PSY2008 Lecture Notes - Associative & Visual Statistical Learning

Week 7 Pre-Recorded Lecture Content Video 1A : Associative Learning Types of Learning Summary Classical Conditioning - Learning that Stimulus X predicts Outcome Y Operant Conditioning - Learning that doing X leads to Outcome Y Erroneous Learning - Illusory correlations - ‘Learning’ that X and Y go together when they are merely random Classical Conditioning Key Terms Unconditioned Stimulus (US): Stimulus that naturally (prior to learning) elicits a response Unconditioned Response (UR): The response elicited by a US Conditioned Stimulus (CS): Stimulus that didn’t elicit a response prior to learning, but does as a consequence of learning Conditioned Response: The response elicited by a CS Note that a Neutral Stimulus (NS) becomes the CS after it is repeatedly paired with the US Other Important Terminology Acquisition: Learning (acquiring) the association between the CS and the US, and thus learning to produce a CR Latent Inhibition: Prior presentation of a CS alone tends to impair subsequent conditioning Extinction: Presenting the CS alone, in the absence of the US, extinguishes the learned association, thus the CR is gradually eliminated Renewal: After extinction in one context, presentation of the CS in a new context reinstates responding Stimulus Generalisation: When CR is elicited by other stimuli that are similar to the CS Stimulus Discrimination: When CR is not elicited by other stimuli that are similar to the CS Little Albert Experiment White rat was paired with a loud sound - US: Aversive sound - UR: Fear - CS: White rat - CR: Fear Acquisition occurred, as Albert learnt to associate the white rat with the aversive outcome, and showed a fear response to the white rat that he didn’t show before learning Stimulus generalisation was shown, as Albert began to fear other fluffy white objects (eg. experimenter wearing a Santa Claus mask) Stimulus discrimination was also shown, as Albert did not fear everything with hair Thinking Exercise for Live Lecture We could extinguish Little Albert’s fear by breaking the learnt association. That is, presenting the mouse over and over again without that loud sound. To prevent renewal (the fear response coming back) Albert should be presented with the mouse in several different contexts. That is, not just the room in which the experiment took place. Operant Conditioning Summary Learning an association between behaviour and consequence for that behaviour Learning to increase or decrease certain behaviours through rewards and punishments Reinforcement Positive Reinforcement: Addition of something positive that increases a behaviour - Child learns good behaviour leads to praise - Increases likelihood of good behaviour Negative Reinforcement: Subtraction of something negative that increases a behaviour - Individual learns that taking a painkiller takes away a headache - Increases likelihood of a painkiller being taken in future Punishment Positive Punishment: Addition of something negative that decreases behaviour - Parking illegally results in a parking fine, decreasing the probability of parking illegally in future Negative Punishment: Subtraction of something positive that decreases behaviour - Taking away a child’s toy when they show bad behaviour - This decreases the likelihood of bad behaviour being shown in future Important Considerations Frequency of reinforcement - Continuous reinforcement oBehaviour reinforced every single time it occurs Faster learning Less robust (susceptible to extinguishment) - Partial reinforcement oResponse is only reinforced part of the time Slower learning More robust Schedules of partial reinforcement: - Fixed ratio - Fixed interval - Variable ratio - Variable interval Schedules of Partial Reinforcement Fixed Ratio - Response is reinforced after a specified number of responses - Example: Rat is given food after pressing a lever 5 times Fixed Interval - Response is rewarded after a specified amount of time has passed - Example: Take a break after you’ve been studying for 30 minutes Variable Ratio - Response is reinforced after an unpredictable number of responses - Example: Rat is rewarded for lever press after anywhere between 0 and 40 lever presses Variable Interval - Response is rewarded after an unpredictable amount of time has passed - Example: Rat is rewarded for a lever press made anywhere between 0 and 40 minutes after the last lever pres Reinforcers Reinforcers differ in strength and origin A good reinforcer will depend on the individual organism - A useful principle is the Premack principle oReinforcers which are already behaviours/outcomes the learner likes, then they’re more likely to be effective reinforcers Primary vs Secondary Reinforcers - Primary: Essential for survival/reproduction of the organism (eg. food, water, sex) - Secondary: Conditioned to be associated with primary reinforces (eg. money) Thinking Exercise for Live Lecture Which schedule of partial reinforcement would be the most effective to increase studying behaviour, and why? - Generally, punishment produces short-term compliance, but can decrease motivation in the long term Erroneous Learning Summary Our brain is attuned to picking up on associations that are present, which can lead us to believe two things are associated even when they aren’t These are called illusory correlations Often come from misperceiving random variation as systematic variation Example Most people think the third option is most likely However, they are all equally likely (over this short span of trials) When asked to generate random strings, people systematically deviate from randomness they underestimate the number of repetitions Real-World Examples People’s responses to projective tests (eg. Rorschach blots) and psychological conditions Superstitious behaviours (eg. wearing ‘lucky socks’) “The lane of traffic that I am in always goes slower” Why does Erroneous Learning occur? We’re susceptible to illusory correlations because our cognitive machinery is simultaneously attuned to capitalise on regularities in the world, and poor at appreciating randomness Once formed, illusory correlations are often maintained, because we selectively attend to and remember information that is consistent with them Thinking Exercise for Live Lecture Dangers of forming illusory correlations? - May lead to stereotypical thoughts - People who are depression can have an existing bias to interpret things in a negative way Strategies to prevent formation of illusory correlations? - CBT can help people change their existing biases oExample: People who are depressed can have an existing bias to interpret things in a negative way oCBT can help alter those thoughts Strategies to assist people in overcoming illusory correlations once formed? - Awareness that we are susceptible to form them - Explicit strategies for conflicting evidence True understanding of randomness can be trained (Neuringer, 1986) Video 1B : Visual Statistical Learning Visual Statistical Learning (VSL) Summary Statistical means learning relationships between stimuli, where there are regularities in the information to be gleaned Example: - A visual scene can be composed into pixels - The RHS is an example of ‘visual noise’ oEach pixel is randomly assigned to be somewhere between black and white with shades of grey in between - The LHS demonstrates statistical regularity oOn the tree, each pixel next to each other is more likely to be purple than any other colour by chance oThere are regularities and groupings This lecture discusses some of the classic paradigms used to discover/demonstrate how sensitive humans are to these visual statistical regularities Fiser & Aslin (2001) Summary Familiarisation: Participants presented with ‘scenes’ consisting of base pairs without instruction (ie. not told what to pay attention to) or feedback Researchers were interested in whether under these conditions, people would just naturally pick up on some of the regularities within these scenes (even though they weren’t explicitly told to look for them ‘Base Pair’ = One of these pairs of stimuli (eg. A and B) Test Phase: - A base pair and a non-base pair were shown sequentially in particular locations in the 3x3 grid - Participants had to indicate which of the two base pairs they thought they had seen before - Participants had an above chance accuracy at identifying the base pairs seen during familiarisation on this judgement These results show that participants learnt information about the spatial statistical regularities in the stimuli they were presented with However, do people learn about temporal regularities during dynamic sequences? - Fiser and Aslin (2002) tested this Fiser & Aslin (2002) Summary Participants were shown many multiple instances of dynamic sequences of stimuli (Left image below) Objects would move back and forth behind the excluder (rectangle below), disappearing when they went behind it The regularities that were present were the sequence of stimuli (eg. Object A always appearing before Object B in the sequence) Like the experiment above, participants were not explicitly told that there were any regularities (no instruction given to identify them Bulf, Johnson & Valenza (2011) Summary Difference between high and low demand conditions: - Number of stimulus pairings consisted in the stimuli - Example (high demand): oSquare and X paired together with 100% probability oCircle and Hexagon paired together with 100% probability oTriangle and Octagon paired together with 100% probability oThen, any stimulus could appear next (eg. square) and participants would have to guess what the pairing would be (ie. X) Essentially, using the amount of time the infants are looking at different stimuli to make inferences about what is new to them, and thus, what they have recognised LDC: Infants learned these pairings, such that they were drawn to the stimuli that violated these sequences HDC: Bar didn’t significantly differ from the 50% chance baseline, so under more complex conditions, they hadn’t learnt the sequences and weren’t recognising them Overall, this means that visual statistical learning (at least at a basic level) occurs in infants Children and VSL Even just a few days from birth, infants were sensitive to simple statistical regularities Evidence also reveals that statistical learning in kids aged 4-7 is directly associated with their acquisition of syntax VSL and Ensemble Perception Ensemble Perception Rather than learning about one stimulus in isolation, or its particular pairing with another stimulus, this is more about representing the whole or the average of the whole scene Ariely (2001) Participants shown a set stimulus, then a test stimulus Judgement: a) Whether that specific test spot had appeared in the set stimulus b) Whether the test spot was larger or smaller than the mean spot size of the set stimulus Results Poor individual dot identifications - Participants were inaccurate at determining whether the test spot had appeared in the prior set Good mean discrimination - They were very accurate at determining whether the test spot corresponded to the mean size of the prior set For multi-element arrays, it appears easier to rapidly extract summary information about a visual event (average/ensemble), than it is to extract information about individual instances that comprised that event Ensemble perception can thus be thought of as an extension of VSL Thinking Exercise for Live Lecture If people have learnt something like the spatial arrangement within the array, then they would probably get better at identifying the target (eg. it wasn’t there vs it was there). You should have multiple conditions, as you need a comparison between them. Condition 1 should have no repeats of arrays, whereas Condition 2 where arrays are repeated. Both will get faster but look to see if the condition where they are getting repetitions get disproportionately faster. Contextual Cuing: People are learning the context, and that is cuing them as to where the target is. Learning Humans are sensitive to spatial and temporal regularities, and will learn them (even when not instructed to) When we looked at visual attention, we learnt that there can be a sluggishness in how people deploy attention across time (as demonstrated by the Attentional Blink) AB: Where people are very poor at identifying the second target (T2) when it appears close in time after the first target (T1) in a rapid sequence of stimuli Given the AB is a ‘failure’ of attentional processing, researchers have tried to examine whether training programs can help people overcome it, and therefore improve the deployment of their attentional resources Given what we know, some critical analysis can be applied to the following study of this vein Choi et al (2012) Tested people’s AB pre-training, and post-training Training consisted of people doing hundreds of trials of RSVP streams, where they had to identify the two digit targets amongst the distractors Results: Have participants truly been trained out of the AB, overcoming a structural limitation in processing? Given the material in this lecture, what other explanations could account for these apparent benefits of training? In this study, all of these trials were Lag 2. That is, T2 was always the second item after T1. Even though they weren’t explicitly told, we know that people are very sensitive to that temporal context, so participants had an expectancy effect. A later 2014 study (Tang et al) replicated the same result as the above experiment. They compared training with fixed lag 2 T2s (like the above study) with training involving variable lag T2s. They found that the apparent benefit of training was removed when training was done with multiple lags. Live Lecture Content Classical Conditioning Questions Answer: - CS: The dog drooling - CR: Pavlov smiling and writing it down in his little book How would Pavlov extinguish the learnt association in the dogs? Answer: Ring the bell without presenting the food (several times) If you get sick after eating lasagna, and now the smell of lasagna makes you feel sick, what learning has occurred? Answer: Classical conditioning Would this learnt association be more or less likely if lasagna was a new food for you? What is the name for this phenomenon? Answer: Because this is a novel stimulus, it is fresh to us, meaning it is likely to be a very strong conditioned stimulus. This is called latent inhibition. If you’ve experienced/seen something before, it is much less likely to be an effective CS. Operant Conditioning Questions What does punishment do, and what are the two types of punishment? Punishment reduces the frequency/probability of behaviour. Punishment may be positive (adding something unfavourable) or negative (taking something desirable away). What does reinforcement do, and what are the two types of reinforcement? Reinforcement increases the frequency/probability of behaviour. Reinforcement could be positive (adding something desirable) or negative (taking something unfavourable away). How would you use operant conditioning to train a rat to press a lever? Place a rat in a cage. When the rat eventually presses the lever, a food pellet will be dropped. This will act as positive reinforcement, adding a desirable reward for the action. Thus, the rat will be more likely to press the lever in future. Note that punishment doesn’t work in eliciting new behaviours, because an animal (or person) won’t know what they’re being punished for not doing. What’s the difference between continuous and partial reinforcement? Continuous reinforcement: Every time the individual does something, they will get reinforced. Partial reinforcement: The individual does not receive reinforcement every time (there is some other schedule). Note that continuous reinforcement will initially increase the behaviour much more quickly but is vulnerable to being extinguish. Partial reinforcement takes longer but is harder to extinguish this learning. Erroneous Learning Questions Sensitivity: How good you are at detecting something is there Criteria: Your bias; how likely you are to say that something is there or not Associative, VSL, and erroneous learning indicates that we have strong sensitivity, but a liberal criterion. We pick up on patterns that are there, but also pick up on patterns that aren’t actually there. Visual Statistical Learning Questions People recognise patterns even when they are not explicitly told to recognise the pattern (people implicitly pick up on patterns). Individuals learn about spatial and temporal arrangements, and are able to identify those patterns significantly above chance level. What does statistical learning look like in infants (given they can’t give verbal answers)? Preferential looking/eye-tracking. A young child will look something interesting to them (usually the more novel stimulus) for longer than something less interesting. Thus, we can infer learning, as they will look at something less if they recognise the pattern, and they’ll look at something more if it is new. How is VSL relevant to a child’s language acquisition? Learning how to form grammatically correct sentences involves learning patterns. Even in a VSL domain, children who pick up on those patterns proficiently appear to be the ones acquiring language sooner. This indicates that there is likely a common mechanism within the brain, some part of it that is trying to pick up in patterns both visually and with language Week 8 Pre-Recorded Lecture Content Video 1A: Visual Memory Visual Memory Summary There are two major types of visual memory: - Iconic Memory - Visual short-term memory (VSTM) Iconic Memory Initial Studies Sperling (1960): - Participants presented with arrays (like the image below) - Presented briefly, but varied (15-500ms) - Participants were tasked with reporting as many of the letters as possible oThis is called the whole report condition (tasked with reporting the whole array) Found that regardless of stimulus duration, people could typically report around 4 items This study was again performed, but with a partial report condition - Same as the whole report condition, except for one key aspect - After the array had been shown (and disappeared for a few seconds), a cue was presented, telling participants which row from the array to report oExample: Tone High pitch: top line Medium pitch: middle line Low pitch: bottom line - Regardless of which line was cued, participants could recall the entire line extremely accurately! This indicates that our visual representations are held for very short periods. Even in the time it takes to verbally say “The first letter I saw was G, then I saw F etc.” the representation must be beginning to fade already, and you can’t access all of it in its entirety. Characteristics of Iconic Memory Iconic memory underlies the partial-report advantage - Increase in the probability of an accurate report for a given line of the array when you are given the cue to report one line, compared to participants trying to report the whole array Iconic memory has a high capacity Iconic memory also has a rapid decay function - Tested by varying time between display and partial-report tone - Decreases in accuracy if cue even delayed by 100ms - It is completely decayed by 1000ms (no difference to whole report) Iconic memory can be over-written or masked by other stimuli VSTM What happens after iconic memory? Iconic memory is a very early stage of visual representation After iconic memory, a lot of the information is lost However, some information is consolidated into VSTM Key Differences between Iconic Memory and VSTM Capacity Iconic: High VSTM: Low Duration Iconic: Short VSTM: Long Classic VSTM Experiment: Luck & Vogel (1997) A visual array of coloured shapes is presented to participants briefly (100ms) Screen is blank for a period of time, then another array appears Participants are tasked with identifying whether the array is the same as the original, or different Results: - Found that performance on this task dramatically varies according to the set size (items on display) - This indicates that VSTM has a very limited capacity - Accuracy is still above chance at 12 items, but it is way off 100% oThey are able to encode some of those items into VSTM This means that VSTM has a relatively limited capacity - It is not able to hold 12 items simultaneously - However, this varies from person to person What happens in VSTM All stimuli in VSTM are robustly represented, so they are not sensitive to the amount of time between two arrays (within reason) and aren’t susceptible to masking However, unlike iconic memory, it’s clear that not all items in a display make it into VSTM Thinking Exercise for Live Lectur What are the similarities between iconic memory and visual short-term memory (on the one hand) and the two stages of the two-stage attentional bottleneck model (on the other hand)? There is a lot of similarity between Stage 1 of the two-stage model and iconic memory. They both have large capacities, but very brief and fragile stores. Consolidation into Stage 2/VSTM is sluggish, and visual information can easily be overridden in Stage 1/Iconic Memory. Furthermore, Stage 2/VSTM are both very robust, but have finite capacity stores. Video 1B: Working Memory What is working memory? Summary Working memory is about the temporary maintenance of information in memory, while simultaneously processing other information It is often conceptualised as the ability to control or regulate attention in the service of goals, especially in the face of competing distracting information “The ability to maintain information in the maelstrom of divergent thought” (Engle, 2018) How does working memory work? Summary Alan Baddeley introduced famous/influential models of working memory While they’ve been revised over time, all versions contain some fundamental distinctions Baddeley & Hitch (1974) 3 components of working memory: Central Executive: The attentional control system, which coordinates information from ‘slave’ systems, which are -Visuospatial sketchpad (Visual): Manipulates visual images, and is tied to perception and action -Phonological loop (Audio): Stores and rehearses speech-based information, and is intimately tied to language as its units are phonemes Central Executive is the most important, as it coordinates, manipulates, and operates the working memory. The other two systems are involved more in storing information, then communicating this information back to the central executive. Examples of the application of this model Over short periods, people struggle to remember similar-sounding letters than the same number of different-sounding letters (whereas similar vs different semantic content does not have an effect) - This is consistent with phonemes being the fundamental unit of the phonological loop oPhones are its basic unit/currency of operation oPhonemes are all about the sound of language Chess play decisions and memory for board arrangements are affected by a visuospatial load, not a verbal one - This is consistent with two separate stores, one for visuospatial and one for verbal How is working memory capacity measured? Summary There is a large literature on individual differences in working memory capacity, their structure, and the factors they are related to PSYC2008 focuses on the most common ways of measuring it Types of Tasks Simple Span: Those that merely require participants to remember information presented to them Complex Span: Requires participants to remember information while simultaneously processing other information Complex spans are the only valid measures of working memory (not simple span) Common complex span tasks - Operation span (OSPAN) - Reading span - Symmetry span Other WM tasks: - N-back task OSPAN Task This was a dual tas - Maths - Remembering letters Participants had to make a judgement about a maths equation shown, then a letter is presented, then another maths equation etc. The span task measures how many letters the person can remember accurately There are particular performance criteria for their span measure to be considered valid: - They have to score a particular level on the maths questions - Otherwise, people could just ignore the maths task (which does not measure working memory, because it is not processing two things simultaneously) Reading Span Task Dual task: - Make a judgement about a sentence (is it semantically meaningful or not) - Remember letters Like the OSPAN, the key measure is how many letters participants can remember in order, while still maintaining a certain level of accuracy and speed in making those judgements about the sentences Participants had to remember where the red square appeared in each stimulus in the order it was presented While processing this stimulus, they had to make judgements about whether the black and white images were symmetrical or not Like the other span measures, a minimum of speed/accuracy must be obtained in the symmetry questions before analysing the accuracy of the red square task Support for Complex Span Tasks They have excellent psychometric properties - High reliability - High validity Standardised versions are available provided by Randolph Engle, which is ideal for standardisation across different labs N-back Task Participants need to decide whether each stimulus in a sequence matches the one that appeared n items ago - Is this the same stimulus you saw 4 items ago? It has poor reliability as an individual differences measure Only correlates weakly with WM complex span scores What is working memory capacity associated with? Summary Working memory is thought to be associated with adaptive regulation of attentional resources Individual differences in working memory capacity are associated with flexible use of spatial attention Bleckley et al (2003): - Participants presented with targets that can appear in any one of the stimulus locations numbered (see the image below) - One of these rings would be cued to see where the target was most likely to appear (eg. outer ring could be highlighted) - Individuals with high levels of working memory capacity were able to adjust their spatial attention to obtain the selective benefit from the cue oExample: If the outer ring was cued, then they would show a benefit if the target appeared in any of those outer ring locations (but wouldn’t receive the benefit if the target appeared in the other rings regardless of the cue’s position in the outer ring) What can WM capacity scores predict? WM capacity scores from complex span tasks also predict: - Reading comprehension - Fluid intelligence - Inhibition of task-irrelevant information, such that high capacity oReduced noticing of own name in the unattended stream of dichotic listening oReduced Stroop effect (meaning of the word slows down your responses to name the colour if the word is different) oReduced flanker interference effects oReduced attentional capture - Mind wandering - Performance on anti-saccade task Overall, this suggests that working memory capacity underlies the flexible/strategic use of attention in the achievement of goals, and the ability to inhibit distracting information unrelated to a task/goal. What else is WM Capacity associated with? Individual differences in WM capacity have also been found to be related to individual differences in more socio-emotional processes, such as: - Anxiety - Empathy - Emotion Regulation WM Capacity and Anxiety People with high levels of trait anxiety/social anxiety show attentional biases towards threatening stimuli However, there is increasing evidence that individuals with such high anxiety have difficulties with regulating their attention in general, not limited to instances where threatening stimuli are present (ie. the opposite of the first statement) - Less efficient inhibition of task-irrelevant information - Less efficient in switching between tasks - Lower WM scores on complex span tasks However, we don’t know if this is due to intrinsic differences in capacity (do people with high levels of anxiety have lower WM capacity) or whether rumination consumes available cognitive resources, leaving fewer for tasks – hence poorer task performance WM Capacity and Cognitive Empathy Individual differences in WM capacity seems to be related to individual differences in cognitive empathy (similar to ToM and mentalising) Navarro et al (2020): - Individual differences in WM capacity were gauged by complex span tasks (symmetry span and rotation span) have been found to be related to whether participants made egocentric errors on a cognitive empathy task - In this experiment, the speaker (the participant) must instruct the listener to be able to place those coloured pegs in the same shapes that they appear in the same shapes that they appear in the speaker’s array oThe speaker knows that the orientation of the board differs between them oEgocentric errors: Where the speaker uses/references terms that only make sense from their perspective (eg. put the red peg in the top left corner) Stress and WM Capacity A recent study (Garrison & Schmeichel, 2022) measured WM capacity in participants and assessed how they responded to stressful events in their life across a six day period More stressful events = greater negative affect (emotion), but this effect was reduced among participants with higher WM capacity This suggests that WM capacity provides a buffer against the effect of stressors - How is this so? How does WM capacity provide such a buffer? WMC may be related to reappraisal (a highly adaptive emotion regulation strategy) - Reappraisal entails changing the way you think about a situation/event to regulate your emotion This contrasts with suppression – which is just about trying to stop feeling something - This is typically ineffective and/or counter-productive Benefits of Reappraisal Experience more positive and less negative emotion in daily life Reduced vulnerability to depression and anxiety Higher self-esteem, optimising, and life satisfaction Greater social connectedness CBT’s effectiveness stems partly from teaching people to deploy reappraisal in handling stressors Thus, WMC may facilitate the use of adaptive reappraisal emotion regulation What does working memory load impact? How can we experimentally manipulate a person’s WM load? This often entails comparing how performance on a task varies under conditions of no, low, and high load conditions (or at least 2 of these 3) Often, the impact of a WM load is used to test the efficiency criterion of automaticity ‘Automaticity’ consists of at least 4 processes A process is ‘automatic’ if it is: - Efficient - Unconscious - Unintentional - Uncontrollable Note that these operate independently of one another What is a WM load? Examples of WM loads: - Remembering a string of digits (eg. remembering 0 vs 2 vs 6 digits when doing another task) - Remembering the location of shape stimuli - Performing mental arithmetic on a sequence of numbers presented - Counting back from a number in given increments Like how complex span tasks are better measures of WMC than simple span tasks, WM loads that entail active operation on information (rather than just remembering) can more fully gauge the true impact of a WM load What else can WM load impact? Has been found to impact: - Visual search efficiency oHigh load = less efficiency visual search - Attentional capture by salient, but task-irrelevant, stimuli - Cognitive empathy and social reasoning - Interference from global level on Navon task - Cognitive reappraisals of emotional response - Attentional capture by low reward history stimuli oPeople tend to attend to stimuli that have had high reward value previously Note that most of these processes that are affected by a WM load are consist with those that have been found to correlate with individual differences in WM capacity Does not impact: - Object individuation Can training increase working memory capacity? Summary WM is associated with many adaptive and desirable outcomes Thus, it makes sense that we would want to enhance one’s WM capacity via training However, the empirical evidence as to whether it can is mixed Important Concepts Some important concepts in training studies: -Near transfer oBenefit of training on same or closely related tasks -Far transfer oBenefit of training on tasks that gauge theoretically relevant but distinct processes This is important to establish training efficacy - Participants will improve at virtually every task with practice - The question is whether that benefit extends beyond the task trained (ie. through far transfer) Also consider the task repetition improvement effect (a control condition is crucial to compare to an active training condition) Jaeggi et al (2008) Supported the idea of an increase in WM capacity Used a challenging novel n-back training task - N-back: Remember whether a presented stimulus is the same as the stimulus presented n trials ago - This task was particularly difficult because it was a dual stream Thinking Exercise for Live Lecture Why might working memory and cognitive empathy share variance? What are their functional similarities? They both involve handling and understanding information about others. Working memory helps temporarily manage and process information needed for various tasks, while cognitive empathy requires understanding and inferring others’ emotions and thoughts. Both tasks involve dealing with information. Cognitive empathy involves putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, understanding their emotions and thoughts. To do so, you need to consider various pieces of information about that person. This aligns with the role of working memory, which helps you hold and manipulate multiple pieces of information. If working memory capacity can’t be trained, what are other means through which a person’s empathy for others could be increased? Perspective-taking, empathy training programs, meditation and mindfulness, cultivating compassion, or education and experience. Live Lecture Content Visual Memory Questions Distinguish between the two types of visual memories. Visual short-term memory (VSTM) has a finite capacity, but longer duration and more robust representation. Comparatively, iconic memory has a large capacity, but short duration and is more susceptible to decay/over-writing. Week 9 Pre-Recorded Lecture Content Video 1A: Memory In previous weeks we’ve discussed visual memory and working memory Now, we will talk about memory processes over longer time spans than visual memory, and that unlike working memory, are really focused on the encoding/maintenance/retrieval of remembered information Memory Overview of Memory Memory holds everything we know - Information about who we are, and what we’ve done in our lives - Provides us with the words and grammar required to construct comprehensible sentences - Allows us to recognise our friends - Allows us to remember a sequence of actions that constitute a certain behaviour (eg. making a cup of tea) Memory is not a simple process of consulting a video-like recording in our head - What we remember and recall is influenced by many contextual and individual factors Types of Memory Retrospective vs Prospective Memory Retrospective: Remembering things from the past (eg. What did you have for breakfast yesterday?) Prospective: Remembering to do things in future (eg. Needing to buy milk from Coles after work) The focus in PSYC2008 is on Retrospective Memory Declarative vs non-declarative Declarative memory (explicit) - Semantic memory (knowing) oMemory for facts Example: Who is the PM of Australia? - Episodic memory (remembering) oMemory for events Example: Remembering what happened at your tenth birthday? Non-declarative (implicit) - Procedural learning oWhat actions are involved in kicking a footy? - Associative learning - Habituation and sensitisation Difference between Semantic and Episodic Memory This difference is somewhat murky The distinction between them has been criticised, it may not reflect distinct underlying mechanisms Semantic memory may arise from repeated episodic memories Categorisation can become unclear - Remembering learning what the capital of Australia is contains aspects of both semantic and episodic memory oYou may remember where and when you learnt that Canberra is the capital of Australia Stages of Memory Summary Three Stages: - Encoding - Maintenance - Retrieval oRecall vs Recognition Encoding The process of getting things into your brain to remember things in the first place Example: Not paying enough attention to lecture content, so you have to go back and re-watch the last 30 seconds Maintenance Keeping things into memory once they get in there If there is a big stretch of time between when you encode information, and when you need to retrieve it, this information may be subject to decay Maintenance issues may also arise from interference from other information as well Retrieval The process of getting something out of memory when you need to Distinguish between recall and recognition - Recall: Remember something with no specific clues/options oWho is the PM of Australia? - Recognition: Remember something with some options oMultiple options of who the PM of Australia is Factors that affect Memory Level of Processing at time of encoding (Craik & Tulving, 1975) - Presented participants with a word (visually), and then answered a question about that word - Varied what the question was, or what the judgement they had to make about the word was, to vary the depth of processing at this stage of encoding 4 different conditions Graphemic, phonetic, semantic, and elaborate processing Processing levels ranged from least effort/shallow (graphemic) to most effort/deep (elaborate semantic) This was Part 1 of the experiment, assessing the encoding stage - At the encoding stage, participants are just seeing these words, and making judgements about them Part 2 of the experiment was a recognition test - Participants were presented with words that had or hadn’t been presented before (at the encoding stage), and participants had to identify whether they had been presented before or not Words that had been presented: - Words where participants superficially encoded the information (ie. graphemic judgements), recognition was poor - This shows that for identical types of words, the level of processing and encoding has a dramatic influence on whether participants can later recognise the words they’d been exposed to or not Level of processing is therefore a critical factor that affects memory - Deeper-level processing promotes superior memory Making greater connections between the presented material and existing material (ie. our pre-existing knowledge) - People are more likely to recall information if it relates to themselves Understanding/Comprehension at time of encoding Understanding or comprehension at the time of encoding improves memory First demonstrated by Bransford & Johnson (1972): - Participants exposed to this type of material, and not told what the topic of this text is about, have much greater difficulty remembering it - Participants told this text is about laundry/doing laundry, had a much better chance of encoding this material Generation Effect Generation Effect: When participants generate a response to a cue, they’re more likely to remember the association than when the response is generated for them (ie. they read it passively) This was demonstrated through giving participants paired associates, or giving them a cue and making them generate the paired associate Generation Condition: - Rapid_f - Sea_o Reading Condition: - Rapid_fast - Sea_ocean Participants were also asked to remember these paired associates Spacing Effect Material is remembered better when learning is distributed, rather than massed - Example: Better retention if study material in sessions across the semester, rather than in a few days before the exam Ebbinghaus documented this by memorising meaningless consonant-vowel-consonant strings (eg. WUV, RIC, PEV) - Used massed practice for some items, and distributed practice for others - Distributed practice was more effective Why does spacing effect occur? - If study trials are massed together, you’re less likely to fully attend to each presentation - When trials are spaced, the context in which the stimulus is processed is likely to have changed than in massed practice oThe result is a richer memory representation and additional retrieval routes Consistency between study & test context Godden & Bradley (1975): - Participants learnt lists of words either while on a boat, or underwater - There was a match between context of learning, and context of the text oContext-dependent cues Chunking Humans can remember approx. 7 units of information (plus/minus two) in STM If these units of information are isolated numbers, then this corresponds to 7 numbers you can remember But, often information can be grouped so that more than 7 would be remembered (a unit of information doesn’t have to be a single number, if ‘grouping’ or ‘chunking’ is used) Example: - 1109200124022022 - 11 09 2001 24 02 2022 Serial Position Effect Tested with word lists Ebbinghaus (1913) discovered the serial position effects There are primacy and recency effects Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) Memory Paradigm Summary Another aspect of context which affects memory, is the other words/stimuli that are presented along with the information that is to be remembered This is demonstrated in the DRM paradigm What is the DRM paradigm Involves the presentation of semantically related words at encoding (eg. dream, bed, night, pyjamas) At test, participants are asked whether they remember (recognise) a series of words, which includes the words presented but also a semantically related lure that was not (eg. sleep) The critical word is recognised with high probability and confidence This is an example of a false memory – wrongly remembering something that did happen when it actually did not Video 1B: Autobiographical Memory Autobiographical Memory Summary Memory for life events, things that have happened to us Although some people think that autobiographical memory is a verbatim record (like a photograph/video), evidence suggests that this is not the case It is reconstructive, it makes us prone to false memories False Memories through suggestion Summary False memories may arise in all sorts of contexts Loftus & Palmer (1974) - Demonstrated people’s memories are fallible, and are able to be influenced through leading questions - Participants were shown a video depicting a traffic accident - They then completed a questionnaire about the accident - A critical question asked them about the speed of the accident oOne group were asked: “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other” oOther groups were asked the same question, except the verbs smashed, collided, bumped, and contacted were used instead of ‘hit’ Loftus & Palmer (1974) Experiment 2 Some argued that the results were due to demand characteristics (participants could’ve been aware of the way the verb was supposed to influence their responses, and thus adjusted their subjective estimates) To address this, Experiment 2 used forced-choice objective questions about the event, instead of subjective estimate (ie. speed of the car) Participants watched video of event, and were then asked a series of questions about the accident Critical Question: - “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other” - “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other” - Another group were not asked about the vehicle speed A week later, participants returned. They didn’t watch the video again, but answered a series of questions about the accident Critical Question: “Did you see any broken glass” (Yes/No) - There was no broken glass in the original video - Any participant who said yes demonstrated a false memory What can we take away from Loftus and Palmer? Loftus and Palmer showed that participants can genuinely believe aspects of an event to have occurred through the power of suggestion, when some details of the event did not occur Perhaps this was only a minor detail to participants, and maybe memory is only suggestible to erroneous minor details To test this, Loftus (1975) tested whether a larger object could be falsely implanted into participants’ memories via suggestion Loftus (1975) Notably, almost 3% of participants were still reporting that there was a barn, even though they hadn’t been exposed to the misleading question This shows that false memories can occur, and they’re especially likely to occur by a suggestion What causes false memories? Each time you recall the memory, it is susceptible to other sources of information contaminating the original memory Can people have a false memory for an entire event? Loftus (1998) had participants watch 4 video clips of crime scenes, depicting: - A bank robbery - A warehouse burglary - A liquor-store hold up - A domestic disp Human memory can be unreliable Even in these experiments where participants had nothing to gain by being dishonest, they were readily reporting memories for objects and even entire events that did not occur Differentiating real from false memories is tough - Confidence is not a reliable predictor of memory accuracy (Loftus, 1979) oEven false memories can be held with strong convict Live Lecture Content Memory Questions Summary What’s the difference between retrospective and prospective memory? Answer: Retrospective memory regards recollection of things that happened in the past, such as remembering you had Weet-Bix for breakfast yesterday. Prospective memory refers to remembering to do something. For example, knowing that you need to go to Coles after work to pick up some milk. If memory is not explicit/declarative, then is it ______ memory? Answer: Implicit/Non-declarative memory. What are the three stages of memory? Answer: Encoding, Storage, and Retrieval. What is the DRM paradigm, how does it work, and what does it show? Answer: It is an experimental paradigm that can reliably create false memories. It is where a bunch of semantically related words are presented (eg. pyjamas, night, moon, bed), and one word that is semantically related to those words is not presented (eg. sleep). Then, when participants are tested on which words were initially presented, participants (on average) have a high degree of confidence in stating that the critical foil (ie. sleep) was present initially – even when it wasn’t Week 10 Pre-Recorded Lecture Content Video 1A: Flashbulb Memories Flashbulb Memories Summary This is a memory for a surprising, emotional, and consequential events Examples: - 9/11 Terrorist Attacks - Michael Jackson’s death - Trump winning 2016 election Refers to the circumstances surrounding how a person heard about the event, not the event itself They are subjectively vivid - Analogy of a photograph (‘flashbulb’) - Are flashbulb memories accurate? oEmpirical evidence suggests they aren’t (or at least they’re not as accurate as a photo) Origins of Flashbulb Memories Brown and Kulik (1977) asked people to recall details of their experience with the assassination of JFK in 1963 Many people provided vivid, detailed reports, and believed their memory to be extremely accurate, like a photograph Suggested that it might be a special type of memory Recent Developments More recently, Talarico and Rubin (2003) contacted Duke University students on September 12, 2001, and asked them for details of: - Event of learning of terrorist attack - Another everyday event oResearchers examined the consistency of these memories over 1-32 weeks later - People believe their flashbulb memories are more accurate than their everyday memories - However, their flashbulb memories weren’t accurate Note that it is difficult to measure (objectively) the accuracy of these types of memories - However, we can use the number of details that people report in the memory oBoth the flashbulb and everyday memories declined in the number of details reported over time Greenberg (2004) Greenberg (2004) notes the inconsistencies in the three accounts from President Bush: - Memory 1 and 3 are nearly identical, but clearly differ from Memory 2 - But Memory 1 and 3 seem to be impossible – there was no footage of the first plane crashing into the building (at least not right away), thus these memories don’t seem to be accurate TAKE-HOME MESSAGE: - Flashbulb memories are more subjectively vivid than everyday memories, but they don’t seem to be more accurate - They are not like a photograph Video 1B: Photographic Memories Eidetic Memories Summary Some people claim to have a photographic memory, is this true? “Eidetic” memory is the closest concept - Eidetic = related to extraordinarily detailed and vivid recall of visual images, comes from the Greek word (eidos) which means “form” Picture Elicitation Method The most common way to identify eidetikers is the Picture Elicitation Method - Unfamiliar picture placed on an easel and a person carefully scans the entire scene - After 30 seconds have elapsed, the picture is removed from view, and the person is asked to continue to look at the easel and to report anything that they can observe - People possessing eidetic imagery will confidently still claim to “see” the picture oThey can scan it, examine different parts of it just as if the picture were still physically present oTalk about picture in the present tense when answering questions about the missing picture oCan report extraordinary detail about it Eidetic Images Not mere after-images (don’t move around with eye movements) Remain between half a minute to several minutes only - Then begin to fade away involuntarily part by part Can be destroyed by the simple act of blinking intentionally Rarely can be retrieved However, unlike a true photograph, eidetic imagery is not perfectly accurate - Sketchy on some details - Alterations/inventions that were not in the original image - Suggests have a reconstructive basis, like regular memory Who has an eidetic memory? The majority of people who have been identified as possessing eidetic memory are children - Estimated around 2-10% - No gender differences Exceptional Memory Forms vs Eidetic Memory Other forms of exceptional memory are often mistaken for eidetic memory Expertise effects - Example: Chess experts chunk chess configurations into elaborate memories oBut this is different from eidetic memory They have no better memory than novices when presented with configurations that could never occur during a game (ie. pieces on the wrong squares) World Memory Championships Not a single champion has ever reported eidetic memory Instead, they use clever and extensive mnemonic strategies TAKE-HOME MESSAGE: - People differ in the vividness of their memories and number of details remembers -However, nobody has a perfect ‘photographic’ memory - Exceptional memory performance is often due to extensive experience or the use of strategies Video 1C: Judgement and Decision-Making Lecture Outline Summary - Dual Cognitive Systems model - Heuristics & fallacies - Adjustments & anchoring - Prospect Theory Dual Cognitive Systems Model Summary System 1: Operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control - Some heuristics or ‘mental shortcuts’ operate at this level System 2: Allocates attention to effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations - System 2’s operations are often associated with subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration When we think of ourselves, we typically identify with System 2 that has beliefs, makes choices, and decides what to think about and how to act - However, System 1 can still have a powerful influence Heuristics and Fallacies Heuristics People largely rely on a limited number of heuristic principles which reduce the complex tasks of assessing probabilities and predicting values to simpler judgemental operations (System 1) In general, these heuristics are quite useful, but sometimes they lead to severe and systematic errors Subjective Assessment The subjective assessment of probability resembles the subjective assessment of physical quantities such as distance or size - We resort to simple heuristic rules/mental shortcuts oExample: Object appears clearer, therefore they must be closer - Heuristics work well in most situations - However, they may lead to systematic error oExample: Poor visibility conditions = distances over-estimated Probabilities Many of the probabilistic questions with which people are concerned belong to one of the following types: - What is the probability that object A belongs to class B? - What is the probability that event A originates from process B? - What is the probability that process B will generate process A? In answering such questions, people typically rely on the representativeness heuristic: probabilities are evaluated by the degree to which A is representative of (or resembles) B Representativeness Heuristic Consider an individual who has been described by a former neighbour as follows: - “Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful, but with little interest in people, or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure, and a passion for detail.” Is Steve more likely which of the following: farmer, salesperson, airline pilot, librarian, or physician? Research has shown that people most say that Steve is most likely to be a librarian - Kahneman and Tversky (1973) argued that this is because people are using the representativeness heuristic: the probability that Steve is a librarian is assessed by the extent to which he is representative or matches the stereotype of a librarian The representativeness heuristic is your brain giving a compelling answer to a simpler question when confronted with a more difficult one - This can be an adaptive way to provide a quick answer to a question - However, it can lead to problems in reasoning (see below) Insensitivity to Base Rates One of the reasoning problems it may lead to is insensitivity to prior probabilities of outcomes - Judgements based on representative ignore the prior probabilities or base-rate frequency of particular outcomes - Statistically, prior probabilities should enormously influence our judgements (Bayes’ theorem) oExample: with Steve, if there are many more farmers than librarians in the population oThis should influence our estimate of the probability that Steve is a librarian rather than a farmer oBut they do not oInstead, the similarity between Steve and the stereotypes of farmers vs. librarians is the source of judgement oBy relying on representativeness heuristic, people often overlook base rates Kahneman and Tversky (1973) Base Rate Experiment: - Showed participants brief descriptions of several individuals, allegedly sampled at random from a group of 100 professionals – engineers and lawyers - Participants were asked to assess probability each description belonged to an engineer versus lawyer oIn one condition told that descriptions drawn from group of 70 engineers and 30 lawyers oOther condition told that drawn from a group of 30 engineers and 70 lawyers - Participants produced essentially the same judgements irrespective of base rates Conjunction Fallacy Example: Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. - Is it more likely that Linda is a bank teller, or a feminist bank teller? Most people say that it is more likely that Linda is a feminist bank teller This is relying on representativeness to make the judgement But it is making the conjunction fallacy The probability of a conjunction of events is always less than or equal to the probability of either of the events in isolation - Example: Soccer player, or female soccer player? oAny given individual is far less likely to be both a female and a soccer player, rather than just a soccer player Thus, if people judge the probability of bank teller & feminist to be higher than just bank teller, they are falling prey to a logical fallacy Availability Heuristic Example: Which do you think is more common in English: Words beginning with the letter ‘k’, or those with ‘k’ as the third letter? - Most people answer words beginning with k - However, words with k as the third letter are actually far more common This is because people are using the availability heuristic where they judge the likelihood or frequency of something by the ease with which instances or occurrences can be brought to mind Availability Heuristic Demonstration: - Participants heard a list of well-known male and female personalities and were subsequently asked to judge whether the list contained more names of men or women - Different lists were presented to different groups of participants - In some lists, the men were relatively more famous than the women, and in the others, women were relatively more famous than the men - In each of the lists, participants judged the gender that had the more famous personalities as more numerous Example: - Participants asked within 5 seconds to answer o8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 Median estimate: 2,250 o1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 x 8 Median estimate: 512 oAlthough these equations are mathematically identical (The correct answer being 40,320), people’s estimates were heavily influenced by what numbers came first This suggests that they’re probably looking at the first few numbers, and then doing a rough calculation in their head to get a rough guide, then trying to adjust up for the number of digits that are there Prospect Theory Expected Utility Theory How do people make decisions in ‘risky’ (ie. uncertain outcome) situations? For centuries, economists relied on expected utility theory - Higher expected value investments are preferred oRational / ideal (prescriptive) oCompute expected utility (factoring in payoff & probability) oFocuses on final states (rather than changes in state, gains or losses) Assumes people will compute expected utility, and then choose whichever option has the higher expected value Then, prospect theory came along Prospect Theory Kahneman and Tversky (1979) developed Prospect Theory - Prospect Theory violates core tenets of expected utility - It is descriptive, rather than prescriptive oIt explains how people actually make decisions, rather than a model which suggests how people should make decisions Essentially, humans don’t really compute expected utility, and they actually make decisions based on other types of criteria How does it work? Example: - Which of the following would you prefer oA: 50% to win $1,000 and a 50% chance to win nothing oB: $450 guaranteed According to Expected Utility (EU): - A: E(X) = $500 - B: (1*450) = $450 - People will pick Option A According to Prospect Theory: - A = uncertain - B = certain oThis is what people are most likely to choose, even though the expected outcome is lower Prospect Theory: Loss Scenario In addition to whatever you own, you have been given $2000. You are now asked to choose between: - A: 50% chance of losing $1000 - B: Certain loss of $500 According to EU: - A: (0.5* -1000) = - $500 - B: (1* - 500) = -$500 - People should have no systematic preference over the other Prospect Theory: - In a loss scenario, people are risk-seeking - People are very sensitive to the relative state-change of a decision - Therefore, most people are likely to select Option A Prospect Theory: Gain Scenario Notes In addition to whatever you own, you have been given $1000. You are now asked to choose between: - A: 50% chance of winning $1000 - B: Certainty of $500 EU: - A: (0.5*1000) = $500 - B: (1*500) = $500 Prospect Theory: - In a gain scenario, people are risk-averse oThey tend to avoid risk - According to Prospect Theory, people are more likely to choose Option B Characteristics of Prospect Theory Not all changes in state (even if they have the same absolute value change) are not perceived psychologically the same Instead, it’s significant to people how those changes fare relative to their reference point (the principle of non-linearity) Non-linearity: - If you have nothing, $100 has significant value - But if you had just won $500,000, you wouldn’t care much about winning an additional $100 Loss Aversion: - The pleasure of gaining $100 is less intense than the pain of losing $100 Prospect Theory incorporates this non-linearity and loss aversion in psychological preference, whereas EU does not - Non-linearity: Gains initially increase happiness massively, but this eventually plateaus - Loss Aversion: Graph shows massive decreases in happiness for losses compared to equivalent gains in money What are some examples of flashbulb memories from your life? Answer: Flashbulb memories are memories for surprising, emotional, and consequential events. They are memories not about the event itself, but rather how the individual heard about the event. An example of a flashbulb memory for me was opening Instagram early in the morning and finding out that Kobe Bryant had died. How do flashbulb memories compare to memories for everyday events in terms of both subjective vividness, and accuracy? Answer: Flashbulb memories are more subjectively vivid than everyday events. However, their accuracy isn’t guaranteed. Like accuracy for everyday events, accuracy for flashbulb memories tend to decline over time. Photographic Memory Questions Summary People who do have exceptional memory (such as winning the World Memory Championships) – what makes their memory so good? Answer: Those with exceptional memory don’t innately have a better memory. Instead, the use of different memory strategies is deployed. For example, the use of chunking or the use of a spatial layout. These strategies are practiced and refined to enhance one’s memory of novel information. Judgment and Decision-Making Questions Summary What is the dual cognitive systems model? Answer: We have two systems for processing information and making decisions. System 1 gives us quick and easy answers, as they operate automatically and involuntarily. It usually involves mental shortcuts or the use of heuristics. System 2 is a slower, deliberate, effortful system that requires more voluntary control. System 2 is much more accurate, but uses much more mental resources than System 1. What is an example of a likely System 1 based judgement? Answer: Responding to the question “What is 1 + 1?”. This is something that immediately comes to mind, and is easy to respond to without effort and deliberate thinking. What is an example of a likely System 1 based judgement? Answer: Finding Waldo in a “Where’s Wally” image People often rely on representativeness to make decisions. What important source of information does this make people’s judgements insensitive to? How did Kahneman and Tversky demonstrate this? Answer: Where people match stereotypes/representations to a given situation (in making a decision), they become insensitive to/they ignore base rates. Kahneman and Tversky demonstrated this by giving people given scenarios. For example, giving a description of Joe Smith, and the participant is representative of a certain job. However, they also would tell participants that Joe Smith came from a group of 100 people – where 20 are farmers and 80 are lawyers. If the description of Joe Smith was representative of a farmer, people were more likely to declare he was a farmer. This reasoning ignores base rates. What is the conjunction fallacy? Answer: A cognitive bias where people mistakenly believe that a specific combination of characteristics is more likely than one of the characteristics alone, despite the combined scenario being logically less probable. This is due to the representativeness heuristic. For example, although a description of someone may sound like they are both a feminist and a librarian, it is statistically more likely they are only a librarian than a feminist librarian. Q: what is relationship between heuristics mentioned today and illusory correlations mentioned in a previous video? Answer: The availability heuristic could be tied up in illusory correlations. For example, thinking “I’m always stuck in the slow lane in traffic”, because you can only remember times when you’ve been in the slow lane. Week 11 Pre-Recorded Lecture Content Video 1A: Motivation Motivation Summary An important distinction is between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation - Intrinsic: Doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable (doing the task is enough reward) - Extrinsic: Doing something because it leads to a separable outcome (doing the task because you’ll be rewarded externally) Evidence suggests that boosting extrinsic motivation can undermine intrinsic motivation (see the studies below) Lepper & Greene (1973) Tested 50 pre-schoolers aged between 3-4 All children selected for the study were intrinsically interested in drawing Children then randomly assigned to one of three conditions: - Expected Reward : Told they would receive a certificate with a gold seal and a ribbon if they took part - Surprise Reward: Received the same certificate, but not told until after drawing finished - No Reward: Neither expected nor received an award Method: - Each child was invited into a separate room to draw for 6 minutes - Then either given reward or not, depending on their condition - Over the next few days, children were observed via one-way mirrors to see how much they would continue drawing of their own accord Results: - Expected reward significantly reduced the amount of time the children spent drawing relative to the other two conditions - The pictures generated by children in this condition were also judged to be less aesthetically pleasing (artwork not as good) This is evidence that rewards reduced intrinsic motivation, particularly the expectation of reward Ariely et al (2009) Recruited people living in villages in India - Volunteers played 6 games testing creativity, memory, and motor skills - Were offered low (4 rupees), mid (40 rupees), or high reward (400 rupees) for achieving high scores in each of them - They earned less money in the high reward conditions, compared to the other two conditions - The pressure from the availability of the high reward resulted in poor performance compared to the other two conditions (they ‘choked’) The nature of the task matters - 24 US students were offered cash rewards if they achieved a certain score on a maths task (cognitively complex – requiring more attention), and a repetitive key-pressing task (very basic/boring) - Some students were offered low reward ($15-$30) whereas others were offered high reward ($150-$300) - Between-subjects manipulation - This is called a disordinal/crossover interaction oThe direction/nature of the relationship between the IVs and DV changes as one moves from one condition of an IV to another oKey Pressing: High rewards = High performance/earnings but Low rewards = Low performance/earnings oMaths Task: Low rewards = High performance/earnings but High rewards = Low performance/earnings Thought Questions Is it a good policy for employees to be paid bonuses based on good performance? - Depends on the complexity of the tasks that employees are required to complete oSimple/Repetitive Tasks: Paying bonuses (extrinsic motivation) could increase performance oComplex/Creative Tasks: Extrinsic motivation could harm performance, so they should rely on intrinsic motivation If a child enjoys drawing and you want to encourage them to do more of it, what should you do? - Giving external rewards may undermine the child’s intrinsic motivation for drawing - This is possibly due to attributions for behaviour (ie. implicit association is formed between the reward and the reason for doing the behaviour) Thinking Exercise for Live Lecture What is the relationship between Operant Conditioning and Motivation? Answer: Operant Conditioning works in a similar fashion to extrinsic motivation. You provide either reward or punishment to shape behaviour. Video 1B: Self-Cognition Overview Summary Mirror Self-Recognition Test Self-Prioritisation Effect (SPE) Mirror Self-Recognition Test Summary One famous test for whether an organism can recognise themselves is mirror self-recognition test First testing was done with chimpanzees (Gallup, 1970) When initially exposed to mirrors, most animals with adequate visual sensitivity respond as if the image represented another animal (bobbing, vocalizing, threatening) Over time, chimps appear to start using the mirror in a self-directed way (grooming parts of the body which would otherwise not be visible, picking bits of food from between the teeth, making faces) Tests on Animals and Humans Key Test: Red mark placed on animal’s face while anaesthetised - To what extent does the animal use the mirror to inspect the mark? In human children, the test involves putting rouge makeup on their face without the child noticing (ie. they’re distracted by something else) It is thought that animals who show self-directed responses on the mirror self-recognition test are recognising themselves Animals shown to pass the mirror self-recognition test: - Humans (around 2 years) - Great apes (orangutans, chimpanzee, bonobos, but evidence is mixed for gorillas) - Dolphins - Orcas - European magpies - 1 elephant Animals that have failed: - Sea lions - Giant pandas - Dogs - Cats - Monkeys - Grey parrot - Octopi Criticisms of the Mirror Self-Recognition Test The test may be prone to false negatives - Animal may notice the mark, but not react to it if don’t deem it important and/or if not prone to self-grooming behaviour - Vision might not be primary sensory modality oExample: Dogs may fail the mirror test because vision isn’t their primary sensory modality, but may pass on olfactory version (there is some evidence for this) - Very aggressive tendencies may overshadow the opportunity to appreciate self in the image (eg. gorillas) What does it actually mean when an organism recognises themselves in the mirror? Does self- recognition imply self-awareness? Self-Prioritisation Effect (SPE) Summary Self-priorisitaion effect (SPE) emerges from a paradigm in which people learn to associate the self with a simple geometric shape This learning process then leads to differential effects on attention and memory The advantage of this paradigm is that it’s designed to isolate self-relevance from familiarity - Example: Cocktail party effect oPeople’s names confound self-relevance with familiarity oYou’ve heard your name so many times that it is difficult to differentiate familiarity with the name, from self-relevance - Participants are told that you are a square, your best friend Jonny is a triangle, and a stranger is a circle - People associate themselves vs a friend vs a stranger with these different geometric shapes - This is counterbalanced across the experiment (ie. people may be told to associate themselves with a triangle or circle instead of a square) Matching Task – Sui et al (2012) The next stage is a matching task On each trial, a shape and a particular label is presented, and the participant makes a correct/incorrect judgement about the corrected pairing the participant would respond that this is an incorrect pairing because it suggests you are a triangle (instead of a square) Results: - Participants are faster and more accurate on trials that contained the shape that was related to the self, compared to the other shapes - Graph A: Matching pairs (label and shape matched, ie. a correct pairing) - Graph B: Non-matching pairs (label and shape didn’t match, ie. an incorrect pairing) Other SPE Finding Self-prioritisation was first documented in this paradigm in 2012, and since then has been used to investigate self-prioritised processing and its consequences Self-prioritisation has been shown in other sensory modalities, including for auditory and vibrotactile stimuli (Schafer & Weisslein, 2016) – it is not limited to the visual domain Self-prioritisation speeds up overall search times, but does not alter search slopes when self-related shapes are used in visual search (Wade & Vickery, 2018) – no change in search efficiency Identity-relevance moderates stimulus prioritization (Golubickis et al., 2020) - The self is not a monolithic concept, and there are parts of your identity that are more important to you than others - Example: Identity as an ANU student is more important to you than your identity as a Melbournian oIf you associate a shape with being an ANU student, you will show greater SPE than a shape associated with being a Melbournian Video 1C: Social Cognition/Empathy Social Cognition/Empathy Summary Empathy is a psychological process (as distinguishable from ‘helping behaviour’) - It is often a precursor to things like helping behaviour, but these are conceptually distinct Empathy is something that is occurring internal to the person that is empathising, and is related to thoughts/feelings/motivations of the person engaging in empathy - This has consequences around prosocial behaviour and interactions with others, but they are separate ideas! Components of Empathy: - Affective Empathy - Cognitive Empathy - Empathic Concern Note about ‘affect’ Note: ‘affect’ is a psychology term that essentially means ‘emotion’ Affect could be a noun, in addition to the general language use of the word as a verb (ie. to affect an outcome) You can think of ‘affective’ as ‘emotional’ (not to be confused with ‘effective’) Affective vs Cognitive Empathy Affective Empathy Affective empathy (AE) is typically defined as feeling what someone else is feeling Example: If you see your friend upset and crying, affective empathy is where you would come to feel upset in response to this It is similar to the notion of ‘emotional contagion’ However, there is debate on the definition of affective empathy in psychology literature: Debate 1: Awareness - Some argue that to qualify as affective empathy, the person must be aware of the source of the emotion oExample: In seeing your friend upset and crying, you need to be aware that the reason you’ve become upset is because you’ve seen your friend in this state - Others argue that affective empathy may be an implicit/unconscious process Debate 2: Similarity of Emotion - Some argue that the emotion elicited must closely resemble that of the person being empathised with (ie. there must be a high degree of congruence between the emotions) - Others argue that a variety of emotional responses (in response to somebody else’s displayed/felt emotion) qualifies as affective empathy -Be careful with broadening the definition of affective empathy too much oExample: If you felt happy after seeing someone crying, then it should not be considered affective empathy Cognitive Empathy Cognitive empathy (CE) is typically defined as understanding another person’s thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, akin to “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes” to understand their perspective Affective is about feeling, whereas Cognitive is about understanding For example, if you see your friend upset and crying, cognitive empathy is where you could come to understand that they are upset because their boyfriend has just broken up with them It is similar to the concept of ‘Theory of Mind’ - There is debate on whether there are distinct components of ToM (Cognitive vs Affective) - Stephanie Goodhew argues that there’s insufficient evidence to suggest that they should be considered as separate components Affective vs Cognitive: Differences Evidence suggests though, that they are dissociable (ie. they are distinct aspects of empathy) Affective empathy appears earlier in development There is a double dissociation in neuropsychological patients with different types of damage & impairments in CE versus AE - Damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex = impaired CE but intact AE - Damage to inferior frontal gyrus = impaired AE intact CE Double dissociations in clinical conditions - People with Autism Spectrum Disorder can have impaired CE but intact AE - People with Psychopathy can have intact CE, but impaired AE Qualitatively different relationships (different directions – one has a positive association, but one has a negative association) with attentional & cognitive control - Increased attentional switching = higher CE (AE not impacted) - Increased focusing = lower AE (CE not impacted) - Increased everyday cognitive failures = lower CE but increased AE It is important to distinguish between them, but they are often conflated in the literature (e.g., just called ‘empathy’) While they are distinct, both cognitive and affective empathy are important, and work in concert to achieve prosocial and adaptive responses to others There are distinct aspects of empathy, we need to understand what they are/how they’re different, and treat them as distinct, in order to not cloud or muddy the relationships between empathy and other variables That being said, while they’re clearly distinct, both components are important, and in a healthy brain they work together to achieve prosocial and adaptive responses to others - Deficits in either can lead to interpersonal issues - However, the nature of these interpersonal issues differs depending on whether the deficit is in the cognitive or affective aspects of empathy Goldilocks Zone It can be important to have the right amounts of cognitive and affective empathy – there might be a ‘Goldilocks’ zone (Weisz & Cikara, 2021) - Example: oToo high AE can lead to occupational burnout in helping professions (ie. clinical psychologist) oCE buffers against burnout oHowever, note that minimal AE is characteristic of psychopathy, so a middle ground between AE and CE is crucial oEmotion regulation ability may be important too, otherwise high AE may lead to the person consoling the other being too invested in the issue and upset rather than provide an adaptive/helpful response to overcome the issue Empathic Concern Summary Empathic concern is a motivational dimension about desiring the wellbeing of other For example, if you see your friend upset and crying in response to relationship breakdown, empathic concern would be wanting them to find a loving relationship in which they are happy Empathic concern is less extensively studied than CE and AE (but is still very important) Measuring Cognitive Empathy Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) Participants are shown pictures of people’s eyes – and asked to discern what emotion the person is feeling and expressing Example: Is person A joking, insisting, amused, or relaxed? Researchers analyse the accuracy in intuiting the emotion that the person is experiencing from only their eyes RMET has been extensively used as a measure of CE in the literature However, it has recently been critiqued for not truly measuring mentalizing (Quesque and & Rossetti, 2020) - You don’t need to understand why someone is feeling what they’re feeling, just recognising what others are feeling It is a great measure of emotion recognition, but not cognitive empathy (and shouldn’t be used in this manner) Perspective-Taking Tasks Communicating with the other person in a non-ego-centric or biased way (recognising the other person has a different perspective) Director’s Task - The participant stands on the triangle (see image below) - Director stands on the other side - Participant is informed that the director can only see objects in the shelves where they are open (ie. without the grey backing) - Various activities happen, and the participant and director interact - The director may instruct the participant to “pick up the smaller ball” and move it to “location X” - The smaller ball from the director’s perspective is the basketball (as they can only see the basketball and the beach ball) - If the participant truly appreciates the director’s perspective, they will pick up and move the basketball - This is done over multiple trials to see whether people make egocentric errors - More egocentric errors = Lower cognitive empathy Sally-Anne Task: - Do people have beliefs that don’t reflect reality? - Children who haven’t developed a ToM will say that Sally should look in the box (without appreciating that Sally doesn’t know the ball is in the box) Implicit Measures: -Where do participants look? -This is an adaption of the Anne-Sally Task, where participants watch a video where the individual in the video doesn’t know that the ball has swapped locations (see below) -While people typically pass the explicit version of this test, it can be useful to gauge the sense the extent to which this kind of processing is implicit/automatic by comparing it with things such as a working memory load (to see if any changes occur) QCAE Many self-report instruments have good evidence for their validity on Cognitive and Affective empathy measurement, eg “Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE) (Reniers et al., 2011) - Cognitive Empathy Example Items: oWhen I am upset at someone, I usually try to “put myself in their shoes” for a while oOther people tell me I am good at understanding how they are feeling and what they are thinking oI am quick to spot when someone in a group is feeling awkward or uncomfortable - Affective Empathy Example Items: oI often get deeply involved with the feelings of a character in a film, play, or novel oIt affects me very much when one of my friends seems upset - Response Options: oStrongly Disagree, Slightly Disagree, Slightly Agree, Strongly Agree Self-report measures have issues with social desirability, but there is good evidence for some of these Likert scales having good correlations ith things like psychopathy and Machiavellianism, as well as the fact that higher scores on each area of empathy (cognitive vs affective) are associated with the different brain areas responsible for each Measuring Affective Empathy Summary There aren’t as many established tasks for gauging affective empathy Some authors have looked at facial mimicry via facial EMG (e.g., Holland et al., 202 - Seeing someone else happy and smile - You will be demonstrating a greater affective empathy if you also smile Could also use other physiological measures (e.g., skin conductance) or self-report measures of affect Measuring Empathic Concern Summary A small number of questionnaires gauge empathic concern - Example: Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) with a subscale of empathic concern oI often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me oSometimes I don't feel very sorry for other people when they are having problems Summary of Empathy Summary 3 key dimensions of empathy They are dissociable, but also interact in important ways The interplay between these different dimensions may be particularly important in determining compassionate and prosocial behaviour and adaptive interpersonal interactions Video 1D: Language Language Outline Summary Aphasia Whorfian Hypothesis Associations between language and space Associations between language and colour Conceptual Stroop effect Aphasia Summary Aphasia is a disorder that affects how a person communicates - It’s usually a consequence of a stroke or head injury Two major types: - Broca’s aphasia - Wernicke’s aphasia Broca’s Aphasia Difficulty in the production of speech or language, comprehension usually intact Results from damage to Broca’s area - A lot of effort is required to produce language - What they do produce is often not effective in what they want to communicate Wernicke’s Aphasia Difficulty in language comprehension, production is fluent but meaningless Results from damage to Wernicke’s area Whorfian Hypothesis Summary Evidence generally supports a weak Whorfian hypothesis, rather than a strong Whorfian hypothesis Strong Version: Language determines thought Weak Version: Language influences thought Some of the most famous evidence in favour of the Whorfian hypothesis comes from Winawer et al. (2007 - English & Russian languages divide the colour spectrum differently - Russian makes an obligatory distinction between lighter blues (“goluboy”) and darker blues (“siniy”) - Winawer et al. found that Russian speakers were faster to discriminate two colours when they fell into different linguistic categories in Russian - This suggests that language shapes colour perception oIt’s not consistent with a strong Whorfian hypothesis (as English speakers could still classify these colours) but the faster response time supports a weak Whorfian hypothesis Associations between Language and Space Concrete Words People associated concrete words with particular spatial locations (e.g., Zwaan & Yaxley, 2003; Estes et al., 2008) - Attic, Sky, Eagle = upwards/high spatial locations - Basement, Grass, Ground = downwards/low spatial locations - Participants presented with pairs of words, one in an upper and one in a lower location on a screen - Participants had to make a judgement of whether the words were semantically related - People were faster when the words appeared in their canonical spatial locations (eg. attic appears above basement) Abstract Words People also associated abstract words with particular spatial locations (e.g., Meier & Robison, 2004; Chasteen et al., 2010) (eg., champion vs enemy, happy vs sad) Positive Abstract words (champion, happy, joy) is associated with higher spatial locations Negative Abstract words (enemy, sad, misery) is associated with lower spatial locations - Word presented in the center of the screen - Simple target appears on the next screen (either upper or lower) - If a positive abstract word is presented, then people will be faster in responding to the target if it’s in a higher location (and vice versa) Impact of Different Languages There is clear evidence that people associate particular words with particular spatial locations However, are these associations specific to English, or are they more universal? - One study found a high degree of correspondence between the word-space associations for English versus Mandarin speakers (Wu, Kidd, & Goodhew, 2019) This suggests that associations between language and space is universal, it manifests in all languages Associations between Languages and Colour Synaesthesia People who have synaesthesia are called synesthetes - Synaesthesia takes many forms - It is like a blending of senses, in that a stimulus in one sensory modality can trigger a sensation in another One of the most common forms of synaesthesia is Grapheme-Colour Synaesthesia - Particular graphemes (eg. letters) elicit particular colours for people experiencing this - Note that it is not universal (and the image below is just an example of the most common ones - Although this is a different experience (eg. non-synesthetes associating yellow with happy, while synesthetes experience the colour yellow when they read the word happy) it appears that there are some commonalities in terms of the types of words that are associated with particular colours Synesthetes and non-synesthetes have some tendencies to systematically associate particular words with particular colours Stroop Effect People are presented with words in particular colours, but the congruence between the meaning of the word and the physical colour the word presents is manipulated Participants are instructed to name the physical colour of the word - People are far more accurate in the congruent stimuli condition, compared to the incongruent stimuli condition Conceptual Stroop Effect Building on this work about the subjective associations people self-report between particular abstract words and colours, Goodhew & Kidd (2020) investigated if these associations were strong enough to influence objective task performance, even when they weren’t relevant to the task at hand - Tested across a series of experiments - Varied whether the task was to identify the colour of the word (like a standard Stroop task) and also whether the task was to identify the valence of the word (was it a positive/negative word) - Trials were either congruent or incongruent oWas the concept word presented congruent in its association for most people, or was it presented in an incongruent manner oExample: Cheerful presented in Yellow = congruent trial Cheerful presented in Blue = incongruent trial Results: - Regardless of if people were making a valence or colour judgement, there was a congruency effect - People were faster and more accurate to make these judgements on congruent trials - Thus, these associations between particular abstract words/concepts and colours are so embedded in people’s minds that they influence their task performance, even when it’s not relevant to the task at hand (eg. when they’re identifying the physical colour of the words) - This suggests there are strong associations between particular words (both concrete and abstract) and colours Live Lecture Content Motivation Questions What is intrinsic motivation? Answer: Internal motivation. It refers to a desire within the self to pursue a goal. You do something because you enjoy it, there’s no reward at the end. What is extrinsic motivation? Answer: Where you perform a behaviour for an external reward. What impacts can rewards have on intrinsic motivation? Answer: Rewards may undermine an individual’s intrinsic motivation. This is because we often make attributions about why we’re behaving in certain ways. We may think we engage in the behaviour just because we’re getting rewarded, rather than we actually like doing the task. How does task complexity moderate the relationship between motivation and behaviour? Answer: For low complex/mundane tasks, extrinsic motivation is the most useful for extracting the desired behaviour. For high complex/interesting tasks, any rewards may actually undermine intrinsic motivation, as people may be interested in completing the task on its own (without needing anything else) anyway. Answer: Refer to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It is only when the lower level needs are met can people strive for higher levels. Our most basic needs are physiological (hunger, thirst), and the next level is safety (shelter). Extrinsic rewards, and particularly money, satisfy the bottom two levels. Therefore, if people are still worried about these basic needs, they should be given extrinsic motivation (in the form of monetary rewards) to ensure they complete required tasks. Self-Cognition Questions Issues with the Mirror Self-Cognition Test: - Animals that show high levels of aggression may be a false negative on this test - They’re so aggressive that they don’t get to demonstrate more self-directed responses which would pass this test Social Cognition/Empathy Questions What type of empathy is described in the following scenarios? If your friend is angry about something and you find yourself feeling angry along with them. Answer: Affective empathy. We ‘feel what others feel’. If you realise that your co-worker misunderstood something you said. Answer: Cognitive empathy. Thinking and reasoning about others’ thoughts/perspectives. We take the co-workers’ perspective to acknowledge they don’t understand something that we do. If a therapist wants to help their client with grief but isn’t feeling grief along with the client. Answer: Empathic concern. This is a broader sense of compassion and desire for someone’s welfare. It is distinct from affective empathy in that you don’t feel what the other person is feeling. Is more empathy always better? Why or why not? Answer: Affective empathy may result in people feeling so overwhelmed with emotions that they don’t focus on helping the other person resolve their issue. How would you respond to a researcher who suggested using the Reading the Eyes in the Mind Test as a measure of cognitive empathy? Answer: This test measures emotion recognition, but it doesn’t measure cognitive empathy. You don’t need to understand why someone is feeling what they’re feeling, just recognising what others are feeling Language Questions What is Broca’s aphasia? Answer: Problems in language production. People can’t physically produce the sound of the word they want to say. What is Wernicke’s aphasia? Answer: Problems in language comprehension. People can physically produce the sounds of words, but the words said out land don’t match the words they want to say (though they think the words they say out loud do make sense). For example, the person might want to say/think they say, “Can I go to the toilet” but they actually say, “Can cheese eat hamburger basketball?”. What are the two versions of the Whorfian hypothesis? Answer: The strong version suggests that language determines thought, while the weaker version suggests language influences thought. Evidence supports the latter, but not the former What kinds of words do people associate with up vs down? Is this consistent across different languages? Answer: People associate positive valence words (attic, joy, champion, happy) with up, and negative valence words with down (basement, sad, depressed). This occurs for both concrete and abstract words. It is also consistent across languages. A study compared native speakers of English and Mandarin, and found they both had a strong tendency to associate positive valence words with up, and negative valence words with down (even though the words were different). What common assumption about perceptual experience does synaesthesia challenge? Answer: Synaesthesia suggests that our perceptual/sensory experience of the world can significantly differ among people. How does the Conceptual Stroop effect differ from a standard Stroop effect? Answer: A standard Stroop effect involves getting the word ‘blue’, but the text colour is green. A conceptual stroop effect is an association between abstract words and certain colours. For example, most people tend to associate ‘joy’ with ‘yellow’. What does the Conceptual Stroop effect demonstrate? Answer: The Conceptual Stroop effect demonstrates an association between abstract words and colour. Week 12 Pre-Readings Study 1: What Happened to Mirror Neurons (Heyes & Catmur, 2022) Heading Summary - Are mirror neurons acquired through visual motor learning? Mirror Neurons: - Three types oStrictly congruent Charge during execution and observation of the same action Example: Gripping something, and watching someone else grip something oBroadly congruent Active during the execution of one action and during the observation of another similar action oLogically related Respond to different actions in observe and execute conditions Causal methodologies, including brain stimulation and patient studies, have continued to support the consensus that mirror-neuron brain areas contribute to imitation Evidence suggests that learning plays an important role in the development of mirror neurons Mirror neurons contribute to complex control systems, rather than dominating such systems or acting alone - They contribute at a low level (eg. body movement discrimination rather than intention reading) Live Lecture Content Heyes and Catmur (2022) Summary What role do mirror neurons play in action understanding? - Mirror neurons are involved in low-level processing of sensory motor stimuli oExample: The actions that someone is performing What role do mirror neurons play in autism? - Initially, people proposed a ‘broken neuron’ hypothesis for autism oThat is, there was neuron dysfunction - However, evidence supports the opposite, that there may be increased activation in these areas for people with autism What role do mirror neurons play in understanding others’ goals and intentions? - Mirror neurons don’t play a role in understanding others’ goals and intentions oExample: No impact on empathy and perspective taking - All they respond to is precisely the concrete action that is being observed Overall, mirror neurons are important in understanding/encoding actions at a low level, rather than high level social processes Why do the authors argue against the notion of a ‘mirror neuron system’? - This is because of the overlap of mirror neurons with other neurons - When you use the term ‘system’, it implies there are a discrete set of neurons that work independently of things around them - However, while mirror neurons exist, they don’t behave qualitatively differently to the neurons around them What reason do they give for why the concept of mirror neurons was so popular? - People initially thought that they were neurological evidence of empathy, and how they assisted in mediating social interaction What shift in approach to understanding the role of the brain in behaviour did the authors identify is taking place? - They emphasised that the brain is a distributed network - This can be influenced by things like learning, rather than being completely pre-determined - We are moving away from “X part of the brain does Y function” Given what you have learned about empathy, what aspect of empathy would mirror neurons be possibly linked to, and how? - They could possibly be linked to affective empathy - There appears to be a lot of mapping someone else’s emotional expressions onto your own sensory motor systems What aspects of empathy aren’t captured by mirror neurons? - Cognitive empathy -Mirror neurons aren’t really equipped for understanding and reasoning about someone’s mental states -Empathic concern (broader desire for people’s wellbeing) is something unlikely to be captured by neuron function Murphy et al (2022) Summary What was the key argument in this paper? - They were anti-RIM (restrictive isomorphic hypothesis) oRIM is the idea that there must be a very close correspondence between the empathic response you demonstrate as a result of seeing someone else demonstrate feelings - They argued that, for example, just because someone else is sad, doesn’t mean you also need to be visibly sad Given what you have learned about the conceptualisation of empathy, what do you think that the authors overlooked here? - They treat empathy as a single concept - Empathy consists of affective, cognitive, and empathic concern - Their argument that we have to expand further than the RIM hypothesis weren’t examples of affective empathy, they were examples of empathic concern - Example: oIf you’re a psychologist and your client experiences grief, you won’t feel grief with them, but you may feel desire/care for them oThis maps on to empathic concern, rather than affective empathy What aspect of empathy is RIM relevant for? - RIM is relevant for affective empathy - It doesn’t make sense to apply it to cognitive empathy and empathic concern oEmpathic Concern: Sympathy and care may be quite different to the emotion you’re witnessing someone else express oCognitive Empathy: Thinking and reasoning, so your emotional experience is less If we rejected the RIM for Affective Empathy, that would mean that experiencing glee in

PSY2008 Lecture Notes - Associative & Visual Statistical Learning

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