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What are the assumptions in cognitive psychology? (2)
- 1. Mental processes exist
- 2. Mental processes can be studied
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What is the most simple model for recognising the word 'dog'?
- Identify 'D'
- Identify 'O'
- Identify 'G'
- Find 'DOG' in lexical memory
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What does a cognitive processing model require? (2)
- 1. Needs to be specific enough to allow predictions to be made
- 2. Needs not to be able to explain anything (i.e., must be falsifiable).
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What are some shortcomings of the cognitive model as computer program that has been developed in the last 25 years or so?
- 1. Stimulations can be modified to look more impressive & are potentially artificial
- 2. Just bcos a computer acts like a human, does not mean a human is programmed in that way (many different models can give similar looking output)
- 3. Highly mathematical programs make explanation more abstract rather than more concrete (purpose of program should be to help us understand what is going on)
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What is the assumption of Cognitive Neuroscience?
That looking directly at the brain will inform us about how the cognitive system works
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What can brain imaging tell us about cognitive processing, & what can't brain imaging tell us?
- Brain imaging tells us where activation takes place & when.
- Very limited in what it can say about how
- (& it is the "how" that is of interest to cognitive psychologists)
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What is attention? (analogy)
Attention is like choosing a television channel - consciousness is the picture on the screen
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What is active attention? (+ what is it controlled by, & driven by)
- Active Attention is when attention is deliberately focused on some particular part of the environment
- - Controlled by beliefs, desires
- - Top-down (goal driven)
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What is passive attention? (+ what is it controlled by, & driven by)
- Attention that is controlled by the environment
- - Bottom-up (data driven)
- - "captured" by events in environment
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Visual search is a perceptual task requiring a scan of the visual environment for a particular object. What kind of attention does this require? What is it driven by?
- Active attention
- Top-down & Bottom-up processes combine to produce behaviour
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Example of a visual search task that is pre-attentive (no search required)?
Red ovals (target) "popping-out" from the background of green ovals (distractors)
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Example of a visual search task that is attentive (search required)?
Finding the 'F's (target) among the' E's (distractors)
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What does Feature integration theory state?
- That if a single feature allows detection, then pre-attentive
- If detection requires a combination of features, then attentional search
- (Attention is required to 'bind' the features together)
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What can we conclude from findings related to feature integration theory?
- 1. Very fast, parallel processing of features
- 2. Slower, attentive, serial process to combine features (to form objects)
- 3. Need to check every object when searching for conjunction stimulus
- Therefore, reaction times will be very high when no# of distractors is high
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What are 2 problems with feature integration theory?
- 1. Distractors sharing no common features with the target do not increase reaction time
- 2. Distractors increase RT much more if they share a feature with target (eg, shape, colour)
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What does the theory of Guided Search (Wolfe, 1998) state?
- 1st we activate each feature (red & oval) - this creates an activation map
- Search is then restricted to those objects with high activation & other objects are ignored
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What happens when distractors in the visual search task are all very similar to each other?
- Distractors can be grouped & visual search is quicker
- (allows many distractors to be rejected together)
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What were Posner's (1980) conclusions regarding focused visual attention?
- 1. Attention is not limited to a narrow 'spotlight'
- 2. There are 2 attentional systems
- - Central cues - endogenous / deliberate
- - Peripheral cues - exogenous / automatic
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What were the conclusions of La Berge (1983) from his word/letter tasks? (2)
- 1. That area attended to can vary in size (size of letter/word)
- 2. That attention is not like a spotlight, it is more like a zoom lens
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What were Juola, Bowhuis, Cooper & Warner's (1991) conclusions regarding attention, using concentric rings?
- - That attention is not a spotlight nor a zoom lens - it is something much more complex -
- (Results showed that when paying attention to the outer ring, responses to targets in centre are slow)
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What can we summarise about visual search tasks? (3)
- 2-stage process - 1st (quick) processing of feature/ similarity info - 2nd (slow) search for target amongst most promising (similar) candidates
- • Distractors easily ignored if dissimilar from target
- • Groups of similar distractors can be rejected together easily
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What can we summarise about focused visual attention? (3)
- Visual attention is very flexible, & can be object centered
- • People can attend to an area, or to particular objects
- • Visual attention can be “captured” by cues such as the peripheral cue (Posner, 1980)
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What is the cocktail party effect?
The ability to focus one's listening attention on a single talker among a cacophony of conversations & background noise
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What did Broadbent (1958) find in his dichotic listening task experiments?
That particpants hearing 3 digit pairs simultaneously (3 digits heard in each ear), would then recall the digits ear by ear, rather than pair by pair
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What does Broadbent's filter theory state? (re Dichotic Listening Task) (3)
- Filter allows information from 1 input through based on physical characteristics (eg, location)
- Prevents overloading the limited capacity of STM
- Unattended stimuli are rejected (early selection)
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How do Deutsch & Deutsch (1963) explain the dichotic listening task?
- Argue for late selection
- (all info processed for meaning but only some chosen when making response)
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What problems did Treisman (1960) find with the filter theory? (3)
- The filter only attenuates processing
- The threshold for processing of unattended stimuli is higher than thought
- (Important unattended stimuli 'breakthrough' )
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What were Lavie's (2000) findings regarding the dichotic listening task?
- That perceptual load (how much other stuff is 'going on') determines Early vs. Late Selection
- - High load = early selection
- - Low Load = late selection
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What is the fate of unattended stimuli?
Not remembered or usually perceived (early selection)
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Is some behaviour automatic?
Yes - that is why we can do 2 things at once (eg, pat head & rub tummy)
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Why can't we initiate 2 behaviours at once? (automatic behaviour)
Because the initiation is always cognitively demanding (so must rub tummy then pat head)
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What is the psychological refractory period (PRP)?
- The delay in the response to the second of two closely spaced stimuli
- (occurs even after 10,000 practice trials)
- Not due to similarity of stimulus or response
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What is an action slip (Reason, 1979)?
- habits & goals in opposition
- (automatic, well-practiced behaviour undermining goal)
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When do action slips occur? (2)
- 1. When correct response is not the strongest or most habitual
- 2. When attention is not fully applied to selecting the correct response
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What role does the central executive (Supervisory Attentional System - SAS), play in overall goal?
- Central executive determines overall goal.
- When you don't pay attention the CE fails to check actions against overall goal
- (& then well-practiced behaviours might take control of behaviour)
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How does frontal lobe damage affect goal-directed behaviour?
- It disrupts goal-directed behaviour
- (& behaviour becomes more controlled by habit & environment)
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Where is the supervisory, attentional system located? (goal-directed behaviour)
In the frontal lobes
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What did Tipper & Driver (1988) conclude in their negative priming study? (2)
- 1. That to respond appropriately we sometimes need to inhibit alternative responses
- 2. Successful inhibition leads to response being slower the next time it is made
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What does the Stroop test demonstrate?
Goal-directed behaviour competing with a habit (reading the word is a habit)
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What are the 2 kinds of attention?
- 1. Controlled
- 2. Automatic
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What are the features of controlled attention? (2)
- endogenous & goal-directed
- (eg, visual search)
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What are the features of automatic attention?
- exogenous & non goal directed
- (eg, captured by sight or sound)
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How do we represent concepts in semantic memory?
- Semantic features
- (features that are so typical of the concept that they are virtually required in order to classify an object to categories - defining features)
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What is Colins & Wuillian's (1969) hierarchical semantic network?
- An account of semantic memory in the form of a semantic network
- (model with branches leading down from main word like 'animal' to bird, mammal, fish, etc)
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What is the prototype model proposed by Rosch?
- Further defines the semantic network by stating that concepts are centred around a prototype which combines the most typical features of all members of that category
- Concepts are also hierarchically represented: superordinate (e.g., furniture), basic (e.g., chair), and subordinate (e.g., dining-room chair) categories.
- Basic concepts are the ones that people tend to name when shown a picture
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What is a propositional network?
- Network of propositions such as:
- 1. Zara gives the book to Arnold. 2. The book belongs to the man 3. The man is old
- Beginning with 1 we then branch out 'Zara' (agent), give (relation), Arnold (recipient), book (object). Book then branches to 2 as (subject), etc
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Through repeated exposures, one builds up a schema for particular activities (eg, restaurant), what else is this script?
A network of propositions
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What did Shepard & Metzler's (1971) empirical study of imagery, reveal about mental rotation?
Operations that we can perform in the mind are similar to operations we perform on the physical objects.
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How does Kosslyn's (1975) model of imagery (Imagine a CAT next to an ELEPHANT vs a CAT next to a FLY. Does a cat have claws? Latter easier to respond to because image of cat is bigger), account for generation of novel images?
- The model incorporates separate systems for representing images (image files) & propositional information (propositional files).
- These can interact with each other to generate a new image (set up in a "spatial medium")
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When you just have to recognise the form of a word (i.e., identify the word) is semantic information activated?
- Stroop interference shows that semantic information is automatically activated (meaning of a word influences the speed of naming the ink colour, e.g., RED)
- Semantic activation is also gauged by looking at semantic priming in the lexical decision task. Recognition of CAT is faster when preceded by DOG
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What are the different types of episodic memory captured in the traditional multistory model by Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968)? (3)
- 1. Sensory memory (unprocessed information in its sensory form ready for processing within the STS)
- 2. Short term store (information here needs to be rehearsed to be remembered)
- 3. Long term store (rehearsal loop between STS & LTS)
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What are the 2 types of rehearsal for episodic memory?
- 1. Maintenance rehearsal (Reproduce information once, then discard it. i.e.
- remembering phone numbers)
- 2. Elaborative rehearsal (link information to old information already stored in long term store. eg, Mental arithmetic, working memory)
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Baddeley (1970s >) states that working memory made up of several subsystems. These are? (4)
- 1. Articulatory loop: saying to yourself over & over (maintenance rehearsal)
- 2. Visuo-Spatial Scratchpad: short term version of Kosslyn’s “spatial medium”
- 3. 2002: Episodic Buffer (binds together information from 1. & 2. – where elaborative processing may occur
- 4. Central executive: controls system , determines strategies you're going to use in relation to articulatory loop & visuo spatial scratch pad (AKA Slave Systems)
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Is long term episodic memory more influenced by semantic factors or by form-based, physical factors (i.e. sound of word)?
Long-term is more influenced by semantic features ('big' mistaken for 'large')
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Is short term episodic memory more influenced by semantic factors or by form-based, physical factors (i.e. sound of word)?
Short-term more influenced by physical factors of the word ('big' is mistaken for 'pig')
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What is the (distributed) connectionist framework?
Like a combined semantic network & propositional network, where each word on the list has its own episodic trace linked to the Context X node ("CAT occurred in Context X")
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What is Infantile amnesia (autobiographical memory)?
No reliable memories prior to the age of 3
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What is Reminiscence bump (autobiographical memory)?
- People around age 70 asked to generate autobiographical memories - majority of these come from (ages 15-25).
- Explained in terms of the novelty of events at that time making them distinctive & being novel, the information in those events is processed more elaborately
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What are Flashbulb memories (autobiographical memory)?
- Major events that can be vividly remembered bcos they are so momentous.
- Exemplified by being able to remember everything you were doing at the time when you heard about a major world event
- (but little evidence that accuracy for memory surrounding such events actual lasts any longer than ordinary memories, maybe replay effect)
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