Cognition: Memory

1. Cognition: Memory

2. Memory • Definition: Learning that has persisted over time • Happens in three stages: • Encoding – getting information in • Storage – maintaining information over time • Retrieval – getting memory back out

3. Encoding: Getting Information In • Automatic processing – we unconsciously encode information about space, time and frequency and well-learned information

4. Effortful processing – encoding that requires attention and conscious effort • Can be boosted through • rehearsal – conscious repetition • spacing effect – retaining information better when rehearsal is spread out over time • serial position effect – tendency to better recall the last and first items in a list

5. What We Encode • Levels of processing: • Visual encoding – encoding of picture images • Acoustic encoding – encoding of sounds • Semantic encoding – encoding of meaning

6. Organizing information for encoding: • Mnemonics – memory aids, especially those that use vivid imagery and organizational techniques • Chunking – organizing items into familiar, manageable units • Often happens automatically

7. Storage: Retaining Information • Information processing model: • Sensory memory – immediate memory; information is kept here for a few seconds or less • Iconic memory – fast-decaying store of visual information • Echoic memory – fast-decaying store of auditory information

8. Short-term memory • Limited in duration and capacity • Capacity is generally 7 +/- 2 “bits” of information • Slightly better for random numbers than random letters • Slightly better for what we hear than what we see • Long-term memory • Unlimited

9. Storing Memories in the Brain • Memories are not stored in precise locations in the brain • Long-term potentiation (LTP) – increase in a synapse’s firing potential after a brief, rapid stimulation • Thought to be a neural basis for learning and memory

10. Flashbulb memory – a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event • Stronger emotional experiences produces stronger, more reliable memories • Prolonged stress can corrode neural connections and shrink the hippocampus

11. Amnesia victims • Have implicit (or nondeclarative) memory – how to do something • The cerebellum helps form and store implicit memories • Often don’t have explicit (or declarative) memory – memory of facts and experiences • The hippocampus helps process explicit memories for storage • Infantile amnesia – we have no accurate memories before age 3 because • Most explicit memories are indexed by words non-speaking children don’t have • Hippocampus is one of the last brain regions to mature

12. Retrieval: Getting Information Out • Retrieval cues • Tastes, smells and sights aid in recall of associated episodes • Priming – activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory

13. Context effects • déjà vu – sense that “I’ve experienced this before” • Cues from current situation might subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience • State dependent memory – what we learn in one state can be more easily recalled when we are again in that state • Losing keys while intoxicated and remembering their location while again intoxicated • Mood-congruent memory – tendency to recall experiences that are consistent w/one’s current good or bad mood • When depressed, we recall sad events which perpetuates the depression

14. Why we forget • Three sins of forgetting • Absent-mindedness - inattention to details • Transience - storage decay over time • Blocking - inaccessibility of stored info

15. Three sins of distortion • Misattribution - confusing the source of the information • Suggestibility - lingering effects of misinformation • Bias - belief-colored recollections • One sin of intrusion • Persistence - unwanted memories

16. Retrieval failure • Proactive interference – disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information • Retroactive interference – disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information • Repression – in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings and memories • Most memory researcher think repression rarely occurs

17. Memory Construction • Misinformation effect – incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event • “How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other • Source amnesia – attributing to the wrong source of an event we have experienced, heard about, read about or imagined • Madonna vs. Lady Gaga

18. False memories may feel as real as true memories • The most confident and consistent eyewitnesses are the most persuasive but often not the most accurate • Children’s memories are especially unreliable and easily influenced

19. Improving Memory • Study repeatedly • Make the material meaningful • Activate retrieval cues • Use mnemonic devices • Minimize interference • Sleep more • Test and retest

20. Cognition: Thinking, Problem Solving, Creativity and Language

21. Cognition • Cognition – mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering and communicating • Concepts – mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas or people • Prototypes – mental image or best example of a category

22. Solving Problems • Strategies • Algorithms – step-by-step procedures that guarantee a solution • Heuristics – simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently • Faster, but more prone to errors than algorithms • Insight – sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem

23. Creativity – the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas • Five components of creativity identified by Robert Sternberg • Expertise • Imaginative thinking skills • A venturesome personality • Intrinsic motivation • A creative environment

24. Obstacles to Problem Solving • Confirmation bias – tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence • Fixation – inability to see a problem from a fresh perspective • Mental set – tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past • Functional fixedness – tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions

25. Using and Misusing Heuristics • Representativeness heuristic – judging the likelihood of things in terms of how they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes • May lead us to ignore other relevant information • Availability heuristic – estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory • If instances come readily to mind, we assume such events are common

26. Overconfidence – tendency to be more confident than correct • Belief perseverance – clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited • Intuition – effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit conscious reasoning • See chart on p. 310 for its pros and cons

27. Framing – how an issue is posed can significantly affect decisions and judgments

28. Language • Phoneme – smallest distinctive sound unit in language • Morpheme – smallest unit of language that carries meaning • Ex: “I”, “s” to indicate something is plural, “ed” or “pre” • Grammar • Semantics – set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words and sentences • syntax – rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences

29. Language Development • Receptive language – ability to comprehend speech • Develops by 4 months

30. Productive language • Babbling stage – spontaneously uttering a variety of sounds • Begins around 4 months • By 10 months language can be identified • One-word stage – child speaks mostly in single words • Usually from age 1 to 2 • Two-word stage – speaks mostly in two-word statements • Usually starts about age 2 • Telegraphic speech – early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram, using mostly nouns and verbs

31. Explaining Language Development • B.F. Skinner: Operant learning • Argued babies learn to talk through association, imitation and reinforcement • Noam Chomsky: Inborn universal grammar • Believed that given adequate nurture, language will naturally occur • Statistical learning and critical periods • Childhood is a critical period for mastering certain aspects of language

32. Thinking and Language • Language determinism – Benjamin Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think • More likely words influence our thinking