CHAPTER 7
Memory: capacity of the nervous system to acquire and retain usable skills and
knowledge, allowing living organisms to benefit from experience
Encoding: processing of info so it can be stored
Storage: retention of encoded representations over time that corresponds to some
change in the nervous system that registers the events
Retrieval: recovering info from memory stores when it is needed
MEMORY MODEL
Sensory Memory – separate sensory-memory store for each sensory system
Visual – iconic memory
Auditory – echoic memory
Persists for about 1/3 of a sec and then progressively fades
Attention - info that has been attended to is passed from sensory stores to short-term
memory
Short-term Memory/Working memory
Active processing of info for current use
Capacity: limited – 7 +/- 2
Duration: short (~20s)
Amount of info that flows through is large
Chunking – process of grouping distinct bits of info into larger wholes to increase
short-term memory capacity
Serial-position effect: tendency to recall more items from the beginning and end
of a list than from the middle
Primacy and recency: good recall of first and last items
Long-term memory
Explicit memory - Declarative (conscious): stored long term knowledge of facts
about ourselves and the world
Semantic (nonpersonal) – facts and general knowledge
Episodic (personal) – specific events
Implicit memory – non-declarative (nconscious): stored long term knowledge of
learned habits and skills
Procedural memory: learned habits and skills
Conditioning effects: ex. classical and operant conditioning
Amnesiacs perform poorly on explicit memory tasks, but implicit task similar to
control subjects
Semantic network: complex web of semantic associations that link items in
memory such that retrieving one item triggers retrieval of others as well
Priming: exposure to stimulus influences response to a later stimulus
Conceptual priming: when priming stimulus influences your flow of
thoughts; activates concepts stored in semantic memory
Perceptual priming: when priming stimulus enhances ability to identify a
test stimulus based on its physical features
Priming is implicit b/c you don’t need to consciously recall seeing priming
stimulus in order for priming to occur
Amnesia Anterograde amnesia: inability to store new info
Retrograde amnesia: inability to retrieve memories from the past
Patient HM – severe seizures so hippocampus removed; could not form any new
memories
Short term memory in tact; anterograde amnesia
Procedural memory in tact; declarative memory – none
Implicit memory – did learn some new tasks with no explicit memory of task
Misinformation effect: tendency for post-event misinformation to become integrated into
memory of an event
Loftus & Palmer (1974)
participants view film of automobile accident and asked how fast cars were using
diff verbs, answers changed
Loftus & Zanni (1975)
Did you see a broken headlight vs did you see the broken headlight
Innocence Project – post-conviction DNA testing yields proof of innocence
EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY
Eyewitnesses are imperfect
Certain personal and situational factors systematically influence eyewitness’
performance
Judges, juries, and lawyers are not well informed about these factors
Acquisition – refers to witness’s perceptions at time of event in question
Factors influencing acquisition
Emotional state
Weapon-focus effect
Cross-race identification bias
Storage – memory for faces and events tend to decline over time
Purity of memory can be influenced by postevent info
Ex. misinformation effect
Retrieval – pulling the info out of storage when needed
Factors affecting identification performance
Lineup construction
Lineup instructions to the witness
Format of the lineup
Familiarity-induced biases
DRM List – when giving a list of words relating to one thing, ppl think related word was
in list
Ex. whiskers, pur, fur; ppl think cat was on list
Theory: spreading activation
Model for association of ideas and memories that is based on activating one
memory will trigger associated items
ATTENTION
Human info processing system limited in terms of allocation of resources to
sensory and perceptual info Attention refers to allocation of processing resourcesAND to concentration and
focusing of mental effort (focus is selective, shiftable, divisible)
VOLUNTARYATTENTION (endogenous): intentionally attend to something
REFLEXIVEATTENTION (exogenous): attention captured by a sensory event
Selective attention: focusing on specific objects and filtering out others
Cocktail party effect –Ability to attend selectively to one person’s speech
in midst of competing conversations
Dichotic listening cherry – made to listen to two messages and repeat
words of one message
Divided attention: ability to distribute one’s attention and simultaneously engage in two
or more activities
Visual search
Parallel processing: processing mult types of info at same time
Targets: objects that differ from others in only one feature
Distractors: other objects in the display
Conjunction tasks are serial and effortful
Inattentional blindness: failure to notice a fully-visible but unexpected object because
attention engaged on another thing
Change blindness: failure to notice large changes in ones environment
Schema: organized pattern of thought or behavior
CHAPTER 8
Problem: wanting to reach a certain goal but solution is not immediately obvious
1. initial state
2. goal state
3. obstacles
Well defined problems: clear path to the solution
Ill defined problems: dimensions of problem are not specified or easy to infer
STRATEGIES
Algorithm: systematic problem solving procedure that is guaranteed to produce a
solution; based on a set of rules
Heuristic: mental shortcut based on prior experiences; allows one to make
judgments that are quick but often in error
Obstacles
Functional fixedness: restricting use of an object to its familiar functions
Mental set: use of problem solving strategies that have worked in the past
Unnecessary constraints – ex. 9 dot problem
Insight – sudden discovery of correct solution following incorrect attempts based on trial
and error
Expertise: superior skills/achievement reflecting well-developed and well-organized
knowledge base
Experts solve problems in their field faster and better and posses more knowledge
Knowledge organized so that it can be accessed when needed to work on a
problem
Novice: surface features
Expert: deep structure Better schemas, well organized knowledge, less time to set up problem, more
appropriate strategies, faster at solving and more accurate than novices
Creativity: Innovative thinking, novel ideas, and new connections between existing ideas
Strategy formation
Divergent thinking: generate mult solutions to problem
Convergent thinking: narrow down to best answer
Organization of info – aids solution(symbols, matrixes, diagrams)
JUDGMENTAND DECISION MAKING
Availability heuristic: mental shortcut that occurs when people make judgments about
probability of events by how easy it is to think of examples
Representative heuristic: used when making judgments about probability of an event
under uncertainty
Confirmation bias: tendency to take evidence that’s consistent with your beliefs more
seriously than evidence inconsistent with your beliefs
LANGUAGE
Human system of communication
Use of organized means of combining words in order to communicate
Birth of a language – needs ‘community’
Language acquisition
Babbling to single words to two word stage to complex grammatical structures
Unconsciously simplified speech when baby was babbling
After first word started more complex sentences
Aspects of language
Phoneme: smallest unit of speech; basic distinct sounds
Ex. tip: t-i-p; ship: sh-i-p
Morpheme: smallest unit that carries meaning
Ex. unthinkable: un-think-able
Prefix, root word, suffix
Lexicon: entire set of morphemes in a given language
Avg English speaker has about 80,000
Syntax: rules that govern the arrangement of words and phrases in a sentence
Semantics: property of language that accounts for the communication of meaning
Phrase: group of words that act as a unit to convey meaning; combo of
morphemes
Sentence: organized sequence of words
Discourse: convo; paragraph; story
Properties of language
Communicative
Arbitrarily symbolic: no visual similarity to sound
Structured at multiple levels(sounds, meaning, phrases, etc)
Generative: ability to originate, produce or procreate
Dynamic: const
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