Psychology Exam 2 Tilley
Terms
undefined, object
copy deck
- short term memory
- STM "working memory" brief storage and processing of selected information
- long term memory
- LTM essentially permanent
- STM limitation
- 7+/2- "bits" of information
- chunking
- combining bits together to make larger bits, expanding the capacity of STM
- the case of "S"
- Russain man plagued by LTM, suffered from synesthesia
- synesthesia
- a mixture of blending of sensory experiences and memory recall
- rote rehearsal
- involves simply repeating things over and over
- elaborate rehearsal
- linking new information with material already stored in LTM
- serial position effect
- when presented with a new list of items we tend to recall the things at the beginning and the end
- types of LTM
- episodic, semantic, prodecural, emotional
- episodic memories
- memories of events experienced at a specific time and place (aka autobiographical memory)
- semantic memories
- factual memories
- procedural memories
- "how to" memories, motor skills and habits
- emotional memories
- any memory with a strong emotional component
- epinephrine
- neurotransmitter (and hormone) associated with memory functioning, increases with stress and anxiety, enhances memories when released in moderate amounts
- Yerkes-Dodson Law
- performance is relative to cognitive/physiological arousal
- amnesia
- loss of memory, typically results from trauma
- retrograde amnesia
- inability to recall memories prior to trauma
- antrerograde amnesia
- inability to recall memories formed after trauma, unability for new memories to form
- contextual variables
- situational learning, state dependent learning, infantile amneisa
- situational learning
- recall improves when we ar ein a situation similar to the situation in which we learned the information
- state dependent learning
- recall improves when out physiological state is similar to out physilogical state when we learned the information
- infantile amnesia
- "childhood amnesia" the general inability to recall memories prior to age 2 (immature hippocampus)
- exceptional memory abilities
- photographic memory, mnemonist, flashbulb memories, eyewitness testimony
- photographic memory
- aka EIDETIC memory, exceptional memory for visual info
- mnemonist
- highly eveloped memory and recall abilities
- flashbuld memories
- a very vivid memory of a certain even and the surrounding details, resistant to "decay"
- eyewitness testimony
- used in legal proceedings, most persuasive evidence available prior to DNA)
- Elizabeth Loftus
- researcher in the eyewitness testimony - videotape of accident (no sound just video) asked "how fast was car going when it HIT/SMASHED/COLLIDED into the other car? - words can influence eyewitness testimony
- cognition
- thought
- 3 components of cognition
- language, images, concepts
- language
- flixible system of communication that uses sound, rules, gestures, and symbols to convey meaning
- phonemes
- most basic unite of sound - 45 in english language - "c" or "st"
- morphemes
- smallest MEANINGFUL units of speech - single short words (cat) - prefixes and suffixes
- syntax
- governs the manner in which we organize words in a particular order to convey meaning
- semantics
- governs the meanings thatwe assign to a word or phrase
- images
- nonverbal mental representations, typically involve sensation, difficult to describe using language
- concepts
- mental categories of classifying things
- algorithms
- step by step method of problem solving that guarantees a correct solution - problems (1) not all problems have an applible algorithm (2) some algorithms would take too much time
- heuristic
- rule of thumb or "short cut" for problem solving - easy quick efficient
- types of heuristic
- trial and error, hill climbing, working backwards
- trial and error
- systematically eliminating possible outcomes until one works
- hill climbing
- involves moving backward as a means of moving forward
- working backwards
- starting at the end and working backward to the beginning
- mental sets
- tendency to perceive and approach problems in similar, or the same way
- functional fixedness
- tendency to perceive only a limited number of uses for an object
- improving problem solving
- visualization, convergent thinking, divergent thinking, incubation
- visualization
- putting it down visually helps you better solve a problem
- convergent thinking
- directed thinking, narrowing your scope of focus
- divergent thinking
- expanding thinking "brainstorming"
- incubation
- stepping away from the problem for a while
- representative heuristic
- base our decisions on how representative a new situation is to our stereotypical model (father,son, automobile accident, surgeon was the mother)
- availability heuristic
- base our decision on info that is most easily retrieved or "available"
- confirmation bias
- tendency to look for or pay attention to the evidence that supports a belief and to ignore evidence that would disprove that belief
- hindsight bias
- tendency to view outcomes as inevitable and predictable, but only AFTER outcome is known "i knew it all along"
- Stanford Binet
- both children and adults
- Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children
- for children
- Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
- for adults
- intelligence
- average = 100
- border line intellectual functional
- range 70-85
- mental retardation
- IQ of 70 or below WITH impairment in abilities of everyday functioning
- Mild MR
- IQ 70-55, causes tend to be enviornmental (poor education/nutrition), function at level of 6th grader, can live independently
- Moderate MR
- IQ 55-40, causes tend to be biological (genetic defects), function at level of 3rd grader, simple job, high supervision, cannot live alone
- severe MR
- IQ 40-25
- profound MR
- IQ 25 and below
- severe/profound MR
- causes are biolgical/genetic/syndromal, mostly non communicative, must have constant supervision
- psychometric properties
- reliability and validity
- reliability
- consistency, ability of the test to produce consistent stable scores
- validity
- accuracy, ability of test to measure what it purports to measure
- determinants of intelligence
- genetic (60% of IQ) and environment (40% of IQ)
- Flynn effects
- natural inflation of collective IQ of a population over time (every 10 years = 3 points smarter)
- gender and IQ (1947)
- girls > boys at verbal abilities boys > girls at mathematics and spatial abilities
- gender and IQ (recent)
- no differences between boys and girls with mathematics and verbal, but boys>girls with spatial abilites