Introduction

1. Langston, PSY 4040 Cognitive Psychology Notes 1 Introduction

2. Cognitive Psychology • "Cognitive Psychology refers to all processes by which sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used.”

3. Cognitive Psychology • You have sensory input… • Questions: • What is it? Perceptual processes, attention, memory, categorization. • What can/should I do? Memory, attention, goals, reasoning. www.desertforest.net

4. Cognitive Psychology • You have sensory input… • Questions: • What is it? • What can/should I do? • How do I feel? Does that matter? www.allaboutwildlife.com

5. Cognitive Psychology • "The experimental study of human information processing in its many manifestations.” • Experimental study: Based on the experimental method, empirical, scientific. • Human information processing: People sometimes operate as information processors. • Many manifestations: Information comes from the environment, is stored briefly, some is selected for additional processing, something is done to it, it may result in some additional behavior.

6. Sensory Store Filter Pattern Recognition Selection STM LTM Input (Environment) Response Architecture • See the box model.

7. Questions • I watched Insidious. On my way to bed I saw old women lurking in every dark corner. • Why?

8. Answers • Mitchell, Ropar, Ackroyd, and Rajendran (2005): • Some visual illusions driven by perceptual processes, some driven by knowledge. • Two versions of the Shepard illusion:

9. Answers • Mitchell et al. (2005): • A. Perceptual processes. • B. Since they look like tables, top down knowledge of perspective is also used, the illusion has a larger magnitude. Mitchell et al. (2005, p. 997)

10. Answers • It's not a stretch to go from that to being pre-loaded by a movie to see things that aren't there:

11. Answers • A lot of people think they see something behind the man in this picture:

12. Cognitive? • What do you see here?

13. Cognitive? • What do you see here?

14. Cognitive? • Do you see faces in these pictures (Riekki, Lindeman, Aleneff, Halme, & Nuortimo, 2012)?

15. Cognitive? • Reikki et al. (2012) asked the question: Does belief matter? • The answer was “yes.” • Believers in the paranormal were more likely to see faces than non-believers. • How does belief influence perception?

16. Cognitive? • How do emotions factor into perception? For example, if you’re scared, do you see more things than if you aren’t?

17. Cognitive? • Becker (2009) Becker (2009, p. 436)

18. Cognitive? Becker (2009, p. 436)

19. Questions • I was turning right. I looked left, saw nothing, looked right, saw nothing, started to go, and then saw a bicycle coming towards me from the right that was right there. • Why didn't I see it the first time I looked? • How can we avoid these kinds of problems?

20. Answers • There are a lot of parts to the answer to this question, we'll look at just one piece. • Summala, Pasanen, Räsänen, Sievänen (1996): Drivers are less likely to look where they don't anticipate a threat, and are more likely to overlook (look-but-not-see) things in that direction.

21. Answers • Summala et al. (1996): Summala et al. (1996, p. 148)

22. Answers • Summala et al. (1996): Summala et al. (1996, p. 150)

23. Cognitive? • Does motivation make a difference? For example, if I really don’t want to run over someone with my car, does that help? • (This is going to come up in baggage screening.)

24. Questions • I have an iTunes gift card with the following number on it: • XXTG2QYBKF4289QJ • I need to type that number into iTunes to redeem my credit. • How do I do it? • What processes are involved? • Can I make that process more efficient and less error prone?

25. Questions • I want to take these authors… • And turn it into this…

26. Answers • Miller (1956): The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two • The capacity for hearing/seeing and repeating back accurately most kinds of information is 7 ± 2. • The code is letters mixed with digits, what do the data say? • The authors are words (but maybe unfamiliar to me), what do the data say?

27. Answers • Miller (1956): Hayes (1952, as cited in Miller 1956, p. 92)

28. Answers • Miller (1956): Hayes (1952, as cited in Miller 1956, p. 92)

29. Answers • Miller (1956): • To improve performance, we could recode it into chunks, but this code doesn't really support that: • XXTG2QYBKF4289QJ • This one might: • ABCD1234EFGH5678

30. Still open • Meta-knowledge (knowledge about knowledge) may have an effect. • (People who think they can remember more than they can.) • (Class theme connection.)

31. Questions • How do you go through the grocery store thinking about a recipe that you want to make and remembering which items you have and which ones you still need?

32. Answers • Morrison & Chein (2011) • This is a classic working memory task. You have to both maintain information and process that information in a flexible way. Performance on these kinds of tasks is related to a variety of important cognitive things.

33. Still open • Morrison & Chein (2011) • Can you train it? That is a controversial question. Most training is generalizable only to similar situations, it might be possible.

34. Questions • I go into the kitchen to get something. When I get there, I can't remember why I came to the kitchen. I try to figure it out, do what I think it must have been, then get back to my original location and realize why I went to the kitchen in the first place. • What's happening there? • Can we avoid these kinds of problems?

35. Answers • This is a cue problem. The appropriate recall cue is not in the kitchen, it's in the room I came from. So, what I need to be able to remember is not where I am (the kitchen), it is where I came from, that's why I know it when I go back.

36. Questions • Why is study so frequently ineffective, but then some random thing will happen and you remember it forever?

37. Answers • Again, there are a number of parts to this one. • One possibility is processing. What you do with the material when you learn it will have a big impact on how well you can get access to it later (Craik & Tulving, 1975).

38. Answers • Craik & Tulving (1975): Craik & Tulving (1975, p. 274)

39. Answers • Craik & Tulving (1975): • Things that are important to you are processed differently, more deeply, and could be remembered better because of that.

40. Still open • How does this relate to study skills and performance in classes? • How does this relate to long-term learning?

41. General Note on Answers • Keep in mind that there is more to the answer for each of these questions. That's why we're here…

42. Not Cognitive? • Part of the goal of defining cognitive is to talk about what it is and also what it isn’t. Then, we’ll ask how we make that determination. • The following examples are less clearly cognitive. • What are the implications of that statement?

43. Questions • Does priming competence affect performance for people who are test anxious (Lang & Lang, 2010)? • Test anxious = higher score on a cognitive test anxiety measure.

44. Questions • Priming competence = before an exam, “imagine a person who is very successful in solving technical and scientific problems” (Lang & Lang, 2010, p. 814) and write: • Abilities this person possesses. • Adjectives describing personality and values of this person. • How this person felt before solving complex problems.

45. Answers Lang & Lang (2010, p. 816)

46. Answers Lang & Lang (2010, p. 816)

47. Answers Lang & Lang (2010, p. 816)

48. Analysis • Priming is clearly cognitive. • But, what is priming competence priming?

49. Questions • What is the effect of stereotype threat on learning (Taylor & Walton, 2011)? • The task was to learn the definitions of rare words (e.g., canton, ephrasy, glabella, gladiolus, insouciant, ofclepe, prosody, rood, schappe, succedaneum, usufruct, and viscid) (Taylor & Walton, p. 1058).

50. Questions • The effect of stereotype threat on test performance is well-established. • “The tests were said to include ‘carefully selected words’ that would ‘evaluate your ability to learn verbal information and your performance on problems requiring verbal reasoning ability’ and to ‘provide a genuine test of your verbal abilities and limitations.’ These instructions were designed to elicit stereotype threat by making negative intellectual stereotypes about African Americans seem relevant (Taylor & Walton, 2011, p. 1058).