Psychology Notes - Memory Concepts PDF

         **Retrieval Cues** \-      **Priming** -- prior activation of nodes/associations, often without our awareness.  ·       Ex. hearing apple and asked to name word starting with A  \-      **Context** -- the environment you encode and take the test.  ·       Scuba divers who learned and te...

         **Retrieval Cues** \-      **Priming** -- prior activation of nodes/associations, often without our awareness.  ·       Ex. hearing apple and asked to name word starting with A  \-      **Context** -- the environment you encode and take the test.  ·       Scuba divers who learned and tested on same place scored better than learned in one place and took test in another.  ·       But not always the case, if you can't take test in same place studying in different places gives you diff cues for retrieval -- so multiple cues that will help you.  \-      **State-dependent Memory** -- your state at the moment.  ·       Ex. If you learn something while drunk you'll remember next time you're drunk. Or combining a mood with an advertisement -- next time you're in that mood will remember the product.           Retrieval Cues: Free Recall, Cued Recall, and Recognition           Anytime you pull something out of long-term memory, you're engaging in retrieval.  \-      **Free recall** - no cues in recalling.  ·       Better recalling first items on a list (**primacy**) as well as last few (**recency**). Harder in middle.  ·       Curve is called the **serial position curve/effect** \-      **Cued recall --** give you "pl" for "planet".  ·       Get more retrieval cues, tend to do better than free recall. \-      **Recognition** -- best out of the 3 tests.  ·       Present two words, and say which one you heard.           **Memory Reconstruction, Source Monitoring, and Emotional Memories**          Brain doesn't save memories exactly. Every time we retrieve a memory we change it in small ways, according to our goals/mood/environment. Or due to our own desires. If gap brain fills it in with something desirable.  \-      Sometimes information we retrieve is based on a **schema** - mental blueprint containing common aspects of world, instead of reality.  \-      **False information** -- inaccurate recollections of an event.   \-      **Misleading information** -- observed video of car crash, and asked how fast cars were going. Some people got word "hit" and some got "smash". If people received "smashed", more likely to say there was glass on the ground.  \-      **Source monitoring Error --** memory error where source of memory is incorrectly attributed to a specific recollected experience (when people recall information they often forget the information's source) -- ·       Ex. angry with someone but forgot it happened in a dream. Or recognize someone but don't know from where.  \-      **Emotional memories** can be positive or negative ·       Highly vivid memories are called **flashbulb memories** -- even if they seem as real as life, still susceptible to reconstruction.           Long Term Potentiation and Synaptic Plasticity \-      Brain doesn't grow new cells to store memories -- connections between neurons strengthen. Called **long-term potentiation**, one example of **synaptic plasticity. ** ·       Neurons communicate using electrochemical signals -- through synapse. Pre-synaptic neurons release neurotransmitters on post-synaptic neurons, allowing Na and Ca to flow in. Dif in charge between outside and inside is the **potential.** \-      With repeated stimulation, the same pre-synaptic neuron converts into greater post-synaptic neuron -- stronger synapse, and when it lasts longer called **long-term potentiation**. This is learning!       **    Decay and Interference** **Decay** -- when we don't encode something well or [don't retrieve it for a while], we can't at all anymore. [Connections become weaker] over time. Initial rate of forgetting is high but levels off over time. ·       **Ebbinghaus** was first investigator of decay. Found his rate of forgetting very fast, but if he remembered it after initial stage it levelled out.  \-      Just because you can't retrieve something doesn't mean it's completely gone -- **relearning**. Even if Ebbinghaus couldn't reproduce everything, took less time to learn list second time around. Called **savings**. \-      Works with procedural skills too -- ex. With piano.  Sometimes **interference** is the problem though -- 2 types:  \-      **Retroactive** - new learning impairs old info (ex. Writing new address)  \-      **Proactive** - something you learned in past impairs learning in future (Ex. New password).           Aging and Cognitive Abilities \-      **Stable** -- implicit memory (ex. riding a bike), and recognition. \-      **Improve** -- semantic memories improve around age 60, so older adults have better verbal skills. Also crystallized IQ (ability to use knowledge and experience). Also emotional reasoning.  \-      **Decline** -- recall, episodic memories (forming new memories is difficult, old memories stable), processing speed, and divided attention. Also **prospective memory** (remembering to do things in future) is decreased.         **  Alzheimer's Disease and Korsakoff's Syndrome**          Excessive forgetting can be problematic.          **Dementia** is forgetting to point of interfering with normal life -- results from excessive damage to brain tissue, ex. From strokes.  \-      Most common form is **Alzheimer's Disease**. Neurons die off over time. Earliest symptoms are memory loss, attention, planning, semantic memory, and abstract thinking. As it progresses, more severe language difficulties and greater memory loss, emotional stability and loss of bodily functions. Cause is unknown -- have buildup of **amyloid plaques** in brain.           **Korsakoff's Syndrome** -- caused by lack of vitamin B1 or thiamine. Caused by malnutrition, eating disorders, and especially alcoholism.  \-      **Thiamine** converts carbohydrates into glucose cells need for energy. Imp for neurons.  \-      Damage to certain areas causes poor balance, abnormal eye movements, confusion, and memory loss. At this stage called **Wernicke's encephalopathy** -- precursor to KS. If diagnosed in time can prevent further damage. If untreated, will progress to Korsakoff's. Main symptom is severe memory loss, accompanied by confabulation (patients make up stories to fill in memories). \-      Treatment is healthy diet, abstain from alcohol, take vitamins, and relearn things.           **Retrograde amnesia** is inability to recall info previously encoded, **anterograde amnesia** is inability to encode new memories.           **Cognition**          **Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development**          **Piaget** argued children weren't miniature adults. Believed they actively construct their understanding of world as they grow.  \-      **Sensorimotor stage** (0-2 years) - smell, hearing, touch etc. + active ·       Also develop **object permanence** -- don't realize objects still exist if they can't see them. Can also use accommodation to acquire knowledge about novel experiences.  \-      **Preoperational** **stage**. (2-7 years)-- When children are going to develop/engage in **pretend play**.  ·       Very **egocentric** -- no empathy.  \-      **Concrete operational stage**. (7-11 years ) --Learn idea of **conservation**.  ·       Can do test to find out if they're in this stage -- take 2 glasses with same amount of water, pour one into short fat glass and other into tall skinny glass, and ask child which one has more. Before this stage will say tall glass, but once they reach concrete operational stage, have same amount of water.  ·       Also begin to learn **empathy**.  \-      **Formal operational stage** (12+) -- reason abstract consequences, and reason consequences. Where sophisticated moral reasoning begins to take place.           **Problem Solving**          We are excellent problem solvers. Well-defined (clear) and ill-defined (more ambiguous starting/ending point) problems. There are some methods we can imply in problem solving: 1\. **Trial + error** **--** not the most efficient. 2\. **Algorithm** -- logical procedure of trying solutions till you hit the right one. 3\. **Heuristics** -- mental shortcut to find solution quicker than other 2, ex. Focusing on one category of solutions.  ·       **Means-end analysis** -- we analyze main problem and break it down into smaller problems, and reduce differences between problem and goal. ·       **Working backwards** -- start with goal and use it to suggest connections back to current. Used in mathematical proofs. 4\. **Intuition** -- relying on instinct. High chance of error.  ·       **Fixation** -- getting stuck on a wrong approach. What happens might be **insight** -- that aha moment. Or can let problem **incubate** -- insight comes after some time.  ·       **Type I error** = false positive ·       **Type II error** = false negative            **Decision Making**          You use **heuristic** shortcuts to make a decision -- it's a quick decision rule/rule of thumb, ex. putting hand on shoulder when someone is sad.  \-      **Availability** method -- using [examples that come to mi]nd.  ·       Helpful, but our memories don't match real state of the world.  \-      **Representativeness** -- a heuristic where people look for the [most representative answer], such as if person matches a prototype.  ·       But can lead to a **conjunction fallacy**, which means co-occurrence of two instances is more likely than a single one (ex. Feminist bank teller vs. bank teller -- actually more likely she's just a bank teller, but people tend to think the probability of 2 events occurring together is higher than the probability of one alone).           [Availability vs. representativeness] ·       Availability = actual memories in mind ·       Representativeness = not thinking of exact memories, thinking of a prototype of idea.           **Biases** that prevent us from [making correct decision]          1. **Overconfidence** -- ex. Going into test without knowing a lot of info.  \-      Could be due to fluency during studying.           2. **Belief perseverance** -- ignore/rationalize disconfirming facts \-      Ex. During elections ignore facts about someone you like.          3. **Confirmation bias** -- seek out only confirming facts.  \-      Ex. Only read stories about how wonderful candidate was.           **Framing effects** -- how you present the decision. Ex. Disease that will kill 600 people, option A is 100% chance exactly 200 people saved, option B 30% chance all 600 saved. Which do you pick? OR A. 100% chance 400 die B. 1/3 chance no one dies and 2/3 chance 600 die.  \-      In first, you'd pick A. In second, you'd pick B.           **Semantic Networks** and **Spreading Activation**          To solve problems, you have to access info already in your brain.  \-      **Semantic Networks** - concepts are organized in mind in terms of connected ideas. Parallel to how info might be stored in a computer. Links can be shorter for closely related ideas, or longer for less related ideas.  ·       First semantic network model was **hierarchical** -- higher order to lower order categories.  ¨     Ex. Animal -\> bird -\> ostrich.  ¨     More specific characteristics like sings, long legs, stored at lower nodes. Can breathe at higher nodes.  ·       Longer it takes us to verify connection between nodes longer it takes for us to make that link.  \-      Not true for all animals/categories, ex. People verify pig is animal takes longer than pig is mammal. Therefore proposed **modified semantic network. ** ·       Rather than hierarchical, says every individual semantic network develops based on experience and knowledge. ·       Means all ideas in head are connected together. When you active one concept, pulling related concepts with it. Called **spreading activation**. (Can explain false memories, or remembering wrong but related info).           **Intelligence** (IQ is Intelligence Quotient)          What is intelligence? A mental quality that allows you to learn from experience, solve problems, and use your knowledge to adapt to new situations. Use numerical scores to measure aptitude for those tasks and compare them to how well others do.  \-      One theory is there's **1 general intelligence.** ·       Evidence comes from fact people who score well on one test also tend to score well on other types of test, ex. Verbal and math. ·       Factor underlying these consistent abilities is called **g factor** (g = general intelligence) \-      Also support for theories of **3 intelligences --** analytical (Academic), creative (generate novel ideas and adapt), practical (solve ill-defined problems).  ·       IQ score measures only analytical intelligence.  \-      Another psychologist proposed **emotional intelligence** --perceive, understand, and manage emotions in interactions with others.  \-      Another way is 2 major categories -- **fluid and crystallized intelligence**.  ·       **Fluid** is ability to reason quickly and abstractly.  ¨     Tends to decrease as we move into older adulthood ·       **Crystallized** refers to accumulated knowledge and verbal skills.  ¨     Usually increases or stays same into adulthood          Question of **nature vs. nurture**: How much is due to [genes] and how much due to [environment/experiences]? \-      Study heritability by looking at correlation scores of twins who grew up in different homes, identical twins raised together, and fraternal twins raised together.  ·       [Strongest correlation] between ***identical twins (monozygotic)*** raised together.  ·       Twins raised apart not as high, suggesting [environment component].  ·       ***Fraternal twins (dizygotic)*** even lower, suggesting also a [genetic component].  \-      No recipe for structuring environment to make a genius, even though we know environments that would impair intelligence.  \-      Some people have a ·       **Fixed mindset** - intelligence is biologically set and unchanging ·       Or a **Growth mindset** - intelligence is changeable if you learn more. Those with growth mindset accomplish more.           **[Total theories:]** \-      **1. Spearman's idea of general intelligence** -- single g factor responsible for intelligence that underlies performance on all cognitive tasks  \-      **2. Gardner's idea of 8 intelligences** -- differentiates intelligence into different modalities  \-      **3. Galton's idea of hereditary genius** -- human ability is hereditary \-      **4. Binet's idea of mental age** -- how a child at a specific age performs intellectually compared to average intellectual performance for that physical age in years.           **Language** **         Theories of Language and Cognition** \-      **Behaviorists**-- empiricist, believe language is just [conditioned behavior].  \-      **Nativists** -- rationalist, language must be [innate]. \-      **Materialist** -- look at [what happens in the brain] when people think/speak/write.  \-      **Interactionist** -- emphasizes interplay between environmental cues and innate biology          Some languages only have 2 words for color. But does that mean we think about color differently? Great language debate. \-      **Universalism** - thought determines language completely. \-      **Piaget** -- he believed once children were able to think a certain way, and then developed language to describe those thoughts.  \-      **Vygotsky** (middle) **-- language and thought** are both *independent*, but [converge through development].  ·       Eventually learn to use them at same time.           **Linguistic Determinism/Relativity** -- weak and strong hypothesis \-      **Weak:** language [influences thought] (reading right to left vs. left to right influences what direction you imagine girl pushing boy) \-      **Strong** (aka **Sapir-Whorfian hypothesis**): idea that speakers of different languages utilize different cognitive processes that influence how they think; people understand their world through language, and language in turn [shapes how we experience the world].  ·       Ex. tribe called Hopi without grammatical sense -- they couldn't think about time in same way.          ** Theories of Language Development: Nativist, Learning, Interactionist**          **Nativist perspective** (Noam **Chomsky**) -  emphasizes innate biological mechanisms and that children are born with ability to learn language.  \-      All people have a **language acquisition device** (LAD, later renamed **universal grammar**) that allowed them to learn language (syntax and grammar).  \-      Idea that this ability exists -- all languages shared same basic elements like nouns, verb, etc.  ·       This allows child to pick up on that. Goes along with idea there's a "critical period", thought to be from birth to age 9, the period of time a child is most able to learn a language