Cognitive Psych Prep Guide 4-6 PDF

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Cognitive Psych Prep Guide 4-6! Chapter 4: Pattern Recognition Check Your Knowledge 1.What are the six laws of Gestalt psychology? Give an example for each one. The six laws are proximity, similarity, closure, common fate, symmetry, and good continuation. An example proximity is two groups of people are close together on each side of a room so they are perceived as two groups. An example pf similarity is …An example of law of closure is if there is a circle with a few chunks cut out of it, you will still see a circle. AN example of common fate is a flock of birds flying in the same direction will be perceived as a group. An example of symmetry is …An example of good continuation is 1.According to the distinctive features theory, which letter would you most likely confuse with a G: C or T? C 1.Which pattern recognition process captures the importance of context and expectation? Top down 1.Describe the different parts of the recognition by components theory. The parts of the component theory are that people first recognize an object as basic features, geons. Once all the geons are recognized, the person puts them together to create the full object. 1.Which of the bottom-up theories would best account for your ability to read words written in handwriting that you had not seen before? prototype theory 1.What is the Margaret Thatcher illusion? What does it demonstrate? Are people with autism subject to this illusion? The Margaret Thatcher illusion shows 2 pictures of a women. Once the picture is rotated upside down, it can be seen that one of the faces is very distorted. This demonstrates how people are dependent on right side up faces. People with autism are not as subjected to this as others. Shows that we use top down processing to recognize faces. 1.What neurological deficit do people with prosopagnosia and schizophrenia have in common? They both have a difficult time in face recognition.

Apply Your Knowledge 1.Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in social interactions. Using what you know about pattern recognition in people with ASD, explain how their pattern recognition skills might influence these impairments. People with autism have a more difficult time recognizing patterns in faces because they focus more on features of the persons face like the mouth. This may affect their social interactions because they might have a more difficult time recognizing someone and spend a longer time trying to recognize who someone is.

Chapter 5: Short-Term Memory and Working Memory Check Your Knowledge 1.Describe the main features of short-term memory (STM), such as its capacity and duration. • The capacity of STM in a typical adult is about 7 unrelated items. This can span between 5-9. The capacity of STM typically increases until middle young adulthood and begins to decline in old age. The capacity can be increased by using chunking information into relatable groups. Determining the duration of STM is done by using the Brown-Peterson task. The two main findings to come from this task are that as time increases, the number of items kept in STM decreases and that the number of chunks present in the STM has an effect on the duration of those items. 1.Describe rehearsal and give an example (not from the book) of both maintenance and elaborative rehearsal. Which types do you think are best for studying for exams in this class? Which do you think is best for remembering a new skill, such as the rules of a card game or sport? • Rehearsal is paying attention to the items that we are trying to keep in STM longer or possibly move that information to LTM. An example of maintenance rehearsal is repeating the name of a person who you just met over and over again to remember it for the next time you see them. An example of elaborative rehearsal is taking that person’s name and relating it to something unique about them so that you can relate their name to that unique quality in the future. I think that elaborative rehearsal is best for studying for exams because you make the information meaningful to you, therefore increasing your chances of recalling it. Maintenance rehearsal is best for a new skill because it is quicker and requires less time to make it meaningful. 1.Describe proactive and retroactive interference and provide an example of each from your own life. • Retroactive interference is when something that you know now makes it hard to remember something that you previously knew. An example of this is that after moving into my new apartment, I have trouble remembering my address from last

year. Proactive interference is the opposite of retroactive interference, so previously known information makes it hard to remember new information. An example of this is that when I got a new guinea pig as a kid, I kept calling it the name of my old guinea pig. 1.Describe the serial position effect. Can it be changed or avoided, and if so, how? • The serial position effect explains that information presented at the beginning and end of a list are more likely to be remembered. It can be changed by different learning conditions. The more time between the presentation of the information and recalling the information effects the recency effect, while the speed in which the information is presented can affect the primacy effect. The mode, like auditory or visual, of the information presented can also effect the serial position effect. The ways to get around this effect are to make the information distinctive or connect them to each other. 1.Please summarize the functions of the main components to the working memory model and how they interact with each other. • The phonological loop is used for storing phonological information. The first part of this loop is the phonological store, which holds acoustic representation of the stimulus. The second part is the articulatory control process which refreshes the information from the phonological store in a 2-second cycle. • The visuospatial sketchpad is used for storing visually presented information. The first part is the visual cache, which holds information from perceptual experience and information about form and color. The second part is the inner scribe, which refreshes the information from the cache and stores spatial relationships associated with bodily movement. • The episodic buffer integrates the information from the visuospatial sketchpad and phonological loop and makes them into a sequence. The episodic buffer can increase the amount of information remembered by putting it into a coherent sequence. • The central executive is used to combine the information from the visuospatial sketchpad, phonological loop, and episodic buffer. It can also communicate with LTM through using the episodic buffer. It is the main system for controlling attention and updates and changes the content from the other divisions of the working memory. 1.What are the limits to WM? • One limit is phonological confusion. This is when items that sound alike are more difficult to memorize because the articulatory control process confuses the letters that it is rehearsing. Another limit is the word-length effect, which says that the longer the word is, the more difficult it is to remember. This is because it takes the articulatory control process longer to rehearse and remember the greater number of syllables. The last limit is the irrelevant speech effect, which explains that

inconsequential background speech interferes with the rehearsal of what is trying to be memorized by working memory. This is because the extra background sounds are added to the amount of sounds being processed by phonological loop. 1.What is the relationship between the STM and WM models? For example, describe their similarities and differences, and make a conclusion about which is the better theory of memory (or if they are both correct and separate functions, explain that and your reasoning). • The similarities between the STM and WM models are that they are both limited in capacity and duration. The differences though are that the WM model is more complex and has more parts and divisions to it, creating auditory and visual components in different systems. I think that the better theory is the working memory model because I think that is a more complex version of the STM and explains different phenomena and separates different sensory information into separate functions. 1.Summarize key evidence for the working memory model. How do we know its components are separate functions, for example? • The evidence to support that the components of the WM are separate functions is found in the phenomena of phonological confusions, word-length effect, and irrelevant speech effect. These explain how auditory and visual information is processed differently. 1.What is the relationship between WM and emotion? Summarize some key evidence for your position. • The relationship between WM and emotion is that emotions, more specifically stressful and negative emotions have a negative effect on WM. A high number of stressful events in a person’s life creates more demands for the WM and decreases its performance on non-emotional related tasks. Studies have been conducted that studied the effects of negative experiences on WM and showed that the WM is working on inhibiting the negative emotions, making it harder to focus on the non-emotional tasks. Apply Your Knowledge 1.Create a story to describe the main parts of the working memory model. Make each piece a character and describe what types of functions they do. Your Central Executive could be a mob boss and the others his cronies, or CE is a king and the others are feudal lords beneath them, etc (make sure the power structure/organization of your characters reflects the true relationships between parts of the WM model). Use these characters to illustrate the limits of working memory: which characters conflict with each other and which work together? What happens when the WM system gets “overloaded”? You do not need a grand conclusion to your story: merely setting up the characters and building a colorful little “world” of working memory to

explain how your characters interact is enough. Be creative and have fun! If you get a bit stuck, look at the model in Figure 5.8 on page 135 and start naming those pieces and functions with new creative names. What kind of rehearsal do you think you would be using if you used this story as a study tool? • The Central Executive is the ruler of the kingdom called “The Working Memory” • His duties include organizing the events and structure of the kingdom. • The Episodic Buffer is the Central Executive’s second-hand man. He receives reports from the Visuospatial Sketchpad and Phonological Loop and reports the sights and sounds of the kingdom to the Central Executive. • The Visuospatial Sketchpad is the “security” for the kingdom. He lives in the top of the Central Executive’s castle and watches over the kingdom and reports to the Episodic Buffer what he sees happening. He lives so high up in the castle that he is not able to hear the people of the kingdom, only see them. • The Phonological Loop works for the Central Executive as well and he walks around the kingdom and speaks to the people and reports back to the Episodic Buffer about what he hears. The Phonological Loop is very useful to the Central Executive, but he is blind, so he is only able to report what he hears, not sees.

Chapter 6: Long-Term Memory Check Your Knowledge 1.Give an example of each type of implicit memory. An example of procedural memory is texting on your iphone and an example of perceptual memory is being able to tell the difference between the smell of two foods. 1.Explain the importance of semantic coding in LTM. Give an example of types of features that are retained and which are forgotten when semantic coding has taken place. Semantic coding is important because the meaning of words is what is most important to humans and our memory for language based events relies on semantics. The types of features that are retained during semantic coding are the meaning of what is said/ written. What is forgotten is the physical characteristics and structure of the sentence or paragraph. 1.Describe how the two demonstrations in this section of the chapter illustrate metamemory. The demonstrations for metamemory in the chapter show the use of metamemory because they give you the experience of the feeling of knowledge and the tip of the tongue phenomenon. Metamemory is our awareness of memory and what is in your memory, so these examples represent metamemory because a person is aware that

they know something, yet are having trouble retrieving exactly what that information is. 1.Give an example of state-dependent retrieval involving mental/emotional state, and one involving physiological state. An example involving mental/emotional state is if you are in a very good mood when going to your 8am math class, you will most likely be able to retrieve the information that you learned that day during the exam if you are in the same good mood. AN example of physiological state is you learned how to perform a task when you were sober, so you are able to properly retrieve that information when you are also sober, as opposed to drunk. 1.Review the evidence for different developmental memory phenomena such as infantile amnesia and the reminiscence bump. The evidence presented for infantile amnesia says that people cannot remember much of anything that occurred prior to 3 years old. It occurs because the ability to maintain information over a lifetime is not completely developed at an early age, a baby’s is incapable of communicating episodic and semantic events through a narrative, and there is a gap between the baby’s worldview and encoding of the event. The evidence supporting the reminiscence bump shows people recall the largest number of memories between the ages of 10 and 25. This is most likely the case due to the serial position effect that is found in humans; we are most likely to forget the information in the middle of our lives. 1.Review the evidence for the role of the hippocampi. The hippocampus plays an important role in memory storage. Evidence that has proven this includes the case of HM. He had portions of his frontal lobe removed, which included the hippocampus and after that he was unable to store new explicit memory. Another example that demonstrates the importance of the hippocampus to memory is the effects of Korsakoff’s syndrome. This is due to malnutrition caused by excessive alcohol consumption that affects the frontal lobes, the home of the hippocampi. The result of Korsakoff’s syndrome is amnesia. 1.Describe the metamemory abilities of people with Korsakoff’s syndrome. People with Korsakoff’s syndrome often have an incorrect feeling of knowledge that is associated with metamemory. They think they know the answer, so they will make up answers to questions that they actually do not know the answers to. 1.Describe some key features of the cognitive interview and their justifications. A key feature of cognitive interviews is to interview the observer at the crime scene or while imagining the scene. This can be effective because it uses the encoding specificity principle so that the person can retrieve the memory in the same context in which it was encoded. Another feature is having the witness report everything they recall from the

event, even if they deem it to be insignificant. This is effective because it eliminates the natural tendency for people to eliminate information that they edit out and think is unimportant, when it actually may be significant. The final feature of cognitive interviews is having the observer report the event in different sequences, like backwards. This can reduce the number of intruded recollections. 1.How do flashbulb memories compare to ordinary memories in their accuracy? What about metamemory about flashbulb memories (compared to everyday memories)? Flashbulb memories are found to be equally as accurate as everyday memories, they just feel more accurate because there is greater emotion and sense of importance behind a flashbulb memory. 1.Compare and contrast how people with typical memory and patient H.M. complete mirror-tracing tasks. What kinds of memory do they have in common (HM and the typical person), and on what kinds of memory do they differ? People with typical memory and people like HM with memory deficits perform similarly in the mirror tracing task. They both display improvement in the task after performing it more. The only difference shown is that HM is not able to remember ever performing the task, while others do remember it. Apply Your Knowledge 1.Identify a long-term memory goal. For example, it might involve information from a class. Is your goal to remember it for the exam? For your future psychology courses? Lifelong? You may also choose any non-academic LTM goals; such as wanting to have good prospective memory as you age; or create permastore of any hobby or family-related information. a.State your goal. What is it you want to remember and for how long? I want to be able to remember the information from my world history class for my next exam. a.Which type of long-term memory is this? Start with the most general and narrow down to the most specific category from Table 6.1. This long-term memory is remembering academic knowledge, more specifically reading comprehension and history recall and recognition. a.Use what you know about duration and encoding to explain how long you expect this specific type of memory to remain accessible in LTM. This should refer to your scientific prediction, not your personal goal. If I am able to properly store this information in my LMW, I expect it to be available in LTM for a long time, but it might become more difficult to retrieve as time moves on after this semester. a.What are some strategies from the chapter you can use to enhance encoding of this information?

I can practice encoding the information in the same environment and mental state in which I will be retrieving it, so in my history classroom. Also I can try encoding the information in different formats so that whichever way it is presented on the exam, I will be able to recall the information. a.How will you ensure that the memory becomes stored more accurately and in a less biased manner? I can store the information how it was presented to me and not relating it to information from my own life so that it can be stored less-biased....