Cognitive Psychology: Visual Attention

Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere. The stimulus is not attended to or perceived at all. It conforms to predictions made by load theory.

Cognitive tests where participants were shown multiple images and were asked to report changes they noticed across the images.

Failing to notice changes in the environment, especially changes that seem obvious, like discontinuities in film and television.

<p>The process by which features such as color, form, motion, and location are combined to create our perception of a coherent object.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This theory proposes that scene perception occurs in two stages: 1. Preattentive stage: features are extracted from objects automatically without effort or attention. 2. Focused attention stage: features are combined into whole, coherent objects, requiring attention.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>A result of Treisman and Schmidt's FIT tests, where properties from different objects shown in tests were incorrectly placed together, suggesting that features are sometimes not accurately bound during the focused attention stage.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The process involving retaining, retrieving, and using information about stimuli, events, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer present. It's active whenever past experiences impact our thoughts or behavior.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This model describes memory as a mechanism that involves processing information through a series of stages, including sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Active processes supporting encoding that can be controlled, such as rehearsal strategies.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Information is retained for a brief moment, with a slight delay. The length depends on whether it is auditory or visually based.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Brief sensory memory of things we see, responsible for persistence of vision (ex: trails of light following a sparkler).</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Sperling designed a paradigm to measure capacity and duration of sensory memory through an array of letters shown in a quick flash. Participants were asked to report letters from a single row based on an audio tone played (partial report). The accuracy of responses decreased with a delay from when the letters were shown to when they had to respond, supporting the existence of sensory memory capacity.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Peterson and Peterson measured the duration of short-term memory by asking participants to read three letters and a number, then count backwards by threes. The delay duration before recall was manipulated, and accuracy decreased with longer delays, suggesting the limitations of short-term memory duration.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>A series of numbers is shown to participants, and they are asked to recall the numbers in order. The length of the number sequence increases in each trial. The test estimates the capacity of short-term memory for numbers to be around 7 +/- 2 items.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Researchers used this paradigm to determine if the capacity for numbers in short-term memory is different from shapes. Participants were shown images with shapes and had to report any changes.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>There is an ongoing debate about the nature of short-term memory. Some evidence suggests a fixed capacity, while others believe that the complexity of stimuli determines its encoding based on how much &quot;space&quot; it takes up. For example, squares, cubes, and Chinese characters may be remembered differently based on familiarity and ease of change detection.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>A newer understanding of short-term memory that involves the active and dynamic manipulation and processing of information across time. It works as a buffer or placeholder for information to be manipulated or &quot;worked on&quot; without committing it to long-term memory.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This model proposed that mental operations could be performed on information held in conscious awareness independent of long-term memory and that performance under dual-task conditions would be as good as single-task conditions as long as the two tasks engaged different domains of information (used different cognitive resources).</p> Signup and view all the answers

<ol> <li>Phonological loop: works with verbal and auditory information. 2. Visuospatial sketchpad: deals with visual and spatial information. 3. Central executive: controls the flow of information, allocates needed components, and pulls from long-term memory.</li> </ol> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This theory measures the ability to differentiate between information-bearing patterns and random patterns with the presence of distractors. Think about the n-back experiment.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>A component of working memory that deals with verbal information. It consists of: 1. Phonological store: limited capacity storage for information for a few seconds. 2. Articulatory rehearsal process: helps to prevent decay of information in the phonological store by repeating it.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The finding that serial recall of visually presented words is worse when the words are phonologically similar rather than phonologically dissimilar.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Memory for lists of shorter words is better than memory for lists of longer words, since longer words take longer to rehearse and to produce recall.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The part of working memory that holds and processes visual and spatial information. Visual imagery, the creation of visual images in the mind in the absence of a physical visual stimulus, is one way information is processed here.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>A task used to investigate the visuospatial sketchpad. Participants are asked to determine if two shapes presented at different angles are the same or not. To compare them, they must manipulate the images mentally within their working memory. Increased angle differences lead to longer reaction times.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>It acts as an attention controller in the working memory system. It controls the flow of information, focuses, divides and switches attention, and controls irrelevant information suppression.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<ol> <li>Perseveration: repeating an activity when it is not accomplishing our goals. This goes against the ideas that the central executive should reduce perseveration with time and practice. 2. Black box: it lacks a good description, evidence, and testing (too theoretical).</li> </ol> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This is another component of working memory that helps explain how we can remember information that exceeds the capacity of our short-term memory. It acts as a temporary storage place for information that is not immediately needed but may be retrieved from the visuospatial sketchpad or phonological loop soon.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This brain region is responsible for processing incoming visual and auditory information. Monkeys without prefrontal cortex have difficulty holding information in working memory, as demonstrated with a delay response task.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>An archive or permanent storage of information about past events and knowledge learned. It works closely with short-term and working memory. Storage ranges from a few moments ago to as far back in the past as one can remember, with more recent memories often being more detailed.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Murdoch's study displays the distinction between short-term and long-term memories with a graph. Participants are shown a stimulus list and write down all the words they remember. The primacy effect (better memory for earlier items) is explained by more time for rehearsal. The recency effect (better memory for later items) is explained by the short-term memory still being active during the test. The recency effect can be eliminated with a delay.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>In short-term memory, it involves remembering a pattern by representing it visually in your mind. In long-term memory, it involves visualizing an image you've seen in the past, but this is not always accurate.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>In short-term memory, it involves representing the sounds of letters in your mind right after hearing them. In long-term memory, it involves repeating a song you've heard many times before.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>In short-term memory, it involves placing words in a task into categories based on meaning (making sense of what you are experiencing). In long-term memory, it involves recalling information about something relevant to you in detail.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This occurs when old information interferes with new information trying to be learned (ex: learning French in elementary school and struggling to learn Spanish in high school).</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Participants were presented with words related to either fruits or professions, creating proactive interference. Interference was attributed to the meanings of the words. Release from proactive interference was observed when participants were given a new category of words (ex: vegetables).</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>It contributes to understanding the involvement of the hippocampus in encoding long-term memories. A double dissociation between short-term and long-term memory exists, meaning that when one is damaged, the other still works, though not to the same degree.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<ol> <li>Explicit memory: conscious memories, including episodic and semantic. 2. Implicit memory: unconscious memories, including procedural memory, priming, and conditioning.</li> </ol> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Episodic details can be lost eventually, leaving only semantic memory (comes with time). Acquiring knowledge may begin as episodic and fade to semantic. Semantic memory can be enhanced if associated with episodic detail.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Autobiographical memory is the memory of a specific experience, including semantic and episodic aspects. For example, remembering a date (episodic) and the street address of the restaurant it was in (semantic). Personal semantic memory refers to semantic memories that have personal significance (ex: remembering the place you went on the date and how it made you feel).</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This procedure investigates encoding in long-term memory. &quot;Remember&quot; response: if the stimulus is familiar and the circumstances under which it was encountered can be remembered. &quot;Know&quot; response: if the stimulus is familiar but the participant doesn't remember experiencing it before.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>These are unconscious memories. Examples include: 1. Procedural memory: memory for skills or actions. 2. Priming: prior exposure to a stimulus changes a subsequent response (ex: learning from the environment). 3. Conditioning: a response from continuous exposure to a stimulus (like pairing a neutral stimulus with a reflex).</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Expertise in a skill may result in it being carried out with a degree of automaticity that the individual performing the action has little to no recollection of what actually happened. Memories blend together or become unimportant/don't stand out.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of them. The propaganda effect is an example of this, where we rate statements as true if we've seen them before.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This represents another example of behavior mediated by procedural memory. Classically conditioned responses can affect behavior without conscious awareness, but at the same time, retrieval leads to activity in explicit memory.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<ol> <li>Shallow processing: little attention to meaning, focusing on physical features (results in poor memory). 2. Deep processing: deep attention to meaning (results in better memory).</li> </ol> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This is a fallacy in which the argument repeats the claim as a way to provide evidence. Assuming whatever method produces better memory performance must have done so because it involved deeper processing (explaining memory performance based on the levels of processing theory).</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>These include: 1. Linking words to yourself. 2. Visual imagery. 3. Generating information. 4. Organizing information. 5. Relating words to survival value (emotional response). 6. Retrieval practice.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Learning through testing yourself is more effective than rereading, as shown by Roediger and Karpicke's study of retrieval practice.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Cued recall is a procedure where the participant is given cues, like words or phrases, to aid recall of previously experienced stimuli. Free recall involves asking the participant to recall stimuli without any cues. Cued recall is often better because cues lead to accessing long-term memory by connecting to related items, memories, facts, and ideas. Cues are most effective when created by the person using them.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This phenomenon describes remembering something better when the conditions under which we retrieve information are similar to the conditions under which we encoded it. For example, studying in the same room in which you will take the exam.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>If learning is associated with a particular internal state (like mood or feelings), memory is better if the state at encoding matches the state at retrieval. For example, feeling excited when you encode a fact and feeling excited when you try to remember it.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The idea that memory is likely to transfer from one situation to another when the encoding and retrieval contexts of the situations match. Matching what you want to do with the skills being learned (do practice tests for an exam). For example, the format of class content being similar to the format of tests/assessments --&gt; higher retrieval.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>It is the process of transforming new memories from a fragile state to a more permanent one. It occurs both during active learning and when experiencing sensory experiences. Synaptic consolidation occurs at the level of synapses, while systems consolidation involves a gradual reorganization of circuits in the brain (a slow process).</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Retrograde amnesia involves the loss of memory for events prior to a trauma (larger for more recent memories). Anterograde amnesia involves the loss of memory for events after a trauma. Both can occur simultaneously.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This model of consolidation challenges the standard model, which proposes that the hippocampus is only needed during initial encoding. The multiple trace model proposes that the hippocampus remains involved in the retrieval of some memories in the distant past. The hippocampus coordinates neural firing to guide memories. Evidence suggests continued involvement of the hippocampus in retrieving episodic memories (but not semantic). Both the standard and multiple trace models may be present during consolidation and retrieval, but the hippocampus may be more involved in episodic memory.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Participants over 40 were asked to recall events in their lives and found high memory for recent events and for events occurring in adolescence and early adulthood (10-30). This is called the reminiscence bump. The bump is likely due to this period being when the most important, life-changing events happen, causing more autobiographical memories to be encoded.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<ol> <li>Self-image: period of assuming one's self-image. 2. Cognitive: encoding is best during times of rapid change. 3. Cultural life script: culturally shared expectations structure recall.</li> </ol> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Memories associated with circumstances surrounding shocking, highly charged, important events. Typically involves contextual content of an episodic nature—what were you doing, who were you with, what did you feel? For example, where you were when 9/11 happened, not what actually happened. Even though these memories feel vivid, they are often inaccurate or lacking in detail, even when participants feel confident.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Repeated viewing or hearing of an event can cause mistakes about our memories of it by making the event highly familiar, inflating confidence in the accuracy of the memory.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Source memory is the process of attributing the origins of memories. A source monitoring error occurs when we misidentify the sources of our memory. Cryptoamnesia involves unconscious plagiarism due to the lack of recognition of the original source.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Memory based on knowledge gained through experience, often including information implied or consistent with the remembered information but was not explicitly stated.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Knowledge about some aspect of the environment. For example, &quot;bird&quot;—feathers, talons, wings, beak.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event. Loftus and Palmer's study showed participants a video of a car crash and asked them to estimate the speed of the cars at impact while manipulating the verbs used in the question: &quot;How fast were the cars doing when they... smashed/collided/bumped/hit/contacted?&quot; Stronger action verbs caused participants to report higher speed estimates, highlighting how misleading information can influence our memory for an event.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Eyewitness testimony can be very convincing, as people tend to assume that we see and remember things accurately. However, the constructed nature of memory and perception means that our memory is often misleading, incomplete, or untrue. Errors in eyewitness testimony can occur because of factors like attention and arousal (which becomes narrowed toward specific stimuli) or because of feelings of familiarity (leading to false positives).</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Studies show that a false suggestion can grow into a vivid, detailed, and believable personal memory. Research using optogenetic reactivation of hippocampal neurons in mice showed that activating fear-based memories by delivering shocks can infer a retrieval of memory based on freezing behaviour. This suggests that false memories can be implanted by manipulating memory processes.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>MDMA-assisted psychotherapy is being evaluated as a treatment for PTSD, and propanolol (a beta-blocker) has been used as a tool to disrupt memory consolidation for traumatic experiences. Relevant mechanisms in propanolol may involve allowing patients to access their traumas with less intensity, enabling them to reinterpret them rationally. This demonstrates the fragility of memories and the potential to modify our understanding of past events.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Conceptual knowledge enables us to recognize objects and events and make inferences about their properties. Concepts are mental representations used for various cognitive functions. Categories are examples of a particular concept. Categorization is the process of placing things into groups called categories.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>They help us deal with novel information by acting as &quot;pointers of knowledge&quot; or labels/placeholders. This parallels with schemas.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This approach determines category membership based on whether an object meets the definition for the category. However, this approach lacks flexibility and can be problematic.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Features that appear to be characteristic of category members but may not be possessed by every member.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This approach proposes that concepts are represented based on a typical (common) instance of that concept, rather than any specific real example, and this representation is determined by characteristic features.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>High prototypicality: a category member closely resembles its prototype (ex: blue jay for bird). Low prototypicality: a category member does not closely resemble its prototype (ex: penguin for bird).</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The ability to judge highly prototypical objects more rapidly. Smith's experiment asked participants to evaluate whether statements were true, and the typicality effect was observed.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This approach involves concepts represented by multiple examples, unlike the prototype approach, which relies on a single typical instance. This approach is similar to the prototype approach as you are still representing a category rather than defining it; both can be good for different things: prototypes are helpful earlier in learning and for large categories, whereas an exemplar approach can work for later learning and small categories.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This is a relevant mechanism in organizing relationships between properties and a particular category. We can distinguish between global (superordinate), basic, and specific (subordinate) levels. As you move down the hierarchy, more information and specificity are gained.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>In semantic networks, concepts are represented by nodes, and related concepts are linked. Inheritance is the principle that lower-level items share properties with higher-level items. This demonstrates a cognitive economy, and activation occurs when a node is aroused, displaying connecting links and priming our memory.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>This hypothesis assumes that things can be categorized along many different dimensions. This approach has found consistency in different dimensions that people rely on to categorize specific types of objects. For example, animals are identified primarily based on motion and colour.</p> Signup and view all the answers