Exam 3 Review Guide PDF

Module 9: Sensory Memory George Sperling (1934– ): An American cognitive psychologist who demonstrated the capacity and duration of iconic (visual sensory) memory. His experiments in the 1960s showed that people briefly store a great deal more visual information than they can report at once....

Module 9: Sensory Memory George Sperling (1934– ): An American cognitive psychologist who demonstrated the capacity and duration of iconic (visual sensory) memory. His experiments in the 1960s showed that people briefly store a great deal more visual information than they can report at once. Cocktail party effect: A phenomenon in selective attention where a person can focus on one conversation in a noisy environment while filtering out others, yet can still notice personally significant stimuli, such as their own name being mentioned across the room. This demonstrates that even unattended information is being processed at some level. Iconic memory: A type of visual sensory memory that maintains a detailed image of what you have just seen for about 250–500 milliseconds. This buffer allows the visual system to integrate information across eye blinks and saccades, creating a seamless perception of the visual world. Example: When a sparkler is waved in the dark, you briefly “see” a trail of light. This trail is partly due to the lingering image in iconic memory. Recall: A type of memory retrieval in which you produce information from memory without substantial cues. It often requires conscious effort. Example: Answering a short-answer test question relies on recall since you must retrieve the information without a list of potential answers. Recognition: A form of memory retrieval that involves identifying previously learned information when it is presented again. Unlike free recall, where you must produce information from memory without help, or cued recall, where you receive a hint directly related to the target memory, recognition typically presents the correct item among other options. Retention: The ability to preserve and keep information stored in memory over time. Retention can be short-term (seconds to minutes) or long-term (hours to years). Good retention often depends on factors like rehearsal, meaningful encoding, and integration with existing knowledge. Sensory memory: A very brief, automatically maintained storage system that captures sensory information from the environment in a raw and unprocessed form. It operates prior to conscious awareness and lasts only a fraction of a second to a few seconds, allowing perception to appear continuous. Example: As you quickly glance at a street scene, the image lingers momentarily even if you immediately shift your gaze. Sperling Memory Experiment: A landmark 1960 study in which participants briefly saw a matrix of 12 letters (e.g., arranged in three rows of four). When asked to recall all the letters, people could only report about 4–5 letters. However, if immediately after the display disappeared a tone indicated which row to recall, participants could recall almost all letters from that row. This “partial report” technique revealed a larger capacity of iconic memory than initially observed with full-report methods. Module 10: Working and Long-term memory George Miller (1920–2012): An American psychologist who identified the limited capacity of short-term memory. In his seminal 1956 paper, he proposed that humans can hold about 7 plus or minus 2 items (chunks) in their immediate memory. Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909): A German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory by using nonsense syllables. He discovered the forgetting curve and the spacing effect, showing that distributed practice improves retention. Anterograde amnesia: A condition marked by the inability to form new long-term memories following the onset of the disorder. Example: A patient with hippocampal damage may remember their childhood but be unable to learn the name of a new neighbor. Baddeley and Hitch model of working memory (Alan Baddeley, 1934–; Graham Hitch, 1946– ): Proposed in 1974, this model replaced the concept of a single short-term memory with a multicomponent system including the central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad. Later, the episodic buffer was added. This model remains influential in understanding complex short-term cognition. Broadbent model of Attention (Donald Broadbent, 1926–1993): Donald Broadbent’s early- selection filter model (1958) proposed that information passes through a sensory buffer and is filtered based on physical characteristics before higher-level processing. Unattended information is largely lost. Central executive: The control center of working memory that directs attention, allocates resources to the phonological loop or visuospatial sketchpad, and integrates information. It decides what to focus on, suppresses irrelevant information, and organizes the flow of cognitive operations. Chunking: A strategy that groups individual pieces of information into larger, more meaningful units (chunks), allowing more data to be held in short-term memory. Example: Remembering a phone number as 555-123-4567 instead of 5551234567. Decay: The fading of a memory trace over time when it is not used, rehearsed, or reinforced. The passage of time alone can lead to loss, especially in short-term or working memory contexts. Digit Span (WAIS task): A subtest in the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale that measures working memory capacity by asking a person to repeat sequences of digits forward, backward, and in sequence. It provides an estimate of the person’s verbal working memory span. Elaborative rehearsal: A more effective encoding process involving linking new information to existing knowledge or making it meaningful. This deeper processing increases the chance of transferring information into long-term memory. Example: To remember “hippocampus,” you connect it to patient H.M.’s inability to form new memories after his hippocampal surgery. Episodic buffer: A part of working memory that blends information from different sources (like sounds, images, and words) and connects it with long-term memory. This allows you to form complete, story-like memories from separate details. Hippocampus: A structure in the medial temporal lobe of the brain crucial for forming, organizing, and storing new long-term memories. Damage to the hippocampus often results in difficulty forming new episodic memories. Maintenance rehearsal: A process of repeatedly verbalizing or thinking about a piece of information to keep it in working memory for a short duration. Example: Saying a grocery list item over and over in your mind to not forget it before you write it down. Memory consolidation: The process by which fragile, newly formed memories become stable and robust over time, often during sleep. Neural activity associated with recent learning is “replayed” to help stabilize and integrate the memory into long-term storage. Memory trace: A hypothetical physical or chemical change in the brain that represents the storage of information. The concept suggests that each memory is encoded in the brain’s structure and connectivity. Phonological loop: A component of working memory (from Baddeley & Hitch’s model) that handles verbal and auditory information. It consists of two parts: The phonological store, which holds speech sounds for about 2 seconds, and the articulatory rehearsal process, which refreshes these sounds through internal speech. Example: Repeating a phone number to yourself until you dial it. Phonological store: A short-term reservoir within the phonological loop that briefly holds spoken words and other auditory inputs in a sound-based form. Proactive interference: When older memories interfere with the retrieval of newer information. Example: Calling your new partner by your ex-partner’s name is an example of proactive interference. Retroactive interference: When newer information disrupts the retrieval of older memories. Example: After you move and learn your new address, you may have trouble recalling your old address accurately. Retrograde amnesia: A condition where an individual cannot recall events that occurred before the onset of the amnesia. Example: After a head injury, a person might lose all memories from the previous year but can still form new memories. The forgetting curve: A graph developed by Hermann Ebbinghaus showing how the ability to recall information declines rapidly initially after learning and then levels off. Most forgetting occurs soon after acquisition. The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: In his 1956 paper “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two,” George Miller concluded that short-term memory can typically hold about 5 to 9 items. This capacity helps explain why phone numbers and other key sequences are often kept within this range. Visual store: Another term related to the visuospatial sketchpad, it temporarily holds visual information like shapes, colors, and layouts. Visuospatial sketchpad: A working memory subsystem that stores and manipulates visual and spatial information. Example: Visualizing how to rearrange furniture in your living room or mentally rotating a shape to see if it matches another. Working memory: A temporary storage and processing system that allows you to hold information “in mind” and manipulate it to accomplish complex cognitive tasks (like reasoning, comprehension, and problem-solving). It’s more dynamic than simple short-term storage. Example: Doing mental arithmetic (e.g., 27 + 58) in your head relies on working memory. Module 11: Implicit Learning Arthur Reber (1940– ): An American cognitive psychologist who pioneered research on implicit learning, especially using artificial grammar paradigms. He showed that people can learn complex patterns unconsciously. Adaptive benefits of a dual-process model: Having both a fast, intuitive “System 1” and a slow, analytical “System 2” enables humans to adapt to different challenges efficiently. System 1 handles routine judgments and quick reactions, such as swerving to avoid an unexpected obstacle, while System 2 takes over for complex or unfamiliar tasks, like carefully comparing financial options. Artificial grammar task: A method used to study implicit learning. Participants are exposed to strings of letters generated by an underlying “grammar” (a set of rules they are not told). They later judge which new strings follow the rules. Although they often can’t explain the rules, they perform above chance, demonstrating learning without explicit awareness. Attachment theory (John Bowlby, 1907–1990): A theory stating that early relationships with caregivers shape a child’s emotional security and influence social and emotional development. It relates to how early implicit relational patterns are formed and influence behavior later in life. Base-rate error: A logical error that occurs when a person ignores or underweights the general probability (base-rate) of an event and instead focuses on specific information. Example: Believing someone who reads poetry is more likely to be a professor of literature than a truck driver, ignoring the fact that truck drivers vastly outnumber literature professors. Cognitive reflection task: A test designed to measure a person’s inclination to override an initial, automatic (System 1) incorrect answer and engage in more reflective, deliberate (System 2) thought. Example: A popular item: “A bat and a ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?” The intuitive answer is 10 cents, but careful reasoning leads to the correct answer of 5 cents. Episodic memory: A type of explicit memory involving personally experienced events, including context (time, place, emotions). Example: Remembering your wedding day or the first time you drove a car alone. Explicit learning: Learning that involves conscious awareness of what is being learned and often the ability to articulate the underlying rules or principles. Example: Studying a textbook chapter and being able to explain the material in your own words afterward. Explicit memory: Memory of facts and events that one can consciously know and declare. Example: Recalling your birthday party last year or stating the capital of France. Implicit learning: Acquiring knowledge without conscious awareness. The learner cannot necessarily verbalize what they have learned, but their behavior shows they have absorbed patterns or rules. Example: A tennis player’s swing becomes more accurate over time simply by practicing, even without explicit instruction or knowing the technical details of the improvement. Implicit memory: Memory that influences thoughts or behaviors without conscious realization. It includes skills, habits, and conditioned responses. Example: Riding a bike or playing the piano without recalling when or how you learned these skills. Priming: An implicit memory effect where exposure to a stimulus influences the response to a subsequent stimulus without conscious guidance. Example: If you see the word “yellow” and  then are asked to name a fruit, you’re more likely to say “banana” than if you hadn’t been primed. Procedural memory: A type of implicit memory for how to perform tasks and skills, often involving motor or cognitive routines. Example: Typing on a keyboard, playing a guitar chord, or knitting. Robustness of implicit memory: Implicit memory often remains intact even when explicit memory is impaired (e.g., in amnesia), suggesting that procedural and priming effects are more resilient to brain damage and decline. Semantic memory: A type of explicit memory that stores general knowledge, concepts, and facts not tied to a specific personal experience. Example: Knowing that the earth revolves around the sun, or that Paris is the capital of France. System 1: A concept from dual-process theory describing a fast, automatic, and intuitive mode of thinking. It requires little effort and often relies on heuristics. Example: Instantly recognizing someone’s emotional expression as angry or happy without deliberation. System 2: The slower, more deliberate, and analytical mode of thinking. It requires conscious effort, attention, and working memory. Example: Carefully solving a math problem step by step. Transfer paradigm (artificial grammars): This research technique tests whether the hidden patterns people pick up in one task can carry over to a new, related situation. For example, after participants implicitly learn the structure of letter sequences generated by a set of rules (an artificial grammar), researchers might switch to sequences of unfamiliar symbols arranged by the same rules. If participants still recognize which new sequences “fit” the pattern, it shows that their implicit understanding is flexible and general enough to transfer across different types of stimuli.