Cognitive Psychology BS Psychology 2 - 1st Semester

Cognitive Psychology BS Psychology 2 | 1st Semester CONSCIOUSNESS CONSCIOUSNESS A.​ CONSCIOUSNESS OF COMPLEX MENTAL PROCESSES B.​ PRECONSCIOUS PROCESSING 1.0 CONSCIOUSNESS ●​ The narrower range of information that the individual is aware of manipulating ●​ Allows us to monitor our interactions with the environment ●​ To link past and present ●​ Sense a continuous thread of experience ●​ To control and plan for future actions 1.1 CONSCIOUSNESS OF COMPLEX MENTAL PROCESSES 1.​ First View: Protocol Analysis ●​ Good access to complex mental processes 2.​ Second View ●​ Not a very good access ●​ Conscious access to thought processes and control over thought processes are minimal 1.2 PRECONSCIOUS PROCESSING Priming ●​ Perception of targets stimuli is influenced or “primed” by previous stimuli ●​ Presentation of first stimulus may activate related concepts in memory that are then more easily accessible Page 1 October 2025 Tip of the Tongue ●​ A preconscious state where an individual tries to remember something that is stored in memory but cannot be readily retrieved ●​ Anterior cingulate prefrontal cortices ●​ Likely due to high-level cognitive mechanisms being activated in order to resolve the retrieval failure. Blindsight ●​ A person cannot consciously see a certain portion of their visual field, but still behaves in some instances as if they can see it MEMORY MEMORY A.​ B.​ C.​ D.​ MEMORY MODELS OF MEMORY MULTIPLE MEMORY SYSTEMS MEMORY PROCESSES 1.0 MEMORY ●​ A process by which we retain and draw on our past experiences to use that information in the present ●​ Dynamic mechanis,s associated with storing, retaioning, and retrieving information about past experiences ●​ Not purely reconstructive (encode-store-retrieve) but it also observes a constructive nature in that prior experience effects how we recall things and what we actually recall from memory ●​ Emotions, moods, and states of consciousness affect memory processes, and may also provide a context for encoding that affects retrieval of semantic memories Autobiographical Memory ●​ Refers to memory of an individual’s history ●​ One does not remember exactly what happened, but the construction or reconstruction of what happened Three Common Operations of Memory ●​ Encoding - transform sensory data into mental representation ●​ Storing - keep encoded info into memory ●​ Retrieval - pull out useful information from memory Recalling ●​ Produce a fact, a word, or other item from memory Recognition ●​ Select or otherwise identify an item as being one that you have been exposed to previously Page 2 October 2025 2.0 2.1 MODELS OF MEMORY THE EARLY MODEL & THE TRADITIONAL MODEL William James (1842 - 1910) ●​ Primary memory, temporary information concurrently used (short term information) ●​ Secondary memory which stores permanent information (long term information) Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968) ●​ Sensory store - capable of storing relatively limited amounts of information for very brief periods ●​ Short-term store - capable of storing information for somewhat longer periods but of relatively limited capacity ●​ Long-term store - capable of storing information for very long periods; need for rehearsal or retrieval strategies 2.2 LEVEL-OF-PROCESSING MODEL LOP Model ●​ Fergus Craik & Robert Lockhart (1972) ●​ Memory is not composed of three memory systems but rather, memory varies along a continuous dimension in terms of depth of encoding ●​ Infinite number of levels of processing at which items can be encoded through the successive and deeper understandin of material to learned ●​ The deeper the level of processing, the higher probability of retrieval ●​ Physical, phonological, semantic level of processing ●​ Greatly affected by what Roger, Kuiper, Kerker (1977) called the self-reference effect ●​ Self-schema ○​ Can affect our ability to recall ○​ An organized system of internal cues regarding our attributes, personal experiences, & ourselves ●​ High levels of recall when they relate to the words meaningfully ●​ The way people process (elaborate) the encoding of an item, and the way the item is retrieved later on, are important variables ●​ The better the match between the type of elaboration of the encoding and the type of task required for retrieval, the better the retrieval results. Table 1.1 LEVEL OF PROCESSING LOP Basis for Processing Example Physical Visually apparent features of the letters TABLE Is the word written in capital letters? Phonological Sound combinations associated with letters CAT Does it rhyme with MAT? Semantic Meaning of the word DAFFODIL A type of plant? 2.3 INTEGRATIVE MODEL: WORKING MEMORY Working-memory model ●​ Alan Baddeley (1990) ●​ The most widely used and accepted models of memory ●​ Integrates insights from the traditional and LOP Model and highlights the role of working memory ●​ Recently activated or conscious, portion of long-temr memory ●​ It moves these activated elements into and out of brief, temporary memory storage ●​ Working memory has four components: 1.​ Visuospatial sketchpad - briefly holds visual images Page 3 October 2025 2.​ Phonological Loop - inner speech for verbal comprehension and acoustic rehearsal; contains the phonological storage (holds information in memory) and subvocal rehearsal (utilized to put the information into the memory) 3.​ Central executive coordinates attentional activities and governs responses: gating mechanism - decides what information to process and how to process that information 4.​ Episodic buffer - limited capacity system capable of binding information from systems that perform other cognitive tasks adn from long-term memory into a unitary episodic representation: visual, spatial, phonological information makes sense to us (integration allows to relate old information with new information) Table 1.2 MODELS COMPARISON Terminaligy Traditional Alternative Working memory is STM Working (active) memory is part of LTM that recently has been activated in memory, including the STM Metaphor for Envisioning Relationship STM vs LTM STM, LTM, & WM are integrated: Wm is the activated LTM. and a fleeting STM Metaphor for Moverment of Information Info in STM to LTM back Info remains in LTM: when activated it moves to the LTM which then moves in and out of the STM Emphasis 3.0 Difference of STM & LTM Role of activation in moving information in the WM MULTIPLE MEMORY SYSTEMS Endel Tulving (1972) ●​ Suggested that our conscious memory (explicit or declarative), may be classified into two: semantic memory (general world knowledge) and episodic memory (personal experienced events) Implicit or Non-declarative ●​ Procedural memory (procedures) ●​ Priming effects (perception) ●​ Conditioning ●​ Habituation (habits) ●​ Sensitization (trauma) Page 4 October 2025 3.0 MEMORY PROCESSES ●​ First, encode, then store, and retrieve 3.1 ENCODING Encoding in the Short-term Storage ●​ Encode visually presented letter by how they sound and not by how they look ●​ More prone to forget visual information that acoustic information Encoding in the Long-term Storage ●​ Encoded semantically ●​ Flexibility in how we encode information to the long-temr storage ●​ There is no single answer on which gets encoded longer 3.2 TRANSFER OF INFORMATION FROM STM TO LTM ●​ To make sense of the information we encode, we integrate information from our STM to our LTM Consolidation ●​ Process of integrating new information into stored information ●​ Consolidate declarative information into memory Rehearsal ●​ Needed to keep information active ●​ Tend to forget things that are recently received (without rehearsal) ●​ Can occur overtly or covertly ●​ Elaborative Rehearsal ○​ Individual somehow elaborates the items to be remembered ○​ Makes the itens either more meaningfully integrated into what the person already knows or more meaningfully connected to one another and therefore more memorable ●​ Maintenance Rehearsal ○​ Simply repetitiously rehearses the items to be repeated ○​ Temporarily maintains information in STM without transferring the information to the LTM ●​ Can also be determined on how they are affected by spacing effect as it can affect on how it can be stored ●​ Spacing Effects ○​ Distributed Practice - learning through various sessions and spaced over time ○​ Massed Practice - learning in which sessions are crammed over a very short period of time Organization of Information ●​ Stored memories are organized subjectively ●​ Mnemonic devices - specific techniques to help you memorize lists of words 3.3 RETRIEVAL Availability ●​ Presence of information stored in the LTM Accessibility ●​ Degree to which we can gain access to the available information Page 5 October 2025 3.4 PROCESS OF FORGETTING AND MEMORY DISTORTIONS Interference Theory ●​ Forgetting occurs because recall of certain words ●​ Proactive Interference ○​ Interfering material occurs before learning of the to be-remembered material ○​ Old information interferes with new information ●​ Retroactive Interference ○​ Recent information gets in the way of trying to recall older information Serial Position Effect ●​ Recency Effect - recall of information at and near the end of a list ●​ Primacy Effect - recall of words at and near the beginning of a list Decay Theory ●​ Information is forgotten because of the gradual disappearance rather than displacement of the memory trace ●​ Original information disappears when there is no rehearsal Memory Distortion ●​ One’s construction of autobiographical memory is subjective ●​ People tend to distort their own memories ●​ Seven Sins of Memory Transcience - memory fades quickly Absent-mindedness looking for something then forget what you are actually looking for Blocking (tip-of-the-tongue) - you know that you should remember something but you cannot Misattribution - cannot remember where they heard what they heard or read what they read Suggestibility - often susceptible to suggestion (they may think they remember something, but it was just suggested to them) Bias - biased to our own recall Persistence - remember things as consequential but are actually inconsequential