Cognition Unit

Thinking and Concepts● Cognition: mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering and communicating

information● Concepts: mental groupings of similar objects, events and people● Prototypes: a mental image or best example of a category

Reasoning● Deductive: drawing logical conclusions from general statements

○ Example: All politicians are trustworthy. Janet is a politician. Therefore, Janet is trustworthy.■ Logical conclusion is that Janet is trustworthy. Statements can be sound, unsound,

valid or invalid● Inductive: drawing general conclusions from specific information

○ Example: You notice that everybody on the football team seems to be a good student. You could infer that all people who play football are good students. However, this is not necessarily true.

Problem Solving and Creativity

Heuristics: intuitive rules of thumb or shortcuts that may or may not be useful

Availability Heuristic: the rule of thumb is judged by what events come readily to mind. Ex: belief that air travel is more dangerous than car travel because plane crashes are so vividly reported.

Representativeness heuristic: judge objects and events in terms of how closely they match the prototype of that object or event. (can result in the formation of stereotypes)

Algorithm: a systematic, mechanical approaches that guarantee an eventual answer to a problem.

Insight Learning: sudden understanding of a problem or a potential strategy for solving a problem. (Aha moment!)

● Wolfgang Kohler-famous example with chimps.

Intuition: our fast, automatic, unreasoned feelings and thoughts.

Mental Set: tendency to respond to a new problem with an approach that was successfully used with similar problems in the past. Can get in the way of problem solving.

● Solutions that worked in the past often do work on new problems, but this is not always the case

Functional Fixedness: tendency to assume that a given item is only useful for the task for which it was designed.

Confirmation bias: the search for information that supports a particular view.

Hindsight bias: tendency after the fact to think you knew what the outcome would be. (I knew it all along phenomenon)

Belief Perseverance: a person only sees the evidence that supports a particular position, despite evidence presented to the contrary.

Framing: the way a question is phrased, can alter the outcome of problem solving or decision making.

Overconfidence: tendency to be more confident than correct--overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments

Elements of LanguagePhonemes: smallest units of sound (Phone)

Morphemes: smallest units of meaning (M)-Could be prefixes or suffixes

Syntax: set of rules used in the arrangement of sentences

Semantics: refers to the word meaning

Stages of Language Acquisition

Overgeneralization Errors: errors in which the rules of language are overextended, such as saying, “I goed to the story.”

B.F. Skinner● Behaviorist perspective: believed that we learn language based on reinforcement principles by

associating words with meanings○ Correct utterances are positively reinforced leading a child to want to continue that behavior○ Learn through operant conditioning and shaping

Noam Chomsky (switch order with skinner)● Cognitive Perspective of language acquisition● Surface structure of language: the superficial way in which the words are arranged in a text or in

speech● Deep structure of language: the underlying meaning of the words● Universal Grammar: innate, biological categories, facilitate language development

○ Example: children instinctively know how to combine a noun and a verb into a meaningful, correct phrase

● Language acquisition device: ability to learn language rapidly as children● Critical period for learning language exists

Benjamin Whorf● Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis: theorized that the language we use

might control, and in some ways limit our thinking

The Brain and LanguageBroca’s Area:

● Located in the left side of the frontal lobe● Linked to speech production

Broca’s Aphasia:● Partial loss of the ability to produce language (spoken,

manual, or written)● Comprehension generally remains intact● Known as non fluent aphasia

Wernicke’s Area:● Located in the temporal lobe of the left side of the brain● Responsible for the comprehension of speech

Wernicke’s Aphasia:● Impaired ability to grasp the meaning of spoken words and sentences● The ease of producing connected speech is not very affected● Known as fluent aphasia

Three Box/Information-Processing Model of Memory

Encoding: get information into our brainStorage: retain the information

Retrieval: get the info back out

Parallel Processing: processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously

Sensory Memory: split second holding tank for incoming memory● Iconic Memory: a split second perfect photograph of a scene● Echoic Memory: split second perfect memory for sounds

Short term/working memory: what you are paying attention to determines what gets encoded into your short term memory

● If we do nothing with a memory it will usually fade in 10 to 30 seconds● George Miller’s Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: our short term memory capacity is

limited to around 7 items● This can be expanded through chunking and other mnemonic devices● Another way to retain is to use elaborative rehearsal

Long Term Memory: relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system

Memory Tools

Chunking: organizing items into familiar, manageable units enabling us to recall more easily

Mnemonics: memory aids

Method of Loci: based on the assumption that you can best remember places that you are familiar with, so if you link something you need to remember with a place that you know very well, the location will serve as a clue that will help you remember.

Distributed PracticeSpacing Effect: distributed study or practice yielding better long term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice

Testing Effect: enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading information.

Levels of Processing

Shallow Processing: encoding on a basic level based on the structure or appearance of words

Deep processing: encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words (yields the best retention)

Semantic encoding:

Memory Storage: Roles of parts of the brainHippocampus: brain’s equivalent of the “save'' button. Helps with converting short term memory into long term memory. Processes explicit memories

Frontal Lobes: also helps process explicit memories

Cerebellum: plays a role in forming and storing the implicit memories created by classical conditioning

Basal Ganglia: also connected to implicit memories. Involved in motor movement and helps to facilitate formation of our procedural memories for skills.

Amygdala: part of the limbic system-connected to emotional memories

Emotions and Memory

Flashbulb Memories: clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event

Synaptic ChangesLong term potentiation: an increase in a cell’s firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory. (kind of like the building and strengthening of a bridge)

RetrievalRecall: retrieving information that is not currently in your conscious awareness, but that was learned at an earlier time (fill in the blank questions, essays, etc)

Recognition: identifying items previously learned (multiple choice questions)

Relearning: learning something more quickly when you learn it a second or later time.

Retrieval CuesPriming: the activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory. Priming is often invisible memory without your conscious awareness

Context Dependent Memory: putting yourself back in the context where you experienced something can prime your memory retrievalExample: While taking notes, you realize you need to sharpen your pencil. You get up and walk into another room, but then you cannot remember why. After returning to your desk it hits you: “I wanted to sharpen this pencil!” In one context (at your desk), you realize your pencil needs sharpening. When you go into the other room and are in a different context, you have few cues to lead you back to that thought.

Mood Congruent Memory: the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one’s current good or bad mood.Ex: When you breakup with a significant other, you think about all of the other times you’ve been dumped

State Dependent Memory: the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one’s current state of mind (drunk, sleepy, caffeinatedEx: Information learned when a person is drunk is better recalled when a person is drunk, or if someone is drowsy when they learn material they may be more likely to remember material when they are drowsy again

Serial Position Effect: our tendency to recall best the last (a recency effect) and first (a primacy effect) items in a list

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Forgetting, Memory Construction and Memory Improvement

Anterograde Amnesia: an inability to form new memories

Retrograde: inability to retrieve information from one’s past

Encoding Failure: refers to the brain's ability to store and recall events and information, either short or long-term.

Hermann Ebbinghaus’s forgetting Curve: The course of forgetting is initially rapid, then levels off with time.

Retrieval Failure: could look like the tip of the tongue phenomenon

Interference● Proactive Interference: the disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information● Retroactive interference: the disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information

Remember PO/RN

Motivated Forgetting

Repression: the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings and memories.

● Helps to protect our self-concept and to minimize anxiety● Commonly connecting back to instances of abuse/trauma

Misinformation and Imagination EffectsElizabeth Loftus: shown how eyewitnesses reconstruct their memories after a crime or accident

● Famous experiment○ Two groups watched a film of a traffic accident and then answered questions about what

they had seen. Those asked about how fast were the cars going when the smashed into each other? Gave higher speed estimates than those asked, about how fast were the cars going when the bumped each other? A week later, when asked whether they recalled seeing any broken glass, people who had heard smashed were more than twice as likely to report seeing glass fragments.

Misinformation Effect: incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event● Hearing a vivid retelling of an event can implant false memories

● Repeatedly imagining nonexistent actions and events can create false memories

Source Amnesia: attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined.

Deja Vu: that eerie sense that “I’ve experienced this before.” Cues from the current situation may subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience

TESTING AND INTELLIGENCE UNITIntelligence: mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

Intelligence Test: a method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores

Psychometrician: people who make tests

Charles Spearman and Intelligence● General Intelligence (g factor): idea that mental capacity is expressed by a single intelligence score● Factor Analysis: a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a

test

Thurstone’s Primary Mental Abilities

Gardner’s Eight Intelligences● Savant Syndrome: a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an

exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing

Sternberg’s Three Intelligences

Emotional Intelligence● The ability to perceive, understand, manage and use emotions

○ Perceiving emotions: to recognize them in faces, music and stories○ Understanding emotions: to predict them and how they change and blend○ Managing Emotions: to know how to express them in varied situations○ Using Emotions to enable adaptive or creative thinking

Alfred Binet: Predicting School Achievement● Goal: measuring each child’s mental age-the level of performance typically associated with a

certain chronological age (the average 9 year old would have a mental age of 9)● Wanted to use the test to identify French school children needing special attention

Lewis Terman: The Innate IQ● Stanford-Binet: the widely used American revision of Binet’s original intelligence test● Intelligence Quotient (IQ): defined originally as the ratio of mental age to chronological age

multiplied by 100 (IQ=ma/caX 100). ○ An average child, whose mental age and chronological ages are the same, has an IQ of 100.

But, an 8 year old who answers questions as would a typical 10 year old has an IQ of 125.

Modern Tests of Mental Abilities● Achievement Tests: designed to assess what a person has learned (AP test)● Aptitude test: designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn

(SAT, ACT)● Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS): most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and

performance (nonverbal) subtests

Standardization● Defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of

a pretested group● Normal curve: the symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical

and psychological attributes.● Flynn Effect: On average, IQ scores worldwide have been increasing over time.

Reliability

● The extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting (test-retest, split-half)

Validity● The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to.

○ Content validity: the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest○ Predictive validity: the success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to

predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior (also called criterion-related validity)

○ Construct validity: the degree to which a test measures what it claims or purports to be measuring

Stability vs. Change● Cross sectional: researchers at one point in time test and compare people of various ages

○ Found older adults give fewer correct answers on intelligence tests ○ Conclude that decline in mental ability is part of general aging process

● Longitudinal: retest the same cohort--group of people--over a period of years○ Found that until late in life, intelligence remained stable

● Crystallized Intelligence: our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age● Fluid Intelligence: our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late

adulthood

Extremes of Intelligence● Intellectual disability: a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence score of 70

or below and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life. ● Down syndrome: a condition of mild to severe intellectual disability and associated physical

disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21● High Extreme: High scoring people tend to be healthy and well-adjusted, as well as unusually

successful academically

Twin and Adoption Studies● Studies of twins, family members, and adoptees indicate a significant hereditary contribution to

intelligence scores● Intelligence seems to be polygenic, and researchers are searching for genes that exert an influence● Heritability is the proportion of variation among individuals that can be attributed to genes

Group Differences and the Question of Bias● Advantages to accrue to the white, middle and upper class● Experiences of other cultural groups seem to work to their detriment both on these tests and in

college

● Stereotype Threat: the risk of confirming negative stereotypes about an individual’s racial, ethnic, gender or cultural group (ex: black students performed worse on standardized tests than their white peers when they were reminded, before taking the tests that their racial group tends to do poorly on such exams. When their race was not emphasized, however, black students performed similarly to white peers.