Exam 2 - Lecture notes 2 PDF

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Exam 2 study guide Psych...

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Learning & Cognition – Exam 2 Key Areas Selective vs. Divided Attention – Page 95 Selective Attention is attending to one thing while ignoring others Divided Attention is paying attention to more than one thing at a time. Cocktail Party Phenomenon – Page 96 The ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli. Called this because at noisy parties people are able to focus on what one person is saying even if there are many conversations happening simultaneously. Broadbent’s Filter Model Early Selection Model of Attention (“Filter” Model of Attention) – Donald Broadbent (1958)  

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Sensory Memory holds all of the incoming info for a fraction of a second and then transfers all of it to the filter. The Filter identifies the message that is being attended to based on its physical characteristics – things like speakers tone of voice, pitch speed of talking, and accent – and lets only this attended message pass through to the detector in the next stage. All other messages are filtered out. The Detector processes the information from the attended message to determine higherlevel characteristics of the message, such as its meaning. Because only the important, attended information has been let through the filter, the detector processes all of the information that enters it. The output of the detector is sent to Short-Term Memory, which holds information for 1015 seconds and also transfers info to into Long-Term Memory, which can hold info indefinitely.

Provided testable predictions about selective attention, which stimulated further research (see Dichotic Listening Studies). Dichotic Listening Studies – Page 96 One prediction is that since all of the unattended messages are filtered out, we should not be conscious of information in the unattended messages. Dichotic Listening Experiment – Neville Moray (1959)    

Participants instructed to shadow the message presented to one ear and to ignore the message presented to other ear. When Moray presented the listener’s name to the unattended ear, 1/3 of the participants detected it. The participants were not supposed to recognize their names according to Broadbent’s theory. Most importantly, the info was analyzed enough to determine its meaning.

Following Moray’s lead, other experimenters showed that info presented to the unattended ear is processed enough to provide the listener with some awareness of its meaning. Dear Aunt Jane Experiment – Page 97 (Gray and Welderburn 1960)– Showed that attention would jump from one ear to the other and back again because they were taking the meaning of the words into account. Dear Aunt Jane words were played in different ears while 9-7-6 was played in the other ear respectively. Anne Treisman’s (1964) Attenuation Model – Page 97 The Attenuation Model of Attention aka the “Leaky Filter Model” Because of the above results (Dear Aunt Jane results), Treisman proposed a modification of Broadbent’s model. She proposed that selection occurs in two stages, and she replaced Broadbent’s filter with an attenuator. The Attenuator analyzes the incoming messages in terms of: 1. Its physical characteristics – high pitched vs low pitched, fast or slow; 2. Its language – how the message groups into syllables or words; and 3. Its meaning – how sequences of words create meaningful phrases. Language and meaning can also be used to separate the messages, but the message proceeds only as far as is necessary to identify the attended message. According to this model, the messages, once identified, are then sent through the attenuator and the attended message emerges at full strength, whereas the unattended message emerges at a much weaker strength. Next, the final output of the system is determined in the second stage, then the message is analyzed by the Dictionary Unit. The dictionary unit contains words, stored in memory, each of which has a threshold for being activated. Thus, a word with low threshold may be detected quite easily even when obscured by other stimuli. Words that are common or words with important meaning can be detected easily. High- vs. Low-load tasks – Page 98 Low Load Tasks use up only a small amount of the person’s processing capacity. High Load Tasks use more of a person’s processing capacity. Stroop Effect – Page 100 A situation where task-irrelevant stimuli are hard to ignore. With this effect, task irrelevant stimuli are extremely powerful. Automatic vs. Controlled Processing – Page 110 Divided attention can be achieved with practice. Automatic Processing – Page 110 1. Occurs without intention(automatically) 2. Occurs at a cost of only some of a person’s cognitive resources. Controlled Processing – ?

Change blindness – Page 117 Difficulty detecting changes in scenes. Modal Model of Memory – Page 132 Proposes three types of memory: 1. Sensory Memory – Initial Stage that holds all incoming info for seconds or fractions of a second. 2. Short-Term Memory – Holds 5 to 7 items for about 15 to 20 seconds. 3. Long-Term Memory – Can hold a large amount of info for years or even decades. Whole vs. Partial Report Procedures – Page 135 Sperling’s Experiment – Measuring Capacity and Duration of Sensory Store Whole Report Method:   

Participants asked to report as many letters as possible from entire 12-letter display. Able to report 4.5 out of 12 letters. Reported seeing all of the letters, but that they faded out of memory during the time to report.

Partial Report Method:   

Participants saw 12-letter display, but asked to report only the letters in a single 4-letter row as indicated by tones of varied pitch (high/medium/low). Reported 3.3 of the 4 letters. Couldn’t produce all because of fading.

Delayed Partial Report Method:   

Letters were flashed on and off, then the cue tone was presented after short delay. 1 second cue tone delay resulted in only recalling slightly more than 1 letter. Fading occurs.

RESULTS: Short-lived sensory memory registers all or most of the info that hits our visual receptors, but quickly decays within less than a second. Miller’s Magic Number – Page 141 The Magic number 7 (plus or minus two) provides evidence for the capacity of short term memory. Most adults can store between 5 and 9 items in their short-term memory. This idea was put forward by Miller (1956) and he called it the magic number 7. Chunking – Concept introduced by miller. Small units combined into larger meaningful units. Central Executive – Page 144 & 148 Where major work of working memory occurs. Pulls info from LTM and coordinates the activity from the phonological loop and visuospatial sketch pad by focusing on specific parts of a task and deciding how to divide attention between different tasks. “Traffic cop of working memory system.”

Component that makes working memory work b/c it is the control center. Decides how info is coordinated between phonological loop and visuospatial sketch pad. “Attention controller.” Related to executive attention. Semantic & Episodic Memory – Page 172 Episodic – Memory for experiences. Involves mental time travel. Experience of traveling back in time to remember events that happened in the past. Self-knowing or remembering. Semantic – Memory for facts. Involves accessing knowledge about the world that does not have to be tied to remembering a personal experience. Facts, vocabulary, numbers, and concepts. Accessing things we are familiar with and know about. In real life, these two memories are often intertwined. Knowledge affects experience. The makeup of autobiographical memory. Autobiographical Memory – People’s memories from their own lives. Involves both Episodic and Semantic memories. Semantic components of autobiographical memory are called personal semantic memories. Declarative & Non-Declarative Memory – Page 179 AKA Explicitly and implicitly assessed memory Declarative memory and nondeclarative memory are two major classifications of longterm memory systems. Declarative memory allows us to consciously recollect events and facts. Nondeclarative memory, in contrast, is accessed without consciousness or implicitly through performance rather than recollection. This memory isn't always easy to verbalize, since it flows effortlessly in our actions. Types of Interference – Page 166 Proactive Interference The decrease in memory that occurs when previously learned info interferes with learning new info. Release from Proactive Interference Increase in performance. Primacy vs. Recency Effect – Page 164 Primacy Effect: More likely to remember the stimuli (in this case, words) presented at the beginning of a sequence. Had time to rehears words and move them to LTM. Regency Effect: Better memory for stimuli (in this case, words) presented at the end of a sequence. Most recently presented words are still in STM.

The case of H.M. – Page 170 Underwent experimental procedure designed to eliminate his severe epileptic seizures. Removed his hippocampus on both sides of his brain. Succeeded in decreasing seizures, but had unintended effect of eliminated his ability to form new LTMs. STM remained, but he couldn’t transfer STMs to LTM. Though this was tragic for HM, this shed light into the Hippocampus’s role in forming new LTMs and put forth the notion that STM and LTM are served by separate brain regions. Propaganda Effect – Page 184 Participants are more likely to rate statements they have read or heard before as being true, simply because they have been exposed to them before. Priming – Page 182 Occurs when the presentation of one stimulus (priming stimulus) changes the way a person responds to another stimulus (the test stimulus). PODSCAST – Chronic Exposure to Traumatic Stress The amygdala is related to emotional memories. When we think about emotional memories, it produces cortisol, a stress hormone. The amygdala has a positive association with HPA axis. The HPA Axis is a common stress pathway composed of the thalamus, the pituitary gland, and the adrenal gland. Once activated it releases cortisol which is a hormone related to stress. After cortisol is released, there is a loop that goes back to the hippocampus. The hippocampus is related to the storage of memory. The hippocampus has a negative association with HPA axis and it acts as a kind of thermostat or regulator for the HPA axis. If we have too much cortisol released, the hippocampus will begin to shut down the HPA axis. With chronic exposure to traumatic stress, evidence shows that the hippocampus begins to shut down, it shrinks in size, and the nerve cells in that region start to atrophy. It’s overstimulated and cells begin to die off. This renders the hippocampus ineffective and no longer able to regulate the production of cortisol. This then leads to the chronic activation of the HPA Axis and over production of cortisol. This over production or inhibited inability to stop production of cortisol results in stunted growth and memory loss as the hippocampus is not able to function effectively and therefore cannot affectively store memory....