.

Front 6

What is a Synaps?

Back 6

a.Synapses: region where the axon terminals of one neuron and the dendrites of another come together.

Front 7

What are the two effects of neurotransmitters?

Back 7

a.Type 1 (excitatory effect): causing activity or firing of the neuron.
b.Type 2(inhibitory effect): preventing activity or stop firing of neuron.

Front 8

Name the neurotransmitter that plays a major role in memory and learning.

Back 8

a.Acetylcholine/Norepinephrine.

Front 9

What are the 4 lobes of the brain and what is their main function?

Back 9

a.Frontal Lobe: decision making.
b.Parietal Lobe: planning.
c.Occipital Lobe: Sight.
d.Temporal Lobe: hearing.

Front 10

What three brain structures are highly relevant to our study of cognition? What are the roles of each?

Back 10

a.Thalamus: gateway to the cortex, almost all messages a side from smell entering the cortex come though the thalamus. Major relay station from the sensory system.
b.Corpus Callosum: primary bridge across which messages pass between the left and right halves.
c.Hippocampus: shaped like sea horse, Memory and learning.

Front 11

Define contralaterality and cerebral lateralization.

Back 11

a.Contralaterality: the receptive and control centers for one side of the body are in the opposite hemisphere of the brain e.g. a stroke in the left hemisphere and some paralysis in the right half of the body.
b.Lateralization of skills is not as absolute as was previously believed. Different functions tend to occur more or less effectively in one hemisphere or another.

Front 12

Understand the subtraction technique and the logic behind its use.

Back 12

a.Subtract areas in the brain that were similar for each task and leaves specific areas in brain that were different for each task.

Front 13

What were the design/results of the Peterson, Fox, Mintun, & Raichle (1989) PET experiment?

Back 13

Tested how people process written or verbal stimuli. P’s stared at screen, words appeared, or heard words. Asked to speak words or say aloud an appropriate noun for what they viewed or heard e.g. hammer-hit. Found that different aspects of the task were constructed in different areas of the brain. Seeing words in Occipital lobe at posterior. Hearing in Temporal lobes on each side. Speaking near temporal lobe. Generating words in Frontal lobe.

Front 14

What was the design/results of the Hughes & Cabeza (2000) ERP experiment?

Back 14

Conducted ERP’s on studied words. Found higher activation for words later recalled than forgotten.

Front 15

What is the ‘split brain’ procedure and why is it used?

Back 15

a.Sperry used surgical procedure for epilepsy where he cut the corpus callosum in half. Tests were done on these patients after.
i.Patients given pencil in left hand, were able to show how to use it, but could not name the object.
ii.Patients given pencil in right hand and could name it.

Front 16

Know the difference between the various neurocognitive methods (lesions, direct stimulation, CAT, MRI, fMRI, PET, EEG, and ERPs)

Back 16

a.Lesions: deliberate lesioning of brain (like Sperry) are restricted to animals and patients with medical conditions limited to their usefulness.
b.Direct Stimulation: pioneered by Penfield, patients skull is cut open and minute electrical charges are applied to the brain. Patients are asked to explain experiences similar to introspection. They reported episodes that had dream like quality. Restricted to patients needing surgery, very invasive.
c.Structural Imaging techniques-photo of the brain: MRI CAT
d.Functional Imaging techniques- shows brain activity: PET, fMRI, ERP, EEG, MEG.

Front 17

Define aphasia.

Back 17

The disruption of language caused by a brain-related disorder. Three basic forms: Broca’s aphasia, Wernicke’s aphasia, and Conduction aphasia.

Front 18

What are the three most common forms of aphasia? What are the features? What region of the brain is affected

Back 18

a.Broca’s Aphasia: severe difficulties in producing speech. Show speech that is hesitant, effortful, and phonemically distorted. Rear of the left frontal lobe. No grammar but meaning!
b.Wernicke’s Aphasia: comprehension is impaired, as are repetition, naming, reading, and writing, but the syntactic aspect of speech are preserved. Copious unintelligible jargon is produced. No meaning but grammar! Damage to the Neocortex.
c.Conduction Aphasia: unable to repeat what they have just heard. Can understand and produce speech quite well. Lesion in pathway between Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, called the acuate fasciculus.

Front 19

What is anomia? Where is the damage usually located?

Back 19

A disruption of word finding, impairment in the normal ability to retrieve a semantic concept and say its name. Can describe a concept, but can’t think of name for it. Damage to the left temporal lobe.

Front 20

Osterhout & Holcomb (1992) used ERPs to study people’s sensitivity to the syntactic structure of sentences. What were the results of this study?

Back 20

Osterhout and Holcomb (1992) gave P’s sentences and recorded brain wave patterns (ERP’s). Sentence violated syntactic or semantic expectations. When violated syntactic expectations saw P600 (positive 600 wave), and when violated semantic expectations saw N400 (negative 600 wave).

Front 21

What were the results of Reichle, Carpenter, & Just’s (2000) fMRI experiment?

Back 21

Reichle, Carpenter, and Just (2000) used FMRI measure. Some P’s asked to use verbal strategy, some asked to use visual imagery strategy when making decision. When using verbal strategy Broca’s area was active. When using visual strategy, Broca’s area not active, parietal lobe active.

Front 22

Dehaene et al., Kim et al., and Wagner et al. studied bilingualism and the brain. What were the results of these studies? What does this tell us about bilingualism?

Back 22

Dehaene et al. found that two languages are in fact located in diff areas. Kim et al. found largely no difference between two language locations, close to one another. Wagner et al. found no difference at all in language locations. Tells us that there might have been a difference in the studies that caused the change in results, and more research needs to be done.

Front 23

What did the study find on learning languages?

Back 23

McCandliss, Posner, and Givon (1997) gave P’s a new miniature artificial language, recorded ERP’s when learning it. Early training ERP patterns typical of nonsense material. After 5 weeks ERP patterns looked like those obtained with English words.

Front 24

What is a false memory?

Back 24

Memory of something that did not happen

Front 25

Describe the procedure used by Roediger & McDermott (1995). What were the results of this experiment? What does this suggest about the fallibility of memory?

Back 25

a.Roediger and McDermott (1995) P’s studied 12-item list of words e.g. bed, rest, awake… all highly associated with word sleep. In immediate free recall 40% P’s recalled sleep and recognized it with high degree of confidence.
i.Second study P’s studied multiple lists in same way as before. When recalled immediately false recognition of the critical lure was higher then the correct recognition of the actual words shown. Falsely remembering the lure during recall strengthened P’s memories of the lure word.
b.This study shows people have good content accuracy but technical accuracy is poor.

Front 26

What is the difference between ‘content accuracy’ and ‘technical accuracy’?

Back 26

Content is the meaning. Technical is the exact syntactic form.

Front 27

Describe the experiment by Loftus & Palmer (1974). What were the results and implications of their findings?

Back 27

a.Loftus and Palmer (1974) showed P’s short film of car accident. P’s described the accident after seeing film and answered questions.
i.How fast when HIT; How fast when SMASHED… P’s who got the stronger verbs (smashed) said car was driving faster than P’s got softer verbs.
ii.Found a week after P’s were shown film, were asked if they say broken glass. P’s who were given stronger verb said saw broken glass. What happened after the memory was formed, the questioning using soft or strong verb, altered the nature of that memory.

Front 28

Define ‘memory impairment’ and ‘the misinformation effect’.

Back 28

a.Memory Impairment: a genuine change or alteration in memory of an experienced event as a function of some later event.
b.The Misinformation Effect: people incorrectly claim to remember the misinformation.

Front 29

Name and describe the three effects described by Loftus (1991) that play a primary role in memory impairment.

Back 29

a.Source Misattribution: the inability to distinguish whether the original event or some later event was the true source of the information.
b.Misinformation Acceptance: accept additional information as having been part of an earlier experience without actually remembering that information.
c.Overconfidence in Memory: two factors for overconfidence.

Front 30

What two factors play a role in our tendency to be overconfident in our memories?

Back 30

a.Source Memory: memory of the exact source of information. Often very flawed.
b.Processing Fluency: the ease with which something is processed or comes to mind e.g. remembered sleep too easily, must have been on list.

Front 31

Why should we be critical of eye-witness testimony and ‘recovered’ memories?

Back 31

a.Repression: intentional forgetting of painful or traumatic experiences. Little hard evidence for this type of forgetting.
b.For example if a person recovers memory of child abuse by seeking therapeutic help. Person may try to put rapist in jail. Therapeutic techniques recover a memory similar to way one increases false memories e.g. imagery, suggestive questioning, and repetition.

Front 32

What aids in Implanting Memories found by Wade et al. (2002) with the study on hot air boloons?

Back 32

Wade et al. (2002) showed P’s a photo of themselves as children riding in hot-air balloon. Photos were altered. 50% of P’s later reported riding in the hot-air balloon. Follow up study to test if procedure was too persuasive. P’s told three stories, two true from parents, and one pseudo-event. Half were given a class photo and half not. P’s asked to recall whether could remember any of three stories then asked to come back in week for more testing. Change from session 1 to 2 modest drop in number of P’s recalled no memories, P’s who incorrectly remembered event climbed from 30% to 70%. Having a photo boosted implementation of false memory.

Front 33

Define autobiographical memory

Back 33

The study of one’s lifetime collection of personal memories.

Front 34

What were the results of the Bahrick et al. “Fifty Years of Memory for Names and Faces” experiment?

Back 34

a.The Bahrick et al. Work (1975): 400 P’s from 17 to 74. Tested them for retention of names and faces of people in their high school. Free recall, name-to-picture, and picture-to-name. Young P’s (3 months after graduation) free recall 15% of names. Old P’s (48 years after graduation) free recall 6% of names. Name recall did not decline till 15 years after graduation. Pic recognition remained 80 to 90 % until 35 years after graduation.
i.Why memory is so good: Two important components: Overlearned and Prolonged acquisition over 4 year period.

Front 35

What is prolonged acquisition?

Back 35

Learning something over a long period of time.

Front 36

What is a Flashbulb Memory?

Back 36

Extremely accurate and very detailed memory of an event especially when event is surprising or highly unusual.

Front 37

What did the psychologists find when testing themselves about memories?

Back 37

Linton, Wagenaar, and Sehulster tested own memories for naturally occurring events. Recoded daily lives for 6 years, then tested recall of these events. Pleasant events were recalled better than unpleasant ones at shorter retention intervals. None of events were truly forgotten. Time since event happened had less effect on recall than salience or importance of event.

Front 38

What are 5 reasons that cognitive psychologists study language?

Back 38

a.Abstraction-don’t have to see prototype of chair.
b.Major impact on representation.
c.Exchange info-only real way to communicate.
d.Means to think/internalize external events e.g. self-talk.
e.Influences perception of the world e.g. Whorf hypothesis.

Front 39

How does Linguistics differ from Psycholinguistics?

Back 39

a.Linguistics: the academic discipline that takes language as its topic; most of what is next comes from this discipline.
i.Language is purposeful activity, there to do something. Linguistics focuses on language as a formal, almost disembodied system.
c.Psycholinguistics: the study of language as it is used and learned by people.

Front 40

What are some important linguistic universals mentioned by Hockett-6?

Back 40

a.Semanticity: language conveys meaning, whereas other sounds like coughing do not.
i.Flexibility of Symbols: because the connection between symbol and meaning is arbitrary, we can change those connections and invent new ones. Contrast to the no flexibility of iconic imaging, icon directly related to image.
ii.Naming: we assign names to all objects in our environment, to all the feelings and emotions we experiment, to all the ideas and concepts we conceive of. Names don’t need physical object to name it e.g. justice isn’t physical.
b.Displacement: the ability to talk about something other than the present moment. By conjugating verbs, talk about past tense, future tense, objects and events not present but remembered or anticipated.
c.Productivity: language is a productive and inherently novel activity that we generate sentences rather than repeat them. Novel, new invented on the spot. Hearers and speakers have flexibility in understanding and generating novel speech.
d.Arbitrariness: there is no inherent connection between the units (sound words) used in a language and the meaning referred to by those units. Symbols we use has no relationship to things referred to e.g. whale is a small symbol for big animal, and microorganism is a big symbol for small animal. No inherent connection, must involve learning and remembering arbitrary connection.

Front 41

What is the linguistic relativity hypothesis? Is there evidence for this hypothesis?

Back 41

Whorf’s Hypothesis (Linguistic Relativity Hypthesis): the language you know shapes the way you think about events in the world around you. Strongest version is that language controls thought and perception. Found to have weak support e.g. Rosch’s findings of culture that has two words for colors but still sees all colors. Lead to Weaker version languages influences thought e.g. Hunt and Agnoli found effect of language on working memory—languages that are simpler use less WM capacity like Welch.

Front 42

What are the 5 levels of language analysis?

Back 42

a.Phonology: sounds of language.
b.Syntax: word order and grammaticality.
c.Semantics: accessing and combining word meaning into sensible whole.
d.Conceptual: analysis of phrase and sentence meaning with reference to knowledge in semantic memory.
e.Belief: analysis of sentence and discourse meaning with reference to own beliefs and one’s belief about a speaker’s intent and motivations.

Front 43

Do non-animals produce language?

Back 43

In wild no genuine language, there is semanticity e.g. monkey rrap when see eagle, chutter at snakes. There is no naming of objects or feelings, or no flexibility in changing any words.

Front 44

Why did Chomsky focus on studying linguistic intuitions? What are 4 types of linguistic intuitions?

Back 44

a.Linguistic intuitions are judgments about sentences and determine people’s linguistic competence.
i.Knowing what is grammatical
ii.Understanding what is a grammatical relationship.
iii.Understanding sentence relationships.
iv.Ability to identify ambiguity.

Front 45

What is a Dysfluency?

Back 45

Dysfluencies: irregularities or errors in otherwise fluent speech.

Front 46

What is a phoneme?

Back 46

Phonology: the sounds of languages and the rule system for combining them. Speaker communicate idea into spoken sounds, listener depicts sounds into intended meaning. English has 46 phonomes.

Front 47

What are some reasons that phonemes are invariant? How do individuals overcome this problem when comprehending language?

Back 47

a.Invariant = don’t always sound the same e.g. bah. Because of differently languages use diff phonemes, Gender, Accent, and Coarticulation = blending letters t-u-b.
i.Overcome by hearing the context, and categorical perception = all sounds falling within a set of boundaries are perceived as being the same despite invariance’s.

Front 48

How did Pollack & Pickett (1964) demonstrate that context facilitates phonemic perception?

Back 48

Pollack and Picket (1964) tape recorded conversations then split up words and played spliced words to P’s. Isolated words P’s only got right 47% of the time. Performance improved the longer the segments of speech.

Front 49

What is the integrative or interactive approach to speech recognition (Rapp & Goldrick, 2000)?

Back 49

A variety of distinctive language processes (from sound perception to integration of meaning) operate simultaneously and can influence the ongoing activity of processing.

Front 50

How does the Left-to-Right Grammar approach explain universal aspects of syntactic knowledge (i.e. grammar)? What are some problems with this approach?

Back 50

a.Deciding what is grammar by probability that one word follows another e.g. the cat jumped.
b.Problems:
i.Takes to long to learn all these word orders.
ii.Does not explain words that probabilistically go together but still don’t make sense e.g. colorless green…
iii.Spoonerisms-you hist my mistery lecture.

Front 51

How does Phrase-Structure-Grammar explain the universal aspects of syntax? What are some strengths and weaknesses of this approach?

Back 51

a.The underlying structure of a sentence, the word grouping and phrases that makes up the whole utterance and the relationship among those constituents.
b.Strengths:
i.Rules define grammaticality-rules are inherent.
ii.Sentences planned hierarchically, not work by word so can explain spoonerisms.
iii.Can account for grammatical relations between words in sentences.
c.Weaknesses:
i.Can’t account for surface structure ambiguity, grammar makes sense but the meaning doesn’t.
ii.Cannot account for when sentences have different rules but mean same thing.
iii.Doesn’t take meaning into account.

Front 52

What is Chomsky’s Transformational Grammar approach? What are some strengths and weaknesses of this approach?

Back 52

a.Need something more than phrase structure grammar so introduced transformational rules to make up new approach of transformational grammar. Apply transformational rules to deep structure to transform to surface structure.
b.Strength:
i.By applying transformational rules, can account for declaitive, passive, and negative voices.
ii.Some evidence for this, takes longer to do transformations.
c.Weakness:
i.Meaning is a secondary factor to the syntactic approach.
ii.May be taking longer to do transformation because sense is more complex.

Front 53

What is Deep Structure?

Back 53

The underlying form, the meaning of the utterance.

Front 54

What is Surface Structure?

Back 54

The outward appearance of the utterance that can be handled by traditional parsing or phrase structure.

Front 55

What is Parsing?

Back 55

Separate or divide the sentence into the basic phrases and grouping e.g. the cat is a phrase.

Front 56

What is the Lexical Representation?

Back 56

The Lexical Representation: the meaning of the morpheme, also including additional information as follows e.g. chase

Front 57

What is case grammar? Is there evidence for this approach?

Back 57

a.Semantic analysis of sentences involves figuring out what semantic role is being played by each word or concept in the sentence and computing sentence meaning based on these semantic roles.
b.Yes-Garden path sentences: initially assigned case roles are incorrect given the sentence ending and it takes time to recover (fixation duration studies).

Front 58

Describe Fillenbaum’s (1974) study on how semantic knowledge influences syntax.

Back 58

Fillenbaum: gave several kinds of sentences to his P’s and asked them to write paragraphs that preserved the original meaning. Found high percentages of changes. 50% of his P’s “normalized” the perverse (John went into the store and got off the buss) threatening sentences (to got off buss and went into store), also, when asked P’s to reread the sentences to see if they were different more than half the time the P’s saw no differences. Conclusion: we comprehend not what we hear or read but what we expect to hear or read. Semantic Knowledge Can Overpower Syntax.

Front 59

What are some predictions of the Semantic Grammar approach?

Back 59

a.Listeners and readers begin to analyses the sentence immediately.
b.Analysis is process of assigning each word a particular semantic case role.
c.Case restrictions can sometimes be violated intentionally.

Front 60

What is a morpheme?

Back 60

The smallest unit of language that has meaning e.g. cars has two units, car and –s.

Front 61

Define/describe a syllogism & discuss two main problems.

Back 61

a.A three-statement logical form, with the first two parts stating the premises or statements taken to be true, and the third part stating a conclusion based on those premises e.g.
b.All A are B
c.All B are C
d.Therefore, all A are C
e.All a are B is saying A is a subset of the group B. Not reversible!
f.The truth of the premises is separate from the validity of the syllogistic argument. What matters is if the conclusion does or does not follow from the premises. Search for disproving evidence not support.

Front 62

Define/describe conditional reasoning & the three broad categories of errors.

Back 62

a.Conditional Reasoning: a logical determination of whether the evidence supports, refutes, or is irrelevant to the stated if-then relationship. Always contains two major parts, conditional clause (If Q), and followed by some evidence (then P).
b.Form Errors: get incorrect conclusions by using invalid forms, either denying the antecedent or affirming the consequent. People have tendency to reverse the if-then: illicit conversion. E.g. If P, then Q, evidence Q, people switch the conditional to If Q, then P.
c.Search Errors: don’t search for evidence, just rely on first impression.
d.Memory-Related Error: Johnson-Laird found solve problems by constructing semantic-based, explicit mental models: mental representations of meaning of the terms in reasoning problems. Because of semantic knowledge, much easier in concrete meaningful problem. Additional models are necessary for abstract form, creating load on WM and can interfere in reasoning.

Front 63

What is the Conformation Bias?

Back 63

Confirmation Bias: only look for evidence to confirm the hypothesis.

Front 64

What is the Wason Card trick and what is it used to show? What Happened when using real life situation?

Back 64

a.Wason card trick used to show Conformation Bias. 33% P’s only confirmed with one card. Only 4% turned over the correct cards: the E (modus ponens) and the 7 (modus tollens).
i.Using envelope task, a concrete and real life situation, Johnson-Laird et al. found that 21 out of 24 P’s tested made correct choice. Concrete situation P’ became skeptable, not just affirming the hypothesis.

Front 65

Differentiate between induction & deduction.

Back 65

Induction is begin with specific facts/observations and draw conclusion. Deduction is start with general statement and figure out what specific claims follow.

Front 66

What is the JND and Distance/discriminability effect?

Back 66

a.Just Noticeable Difference (jnd): the amount of change needed for people to detect the change e.g. dimming a light slowly until notice the light has darkened, that is the point of jnd.
b.Distance or Discriminability Effect: the greater the distance or difference between the two stimuli being compared, the faster the decision that they differ e.g. easier to tell difference between snap versus a gunshot than a snap versus a clap.

Front 67

Define & give an example of the symbolic distance effect & the semantic congruity effect.

Back 67

a.Symbolic Distance Effect: we judge differences between symbols more rapidly when they differ considerably on some symbolic dimension, e.g. magnitude. Two stimuli can be discriminated more quickly when they differ more.
b.Semantic Congruity Effect: decision is faster when the dimension being judged matches or is congruent with the implied semantic dimension in the figure e.g. “which balloon is lower?” Judgments were made much slower because not matching; balloon usually high, asking which is lower doesn’t match higher in mind of balloon.

Front 68

Define & give an example of the availability heuristic.

Back 68

Estimates are influenced by the ease with which relevant examples can be remembered. We info that is the examples are easily retrieved, that it must be a frequent event e.g. friends Volvo breaks down a lot, then think all Volvos are bad.

Front 69

What is an Algorithm and a Heuristic and what models do they suggest? Which model is one we use?

Back 69

a.Algorithm: is a specific rule or solution procedure, often detailed and complex that is guaranteed to furnish the correct answer if it is followed correctly e.g. a formula in math.
i.Normative Model: the method or formula provided to us by mathematics and probability. Guaranteed to yield the correct result.
b.Heuristic: strategy or approach that works under some circumstances, for some of the time, but is not guaranteed to yield the correct answer.
i.Descriptive Model: very human and real, not necessarily systematic or orderly, relies on educated guessing. Human experiences are built in, based on principles. Use this one!

Front 70

Imagine you are trying to guess the amount of students in your psychology class & you overhear a friend guess that there are 220 students. What heuristic are you likely to use?

Back 70

Anchoring and Adjusting Heuristic: will anchor and adjust decision based on something like own knowledge.

Front 71

When subjects were given base rates & personality descriptions and asked to estimate the likelihood that a described person was a member of one or another profession what info were they most likely to use and why?

Back 71

a.Ignore base rates.
b.Stereotypes: P’s estimates are influenced by stereotypes e.g. frank is meek and quite, hobby is playing chess, P’s say is a librarian over a businessman even though so many more businessmen in the world.
c.Correct way to do it would be—normative model by Baye’s Theorem: assess how useful the additional information is, weight it against base rate.

Front 72

The way something is phrased affects our choices. How do we differ when something is framed in terms of losses versus gains?

Back 72

a.Framing in terms of losses tends to make us risk-seeking.
b.Framing in terms of gains makes us risk aversive.

Front 73

What is useful about the representativeness heuristic

Back 73

The Representativeness Heuristic: an estimate of the probability or likelihood of an event is determined by one of two features, how similar the event is to the population of events it came from or whether the event seems similar to the process that produced it e.g. when getting heads 5 times in a row, P’s say much more likely for next flip to be a tails because the process needs to resemble randomness.

Front 74

You win the lottery and your roommate says, “I knew that would happen”. What bias is your roommate demonstrating?

Back 74

Hindsight Bias: the after-the-fact judgment that some event was very likely to happen or was very predictable, event though it wasn’t predicted to happen beforehand.

Front 75

What is the Recognition Heuristic?

Back 75

Base a decision on whether you recognize the thing to be judged. What is bigger, Kansas City or Junction City, heard of Kansas City so think it is bigger.

Front 76

What is the Take the best Heuristic?

Back 76

Where you decide between alternatives based on the first useful information you retrieve about the alternatives e.g. what is bigger K or J, know both and still don’t know, so think of a cue for bigger, like do either has a baseball league, yes one does, then choose it.

Front 77

What is the Conjunction Fallacy?

Back 77

The mistaken belief that a compound outcome of two characteristics can be more likely than either one of the characteristics by itself e.g. reading about Linda, P’s choose her future as a compound of two things, bank teller and feminist.

Front 78

What did Tversky and Shafir (1992) find about the way we justify our actions?

Back 78

Asked P’s if would buy a ticket for vacation is passed, failed, or don’t know how they did on an exam. When passed or failed most bought a ticket. Didn’t know only 33% did. Pass fail info is relevant to justify the decision. We want to justify.

Front 79

What are the four features of problems?

Back 79

a.A goal, description of what constitutes a solution.
b.A description of objects relevant to achieving the solution-what things present in environment that you could use.
c.A set of operations or allowable actions toward a solution.
d.A set of constraints not to be violated.

Front 80

Name & describe the two types & two kinds of problems. Give an example of each.

Back 80

a.Types:
b.Knowledge-lean problems: don’t need a lot of knowledge just general problem solving skills e.g. finding a parking spot.
c.Knowledge-rich Problems: need a lot of knowledge e.g. calculus.
d.Kinds:
e.Well-defined: clear-cut solution e.g. crossword puzzle.
f.Ill-defined: multiple possible solutions e.g. building a career.

Front 81

What is the problem space? An Operator?

Back 81

a.The domain of the problem and the choices the solver evaluates during solution.
b.The Operators: a set of legal operations or moves that can be performed during problem solution

Front 82

What is verbal Protocol?

Back 82

The transcription and analysis of the subject’s verbalization as they solve the problem.

Front 83

Gestalt?

Back 83

Is the whole pattern, a form, or a configuration. Humans tend to perceive and therefore deal with integrated, cohesive wholes. A whole is something more than the total list of its parts.

Front 84

Name and give an example of Greeno’s three types of problems.

Back 84

a.Arrangement Problems e.g. anagrams.
b.Inducing Structure Problems e.g. Washington is to Lincoln…must understand underlying structure to get the answer.
c.Transformational Problems e.g. Tower of Hanoi.

Front 85

Distinguish between mental set and functional fixedness. Give an example

Back 85

a.Functional Fixedness: is a tendency to use objects and concepts in the problem environment in only their customary and usual way. Maier (1931) gave P’s two strings suspended from ceiling. Goal is to tie them together but they are too far a part to grab one then reach the other. In the room are a chair, pliers, and paper. Only 39% of P’s came up with correct solution. Problem is P’s were fixed on the normal use for pliers and failed to see them for a weight like a pendulum.
b.Negative Set (mental set): is the bias or tendency to solve problems in one particular way, using a single specific approach, even when a different approach might be more productive. Lunchins (1942) did water jug problem asking P’s to pure desired quantities of water using just three jugs of different sizes for measuring. P’s developed a particular approach for measuring out the quantities e.g. C-2A-B. So because of integrated algorithm, biased P’s to use the lengthier method to solve problems that had an easier or shorter way to do it. The control group who didn’t learn a response set got the shorter version.

Front 86

According to Gick & Holyoak (1983), when don’t we use analogies?

Back 86

P’s read attack or parade story and figured it out, then given a radiation story. Just reading the radiation story 8% correct. Reading attack story 76% correct. Attack and hint to use it as analogy 92% correct. Don’t use analogy when hard to apply analogy, structure problems (can’t map out similarities), and problems with noticing similarities.

Front 87

What is the reason Gestalt approach was replaced by new approach of cognitive psychology?

Back 87

a.Lacked careful and scientifically precise way to define concepts and explanatory variables.
b.Problem with their principle not to look at the parts, just the end result. Can learn a lot by looking at the failed attempts as well
c.New approach of cognitive psychology uses a more reductionistic approach and looks at problem solving as a process.

Front 88

What is involved in a means-end analysis

Back 88

A Heuristic. The problem is solved by repeatedly determining the difference between the current state and the goal or subgoal state, then finding and applying an operator that reduces this difference.

Front 89

What is an Insight?

Back 89

A deep, useful understanding of the nature of something, especially a difficult problem. Occurs suddenly like an “Aha!” e.g. Story of Archimedes, Greek Scientist, had insight aha on how to see if Kings crown was real gold or not. Put it in water to see how big it is then measure that to real gold weight.

Front 90

Define creativity and describe four steps to the creative process.

Back 90

a.A new solution to an old problem, when it has never been solved before, and when we recognize it as such.
b.Preparation=conceptualizing problem.
c.Incubation =setting aside problem.
d.Illumination= achieving insight.
e.Verification=checking solution.

Front 91

What did Metcalfe & Wiebe’s (1987) results about warmth ratings tell us about problem solving?

Back 91

Metcalfe and Wiebe (1987) studied how people solve such problems compared with algebra and other routine problems. Found people were accurate in predicting whether they’d be successful in solving routine problems but not accurate at predicting success with insight problems. Solution to the insight problems came on almost without warning. Asked P’s to say how warm they were getting to solve the problem. For algebra were saying they were getting warmer, but for insight felt cold until bang got it.

Front 92

Posner (1973) suggested that an interruption during problem solving should help. List three reasons why interruptions help.

Back 92

a.Recovery from fatigue.
b.Forget inappropriate approaches.
c.Reorganization of problem space and lets us be more open to new solutions.

Front 93

Which Hemesphere did Bowden and Beeman (1998) find playes a role in insight problems?

Back 93

a.Found role for right hemisphere processing in solving insight problems. P’s given word triples and asked to think of a forth word that combined with each of three initial words e.g. Palm, Shoe, House—Tree. Seemed so hard, spent so much time, and then finally solved problem in Aha type solution. Found semantic priming in the right hemisphere was more prominent than in the left hemisphere: P’s were faster to name pot when it was presented to right hemisphere, presumably because it had been primed by the initial three words.

Front 94

The multiconstraint theory proposed by Holyoak & Thagard (1997) suggests people are constrained by three factors when trying to use or develop analogies. Describe these factors.

Back 94

a.Similarity: must be a reasonable degree of similarity to get an analogy.
b.Structure: must have parallel structure between the source and target problems so can map elements from one to other. Working memory lead seriously reduces P’s ability to find correct mapping of relations.
c.Purpose of the Analogy: problems solvers goals and the goals stated in the problem must be similar. Goal of attack and radiation matched so more people got analogy right.

Front 95

Anderson proposed a general model called ACT*. What does ACT stand for?

Back 95

Adaptive Control of Thought.

Front 96

What are the three major components of ACT?

Back 96

a.Declarative memory: long term memory including episodic or semantic. Consists of interrelated nodes representing information, a memory network accessed by means of spreading activation. Can verbalize this knowledge.
b.Production memory: stored collection of if-them pairs. Accomplishes all the various cognitive acts. Related to Procedural knowledge: knowledge of how to do things e.g. how to ride a bike. Implicit procedural knowledge, where cannot verbalize info in memory.
c.Working Memory: the keeping track mechanism of the outcomes of the if-then pairs.

Front 97

What are some suggestions for improving problem solving? 10!

Back 97

a.Increasing Your Domain Knowledge
b.Automate Some Components of the Problem-Solving Solution
c.Follow a Systematic Plan
d.Draw Inferences
e.Develop Subgoals
f.Work Backwards
g.Search for Contradictions
h.Try Practice
i.Find a Different Problem Representation
j.Search for Relations among Problems

Front 98

What is satisficing?

Back 98

We settle for finding a satisfactory way to answer a question, rather than searching for the ideal optimal method

Front 99

What are the principles of convergence and divergence?

Back 99

a.Convergence, when many different neurons synapse on a single neuron.
b.Divergence, when a single neuron synapses on a large number of other neurons.

Front 100

What does Bock (1982) cite as current directions in psycholinguistics towards the study of syntax?

Back 100

a.Automatic Processing: aspects of syntactic structure consistent with automaticity e.g. children rely on regular word order, generating it over and over, so it becomes automatic. Also, evidence that syntax can be primed.
b.Planning: interaction between syntax and meaning, we tailor the syntax to the meaning being conveyed. Phrases that contain more accessible info appear earlier in the sentence and phrases with less accessible are rearranged to be at end to give us more time to think.

Front 101

What is counterfactual reasoning? Name and describe the three types of changes people make that may lead to different outcomes.

Back 101

a.The Undoing Heuristic/Counterfactual Reasoning: when a line of reasoning deliberately contradicts the facts in a “what if” kind of way e.g. what would happen if Germany developed the bomb first.
i.Downhill Change: we alter an unusual story element, substituting a more typical or normal element in its place.
1.K&T showed story to P’s about Jones and asked them what if—Jones went home early one day, usually goes home on time and does chores, this day took another rout and got killed in car crash by druggy kid. P’s tend to give bias answer to under the unusual event e.g. didn’t leave work early or went to do chores. Hardly ever supplied an unusual event like went to friends and didn’t get hit. 3 reasons we do downhill changes:
ii.Uphill changes: bring in unusual story item.
iii.Horizontal changes: bring in some event of equal magnitude.

Front 102

What are the two Biases when focusing on an event?

Back 102

i.Bias to Focus on Action, not Failure to Act: Byrne and McEleney (2000) P’s read story of Joe and Paul: Joe acted and lost money on the stock market; Paul did nothing and lost money. P’s said Joe would be madder because he acted.
ii.Bias to Focus on Controllable Events: when K is late for appointment because his fault, more to blame then an accident caused K to be late.

Front 103

What is blaming the victim?

Back 103

a.Blaming the Victim: P’s didn’t change druggy kids actions who hit Jones, said to change Joes rout or making him leave on time from work. Blame Jones for him being killed.
i.Goldiner et al. gave P’s stories of men who leaves work on time, leave early, or leaves because of an emergency and then gets broadsided by another driver who violated a traffic sign. P’s think man should get less compensation when leave work early, more then one time, and even more when emergency. Feel he is more responsible when leave work early.