PSYCHOLOGY – MS. GILLETTE

Cognition & Memory

DO NOW: What is the…

Ordering at The Eatery takes cognitive effort. *Especially if you have never tasted these sushi combinations before.

COGNITION:

ENGAGED!

CognitionLiteral:

“to know.”

Mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge.

Understanding through thought, experience, & senses.

Take pizza for example:

Cognition encompasses everything:

★ Knowing/remembering pizza itself

★ Recalling what style & toppings that you like

★ Realizing that you are hungry & organizing plans

to have it delivered or eat out.

To make sense of the near infinite details of our surroundings a large part of cognition involves the organization of our thoughts.

Associations or Categories➔ Dinner food options

➔ Things in the fridge to eat

➔ Places to eat out

➔ Places that deliver food

➔ Type of pizza

➔ Pizza toppings

Simple symbols: “Types of Pizza” used to group complex learned associations.

★ The Original: Neapolitan

★ California Style

★ New York Thin Crust

★ Chicago Deep Dish (& Stuffed)

★ Frozen Pizza

★ Pizza Rolls

Although important, these cognitive categoriesare overlapping

& not always clearly distinct

How do we divide the thinking process?Perception, attention, memory & executive function

Perception: Seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and or smelling your surroundings, allowing you to respondappropriately.

Your hunger spurs the thinking process.

Memory: Stores the name of your favorite pizza joint. Enables you to give directions to your house for delivery.

Includes:

★ STM: short term/working memory

★ LTM: long-term memory

★ subconscious/implicit knowledge

Executive Function: enables planning of logisticsex.) timing pizza delivery to coincide with start of football game

Improvising: guessing what toppings everyone will enjoy Problem Solving: figuring how much to tip Controlling Impulses: not ruining your appetite by eating a whole bag of Doritos while waiting for pizza delivery

Attention Processes shift your focus from reading Psychology text to answering doorupon hearing that long awaited pizza delivery arrive. Multi-tasking slice of pizza & figuring out how your football team can come back from an embarrassing early deficit while ignoring heckling antics of your so called “friends”Process of Cognition Interplay of all of these systems working simultaneously; allowing us to adapt to our surroundings & take actiontowards obtaining our goals.

YouTube: The Mystery of Memory (30 minutes)

Memory

The Facts

●In this country, it is estimated that 75% of wrongly convicted defendants, later cleared by DNA evidence, were convicted based largely on eyewitness testimony

You Be the Eyewitness

●Imagine you are at a gas station buying milk

●A man walks in, threatens the employee at the counter, robs the cash register, and runs out

●The entire ordeal lasts about five seconds

●This is the man you saw…

You Be the Eyewitness

●The police have asked you to help them identify the perpetrator

●They will show you a set of pictures, and it is your responsibility to select the picture of the man you saw rob the gas station…

How Did You Do?

●So, which picture did you choose?

●And the correct answer was... #2

●Were you right?

●What does this tell you about eyewitness testimony?

According to Research…●Studies show that the longer it takes an eyewitness to decide if the perpetrator is in a lineup, the less confident they actually are about their decision

●Why?

●Eyewitnesses typically take several minutes to point out the perpetrator because they often feel pressured to choose the correct one

●However, if they are truly confident, they should be able to decide in under 10 seconds

Multi-store Model of Memory

explanation of how memory

processes work. You hear, see,

& feel many things, but only a

small number are remembered

Since Atkinson & Shiffrin

originally proposed their dual-

store model, it has undergone

numerous adjustments &

improvements.

Interference:

Proactive - Old; Old works forward

Occurs when information or exp. already

stored in long-term memory hinder the

ability to remember newer information.

Retroactive - New; New works backward

Happens when new learning interferes

with the ability to remember previously

learned information.

YOUTUBE: How memories form & how we lose them - Ted-Ed

Remember the difference

between proactive &

retroactive interference:

"PORN"

Proactive: (PO )

Old memories interfere

with new information.

Retroactive: (RN )

New information

interferes with old

memories.

PROACTIVE OLD,

RETROACTIVE

NEW

CLIP

Clip

Semantic Encoding –

Three groups

Group 1

Group 2

Everyone’s Eyes Closed

If the balloons popped, the sound would no be able to carry,

since everything would be too far away from the correct floor.

A closed window would also prevent the sound from carrying,

since most buildings seem to be too well insulated. Rain

could cause the entire operation to be postponed. Since, the

entire operation depends on a steady flow of electricity; a

break in the middle of the wire would also cause a problem.

High winds can move the entire operation to a new location.

Of course, the fellow could shout, but the human voice

typically will not carry that far. An additional problem is that a

string could break on the instrument. Then there would be no

accompaniment to the message. It is clear that the best

situation would involve less distance. There would be way

fewer potential problems. With face to face contact, the least

number of things could go wrong.

How Does Memory Work?

encoding, storage, & retrieval

These are the processes by which we:

★ get info in - encoding

★ hang on to it - storage

★ get it back out - retrieval

Name the 7 DwarfsWrite each name in your notes on a

piece of paper.

Name the 7

Dwarfs

Was this difficult for you?

It all depends on these factors...

★ Do you like Disney movies?

★ How long ago did you watched the

movie?

★ How loud or distracting were the people

around you when you are trying to

remember?

Superior Autobiographical Memory -

or Hyperthymesia

Jill Price - FIRST! One of about 20

subjects positively diagnosed with the

condition hyperthymesia.

She is able to recite details of every

day of her life since age - 14.

Dr. James McGaugh: By stimulating

the amygdala in rats, McGaugh has

learned more about how we can

enhance memory.Researching with rats, McGaugh showed that

stimulating the amygdala with a drug that

emulates effects of stress hormones helps

memories become more firmly fixed & retained.

Without the amygdala, all of our memories

would be remembered equally. Ex.) Loss of a friend = Christmas morning.

YouTube: 60 Minutes - Endless Memory - Superior Autobiographical Memory

Storage★ Sensory Memory

★ Short-Term Memory STM

★ Long-Term Memory LTM

STM (or ‘working memory’) Limit not only on number of items it can hold, but also on duration (20 seconds or so).

Use of rehearsal helps to increase the likelihood that memories will be recalled.

LTM is divided into

explicit memories (knowing facts)

& implicit memories(remembering how to move your body when walking)

Worksheet- three types of memory

RetrievalKey to accessing information from Long Term Memory (LTM) is to have an appropriate retrieval cue.

Mnemonics: memory aid that relies on reorganization of information for easy retrieval. (Song - information for a test)

Encoding Specificity (or Transfer Appropriate Processing):Retrieval is better when context in which we are trying to retrieve something matchescontext in which it was learned.Context: part of the overall memory. By reinstating context when retrieval is occurring, we are creating an optimal recall situation.

Thirty days hath September,

April, June, and November;

All the rest have thirty-one,

Save February, with twenty-eight days clear, &

twenty-nine each leap year.

Capacity of STM – Short Term Memory

Learning sounds & meanings of new words, or seeing pictures while a storyteller tells a tale.

Want to remember large amounts of information: our recall will be easier if we can use chunking to group information together.

Learning the sounds & meanings of new words, or seeing pictures while a storyteller tells a tale.

The "Magic Number" =

7 digits, plus or minus 2

(5..6..7..8..9)

Chunking storage in STM

Remembering 10-digit phone

number is much easier if we

remember:

pattern 3-3-4

281-867-5309

Rather than recalling 10

unconnected numbers

Psychologist George Miller

published original study, 1956

YouTube: Feats of Memory That Anyone Can Do

Turn to a blank sheet of paper.

Pick out the names of the 7 dwarfs.

Grouchy Gabby Fearful Sleepy

Smiley Jumpy Hopeful Shy

Droopy Dopey Spiffy Wishful

Puffy Dumpy Sneezy Pop

Grumpy Bashful Cheerful

Teach Sporty Nifty Happy

Doc Wheezy Stubby Poppy

How many did you remember this time?

Did you do better on the 1st or 2nd

dwarf memory exercise?

Recall vs. Recognition:

With recall - you must retrieve the

information from your memory

(Fill-in-the blank tests)

With recognition - you must

identify the target from possible

targets

(Multiple-choice tests)

Which is easier?