Cognitive Psych Exam.docx

Cognition refers to the mental processes such as perception, attention and memory that are what the mind creates. Cognition involves perception, paying attention, remembering, distinguishing items in a category, visualizing, understanding and production of language, problem solving, reasoning and de...

Cognition refers to the mental processes such as perception, attention and memory that are what the mind creates. Cognition involves perception, paying attention, remembering, distinguishing items in a category, visualizing, understanding and production of language, problem solving, reasoning and decision making. These all include hidden processes of which we may not be aware. The mind is involved in formaing and recalling memories, solving problems, considering possibilites and making decisions. It is necessary for survival and normal functioning. It is also a symbol of creativity and intelligence. It creates representations of the world so we can act in it. Mental responses cannot be measured directly but can be inferred from the participant’s behaviour. Although behaviourism used to be the primary researched topic in psychology, from the 1960s there lead to a decline in behaviourism due to controversy over language acquisition with Skinner’s theory of children learning language through imitation and reward being disputed by Chomsky’s (1959) theory that children do not only learn language through imitation and reinforcement, children say things that they have never heard and say things that they have not been rewarded for. Thus it has been hypothesised that language must be determined by inborn biological processes, a leap from a behaviourist point of view to a cognitive one. To understand complex cognitive behaviours, observable behaviour must be measured, inferences about underling cognitive activity must be evaluated and what this behaviour says about how the mind works must be considered. Development of the computer also contributed to out understanding of the way the mind operated, with models of computer processing representing similar processes to models of cognitive processing, particularly in relation to an input/stimulus being transferred to memory. Introduction: Cognition encompasses a wide array of mental processes, including perception, attention, memory, problem-solving, and decision-making, which collectively shape our understanding of the world and guide our actions within it. These processes are often hidden from conscious awareness but play a fundamental role in our everyday experiences. The mind engages in a multitude of cognitive activities, ranging from forming and recalling memories to considering possibilities and making decisions, all of which are essential for our survival and functioning in the world. Moreover, cognition serves as a symbol of creativity and intelligence, allowing us to create mental representations of the world and manipulate them to achieve our goals. While mental responses cannot be directly measured, they can be inferred from observable behavior, providing insight into the underlying cognitive processes at play. This approach has become central to the study of cognitive psychology, which seeks to understand how the mind operates by examining behavior and drawing inferences about cognitive activity. Historically, behaviorism dominated the field of psychology, emphasizing the study of observable behavior as the primary focus of research. However, beginning in the 1960s, there was a shift away from behaviorism, sparked in part by controversies surrounding theories of language acquisition. B.F. Skinner's behaviorist theory, which proposed that children learn language through imitation and reinforcement, was challenged by Noam Chomsky's assertion that language acquisition involves innate biological processes rather than mere imitation and reward. This marked a significant transition from a behaviorist perspective to a cognitive one, highlighting the importance of considering internal mental processes in understanding behavior. The development of computer technology further contributed to our understanding of cognitive processes, as models of computer processing mirrored similar processes in human cognition. Concepts such as input, processing, and memory storage in computer systems provided a framework for understanding cognitive functioning, particularly in relation to how stimuli are processed and stored in memory. In summary, cognitive psychology focuses on unraveling the complexities of human cognition by examining observable behavior, evaluating inferences about underlying cognitive activity, and considering the implications of this activity for understanding the mind. Through the integration of various methodologies and theoretical perspectives, cognitive psychology continues to shed light on the intricate workings of the human mind. Perception Perception is experience resulting from stimulation of the senses. Perception can change based on added information. Perception involves a process similar to reasoning or problem solving. Perception can occur in conjunction with actions. It is possible that true human perceptual processes are uniue to humans. Attempts to create artificial forms of perception (machines) have been met with limited success and each time have had problems that could not be solved, this may be attributed to the inverse projection problem in which machines find it difficult to determine the object responsible for a particular image on the retina, machines also can find it difficult to identify hidden or blurred objects or objects can look different from different viewpoints. The human perceptual system uses two types of information: environmental emnergy stimulating the receptors and knowledge and expectationms the observer brings to the situation Both bottom up processing and top-down processing are involved in perception. Direct perception theories heavily involve bottom-up processing where perception comes from stimuli in the environment and parts are identifeied and put together, and then recognition occurs. Constructive perception theories heavily involve top-down processing where processing originates in the brain or the ‘top’ of the perceptual system and people actively construct perceptions using information based on expectations. Perception as a whole is always a combination of both top-down and bottom up processing, which can be seen in Figure 1. Figure 1 Top down and Bottom up Processing in Perception Expectancies or prior knowledge can lead us to perceive the world accurately at times yet inaccurately at other times, and different people might interpret the same stimulus differently. An explanation for why this may occur is the influence of context. The presentation of various stimuli in additon to a focal point can influence how the focal point is perceived, for example, if two normal-sized individuals stand in the Ames Room, they may be perecieved as larger or smaller than they actually are due to the context of the Ames room. Perception of Language Top-down processing influences our perception of language based on our individual experience with the language. Speech segmentation is the ability to tell when one word ends and another begins. Transitional probabilities is knowing which sound will likely follow another in a word. Perception of Pain Pain occurs when receptors in the skin are stimulated and in accordance with the direct pathway model, the connections from the skin to brain are triggered. This is a bottom-up process because it depends on stimulation of the receptors. Pain occurs when recpetors in the skin are stimulated. Pain is also influenced by what a person expects, how the person directs their attention, and distracting stimuli present. Context also influences pain perception, as can be seen in Nilsson et al.,’s experiment on how distraction influences pain and distress in children during wound care which found that serious gaming reduced the observed pain behaviour and self-reported distress compared with the other groups. Helmholtz’s Unconscious Inference theory suggests that perceptions are the results of unconscious assumptions we make about the environment where we use our knowledge to inform our perceptions. Humans infer much of what they know about the world. This is a top-down approach to perception. Similarly, the likelihood principle suggests that we perceive the world in the way that is ‘most likely’ based on our past experiences. The old view the perception is known as structuralism and approaches perception as a sum of sensations. The new view of perception involves Gestalt principles and suggests that the mind groups patterns according to intrinsic laws of perceptual organization. Principles of Perceptual Organization include good continuation, law of pragnanz, principle of similarity and similarity of colour. Principle of good continuation states that lines tend to be seen as following the smoothest path. Law of pragnanz suggests that every stimulus pattern is seen so the resulting structure is as simple as possible. The principle of similarity suggests that similar things appear grouped together. Finally, similarity of colour causes grouping, where similar colours are grouped together in a scene. Gestalt Principles of Perceptual Organization also dictate that perception is determined by specific organizing principles, not just dark and light stimuli activating the retina. The role of experience is minor compared to these intrinsic ‘built in’ principles. It also suggests that although experience can influence perception, it is not the key driver. Regularities of the enviornment also influence human perception. Based on common physical properties of the environment, humans perceive things in a certain way. The oblique effect occurs in humans, where we perceive verticals and horizontals more easily than other orientations. The light-from-above assumption suggests that we as humans assume light comes from above becuase this is common in our environment. We perceive shadows as specific information about depth and distance. Semantic regularities of the environment can also influence perception and suggests that the meaning of a given scene is related to what happens within that scene. Semantic regularities are the characteristics associated with functions carried out in different types of scenes. Scene shemas are relevant to understanding the influence of semantic environmental regularitie. Scene schemas are the knowledge of what a given scene ordinarily contains, for example, in a jewellery case at Tiffany’s, you would not expect to see a plate of fish and chips but you would expect to see diamond rings. Another theory of human perception is Bayesian Inferences, which suggests that one’s estimate of the probability of a given outcome is influenced by two factors: the prior probability and the likelihood of a given outcome. For example, a football fan may have a prior belief of his favourite team winning. Further data such as the skill level of players on his team, his teams current proficiency at winning games, and the inferior skill level of the other team, contribute to the likelihood of his team winning. Taking the priors and the likelhood together results in the conclusion that the fan’s team is most likely going to win the match. In conclusion, top-dwon processing is involved in object perception through the principles involved in unconscious ingerence, envrionmental regularities and bayesian inference and bottom-up processing can be seen in Gestalt princiuples. An explanation for why regulaties and inferences occur in perception is neuron interaction. Some neurons respond best to things that occur regularly in the environment. Neurons become tunes to respond best to what we commonly experience, for example horizontals and verticals being percieved more easily or the automatic association of diamonds with Tiffany’s. Familiarity with environments and development of schemas can cause experience-dependent plasticity, the mechanism through which the structure of the brain is changed by experience. Perception and action can interact as constant coordination occurs in the brain as we perceive stimuli while also taking action toward them. For example when picking up a cup of coffee, a person would first percieve and recognise the cup, then reach for it, and then grasp it and pick it up. Additionally movement can facilitate perception. Our movement adds complexity to perception compared to if we remain static but moving around a stimulus offers us more views to create accurate perceptions. For example, when buying a house, one would not simply look at one side of the exterior and draw conclusions but instead inspect it from multiple viewpoints. There are two pathways involved in perception. The ventral pathway determines the identity of an object and the dorsal pathway determines the location of an object. In an experiment conducted by Ungerleider and Mishkin on monkeys, it was found that lesioning in the temporal lobe made object discrimination difficult and lesioniung in the parietal lobe made landmark discrimination difficult. Milner and Goodale (1995) determined that the perception pathway lads from the visual cortex to the temporal lobe and corresponds to the what pathway. They also determined that the action pathway stems from the visual cortex to the parietal lobe and corresponds with the how and where pathway. In the Ebbinghaus illusion people generally judge the central circle to be smaller compared to its actual size when surrounded by bigger circles and vice versa. Object perception was misled by the size of the surrounding circles, vision for action system was not. Attention ‘Attention... is the taking posession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought...It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal with others...’ (James, 1980). Attention is the ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations in our environment. There are 3 forms of attention, sustained, selective and divided. Sustained attention is maintaining focus on a task over time. Selectove attnetion is attending to one thing while ignoring others. Divided attention is paying attention to more than one thing at a time. Sustained attention is the ability to maintain focus on a task over time, especially in conditions of monotony or repetition. Perfromance in sustained attention declines over time, which is known as vigilance decrement. Sustained attention fluctuates from moment to moment, from ‘in the zone’ periods to ‘out of the zone’ periods. The decline in perfromance over time of sustained attention is visible in the Mackworth Clock Task created by Norman Mackworth to measure sustained attention in radar operations during WW II. Participants would do the task for 2 hours. Mackwork found that people’s ability to detect targets decreased over time. Selective Attention is the ability to foucs on one message and ignore others. We do not attend to a large graction of the information in the environment. We filter out some information and promote other information for further processing. Selective attention can be seen when inattentional blindness occurs, or when we do not notice something because we are focused on something else. This can be seen in the invisible gorilla experiment, participants are asked to watch a video and count the number of ball passes between people on the screen, as they are so focused on the task they fail to notice a gorilla enter the room. Dichotic listening experiments aided our understanding of divided attention. In this task one message is presented to the left ear and another to the right ear. The participant shadows one message to ensure he is attending to that message.The experiment aimed to evaluate if we can completely filter out the message to the unattended ear and attend only to the shadowed message. Participants could not report the content of the message in the unattended ear. They knew that there was a message. They knew the gender of the speaker. However the unattended ear is being processed at some level as suggested by the findings of the Cocktail party effect, where a change in gender and tone is noticed despite attention not being selectively applied to the speaker. Most models of selective attention concur that attention filtering occurs at some point in the attention process, however some models theorise that it occurs early in prcoessing and others later in processing. Early selection models include Broadbent’s filter model, intermediate selection model includes Treisman’s attenuarion model and Late selection models include MacKay’s (1973). Broadbent’s filter Model suggests that incoming messages are filtered before incoming information is analyzed for meaning. The components of Broadbent’s Filter model includes sensory memory, which holds all the information for a fraction of a second and transfers it to the next stag, the filter, which identifes attended messages based on physical characteristics and only the attended message is passed on to the next stage, and the detector which processes all information to determine higher-level characteristics of the message. The message is received from the senses, passes through sensory memory, through the filter, then through the detector and then to memory. Broadbent’s model could not explain certain things such as the cocktail party phenomenon, the ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out other stimuli, especially at a party where there are a lot of simultaneous conversations. An intermediate selection model is Treisman’s Attenuation Model. In this model attended messages can be separated from unattended messages early in the information-processing system. The components of Treisman’s Attenuation Model include the attenuator which analyses incoming messsages in terms of physical characteristics, language and meaning. The attended message and weaker unattended message is let through. It also includes a Dictionary unit which contains words each of which have a threshold for being activated (e.g. listener’s name has a low threshold). The attended messag and weaker unattended message is passed through the attenuator through to the dictionary unit and then passed to memory. Tresiman’s attenuation model of selective attention’s dictionary unit can explain the cocktail party phenomenon, as it suggested that even unattended messages can be detected, particularly if they have a low threshold for detection such as one’s own name. MacKay’s late selection model suggests that selection of stimuli for final processing does not occur until after information has been analysed for meaning. In MacKay’s study, he played an ambiguous sentence such as ‘They were throwing stones at the bank’ in the attended ear and in the unattended ear, participants heard either ‘river’ or ‘money’. Participants then had to choose which was the closest to the meaning of the attended message ‘They threw stones toward the side of the river yesterday’ or ‘They threw stones at the savings and loan association yesterday’. The results suggested that the meaning of the biasing word affected participants’ choice even though participants reported that they were unaware of the presentation of the biasing words. Processing capacity is how much information a person can handle at any given moment. Perceptual load is the difficulty of a given task. Low-load (easy) tasks require lower processing capacity. High-load (difficult) tasks – require higher processing capacity. The load theory of attention dictates that low-load tasks use fewer cognitive resources which leaves resources available for processing unattended stimuli whereas high-load tasks use all of a person’s cognitive resources and does not leave any resources to process unattended task irrelavant stimuli. The Stroop Test is an example of how the name of the word interferes with the ability to name the ink color, due to the higher processing capacity required. Divided attention is the ability to pay attention to two things simultaneously, which is facilitated by practice. Schneider and Shiffrin (1977) conducted an experiment where participants were asked to divide attention btween remembering target and minitoring rapidly presented stimuli. This experiment showed improvement in performance with practice, and at a certain point in the experiment participants reported similarly when the task had become automatic. This shows that following multiple trials, automatic processing occurs for one or both of the divided attention tasks, which occurs without intention and only uses some of a person’s cognitive resources. Divided attention can prove detrimental however, as dividing one’s cognitive resources can prove dangerous in situations such as driving or operating heavy machinery. Strayer & Johnston’s 2001 experiment which simulated driving found that participants on the phone missed twice as many red lights and took longer to apply the brakes. The same results occured using a ‘hands-free’ movbile phone. Attention is linked to visual perception. Inattention blindness is when a stimulus that is not attended is not perceived, even though a person might be looking directly at it. This can be seen in an inattentional blindness experiment in which participants were asked to look at a cross and indicate which arm of the cross was longer over 5 trials, there was a small square to the left of the cross however participants never percieved it due their doucs being on the task they were asked. Change blindness is difficulty in detecting changes in similar but slightly different scenes that are presented one after another. The changes are often easy to see once attention is directed to them but are usually undetected in the absence of appropriate attention. Attention is improtatn for experiencing a coherant world. Binding is the process by which features such as color, form, motion and location are combined to create our perception of a coherant object. The binding problem is the problem of explaining how an object’s individual features become bound together, explained by Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory. Accprding to Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory, an object enters the preattentive stage where it is analyzed into features and it then enters the focused attention stage where its features are combined, leading to perception. Objects are analyzed into their features in the preattentive stage, and the feautres are later combined with the aid of attention. The pre-attentive stage is automatic, no effor or attention is used, and it is a subconscious experience.Feature Integration Theory was supported by Treisman and Schmidt’s 1982 expeirment in which participants were asked to report coloured shapes that were shown togehter, however participants reported combinations of featurws from different stimuli including coloured shapes and numbers, they may have known that the shapes were big or small, circles or triangles and the colours were red, yellow, green and blue but they could not attribute the features correctly. This is an example of how the objects are broken down into their features in the preattemntive stage, however is there is a range of items in quick succession it may be difficult to combine these features correctly and perceive them correctly later on. If participants were just asked to focus on objects, they can correctly pair shapes and colours. Feature Integration Theory was also supported by the study of a patient known as R.M, a patient with Balint’s sydnrome, who suffered from parietail lobe damage and was unable to focus attention on individual objects, and a high number of illusory conjunctions were reported. Feature Integration is mostly bottom-up processing. Top-down processing influences processing when participants are told what they would see. Top-down processing combines with feature analysis to help one perceive things accurately. Memory Memory can be defined as the processes involved in retaining, retrieving, and using information about stimuli, images, evenets, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer present. The Modal Model of Memory was defined by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968). Within this model there are three types of memory. Sensory memory, short-term memory and long term memory. Sensory memory is the initial stage of memory that holds all incoming information for seconds or fractions of a second. Short-term memory holds five to seven items for about 15 to 20 seconds. Long-term memory can hold a large amount of information for years or even decades. Atkinson and Shiffrin’s (1968) modal model of memory contains features of many of the memory models that were being proposed in the 1960s. Sensory, short-term and long term memory are called structural features. Control processes are active processes that can be controlled by the person. These include rehearsal, strategies used to make a stimulus more memorable, strategies of attention that help you focus on specific stimuli. The Modal Model memory aids our understanding of storage and retrieval. For example, when somebody looks up the phone number of a take-away, information on the screen enters sensory memory. Then they rehearse the number to keep it in short term memory while making the call. A few days later, the number is retrieved from long-term memory and goes back to short term memory and is remembered, and the takeaway can be ordered again. Sensory memory is the retention, for brief periods of time, of the effects of sensory stimulation. This information decays very quickly. An example of sensory memory is the persistence of vision. Persistence of vision is the retention of the perception of light such as trail of light from a moving sparkler or frames in film. Studies have investigated the capacity and duration of sensory memory (Sperling, 1960). In Sperling’s 1960’s experiment, an array of letters flashed quickly on a screen. Participants were asked to report as many as possible. When told to report as many as possible, it was found that participants could on average report 4.5 out of 12 letters (37.5%). When a tone wasplayed which told them which row to report, participants could report on average 3.3 out of 4 letters (82%) and participants could report any of the rows. When the tone was delayed for a fraction of a second after the letters dissapeared, performance was found the decrease rapidly. The decrease in perfomance is due to the rapid decay of iconic memory. Sensory Memory Iconic memory is the brief sensory memory of the things that we see. It is responsible for persistence of vision. Echoic memory is brief sensory memory of the things that we hear. It is responsible for persistence of sound. Short-Term Memory Short-term memory stores small amounts of information for a brief duration. It includes new information received from the sensory stores and information recalled from long-term memory. In studies conducted to measure the duration of short-term memory, three letters were read, then a three-digit number, then they began counting backwards by threes and then after a set time they were asked to recall three letters. After 3 seconds of counting, participants perormed at 80%. After 18 seconds of counting, participants performed at 10%. Reduction in performance is explained by decay, the vanishing of a memory trace due to the passage of time and exposure to competing stimuli. Digit span tasks have been conducted to measure the capacity of short-term memory. A Digit span task evaluates how many digits a person can remember over a series of trials. They typical result is five to eight items. This suggests that short-term memory lasts 15 to 20 seconds or less. Chunking can improve performance in memory capacity, when small units can be combined into larger meaningul units. For example, instead of memorising a mobile phone number such as 1234567891 as 10 separate items or one large item, it can instead be broken into chunks which are easier to remember, for example 123-456-7891. Ericsson and coworkers (1980) examined the effect of chunking on memory, and trained a college student with average memory ability, and initial difit span of 7, to use chunking. After 230 one-hour training sessions, the student could remember up to 79 digits by chunking them into meaningful units. Alvarex and Cavanagh examined memory capacity however focused on amount of information rather than number of items. They used coloured squares as well as complex objects. They used the change detection procedure. The results found that low information stimuli (coloured squares) had a higher capacity for being remembered than high information stimuli (cubes). Working Memory The Modal model of memory was expanded on by Baddeley and Hitch to include the concept of working memory. Working memory is a limited capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning, and reasoning. Working memory differs from short-term memory. Short term memory holds information for a brief period of time whereas Working Memory is concerned with the storage, processing and maniulation of inforamtion and is active during complex cognition. Hitch’s 1974 model of working memory included the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketch pad and the central executive. Working memory is set up to process different types of information simultaenously and has trouble when similar types of information are presented at the same time. The phonoloigcal loop deals with verbal and auditory information.The phonologicsl loop has two components, the phonological store and the articulatory rehearsal process. The phonological store has a limted capacity and only holds information for a few seconds. The Articulatroy rehearsal process is responsible for rehearsal that keeps in phonological loop from decaying. The phonological similarity effect is when letters or words that sound simlar are confused. The word length effect is when memory for lists of words is better for short words than for long words. It takes longer to rehearse long words and to produce them during recall. Articulatory suppression is when speaking prevents one from rehearsing items to be remembered. This resuces memory span, eliminates word length effect and reduces phonoloigcal similarity effect for reading words. The visuospatial sketch pad creaes visual images in the mind in the abseence of a phjysical stimulus. For example, Shepard and Metzler’s Mental rotation task found that tasks that called for greater rotations in the mind took longer, suggesting that there are other mechanisms at play in imagining images. The central executive acts as the attention controller for focusing, dividing and witching attention. It controls the suppression of irreleavant information. Perseveration is repeatedly performing the same action of thought even if it is not achieving the desired goal. Baddeley’s revised working memory contains the origianl three components of Hitch’s working memory model but includes the episodic buffer. The episodic buffer is a backup store that communicates with long term and working memory components. It holds information longer and has greater capactiy than the phonological loop or visuospatial sketch pad. Working Memory can be localised in the brain. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for processing incoming visual and auditory information. It has been found that monkeys without a prefrontal cortex have difficulty holding information in working memory. Funahasi and coworkers (1989) found that neurons in monkeys responded when when a stimulus was flashed in a partciulat location and during decay, and information remains available via these neurons for as long as the continue firing, suggesting that working memory or the ability to change memory in the mind is due to these neuronal interactions. Working memory is heavily involved in learning ability. Albhabet decoding places great demands on children’s working memory, where letters are converted to sounds and stored in the mind. Working memory is also involved in reading compregension. Text is stored in the mind while manipulating words to understand the content. Working memory also uniquely predicts word reading and reading comprehension (Slattery et al., 2021). Long-Term Memory Long term memory is an archive of information about past events and knowledge learned. It works closely with working memory. Storage stretches from a few moments ago to as far back as one can remember. More recent memories are more detailed. Long term memory covers a span that stretches from about 30 seconds ago to your earliest memories. Murdoch examined the distinction between short-term and long-term memories using the serial position curve. Paricipants were asked to read the stimulus list and write down all words remembered. Mmeory was found to be better for words presented at the beginning of the lsit, which is known as the primacy effect, and at the end of the list, which is known as the recency effect. The primacy effect gave more time to rehearse information, making it more likely to enter long term memory. The rate of rehearsal of words correlates with the the primacy effect, with higher rehearsal rates for words at the beginning of the list. The serial position curve experiment also found that a normal recency effect occurs when the memory test is immediate, but no recency effect offurs if the memory test is delayed for 30 seconds. Coding in Short-term and long-term memory Visual and auditory encoding occurs in short-term and long-term memory. Semantic encoding also occurs in short-term and long-term memory. Wickens and coworker’s experiment (1976) found that encoding was enhanced by meanings of words. When participants were presented with a list of nonsense words, then a list of unrelated words, and finally a list of related words, participants will usually remember more words from the third list due to the meaningful connections words. Wickens et al.’s (1976) proactive intereference experiment also examines semantic coding in short-term memory. Participants in the fruits group were presented with the names of three fruits across 4 trials, and after each presentation, participants counted backwards for 15 seconds and then recalled the names of the fruits. Participants in the professions group were similarly presented with the names of three occupations across 3 trials, however on the fourth trial they were presented with the names of fruits rather than occupations. The fruits group showed reduced performance on trials 2,3 and 4, caused at least partially by proactive interference. The professions group showed similarly reduced performance on trials 2 and 3. The increase in performance on trial 4 represents a release from proactive interference because the names of fruits, rather than professions, were presented on trial 4. Semantic coding also occurs in long-term memory. Recognition memory is the identification of a previously encountered stimulus. Sachs (1967) found that although specific wording can be forgotten the general meaning can be remembered for a long time. Coding in short-term and long-term memory includes visual, auditory and semantic coding. Location of memory in the brain Much of the knowledge we have about the location of memory in the brain stems from patients with damaged brains. Patient H.M had surgery to remove their hippocamus, and they retained short term memory but were unable to transfer information to long-term memory, because of this they were unable to form new long-term memories. Patient K.F damaged their parietal lobe in an accident. They had impaired short term memory and had reduced ability at digit span tasks, but functional long term memory. They were able to form and hold new memories. This suggests that the hippocamus is involved in long term memory and that the parietal lobe is involved in short term memory. Long-term memory can be categorised into episodic and semantic memories. Episodic memory involves mental time travel. It is tied to personal experience, remembering is similar to reliving the experience. It is ‘self-knowing’, for example remembering oneself standing at the Eiffel tower (Tulving, 1985). Semantic memory does not involve mental time travel. It includes general knowledge and facts, or knowing information. For example, knowing Paris is the capital of France (Tulving, 1985). The separation of episodic and semantic memories can be seen in patients with damaged brains. For example, patient K.C had a damaged hippocampus and had no episodic memory or ability to relive past events. However, K.C’s semantic memory was intact, and they could remember general information about the past. Additionally, an Italian woman how developed brain damage due to encephalitis, had an impaired semantic memory while her episodic memories were intact. She could still remember past events and create new event memories, however her general knowledge was impaired. These patients exacerbate how episodic and semantic memories are encoded differently and separately. Additionally fMRIs demonstrates that retrieving episodic and semantic memories activate different areas of the brain. Episodic and semantic memories, although separate, do interact with eachother. Episodic memory can be lost, leaving only semantic. For example, you may have had a memory from years ago that is now only known to you as a fact that you cannot remember the source of. This displays how acquiring knowledge may start as episodic but then fade to semantic. Semantic can be enhanced if associated with episodic. For example, autobiographical memory is memory of specific experiences that includes both semantic and episodic memory. Personal semntic memories are semantic memories that have personal significance. This exacerbates how meaning can influence memory. There are three types of long term memory: episodic, semantic and autobiographical. Episodic memory is memory for specific personal experiences, involving mental time travel back in time to achieve a feeling of reliving the experience. For example: I remember going to get a coffee at Le Buzz yesterday morning and talking with Gil and Mary about their bike trip. Semantic memory is memory for facts. For example, there is a Starbucks down the road from Le Buzz. Autobiographical memory is people’s memories for experiences from their own lives. These memories have both episoidic components (relived specific events) and semantic components (facts related to these events). These semantic components of autobiographical memory are personal semantic memories. For example, I met Gil and Mary at Le Buzz yesterday morning. We sat at out favourite table near the window, which is often difficult to get in the morning when the coffee shop is busy. Long-Term memory can be divided into explicit memory and implicit memory. There are two types of explicit memory: episodic and semantic. There are several types of implicit memory however three of the main types are procedural memory, priming and conditioning. Time can affect memories. Forgetting increases with longer intervals after encoding. Forgetting is not an ‘all-or-nothing' process. Familiarity and frequency of recollection can influence the effect of time on memory. Semanticisation of remote memories can offorc and result in a loss of episodic details for memories of long-ago events. This can be seen in the findings of the remember / know experiment that tested older subjects’ memory for events over a 50-year period. Findings showed that complete forgetting increased over time, and remember responses (episodic memory) decreased much more than know responses (semantic memory). Therefore, memories for 40-50 years old events had lost much of episodic character, which is known as semanticisation of remote memories. Memory can help us to anticipate future needs and guide guture behaviours. Episodic memories are extracted and recombined to create simulations of future events and there is an adaptive function of memory similar to mind wandering which can aid also help us to anticipate future needs and outcomes. Implicit memory occurs when learning from experience is not accompanied by consicous remembering. This includes procedural memories, priming and conditioning. Procedural memory is the memory of skills and actions. There is no memory of where or when the skill was learned. This includes performing procedures without being sonsciously aware of how to do them, such as riding a bicycle. Patients who cannot form new long term memories can still learn new skills, such as Patient H.M. Priming is when the presentation of a stimulus changes a person’s response to a test stimulus. Repetition priming is when the test stimulus is the same or similar to the priming stimulus. This involves implicit memory, and the person may or may not remember the original presentation of priming stimuli. The effect of priming on a person’s response was examined by Graf and coworkers (1985) who tested patients with amnesia. In the Graf et al. (1985) experiment, Amnesiac patients did poorly on the recall test compared to medical inpatients and alcoholic controls, this poor recall confirms the poor explicit memory associated with amnesia. However amnesiac patients did as well as the other patients on the implicit memory test (completing three-letter word stems). Primining can occur in everyday experience. The propaganda effect is an example of this. The propaganda effect is when people are more likely to rate statements read or heard before as being true. It involves implicit memory because it can occur when people are not aware of previously seeing or hearing a statement. This has implications for advertisements, as despite only seeing advertisements for a few seconds and forgetting about them, when we hear or see the product in person we will implicitly remember the adverisement and believe in what was previously stated about the product. Classical conditioning is also linked to implicit memory. Classical conditioning involves pairing a neutral stimulus with a reflexive response. Conditioning in real life can occur when experiences are linked to emotional reactions. This can involve implicit memory when a person has forgotten about the original pairing of the stimulus and the response. Memory errors Memory is a process of construction which is based on what actually happened combined with other things that have happened and our general knowledge about things usually happen. Autobiographical memory is memory for specific experiences from our life, which can include both episodic and semantic components. It involves mental time travel and is multidimensional with spatial, emotional and sensory components. The sensory component of autobiographical memory has proven important in forming and retrieving autobiographical memories. Greenberg and Rubin’s (2003) study found that patients who cannot recognise objects also experience loss of autobiographical memory. This shows how autobiographical memory is linked to sensory memory and visual experience plays a role in forming and retrieving autobiographical memory. Cabeza and coworkers (2004) investigated brain activation caused by autobiographical memory and lab memory. Participants viewed photographs they took (own-photos) and photographs taken by someone else (lab-photos). The findings indicated that both types of photos activated similar brain structures with the medial temporal lobebeing activated by episodic memory and the parietal cortex being activated by the processing of scenes. The findings also found that own-photos activated more of the prefrtontal cortex )processing information about self) and the hippocampus (recollection). This demonstrates the richness of autobiographical memories. Over the lifespan significant events in a person’s life, highly emotional events and transition points are remembered well. An example of memory errors in relation to age is the reminiscence bump. In one study, participants over the age of 40 were asked to recall events in their lives. Memory was found to be high for recent events and for events that occurred in adolescence and early adulthood (between 10 and 30 years of age). The reminiscence bump refers to enhanced memory for adolescence and young adulthood. Explanations for the reminiscence bump include the context of what was happening during this time period. For example, the time from 10-30 is a period of assuming one’s self-image and self-identity as well as rapid cognitive change, which may explain why encoding is better during this time period. Another explanation is the cultural life script, in which culturally shared expectations structure recall. It has been found that the reminiscence bump for people who emigrated to the US at age 34 or 35 is shifted toward older ages compared to the bump for people who emigrated between the ages of 20 and 24, this can also be explained by the cognitive hypothesis which states that encoding is better during periods of rapid change that are followed by stability. It has also been foudn that personal events are easier to recall when they fit the cultural life script and culturally shared expectations structure recall, for example, in Ireland the majority of people attend primary school and then this leads on to secondary school, and then college, training or work, and most people follow this script when recalling these events. Exceptional stimuli tend to be remembered better. Emotional events are more easily and vivdly remembered. Emotion improves memory and becomes greater with time, and may enhance consolidation. This may be due to brain activity in the amygdala which is filtering information as threat as non threat, and highly emotional responses may be better encoded so that threats or emotional responses can be steered towards or against in the future. In an experiment conducted on memory for exceptional stimuli, it was found that recall for exmotional pictures was better than for neutral pictures when exposed to stress. There were no significant differences between emotional and neutral recall in the no-stress condition. Flashbulb memories are memories for the circumstances surrounging shocking, highly charged important evenets, such as the 9/11 terror attacks and the Kennedy assassination. People tend to remember where they were and what they were doing at the time of these events, and they tend to be highly emotional, vivid and very detailed. Flashbulb memories are not photograph memories and they can change with the passage of time. In Talarico and Rubin’s (2003) study on Flashbulb Memories the results suggest that these memolries can be inaccurate or lacking in detail even though participants claim confidence and that memories seem very valid. It was found that details remembered decreased for both flashbulb and everyday memories, however belief in accuracy and vividness remained high for flashbulb memories and not everyday memories. The Narrative rehearsal hypothesis suggests that repeated viewing / hearing of event, or rehearsal, such as TV, newspaper, talking with others could introduce errors in one’s own memory. The Constructive Nature of Memory Memory is what actually happens and a person’s knowledge, experiences and expectations. In Bartlett’s war of the ghosts experiment, he had participants attempt to remember a story from a different culture and reproduce it. Over time reproduction become shorter, contained omissions and inaccuracies and participants changed the story to be more consistent with their own culture. This displays how memories are our own creation, and errors can occur based on our expectations and biases of what we believe it the most likely course of events. Source monitioring is the process of determining origins of our memories. A source monitoring error, also called source misattributions, is misidentifying the source of memory. Crypomnesia is an unconscious plagiarism of another’s work due to a lack of recognition of its original source. In Jacoby and coworkers (1989) ‘Famous overnight’ experiment participants were asked to distinguish between famous and non-famous names. After 24 hours, some nonfamous names were mididentified as famous. This can be explained by participants experiencing familiarity with some nonfamous names, and the participants misattributing the source of the familiarity. They failed to identify the source as the list that had been read the previous day. The illusory truth effect is when there is an enhanced probability of evaluating a statement is true after repeated presentation. This occurs due to fluency or familiarity with the information. This is related to the propagand effect as both result from stimulus repetition. Real world knowledge affects memory. Memory can be influenced by inferences that people make based on their experiences and knowledge. Pragmatic inferences are inferences made based on knowledge gained through experience. Memory often includes information that is implied nby or is consistent with the to be remembered information bu was not explicitly stated. A schema is knowledge about some aspect of the environment e.g. post office, ball game, classroom. A script is a conception of a sequence of actions that usually occurs during a particular experience, e.g. going to a restaurant, playing tennis. Scemas and scripts influence memory. Memory can include infromation not actually experienced but inferred because it is expected and consistent with the schema. For example, in a study conducted on schemas, scripts and memory, it was found that participants recalled books present in the office waiting room despite none being present, this is because books are part of the office waiting room ‘script’. The constructive nature of memory can lead to errors of false memories. There are advantages to the constructive nature of memories. It allows us to fill in the blanks and have creative cogntion which allows us to understand language, solve problems and make decisions. There are also disadvantages, the constructive nature of memories causes us to sometimes make errors and misattribute the source of information, resulting in the need to question was something actually present, or was it inferred. The power of suggestion is also important to consider when it comes to memory. The misinformation effect is when misleading information presented after someone witnesses an event can change how that person later describes the event. The stimulus presented following the event which can alter their description is known as Misleading postevent information (MPI). For examplein Loftus and coworkers (1975) experiment, participants saw slides of traffic accident with stop sign. However they were rold that it was a Yield sign. Particiapnts remembered what they heard (yield sign) and not what they saw (stop sign). Loftus and Palmer conducted a similar experiment on the power of suggestion, in which participants either heard ‘smashed’ or ‘hit’ in the description of a car accident. It was found that those hearing ‘smashed’ said the cars were going much faster than those who heard ‘hit’. Another example of the power of suggestion and its link to memory errors is the source monitoring error. When there is a failure to distinguish the source of the information misleading postevent information is attributed to the original source. In Lindsay’s (1990) experiment participants heard a story, and then heard the same story again two days later with some details changed, and were told to ignore the changes. When the voice for both stories was the same, it created source monitoring errors and caused more errors in remembering the original story. When the voice was changed from male to female it did not create as many errors, as it was easier for participants to attribute the story to the correct source. False memories are a debated topic within cognitive psychology. Human and coworkers (1995) conducted a study in which participant’s parents gave descriptions of childhood experiences. The participant had a conversation with the experimenter about these experiences, however the experimenter added new events which had never occurred. Despite these events never occurring, the particpant remembered the new experiences as though they actually happened. Errors in eyewitness testimony can occur due to errors in memory. Testimony is often taken by an eyewitness to a crime about what he or she saw during the crime. It is one of the most convincing types of evidence to a jury, people assume that people see and remember accurately. However, like other memory, eyewitness testimony can be inaccurate due to mistaken identity and the constructive nature of memory. For example, in Wells and Bradfield’s (1998) study on eyewitness testimony, participants viewed a security tape with a gunman in view for 8 seconds, and everyone identified somone as the gunman from photographs despite the actual gunman’s picture not actually being presented. Errors can also occur in eyewitness testimony due to attention and arousal. Attention can be anarrowed by specific stimuli. For example, the weapon focus effect may occur, in which observation that the presence of a weapon impairs eyewitness recall for details of the crime scene, including the perpetrator’s face. Errors in eyewtiness testimony can also occur due to familiarity (source monitoring). In Ross et al.’s (1994) experiment, a control group watched a film of a female teacher reading to students and an experimental group watched a film of a male teacher reading to students. Both groups then watched a film of a female teacher being robbed. Both groups objective was to pick the robber from the phoospread. When the actual robber was not in the photospread, the experimental group wrongly identifed the male teacher as the robber 60% of the time. When the actual robber was in the photospread, the male teacher was identified 18% of the time. Errors in Eyewitness Testimony may also occur due to suggestion. Suggestive questioning can cause the misinformation effect and confirming feedback can lead to the post-identification feedback effect. In Wells and Bradfield’s (1998) ‘Good you identifed the suspect experiment’ it was found that the type of feedback from the experimenter influenced subject’s confidence in their identification, with confirming feedback resulting in the highest confidence. Confidence in one’s memories may be increased by post-event questioning and may make memories easier to retrieve. Strategies to Improve Eyewitness Testimony include informing the witness that the perpetrator might not be in the lineup, use fillers in lineup similar to suspect, use sequential presntation and not simultaeous, and improving interviewing techniques such as cognitive interviewing strategies.