Cognitive Processes Lecture Notes PDF

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PSYC 1002 – LECTURE NOTES COGNITIVE PROCESSES DR CALEB OWENS

LECTURE 1 (Tuesday, 17 Sept) -

Cognitive psychology is looking at mental processes

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The dominant paradigm

History -

The behaviorist arose because of the frustration in the field

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It is highly subjective and there is no participants, only the researcher itself

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From Europe, Froyd and the troublesome concepts

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The paper by Watson is martin Luther’s break from the catholic church

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Not allowed to talk about consciousness, only stimuli, responses, inputs outputs etc

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What’s going on inside can only be figured out by asking the person o

Immediately ruled out non-human species

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The behaviorists were successful

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Behaviorism was the dominant paradigm but it didn’t accept that many things cant be explained by only measuring stimuli and responses

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Growing up in the behaviorist age is bad because they rule psychology, and psychology rules education o

They believed kids were going to learn if they are rewarded or punished for not doing it

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Even in the uni, if its not assessable they will not learn anything from it

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Tolman break the number 1 rule and propose an internal mental representation o

Rats running through mazes

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Behaviorist will see rats are learning left, right, left, right = food 

o

Rat is mindless, not learning anything

Tolman – we think animals have a map control room. There is a cognitive structure 

Use map and rat data

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Rats were put in the maze and food was introduced in day 3 or 7

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Rats that were given food in day 7 – behaviorist think the rat didn’t learn anything 

Tolman thinks the rat learns the maze

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The moment food is introduced, the learning they gain falls

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All creatures learn with or without rewards

How do you explain language in terms of reward and punishment? o

The aim of psychology is not to work out a way to do something, but what actually humans do

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Another problem o

Doesn’t explain attentional load or cognitive load

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Our thoughts and capacity are limited

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Ancient people are very arrogant

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We want to make things that are not too complex to operate

o

Making things too simple annoys us

o

But its good to interact with device

THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY -

A metaphor for the mind, a computer

Cognitive models -

Cognitive psychology is the software

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Neuroscience is the hardware

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The boxes represent processes or storage

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Arrows represent transferred information

Tolman’s radical and revolutionary proposal in 1948 was that: rats form an internal map in their environment

Mental Chronometry – Timing how long thoughts take Demystification of mental processes in 1960s How do we measure how long a thought takes to distinguish a red light from a green light? -

Most cognitive processes are between 20 – 100 milliseconds

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Simple Reaction Time – press any button to any light

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Choice Reaction Time – press on button to red light and another button to green light

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Choice RT – Simple RT = Estimate of stimulus evaluation time

Memory scanning test (1 5 2 7) Can either search for the 5 in: -

Parallel self-terminating search o

Look at all 1 5 2 7 at once

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the positive response is a flat line because no matter how big the set size, the reaction time stays the same

o -

negative response

serial self-terminating search o

scan through 1 5 2 7 in a series

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positive response - as the set size increases, the reaction time increases

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bc it takes longer to scan for the answer asked

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negative response the slope is steeper – the target you’re looking for is somewhere down the list

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serial exhaustive search o

don’t stop scanning after u get the answer, goes through the whole set

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scan the whole number

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positive response – bigger set, longer reaction time

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negative response – bigger set, longer reaction time, longer than positive response

humans mostly do the serial exhaustive search cognitive psychology is about what we’re stuck with and what humans actually do

why do we have to investigate cognitive processes so indirectly? -

Not conscious of these things, you just do them

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We are riddled by cognitive biases o

Our expertise is based on memory and not computing things

o

Very well-known and studied

LECTURE 2 (Thursday, 19 Sept)

Attentions -

Focused attention o

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Diffused attention o

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Focusing on one thing at the time

Not focused on anything in particular

Inattentional blindness o

Attention is divided

o

Or you’re not paying attention at all

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It’s not about seeing but processing and remembering

What is processed without attention? o

Don’t confuse attention without memory

o

Didn’t pay attention doesn’t mean you don’t realize it

Why is attention limited? o

You have attentional resources, if you split them across multiple tasks, you cant do each tasks as well as putting all the attention to one task

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What is the locus selection? o

Point at which you make decision what to process or what to reject

o

Early locus of selection 

Not really aware of what they are

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Basic physical characteristics

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Dicotic listening test 

Has to listen and pay attention to only one ear, the other ear they can’t report the language

o

Late locus of selection

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People are processing what is coming in the other ear but you don’t realize you switch between 2 ear

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The role of attention o

To bind features together

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Ther are parallel pre-attentive processes

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Require serial attention to actually bind things together

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Focused attention is required to find a particular configuration

Control of attention o

To capture attention, being different is not enough

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Has to move or flash to catch attention

Change blindness o

If we make eye movement, we are not processing anything in between the movement

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What we’re actually processing is very minimal

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U multitask because you cant help themselves, not because they are busy and because they want to.

LECTURE 3 (Monday, 23 Sept) - SHORT TERMS MEMORY AND WORKING MEMORY

WHAT IS MEMORY? -

The difference between short term and working o

Old fashioned and modern, but same meaning

Sensory memory -

Uncompressed version

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Unlimited capacity

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Doesn’t last very long

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Passive

Iconic and echoic memory -

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Iconic – visual memories o

Unlimited capacity

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Top and middle will get right

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Short duration

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50-500 milliseconds

Echoic memory o

8 – 10 seconds in duration

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Unlimited

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Can cram more echoic than iconic memory

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We need to hold the entire information in order to make sense of it

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Sequential information makes it easier to hold the information

Short term memory -

Capacity is limited (7 +- 2)

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Decays within 20 secs if not rehearsed

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Phonological code - The way they sound effects your memory o

Easily confused by the sound of things

Long-term memory -

Unlimited

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Forgetting due to interference rather than decay

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Semantic code o

Coding things based on what they mean

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Easily confused by the meaning of things

Primacy effects -

information makes it to LTM

recency effect -

information dumped from short terms buffer

chunking -

save capacity by grouping a couple of pieces of info as one

neuropsychological evidence -

HM – the guy who had his hippocampus out after a pole went through his head/skull

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Clive Wearing o

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Not able to encode information longer than 20 seconds

Memento movie

Working memory -

Central executive

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Phonological loop

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Visuospatial sketchpad

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We need to keep active by rehearsal

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Information rehearsed in what kind of code? Phonological code

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How great is someone’s memory span?

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o

Language differences

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Speaking code more efficient = hold more

Visuo-spatial sketchpad

Central executive -

What does it do?

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Is working memory the basis of attentional limitations or the site of conscious awareness?

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Constantly distracted people = lower working memory capacity

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Focused people = have more control over working memory capacity

LECTURE 4 (Tuesday, 24 Sept) THE STRUCTURE OF LONG-TERM MEMORY, HOW IT AFFECTS HOW WE SEE THE WORLD

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Memory o

Declarative memory system (factual information) 

Semantic memory system (general knowledge, stored undated) 

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E.g. Lincoln gave Gettysburg Address

Episodic memory system (dated recollection of personal experience) 

o

E.g. first kiss

Non-declarative memory system (actions, perceptual motor skills, conditioned reflexes, emotional memories) 

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E.g. riding a bicycle

Explicit Memory – Episodic memory o

Why is it not well studied? Because everybody is different

o

What? Memory of life events 

E.g. birthdays, graduation, what you did last Sunday

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Information linked to a time period

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Not stored well

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We don’t always remember where we learn things

Explicit Memory - Semantic memory o

What things mean

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Less fragile than episodic memory

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Knowing is different from remembering

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How is this stored? Propositional network models

In connectionist or parallel distributed processing (PDP) models of attention, how are memories meant to be stored? -

Particular patterns of activation

Everyone’s neuronal representation is different The structure of memory: schemas and scripts -

Schema: generalized mental representations, or concepts, describing a class of objects, people, scenes or events

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E.g. u know when there’s a cake, candles, party = birthday party

The importance of schemas o

Can distort experiences and perceptions greatly

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Are exceptions (information that do not fit into a schema) encoded separately? They may be more salient or dropped completely, depends on the situation

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Schema examples o

Stereotypes (person schema) 

Can it be harmful? Possible bc it can affect our perceptions

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Double standards

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Counter-stereotypes – by being special

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Gender stereotypes – guilt makes girl heroes or assassins more brutal (e.g. lara croft)

o

Does this have an impact on people? Possibly yes 

People was allocated to randomly play video games

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Asked about attitudes towards Arabs

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More violent games -> biased towards Arabs to portray them as terrorists

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Most toys are gendered (Lego blue box -> boys)

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Got it in schemata but he doesn’t know why

Scripts (event schemas) 

More complex

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E.g. in ordering food at restaurants, certain scripts different at each restaurants

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If you’re dealing with someone with dementia or brain damage, scripts are the hardest to get through (to teach)

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Scripts transference 

Applying high school script to uni leads to disaster

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Work not spaced out because no plans are made

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Voluntary or self-guided components completely missed

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Lack of exploration consolidation or application of knowledge

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Also a challenge when you switch cultures

Schemas helps you but you don’t realize how important it is until you can’t use it

LECTURE 5 (Thursday, 26 Sept) Consider the most important memories in your life. How well do you think you remember them? They are important but are just like other memories and will fade and change with time

IMPLICIT MEMORY AND FALSE MEMORY

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Implicit memory: classical conditioning and priming o

Unconscious associations between stimuli (dentist drill -> pain -> anxiety)

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Priming – when you affect someone’s future interpretation of something by mentioning another concept 

E.g. primed with “money, withdraw, robbery” / “river, flow, boat”

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Probe: “he walked towards the bank”

Procedural memory o

o

Declarative memory (explicit) 

Semantic memory

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Episodic memory

Procedural memory (implicit) 

Memory for how to do things

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Not verbalizable, not available to conscious awareness

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Acquired in a different way 

Work it out yourself

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Learnt through gradual, incremental experience

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Not one-trial learning

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E.g. kissing, riding a bike, etc.

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Stored in the cerebellum

Levels of processing and memory o

More deeply processed stimuli are better remembered than stimuli processed in a s shallow manner

o

Implicit memory test – when u don’t know your memory is being tested

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Mere exposure is enough to make you remember

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Explicit memory tasks – you know your memory is being tested 

Recall and recognition (did you see this before/write down what you remember)

o

Implicit memory performance is different from explicit memory 

They do not follow the levels of processing mantra 

Deeply processed items are not that remembered in implicit memory

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The shallower the task, the more you remember for implicit memory

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The modality or format 

If something was in capital letters, when tested it wouldn’t work if the case is not the same

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o

Explicit – it’s not a problem in explicit memory

Delay/retention interval 

Doesn’t matter in implicit memory

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You can still remember

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In explicit memory, you’ll forget it bc its very fragile

Amnesic patients 

Poor explicit memory

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Very good implicit memory

Implicit and explicit memory tasks involve different encoding processes and therefore benefit from different retrieval processes 

Implicit 

encoding is perceptual, something that happens when u think you’re doing another task

 

Retrieval is perceptually based

Explicit – following different rules 

Different processes involved

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Create retrieval cues

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Bc u know your memory is being tested

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Declarative memory – understanding of facts, words, concepts, ideas

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Procedural memory – associated with skills and the performance of actions

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Implicit memory – assessed by your performance on various tasks

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Explicit memory – you know when your explicit memory is being assessed

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Pseudo forgetting is most likely due to lack of attention at encoding

False Memory -

Misleading ‘post-event’ information o

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Take the words in the question and implemented in their memory

Social pressure (lost in a shopping mall) o

Put mom and dad to implant childhood trauma

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Source confusion

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Kim – remember everything, have a good memory o

Unable to grasp meaning bcos he only remembers it, does not process the meaning

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o

Without conceptual encoding, can’t understand meaning

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Can’t get metaphor, Shakespeare plays, etc.

Does hypnosis improve memory? o

Get more false memory

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Don’t improve memory but improve confidence on said memories

Flashbulb memories -

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Memories that are formed at the same time as the dramatic world event o

Events that bind people together

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E.g. 9/11, bombing, tsunamis

People have very vivid and detailed memories surrounding dramatic world events

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o

Are these memories really more accurate? Probably not

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But it is rehearsed more frequently

Less distortion for people who are more emotionally attached o

Talk about something more – open yourself to more distortion

Confabulation -

What is it o

A filling in of the gaps with something coherent, making stuff up

o -

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