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UNIT VII: COGNITION

MODULE 31: STUDYING AND BUILDING MEMORIES MODULE 32: MEMORY STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL MODULE 33: FORGETTING, MEMORY CONSTRUCTION, AND MEMORY IMPROVEMENT MODULE 34: THINKING; CONCEPTS, AND CREATIVITY MODULE 35: SOLVING PROBLEMS AND MAKING DECISIONS MODULE 36: THINKING AND LANGUAGE

CONSIDER THIS: WHAT WOULD LIFE BE LIKE WITH NO MEMORY? With no memory, how would your identity be affected?

“Memento”

“Life with no memory, is no life at all.”

STUDYING AND BUILDING MEMORIES

MODULE 31

MEMORY, THINKING, LANGUAGE

COGNITION:▸ all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, and

remembering information.

Fact: Cognitive revolution in psychology occurred in the 60s and 70s and helped dethrone behaviorism as the dominant perspective in psychology.

STUDYING MEMORY

MEMORY:

▸ learning that has persisted over time; information that has been acquired, stored, and can be retrieved.

▸ We are what we remember.

▸ How do we remember countless voices, sounds, songs, tastes, smells, textures, faces, places, happenings, etc.?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tESffhWs8l0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tESffhWs8l0

STUDYING MEMORY

HOW DOES MEMORY WORK?

▸ Psychologists create Memory Models to explain how we form and retrieve memories.

▸ We use different “models” to explain memory.

▸ Information Processing Model: 3 stage model that compares human memory to a computer’s operations.

▸ Computers process information sequentially, our dual track mind processes information simultaneously (parallel processing)

▸ Example: in the cafeteria, you process info about (1) the people you see, (2) the sounds of voices, and (3) the smell of food.

STUDYING MEMORY

▸ Information Processing Model:

▸ Three step process in how memory works

▸ 1. Encoding: The processing of information into the memory system.

▸ 2. Storage: The retention of encoded material over time.

▸ 3. Retrieval: The process of getting the information out of memory storage.

STUDYING MEMORY

ENCODING ▸ the processing of information into the memory system.

▸ What you do when you are trying to learn something.

▸ Increase attention and intention while encoding.

Getting someone’s IG name at a party. Typing info into a computer

STUDYING MEMORY

STORAGE

▸ the retention of encoded material over time.

▸ Create mnemonics/associations to help store info.

Remembering someone’s IG name after you leave the party. Pressing command S and saving the info.

STUDYING MEMORY

RETRIEVAL

▸ the processing of getting the information out of memory storage.

▸ Find cues, use external memory aids.

Going on IG the next day and typing in wrong IG names. (Retrieval failure!)

Finding your document and opening it up.

STUDYING MEMORY

THREE STAGE MEMORY FORMING MODEL ▸ Atkinson and Shiffrin three stage model of memory, describes 3

different memory systems characterized by time frames:

▸ Stage 1- Sensory Memory (encoding): is a brief representation of a stimulus while being processed in the sensory system.

▸ Stage 2- Short-Term Memory (storage): (STM) is working memory that holds a few items briefly.

▸ Limited capacity (7 items +/- 2)

▸ Duration is about 30 seconds

▸ Stage 3- Long-Term Memory (storage): (LTM) is large capacity and long duration.

STUDYING MEMORY

THREE STAGE PROCESSING MODEL OF MEMORY: SENSORY MEMORY

▸ the immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system.

▸ Sensory memory relates to memories taken in by the senses. It is divided into iconic and echoic memories.

STUDYING MEMORY

THREE STAGE PROCESSING MODEL OF MEMORY: SHORT TERM MEMORY▸ activated memory, holds a few items briefly before it is stored

or forgotten.

▸ The stuff we encode from the sensory memory goes to STM.

▸ From here we encode it through rehearsal.

▸ Capacity of STM

▸ Holds about 7 (plus or minus 2) items for about 20 seconds.

▸ We recall digits better than letters.

http://www.garyfisk.com/anim/lecture_stm.swf

http://www.psychologistworld.com/memory/test1.php

http://www.garyfisk.com/anim/lecture_stm.swf

http://www.psychologistworld.com/memory/test1.php

http://www.apple.com

STUDYING MEMORY

THREE STAGE PROCESSING MODEL OF MEMORY: SHORT TERM MEMORY

▸ Maintenance Rehearsal:

▸ continuously repeating the to-be-remembered information

▸ Volunteer?

STUDYING MEMORY

THREE STAGE PROCESSING MODEL OF MEMORY: SHORT TERM MEMORY

▸ STM is NOT just a small, brief storage place.

▸ STM is an active desktop where your brain processes information, making sense of new input and linking it with LTM.

▸ The active processing that takes place in this stage is called your working memory. (Example: linking the information you’re reading with prior knowledge.)

STUDYING MEMORY

THREE STAGE PROCESSING MODEL OF MEMORY: LONG TERM MEMORY

▸ Long term memory (LTM):

▸ relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system.

▸ Effortful processing into LTM

▸ chunking

▸ form associations w/mnemonic devices!

▸ Effortless(ly) automatically processed into LTM

▸ state dependent (emotional/amygdala)

▸ flashbulb memories

BUILDING MEMORIES: ENCODING

DUAL-TRACK MEMORY: EFFORTFUL VS. AUTOMATIC PROCESSING▸ Our mind operates on two tracks, even with memory!

▸ Effortful processing:

▸ episodic memories (birthdays)

▸ Explicit (declarative) memories:

▸ our LTM of facts and experiences we consciously know and can verbalize.

▸ Automatic processing:

▸ procedural memories (how to ride a bike)

▸ Implicit (non-declarative) memories:

▸ our long term memory for skills and procedures to do things by previous experience without that experience being consciously recalled.


EFFORTFUL PROCESSING AND EXPLICIT MEMORIES

▸ With conscious experience and practice, we learn and remember things.

▸ How does Sensory Memory work?

▸ Iconic Memory (EYE-conic)

▸ momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli, a photograph like quality lasting only about a second.

▸ Echoic Memory

▸ momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli.

▸ If you are not paying attention to someone, you can still recall the last few words said in the past three or four seconds.

▸ “echolalia” http://www.garyfisk.com/anim/iconic.swf

http://www.garyfisk.com/anim/iconic.swf


EFFORTFUL PROCESSING STRATEGIES

▸ What are some strategies that can help us remember new information?

▸ Chunking

▸ organizing items into familiar, manageable units.

▸ Enables us to recall things more easily.

▸ For example: Phone numbers 305-3000, Social Security Numbers, Address?

▸ Mnemonics

▸ memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices.

▸ Hierarchies

▸ systems in which concepts are arranged from more general to more specific.


AUTOMATIC PROCESSING (EFFORTLESS) AND IMPLICIT MEMORIES

▸ Implicit memories include:

▸ Procedural memories (how to ride a bike, play an instrument, tie a shoelace)

▸ automatic skills and classically conditioned associations among stimuli.

▸ Without conscious memory, we automatically process info about:

▸ space (visualizing the location of information in a book)

▸ time (being able to remember the sequence of your day and where you misplaced your hydroflask)

▸ frequency (effortlessly keeping track of things. “That’s the fifth time she’s worn that outfit this week!)

STM VS. LTM▸ STM:

▸ LTM:

▸ Types of LTM:

▸ Nondeclarative (Procedural) memory: are your how to skills.

▸ Declarative memory: stores personal experiences: your memory for events, or “episodes” in your life. Acts as your autobiographical memory.

▸ Semantic Memory: names, faces, facts, knowledge, and concepts.

▸ Episodic Memory: memories of specific dates and events. (An episode on t.v)

▸ Prospective Memory: a future event that you have to remember.

Types&of&Memory& Storage&Capacity& Dura5on&

STM&or&Working& 7+;2&items& Fades&in&10;12&seconds,&lasts&up&to&30&seconds&if&unrehearsed&

Type%of%Memory% Storage%% Dura1on%

Long4Term%Memory% Infinite% Infinite%


DISTRIBUTED PRACTICE PRODUCES BETTER LONG TERM RECALL

▸ We encode better when we study or practice OVER TIME!

▸ Therefore, Do NOT CRAM (massed practice)!

▸ Spacing effect:

▸ the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice.

▸ Testing effect:

▸ enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information.

“Those who learn quickly also forget quickly.” -Ebbinghaus

TEXT

LEVELS OF PROCESSING

▸ Shallow processing:

▸ encoding on a basic level such as a word’s letters or, word’s sound.

▸ Deep processing:

▸ encodes semantically based on the meaning of the words.

▸ The more meaningful, the better our retention.

▸ How do we process information?

▸ Visual Encoding: the encoding of picture/visual images.

▸ Acoustic Encoding: the encoding of sound, especially the sounds of words.

▸ Semantic Encoding (best level of recall): the encoding of meaning.

DREAM, CRIB, PILLOW, CLOCK, BED, NIGHT, QUILT, FATIGUE, REST, ARTICHOKE, RELAX, BLUE, PAJAMA, BLANKET, SHEEP, WAKE, DARK

MEMORY ACTIVITY: MEMORIZE AS MANY WORDS AS YOU CAN!

MEMORY STORAGE AND RETRIEVALMODULE 32

MEMORY STORAGE

ARE OUR LONG TERM MEMORIES PROCESSED AND STORED IN SPECIFIC LOCATIONS?

▸ “Our memories are flexible and superimposable, a panoramic blackboard with an endless supply of chalk and erasers.” -Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham

▸ Our capacity for storing long-term memories is limitless.

✴ However! Attention issues, prior knowledge, and memory decay may interfere with the actual memories stored.

MEMORY STORAGE

EXPLICIT-MEMORY SYSTEM: FRONTAL LOBES & HIPPOCAMPUS

▸ What are the roles of these structures in terms of memory?

▸ Memory requires brain networks that processes and stores our explicit memories.

▸ R and L frontal lobes process diff types of memories.

▸ Recalling a password and holding in working memory = L frontal lobe

▸ Recalling a memory of someone attractive at a party = R frontal lobe

MEMORY STORAGE

EXPLICIT-MEMORY SYSTEM: FRONTAL LOBES & HIPPOCAMPUS

▸ HippocampuS(ends to storage): neural center located in the limbic system; helps process explicit memories for storage.

▸ explicit memory for facts and episodes are processed here and fed to other brain regions for storage.

▸ equivalent of a “save” button

▸ damage to this structure disrupts recall of explicit memories

✴ During deep sleep, hippocampuS processes memories for later retrieval. Hippocampus and brain cortex show simultaneous brain activity as if they’re working together.

KORSAKOFF’S SYNDROME: LINKED TO CHRONIC ALCOHOL DEPENDENCE. PATIENT’S MEMORIES SLOWLY ERODE, LEAVING THEM TO FILL IN THE MISSING PIECES WITH FALSE MEMORIES. SHOWN TO HAVE SMALLER HIPPOCAMPI.

BRAIN BREAK

MEMORY STORAGE

IMPLICIT-MEMORY SYSTEM: CEREBELLUM & BASAL GANGLIA

▸ These brain structures are involved in automatic processing (skills, and conditioned associations.)

▸ Brain-damaged patient with amnesia unable to recognize same doctor everyday.

▸ Thumbtack in doctor’s palm and never wants to shake his hand again. Why?

▸ Classically conditioned and can’t explain why.

MEMORY STORAGE

IMPLICIT-MEMORY SYSTEM: CEREBELLUM & BASAL GANGLIA

▸ Cerebellum:

▸ plays a key role in forming and storing implicit memories created by classical conditioning.

▸ Damaged cerebellum = unable to develop certain conditioned reflexes.

▸ Example: No salivation to tone, no nausea with a food that once made you sick.

MEMORY STORAGE

IMPLICIT-MEMORY SYSTEM: CEREBELLUM & BASAL GANGLIA▸ Basal Ganglia:

▸ deep brain structures involved in motor movement.

▸ Helps in forming our procedural memories for skills.

▸ info from cortex -> basal ganglia

▸ Example: riding and bike, skateboarding, etc.

INFANTILE AMNESIA: FIRST THREE YEARS WITH NO CONSCIOUS MEMORY. WHY? HIPPOCAMPUS IS ONE OF THE LAST BRAIN STRUCTURES TO DEVELOP. WE COMMUNICATE DIFFERENTLY AS ADULTS THAN WE DID AS BABIES.

BRAIN BREAK

MEMORY STORAGE

THE AMYGDALA, EMOTIONS, AND MEMORY▸ How do emotions affect our memory processing?

▸ Emotions trigger stress hormones.

▸ Stress hormones provoke the amygdala to initiate a memory trace/pathway in the frontal lobes and basal ganglia.

▸ Emotional arousal can sear certain events into the brain.

▸ Patients with hippocampal damage watching happy and sad films.

▸ Couldn’t remember what they watched (no explicit memories)

▸ Emotions persisted.

MEMORY STORAGE

THE AMYGDALA, EMOTIONS, AND MEMORY

▸ “Stronger emotional experiences make for stronger, more reliable memories.”

▸ Helps us adapt the world around us.

▸ Memory serves to predict the future and to alert us to potential danger.

▸ Flashbulb memories:

▸ a clear moment of an emotionally significant moment or event.

WHERE WERE YOU? - MICHAEL JACKSON’S DEATH - SCHOOL SHOOTINGS - 9/11 - PARIS ATTACKS - DEATH OF A LOVED ONE

Flashbulb memories

How vividly do you remember your whereabouts?

What emotional reactions did they have about the event?

MEMORY STORAGE

RECAP OF MEMORY AND THE BRAIN

▸ Explicit memory (consciously trying to remember something)

▸ Brain part = hippocampus

▸ Implicit memory (remembering something unintentionally)

▸ Brain part = cerebellum and basal ganglia

▸ Emotional memories

▸ Brain part = amygdala

▸ Converting sensory memory into STM

▸ Brain part = thalamus

REVIEW: p.334 Figure 32.5!

RETRIEVAL: GETTING INFORMATION OUT

RETRIEVAL▸ the process of getting information over time.

▸ Recall

▸ the ability to retrieve information not in conscious awareness. (vocab test- writing definitions out)

▸ Recognition

▸ a measure of memory in which the person need only to identify items previously learned. (vocab test- matching)

▸ Relearning

▸ a measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material for the second time.

▸ Primacy and Recency Effect (Serial Position Effect)

▸ one factor in retrieval is the order in which the information is presented. We tend to remember items that presented at the beginning (p) and the ending (r) of a list.


HOW TO IMPROVE RETRIEVAL- RETRIEVAL CUES▸ Mnemonics

▸ ROYGBIV, RIDDLES

▸ Method of Loci “memory palace” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-xl7_hdWZo

▸ placing items to remember around a familiar location usually your home or room, and then calling forth the image of the place as needed.

▸ Peg Word System

▸ uses association of terms to be remembered with a memorized scheme

▸ Example: one is a bun, two is a shoe…

▸ Priming

▸ a technique for cuing implicit memories by providing cues that stimulate memory without awareness of the connection btwn the cue and the retrieved memory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-xl7_hdWZo


FACTORS AFFECTING RETRIEVAL▸ Mood-Congruent Memory

▸ a memory process that selectively retrieves memories that match one’s mood.

▸ Example: “My bf broke up with me and my mom told me I couldn’t go to the party. She ALWAYS tells me NO!

▸ TOT Phenomenon

▸ the inability to recall a word, while knowing it in memory. People often describe this frustrating experience as having the word on the TOT.

▸ Context-Dependent Memory

▸ information that is better retrieved in the context in which it was encoded, stored, or learned.

▸ Example: forgetting what you stood up to do. you go back and sit down to remember.

▸ Example: studying for subject in the classroom that you’ll be taking the test in.

▸ State-Dependent Memory

▸ information that is better retrieved in the physiological or emotional state in which it was encoded and stored, or learned.

▸ Example: while one is drunk, they hide money. can only find it when drunk again

FORGETTING, MEMORY CONSTRUCTION AND MEMORY IMPROVEMENT

MODULE 33

FALSE MEMORIES

The Bunny Effect (Elizabeth Loftus) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZlPzSeUDDw&feature=relmfuhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZlPzSeUDDw&feature=relmfu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZlPzSeUDDw&feature=relmfu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZlPzSeUDDw&feature=relmfu

FORGETTING

WHY DO WE FORGET?

▸ Reasons:

▸ Memory loss due to severe and permanent damage (H.M.)

▸ Encoding failure

▸ Storage decay

▸ Retrieval failure

▸ Interference

FORGETTING

FORGETTING AND THE TWO-TRACK MIND:

▸ Anterograde amnesia: (H.M.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkaXNvzE4pk

▸ an inability to form new memories.

▸ Retrograde amnesia:

▸ an inability to retrieve information from one’s past.

▸ Some people are incapable of recalling new facts and forming explicit memories, however they are able to learn nonverbal tasks due to the diff brain structures involved.

▸ Able to learn tasks without awareness of learning them

▸ Examples: Wheres Waldo, find their way to bathroom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkaXNvzE4pk

FORGETTING

THEORIES OF FORGETTING‣ Proactive interference (forward acting): ‣ old information interferes with recall of new information

‣ Retroactive interference (backward acting): ‣ new information interferes with recall of old information

‣ Encoding failure: ‣ a lot of what we sense, we never notice, and what we fail to encode, we will never

remember. (absent mindedness: texting in class..missing important details)

‣ Decay theory: ‣ memory trace fades with time

‣ Motivated forgetting: ‣ involves the loss of painful memories (protective memory loss)

‣ Retrieval failure: ‣ the information is still within LTM, but cannot be recalled because the retrieval cue is

absent

FORGETTING

EXAMPLES OF INTERFERENCE:

‣ Proactive interference (forward acting): ‣ Happens when previously stored info prevents learning and

remembering new info. ‣ Calling your new boyfriend by your old boyfriend’s name.

‣ Retroactive interference (backward acting): ‣ Occurs when newly learned information prevents the retrieval of

previously learned material. ‣ Getting a new address and forgetting your old address

Mnemonics?

FORGETTING

EXAMPLES OF STORAGE DECAY:‣ If we encode something well enough, we can forget it. ‣ Without rehearsal, we forget things over time. ‣ Why? Possible reasons: ‣ forgetting curve is a gradual fading of the physical memory trace.

‣ Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve: ‣ The course of forgetting unused info is initially rapid, followed by a

declining rate of loss, then leveling off with time.

FORGETTING

EXAMPLES OF MOTIVATED FORGETTING:

‣ We sometimes revise our own histories. ‣ Memory is an “unreliable, self-serving historian.” ‣ Where did all the cookies go? “I don’t know, I seriously only ate one.”

FORGETTING

MOTIVATED FORGETTING:

‣ One explanation is REPRESSION: ‣ in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes

anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings and memories from consciousness.

‣ Freud says we repress painful or unacceptable memories to protect our self-concept and to minimize anxiety. Popular in the mid-twentieth century.

‣ Today however, psychologists believe we forget neutral things like where we placed our keys, and hardly ever forget emotional events.

Why does it exist?

You go to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. You are seated at a table with a white tablecloth. You study the menu. You tell the female server you want Avocado Egg Rolls, extra sauce, Roadslide Sliders, Thai Lettuce Wraps, and Chino-Latino Steak (medium). You also order a Cherry Coke from the beverage list. A few minutes later the server returns with your Avocado Egg Rolls. Later the rest of the meal arrives. You enjoy it all, except the Chino-Latino Steak is a bit overdone.

My Trip To Cheesecake Factory

Cheesecake factory

How did you order the steak?Was the red tablecloth checkered?

What did you order to drink?Did a male server give you a menu?

MEMORY CONSTRUCTION ERRORS

MEMORY CONSTRUCTION▸ Memory does not function like a video recorder!

▸ We sometimes alter memories as we encode or retrieve them.

▸ Your expectations, schemas, and environments may alter your memories.


FALSE MEMORIES▸ Loftus and Palmer 1974

▸ Eyewitnesses reconstruct their memories after a crime or accident and then answered questions about what they had seen.

https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_loftus_the_fiction_of_memory?language=en

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg5bBJQOL74\

“Memory is insubstantial. Things keep replacing it. Your batch of snapshots will both fix and ruin your memory. You can’t remember anything from your trip except the wretched collection of snapshots.” -Anne Dillard 1988

https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_loftus_the_fiction_of_memory?language=en

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg5bBJQOL74%5C


MISINFORMATION AND IMAGINATION EFFECTS▸ Misinformation effect (Elizabeth Loftus):

▸ incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event.

▸ About how fast were the cars going when they SMASHED into each other? (higher speed estimates and glass)

▸ About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other? (lower speed estimates)


EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY▸ Shown to be unreliable.

▸ Eyewitnesses can only remember what they perceive. The more people you tell the story to, the better the chance of distortion.

▸ Recall for events may be influenced by what they heard or constructed after incidents.

▸ Memory is reconstructed.

▸ Memories are not stored like snapshots, but are instead like sketches that are altered and added to every time they are called up.


EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY

▸ Elizabeth Loftus has shown subjects who are given false information about an event or scene tend to incorporate it into their memories, and "recall" the false information as a part of their original memory even two weeks later.

▸ Loftus gives the example of the sniper attacks in the fall of 2002. "Everybody was looking for a white van even though the bad guys ended up having a dark Chevy Caprice." That's because some people reported seeing a white van at the scene of the crime. "Witnesses overhear each other," says Loftus, and police may also unintentionally influence people's memories when they talk about a crime.


SOURCE AMNESIA (MISATTRIBUTION)▸ attributing to the wrong source an event we have

experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined.

▸ Frailest part of memory is its source.

▸ Along with the misinformation effect, is the heart of many false memories.

▸ Author and songwriters sometimes suffer from it, thinking they came up with something and end up plagiarizing.

▸ deja vu: “already seen”

MEMORY IMPROVEMENT

HOW TO IMPROVE MEMORY▸ Study repeatedly

▸ Make material meaningful

▸ Activate retrieval cues

▸ Use mnemonic devices

▸ Get adequate sleep

▸ Self test!

‣ THINKING, CONCEPTS, AND CREATIVITY ‣ SOLVING PROBLEMS AND MAKING

DECISIONS

MODULE 34-35

THINKING AND CONCEPTS

STRUCTURE OF COGNITION: THINKING AND CONCEPTS▸ What is cognition and what are the functions of concepts?

▸ Concepts:

▸ mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

▸ representations of categories of items or ideas, based on experience.

▸ simplify our thinking

▸ I.E. The concept “fish” includes specific creatures such as an eel, goldfish, and a shark.

▸ Prototypes:

▸ an ideal or most representative (best example) of a conceptual category.

▸ concepts are formed by developing prototypes.

▸ E.G. Penguin vs. Robin or Goldfish vs. Eel

CREATIVITY

STRUCTURE OF COGNITION: CREATIVITY▸ Creativity: the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas

▸ Convergent thinking:

▸ narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution.

▸ intelligence tests that require a single direct answer

▸ converge “come together to ONE point”

▸ Divergent thinking:

▸ expands the number of possible problem solutions (creative thinking that diverges in different directions)

▸ creativity tests require divergent thinking

▸ diverge “to separate into multiple points”

▸ E.G. How many uses can you think of for a brick?

PROBLEM SOLVING: STRATEGIES AND OBSTACLES

STRUCTURE OF COGNITION: PROBLEM SOLVING STRATEGIES▸ Algorithms:

▸ methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.

▸ problem solving procedures or formulas that guarantee a correct answer

▸ E.G. Calculating your GPA, searching EVERY isle for an item in market.

▸ Heuristics:

▸ a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently.

▸ cognitive strategies or “rules of thumb” used as shortcuts to solve complete mental tasks.

▸ usually speedier, but more error-prone than algorithms.

▸ E.G. When in doubt, on a multiple choice question you select “C.” , searching for hot cocoa mix- check the breakfast, beverage and baking supply aisles.


STRUCTURE OF COGNITION: PROBLEM SOLVING STRATEGIES▸ Sometimes, no problem-solving strategy seems to work and

we arrive at a solution through….

▸ Insight (Wolfgang Kohler)

▸ a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem.

▸ E.G. The Candle Solving Problem

▸ Before the Aha! moment, frontal lobes (involved in attention) were active.

▸ The Aha! moment to word problems show a burst of right temporal lobe activity


STRUCTURE OF COGNITION: OBSTACLES▸ Sometimes cognitive tendencies lead us astray….

▸ Confirmation bias:

▸ a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.

▸ we eagerly seek out and favor evidence verifying our ideas than evidence refuting them.

▸ Hindsight bias:

▸ a tendency, after learning about an event, to believe you could have predicted the event in advance.


STRUCTURE OF COGNITION: OBSTACLES▸ Fixation:

▸ an inability to see a problem from a fresh perspective.

▸ Mental set:

▸ the tendency to approach a problem with the mind-set of what has worked for us previously.

▸ predisposes how we think, and can become an obstacle

▸ E.G. O, T, T, F, ?, ?, ? J, F, M, A, ?, ?, ?

▸ Functional Fixedness:

▸ the inability to perceive a new use for an object associated with a different purpose.

▸ E.G. Searching all over the house for a screwdriver when you could have just used a dime.

FORMING GOOD AND BAD DECISIONS AND JUDGMENTS

STRUCTURE OF COGNITION: JUDGEMENT AND DECISION MAKING▸ Is it worth the bother to take a jacket? Can I trust this person?

Should I sleep with this person? Should I shoot the basketball or pass to the player who’s hot?

▸ People make the most of their decisions on the basis of limited information. They take shortcuts.

▸ We usually follow our Intuition:

▸ our fast, automatic, unreasoned feelings and thoughts.

▸ When we need to act quickly, we use mental shortcuts called: Heuristics

▸ Sometimes these generally helpful shortcuts can lead us into dumb decisions.


STRUCTURE OF COGNITION: JUDGEMENT AND DECISION MAKING▸ Heuristics in Decision Making

▸ Representative Heuristic:

▸ judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant info.

▸ enables us to make snap judgements about events according to the populations of events that they appear to represent.

▸ form of stereotyping

▸ influences many of our daily decisions.

▸ E.G. A person who is slim, intelligent, and likes to read poetry, is a professor of classics at an Ivy League University or a truck driver?


STRUCTURE OF COGNITION: JUDGEMENT AND DECISION MAKING

▸ Heuristics in Decision Making

▸ Availability Heuristic:

▸ estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind, we presume such events are common.

▸ can lead us astray in our judgements of things and others.

▸ What makes things “pop” into our mind? vividness & recency.

▸ E.G. Airline crashes, casinos signaling wins with bells and lights



▸ Sometimes our judgments go bad because we are more confident than correct.

▸ Overconfidence:

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

▸ E.G. history is full of leaders who were more confident than correct and classrooms are full of overconfident students who expect to finish assignments ahead of schedule.

“Don’t believe everything you think.” -Bumper Sticker



▸ The way we present an issue, sways our decision and judgments.

▸ Framing:

▸ the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments.

▸ the influence or wording, or the context in which info is presented may impact decision making.

▸ E.G. 95% fat free, 10% chance of dying, 90% chance of survival

▸ organ donors

‣ THINKING AND LANGUAGE

MODULE 36

LANGUAGE STRUCTURE

WHAT ARE THE STRUCTURAL COMPONENTS OF A LANGUAGE?▸ Language:

▸ our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

▸ 3 building blocks for spoken language:

▸ Phoneme:

▸ the smallest distinguishable sound units in a language.

▸ English uses about 40 phonemes.

▸ E.G. Chat (ch, a, t) 3 phonemes

▸ Morpheme:

▸ the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or part of a word.

▸ usually whole words or meaningful parts of a word such as prefixes and suffixes.

▸ E.G. prefix pre- in preview

LANGUAGE STRUCTURE

WHAT ARE THE STRUCTURAL COMPONENTS OF A LANGUAGE?▸ Grammar:

▸ a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others.

▸ Grammatical rules guide us in deriving meaning from sounds (semantics) and in ordering words into sentences (syntax).

▸ Syntax: system of rules that governs how words can be meaningfully arranged to form phrases and sentences.

▸ Semantics: the set of rules we use to derive meanings from morphemes.

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

MILESTONES IN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

▸ First birthday to high school graduation- about 60,000

▸ Receptive Language:

▸ the ability to understand what is said to and about them.

▸ Infants start without language (in fantis- not speaking)

▸ 4 months of age: babies can recognize differences in speech sounds, can read lips


MILESTONES IN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT▸ Productive Language:

▸ Crying- happens immediately

▸ Babbling stage:

▸ occurs at about 4 months, stage of speech development where infant utters various sounds unrelated to household language.

▸ ALL infants produce sounds that resemble many diff languages.

▸ includes sounds used in all human languages, not just the language heard by the infant.

▸ One-word stage (holographic speech):

▸ stage in speech development usually beginning from about 1 year of age, during which a child speaks mostly in single words.

▸ single words that can express complex meaning. “doggy” “ball”


MILESTONES IN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT▸ Two-word stage:

▸ beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements.

▸ At about 18 months, children’s word learning explodes from a word per week to a word per day.

▸ Children’s language still follow rules of syntax. Seen across cultures. (nouns follow adjectives)

▸ They utter two word sentences in telegraphic speech.

▸ “go car” “want juice”


EXPLAINING LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT▸ How do we acquire language?

▸ Theories of Language Acquisition:

▸ B.F. Skinner:

▸ language depends on the environment. Language is acquired through association, imitation, and reinforcement.

▸ Noam Chomsky (Nativist theory):

▸ argues that human brains have a built in language acquisition device (LAD), an innate mechanism or process that allows children to develop language skills.

▸ Critical period hypothesis: language must be learned by a certain age, if not- the rules of language pass you by.

▸ Benjamin Whorf (linguistic relativity hypothesis):

▸ language determines the way people think, and shapes a person’s basic ideas.

▸ language is dependent on culture.

▸ E.G. Hopi Indians of Northern Arizona have no past tense for verbs, therefore they cannot think about the past. Eskimos have numerous words for snow.


EXPLAINING LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT▸ How do we acquire language?

▸ Theories of Language Acquisition:

▸ Benjamin Whorf (linguistic relativity hypothesis):

▸ language determines the way people think, and shapes a person’s basic ideas.

▸ linguistic determinism:

▸ Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think.

▸ language is dependent on culture.

▸ English as a rich vocal for self-focused emotions such as anger, Japanese have more words for interpersonal emotions such as sympathy. (Markus & Kitayama)

▸ E.G. Hopi Indians of Northern Arizona have no past tense for verbs, therefore they cannot think about the past. Eskimos have numerous words for snow.

To expand language, is to expand the ability to think.

THE BRAIN AND LANGUAGE

BRAIN AREAS INVOLVED IN LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND SPEECH

▸ MRI scans show that different neural networks are activated by nouns and verbs, or objects and actions.

▸ fMRI scans show that jokes that play on meaning are processed in a diff brain area that jokes that play on words.

▸ “Why don’t sharks bite lawyers?”

▸ “What kind of lights did Noah use on the ark?”

▸ In language processing: the brain operates by dividing its mental functions- speaking, perceiving, thinking, remembering- into subfunctions.

THE BRAIN AND LANGUAGE

BRAIN AREAS INVOLVED IN LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND SPEECH▸ During language processing, there is brain activity in Broca’s and Wernicke’s area.

▸ Aphasia:

▸ impairment of language, usually caused by left-hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding).

▸ Broca’s area:

▸ controls language expression- an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech.

▸ a person would struggle to speak words while still being able to sing familiar songs and comprehend speech.

▸ Wernicke’s area:

▸ controls language reception- a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe.

▸ after damage to an area of the left temporal lobe people could speak only meaningless words.

▸ E.G. Describe a picture of two boys stealing cookies behind a woman’s back.

▸ “Mother is away her working her work to get her better, but when she’s looking, the two boys looking the other part.”

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