Psych 3030 Exam 1 Notes PDF

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Notes for all lectures included on Exam 1 when PSYC 3030 was taught by Dr. Papesh....

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I.

Human Information Processing A.

A General Overview 1.

How does human memory interact with the environment? a) Human information processing is seen as interacting memory systems. There is a flow chart that goes along with this. (1) Some object  Sensory Memory (Raw data, large capacity, information lost very quickly)  Short Term Memory (“encoded data”, limited capacity)  Long Term Memory (“Complex data”, large capacity; permanent…?) (2) A more accurate model would be Sensory Memory Long Term Memory Short Term Memory

2.

Sensory Memory a) We have nine senses; the five basic senses are visual (sight), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), tactile (touch), and auditory (hearing). The four other senses are nacioceptive (pain), thermal (temperature), vestibular (balance), and proprioceptive (body position). b)

Why do we have sensory memory? (1) It briefly holds information in its literal form, giving perceptual processes time to work. (2)

c)

It’s also a part of attention.

Functions of Sensory Memory (1) Collects information to be processed, holds information (briefly) during processing, and fills in the blanks when stimulation is intermittent. (a) For example, flip books – you have the perception of movement, but we know it’s a series of still pictures. The same goes for when someone goes “What’d you say?” but then they answer anyway.

d)

Iconic Memory (1) Segner (1740) is credited with initiating the study of iconic (visual) memory

(2) Sperling (1960) measured the capacity and duration of iconic memory with a tachistoscope (t-scope) (a) This allowed him to precisely control how long participants viewed something. (b)

There were two conditions, partial and whole report.

(c) For partial report, about 82% of information remained available for up to 1 second (i) But by the time we start reporting things (whole report), we start forgetting already! (3)

Duration of Iconic Memory (a) Averbach and Sperling (1961): Does iconic memory fade because of decay or interference? (i) They varied the time between the display and the tone and whether the pre/post display was light or dark. (ii) When the pre/post display was light, the new visual information interfered with iconic sensory memory. (iii) **Interference causes us to forget more than decay!!**

(4)

Interference with Sensory memory? (a)

e)

Bar vs. circle – integrated memory; see slides.

Echoic Memory (1) Darwin (1972) measured echoic memory using his “threeeared man” experiment. (a) Participants heard three streams of letters on three channels at once; a visual cue told them which ear to report. (b) The results were similar to vision, but with a longer duration.

3.

What comes after sensory memory? Attention! a)

Attention and Pattern Recognition

(1) Pattern Recognition involves an interaction of sensory information and long-term memory, combined in short-term memory. (2) We will roughly equate STM with consciousness; STM can be seen as the “cognitive workbench” b)

Attention (1)

Defined as the interface between memory systems.

(2)

Why do we have attention? (a) We are constantly bombarded with information, but most of it does not enter consciousness (STM) (b) Attention determines what information receives further analysis.

(3)

Central Assumptions (a) STM is a limited capacity system; we can’t process all information at once. (b) We often refer to a bottleneck in information processing. (c) Many studies have been dedicated to finding the locus (origination point) of the bottleneck

(4)

What is attention? (a) You know what it’s like to think hard about something versus letting your mind wander, when something grabs your attention, etc. You are probably able to tune things out. (b) Attention can be defined as a pool of mental effort that is selective (you choose what to pay attention to), shiftable (you can go from one thing to another), and divisible (you can pay attention to several things at once).

(5)

Selective Attention for auditory signals (a)

Why auditory signals? Eyes move – ears don’t!

(b) This was originally studied with dichotic listening; Cherry (1953) had participants wear headphones and listen to a shadowed (followed) vs. unattended ear

(i) Cherry also asked what participants remembered from the unattended ear; they could remember physical attributes (male or female, loud or quiet) (ii) They didn’t notice some important details, though – subjects couldn’t tell when foreign languages were included or when words were repeated up to 35 freaking times. (6) Broadbent (1958) developed a theory based on Cherry’s findings (a) Sensory Memory holds information in a pre-attentive store; after selection, stimuli are shunted along a limitedcapacity channel (b) Once information gets to the recognition device, abstract analysis (meaning, etc.) occurs (c) Sensory Memory (preattentive store)  Filter (selection device)  Detector (recognition device)  STM (d)

There are a few problems, though… (i) The Cocktail Party Effect (you hear your name and divert your attention automatically) (ii) Some information (e.g. the subject’s name) “sneaks through” because of meaning

(7)

Treisman’s story (a) The unattended message must receive some level of semantic analysis; it can’t be purely pre-attentive (i) (b)

In other words, we attend to meaning

Treisman’s attention model (i) All stimuli receive some form of meaningful analysis; attention can prioritize, but not shut off completely; messages are analyzed for physical properties, language, and meaning (ii) Input  Sensory Memory  Attenuator  Dictionary Unit (threshold recognition)

(iii) Certain words have to jump higher or lower “hurdles” to be noticed (8) Both Broadbent and Treisman do, however, have “early selection models”. There is recognition or identification BEFORE STM. (9)

Problems for Early Selection (a) Mackay (1973): The unattended message influenced participants’ later decisions about the meaning of the ambiguous word (in this case, bank).

(10)

Deutsch and Deutsch (1963) (a) Proposed a late-selection model to rememdy the earlyselection models (b) All stimuli pass the detection device; selection for further processing occurs in STM. (c) Input  Sensory Memory  Detection (paying attention)  STM (selection occurs here)

(11) All three theories suggest that attention is a system that selects one signal from its competitors. In other words, you can think of attention like a spotlight. (a) The theories are all supported by phenomena like the Cocktail Party Effect. (b) What we have learned: Unless we are paying attention to the critical detail (and even sometimes when we are), we fail to see many changes that occur around us. c)

Attention and Perception (cont’d) (1)

Kahnman’s Capacity Theory (a) Developed in response to failures of selective attention; everyday activities that divide attention seem incompatible with filter theories, so… (b) What seems to be more important is the level of demand a task has. Attention is a limited pool of energy that we try to divide or concentrate optimally. (i) We can do two (or more) things at once as long as we don’t exceed capacity!

(c) Two factors will determine whether tasks will exceed capacity: (i) Task difficulty (for example, you tend to turn down the car radio during heavy traffic to concentrate) (ii) Task similarity (for example, trying to read while someone is talking) (2)

Posner and Boies (1971): Dual Task (a) Subjects did 2 simultaneous tasks; letter matching (A-A vs. A-B) and tone detection (press a button when you hear a tone) (b) Results showed that participants could switch attention between tasks (even easy ones), but it has cognitive costs

(3) it?

So attention is limited and we all suck. What can we do about

(a) Practice! We are all probably pretty skilled at some things more than others, like taking notes and listening in class, or walking, talking, and looking at stuff at the mall, or using chopsticks, or reading. (b)

Practice reduces the capacity usurped by a task.

(4) Automatic (overlearned) processes require no attention and can be carried out in parallel with other processes (like reading). Controlled processes require attention and have to be carried out in serial with other tasks. (a) Spelke, Hirst, and Neisser (1976): People had to read a book aloud while listening to a message and typing it. (i) After six weeks of practice, people could perform both tasks almost perfectly (holy shit bro). (b) Shiffrin and Schneider (1977): Subjects completed two simultaneous tasks; 1. Hold information about a stimulus and 2. Pay attention to distractions (i) Consistent mapping (targets and distractions are different categories; i.e. letters vs. numbers) versus Varied mapping (targets and distractions are the same categories; all letters, all numbers)

(ii) For consistent mapping, practice drastically increased performance; only time frame affected performance; subjects learned to search all of the frames in parallel without a cost of increasing complexity! (a) This implies that the task became automatic processing.

(iii) For varied mapping, everything affected performance. Subjects detected targets poorly, especially when the memory set or the frame size were large; it suggests that subjects had to search all of the frames in serial, with large processing costs with increased complexity. (a)

(5)

Sooo basically, controlled processing.

Is automaticity always learned? Does it ever occur naturally? (a) Work by Treisman and colleagues suggest that some automatic processing is “built-in” (i) Like “pop-out effects” (e.g. looking for a blue square in a bunch of red squares) (b)

Feature Search (i) Unique targets are detected quickly; RTs are not affected by number of distractors; yes/no are equally fast, which indicates a parallel (automatic) search

(c)

Conjunction Search (i) Conjunctions of features are detected slowly; RTs increase with number of distractor items; no responses are slower than yes responses (about a 2:1 ratio), which indicates a serial (controlled) search

(6)

Why do pop-out effects occur? (a)

Triesman’s Feature Integration Theory (i) Basic features of objects (e.g. color) are detected automatically (ii)

Features must then be combined into objects

(a) Object  Preattentive Stage (analyze features)  Focused attention (combine features) Perception! (b) Detecting a feature is faster than detecting the absence of a feature!

(b)

Evidence for FIT (i)

Illusory Conjunction (a) If the brain detects and assembles features, does it ever mess up? Our perception recombines things when shapes are suggested – like when there are circles, people see illusory triangles!

4.

Pattern Recognition and Perception a) Preattentive (basic features are detected automatically) and focused attention (basic features are combined into objects) b) Pattern recognition is organizing sensory information into coherent wholes c)

Perception: How do we interpret sensation? (1) Naïve Realism – assumes that perception is direct, with no cognitive intervention or guesswork. (a) Says that perception is basically a “bottom up” process; we create mental states by combining sensory building blocks. (2)

Problems with Purely Bottom-Up Perceptions (a) The sheer volume of information processing may be impossible; consider reading of scanning a crowded room – could require millions of features! (b)

Also the Thatcher Effect!...