Chapter 7
Cognition
Cognition: Overview
Cognitive psychology is the study of mental processes such as
attention, language, memory, perception, problem solving,
thinking, and creativity.
What is memory?
Memory is defined as any indication that learning has
persisted over time.
Cognition: Information Processing
Theory
Information Processing Model proposes the stages that
information passes through before it is stored.
Cognition: Sensory Memory
Sensory Memory is first stage in the information processing
model and is the gateway between perception and memory.
Cognition: Sensory Memory
Iconic memory is visual sensory memory and lasts for only a
few tenths of a second.
Echoic memory is auditory sensory memory and lasts for three
or four seconds.
Items in sensory memory are constantly being replaced.
Cognition: Sensory Memory
George Sperling Experiment
Participants were very briefly shown a matrix of characters.
Then a tone was sounded. Either a high tone, mid tone, or low
tone.
Then participants were asked to recall the row of characters
corresponding to that tone.
Cognition: Sensory Memory
Cognition: Sensory Memory
The experiment demonstrated that the entire grid must be held
in sensory memory because participants did not know which
tone would be cued.
Cognition: Short-Term Memory
Short-term memory is the memory system responsible for the
temporary storage of information. Units of information are
stored for a duration of 10-30 seconds.
How many units can we hold in short-term memory?
Let’s do a test.
Cognition: Short-Term Memory
Butterfly
Multiple
Furry
Hope
Transferring
Robotic
Disaster
Guile
Red
Sixteen
Cognition: Short-Term Memory
George Miller researched how many units we can hold in
short-term memory.
He coined the term the magical number seven (plus/minus
two). You can hold roughly 7±2 units of information in shortterm.
What tricks do we use to help us store information in shortterm memory?
Cognition: Short-Term Memory
Maintenance Rehearsal is simple repetition to keep an item
in short-term memory until it can be used.
Elaborative Rehearsal involves thinking about how new
information relates to information already stored in long-term
memory.
Cognition: Short-Term Memory
Mnemonic devices are memory aides. They are strategies to
help store information.
Chunking involves taking long strings of information, and
grouping them into smaller, more manageable bits of
information.
Examples:
BEDMAS
ROY-G-BIV
Cognition: Short-Term Memory
Method of Loci: This involves imagining what you’re trying
to remember.
Dual-coding hypothesis: It is easier to remember words with
associated images than either words or images alone.
Self-reference effect: It is easier to remember things that are
personally relevant.
Cognition: Short-Term Memory
State-dependent memory: Information is more likely to be
remembered if the attempt to retrieve it occurs in a situation
similar to the situation in which in was encoded.
State-dependent memory also applies to information encoded
while in a particular state of mind, such as when information
is encoded under the influence of a drug (e.g., caffeine).
Cognition: Long-Term Memory
Long-term memory is defined as our “permanent” storage.
Types of long-term memory:
Declarative (explicit) memories: Are memories a person can
consciously retrieve.
Nondeclarative (implicit) memory: Are memories beyond
conscious consideration.
Cognition: Long-Term Memory
Types of long-term memory:
Episodic memories are of specific events, stored as a
sequential series.
Semantic memories are general knowledge of the world,
stored as facts or categories.
Procedural memories are memories of skills and how to
perform them.
Cognition: Long-Term Memory
Examples:
Episodic memory: The time you went and hung out with
____, and you guys went to ____, and then _____
Semantic memory: The capital of Russia is _____
Procedural memory: Tying your shoes, baking a cake, etc.
Cognition: Long-Term Memory
More ideas about long-term memory:
Priming is the implicit memory effect in which exposure to a
stimulus influences response to a later stimulus. A person
who sees the word “green” will be slightly faster to recognize
the word “tree.” This happens because green and tree are
closely associated in memory.
Classical Conditioning refers to a learning procedure in
which a biologically potent stimulus (food) is paired with a
previously neutral stimulus (bell).
Cognition: Long-Term Memory
Declarative Memory:
Sematic memory
Episodic memory
Nondeclarative Memory:
Procedural
Classical conditioning
Priming
Cognition: Long-Term Memory
Herman Ebbinghaus was a pioneer in memory research; he
would write out very long lists of arbitrary words and try to
recall them (e.g., CUH, TIR, GHO, SWE, etc.)
Herman Ebbinghaus is most famous for developing the
learning curve and the forgetting curve.
Cognition: Long-Term Memory
The learning curve described by Ebbinghaus refers to how
fast one learns information. The sharpest increase occurs after
the first try and then gradually evens out, meaning that less
and less new information is retained after each repetition.
Forgetting Curve: You will forget information at a
exponential rate at first. Eventually you will only remember a
small amount of what you learned, unless you practice.
Cognition: Long-Term Memory
Levels of Processing Model: Memories, in the levels of
processing model, are neither short nor long term. Memories
are deeply processed or shallowly processed.
This model explains why we remember stories better than
plain statements.
Shallowly Processed:
Images/sounds
Deeply Processed:
Stories
Cognition: Levels of Processing
Model
The next thing we will be discussing is our ability to recall
information. On the next slide, there is a list of words.
After the slide is changed, write down as many as you can
remember.
Cognition: Primacy & Recency
Effect
Rubber
Bug
Dislocate
Former
Trip
Mischief
Tease
States
Dog
Obvious
Cognition: Primacy & Recency
Effect
The primacy effect predicts that we are more likely to recall
items presented at the beginning of a list.
The recency effect demonstrates our ability to recall the items
at the end of list.
Primacy and recency effect are a part of the Serial Position
Effect. This is also called the serial position curve.
Serial Position Effect is the tendency for recall to be the
highest for the first and last items in a series.
Cognition: Serial Position Effect
Cognition: Retrieval
Have you ever tried to recall something, but you just cannot
say it?
Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon is the inability to remember
information you’ve previously stored.
Why might this be?
Cognition: Retrieval
Semantic Network Theory considers knowledge as semantic
relations between concepts in a network. This is often used as
a form of knowledge representation.
Cognition: Retrieval
In a semantic network, each idea is called a node and nodes
are connected to one another similar to how roads are
connected to cities. But the connection between the nodes
are not always created equal. The strength of the connection
is related to how frequently the connection is used.
Spreading Activation: The activation of a few nodes can
lead to a pattern of activation within the network that
spreads onward.
Cognition: Retrieval
Semantic network theory may explain why the tip-of-thetongue phenomenon occurs because if a connection
between two nodes is weak, we may have trouble retrieving
that node of information.
Cognition: Retrieval
Flashbulb Memory is a memory that is highly detailed and
exceptionally vivid. It is said to be like a ‘snapshot’ of a
moment that was surprising and consequential.
Cognition: Retrieval
Cognition: Retrieval
Constructed Memory (also know as Memory
Reconstruction): A memory of an event that did not actually
happen or is only partially fact based.
Studies show that leading questions can easily influence us to
recall false details, and questioners can create an entirely new
memory by repeatedly asking insistent questions.
Cognition: Forgetting
One cause of forgetting is natural decay. As time goes on, the
memories we have fade.
But another factor in forgetting is interference. Sometimes
other information in your memory competes with what you’re
trying to recall.
Cognition: Forgetting
Retroactive interference: Learning new information
interferes with the recall of older information.
Proactive interference: Older information learned previously
interferes with the recall of information learned more
recently.
Cognition: Forgetting
Amnesia is forgetting or the inability to encode new
memories due to brain trauma or disease.
Anterograde Amnesia is the inability to encode new
memories as a result of damage to the hippocampus.
Retrograde Amnesia is a loss of memory for events that
occurred or were learned due to brain trauma or disease. But
one has the ability to encode new information.
Cognition: Language
Language and thought are interactive processes. Here we will
be considering phonemes, morphemes, syntax, semantics, and
the linguistic relativity hypothesis.
Phonemes are the smallest units of sound used in language.
Phonemes are studied in linguistics. An example is the
English phoneme /k/, which occurs in words such as cat, kit,
scat, skit.
Cognition: Language
A morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a language.
A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the difference
between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand
alone, whereas a word, by definition, is freestanding.
Examples:
• -ed = turns a verb into the past tense
• un- = prefix that means not
• a
• I
Cognition: Language
Syntax: Is the order in which we use words.
Semantics: Refers to word meaning or word choice.
Cognition: Language
Psychologist Benjamin Whorf theorized that the language we
use might control and limit our thinking.
The theory that the language we use has influence over our
thinking is called the linguistic relativity hypothesis.
For example, there are 50 Eskimo words for “snow.” This
may have practical value for them.
Cognition: Language
Language acquisition occurs at about four months.
Holophrastic stage (one-word stage): This is when babies
speak in single words (holophrases). Usually occurs by a
baby’s first birthday.
Telegraphic speech (two-word stage): This is when toddlers
will combine the words they can say into simple commands.
Occurs by 18 months.
Cognition: Language
Overgeneralization: By age three, a child knows many
words, but can make mistakes by overextending the rules of
language. For example, they may say “I goed to the store” or
“I rided my bike.”
Noam Chomsky theorized that humans are born with the
ability to learn a language rapidly. This inborn ability to learn
language is called the language acquisition device or the
nativist theory of language acquisition.
Chomsky proposed that there is a critical period after birth
for learning language.
Cognition: Heuristics
Algorithm: A rule that guarantees the right solution by using
a formula.
A heuristic is a short cut for problem solving.
For example, if you were trying to guess your friend’s
password for their email, what are some of the first guesses
that come to mind?
12345
Name
Birthday
Cognition: Heuristics
Availability Heuristic: Judging a situation based on examples
of similar situations that initially come to mind.
For example, you may see a murder on the news in a specific
neighbourhood, and then conclude, when you’re in that
neighborhood, that you’re in a highly unsafe area because the
first thing that came to mind was the news clip.
Cognition: Heuristics
Cognition: Heuristics
Representative Heuristic: Judging a situation or person based
on how similar the aspects are to prototypes the person holds
in his or her mind.
Cognition: Problem Solving
Using heuristics is typically helpful but it can lead to specific
problems.
Belief Bias/Perseverance: This occurs when we maintain a
belief even after evidence for the belief is contradicted.
Confirmation Bias: This is searching for information or
evidence that supports a belief instead of searching for
evidence to the contrary. This can hinder problem solving and
objectivity.
Cognition: Problem Solving
Mental Set (Rigidity): This is a tendency to only see solutions
that have worked in the past.
Functional Fixedness: This is the tendency to assume that a
given item is useful for only what it was designed to do.
Functional fixedness is opposite to creative thinking.
Cognition: Creativity
Creativity is hard to define.
When judging whether something is creative, we look at
whether it is original or novel and whether it somehow fits the
situation.
Convergent Thinking: This is thinking pointed toward one
solution. Determining the correct answer to a multiple choice
question is an example.
Cognition: Creativity
Divergent Thinking: This is thinking that searches for
multiple possible answers to a question. Divergent thinking is
similar to brainstorming in that it involves coming up with
many different ideas to solve a single problem.
Divergent thinking is more closely related with creativity;
creative activities usually involve thinking of new ways to use
what we are familiar with to create something new.
Cognition Quiz
Cognition Quiz
Memory Quiz