Gre Psych: Cognitive Psychology

Front 1

Hermann Ebbinghaus?

Edward Titchener (structuralism)

Noam Chomsky

Back 1

1. Hermann Ebbinghaus: Used nonsense syllables to study memory.

Method of Savings: A measure of how much of the original list was remembered.
How? By measuring how many times he had to read the same list a second time (time to memorize vs. time to REMEMORIZE).
So: If it took him Ebbinghaus less trials to rememorize a list than to memorize it, he learned something.

Ebbinghaus' Forgetting Curve: Without practice, we forget rapidly, then at a certain point forgetting hits a plateau and then we forget slower.

2. Edward Titchener (structuralism): Structuralism breaks conicousness down into its elements.
Titchener : Used method of introspection (report on your current conscious experience). Titchener was Wundt- trained.

Noam Chomsky: Paved the way for modern cognitive psychology. (critiqued Skinner's book).
Chomsky: Language isn't due to reinforcement.
Chomsky: Language is the best route to understanding the mind.

Front 2

Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology

1. Reaction Time
2. Eye Movements
3. Brain Imaging

Back 2

Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology

1. Reaction Time (aka mental chronometry): Elapsed time between stimulus presentation and the subject's response to it.


2. Eye Movements: An "on line" measure of information processing.

3. Brain Imaging: Used to associate cognitive processes with various parts of the brain.

Front 3

Mental Processes Involved in Memory

1. Encoding
2. Storage
3. Retrieval (recall and recognition)

Back 3

Mental Processes Involved in Memory

1. Encoding: Putting information into memory.

2. Storage: Retaining information in memory.

3. Retrieval: Recovering the information in memory. (tip of the tongue phenomenon is a retrieval problem)
i. Recall: Independently reproducing the information you have been previously exposed to.
ii. Recognition: Realizing a certain stimulus event was presented before.

Front 4

Fun Stuff about Memory Retrieval

1. Generation-Recognition Model
2. Recency Effect
3. Primacy Effect
4. Clustering

Back 4

Fun Stuff about Memory Retrieval

1. Generation-Recognition Model: Recall is the same basic process as recognition, but requires an extra step.

2. Recency Effect: Stuff in the end of a list is remembered best.
3. Primacy Effect: Remembered not as well as the last stuff you see, but still pretty well.

4. Clustering: People tend to recall words in CLUSTERS belonging to the same category.

Front 5

Stage Theory of Memory

(what's the three stages? Describe Sensory memory, what's visual? What's auditory? What's the whole-report procedure? What's the partial-report procedure?)

Back 5

Stage Theory of Memory:

There's different memory systems and each has a different function. Memories enter the systems in a certain order.

1. Sensory Memory: Fleeting impressions of sensory stimuli.
i. Visual (iconic) Memory
ii. Auditory (echoic) Memory

Whole-Report Procedure: How much info can your sensory memory hold? Look at a display of nine items for a fraction of a second, asked to recall items.
Whole-Rept: Found avg. of FOUR items.

BUT...

George Sperling's Partial-Report Procedure: Same array, report just one row. There was a tone presented RIGHT AFTER the array, telling you which row it wanted you to remember.

SO: Their recall was nearly perfect, sensory capacity was NINE items

Front 6

Short-Term Memory

(Part of which memory theory? How long does info last in there? What's maintenance rehearsal? Who's George Miller? What's 7 +/- 2? What's a chunk?)

Back 6

Short-Term Memory (part of Stage Theory)

Has the information you attend to. It's the link between the ever-changing sensory memory and the more permanent long-term memory.

How long does info last there?

1. With nothing: 20 seconds
2. With rehearsal: As long as you rehearse (maintenance rehearsal)

George Miller: SEVEN (7 +/- 2) pieces (chunks) can be in short-term memory.
Chunking: It's like breaking a phone number from 404303 to 404-303-...

Front 7

Long-Term Memory (part of STAGE theory of memory)

(what's elaborative rehearsal? What's procedural and declarative memory? What's semantic and episodic memory?)

Back 7

Long-Term Memory

LTM: The long-term storehouse of your memory. Stuff can be in there a while or a long time.

Elaborative Rehearsal: A way we can get information INTO LTM. Organizing and associating the material with information already in LTM.

Two types of LTM:
1. Procedural Memory: Remembering HOW to do things.

2. Declarative Memory: Remembering explicit knowledge.
i. Semantic: General knowledge. (words, concepts)
ii. Episodic: Particular events you have personally experienced.

Front 8

Types of Rehearsal

1. Maintenance

2. Elaborative

Back 8

Types of Rehearsal

1. Maintenance: Repeating the information. For keeping info in short -term memory.

2. Elaborative: Organizing and associating the info with information already in LTM..

Front 9

Encoding

For verbal material in STM? In LTM? Supported by?)

Back 9

Encoding for verbal behavior...

1. In STM: Phonological (acoustic) NOT visual.
2. In LTM: By meaning.

Supported by Semantic Priming: Response time is faster is two words are semantically related.

Front 10

Semantic (General Knowledge) Memory

What's the semantic verification task? What's the spreading activation model? What's the semantic feature- detection model?

Back 10

Semantic (General Knowledge) Memory. First off, it's part of declarative memory in the Stage Theory.

How's semantic memory organized?

1.Semantic Verification Task: Is a simple statement true or false? The Response Latency (how long it takes you to respond)...hints at how your semantic knowledge is stored.

2. Spreading Activation Model (Collins and Loftus): The shorter the DISTANCE between two words, the closer they are related in semantic memory.

3. Semantic Feature-Comparison Model (Smith, Shoben, Rips): Semantic memory features lists of concepts. The concepts are represented by FEATURES: some REQUIRED, and some TYPICAL of that concept.

Some concepts OVERLAP in the feature lists is the key.

Front 11

Levels-of-Processing Theory (aka the Depth-of-Processing Theory)

(an alternative to what? who proposed it?

Back 11

Levels-of-Processing Theory (aka the Depth-of-Processing Theory)

An alternative to stage theory.
Craik and Lockart's Theory: Basically, the way you PROCESS the material determines how long you'll remember it.

An item entering the memory system is analyzed in levels.
1. Physical (visual): Focuses on appearance, shape, size of information.
2. Acoustical: The sound combinations a word has.
3. Semantic: The meaning of the word.
Every level demands increasingly more effort. The deeper the processing, the more likely you'll be to remembering it. Later stages: Connecting the information to other information in memory.

Front 12

Pavio's Dual-Code Hypothesis
(how do we encode abstract and concrete information? What's a schema?)

Back 12

Pavio's Dual-Code Hypothesis: Information can be stored visually (concrete info like an image) and verbally (abstract information).

Ex. "virtue" encoded verbally, "elephant" encoded visually and verbally.

Schema: Conceptual framework used to organize knowledge. We interpret our experiences (remember them) in terms of our existing schema.
So: If we can't match our new experience to a schema, we'll have a hard time remembering it.

Front 13

Forgetting

1. Trace Decay
2. Inhibition Theory

Back 13

Forgetting

Decay Theory: If the information in LTM will not be used or rehearsed, it'll eventually be forgotten.
Criticism: Assumes what you've learned between memory and retrieval doesn't make a difference.

BUT:

Inhibition Theory: Forgetting is due to the activities that have taken place between original learning and later attempted recall.
i. Retroactive Inhibition: When you learn something NEW and can't remember OLD INFORMATION.


ii. Proactive interference: When OLD information INTERFERES with your learning something new.

Front 14

Facilitating Memory

What's encoding specificity? What's state-dependent learning? Mnemonic devices? Chunking? Method of Loci?

Back 14

Facilitating Memory

1. Encoding Specificity: The assumption recall will be best if the context at recall approximates the context during the original encoding.
ex/ State Dependent Learning: Suggests that recall will be better if your psychological or physical state is the same as your memorizing state.

2. Mnemonic Devices: Techniques we use to improve the likelihood that we'll remember something.
i. Chunking
ii. Method of loci: Associating information with some sequence of places you're familiar with.

Front 15

Reconstructive Memory

Who's Sir Fredrick Bartlett?

Back 15

Reconstructive Memory

Sir Fredrick Bartlett: Studied memory in the "War of the Ghosts" NA tale.

So: Subjects reconstructed the story re: their own expectations and schemas for a ghost story.

Bartlett: Prior knowledge and expectations influence recall.

Front 16

Eyewitness Memory (who's elizabeth Loftus?)

Back 16

Eyewitness Memory

Elizabeth Loftus: Eyewitnesses can be confused/ influences by misleading information. Much eyewitness memory can be erroneous. Also studied the accuracy of repressed memories that return later in life.

Front 17

Zeigarnik Effect (do we remember finished or unfinished tasks better?)

Back 17

Zeigarnik Effect

Tendency to remember incomplete tasks better than completed tasks.

Front 18

Thinking

Problem Solving

(what's the Luchins water-jar problem? What's a mental set? What's functional fixedness?

Back 18

Thinking

Problem Solving.

1. Luchins Water-Jar Problem: You get a mental set (tend to keep repeating solutions that have worked in the past).

So: Past experience affects the strategies we use to solve problems. Bad sets are an impediment.

2. Functional Fixedness: Inability to use a familiar object in a familiar way.

Front 19

Creativity (what's Guildford's divergent thinking test?)

Back 19

Creativity: A cognitive ability that results in new ways to view problems.

Guilford's Divergent Thinking: Thinking of as many creative uses for an object as possible.

Front 20

Heuristics (what is it? Who studied it? What's availability, representativeness h, and base-rate fallacy?)

Back 20

Heuristics and Decision Making

1. Heuristics: Short cuts and rules of thumb we use to speed up making decisions.
Investigated by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.

2. Availability Heuristic: Making decisions about frequencies based on how easy it is to imagine the items involved.
For deciding HOW LIKELY something is.

3. Representativeness Heuristic: Categorizing things based on whether they fit the prototypical image of the category.

4. Base-Rate Fallacy: Categorizing using stereotypical information and ignoring the numerical information about what you're sorting.

Good use of heuristics: Good for speedy, effective decision-making. Chess.

Front 21

Language (4 basic units, what's a phoneme? Morpheme? Semantics? Syntax?)

Back 21

Language. 4 basic units of it:

1. Phoneme: Smallest SOUND units of language
2. Morphemes: Smallest units of meaning in a language.
3. Semantics: The meaning of words
4. Syntax: Grammar.

Front 22

Theories of Language Development

(what's cognitive-developmental vs. Learning Theory of Language)

Back 22

Theories of Language Development

1. Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory: Language relates to the capacity for SYMBOLIC thought. It develops along the child's cognitive level.

2. Learning Theorists: Language comes from Classical, Operant conditioning and modeling. Ex. Skinner.

Front 23

Chomsky's work (nativist how? What's the LAD? Deep structure? Surface structure? And transformational rules?)

Back 23

Chomsky's nativist theory.

Why? Because kids everywhere make speech early in development (12-18 months) and become fluent at 5, there's a LAD (built-in advanced knowledge of rule structure of language).

Chomsky's Grammar Theory:

1. Surface Structure: The actual word order.
2. Deep (Abstract) Structure: Specifies the meaning of the sentence.

Transformational Rules: How we can change one structure into another. Like, a statement to a question.

Front 24

Relationship between language and thought

(Who's Benjamin Whorf? What's his theory?)

Back 24

Relationship between language and thought

Benjamin Whorf: The Whorfian Hypothesis (the Linguistic Relativity Theory): Language determines how we perceive reality.

Language affects the way we think...ex/ 400 words for snow? Means Eskimos are better at discriminating between different types of snow than Americans.

Front 25

Gender Differences in Language Development

(who's Macoby and Jacklin?)

Back 25

Gender Differences in Language Developement: Elanor Macoby and Carol Jacklin: Found girls are better at verbal than boys.

Front 26

Intelligence (who's spearman? What's g? Who's Thurstone? What's the PMA? What are Sternberg's 3 aspects of intellegence? Who's Howard Gardener?)

Back 26

Intelligence

1. Charles Spearman: There's a g (a general, unitary factor of intelligence)

2. Louis Thurstone: Seven PRIMARY Mental Abilities (verbal, perceptual speed, general reasoning, numbers). Used factor analysis with factors more specific than g, more general than s.

3. Robert Sternberg's Triarchic Theory: 3 aspects to intelligence.
i. Componential (ex. tests)
ii. Experiential (creativity)
iii. Contextual (street/ business)

4. Howard Gardener's Theory of Multiple Intelligences: Seven defined. Language, music, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, spatial, math, bodily-kinesthetic.
The West: Only likes language and logic-math.

Front 27

Intelligence over age? (Who's Raymond Cattell? What's fluid and crystallized IQ?)

Back 27

Intellegence over age?

Raymond Catell:
1. Fluid Intelligence: Quickly grasp relationships in novel situations.
2. Crystallized Intelligence: Knowledge acquired from experience or education.

So: Fluid IQ: Goes up @ young life, then levels off in young adulthood, then starts a steady decline with older life.
Crystallized IQ: Increases throughout the lifespan.

Front 28

Arthur Jensen (intelligence by genes?)

Back 28

Arthur Jensen: Intelligence by IQ tests is almost %100 genetics. You can't teach someone to score higher on an IQ test. Was a liddle bit racist.

Front 29

Information Processing (who's McClelland and Rumelhart? What's PDP?)

Back 29

Information Processing

McClelland and Rumelhart: Talked about Parallel Distribute Processing, that information processing is DISTRIBUTED across the brain in a parallel fashion?

Front 30

Metapsychology?

Back 30

Metapsychology...
Meta: Reflecting upon something.

Metacognition and Metamemory: Thinking about and monitoring cognition and memory.