Cognitive Psychology Exam 1 Review.docx

Study Guide Cognitive Psychology (Exam 1) 1\. List 3 characteristics (given in class) of the cognitive approach. Knowing (or thinking) over responding Focus on mental structure and organization Views people as active, constructive, and creative responders - unlike behaviorism Focus on interact...

Study Guide Cognitive Psychology (Exam 1) 1\. List 3 characteristics (given in class) of the cognitive approach. Knowing (or thinking) over responding Focus on mental structure and organization Views people as active, constructive, and creative responders - unlike behaviorism Focus on interaction between organism and environment Meaning is emergent property of this interaction Does not emphasize person animal continuum 2\. Describe the notion/basic idea behind Gestalt psychology. Then give 1 example demonstrating gestalt principles. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. We tend to perceive more than what is there. Largely based on how we recognize patterns and associate groups of shapes and ideas together Common examples are figure ground vases 3\. When was modern-day cognitive psychology born? What three areas (during this time) had a huge influence on these modern "real beginnings" and why? September 11, 1956 - MIT Symposium Merging and sharing of ideas lead to birth of cognitive psychology as we know it today Language, problem solving, computer science (how to look at the mind) 4\. Define and describe behaviorism. Then give 2 reasons why those who believed in it were so extreme in their views. Finally, describe what influence behaviorism had on cognitive psychology. Behaviorism focuses on stimulus and response. Not concerned about anything in between Scientific study of observable behavior. Jon B Watson, Pavlov, William Wundt 5\. Distinguish between bottom-up and top-down processes. Give 1 example where top down processing is clearly evident. Bottom Up- Data driven, typical flow of info from senses into memory (the kind people normally think of (little bits of information being built up until you reach understanding) Top Down- conceptually driven, uses context, previous experiences, memories, and expectations to make sense of information (reading a paragraph with the words slightly messed up and being able to understand it because your brain uses past reading experience so you can read the construed paragraph, first and and last letters are in the right location) 6\. What are the stages in the basic information processing model? Reproduce the diagram presented in class (and in the book) and give a summary of each stage and its function. Input response \| \^ V \| Sensory store --filter--pattern recognition--selection-- short term memory--long term memory 7\. Distinguish between parallel and serial processing. Parallel- processing information all at once or several parts simultaneously (looking at things) Serial- processing one piece of information fully before moving onto the next thing (listening to things) 8\. Distinguish between the iconic and echoic sensory stores in terms of purpose (What does it do? What info does it work with?), relative capacity, duration, and preferred type of processing. Iconic - visual processing, Sperling's partial report means you can store up to 9 letters correctly in your sensory store for 250-500 milliseconds, parallel Echoic - auditory, 3-4 chunks of info, 3-5 seconds, processes in parallel 9\. Why was Sperling important to cognitive psychology? Developed whole and partial report methods 1st to provide evidence of the sensory store 1st to provide evidence of the iconic store One of the first to show evidence of info processing stages and how they relate to each other 1st to provide evidence that short term memory stores info through auditory encoding 10\. Describe the template theory of pattern recognition. Then describe two problems with the theory. Holistic, unanalysed entities Store exact mental copies Recognition occurs when visual cue matches with stored template Problems = requires a different template for each problem, requires perfect match, doesn't reveal how patterns differ, no room for alternative interpretations, does not account for animal data. "Its got to be more basic than that" 11\. List and describe 2 pieces of research evidence to support feature theories of pattern recognition. Rats with shadows Children and them being able to learn and different letters when you highlight their differing features Charactertures emphasizes features leads to easier recognitions 12\. How do feature and structural theories of pattern recognition differ? Describe one piece of research evidence to support structural theories. Structure theory adds to feature theory. The relationship between features is as important as the features themselves for achieving recognition. Evidence would be the b and p graph with the dot. Or the cup example 13\. Distinguish between automatic and controlled attentional processes. Be sure to mention 2 criteria distinguishing them and give an example of each process. Automatic- The process occurs without intention/without a conscious decision & does not give rise to conscious awareness. Controlled- The process occurs with intention/with a conscious decision & does give rise to conscious awareness 14\. Compare and contrast the following theories of attention: Broadbent's Filter, Treisman's Attenuation, and Deutsch-Norman's Late Selection. They differ based on where the bottleneck happens. All of them start with input into the sensory store 15\. What is a shadowing task? Describe how it works and state what it is psychologists are interested in (i.e., what they want to find out). Shadowing task- where participants listen to sentences and repeat isolated words Full sentences are said in both ears and the participant has to pick one to listen to and repeat. The participant usually doesn't recall anything from the unattended ear. It is used to study selective attention 16\. What is the capacity theory of attention, and what are its basic assumptions? How does it differ from a bottleneck theory? The capacity theory of attention proposes that attention is like a limited resource. People allocate their attention capacity across tasks based on their priorities. The nature of interference is different