Cognitive psychology notes

Reference - maams ppt

Textbook - margaret, Matlin, M.W. (2003). Cognition. London: Wiley Publication.
Matlin, M. W. (2003). Cognition.
Matlin, M. W. (2003). Cognition.
Galotti, K. M. (2017). Cognitive psychology in and out of the laboratory. Sage Publications.
Goldstein, E. B., & Hooff, J. van. (2020). Cognitive psychology. Cengage Learning.

Unit 1
INTRODUCTION
● Cognition: Area within psychology that examines how we acquire, store, transform and
use knowledge. (Matlin, 2013).
● Cognitive Psychology is part of an active interdisciplinary area known as cognitive
science. A branch of Psychology which involves scintific study of cognition.
● Cog Psy influences other areas like clinical, social, educational etc.
● Cognitive approach/perspective
● Prejudice: psychoanalytic, behavioral, cognitive approach
● Central in human life
ORIGINS OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY (margret textbook, pg 4 to 6)
● Mother discipline of Psychology: Philosophy
● Early Greek Philosophers: Aristotle: perception, memory, imagery and how these
processes & acquire knowledge.

● In 1868 a Dutch psychologist Donders did first cognitive experiment (Reaction time).
Perceiving light. Press L or R when light was illuminated

● Helmholtz’s unconscious inference (1860-80): Without conscious effort, we perceive

things in specific way because of stored previous experiences
● Wilhelm Wundt: Founder of Psychology. First lab (1879). Focussed on Introspection:
carefully trained observers systematically analyse sensations. Tried to objectify
experience. Stimulus error (color, brightness, feeling of redness objectively & not the
stimulus itself).
● Wundt proposed that psychology should study mental processes, using a technique
● called introspection. In this case, introspection meant that carefully trained observers
would systematically analyze their own sensations and report them as objectively as
● possible, under standardized conditions (Blumenthal, 2009; Pickren & Rutherford,
● 2010; Zangwill, 2004b). For example, observers might be asked to objectively report
● their reactions to a specific musical chord, without relying on their previous knowledge
● about music.

● Early Memory research: German Psychologists: Ebbinghaus (1850-1909): First to study

 memory scientifically. 1885- NSS/CVC experiment.

● Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), was the first person to scientifically study human
memory (Baddeley et al., 2009; Schwartz, 2011). Ebbinghaus examined a variety of
factors that might influence performance, such as the amount of time between two
presentations of a list of items. He frequently chose nonsense syllables (e.g., DAX),
rather than actual words. This precaution reduced people’s previous experience with the
material. He chose nonsense syllables because he did not want
meaning to shade his results. He assumed that meaningful
syllables would be more memorable
● Meanwhile, in the United States, similar research was being conducted by psychologists
such as Mary Whiton Calkins (1863–1930). For example, Calkins reported a memory
phenomenon called the recency effect (Schwartz, 2011). The recency effect refers to the
observation that our recall is especially accurate for the final items in a series of stimuli.
In addition, Calkins emphasized that psychologists should study how real people use their
cognitive processes in the real world, as opposed to the psychology laboratory. USA:
Calkins: (1863-1930) Recency effect. First woman president of APA.

● Forgetting curve - German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus wanted to understand

more about why we forget things and how to prevent it. His research produced the
Forgetting Curve – a visual representation of the way that learned information fades over
time. Forgetting curve:
-Memories
weaken over time.
● The Forgetting Curve is an influential memory model. It shows how learned information-The biggest drop
in retention
slips out of our memories over time – unless we take action to keep it there. happens just after
● The steepest drop in memory happens quickly after learning, so it's important to revisit learning.
-It is easier to
the information you've learned sooner rather than later. After that, regular reviews will remember things
that have meaning.
help to reinforce it. But you can leave longer and longer gaps between these review -The way
sessions. This is known as "spaced learning." something is
presented affects
learning
● Doing this will help to reinforce your learning and improve your power of recall, so that -How you feel
affects how well
you can remember what you've learned in the long term. Other strategies you can use to you remember.
improve your memory are: overlearning information, making what you want to learn
meaningful, and challenging your memory regularly.

● https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/forgetting-curve.htm#:~:text=The%20Forgettin
g%20Curve%20is%20an,learned%20sooner%20rather%20than%20later.

● William James (1842-1910): Principles of Psychology. Attention, memory, perception, to

phenomenon

● Behaviorism: Half of the 20th century. US psychologist- John B. Watson (1878-1958).

Famous experiment. Classical & Operant conditioning. Behaviorism contributed to
research methods.
 ● The Gestalt approach:
● Gestalt: unity of psychological phenomena. Critisized structuralism, behaviorism.
Emphasized on importance of insight in problem solving.Gestalt psychology emphasizes
that we humans have basic tendencies to actively organize what we see; furthermore, the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts (Benjamin, 2009).They strongly objected to
Wundt’s introspective technique of analyzing experiences into separate components
(Pickren & Rutherford, 2010). They also criticized the behaviorists’ emphasis on
breaking behavior into observable stimulus-response units and ignoring the context of
behavior (Baddeley et al., 2009; Benjamin, 2009). Gestalt psychologists constructed a
number of laws that explain why certain components of a pattern seem to belong together

● Frederic Bartlett (British Psychologist): Memory. Used meaningful material/stories.

Constructive processes in memory.Bartlett rejected the carefully controlled research of
Ebbinghaus (Pickford & Gregory, 2004). Instead, he used meaningful materials, such as
lengthy stories. Bartlett discovered that people made systematic errors when trying to
recall these stories. He proposed that human memory is an active, constructive process, in
which we interpret and transform the information we encounter. We search for meaning,
trying to integrate this new information so that it is more consistent with our own
personal experiences (Benjamin, 2009; Pickford & Gregory, 2004; Pickren & Rutherford,
2010).

● Cognitive revolution: 1950s

Cognitive psychologists generally agree that the birth of cognitive psychology can be listed as
1956 (Eysenck & Keane, 2010; G. Mandler, 2002; Thagard, 2005). During this prolific year,
researchers published numerous influential books and articles on attention, memory, language,
concept formation, and problem solving. By the 1960s, the methodology, approach, and attitudes
had changed substantially (Shiraev, 2011).

Many researchers interested in memory had shifted from animal learning to human memory
(Baddeley et al., 2009; Bower, 2008) It was difficult to explain complex human behavior using
only behaviorist concepts such as observable stimuli, responses, and reinforcement (G. Mandler,
2002; Neisser,1967). The behaviorist approach tells us nothing about numerous psychologically
interesting processes, such as the thoughts and strategies that people use when they try to solve a
problem (Bechtel et al., 1998).

● Emergence -
● Mid 20th century: Dissatisfaction with behaviorism. According to the principles of
behaviorism, psychology must focus on objective, observable reactions to stimuli in the
environment, rather than introspection.
● Behaviorists also argued that researchers could not objectively study mental
 representations, such as an image, idea, or thought.
● behaviorists emphasized the importance of the operational definition, a precise definition
that specifies exactly how a concept is to be measured.
● Similarly, cognitive psychologists in the 21st century need to specify exactly how
memory, perception, and other cognitive processes will be measured in an experiment.
● Behaviorists also valued carefully controlled research, a tradition that is maintained in
current cognitive research (Fuchs & Milar, 2003).

● Noam Chomsky: said that Inborn capacity to master complicated aspects of language.
Criticized behaviorism. Noam Chomsky (1957), who emphasized that the structure of
language was too complex to be explained in behaviorist terms (Pickren & Rutherford,
2010; Pinker, 2002). Chomsky and other linguists argued that humans have an inborn
ability to master all the complicated and varied aspects of language.

● End of 1950s: Research on human memory

● Piaget Swiss psychologist: According to Piaget, children actively explore their world in
order to understand important concepts (Gregory, 2004b). Children’s cognitive strategies
change as they mature, and adolescents often use sophisticated strategies in order to
conduct experiments about scientific principles.

● Info processing approach: 1960s: info passes through cognitive sys in a series of
stages/steps. This information-processing approach argued that

● (a) our mental processes are similar to the operations of a computer, and

● (b) information progresses through our cognitive system in a series of stages, one step at
a time. (Gallistel & King, 2009; Leahey, 2003; MacKay, 2004).

● Atkinson & Shiffrin model. Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968) developed an
information processing model that became extremely popular within the emerging field
of cognitive psychology (Baddeley et al., 2009; Rose, 2004).

● The Atkinson-Shiffrin model proposed that memory involves a sequence of separate

steps; in each step, information is transferred from one storage area to another.

● External stimuli from the environment first enter sensory memory. Sensory memory is a
storage system that records information from each of the senses with reasonable accuracy
(Schwartz, 2011)

● The model proposed that information is stored in sensory memory for 2 seconds or less,
and then most of it is forgotten. For example, your auditory memory briefly stores the last
words of a sentence spoken by your professor, but this memory disappears within about 2
seconds. Atkinson and Shiffrin’s model proposed that some material from sensory
Ecological Validity - measures how generalizable experimental findings are to the real world, such as situations or
settings typical of everyday life
 memory then passes on to short-term memory.

● Short-term memory—which is now typically called working memory—holds only the

small amount of information that you are actively using. Memories in short-term memory
are fragile—though not as fragile as those in sensory memory (J. Brown, 2004). These
memories can be lost within about 30 seconds, unless they are somehow repeated.
According to the model, only a fraction of the information in short-term memory passes
on to long-term memory (Leahey, 2003).

● Long-term memory has an enormous capacity because it contains memories that are
decades old, in addition to memories of events that occurred several minutes ago.

● Atkinson and Shiffrin’s model proposed that information stored in long-term memory is
relatively permanent, compared to the information stored in working memory

Current/contemporary areas
● Cognitive Neuroscience: Brain lesions, EEG, MRI, FMRI, PET, ERP.
● Cognitive neuroscience combines the research techniques of cognitive psychology with
various methods for assessing the structure and function of the brain (Marshall, 2009).
● In humans, the term brain lesions refers to the destruction of an area in the brain, most
often by strokes, tumors, blows to the head, and accidents. The study of brain lesions has
definitely helped us understand the organization of the brain. However, the results are
often difficult to interpret. For example, a brain lesion is not limited to just one specific
area. As a result, researchers typically cannot associate a cognitive deficit with a specific
brain structure.

● PET- 2/3 secs; fMRI takes about 1 sec

● In a positron emission tomography (PET scan), researchers measure blood flow in the
brain by injecting the participant with a low dose of a radioactive chemical just before this
 person works on a cognitive task. This chemical travels through the bloodstream to the
parts of the brain that are activated during the tasks. While the person works on the task, a
special camera makes an image of the accumulated radioactive chemical in various regions
of the brain.PET scans can be used to study such cognitive processes as attention, memory,
and language. PET scans require several seconds to produce data, so this method is not
very precise.

● functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is based on the principle that

oxygen-rich blood is an index of brain activity. The fMRI technique was developed during
the 1990s, based on the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is used in medical
settings. In general, an fMRI is preferable to a PET scan because it is less invasive, with
no injections and no radioactive material (Gazzaniga et al., 2009). In addition, an fMRI
can measure brain activity that occurs fairly quickly—in about 1 second.

● ERP: fast, precise, electrode cap, group of neurons, bad spatial resolution; the
event-related potential (ERP) technique records the very brief fluctuations in the brain’s
electrical activity, in response to a stimulus such as an auditory tone. The ERP technique
provides a reasonably precise picture about changes in the brain’s electrical potential while
people perform a cognitive task.

● (Pg 17 to 21)

● AI: language, problem solving, decision making face recognition etc; computational
metaphor; computer simulation, emotion recognition/expression.

● Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science; it seeks to explore human

cognitive processes by creating computer models that show ‘‘intelligent behavior’’ and
also accomplish the same tasks that humans do. Pure artificial intelligence (pure AI) is an
approach that designs a program to accomplish a cognitive task as efficiently as possible,
even if the computer’s processes are completely different from the processes used by
humans.

● Computer simulation or computer modeling attempts to take human limitations into

account. The goal of computer simulation is to program a computer to perform a specific
cognitive task in the same way that humans actually perform this task. A computer
simulation must produce the same number of errors—as well as correct responses—that a
human produces.

● BCI

● consciousness:
● Consciousness means the awareness that people have about the outside world and about
their perceptions, images, thoughts, memories, and feelings (Chalmers, 2007; Revonsuo,
 2010; Zeman, 2004). In recent years, cognitive psychologists have been especially
interested in three interrelated issues concerned with consciousness: (1) our inability to
bring certain thoughts into consciousness; (2) our inability to let certain thoughts escape
from consciousness; and (3) blindsight, which reveals that people with a specific visual
disorder can perform quite accurately on a cognitive task, even when they are not
conscious of their accuracy.
● A more general phenomenon, called mind wandering, occurs when your thoughts shift
from the external environment in favor of internal processing (Barron et al., 2011; McVay
& Kane, 2010; Smilek et al., 2010). Again, you may not be conscious that your mind has
wandered to another topic.
● Altered states, Inattentional blindness, Change blindness,
Absent-mindedness,Mindwandering,daydreaming,Impairment of
consciousness....vegetative state, amnesia, coma, blindsight

● Imagery

● User experience

● Social navigation.

Visual & Auditory Processing

● Psychologists have developed two terms to refer to perceptual stimuli.
● The distal stimulus- is the actual object that is ‘‘out there’’ in the environment—for
example, the pen on your desk.
● The proximal stimulus- is the information registered on your sensory receptors—for
example, the image that your pen creates on your retina. The image formed on our retina
is called the retinal image,which is a two-dimensional image
● When we recognize an object, we manage to figure out the identity of the distal stimulus,
even when the information available in the proximal stimulus is far from perfect (Kersten
et al., 2004; Palmer, 2003; Pasternak et al., 2003).
● Your retina covers the inside back portion of your eye; it contains millions of neurons that
register and transmit visual information from the outside world.
● Each such object is a distal stimulus. For a living organism to process information about
these stimuli, it must first receive the information through the visual system. The
reception of information and its registration by a sense organ make up the proximal
stimulus.
● Scientists discovered other 30 areas of cortex that play an important role in visual
perception. The regions get activated when we recognize complex objects.
Bottom-up & Top-down processing
● Bottom-up processing emphasizes that the stimulus characteristics are important when
you recognize an object.
● The physical stimuli from the environment are registered on the sensory receptors. This
 information is then passed on to higher, more sophisticated levels in the perceptual system
(Carlson, 2010; Gordon, 2004).
● For example, glance away from your textbook and focus on one specific object that is
nearby. Notice its shape, size, color, and other important physical characteristics. When
these characteristics are registered on your retina, the object-recognition process begins.
● This information starts with the most basic (or bottom) level of perception, and it works
its way up until it reaches the more ‘‘sophisticated’’cognitive regions of the brain, beyond
your primary visual cortex.
● The combination of simple, bottom-level features helps you recognize more complex,
whole objects.

Top-down processing
● Top down processing emphasizes how a person’s concepts, expectations, and memory
can influence object recognition.
● This top-down process then combined together with the specific physical information
about the stimulus from bottom-up processing. As a result, you could quickly and
seamlessly identify the object
● Cognitive psychologists believe that both bottom-up and top-down processing are
necessary to explain the complexities of object recognition (Riddoch & Humphreys,
2001).
● For example, you recognize a coffee cup because of two almost simultaneous processes:
○ (1) Bottom-up processing forces you to register the component features, such as
the curve of the cup’s handle; and
○ (2) the context of a coffee shop encourages you to recognize the handle on the cup
more quickly, because of top-down processing.

Top-Down Processing and Reading

CAT - example

● According to the word superiority effect, we can identify a single letter more accurately
and more rapidly when it appears in a meaningful word than when it appears alone by
itself or else in a meaningless string of unrelated letters (Dahan, 2010; Palmer, 2002;
Vecera & Lee, 2010). For instance, you can recognize the letter p more easily if it appears
in a word such as plan than if it appears in a nonword such as pnla.
● The same shape—an ambiguous letter—can sometimes be perceived as an H and
sometimes as an A. In this demonstration, you began to identify the whole word ‘‘THE,’’
and your tentative knowledge of that word helped to identify the second letter as an H.

Overusing of TOP DOWN PROCESSING

 ● Smart errors- our cognitive processes are remarkably efficient and accurate. However,
when we occasionally do make a mistake, that error can often be traced to a ‘‘smart
mistake,’’ such as overusing the strategy of top-down processing
● Inattentional blindness-
a. Overusing top-down processing can also lead us to demonstrate a second mistake,
called inattentional blindness; when we are paying attention to some events in a
scene, we may fail to notice when an unexpected but completely visible object
suddenly appears (Most et al., 2005). they use the term inattentional blindness
when people fail to notice that a new object has appeared.
b. Simons and Chabris (1999) asked participants to watch a videotape of people
playing basketball. These participants were instructed to mentally tally the
number of times that members of a specified group made either a bounce pass or
an aerial pass. Shortly after the video began, a person dressed in a gorilla suit
wandered into the scene and remained there for 5 seconds. Amazingly, 46% of the
participants failed to notice the gorilla! Other research confirms that people often
fail to notice a new object, if they are paying close attention to something else
● Change blindness -
○ Because we overuse top-down processing, we sometimes demonstrate change
blindness; we fail to detect a change in an object or a scene.
○ Ex. Imagine that you are walking along a sidewalk near your college campus.
Then a stranger asks you for directions to a particular building. Right in the
middle of this conversation, two people—who are carrying a wooden door
sideways—walk between you and this stranger. When they have passed by, the
original stranger has been replaced by one of the door-holding strangers. (The
door was blocking your vision, so you could not directly see the strangers
switching places.) Would you notice that you are no longer talking with the same
individual? You may be tempted to reply, ‘‘Of course!’’

Figure & ground relationship

● One important principle in gestalt psychology is that humans have basic tendencies to
organize what they see; without any effort, we see patterns, rather than random
arrangements (I. E. Gordon, 2004; Schirillo, 2010).
● We distinguish figure from the ground on the basis of the following characteristics:
○ 1. Figure has a definite form, while the background is relatively formless.
○ 2. Figure is more organised as compared to its background.
○ 3. Figure has a clear contour (outline), while the background is contourless.
○ 4. Figure stands out from the background, while the background stays behind the
figure.
○ 5. Figure appears more clear, limited, and relatively nearer, while the background
 appears relatively unclear, unlimited, and away from us.

Ambiguous figure-ground relationship-

● In an ambiguous figure-ground relationship, the figure and the ground reverse from time
to time.
● At first, you see a white vase against a blue background, but a moment later, you see two
blue faces against a white background. Even in this ambiguous situation, our perceptual
system imposes organization on a stimulus, so that one portion stands out and the
remainder recedes into the background.
● We are so accustomed to the certainty of the figure-ground relationship that we are
surprised when we encounter a situation where the figure and the ground exchange
places.
● In illusory contours (also called subjective contours), we see edges even though they are
not physically present in the stimulus.

Theories of visual object recognition

Distinctive features of each alphabet letters remains
1. Feature Analysis Theory constant, wehether the letter is handwritten, printed or
typed.
● A list of distinctive features for each letter is stored in our memory. When you look at a
Consistent with
new letter, the visual system notes the presence or absence of various features. It then psychological and
neuroscience
compares the list with the features stored in memory.Such a model of perception—called research
featural analysis—fits nicely with some neurophysiological evidence.
● Some studies of the retinas of frogs (Lettvin, Maturana, McCullogh, & Pitts, 1959)
involved implanting microelectrodes in individual cells of the retina. Lettvin et al. found
that specific kinds of stimuli could cause these cells to fire more frequently. Certain cells
responded strongly to borders between light and dark and were called “edge detectors”
● Others responded selectively to moving edges, called“bug detectors,” responded most
vigorously when a small, dark dot (much like an insect) moved across the field of vision.
● Hubel and Wiesel (1962, 1968) later discovered fields in the visual cortexes of cats and
monkeys; there are separate “horizontal-line detectors” and “vertical-line detectors,” as
well as other distinct detectors.
● This model can explain how we perceive a wide variety of other two dimensional
patterns. However, most research on this topic focuses on our ability to recognize letters
and numbers.
● Gibson (1969)- People take longer time to decide whether one letter is different from
other letter if they share a large no of critical features. For eg letter ‘P’ & ‘R’. Subjects
took less time to decide if they don’t share critical features for eg. L & O.
● Limitation- FATs mainly explain perception of simple visual stimuli/patterns but fail to
explain the perception of complex stimuli present in the environment. For eg a horse-
which is made up of too many lines, curved segments etc.
The Recognition-by-Components Theory.
● Irving Biederman and his colleagues have developed a theory to explain how humans
recognize three-dimensional shapes
● The basic assumption of their recognition-by-components theory is that a specific view of
an object can be represented as an arrangement of simple 3-D shapes called geons.
● Just as the letters of the alphabet can be combined into words, geons can be combined to
form meaningful objects (Vuong, 2010).
● A cup is different from a pail, and the recognition-by-components theory emphasizes the
specific way in which these two geons are combined.
● In general, an arrangement of three geons gives people enough information to classify an
object.
● Biederman and his colleagues have conducted fMRI research with humans, and they also
recorded neuronal responses in anesthetized monkeys. Their findings show that areas of
the cortex beyond the primary visual cortex respond to geons
● Limitation: However, the recognition-by-components theory requires an important
modification, because people recognize objects more quickly when those objects are seen
from a standard viewpoint, rather than a much different viewpoint (Friedman et al., 2005;
Graf et al., 2005).
View Centered approach
● One modification of the recognition-by-components theory is called the viewer centered
approach; this approach proposes that we store a small number of views of
three-dimensional objects, rather than just one view (G. Mather, 2006).
● Suppose that we see an object from an unusual angle, and this object does not match any
object shape we have stored in memory. We must then mentally rotate the image of that
object until it matches one of the views that is stored in memory (Tarr & Vuong, 2002;
Wolfe et al., 2009).
● This mental rotation may require an additional second or two, and we may not even
recognize the object.

Recognizing Faces

● Face perception is somehow “special”.

● We recognize faces on a holistic basis (in terms of gestalt)- i.e. in terms of their overall
shape in structure. Tanaka & Farah (1993): Participants were more accurate n recognizing
a facial feature when it appeared within the context of a whole face, rather than in
isolation. For eg., a nose/ear. However they were equally accurate in recognizing a house
feature (window) within the context of a complete house, versus recognizing the window
in isolation.
Prosopagnosia
● People with prosopagnosia cannot recognize human faces visually, though they perceive
other objects relatively normally
● modern Latin, from Greek prosōpon ‘face’ + agnōsia ‘ignorance’.
● Neuroscience research
● People with prosopagnosia recognize common objects, can recognize emotional
expressions like a smiling lady looks happy but cant recognize who this smiling lady is
● Many neuroscience case studies show that individuals with prosopagnosia can easily
recognize common objects.
● For example, a man with prosopagnosia may quickly identify a chair, a coffee cup, or a
sweater. He may even look at a woman’s smiling face and report that she looks happy.
However, he may fail to recognize that this woman is his own wife!
Brain Damage Associated with Prosopagnosia

● Visual processing: Primary Visual Cortex but for facial recognition- temporal lobe/
inferotemporal cortex.
● The occipital lobe, at the back of your brain, is the location in the part of the cortex that is
responsible for the initial, most basic visual processing. Information then travels from the
occipital lobe to numerous other locations throughout the brain.
● The location most responsible for face recognition is the temporal cortex, at the side of
your brain (Farah, 2004; Kanwisher et al., 2001; Sinha et al., 2010). The specific location
is known as the inferotemporal cortex, in the lower portion of the temporal cortex.
● Researchers have also tested monkeys, using neuroscience recording techniques. They
report that certain cells in the inferotemporal cortex respond especially vigo a photo of
another monkey’s face (Rolls & Tovee, 1995; Wang et al.,1996).
● Farah, 2004; Gazzaniga et al., 2009- Various parts of a person’s face appear independent
of one another, instead of forming a unified, complete face.

● Face Inversion Effect

● Inverted faces evoked greater neural responses compared to upright faces within object
regions inferior temporal (IT) cortex of non-human primates.
● Similarly, behavioral research shows that people are much more accurate in identifying
upright faces, compared to upside down faces, a phenomenon called the face-inversion
effect. Human beings are more accurate in perceiving familiar faces rather than
unfamiliar faces. (Bruce et al. 2001)
● Certain cells in the inferotemporal cortex respond vigorously to a photo of another
monkey’s face (Rolls & Tovee, 1995; Wang et al., 1996).
● FMRI research: Brain responds more quickly to faces presented in the normal, upright
position in comparison to faces presented upside-down (D’Esposito et al., 1999).
 ● Illusions demonstrating holistic face coding and its specificity to the upright.

Holistic perception of face

(Evidences)
● In the Thatcher illusion (Thompson, 1980),.Flipping the eyes and mouth in the face
makes the face appear bizarre in the upright orientation, but does not produce bizarreness
in the inverted orientation, and indeed is usually not noticed at all when the inverted
version is seen first.
● In the composite illusion (Young et al., 1987), aligning the top-half of one person’s face
with the bottom-half of a different person creates the illusion that the top-half has altered
in appearance,
● In the part-whole illusion (Tanaka and Farah, 1993), the appearance of a single face
feature (e.g., the mouth) changes depending on the facial context into which that feature
is inserted.

Speech Perception

During speech perception, auditory sys records sound vibrations, translates these vibrations into
a sequence of sounds that are perceived as meaningful speech. We must distinguish the sound
pattern of 1 word from tens of thousands of irrelevant words stored in memory. Also, voice of
the speaker has to be separated from background noise (Brown & Sinnot, 2006; Mattys & Liss,
2008)

Basic units of spoken language

● Phoneme: is the basic unit for spoken language such as a, k and th

● Morpheme: is the basic unit for meaning.
● Syllable is the smallest unit of speech perception. (mostly meaning less)
● Eating: eet… ing…two syllables (stress on one syllable); Bio: Bi…oh…2 syllables;
Hotel: ho…teel……
Characteristics of speech perception:
Variability in phoneme pronunciation
● Phoneme pronunciation varies tremendously.(Eg. pitch of voices and the rate of
producing phonemes)
● Speakers produce phonemes in a less precise manner. Saying sposed instead of supposed)
● Coarticulation: the phoneme speaker produces, varies slightly from time to time because
of the surrounding phonemes. Eg: d in idle and d in don’t
Word Boundaries
● In an unfamiliar language, words seem to run together in a continuous stream, with no
boundaries of silence to separate them.
● We are rarely conscious that it is difficult to resolve word boundaries. Speech recognition
system immediately & effortlessly uses our knowledge about language in order to place
the boundaries in appropriate locations (Grossberg et al., 2004; Pitt, 2009.)
Context & Speech perception
● Context allows listeners to fill in missing sounds. (Cleary & Pisoni, 2001; Warren, 2006)
Top-down factors also influence speech perception. We use our knowledge about
language to perceive ambiguous words.
● Phonemic Restoration: People fill in a missing phoneme using contextual meaning as a
cue (Conway et al., 2010)
● Warren et al. (1970): Played a recording of a sentence: “The state governors met with
their respective legi*latures convening in the capital city”. The first “s” in the word was
replaced with a coughing sound (v v brief). Out of the 20 participants, 19 reported there
were no sounds missing from the recording.
● Warren & Warren (1970): Played recordings of sentences. Coughing sound was inserted:
❖ It was found that the *eel was on the shoe/sandal (heel was heard)
❖ It was found that the *eel was on the orange (peel was heard)
❖ It was found that the *eel was on the table (meal was heard)
❖ It was found that the *eel was on the axle (wheel was heard)

Characteristics of speech perception: Visual Cues and Speech perception

● Smyth et al. (1987): Info from the speaker’s lips and face help resolve ambiguities from
the speech signal, much as phoneme contextual cues help us choose b/w wheel and peel.
● A poorly dubbed movie in which the actor’s lips move independently of the sound
presumably coming from those lips….. might make the perceiving experience
uncomfortable/unpleasant.
● We hear more accurately if we closely watch the speaker's lips. We tend to integrate
visual cues and auditory cues during speech perception even if we don’t recognize the
usefulness of visual cues. ‘

● McGurk & McDonald effect (1976): Influence of visual information on speech

perception when individuals must integrate both visual & auditory info (McGurk &
MacDonald, 1976; Beauchamp et al., 2010; Rosenblum, 2005).
● The influence of visual information on speech perception when individuals must integrate
both visual and auditory information.
 ● Beauchamp et al. (2010): Brain location giving rise to McGurk effect: superior temporal
sulcus.

Theories of speech perception

Special mechanism approach

● Humans are born with a specialized device that allows them to decode stimuli (Samuel,
2011).
● Humans possess a phonetic module- a special purpose neural mechanism that specifically
possesses all aspects of speech perception and not other auditory perception.
● This phonetic module would presumably enable listeners to perceive ambiguous
phonemes accurately. It would also help you to segment the blurred stream of auditory
information that reaches your ears, so that you can perceive distinct phonemes and words
● The special mechanism approach to speech perception suggests that the brain is
organized in an unusual way. Speech perception would not rely on the general cognitive
functions such as recognizing objects, remembering events, and solving problems

● Categorical perception: (When a smooth continuum of sounds b/w ‘b’ and ‘p’ was
presented, s’s could not hear a sound part way between a ‘b’ and a ‘p’ but reported
hearing a clear-cut ‘b’ or ‘p’) but non speech sounds were heard as a smooth continuum
(Liberman & Mattingly, 1989). However new research shows humans also exhibit
categorical perception for non-speech sound (Esgate & Groome, 2005).

Theories of speech perception (General mechanism):

● General mechanism approach: speech perception can be explained without any special
phonetic module.
● Humans use the same neural mechanisms to process both speech sounds and non speech
sounds.
● Speech perception is a learned ability and not an innate one.
● ERP studies show adults show the same sequence of shifts in brain’s electrical potential
whether listening to speech or to music (Patel et al., 1998).
● If speech perception can be influenced by visual perception (e.g. Mcgurk effect), we can’t
conclude that a special phonetic module handles all aspects of speech perception.

Attention
Attention: Focusing on an object/stimulus of interest carrying out desired/necessary action while
ignoring other irrelevant stimuli
Ability to actively process specific info while tuning out other details.
● ability to focus on a task
● ability to concentrate
 ● refers to the allocation of processing resources (Anderson, 1995) (assumes limited
resources)

Types of attention:
● Selective attention - Selective attention is the process of focusing on a particular object
in the environment for a certain period of time. Attention is a limited resource, so
selective attention allows us to tune out unimportant details and focus on what matters.

● Sustained attention/vigilance - Sustained attention is the ability to focus on an activity

or stimulus over a long period of time.. It is what makes it possible to concentrate on an
activity for as long as it takes to finish, even if there are other distracting stimuli present.
Sustained attention is usually divided into vigilance (detecting the appearance of a
stimulus) and concentration (focusing on the stimulus or activity). This important
cognitive skill helps us efficiently and successfully carry out tasks and activities in our
daily lives, especially those that take a long time to complete.

● Divided attention - In a divided-attention task, you try to pay attention to two or more
simultaneous messages, responding appropriately to each message. In many cases, both
your speed and your accuracy suffer. These problems are especially likely if the tasks are
challenging, for instance, if two people are talking quickly to you at the same time
Divided Attention
● Hyman (2010): College students walk more slowly when they are talking on cell phones.
Furthermore, the research shows that college students read their textbooks significantly
more slowly when they are responding to instant messages.
● (Bowman et al., 2010): Students also earn lower grades when they are tested on the
material they had been reading while multitasking .
● Collet et al. (2009): Reaction times of people talking on handheld phones were about
20% slower than others without cell phone conversations.
● Strayer et al. (2003): In heavy-traffic conditions, people in the hands-free cell phone
group took significantly longer to apply the brakes, compared to those in a control group.
● In further testing, Strayer and his colleagues discovered that the participants who used
cell phones showed a form of inattentional blindness

● Alternating - Alternating attention refers to the ability to switch between tasks; to stop
one task to participate in another and then be able to return to the initial task.

● There are 4 main types of attention that we use in our daily life and they are selective
attention, divided attention, sustained attention, and executive attention.
 ● Examples include listening carefully to what one is saying amidst a group of people or
among some big noise like talking to a person in a party(cocktail party effect). Talking to
someone on the phone while driving a car – selective attention. When we study, we need
to be awake and attentive to whatever we are reading or trying to learn. – sustained
attention. Jamming with a song playing on the radio while driving a car. – divided
attention.
● You may try to use divided attention, for example, concentrating on both your professor’s
lecture and a nearby whispered conversation between two students. You’ll discover,
though, that you cannot accurately attend to both categories of stimuli simultaneously. In
reality, you are likely to use some form of selective attention, by trying to focus your
attention. The remaining four items in this list require this selective attention

● Theories/models of attention/Bottleneck theories ( not in the textbook)

Broadbent filter theory:
Cherry’s experiment (1953)
➔ They can tell whether it was a human voice or a noise
➔ They can tell whether the voice was male or female
➔ S’s cannot tell what language was spoken
➔ S’s cannot report any of the words spoken, even if the same word was repeated over and
over again.
● Experiment by Cherry (1953): Broadbent based his theory on its findings.
Broadbent filter theory (1958):
● Broadbent described attention as a bottleneck which lets only a limited amount of info
pass for processing. If the amount of info available at any given moment exceeds
capacity, the person uses an attentional filter to let some info through and to block the
rest.
● Incoming stimuli, briefly held in a sensory register, undergo pre-attentive analysis by a
selective filter on the basis of their physical characteristics. Those stimuli selected pass
along a (very) limited capacity channel to a detection device. Stimuli not selected
(‘filtered out’) are not analyzed for meaning and do not reach consciousness.
● Two main assumptions of Broadbent’s theory:
● If the amount of info available at any given moment exceeds capacity, the person uses an
attentional filter to let some info through and to block the rest.
● In a dichotic listening task, subjects were more comfortable recalling the content based
on the ear of the presentation (all messages in 1 ear first and then all messages in the
other ear) and not on the sequence of presentation of stimuli. (L: 1, 3, 5; R: 2, 4, 6)

Research opposing filter theory:

● Broadbent’s theory fails to explain the cocktail party effect (discovered by Moray).
 ● Moray (1959) found that although his subjects could not recall nor recognize irrelevant
messages presented as many as 35 times to the unattended ear, they frequently heard their
own name when presented in this channel. Moray thus concluded that only “important
material” can penetrate the filter setup to block unattended messages.

Triesman’s theory (1960): Feature-Integration Theory.

● Anne Treisman
● The basic elements: According to Treisman’s feature-integration theory, we sometimes
look at a scene using distributed attention,∗ and we process all parts of the scene at the
same time; on other occasions, we use focused attention, and we process each item in the
scene, one at a time.
● Treisman also suggested that distributed attention and focused attention form a
continuum, rather than two distinctive categories.
● As a result, you frequently use a kind of attention that is somewhere between those two
extremes.
Two processes involves
● Distributed attention allows you to register features automatically; you use parallel
processing across the field, and you register all the features simultaneously. Distributed
attention is a relatively low-level kind of processing.
● Focused attention requires slower serial processing, and you identify one object at a
time. This more demanding kind of processing is necessary when the objects are more
complex.
● Focused attention identifies which features belong together—for example, a square shape
may go with a blue color.
● Research on the theory: Treisman and Gelade (1980) examined distributed attention and
focused attention by studying two different stimulus situations. In this study, one situation
used isolated features (and therefore it used distributed attention).
● In contrast, the other situation used combinations of features (and therefore it used
focused attention).
● According to Treisman and Gelade, if you process isolated features in distributed
attention, then you should be able to rapidly locate a target among its neighboring,
irrelevant items.
● That target should seem to ‘‘pop out’’ of the display automatically, no matter how many
items are in the display. The results showed that you could detect it just as fast when it
appeared in an array of 23 items as when it appeared in an array of only 3 items
(Treisman, 1986; Treisman & Gelade, 1980). Distributed attention can operate in a
parallel fashion and relatively automatically; the target seemed to ‘‘pop out’’ in
● Research on focused attention (Using Combined features):In case of searching for
“king of diamond”, you need to use focused attention. In other words,you were forced to
focus your attention on one item at a time, using serial processing (complex task).
 ● People need more time to find the target when there are a large number of distractors in a
focused-attention task(Triesman & Gelade, 1980; Parasuraman & Greenwood, 2007).

Conjunction search

Illusory conjunction effect:

● An illusory conjunction is an inappropriate combination of features, perhaps combining
one object’s shape with a nearby object’s color.
● When we are overwhelmed with too many simultaneous visual tasks, we sometimes form
an illusory conjunction. for example, a blue N and a green T can produce an illusory
conjunction in which the viewer actually perceives either a blue T or a green N

illusory Conjunctions (Errors of synthesis):

● When you look at a red circle, you actually analyze its red color separately from its round
shape. In other words, your visual system sometimes has a binding problem because it
does not represent the important features of an object as a unified whole. Focused
attention acts like a form of glue, so that an object’s color and its shape can stick together.
● When you use focused attention to look at the apple, you will accurately perceive an
integrated figure—a red, round object.Focused attention allows the binding process to
operate (Bouvier & Treisman, 2010
● Research shows that our visual system can create an illusory conjunction from verbal
material also (Treisman, 1990; Wolfe, 2000).
● For example: 2 nonsense words are shown, dax and kay. You might report seeing the
English word day. When we cannot use focused attention, we sometimes form illusory
conjunctions that are consistent with our expectations. Top-down processing helps us
screen out inappropriate combinations. As a result, we are more likely to perceive
familiar combinations (Treisman, 1990).

Filter versus Attenuation Theory:

● I. Broadbent’s filter does not allow through unattended messages, whereas Treisman’s
filter allows unattended messages through, but in an attenuated form.
● II. Broadbent’s is a simple single filter model, whereas Treisman’s can be thought of as a
two-stage filtering process: firstly, filtering on the basis of incoming channel
characteristics, and secondly, filtering by the threshold settings of the dictionary
● units.
● III. Both models are “early selection”models, in which selection occurs prior to pattern
recognition.
Late Selection theory:
 ● Deutsch & Deutsch (1963) model is called a late selection model because they claim that
all information (attended and unattended) is analysed for meaning in order to select an
input for full awareness. Whether or not information is selected is dependent on how
relevant it is at the time.
● More support comes from Moray (1969), who paired electric shocks with a word to
condition a galvanic skin response (GSR) when the word was spoken. A GSR was
produced even when the word was presented to the unattended ear and the participants
were unaware of it.
● In contrast to the early-selection assumption that information is filtered or blocked prior
to recognition, Norman’s theory is that all stimuli are processed for meaning, which
happens in LTM but only the meaning of the attended stimulus reaches awareness.
○ Information that is more pertinent (relevant/important) is most likely to be
selected.
○ Information is kept in short term memory and is quickly forgotten unless it is
pertinent.
● This theory holds that all messages are routinely processed for at least some aspects of
meaning-the selection of which message to respond happens “late” in processing.

MacKay (1973)
❖ Ambiguous sentence in attended ear
❖ “They were throwing rocks at the bank.”
❖ Bias word in unattended ear (money/river)
❖ Result
❖ Bias word influences sentence meaning
❖ Conclusion
❖ Unconscious processing of meaning of unattended information
❖ Support for late selection

Important Attention Processes

● Dichotic listening task
● Stroop task
● Visual Search
● Saccadic eye movements

Divided attention: Dichotic task

● In the laboratory, dichotic listening is studied by asking people to wear earphones; one
message is presented to the left ear, and a different message is presented to the right ear.
● Typically, the research participants are asked to shadow the message in one ear; that is,
they listen to that message and repeat it after the speaker.
● If the listener makes mistakes in shadowing, then the researcher knows that the listener is
 not paying appropriate attention to that specified message (Styles, 2005).
● In the classic research, people noticed very little about the unattended second message
(Cherry, 1953; Gazzaniga et al., 2009; McAdams & Drake, 2002). For example, people
didn’t even notice that the second message was sometimes switched from English words
to German words. People did notice, however, when the voice of the unattended message
was switched from male to female.
● In general, people can process only one message at a time (Cowan, 2005). However,
people are more likely to process the unattended message when
○ (1) both messages are presented slowly,
○ (2) the main task is not challenging, and
○ (3) the meaning of the unattended message is immediately relevant (e.g., Duncan,
1999; Harris & Pashler, 2004; Marsh et al., 2007).
● Even if you are paying close attention to one conversation, you may notice if your name
is mentioned in a nearby conversation; this phenomenon is sometimes called the cocktail
party effect.
● In one study, for example, Wood and Cowan (1995) found that about one-third of the
participants reported hearing their name in the message that they were supposed to
ignore.
● Wood and Cowan study was conducted in a laboratory, so this research may not have
high ecological validity (Baker, 1999).
● In an unstructured social setting, your attention may easily wander to other intriguing
conversations. Furthermore, the capacity of a person’s working memory could help to
explain why some people hear their name, but others do not. Conway and his coauthors
(2001) found that students who had a high working-memory capacity noticed their name
only 20% of the time. In contrast, students with a low working-memory capacity noticed
their name 65% of the time on the same dichotic-listening task. Apparently, people with a
relatively low capacity have difficulty blocking out irrelevant information such as their
name (Cowan, 2005). In other words, they are easily distracted from the task they are
supposed to be completing.

Stroop Effect:

● The Stroop effect is named after James R. Stroop (1935), who created this well known
task.
● According to the Stroop effect, people take a long time to name the ink color when that
color is used in printing an incongruent word (100 secs); in contrast, they can quickly
name that same ink color when it appears as a solid patch of color.(60 secs)
● Selective attention: People take longer to pay attention to a color when they are distracted
by another feature of the stimulus, namely, the meaning of the name itself (Styles, 2006).
Researchers have examined a variety of explanations for the Stroop effect.
 ● Some have suggested that it can be explained by the connectionist or parallel
distributed processing (PDP) approach,
● According to this explanation, the Stroop task activates two pathways at the same time.
One pathway is activated by the task of naming the ink color, and the other pathway is
activated by the task of reading the word. Interference occurs when two competing
pathways are active at the same time. As a result, task performance suffers.
● Another explanation is that adults have had much more practice in reading words than in
naming colors. The more automatic process (reading the word) interferes with the less
automatic process (naming the color of the ink). As a result, we automatically—and
involuntarily—read the words that are printed
● For instance, many clinical psychologists have used a related technique called the
emotional Stroop task (C. MacLeod, 2005; C. M. MacLeod, 2005).
● On the emotional Stroop task, people are instructed to name the ink color of words that
could have strong emotional significance to them. These individuals often require more
time to name the color of the stimuli, presumably because they have trouble ignoring
their emotional reactions to the words themselves (Most, 2010).
● For example, suppose that someone appears to have a phobic disorder, which is an
excessive fear of a specific object. A person with a fear of spiders would be instructed to
name the ink colors of printed words such as hairy and crawl. People with phobias are
significantly slower on these anxiety-arousing words than on control words. In contrast,
people without phobias show no difference between the two kinds of words (Williams et
al., 1996). These results suggest that people who have a phobic disorder are hyper-alert to
words related to their phobia, and they show an attentional bias to the meaning of these
stimuli.
● An attentional bias describes a situation in which people pay extra attention to some
stimuli or some features. In the emotional Stroop task, for example, the participants pay
less attention to the ink color of the words. In addition, adults who showed an attentional
bias toward suicide-related words are more likely than other adults to make a suicide
attempt within the following 6 months (Cha et al., 2010).

Visual Search:
● In visual search, the observer must find a target in a visual display that has numerous
distractors. In some cases, our lives may depend on accurate visual searches.
● For instance, airport security officers search travelers’ luggage for possible weapons, and
radiologists search a mammogram to detect a tumor that could indicate breast cancer.
Examples of visual search:
● Searching for keys on a messy table
● Searching for your wallet
● Searching for tea bags in the supermarket
 ● Searching for your name on a list of names
● Searching your roll no in competition results
● Searching for your friend in a crowd
Research on Visual Search:
● Wolfe and his colleagues (2005) found that people are much more accurate in identifying
a target if it appears frequently. If the target appears—in a visually complex
background—on 50% of the trials, participants missed the target 7% of the time. When
the same target appeared in this same complex background on only 1% of the trials,
participants missed the target 30% of the time.
● Role of bottom-up & top-down processes (Wolfe, 2010)

Types of effects studied in visual search:

The isolated-feature/combined-feature effect.:

● If the target differed from the irrelevant items in the display with respect to a simple
feature such as color, observers could quickly detect the target.
● Quinlan (2010): People can typically locate an isolated feature more quickly than a
combined feature.

Combined/conjunctive feature
The feature-present/feature-absent effect..:
● Treisman and Souther (1985) found that people performed rapid searches for a feature
that was present whether the display contained zero irrelevant items or numerous
irrelevant items. When people are searching for a feature that is present, the target item in
the display usually captures their attention automatically (Franconeri et al., 2005;
Matsumoto, 2010; Wolfe, 2000, 2001). In fact, this ‘‘pop-out’’ effect is automatic, and
researchers emphasize that locating the target is strictly a bottom-up process (Boot et al.,
2005)
● When people search for a feature that is absent, they typically examine every item, one
item at a time. They therefore must use a kind of attention that emphasizes both
bottom-up processing and top-down processing. This task is substantially more
challenging, as Wolfe has also found in his extensive research on the
feature-present/feature-absent effect (Wolfe, 2000, 2001; Wolfe et al. 2009)

Saccadic eye movements

● Rapid movement of the eyes from one spot to the next is known as saccadic eye
movement. The purpose of a saccadic eye movement during reading is to bring the center
of your retina into position over the words you want to read. The eye must be moved so
 that new words can be registered on the fovea.
● Researchers have estimated that people make between 150,000 and 200,000 saccadic
movements every day (Irwin, 2003). We cannot process much visual information when
your eyes are moving (saccades) but a fixation occurs during the period between two
saccadic movements.
● During each fixation, your visual system pauses briefly in order to acquire information
that is useful for reading. Eye movement while reading is not smooth but the eyes are
actually alternating between jumps and pauses.
● Most of the research has been done on English language reading. In English, each
saccade moves your eye forward by about 7 to 9 letters (Wolfe et al., 2009).
● Few researchers have determined that Chinese readers move their eyes only 2 to 3
characters in a saccade. The reason behind this finding can be the fact that each character
in the Chinese written language is more densely packed with information, compared to
each letter in written English (Rayner, 2009; Shen et al., 2008).
● When the eye jumps forward in a saccadic movement, it usually moves toward the center
of a word, rather than to a blank space between words or between sentences (Engbert &
Krugel, 2010). The eye also jumps past short words, words that appear frequently in a
language, and words that are highly predictable in a sentence
● In contrast, the size of the saccadic movement is small if the next word in a sentence is
misspelled or if it is unusual
Characteristics of good readers.:
● Good readers make larger jumps. They are also less likely to make regressions, by
moving their eyes backward to earlier material in the sentence. The good reader also has
shorter pauses before moving onward (Castelhano & Rayner, 2008).

Neuroscience Research on Attention

● Research using these techniques has identified a network of areas throughout the brain
that accomplish various attention tasks (Posner & Rothbart, 2007b).
● According to Michael Posner and Mary Rothbart, several systems in the cortex process
different aspects of attention: 3 major systems: The Alerting, Orienting & the executive
attention network

The attention networks:

● Alerting attention network: Alerting, or preparing for a stimulus by establishing and
maintaining a state of alertness (Posner & Petersen, 1990), is associated with frontal,
parietal and thalamic activity, and with norepinephrine

Orienting attention network:

● Orienting, or the voluntary and involuntary selection of and shifting of attention toward
the direction of an incoming stimulus (Posner & Petersen, 1990), is associated with
 activity in the superior and inferior parietal lobes, frontal eye fields, superior
colliculus, pulvinar, and reticular thalamic nuclei (Corbetta & Shulman, 2002), and
with acetylcholine (Davidson & Marrocco, 2000)
● Two important components of the orienting network are located in the parietal lobe. This
is the region which is involved during visual searches such as searching for your lost
ring/contact lens etc.
● People whose right parietal lobe was damaged had difficulty in reporting stimulus
appearing in their left visual field while people with damage in the left parietal region
have trouble noticing a visual stimulus on the right side this is called unilateral spatial
neglect/hemifield neglect

The Executive Attention Network:

● Executive attention involves the detection and resolution of conflict in mental operations
between brain regions, as well as the production of accurate behavioral responses (Posner
& Petersen, 1990).
● Executive attention is associated with activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC),
anterior insula, and with dopamine (Bush, Luu, & Posner, 2000; Fan et al., 2005;
● The insula is a small region of the cerebral cortex within large fissure that separates the
frontal and parietal lobes from the temporal lobe.
● The executive attention network is responsible for the kind of attention we use when a
task focuses on conflict (Posner & Rothbart, 2007a, 2007b). Eg: the Stroop task.
● The executive attention network inhibits your automatic responses to stimuli (Stuss et al.,
2002).
● Prefrontal portion of cortex involved in this attention network
● This network begins to develop at about age 3, much later than the orienting attention
network (Posner & Rothbart, 2007a; Rothbart et al., 2011).
● Posner and Rothbart (2007b): the executive attention network is extremely important
when you acquire academic skills in school, for example, when you learned to read.
● Tang & Posner (2009): Adults can enhance their executive attention network by learning
meditation, adopted from traditional Chinese techniques.
● Executive attention also helps you learn new ideas/compare them with old ones (Posner
& Rothbart, 2007a).
● Location of the executive attention network overlaps with the areas of your brain that are
related to general intelligence.

● CConsciousness
Definitions:
● Consciousness is the sum of processes we are aware of.
● Consciousness: “current awareness of external or internal circumstances”
 ● “the awareness that people have about the outside world and about their perceptions,
images, thoughts, memories, and feelings” (Chalmers, 2007; Revonsuo, 2010; Zeman,
2004).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Types of consciousness: Block 1995: 4 types:
● i. Monitoring: One’s ability to reflect on one’s own thinking process. Appraisal
of one’s own internal states. (Metacognition)
● ii. Self conscious: It refers to one’s general knowledge about self. Awareness of
self; components, strengths, weaknesses, emotional awareness, body awareness, etc.
● iii. Access:
● Iv. Phenomenal:
● Access Consciousness: In A-conscious state, a person is able to use/retrieve previously
stored info but is not subjectively aware about it. Eg: blind sight, automaticity in driving,
consciousness of animals etc. Eg: A zombie or robot may have A consciousness but not P
conscious.

● Phenomenal consciousness: subjective awareness of what our mind is currently

doing/experiencing
● “P-conscious states are experiential”; he gives examples such as smells, tastes, pains,
thoughts, and desires.
● Qualia: subjective awareness/experience; redness of red, subjective experience of smell
of perfume
● Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson (1977) argued that we often have little direct access
to our thought processes. As they pointed out, you may be fully conscious of the products of
your thought processes (such as your mother’s maiden name.
Consciousness & Attention
● Consciousness is closely related to attention, but the processes are not identical
(Dijksterhuis & Aarts, 2010; Hoffman, 2010; Lavie, 2007). After all, we are frequently
not aware or conscious of the tasks we are performing with the automatic,distributed
form of attention. Eg: driving
Consciousness research areas:
● Mind wandering
● Thought suppression
● Blindsight
● Research with primes
Research on Mind wandering

● During mind wandering, your thoughts shift from the external environment in favor of
internal processing (Barron et al., 2011; McVay & Kane, 2010; Smilek et al., 2010)
 without being conscious about it.
● Mind-wandering has been associated with beneficial processes as goal-directed thinking
(Gorgolewski et al., 2014), planning (Baird et al., 2011), and creativity (Baird et al.,
2012).
● On the other hand, it correlates with such costly outcomes as attenuated processing of the
environment (Smallwood et al., 2008), driving accidents (Yanko & Spalek, 2014),
disruptions to learning [Wammes et al, 2016; Seli et al., 2016), affective dysfunction
[Smallwood et al., 2003)], and impaired performance in daily life (Mc Vay et al., 2009).
● There is a lot of inconsistency in defining mind wandering phenomena itself (Seli et al.,
2018)
Research on Thought suppression

● Wegner (1997b, 2002) uses the phrase ironic effects of mental control to describe how
our efforts can backfire when we attempt to control the contents of our consciousness.
● Wegner et al. (1987) instructed one group of students not to think about a white bear
during a 5-minute period, and then they were allowed to think about a white bear during a
second 5-minute period. These students were very likely to think about a white bear
during the second period. In fact, they thought about bears more often than students in a
control group. Students in this control group had been instructed to think freely about a
white bear—without any previous thought-suppression session.
● In other words, initial suppression of specific thoughts can produce a rebound effect
(Wegner et al., 2002; Purdon et al., 2005).
● Furthermore, this rebound effect is not limited to suppressing thoughts about white bears
and other relatively trivial ideas. For example, when people are instructed not to notice a
painful stimulus, they are likely to become even more aware of the pain.
● Similar ironic effects—which occur when we try to suppress our thoughts—have been
documented when people try to concentrate, avoid movement, or fall asleep (Harvey,
2005; Wegner, 1994).

Research on Blindsight

● Blindsight refers to an unusual kind of vision without awareness.

● Blindsight is a condition in which an individual with a damaged visual cortex claims not
to see an object; however, he or she can accurately report some characteristics of that
object, such as its location (Kolb & Whishaw, 2009; Robertson
& Treisman, 2010; Weiskrantz, 2007; Zeman, 2004).
Possible explanation on Blindsight

● Most of the information that is registered on the retina travels to the visual cortex.
 However, a small portion of this retinal information travels to other locations in the
cerebral cortex that are located outside the visual cortex (Weiskrantz, 2007; Zeman,
2004).
● A person with blindsight can therefore identify some characteristics of the visual
stimulus—even with a damaged primary visual cortex—based on information registered
in those other cortical locations.

Research with primes

● (Meyer & Schvanveldt 1970s) Effect of briefly presented words on subsequent

recognition of other word was observed.
● College..................... university faster
● Jelly.......................university...recognizing relatively slower
● If primed with “college”, a subject identifies “university” faster than if primed with
“jelly”.
● Subliminal priming: Priming done (prime presented) below the sensory threshold, level
of conscious awareness.
● Boy with cake............2 pics presented for a v brief period.
● Neutral picture...... (Perception according to the priming done)
●
Unit 2- Memory

● “Memory is the process of maintaining information over time.” (Matlin, 2005)

● “Memory is the means by which we draw on our past experiences in order to use this
information in the present”.(Sternberg, 1999).
● Memory is the means by which we retain and draw on our past experiences to use that
information in the present (Tulving, 2000b; Tulving & Craik, 2000).
● Memory is the processes involved in retaining, retrieving, and using information about
stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer
present.

Process of remembering

Encoding:

● Transferring information into a form that can be stored in memory

● Encoding is the first stage which refers to a process by which information is recorded and
registered for the first time so that it becomes usable by our memory system.
● Whenever an external stimulus impinges on
● In encoding, we transform sensory data into a form of mental representation
Storage:

● The process of keeping or maintaining information in memory.

● our sensory organs, it generates neural impulses. These are received in different areas of
our brain for further processing.
○ In encoding, incoming information is received and some meaning is derived. It is
then represented in a way so that it can be processed further.
○ (b) Storage is the second stage of memory. Information which was encoded must
also be stored so that it can be put to use later. Storage, therefore, refers to the
process through which information is retained and held over a period of time.
○ (c) Retrieval is the third stage of memory. Information can be used only when
one is able to recover it from her/his memory.
● In storage, we keep encoded information in memory

Retrieval

● Retrieval refers to bringing the stored information to her/his awareness so that it can be
used for performing various cognitive tasks such as problem solving or decision-making.
● It may be interesting to note that memory failure can occur at any of these stages.
● You may fail to recall an information because you did not encode it properly, or the
storage was weak so you could not access or retrieve it when required.
● Bringing to mind information that has been stored in memory
● In retrieval, we pull out or use information stored in memory.

Recall

● Recall in memory refers to the mental process of retrieval of information from the past.
Along with encoding and storage, it is one of the three core processes of memory.
● There are three main types of recall: free recall, cued recall and serial recall.
● Psychologists test these forms of recall as a way to study the memory processes of
humans and animals

Types of Recall

Free recall:
 ● Free recall describes the process in which a person is given a list of items to remember
and then is tested by being asked to recall them in any order.
○ Hardest type of recall
○ Least environmental support
○ Free recall often displays evidence of primacy and recency effects.
○ Primacy effects are displayed when the person recalls items presented at the
beginning of the list earlier and more often.
○ The recency effect is when the person recalls items presented at the end of the list
earlier and more often

Cued recall:

● Second hardest type of recall

○ Provides somes environmental support
○ Cued recall is when a person is given a list of items to remember and is then
tested with cues to remember material.
○ Researchers have used this procedure to test memory.
○ Participants are given pairs, usually of words, A1-B1, A2-B2...An-Bn (n is the
number of pairs in a list) to study.
○ Then the experimenter gives the participant a word to cue the participant to recall
the word with which it was originally paired. The word presentation can either be
visual or auditory.
○ There are two basic experimental methods used to conduct cued recall, the
study-test method and the anticipation method.
○ In the study-test method participants study a list of word pairs presented
individually.
○ Immediately after or after a time delay, participants are tested in the study phase
of the experiment on the word pairs just previously studied.
○ One word of each pair is presented in a random order and the participant is asked
to recall the item with which it was originally paired.
○ The participant can be tested for either forward recall, Ai is presented as a cue for
Bi, or backward recall, Bi is presented as a cue for Ai.
○ In the anticipation method, participants are shown Ai and are asked to anticipate
the word paired with it, Bi. If the participant cannot recall the word, the answer is
revealed.
● Recognition:
○ Easiest type of recall
○ Memory best under recognition
○ Provides environmental support
Types of Memory

● Sensory Memory: Sensory memory- Short term memory/ WM: Short capacity
memory storage system which receives information from sensory memory and holds it
for short periods of time for further processing
● Long term memory: Memory system in which information is retained for a very long
period of time

Goldstein and PPT

Sensory Memory

● External stimuli from the environment first enter sensory memory. Sensory memory is a
storage system that records information from each of the senses with reasonable accuracy
● shortest element of memory. Its the ability to retain impressions of sensory information
(for a brief period of time) after the original stimuli have ended. (Iconic and echoic)

Iconic memory

● It involves the brief persistence of visual impressions that “makes them briefly available
for processing even after the stimulus has been terminated”.
● Whole Method : Sperling flashed an array of letters and numbers on a screen for a mere
50 milliseconds. Participants were asked to report the identity and location of as many of
the symbols as they could recall. 12 items were presented. The subjects felt that they had
stored all 12 items in their memory but most of them were lost at the moment of verbal
report. 4-5 items recalled.
● Partial report- Sperling (1960): Chart is displayed v briefly. S’s instructed to recall one
row items only
● Subjects hear a tone: high pitch: recall I row; moderate pitch: II row; Low pitch: III row
 ● S’s could report more than 3 items per line and saw between 9-10 items but the image of
these 9 items fades so rapidly that the person can report only 4 or so…
● To estimate the duration of iconic memory, Sperling manipulated the interval between the
display and the tone. The range of the interval was upto 1.0 second after the offset of the
display
● Conclusion: Icon persisted for 200-400 milliseconds i.e less than half a sec. Iconic
memory capacity- abt 9 items
● Half a sec-1 sec

Echoic memory (partial method)

● Echoic: Neisser coined the term

● There is also a sensory memory for auditory material, which Neisser (1967) called the
echo.
● Moray, Bates, and Barnett (1965) offered a clever demonstration of the echo.
○ Participants were given a “four-eared” listening task, similar to a dichotic
listening task
○ They heard, simultaneously over headphones, four channels of incoming
information, each apparently coming from a different location, consisting of a
string of random letters.
○ In one condition, similar to Sperling’s (1960) whole-report condition, participants
were asked to report all the letters they had heard.
○ In another condition, each participant held a board with four lights on it, each
light corresponding to one of the channels, cueing the participant to1 report only
the letters from a particular channel.
○ As did Sperling, Moray et al. found that participants giving partial reports could
report proportionately more letters.
○ This suggests that the echo, like the icon, stores information only briefly for about
2 seconds
● Short term memory demonstration called the “suffix effect” also reveals something
about the nature of echoic memory.
○ Imagine you are a research participant in a memory experiment, and a list of
random digits, letters, or the like is being presented to you.
○ If the list is presented to you auditorily (as opposed to visually), and if there is an
auditory recall cue such as a spoken word or specific item, recall of the last few
items on the list is seriously hindered (Crowder, 1972).
○ Researchers think the recall cue, called the suffix, functions as an auditory “mask”
of sorts, because when the suffix is simply a beep or tone, or a visual stimulus,
there is usually not much effect.
○ Nor is there any effect if the items on the list are presented visually—say, on a
 computer screen.
○ Finally, the more auditory similarity there is between the suffix and the items on
the list, the greater the suffix effect.
● Sensory memory can currently best be described by a number of properties.
1. Sensory memories are modality specific: the visual sensory memory
contains visual information; the auditory sensory memory, auditory
information; and so forth.
2. Sensory memory capacities appear relatively large, but the length of time
information can be stored is quite short, much less than a second.
3. The information that can be stored appears relatively unprocessed,
meaning that most of it has t(Atkinson and shiffrin)
● Some proposals (Haber, 1983; Neisser, 1983) have disputed the idea that
● the icon and the echo play a necessary role in perception or memory. Although
● no one disputes the findings reported by Sperling (1960) and others, some

Haptic Memory

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-psychology/chapter/types-of-memory/

● Sensory receptors all over the body detect sensations like pressure, itching, and pain,
which are briefly held in haptic memory before vanishing or being transported to
short-term memory.
● This type of memory seems to be used when assessing the necessary forces for gripping
and interacting with familiar objects.
● Haptic memory seems to decay after about two seconds. Evidence of haptic memory has
only recently been identified and not as much is known about its characteristics compared
to iconic memory.

● Section summary: Working memory (originally called short-term memory) is the very
brief,immediate memory for material that we are currently processing.

2. In 1956, George Miller proposed that we can hold about seven chunks of information
in short-term memory.
3. The Brown/Peterson & Peterson technique, which prevents rehearsal, shows that
people have only limited recall for items after a brief delay. The recency effect in a
serial-position curve is also used in measuring the limited capacity of short-term memory.

4. Word meaning can also influence the number of items we store in short-term memory;
when the semantic category changes between adjacent trials, our recall for the new
material increases.

5. According to the Atkinson-Shiffrin (1968) model, the items that we store in short-term
memory can be lost within about 30 seconds unless they are repeated; people can use
rehearsal and other control processes to improve their short-term memory.

The original form of this model focused on the role of short-term memory in learning and
memory. This model did not explore how short-term memory plays an important role
when we perform other cognitive tasks (Roediger et al., 2002).

The Atkinson-Shiffrin model contributed to the growing appeal of cognitive psychology.

For instance, researchers conducted numerous studies to determine whether short-term
memory really is distinctly different from long-term memory.

Short Term Memory

● Short-term memory, which includes working memory, stores information for a

brief period of recall for things that happened recently.
● STM as lasting for a minute or two, if rehearsal is not prevented; Miller (1956)
reviewed evidence demonstrating that if you are presented with a string of random
digits, letters or words you’ll be able to recall them only if the string contains
about seven or fewer digits.
● Capacity
● Miller: Based on his experiments, Miller (1956) gave a magic number of 7 plus or
minus 2 items
○ He proposed that we can hold only a limited number of items in short-term
memory (as this brief memory was called at the time).
○ Specifically, he suggested that people can remember about seven items
(give or take two).
○ In other words, we can usually remember between five and nine items.
○ For complex items, we use ‘chunking’ to categorize items into large units.
For eg: 1947201919502018
● Another instance, consider the following string of letters: N F L C B S F B I M T
● This 12-letter string would normally exceed almost everyone’s short-term
 memory capacity.
● But if you look closely at the letters, you’ll see they really form four sets of
abbreviations for well-known entities:
○ NFL (the National Football League),
○ CBS (one of the three major television networks currently operating in the
United States),
○ FBI (the Federal Bureau of Investigation), and
○ MTV (the rock video cable television station).
● In recognizing that the three sets of letters really “go together” and in forming
them into a single unit, you are said to be chunking them.
● Miller regarded the process of forming chunks (he called it “recoding”) as a
fundamental process of memory—a very powerful means of increasing the
amount of information we can process at any given time, and one we use
constantly in our daily lives.
● The process of chunking can be seen as an important strategy in overcoming the
severe limitation of having only seven or so slots in which to temporarily store
information.

Working memory

● Working memory is the brief, immediate memory for the limited amount of material that
you are currently processing; part of working memory also actively coordinates your
ongoing mental activities.
● In other words, working memory lets you keep a few items active and accessible, so that
you can use them for a wide variety of cognitive tasks (Baddeley, 2007; Baddeley et al.,
2009; Hassin, 2005; Pickering, 2006b).
● In the current research, the term working memory is more popular than a similar but older
term, short-term memory (Schwartz, 2011;Surprenant & Neath, 2009).
● Holds on items for a brief period of time
● The short-term store also has some control processes available that regulate the flow of
information to and from the long-term store, where we may hold information for longer
periods.
● Typically, material remains in the short-term store for about 30 seconds, unless it is
rehearsed to retain it.
● Wickelgren (1975): Information is stored acoustically (by the way it sounds) rather than
visually (by the way it looks).

Long term memory store

● Part of the memory system in which info is retained for v long period of time. LTM may
 last for days, months, years, lifetime.
● We can design experiments to tax the limits of short-term memory, but we do not know
how to test the limits of long-term memory and thereby find out its capacity.
● Some theorists have suggested that the capacity of long-term memory is infinite, at least
in practical terms (Bahrick, 2000; Brady, 2008).
● Permastore effect: The term refers to the very long-term storage of information, such as
knowledge of a foreign language (Bahrick, 1984a, 1984b; Bahrick et al., 1993) and of
mathematics (Bahrick & Hall, 1991).
● Schmidt and colleagues (2000) studied the permastore effect for names of streets near
one’s childhood homes. Indeed, the author just returned to his childhood home of more
than 40 years ago and perfectly remembered the names of the nearby streets. These
findings indicate that permastore can occur even for information that you have passively
learned.

Types of Memory

● There are a number of different types of long-term memory. two main divisions of LTM
are explicit memory and implicit memory.
● Explicit memory also called conscious memory or declarative memory,
● Episodic memory, memory for personal experiences, and
● Semantic memory, stored knowledge and memory for facts.
● Episodic and semantic memories are illustrated by two memories that Cliff, the student is
experiencing. When he remembers talking with Gail yesterday about meeting to study for
the cognitive psychology exam, he is having an episodic memory.
● When he remembers some facts about theories of attention that he learned in his
cognitive psychology class, he is having a semantic memory.
● Both of these types of memory are called explicit, because their contents can be described
or reported (Smith & Grossman, 2008).
● The other division of long-term memory, implicit memory, Implicit memories also
called nondeclarative memory or unconscious memory are memories that are used
without awareness, so the contents of implicit memories cannot be reported
● One type of implicit memory that has influenced Cliff’s behavior is priming—a change in
response to a stimulus caused by the previous presentation of the same or a similar
stimulus.
● An example of priming would be finding it easier to recognize words that are familiar or
that he has recently seen compared to words that he has rarely encountered.
● Another type of implicit memory is procedural memory, also called skill memory, which
is memory for doing things.
● When Cliff is typing notes into his computer, his ability to type is procedural memory.
Finally, classical conditioning is another form of implicit memory.
 ● Classical conditioning occurs when pairing an initially neutral stimulus with another
stimulus results in the neutral stimulus taking on new properties. For example, about a
week ago Cliff had a frightening accident in which a red SUV smashed into his car. He
escaped without serious injury, but was emotionally shaken.
● Now, when he sees a red SUV or even red cars, he begins to feel anxious, just as he felt
immediately after the accident. Because of classical conditioning, the previously neutral
cars have taken on new properties.

Models of memory Goldstein and PPT

● Atkinson- Shiffrin: proposed that memory involves a sequence of separate steps; in each
step, information is transferred from one storage area to another.
● External stimuli from the environment first enter sensory memory.

Sensory memory

● Sensory memory is a storage system that records information from each of the senses
with reasonable accuracy (Schwartz, 2011).
● During the 1960s and 1970s, psychologists frequently studied both visual sensory
memory and auditory sensory memory (e.g., Darwin et al., 1972; Parks, 2004; Sperling,
1960).
● The model proposed that information is stored in sensory memory for 2 seconds or less,
and then most of it is forgotten.
● For example, your auditory memory briefly stores the last words of a sentence spoken by
your professor, but this memory disappears within about 2 seconds.
● Atkinson and Shiffrin’s model proposed that some material from sensory memory then
passes on to short-term memory.

Short-term memory

● Short-term memory—which is now typically called working memory—holds only the

small amount of information that you are actively using.
● Memories in short-term memory are fragile—though not as fragile as those in sensory
memory (J. Brown, 2004). These memories can be lost within about 30 seconds, unless
they are somehow repeated.

Long Term Memory

● According to the model, only a fraction of the information in short-term memory passes
on to long-term memory (Leahey, 2003)
 ● Long-term memory has an enormous capacity because it contains memories that are
decades old, in addition to memories of events that occurred several minutes ago.
● Atkinson and Shiffrin’s model proposed that information stored in long-term memory is
relatively permanent, compared to the information stored in working memory.
● The original form of this model focused on the role of short-term memory in learning and
memory.

Levels of processing model: Craik and Lockhart

● The levels of processing theory holds that memory is not three-staged which separates it
immediately from the stage theory model.
● levels-of-processing approach argues that deep, meaningful processing of information
leads to more accurate recall than shallow, sensory kinds of processing. (This theory is
also called the depth-of-processing approach.)
● The levels-of-processing approach predicts that your recall will be more accurate when
you use a deep level of processing, in terms of meaning.
● In contrast, you will be less likely to recall a word when you consider its physical
appearance (e.g., whether it is typed in capital letters) or its sound (e.g., whether it
rhymes with another word).
● In general, then, people achieve a deeper level of processing when they extract more
meaning from a stimulus.
● Craik and Lockhart argue that stimulus information is processed at multiple levels
simultaneously (not serially) depending on characteristics, attention and meaningfulness.
● New information does not have to enter in any specific order, and it does not have to pass
through a prescribed channel.
● They further contend that the more deeply information is processed, the more that will be
remembered (Kearsley, 2001b).
● Craik and Tulving (1975) performed a typical levels-of-processing investigation.
Participants were presented with a series of questions about particular words. Each word
was preceded by a question, and participants were asked to respond to the questions as
quickly as possible; no mention was made of memory or learning. Any learning that is
not in accord with the participant’s purpose is called incidental learning.
● In one experiment, three kinds of questions were used. One kind asked the participant
whether the word was printed in capital letters. Another asked if the target word rhymed
with another word. The third kind asked if the word fit into a particular sentence (for
example, “The girl placed the _____ on the table”). The three kinds of questions were
meant to induce different kinds of processing. To answer the first kind of question, you
need look only at the typeface (physical processing). To answer the second, you need to
 read the word and think about what it sounds like (acoustic processing). To answer the
third, you need to retrieve and evaluate the word’s meaning (semantic processing).
● Presumably, the “depth” of the processing needed is greatest for the third kind of question
and least for the first kind of question. As predicted, Craik and Tulving (1975) found that
on a surprise memory test later, words processed semantically were remembered best,
followed by words processed acoustically.

● Self referenced effect: According to the self reference effect, you will remember more
information if you try to relate that information to yourself (Burns, 2006; Gillihan &
Farah, 2005; Schmidt, 2006). Self reference tasks tend to encourage especially deep
processing.
● Experimental support: Burgess & Weaver (2003):
○ Showed participants photos of faces and asked them questions about the persons
of the photo to induce either deep or shallow processing.
○ Faces that were deeply processed were better recognized on a subsequent test than
those that were studied at a lower level of processing.
○ Meta-memory condition (do you think you’ll be able to remember this face?)
■ Personality (What do you think about the personality? Honest?)
■ Self referenced (Would you like to talk/study with/go out etc.)
■ Physical features (Does this face has a big nose?)
■ Following instructions about the levels of processing manipulation,
students saw the study set of 80 faces at the rate of 8 sec. per face. They
were then tested on the recognition set of 160 faces at the rate of 6.5 sec.
per face.
● Working memory model: Baddley
○ The term working memory is often used interchangeably with short-term memory,
although technically working memory refers more to the whole theoretical
framework of structures and processes used for the temporary storage and
manipulation of information, of which short-term memory is just one component.
○ WM is not a unitary storage concept. Like STM, it has a limited capacity sys
containing transient info.
○ Unlike STM, function of WM is less a matter of storage pathway to LTM than of
holding info used for other cognitive work.
○ WM is a part of many imp activities like problem solving, reasoning,
comprehension etc.
○ Its an active sys which constantly handles, combines and transforms material
drawn from sensory memory and LTM
Goldstein

Central Executive:

● The central executive is where the major work of working memory occurs.
● The central executive pulls information from long term memory and coordinates the
activity of the phonological loop and visuospatial sketch pad by focusing on specific
parts of a task and switching attention from one part to another.
● One of the main jobs of the central executive is to decide how to divide attention between
different tasks.
● For example, imagine you are driving in a strange city, and a friend in the passenger seat
is reading your directions to a restaurant while the news is being broadcast on the car
radio.
● As your phonological loop takes in the verbal directions, your sketch pad is helping you
visualize a map of the streets leading to the restaurant , and the central executive is
coordinating and combining these two kinds of information.
● In addition, the central executive might be helping you ignore the messages from the
radio, so you can focus your attention on the directions.

Visuospatial sketchpad: It holds visual images

● The visuospatial sketch pad handles visual and spatial information and is therefore
involved in the process of visual imagery—the creation of visual images in the mind in
the absence of a physical visual stimulus. The following demonstration illustrates an
early visual imagery experiment by Roger Shepard and J. Metzler (1971).
● When Shepard and Metzler measured participants’ reaction time to decide whether pairs
of objects were the same or different, they obtained the relationship shown in ● Figure
5.19 for objects that were the same. From this function, we can see that when two shapes
were separated by an orientation difference of 40 degrees
● (like Figure 5.18a), it took 2 seconds to decide that a pair was the same shape, but for a
difference of 140 degrees (like Figure 5.18b), it took 4 seconds. Based on this finding that
reaction times were longer for greater differences in orientation, Shepard and Metzler
inferred that participants were solving the problem by rotating an image of one of the
objects in their mind, a phenomenon called mental rotation. This mental rotation is an
example of the operation of the visuospatial sketch pad because it involves visual rotation
through space.
● Lee Brooks (1968) did some experiments in which he demonstrated how interference can
affect the operation of the visuospatial sketch pad. The following demonstration is based
on one of Brooks’s tasks.
● Most people find that the pointing task is more diffi cult. The reason is that holding the
 image of the letter and pointing are both visuospatial tasks, so the visuospatial sketch pad
becomes overloaded. In contrast, saying “Out” or “In” is an articulatory task that is
handled by the phonological loop, so speaking didn’t interfere with visualizing the F.

Phonological loop: It briefly holds inner speech for verbal comprehension and for acoustic
rehearsal.

○ 2 components: Phonological storage, subvocal rehearsal

○ Eg: Tree, pencil, marshmallow, lamp, sunglasses, computer, chocolate, noise,
clock, snow, river (repeat a no to yourself)
○ Articulatory suppression: When subvocal rehearsal is inhibited, new info is not
stored. More pronounced when info is visually presented.

The phonological loop

● The phonological loop consists of two components:

○ the phonological store
■ which has a limited capacity and holds information for only a few
seconds; and
■ the articulatory rehearsal process, which is responsible for rehearsal that
can keep items in the phonological store from decaying.
● The phonological loop holds verbal and auditory information.
● Thus, when you are trying to remember a telephone number or a person’s name, or to
understand what your cognitive psychology professor is talking about, you are using your
phonological loop.

Phonological Similarity Effect

● The phonological similarity effect is the confusion of letters or words that sound similar.
● Remember Conrad’s experiment, shows that in a memory test people often confuse
similar sounding letters, such as “F” and “S.”
● Conrad interpreted this result to support the idea of auditory coding in STM. In
present-day terminology,
● Conrad’s result would be described as a demonstration of the phonological similarity
effect, which occurs when words are processed in the phonological store part of the
phonological loop.
● Memory suffers for similar items because they are confused with one another.

Word Length Effect

 ● The word length effect occurs when memory for lists of words is better for short words
than for long words.

Episodic buffer:

● It is a limited-capacity system that is capable of binding information from the

visuospatial sketchpad and the phonological loop as well as from long-term memory into
a unitary episodic representation.
● This component integrates information from different parts of working memory—that is,
visual-spatial and phonological—so that they make sense to us.

The episodic buffer

● Baddeley decided it was necessary to propose an additional component of working

memory to address these abilities.
● This new component, which he called the episodic buffer,
● .The episodic buffer can store information and is connected to LTM thereby making
interchange between working memory and LTM possible
● This model also shows that the visuospatial sketch pad and phonological loop are linked
to long-term memory.
● The main “take-home message” about the episodic buffer is that it represents a way of
increasing storage capacity and communicating with LTM.

Neurological research on WM model:

○ The phonological loop, maintaining speech-related information, appears to

involve activation in the left hemisphere of the lateral frontal and inferior parietal
lobes as well as the temporal lobe (Gazzaniga et al., 2009; Baddeley, 2006).
○ Visuospatial sketchpad: Shorter retention intervals activate areas of the occipital
and right frontal lobes. Longer intervals activate areas of the parietal and left
frontal lobes (Haxby et al., 1995).
○ The central executive functions appear to involve activation mostly in the frontal
lobes (Baddeley, 2006)
○ The episodic buffer operations seem to involve the bilateral activation of the
frontal lobes and portions of the temporal lobes, including the left hippocampus
(Rudner et al., 2007).

Connectionist model/PDP Approach

● According to the PDP model, the key to knowledge representation lies in the connections
 among various nodes, or elements, stored in memory, (Feldman & Shastri, 2003).
● Activation of one node may prompt activation of a connected node. This process of
spreading activation may prompt the activation of additional nodes
● In this model, activation spreads through nodes within the network.
● A prime is a node that activates a connected node. A priming effect is the resulting
activation of the node.
● Some evidence supports the notion that priming is due to spreading activation. But not
everyone agrees about the mechanism for the priming effect.
● Working memory comprises the activated portion of long-term memory and operates
through at least some amount of parallel processing.
● Spreading activation involves the simultaneous (parallel) activation (priming) of multiple
links among nodes within the network.
● Meyer & Schvanveldt (1971): performed a series of experiments that elaborated the
semantic network model. If related words are stored close by one another and are
connected to one another in a semantic network, then whenever one node is activated or
energized, energy spreads to the related nodes. Participants saw 2 words at a time, and
had to decide if both strings were words or not..if one of the string was a real word
(bread), participants were faster to respond if the other string was a semantically
associated word (butter) than if it was an unrelated word (chair) or a non-word (rencle).
This was called spreading activation. (excitation spreads along the connections of nodes

Memory Processes

Encoding: encoding, we transform sensory data into a form of mental representation.

● The procedure is actually quite simple. First, you arrange items into different groups. Of
course one pile may be sufficient, depending on how much there is to do. If you have to
go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step; otherwise, you are pretty
well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at
once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important but complications can
easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first, the whole procedure will seem
complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to
foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then, one can
never tell. After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials into different
groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be
used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part
of life. (Bransford & Johnson, 1972-recall the steps)

Forms of Encoding (STM)

 ● Conrad et al. (1964:) 6 letters presented visually:
○ B, C, F, M, N, P, S, T, V, and X.
● S’s had to recall 6 letters. Errors they made: substituted B for P or V; S for X
● Similar errors were made when letters were presented acoustically.
● Baddley (1966):Also found coding in STM to be acoustic rather than semantic. Exp:
Presented visually similar sounding words: CAB, CAP ,MAT, MAP, MAD etc. vs
distinct (COW, PIT, DAY, RUG, BUN).
● Found more errors in I case. Later he showed semantically similar pairs vs dissimilar
pairs.
○ Eg (BIG, LONG, LARGE, WIDE, BROAD) vs (OLD, FOUL, LATE, HOT,
STRONG).
● Found no difference in recall. Semantics did not interfere in recall but acoustics did.
Conclusion: Acoustic encoding in STM

Forms of Encoding (LTM)

● Gross & Eagle (1970): S’s learned a list of 41 words. Had to complete a recognition test
having distractors after 5 mins. 9 distractors-semantically related. 9 not. S’s falsely
recognized an avg of 1.83 synonyms but only an avg of 1.03 unrelated words
● Bousfield (1953): showed 60 words including 15 (animals, professions, names,
vegetables). Free recall was taken.Participants tended to recall more from same category
more frequently
● Levels of processing model: Also shows semantic coding to reach LTM. Indication:
Semantic coding in LTM
● Visual as well as semantic coding:
● Frost (1972: )Participants in a study received 16 drawings of objects, including 4 (items
of clothing, animals, vehicles, and items of furniture
● The investigator manipulated not only the semantic category but also the visual category.
The drawings differed in visual orientation. Four were angled to the left, four angled to
the right, four horizontal, and four vertical.
● Items were presented in random order. Participants were asked to recall them freely. The
order of participants’ responses showed effects of both semantic and visual categories.
These results suggested that participants were encoding visual as well as semantic
information.

How Encoding and retrieval are connected (LTM)

● Effect of context: Encoding specificity principle

○ Recall is better if the context during retrieval is similar to the context during
encoding (Baddeley et al., 2009; Surprenant & Neath, 2009; Tulving &
 Rosenbaum, 2006). When the two contexts do not match, forgetting is more likely
to occur.
○ Marian & Fausey (2006): Bilingual children. 2-2 stories told in Eng and Spanish.
Later recall questions given.
○ If story was told in Eng, and the recall questions were in spanish, recall was poor
as compared to the condition in which original language (of encoding) matched
with language in retrieval.
○ Examples from day-today life

Transfer and Storage

● Transfer of info from STM to LTM

● Consolidation: Process of integrating new information into stored information is
called consolidation
● Studies have examined people who have suffered brief forms of amnesia as a
consequence of electroconvulsive therapy.
● Related theory: Perseveration consolidation (Miller & Pilzecker, 1900): Memory
trace is held in the form of a reverberating (vibrating) electrical circuit while a
more permanent structural trace is laid down.
● Duncan (1949) confirmed this by testing the effects of ECS on maze learning in
rats. Duncan administered an electroconvulsive shock (ECS) after each daily trial
in a complex maze and showed an inverse relationship between the speed of
learning and the delay between the trial and the amnestic treatment.
● Müeller and Pilzecker’s hypothesis stated that post-learning neural perseveration
was necessary for consolidating memory. ECS disrupted this activity, thereby
preventing post-acquisition memory consolidation
● Memory traces must undergo a consolidation phase during which it is vulnerable
to obliteration
● Eg in humans: Just before accident people don't remember what happened.
● Sleep and memory consolidation:
● Karni et al., (1994): Specifically, disruptions in REM sleep patterns the night after
learning reduced the amount of improvement on a visual discrimination task that
occurred relative to normal sleep.
● Furthermore, this lack of improvement was not observed for disrupted stage-three
or stage-four sleep patterns.
● People who suffer from insomnia, a disorder that deprives the sufferer of
much-needed sleep, have trouble with memory consolidation (Backhaus et al.,
2006).
● Neuroscience and memory consolidation:
● Peigneux et al., 2004: After learning routes within a virtual town, participants
 slept. Increased hippocampal activity (which is also active while a
learning/memorizing task) was seen during sleep after the person had learned the
spatial information. In the people with the most hippocampal activation, there was
also an improvement in performance when they needed to recall the routes
● McClelland, McNaughton, & O’ Reilly (1995): The hippocampus temporarily
maintains new experiences until they can be appropriately assimilated into the
more gradual neocortical representation system of the brain

Rehearsal (Repeating and forming associations):

● Maintenance: In maintenance rehearsal, the individual simply repetitiously

rehearses the items to be repeated. Such rehearsal temporarily maintains
information in short-term memory without transferring the information to
long-term memory
● Elaborative: Such rehearsal makes the items either more meaningfully integrated
into what the person already knows or more meaningfully connected to one
another and therefore more memorable
● Spacing Effect: long-term learning is promoted when learning events are spaced
out in time, rather than presented in immediate succession
● Distributed practice: memories tend to be good when they use distributed
practice, learning in which various sessions are spaced over time.
● Massed practice: learning in which sessions are crammed together in a very short
space of time.
● Spacing effect: Example of utilization in day-to-day life.
● Organization of information:
● Most adults spontaneously tend to cluster items into categories, categorical
clustering also may be used intentionally as an aid to memorization. (Previous res
on categories)
● Use of imagery (mnemonics)
● Use of chunking, acronyms
● Associating with old info

Problems in transfer of info from STM to LTM

Decay

● The inability to retrieve a memory is one of the most common causes of forgetting.
● One possible explanation of retrieval failure is known as decay theory.
● According to this theory, a memory trace is created every time a new theory is formed.
Decay theory suggests that over time, these memory traces begin to fade and disappear. If​
 the information is not retrieved and rehearsed, it will eventually be lost.
● One problem with this theory, however, is that research has demonstrated that even
memories which have not been rehearsed or remembered are remarkably stable in
long-term memory
● Research also suggests that the brain actively prunes memories that become unused, a
process that is known as active forgetting. As memories accumulate, those that are not
retrieved eventually become lost

Interference: RI, PI

● Sometimes people forget due to a phenomenon known as interference. Some memories

compete and interfere with other memories. When information is very similar to other
information that was previously stored in memory, interference is more likely to occur.
● There are two basic types of interference:
● Proactive interference is when an old memory makes it more difficult or impossible to
remember a new memory.
● Retroactive interference occurs when new information interferes with your ability to
remember previously learned information.

Failure in consolidation

● Losing information has less to do with forgetting and more to do with the fact that it
never made it into long-term memory in the first place.
● Encoding failures sometimes prevent information from entering long-term memory.

Strategies/techniques for memory improvement:

● Mnemonics (for retrospective memory)

● Reminders (for prospective memory)
● Forcing functions (for prospective memory)
● To do list (for prospective memory)

Retrieval

Retrieval from STM:

● Sternberg (1966): Participants were shown a short (one to six items) list of numbers and
asked to memorize them. After putting them to memory, a probe number was shown.
● For eg. 4,1,9,3,5,2: probe item: 9
● The probe number was either one of the numbers in the list or a new number. The
participant was to respond as quickly as possible, indicating whether the probe number
 was in the list or not (Y/N). The response time of the participant should reflect the time
spent searching STM to determine whether the probe number is part of the list. By
varying the number of items in the list, Sternberg hypothesized that he could test several
theories of STM search.
● If memory search requires consideration of each item in succession – a serial search – the
response times should increase with memory set size because the participant will, on
average, have to search through more items for larger set sizes.
● In contrast to a serial search, it is possible that there is a parallel search. If such a search
took place in STM, the prediction is that response times would not vary as the memory
set size increased.
● Sternberg's data were consistent with the successive or serial search.
● Specifically, he found that response times grew linearly with increases in memory set
size. For each additional item in the memory set, participants took (on average) an
additional 38 ms to make their responses. Thus, it seems the probe item is compared
one-by-one with each item in STM, and each comparison takes approximately 38
milliseconds.
● When he compared response times for probe "Present" and "Absent" trials (probe item
was in the memory set or not, respectively), Sternberg found no differences in response
times.
● An "Absent" response can be made only after all items in STM have been searched and
found not to match the probe item. At first glance, it seems that a "Present" trial could
terminate as soon as the probe item is matched with the appropriate item in STM. With a
self-terminating search, one would expect "Present" trials to be faster, but the data
contradict this hypothesis.
● The counterintuitive finding from Sternberg's study is that search of STM is serial
exhaustive

Retrieval from LTM: Explicit vs implicit memory tasks:

● Retrieval from LTM (Effect of categorization)

○ Individuals use ‘categories’ in retrieval.
○ Tulving & Pearlstone (1966): Category names for eg. clothes, furniture were told
and then items under each category told. Later recall test was taken
○ 2 conditions:
○ Free recall in any order.
○ Cued Recall condition: category labels were given.
○ Result: better recall in II condition.
○ ower et al. (1969): List of words presented.
○ I group : random order.
○ II group : hierarchical structure/organized. For eg: living beings...then
 animals...then birds…
○ Results: Participants given hierarchical presentation recalled 65% of the words. In
contrast, recall was just 19% by participants given the words in random order.
● Retrieval from LTM: implicit memory task:
○ an implicit memory task assesses your memory indirectly. On an implicit memory
task, you see the material (usually a series of words or pictures); later, during the
test phase, you are instructed to complete a cognitive task that does not directly
ONask you for either recall or recognition
○ Implicit memory shows the effects of previous experience that creep out
automatically—during your normal behavior—when you are not making any
conscious effort to remember the past

Long term memory types

● Associative learning: When you learn something new about a new kind of stimulus (that
is, an extra stimulus).
● Non-associative learning is when you're not pairing a stimulus with a behavior.
Non-associative learning can be either habituation or sensitization.
● Habituation is when repeated exposure to a stimulus decreases an organism's
responsiveness to the stimulus. Eg:to noise, to pollution
● Sensitization is kind of the opposite. It's learning that occurs when stimulus is repeated,
and each time your response to it increases as it goes on and on. So what's an example of
sensitization in real life? Eg: aggression/frustration increases with time….
● EXPLICIT MEMORY
○ Declarative memory: Episodic
○ Tulving: Episodic memory involves ‘mental time travel’. However, the recall is
not necessarily accurate
○ Tulving describes the experience of episodic memory as ‘self knowing’ or
‘remembering’.
○ Declarative memory: Semantic
○ Tulving: Exp of semantic memory involves accessing knowledge abt the world
which can be facts, vocabulary, numbers and concepts.
○ Tulving describes the experience of semantic memory as ‘knowing’ without time
travel
○ Rosenbaum et al. (2005): Case of K.C., age 30 yrs. Suffered severe damage to
hippocampus after an accident. Lost episodic memory but not semantic. Eg: he
remembered 2 yrs ago his brother died but he didn’t remember any event/episode
related to it. When and how he heard the news, what happened then etc.
○ Levine et al. (2004): had participants keep diaries of audiotaped descriptions of
everyday events (“It was the last night of our Salsa dance class. . . . People were
 dancing all different styles of Salsa. . . .”), and facts drawn from their world
knowledge (“By 1947, there were 5,000 Japanese Canadians living in
Toronto”).
○ When the participants later listened to these descriptions while in an MRI scanner,
the everyday experiences elicited retrieval of episodic memories, and the facts
elicited retrieval of semantic memories.
○ Conclusion: Retrieving episodic and semantic memories causes overlapping but
different patterns of brain activity.
○ Other research comparing brain activity during episodic and semantic retrieval
has also found differences between the areas activated by episodic and semantic
memory (Cabeza & Nyberg, 2000)
● Connections between episodic and semantic memories
○ Episodic memory can be lost, leaving only semantic:
○ “Morphing” from episodic to semantic memory can occur for personal
experiences. Eg: highschool farewell; episodic details can fade over time and only
semantic information can remain
○ Eg: year of highschool, institution name etc.
○ Semantic Memory Can Be Enhanced If Associated With Episodic Memory:
○ personal semantic memories, are easier to remember than semantic memories that
are not personally significant. Eg. knowledge about the facts associated with your
high school would be personal semantic memories
○ Westmacott and Moscovitch (2003) showed that participants have better recall for
names of public figures such as actors, singers, and politicians whom they
associated with personal experiences. For example, you would be more likely to
recall the name of a popular singer in a memory test if you had attended one of his
or her concerts
○ Semantic Memory Can Influence Our Experience (episodic memory) by
Influencing Attention:
○ Eg: If you have sound knowledge about a subject, you will be able to pick more
from an event related to that subject. Eg: You did a dissertation on a topic. Later
in a conference, you are able to attend related studies but your friend is not. And
later you can give a rich description of the whole episode
○ Eg: A football player is able to pay more attention to the details of game played as
compared to a non-player

● Long term memory: Autobiographical

○ Autobiographical memory is your memory for events and issues related to
yourself. Autobiographical memory usually includes a verbal narrative. It may
 also include imagery about these events, emotional reactions, and procedural
information (Kihlstrom, 2009).
○ The studies of autobiographical memory are typically high in ecological validity
(Bahrick, 2005).
● Autobiographical memory,schemas & consistency bias
○ A schema is a mental concept that informs a person about what to expect from a
variety of experiences and situations.
○ Schemas are developed based on information provided by life experiences and are
then stored in memory.
○ A schema consists of your general knowledge or expectation, which is distilled
from your past experiences with someone or something.
○ The consistency bias suggests that we tell our life stories so that they are
consistent with our current schemas about ourselves
○ Honig (1997): interviewed garment workers who participated in a strike. They
found strike as a life transforming experience that changed them from timid
workers to fearless activists. After several years, when Honig took the interview
again, the women recalled that they had always been assertive & non-conforming.
● Source monitoring & Reality monitoring
○ Source monitoring: Process by which we try to identify the source of a piece of
information. For eg: from where it is coming: a movie or a person or themselves
or internet article etc..
○ Source monitoring errors: Making a mistake by thinking that Source A provided
some information, when Source B actually provided the information.
○ Defeldre, (2005) :a songwriter believes that he or she has composed a truly new
song. However, the melody of the song may actually be based on a melody that
another songwriter had composed at an earlier date
○ Positivity bias: the tendency to sometimes see the past as more positive than it
actually was
○ Wishful thinking bias: Recall of desirable events/information. It can lead us for
source monitoring errors
○ Source monitoring errors: (Isikoff & Lipper, 2003): In 2003, president Bush
justified Iraq war by stating that Iraq was negotiating with an African country for
buying uranium. And he believed this info was cleared by central intelligence
agency. However, CIA claimed that their agents tried to warn Bush that this
information was based on false claims/rumours.
○ Reality monitoring
○ In reality monitoring, we try to identify whether an event really occurred, or
whether we actually imagined this event
○ Eg: you might think that you told a friend that an upcoming event had been
cancelled. However, in reality, you were thinking whether to call her or send a
 message ... and you never actually conveyed that message.
○ Henkel (2011): College students saw familiar objs like a pencil. For half of the
objs, they performed an action like breaking it and for half of them, they just
imagined breaking it/doing a particular action with the obj.
○ One week later, students saw photos of completed actions
○ One week after that the students were instructed to indicate whether they had
actually performed each action. When they had not seen a photo of the completed
action, fewer than 10% were confident that they had completed the action.
○ In contrast, when they had seen the relevant photo three times, 25% were
confident that they had actually completed this action., even if they had not.
● Long term memory: Flash Bulb
○ Flashbulb memory refers to your memory for the circumstances in which you first
learned about a very surprising and emotionally arousing event. Many people
believe that they can accurately recall all the minor details about what they were
doing at the time of this event
○ The classic study by Brown and Kulik (1977) introduced the term ‘‘flashbulb
memory.’’
○ Brown and Kulik (1977) suggested that people’s flashbulb memories are more
accurate than memories of less surprising events. However, many later studies
suggested that people make numerous errors in recalling details of national
events, even though they claimed that their memories for these events were very
vivid (Roediger et al., 2000)
○ Flash bulb memory (9/11 attack)
○ Talarico & Rubin (2003): Talarico and Rubin asked students at a North Carolina
university to report specific details about how they had learned about the 9/11
attacks. The students also provided similar information for an ordinary event that
had occurred at about the same time.
○ This memory about an ordinary event served as a control condition that could be
contrasted with the ‘‘flashbulb memory’’ of the attack.
○ After the initial session, the students were randomly assigned to one of three
recall testing sessions.
○ Some returned to be tested 1 week later, others returned 6 weeks later, and still
others returned 32 weeks later.
○ At these recall-testing sessions, Talarico and Rubin asked the students a variety of
questions, including the details of their memory for the attack, as well as for the
everyday event. These details were checked against the details that the students
had supplied on September 12. Then the researchers counted the number of
consistent and inconsistent details.
○ The number of inconsistent details increases slightly over time for both kinds of
memories. Interestingly, however, the students in all conditions reported that they
 were highly confident that their recall of the terrorist attacks had been accurate.
○ Other research about memory for 9/11 shows that students at a college in New
York City recalled significantly more factual details about the tragedy, compared
to students at colleges in California and Hawaii (Pezdek, 2003). This finding
makes sense because the New York City students lived much closer to the World
Trade Center at the time they learned about the attack.
○ They were also much more likely than the other students to know people whose
lives were impacted by the event.
○ Generally enhanced memories (in case of flash bulb) can usually be explained by
several standard mechanisms, such as rehearsal frequency, distinctiveness, and
elaboration (Neisser, 2003; Read & Connolly, 2007).
● Long term memory: Eyeswitness testimony
○ Factors affecting EWT:
○ EWT refers to an account given by people of an event they have witnessed.
■ Memory schemas
■ Faulty source monitoring
○ The Post-Event Misinformation Effect: In the post-event misinformation effect,
people first view an event; then they are given misleading information about the
event; later on, they mistakenly recall the misleading information, rather than the
event they actually saw (Davis & Loftus, 2007; Pansky et al., 2005).
○ The misinformation effect resembles a second kind of interference called
retroactive interference.
○ Loftus et al. (1978) showed participants a series of slides. In this sequence, a
sports car stopped at an intersection, and then it turned and hit a pedestrian. Half
the participants saw a slide with a yield sign at the intersection; the other half saw
a stop sign.
○ 20 minutes to one week after the participants had seen the slides, they answered a
questionnaire about the details of the accident. A critical question contained
information that was either consistent with a detail in the original slide series,
inconsistent with that detail, or neutral (because it did not mention the detail).
○ The first group of people who had seen the yield sign were asked, ‘‘Did another
car pass the red Datsun while it was stopped at the yield sign?’’ (consistent).
○ A second group of people were asked, ‘‘Did another car pass the red Datsun while
it was stopped at the stop sign?’’ (inconsistent).
○ For the third group of people, the type of sign was not mentioned (neutral). To
answer this question, all participants saw two slides, one with a stop sign and one
with a yield sign. They were asked to select which slide they had previously seen.
○ People who had seen the inconsistent information were much less accurate than
people in the other two conditions. They often selected a sign on the basis of the
information in the questionnaire, rather than the original slide.
 ○ Many studies have replicated the detrimental effects of misleading post-event
information (e.g., Pickrell et al., 2004).
○ The research on the misinformation effect emphasizes the active, constructive
nature of memory. The constructivist approach to memory emphasizes that we
construct knowledge by integrating what we know; as a result, our understanding
of an event or a topic is coherent, and it makes sense (Davis & Loftus, 2007).
● Factors Affecting the Accuracy of EWT
○ People may create memories that are consistent with their schemas
○ People may make errors in source monitoring
○ Post-event misinformation may distort people’s recall.
○ Eyewitnesses make more errors if they saw a crime committed during a stressful
circumstance (Wise et al. 2011)
○ Eyewitnesses make more errors when there is a long delay between the original
event and the time of the testimony (Dysart & Lindsay, 2007)
○ Eyewitnesses make more errors if the misinformation is plausible.
○ For instance, in the classic study by Loftus and her colleagues (1978), a stop sign
is just as plausible as a yield sign, so the participants in that study frequently made
errors.
○ Eyewitnesses make more errors if there is social pressure (Roebers & Schneider,
2000).
○ Eyewitnesses make more errors if someone has provided positive feedback. Eg:
even a simple ‘‘Okay’’
○ (Douglass & Steblay, 2006; Semmler & Brewer, 2006).
● The Relationship Between Memory Confidence and Memory Accuracy
○ Participants are almost as confident about their misinformation-based memories
as they are about their genuinely correct memories (Kovera & Borgida, 2010;
Wells & Olson, 2003).
○ In other words, people’s confidence about their eyewitness testimony is not
strongly correlated with the accuracy of their testimony.
○ Wise et al. (2011): Only 21% of the US law enforcement officers were aware that
memory confidence is not strongly correlated with memory accuracy
● Constructive processes in memory
○ Autobiographical: The Recovered-Memory/False-Memory Controversy
○ According to this recovered-memory perspective, some individuals who
experienced sexual abuse during childhood managed to forget that memory for
many years. A child would be especially likely to forget these traumatic events if
the abuser was a close relative or a trusted adult.
○ At a later time, this presumably forgotten memory may come flooding back into
consciousness (Brewin, 2011).
○ The false-memory perspective proposes that most of these recovered memories
 are actually incorrect memories; in other words, they are constructed stories about
events that never occurred (Bernstein & Loftus, 2009).
○ This group of researchers don’t trust the accuracy of many reports about the
sudden recovery of early memories.
● Arguments for false-Memory
○ In research with lists of words like these, Roediger and McDermott (1995) found
a false-recall rate of 55%. People made intrusion errors by listing words that did
not appear on the lists. Intrusions are common on this task, because each word
that does appear on a list is commonly associated with a missing word, in this
case sleep on the first list and river on the second list.
○ This study has been replicated numerous times, using different stimuli and
different testing conditions
○ Many researchers argue that similar intrusions could occur with respect to
childhood memories of abuse. People may ‘‘recall’’ events that are related to their
actual experiences, but these events never actually occurred (However, a small
percentage of people).
○ In laboratory research, these false memories include being attacked by a small
dog, being lost in a shopping mall, seeing someone possessed by demons,
becoming ill after eating hard-boiled eggs etc.(e.g., Bernstein et al., 2005;
Geraerts et al., 2010).
● Arguments for Recovered memory:
○ laboratory studies have little ecological validity with respect to memory for
childhood sexual abuse
○ There’s not much similarity between ‘‘remembering’’ a word that never appeared
on a list, compared to a false memory of childhood sexual abuse (Bernstein &
Loftus, 2009).
○ Researchers have studied individuals whose sexual abuse had been documented
by medical professionals or the legal system. Still, some of these individuals fail
to recall the episode when interviewed as adults (Goodman et al., 2003; Pezdek &
Taylor, 2002).
○ Few researchers emphasize that childhood sexual abuse is different from
relatively innocent/neutral episodes.
○ Betrayal trauma: A child may respond adaptively when a trusted parent or
caretaker betrays him or her by sexual abuse. The child depends on this adult and
must actively inhibit memories of abuse in order to maintain an attachment to this
person.
○ Conclusion: Human memory is both flexible & complex. Eg: Temporarily
forgetting events, construction of events that never actually happened, relatively
accurate memory, even when the events are terrifying.
● Implicit memory (Non-conscious):
 ○ Implicit memory occurs when some previous experience improves our
performance on a task, even though we do not consciously remember the
experience (Roediger, 1990). Tulving describes implicit memory as nonknowing.
○ Major Types:
○ Repetition priming: when the response to an item increases in speed or accuracy
because it has been encountered recently.
○ Procedural: memory for how to do things, such as riding a bike, typing, or playing
a musical instrument.
○ To reduce the effect of conscious memory, following things are to be kept in
mind:
■ Not using a memory test but to ask participants to solve a problem
■ To ask participants to respond as quickly as possible
■ Using a recognition procedure: When Tulving tested recognition 1 hour
after presenting the original list and 7 days after presenting the original
list, he found that recognition was much lower after 7 days. However,
performance on the word-completion test remained the same at 1 hour or 7
days. This suggests that performance on the word-completion test did not
depend on conscious memory for recognized words.
○ Testing patients with brain damage, who have lost the ability to retain long-term
memories, provides a demonstration of “pure” implicit memory.
○ Elizabeth Warrington and Lawrence Weiskrantz (1968) tested five patients with
Korsakoff’s syndrome. by presenting incomplete pictures. The participant’s task
was to identify the picture. The fragmented version was presented first, and then
participants were shown more and more complete versions until they were able to
identify the picture.
○ By the third day of testing these participants made fewer errors before they were
able to identify the pictures than they did at the beginning of training, even though
they had no memory for any of the previous day’s training. The improvement of
performance represents an effect of implicit memory.
● Implicit memory: Procedural
○ Person A. and Person B lost the ability to retain episodic memories.
○ However, Person A. can still tie his shoes,
○ B, who was a professional musician, can still play the piano.
○ In fact, people who can’t form new long-term memories can still learn new skills.
○ For example, K.C., who had lost his episodic memory because of a motorcycle
accident, learned how to sort and stack books in the library after his injury. Even
though he doesn’t remember learning to do this, he can still do it, and his
performance can improve with practice.
● Memory enhancement strategies/ Mnemonics
○ Rehearsal
 ○ Deep level of processing (elaboration/distinctiveness/self reference effect)
○ Encoding specificity
○ Total time hypothesis (But quality also matters)
○ Retrieval practice effect & testing effect
○ Distributed practice effect
● Memory improvement techniques: Baker/Baker paradox (Gillian Cohen)
○ Important:
○ 1. Organize/Categorize
○ 2. Make it meaningful.
○ 3. Create associations.
● Mnemonics
○ A mnemonic is a device that allows for easy storage and simple retrieval of
information from your longterm memory. (People tend to remember the unusual,
the funny and/or the personal ones the best).
○ Acronyms: The most common everyday use of mnemonics. The first letter from
each word is taken to spell out a simple word or phrase.
○ * Colors of the Rainbow: ROY G BIV (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue,
Indigo, Violet)
○ Acrostic: An invented sentence where the first letter of each word is a cue to an
idea you need to remember
○ My Very Educated Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas: Mercury, Venus, Earth,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto Planets in order from the sun
○ Richard Of York Gave Battle in Vain
○ Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet Colors of the spectrum
○ My Dear Aunt Sally
○ Multiply, Divide, Add, Subtract (Mathematical order of operations)
○ CHUNKING 74177691120011271941112000 vs. 7-4-1776 / 9-11-2001 /
12-7-1941 / 1-1-2000
○ Model Mnemonics: In a Model Mnemonic, some type of representation is
constructed to help with understanding and recalling important information.
Examples include a circular sequence model, a pyramid model of stages, a pie
chart, and a 5-box sequence. Models should be used in addition to words and lists
because they make recall at test time much easier
● Mnemonic using organization
○ Chunking
○ Hierarchy
○ Model
○ First letter technique/acronym
○ Narrative technique (Bower & Clark, 1969)
○ Rhymes: Placing the facts to be memorized into a rhyme or poetry form. English
 alphabet song
○ Music mnemonic
○ Visual Association /Numeric peg system: Involves linking two ideas using
images. This allows you to remember sequences of unrelated items in the
appropriate order.

1 Bun, 2 Shoe, 3 Tree, 4 Door, 5 Hive……

○ Method of loci

● Numeric Peg System (refer slides)

● Mnemonics for Prospective memory
○ Imagery
○ External memory aid (list, rubber band around wrist, reminders)
○ Forcing function

Unit 3- Margret + PP

UNIT - 3 : Mental Imagery and Cognitive Maps

● Mental Imagery (Imagery) - mental representation of stimuli when those stimuli are not
physically present (Kosslyn et al.,2010).
● Imagery relies exclusively on top-down processing because sensory receptors do not
 receive an input when you create a mental image.
● Diff. b/w Imagery and Perception:
○ Perception uses previous knowledge to gather and interpret the stimuli registered
by the senses. It requires you to register information through the receptors in your
sensory organs, such as your eyes and ears.
○ As a result, perception requires both bottom-up and top-down processing.
○ Visual Imagery is the most common form of imagery.

CHARACTERISTICS OF MENTAL IMAGE

● Controllability- zooming, shrinking, mental rotation

● Vividity- mental image can range from being blurred to highly vivid
● Sensory modality (no. of modes)- Mental image can have a number of sensory modes
● Code- mental image can be stored in analog or propositional code ( the imagery debate)

TYPES OF IMAGERY -

● Visual: mental representation of visual stimuli

● Auditory: mental representation of auditory stimuli
● Tactile: mental representation of tactile stimuli (touch)
● Gustatory: mental representation of gustatory stimuli (taste)
● Olfactory: mental representation of olfactory stimuli (smell)
● Bodily Kinesthetic: mental representation of bodily kinaesthetic stimuli.

UTILITY OF MENTAL IMAGERY -

● Clinical psychology- clients who have psychological problems such as post-traumatic

stress disorder, depression, or eating disorders sometimes report that they experience
intrusive, distressing mental images. Therapists have successfully worked with clients by
encouraging them to create alternative, more positive images.
● STEM disciplines, that is, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics have the
need of spatial ability.
● Sports Psychology - An athlete who before competing spends time mentally imagining a
smoothly executed, well-timed, elegant performance has been shown to perform better a
bit later when engaging in her or his sport.
● Using guided-imagery techniques for controlling pain and for strengthening immune
responses and otherwise promoting health.

HISTORY OF MENTAL IMAGERY - Wundt proposed that images were one of the
three basic elements of consciousness, along with sensations and feelings. He also
proposed that because images accompany thought, studying images was a way of
studying thinking.

● This idea of a link between imagery and thinking gave rise to the imageless
thought debate, with some psychologists taking up Aristotle’s idea that “thought is
impossible without an image,” and others contending that thinking can occur
without images.
● Evidence supporting the idea that imagery was not required for thinking was
Francis Galton’s (1883) observation that people who had great difficulty forming
visual images were still quite capable of thinking.
● Other arguments both for and against the idea that images are necessary for
thinking were proposed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but these arguments
and counterarguments ended when behaviorism toppled imagery from its central
place in psychology
● The behaviorists branded the study of imagery as unproductive because visual
images are invisible to everyone except the person experiencing them. The
founder of behaviorism, John Watson, described images as “unproven” and
“mythological” (1928), and therefore not worthy of study.
● The dominance of behaviorism from the 1920s through the 1950s pushed the
study of imagery out of mainstream psychology.
● Cognitive Revolution: (1950s and 1960s) cognitive psychologists developed ways
to measure behavior that could be used to infer cognitive processes.
● Alan Paivio’s (1963) showed that it was easier to remember concrete nouns, like
truck or tree, that can be imaged, than it is to remember abstract nouns, like truth
or justice, that are difficult to image.
● One technique Paivio used was paired-associate learning. participants are
presented with pairs of words, like boat–hat or car–house, during a study period.
They are then presented, during the test period, with the first word from each pair.
Their task is to recall the word that was paired with it during the study period.
Thus, if they were presented with the word boat, the correct response would be
hat. -
○ To explain this result, Paivio proposed the conceptual peg hypothesis.
According to this hypothesis, concrete nouns create images that other
words can “hang onto.” (For example, if presenting the pair boat-hat
creates an image of a boat, then presenting the word boat later will bring
back the boat image, which provides a number of places on which
participants can place the hat in their mind )
○ Roger Shepard and J. Metzler (1971) inferred cognitive processes by
using mental chronometry, determining the amount of time needed to
carry out various cognitive tasks. Their study was one of the first to apply
 quantitative methods to the study of imagery and to suggest that
imagery and perception may share the same mechanisms.

DUAL CODE THEORY (Paivio) - We use both pictorial and verbal codes for representing
information - These two codes organize information into knowledge that can be acted on, stored
somehow, and later retrieved for subsequent use.

● According to Paivio, mental images are analog codes. Analog codes resemble the
objects they are representing. The mental images we form in our minds are analogous to
the physical stimuli we observe.
● Mental representations for words chiefly are represented in a symbolic code. A symbolic
code is a form of knowledge representation that has been chosen arbitrarily to stand for
something that does not perceptually resemble what is being represented.
● Paivio noted that verbal information seems to be processed differently than pictorial
information. - For example, in one study, participants were shown both a rapid sequence
of pictures and a sequence of words (Paivio, 1969).
● They then were asked to recall the words or the pictures in one of two ways. One way
was at random, so that they recalled as many items as possible, regardless of the order in
which the items were presented. The other way was in the correct sequence.
● Participants more easily recalled the pictures when they were allowed to do so in any
order. But they more readily recalled the sequence in which the words were presented
than the sequence for the pictures, which suggests the possibility of two different systems
for recall of words versus pictures.

RESEARCH RELATED TO DUAL CODE THEORY

● - Hypothesis: actual visual perception could interfere with simultaneous visual imagery.
Similarly, the need to produce a verbal response could interfere with the simultaneous
mental manipulation of words.
● - (Brooks, 1968). Tested and confirmed this hypothesis. Participants performed either a
visual task or a verbal task. The visual task involved answering questions requiring
judgments about a picture that was presented briefly. The verbal task involved answering
questions requiring judgments about a sentence that was stated briefly. Participants
expressed their responses verbally (saying “yes” or “no” aloud), visually (pointing to an
answer), or manually (tapping with one hand to agree and the other to disagree). There
were two conditions in which Brooks expected interference: a visual task requiring a
visual (pointing) response and a verbal task requiring a verbal response. This prediction
assumed that both task and response required the same system for completion.
Interference was measured by slow-downs in response times.
ALTERNATIVE THEORY TO DUAL CODE PROCESSING, THE PROPOSITIONAL
THEORY (Anderson and Bower, Phylyshyn) -

● Propositional theory suggests that we do not store mental representations in the form of
images or mere words.
● We may experience our mental representations as images, but these images are
epiphenomena—secondary and derivative phenomena that occur as a result of other more
basic cognitive processes.
● According to propositional theory, our mental representations (sometimes called
“mentalese”) more closely resemble the abstract form of a proposition. Limitations of
propositional theory -

IMAGERY DEBATE -

● Research on mental imagery is difficult to conduct because researchers cannot directly

observe mental images and because they fade quickly.
● Imagery Debate (Kosslyn et al., 2006) : Do our mental images resemble perception
(using an analog code), or do they resemble language (using a propositional code)? -
● Information about a mental image is stored in an analog code. Analog code is a
representation that closely resembles the physical object. [analog suggests the word
analogy, such as the analogy between the real object and the mental image]
● According to the analog-code approach,
○ Mental imagery is a close relative of perception (Tversky, 2005a).
○ When you look at a sketch of a triangle, the physical features of that triangle are
 registered in your brain in a form that preserves the physical relationship among
the three lines. Those who support analog coding propose that your mental image
of a triangle is registered in a somewhat similar fashion, preserving the same
relationship among the lines.
○ Does not suggest that people literally have a picture in their head. People often
fail to notice precise visual details when they look at an object. These details will
also be missing from their mental image of this object.

Propositional - code approach: A propositional code is an abstract, language-like

representation; storage is neither visual nor spatial, and it does not physically resemble the
original stimulus.

● Mental imagery is a close relative of language, not perception.

● When you store a mental image of a triangle, your brain will register a language-like
description of the lines and angles. Theorists have not specified the precise nature of the
verbal description. However, it is abstract, and it does not resemble English or any other
natural language. Your brain can then use this verbal description to generate a visual
image.
● Neuroimaging research shows that the primary visual cortex is activated when people
work on tasks that require detailed visual imagery. This is the same part of the cortex that
is active when we perceive actual visual objects.
● Individuals with prosopagnosia also have comparable problems in creating visual
imagery for faces (They can perceive objects relatively normally)

Characteristics related to visual imagery: Rotation, Distance, Shape, Interference, Ambiguous

figures.

Visual Imagery and Rotation -

Shepard and Metzler’s Research: (In support of the Analog code approach)
● Reasoning - Suppose that you're holding a physical, geometric object in your hands, and
you decide to rotate it. It will take you longer to rotate this physical object by 180 degrees
than to rotate it only 90 degrees. Now suppose that our mental images operate the same
way that physical objects operate.Then it will take you longer to rotate this mental image
180 degrees, instead of 90 degrees.
● Shepard and Metzler (1971) asked eight extremely dedicated participants to judge 1,600
pairs of line drawings like these. They were instructed to pull a lever with their right hand
if they judged the figures to be the same,and to pull a different lever with their left hand if
they judged the figures to be different. In each case, the experimenters measured the
amount of time required for a decision. Here, DV = Reaction Time. (A- requires 2D
rotation, B requires 3D rotation)
● Results - People’s decision time was strongly influenced by the amount of mental rotation
required to match a FIgure with its mate. For example, rotating a figure 160 degrees
requires much more time than rotating it a mere 20 degrees.
● The participants in this study performed a three-dimensional rotation almost as quickly as
a two-dimensional rotation.
● The relationship between rotation and reaction time is a straight line. This research
supports the analog-code perspective, because you would take much longer to rotate an
actual physical object 160 degrees than to rotate it a mere 20 degrees. In contrast, a
 propositional code would predict similar reaction times for these two conditions; the
language-like description for the gure would not vary with the amount of rotation.
● Other Research: Alphabet rotation, similar results were observed.
● Kotaro Takeda and his coauthors (2010) asked the participants in their study to look at
pictures of a human hand and to identify whether they were viewing a left hand or a right
hand. Right-handers recognized a right hand faster than a left hand. In contrast,
left-handers recognized right and left hands equally quickly. However, both groups
recognized upright pictures faster—and more accurately—than upside-down pictures.
This particular finding is consistent with the earlier research.Afterall,people take less
time to rotate an image 0 degrees, rather than 180 degrees
● Elderly people perform more slowly than younger people on a mental-rotation task. In
contrast, age is not consistently correlated with other imagery skills, such as sense of
direction or the ability to scan mental images (Beni et al., 2006; Dror & Kosslyn, 1994).
● Deaf individuals who are uent in American Sign Language (ASL) are especially skilled
in looking at an arrangement of objects in a scene and mentally rotating that scene by 180
degrees

Cognitive Neuroscience Research on Mental Rotation Tasks -

● Kosslyn, Thompson, and their coauthors (2001) examined whether people use their
motor cortex when they imagine themselves rotating one of the geometric figures in the
figure above.
● Researchers instructed one group of participants to rotate—with their own hands—one of
the geometric figures that had been used in Shepard and Metzler’s (1971) study. They
instructed a second group of participants to simply watch as an electric motor rotated this
same gure.
● Participants who had originally rotated the original geometric figure with their hands
showed activity in their primary motor cortex. The same part of the brain that had
been active when they had rotated the figure with their hands.
● In contrast, participants who had originally watched the electric motor as it rotated the
figure.On the mental-rotation task, these people now showed no activity in the primary
motor cortex. Without the ‘‘hands on’’ experience, their primary motor cortex was not
active. - When people received the standard instructions to rotate the gure, their right
frontal lobes and their parietal lobes were strongly activated.
● Researchers modified the instructions in a second condition where the participants were
instructed to imagine rotating themselves so that they could ‘‘see’’ the figure from a
different perspective. These instructions produced increased activity in the left temporal
lobe, as well as in a part of the motor cortex.
● Implication : a relatively subtle change in wording can make a dramatic change in the
way that the brain responds to a mental-imagery task.
 ● Application : Such imagery tasks can be beneficial as ‘exercises’ for people recovering
from stroke. When people rotate a visual image, a large rotation takes them longer, just as
they take longer when making a large rotation with a physical stimulus.

Visual Imagery and Distance -

● Kosslyn and his colleagues (1978) showed that people took a long time to scan the
distance between two widely separated points on a mental image of a map that they had
created. In contrast, they quickly scanned the distance between two nearby points on a
mental image of that map .Later research confirms that there is a linear relationship
between the distance to be scanned in a mental image and the amount of time required to
scan this distance.
● Possible problem w/this research: experimenter expectancy: the researchers’ biases and
expectations influence the outcomes of the experiment.
● To counter this criticism, Jolicoeur and Kosslyn repeated the mental-map experiment.
However, these researchers made certain that the two research assistants—who actually
administered the new study—were not familiar with the research on mental imagery.
They did not know about the typical linear relationship found in the previous research.
Instead, the assistants were given an elaborate and convincing (but incorrect) explanation
about visual imagery. This incorrect explanation described how the participants’ results
should show a U-shaped relationship between visual-imagery distance and scanning time.
● Interestingly, the research assistants did not obtain the U-shaped curve that they were
told they would find. Instead,their results demonstrated the standard linear relationship.
People make distance judgments in a similar fashion for visual images and for physical
stimuli.

Visual Imagery and Shape -

● Allan Paivio (1978) asked participants to make judgments about the angle formed by the
two hands on an imaginary clock.
● Results: The high-imagery participants made decisions much more quickly than the
low-imagery participants.
● Participants in both groups made decisions very slowly when they compared the angle
formed by the hands at 3:20 with the angle of the hands at 7:25.
● Their decisions were relatively fast if the two angles were very different in size, perhaps
3:20 and 7:05.
● Implication: According to Paivio (1978), this study demonstrates strong support for the
proposal that people use analog codes, rather than propositional codes.
● 1 more study in support of this- Shepard and Chipman (1970) asked participants to
construct mental images of the shapes of various U.S.states, such as Colorado and
 Oregon. Then the participants judged the similarity between the two mental images, with
respect to their shapes. For example—without looking at a map—do you think that
Colorado and Oregon have similar shapes? How about Colorado and West Virginia?
These same participants also made shape-similarity judgments about pairs of states while
they looked at an actual physical sketch of each state (rather than only its name). The
results showed that the participants’ judgments were highly similar in the two conditions.
Once again, people’s judgments about the shape of mental images are similar to their
judgments about the shape of physical stimuli.

People make decisions about shape in a similar fashion for visual images and for physical
stimuli. This conclusion holds true for both simple shapes (angles formed by hands on a clock)
and complex shapes (geographic regions, like Colorado or West Virginia).

Visual Imagery and Interference -

● Segal and Fusella(1970). In part of this study, they asked participants to create a visual
image, for example, a visual image of a tree. As soon as the participant had formed the
requested image, the researchers presented a real physical stimulus, for example a small
blue arrow. The researchers then measured the participants’ ability to detect the physical
stimulus.
● Results showed that people had more problems detecting the physical stimulus when the
mental image was in the same sensory mode. For example, when the participants had
been imagining the shape of a tree, they had trouble detecting the small blue arrow. The
mental image interfered with the real visual stimulus. In contrast, when they had been
imagining the sound of an oboe,they had no trouble reporting that they saw the arrow. -
● Mast and his colleagues (1999) told participants to create a visual image of a set of
narrow parallel lines. Next, they were instructed to rotate their mental image of this set of
lines, so that the lines were in a diagonal orientation. Meanwhile, the researchers
presented a physical stimulus, a small segment of a line.The participants were told to
judge whether this line segment had an exactly vertical orientation.
● Results showed that the imagined set of lines and the real set of lines produced similar
distortions in the participants’ judgments about the orientation of that line segment.

Visual Imagery and Ambiguous Figures -

● When people create a mental image of an ambiguous gure—they sometimes use analog
codes and sometimes propositional codes.
● Stephen Reed (1974, 2010) tested people’s ability to decide whether a specific visual
pattern was a portion of a design that they had seen earlier.
● Specifically, Reed presented a series of paired figures. For example, people might first
 see a pattern like the Star of David in Demonstration 7.3, and then this figure
disappeared.
● Next, after a brief delay, people saw a second pattern, such as a parallelogram with
slanted right and left sides. In half the trials, the second pattern was truly part of the rst
one (for example, a parallelogram). In the other half, it was not (for example, a
rectangle).
● The participants in Reed’s(1974) study were correct only14% of the time on the
star/parallelogram example. Across all stimuli, they were correct only 55% of the time,
hardly better than chance.
● Reed (1974) argued that people could not have stored a visual image for gures like the
Star of David, given the high error rate on items like this one. Instead, Reed proposed that
people sometimes store pictures as descriptions, using a kind of propositional code.. -
Reed’s (1974) research supports the verbal propositional-code approach, rather than the
analog-code approach.
● Chambers and Reisberg (1985) asked participants to create a clear mental image of this
figure.

● Next, the researchers removed the figure. The participants were then asked to give a
second, different interpretation of that particular figure. None of the 15 people could do
so. In other words, they apparently could not consult a stored mental image.
● Then, the participants were asked to draw the figure from memory. All of them looked at
the figure they had just drawn, and all 15 were able to supply a second interpretation. -
Implication: a strong verbal propositional code—such as ‘‘a duck that is facing
left’’—can overshadow a relatively weak analog code. - It’s often easy to reverse a visual
stimulus while you are looking at a physical picture that is ambiguous. In contrast, it’s
 usually more difficult to reverse a mental image (Reisberg & Heuer, 2005).
● Conclusion: People often use an analog code when they are thinking about fairly simple
figures (like the two hands of a clock).
○ People may use a propositional code when the figures are more complex, as in
the case of the research by Reed (1974) and Chambers and Reisberg (1985). Our
memory has a limited capacity for visual imagery. We may therefore have
difficulty storing complex visual information in an analog code and then making
accurate judgments about these mental images.
○ Verbal labels (and a propositional code) may be especially helpful if the visual
stimulus is complex.

Visual Imagery and Other Vision-Like Processes -

● Ishai and Sagi (1995) showed that people can see a visual target more accurately if they
create mental images of vertical lines on each side of the target. (masking effect)
● This study on the masking effect is especially important because of a research methods
issue called ‘‘demand characteristics.’’ Demand characteristics are all the cues that
might convey the experimenter’s hypothesis to the participant.
● Some critics of the analog approach have proposed that the experimental results in
imagery experiments might be traceable to one or more of these demand characteristics.
participants may be able to guess the results that the experimenter wants. Perhaps they
might guess that a visual mental image is supposed to interfere with visual perception. -
● The masking effect is virtually unknown to people who have not completed a psychology
course in perception. The participants in the study by Ishai and Sagi (1995) would not
know that visual targets are especially easy to see if they are surrounded by masking
stimuli.Therefore, demand characteristics cannot account for the masking effect with
mental images.
● Visual imagery really can produce the masking effect, just as visual perception can
produce the masking effect. Visual imagery can indeed resemble visual perception.

Imagery v/s perception (Kosslyn)

● He asked participants to imagine animals next to each other, such as an elephant and a
rabbit, and told them to imagine that they were standing close enough to the larger animal
so that it fills most of their visual field.
● He then posed questions such as “Does a rabbit have whiskers?” and asked his
participants to find that part of the animal in their mental image and to answer as quickly
as possible. When he repeated this procedure but told participants to imagine a rabbit and
a fly next to each other, participants created larger images of the rabbit, as shown in
Figure 10.9b. The result of these experiments, shown alongside the pictures, was that
 participants answered questions about the rabbit more rapidly when it filled more of the
visual field.

(Mental Walk Task)

● Participants were to imagine that they were walking toward their mental image of an
animal.
● Their task was to estimate how far away they were from the animal when they began to
experience “overflow”—when the image fi lled the visual field or when its edges started
becoming fuzzy.
● The result was that participants had to move closer for small animals (less than a foot for
a mouse) than for larger animals (about 11 feet for an elephant), just as they would have
to do if they were walking toward actual animals. This result provides further evidence
for the idea that images are spatial, just like perception.

Interactions of Imagery and Perception :

● Perky asked her participants to “project” visual images of common objects onto a
screen, and then to describe these images. Perky was back-projecting a very dim
image of this object onto the screen. Thus, when participants were asked to create
an image of a banana, Perky projected a dim image of a banana onto the screen. -
Result: the participants’ descriptions of their images matched the images that
Perky was projecting. Not one of Perky’s 24 participants noticed that there was an
actual picture on the screen. They had apparently mistaken an actual picture for a
mental image.
● Farah (1985) instructed her participants to imagine either the letter H or T on a
screen. Once they had formed clear images on the screen, they pressed a button
that caused two squares to flash, one after the other. One of the squares contained
a target letter, which was either an H or a T. The participants’ task was to indicate
whether the letter was in the first square or the second one.
● The results indicate that the target letter was detected more accurately when the
participant had been imagining the same letter rather than the different letter.
● Farah interpreted this result as showing that perception and imagery share
mechanisms. Many other experiments have demonstrated similar interactions
between perception and imagery

Imagery and the Brain

● One of the early brain imaging experiments to study imagery was carried
out by LeBihan and coworkers (1993), who demonstrated that both
 perception and imagery activate the visual cortex.
● Activity in the striate cortex increased both when a person observed
presentations of actual visual stimuli (marked “Perception”) and when the
person was imagining the stimulus (“Imagery”).
● Giorgio Ganis and coworkers (2004) used fMRI to measure activation
under two conditions, perception and imagery.
● For the perception condition, participants observed a drawing of an
object, like a tree For the imagery condition, participants were told to
imagine a picture that they had studied before, when they heard a tone. -
For both the perception and imagery tasks, participants had to answer a
question such as “Is the object wider than it is tall?”
● Results of Ganis’s experiment show activation at three different locations
in the brain.
● There is almost complete overlap of the activation caused by perception
and imagery in the front of the brain, but some differences near the back of
the brain.

Transcranial Magnetic Imaging (TMI):

● Kosslyn and coworkers (1999) did an experiment using a technique called transcranial
magnetic stimulation (TMS).
● Kosslyn and coworkers performed TMI to the visual area of the brain while participants
were carrying out either a perception task or an imagery task.
● Result indicated that stimulation caused participants to respond more slowly, and that this
slowing effect occurred both for perception and for imagery.
● Based on this result, Kosslyn concluded that the brain activation that occurs in response
to imagery is not an epiphenomenon and that brain activity in the visual cortex plays a
 causal role in both perception and imagery.

The Imagery Debate : The analog perspective v/s the propositional perspective

● According to the analog perspective, you create a mental image of an object that closely
resembles the actual perceptual image on your retina
● According to the propositional perspective, mental images are stored in an abstract,
language-like form that does not physically resemble the original stimulus. Zenon
Pylyshyn (2003, 2004, 2006) has been the strongest supporter of this perspective.
Pylyshyn agrees that people do experience mental images; it would be foolish to argue
otherwise.
● However, Pylyshyn says that these images are not a necessary, central component of
imagery. it would be awkward—and perhaps even unworkable—to store information in
terms of mental images. For instance, people would need a huge space to store all the
images that they claim to have.
● He also emphasizes the differences between perceptual experiences and mental images.
For example, you can re-examine and re-interpret a real photograph. However, on a task
like the rabbit/duck gure, people typically cannot reinterpret a mental image (Chambers
& Reisberg, 1985).
● At present, the analog code apparently explains most stimuli and most tasks. However,
for some kinds of stimuli and several specific tasks, people may use a propositional code.

Neuroscience Research Comparing Visual Imagery and Visual Perception.

✅
● Visual Imagery relies only on top- down processes (Perception- bottom up + top down) -
Does not activate rods or cones (Perception )
● Visual imagery activates between about 70% and 90% of the same brain regions that are
activated during visual perception.
● Some individuals with brain damage cannot distinguish between (1) the colors registered
during visual perception and (2) the visual imagery created in a mental image.
● People who have prosopagnosia cannot recognize human faces visually, though they
perceive other objects relatively normally. The research shows that these individuals also
cannot use mental imagery to distinguish between faces -
● This neuroscience evidence about the similarity between visual imagery and visual
perception is especially persuasive,because it avoids the demand-characteristics problem.
● As Farah (2000) pointed out, people seldom know which parts of their brain are typically
active during vision. Therefore, when you create a mental image of a bow tie, you cannot
voluntarily activate the relevant cells in your visual cortex!

Mental Scanning experiment by Kosslyn: -

 ● Kosslyn (1973) asked participants to memorize a picture of an object, such as the boat in
and then to create an image of that object in their mind and to focus on one part of the
boat, such as the anchor.
● They were then asked to look for another part of the boat, such as the motor, and to press
the “true” button when they found this part or the “false” button when they couldn’t find
it. Kosslyn reasoned that if imagery, like perception, is spatial, then it should take longer
for participants to find parts that are located farther from the initial point of focus because
they would be scanning across the image of the object. This is actually what happened,
and Kosslyn took this as evidence for the spatial nature of imagery.

Gender differences in Spatial Abilities

COGNITIVE MAPS : a cognitive map is a mental representation of geographic information,

including the environment that surrounds us

● Research on cognitive maps is a part of a larger topic called “spatial cognition” (thoughts
abt cognitive map, how we remember the navigation, how we keep track of objs in a
spatial array)
● Individual differences in spatial-cognition skills are quite large (Smith & Cohen, 2008;
Wagner, 2006). However, people tend to be accurate in judging their ability to find their
way to unfamiliar locations (Kitchin & Blades, 2002)
 ● Spatial-cognition scores are also correlated with performance on the spatial tasks like
mental rotation
● People often use heuristics (general problem-solving strategy that usually produces a
correct solution ... but not always) in making judgments about cognitive maps. As a
result, they tend to show systematic distortions in distance, shape, and relative position.

Distance Estimates -

● One of the first systematic studies about distance in cognitive maps -

● Thorndyke (1981) constructed a map of a hypothetical geographic region with cities
distributed throughout the map.
● Between any two cities on the map, there were 0, 1, 2, or 3 other cities along the route.
Participants studied the map until they could accurately reconstruct it. Then they
estimated the distance between species pairs of cities.
● Number of intervening cities had a clear-cut inuence on their estimates. For example,
when the cities were really 300 miles apart on this map, people estimated that they were
only 280 miles apart when there were no intervening cities. In contrast, these target cities
were estimated to be 350 miles apart with three intervening cities.
● If cities are randomly distributed throughout a region, two cities are usually closer
together when there are no intervening cities between them. In contrast, two cities are
likely to be further apart when there are three intervening cities. -
● Category Membership: Hirtle and Mascolo (1986) showed participants a hypothetical
map of a town, and they learned the locations on the map. Then the map was removed,
and people estimated the distance between pairs of locations.The results showed that
people tended to shift each location closer to other sites that belonged to the same
category. For example, people typically remembered the courthouse as being close to the
police station and other government buildings. However, these shifts did not occur for
members of different categories. For instance, people did not move the courthouse closer
to the golf course.
● Borderbias: People estimate that the distance between two specific locations is larger if
they are on different sides of a geographic border, compared to two locations on the same
side of that border. -
● Experiment: Arul Mishra and Himanshu Mishra (2010), found that when people hear
about an earthquake, they prefer to select a home in a different state, rather than a home
that is equally close, but in the same state. (Oregon and Washington: example) -
● This study demonstrates a ‘‘same-category heuristic.’’ It’s generally a good strategy to
guess that two cities are closer together if they are in the same state, rather than in
adjacent states.
 ● Landmark effect is the general tendency to provide shorter estimates when traveling to a
landmark—an important geographical location—rather than a non-landmark. -
● Experiment: McNamara and Diwadkar (1997) asked students to memorize a map that
displayed various pictures of objects. The map included some objects that were described
as landmarks, and some objects that were not landmarks. After learning the locations, the
students estimated the distance on the map(in inches) between various pairs of objects.
Consistent with the landmark effect, these students showed an asymmetry in their
distance estimates.
● Prominent destinations apparently seem closer than less important destinations.This
research also demonstrates the importance of context when we make decisions about
distances and other features of our cognitive maps.

Cognitive Maps and Shape

● We tend to construct cognitive maps in which the shapes are more regular than they are in
reality.
● Angles: Moar and Bower (1983), who studied people’s cognitive maps of Cambridge,
England. All the participants in the study had lived in Cambridge for at least five years.
Moar and Bower asked people to estimate the angles formed by the intersection of two
streets, without using a map. The participants showed a clear tendency to ‘‘regularize’’
the angles so that they were more like 90-degree angles. (Systematic Distortion) -
● 90-degree-angle heuristic- they represent angles in a mental map as being closer to 90
degrees than they really are.
● Curves: people tend to use a symmetry heuristic; we remember gures as being more
symmetrical and regular than they truly are.
● The small inconsistencies of geographic reality are smoothed over, so that our cognitive
maps are idealized and standardized.

Cognitive Maps and Relative Position -

● Tversky(1981,1998) pointed out that we use heuristics when we represent relative

positions in our mental map.
● Tversky points out that these heuristics encourage two kinds of errors:
○ We remember a slightly tilted geographic structure as being either more vertical
or more horizontal than it really is (the rotation heuristic).
○ We remember a series of geographic structures as being arranged in a straighter
line than they really are (the alignment heuristic).
○ The coastline of California is obviously slanted. When we use the rotation
heuristic for our cognitive map of California, we make the orientation more
vertical by rotating the coastline in a clockwise fashion. If our cognitive map
 reflects the distorting effects of the rotation heuristic, you will conclude
(erroneously) that San Diego is west of Reno.
○ Tversky (1981) presented pairs of cities to students, who were asked to select
which member of each pair was north (or, in some cases, east). For example, one
pair was Rome and Philadelphia. Rome is actually north of Philadelphia.
○ Philadelphia is farther south than Rome. According to the alignment heuristic,
however, we tend to line up Europe and the United States. As a result, we
incorrectly conclude that Philadelphia is north of Rome.

○ Difference b/w rotation and alignment heuristic:

■ The rotation heuristic requires rotating a single coastline, country,
building, or other gure in a clockwise or counterclockwise fashion so that
its border is oriented in a nearly vertical or a nearly horizontal direction. In
contrast, the alignment heuristic requires lining up several separate
countries, buildings, or other gures in a straight row. Both heuristics are
similar, however, because they encourage us to construct cognitive maps
that are more orderly and schematic than geographic reality.
■ When our mental maps rely too strongly on these heuristics, we miss the
important details that make each stimulus unique. When our top-down
cognitive processes are too active, we fail to pay enough attention to
bottom-up information

UNIT 4- Language

● Language is a system of communication using sounds or symbols that enables us to

express our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and experiences (Goldstein, 2007).
● Language is a system of symbols and rules that is used for meaningful communication.
 ● Psycholinguistics is the psychology of our language as it interacts with the human mind.
It considers both production and comprehension of language (Gernsbacher & Kaschak,
2003a)
Properties of Language:-
1. Communicative: Language permits us to communicate with one or more people who
share our language.
2. Arbitrarily symbolic: Language creates an arbitrary relationship between a symbol and
what it represents: an idea, a thing, a process, a relationship, or a description.
- We communicate through our shared system of arbitrary symbolic reference to things,
ideas, processes, relationships, and descriptions
- Such as a “tree,” “swim,” or “brilliant.” The thing or concept in the real world that a
word refers to is called referent.
- But the particular symbols themselves do not lead to the meaning of the word, which
is why different languages use very different sounds to refer to the same thing
3. Regularly structured: Language has a structure; only particularly patterned arrangements
of symbols have meaning, and different arrangements yield different meanings.
- Two principles underlying word meanings are the principle of conventionality and the
principle of contrast
- The principle of conventionality simply states that meanings of words are determined
by conventions they have a meaning upon which people agree
- Principle of contrast, different words have different meanings.
- Regular structure of language: Particular patterns of sounds and of letters form
meaningful words
4. Structured at multiple levels: The structure of language can be analyzed at more than one
level (e.g., in sounds, meaning units, words, and phrases).
5. Generative, productive: Within the limits of a linguistic structure, language users can
produce novel utterances. The possibilities for creating new utterances are virtually
limitless.
- Productivity refers here to our vast ability to produce language creatively.
- Limitation- We have to conform to a particular structure and use a shared system of
arbitrary symbols.
- We can use language to produce an infinite number of unique sentences and other
meaningful combinations of words.
6. Dynamic: Languages constantly evolve.
- Individual language users coin words and phrases and modify language usage. The
wider group of language users either accepts or rejects the modifications.

Four areas of study have contributed greatly to an understanding of psycholinguistics:

● Linguistics
● Neurolinguistics
● Sociolinguistics
● Computational linguistics

● 1957 B. F. Skinner, the main proponent of behaviorism, published a book called

Verbal Behavior in which he proposed that language is learned through reinforcement.
● According to this idea, just as children learn appropriate behavior by being rewarded for
“good” behavior and punished for “bad” behavior, children learn language by being
rewarded for using correct language and punished (or not rewarded) for using incorrect
language.
● Noam Chomsky published a book titled Syntactic Structures in which he proposed
that human language is coded in the genes.
● According to this idea, just as humans are genetically programmed to walk, they are
programmed to acquire and use language.
● Chomsky concluded that despite the wide variations that exist across languages, the
underlying basis of all languages is similar. Most important for our purposes,
● Chomsky’s disagreement with behaviorism led him to publish a scathing review of
Skinner’s Verbal Behavior in 1959. In his review, he presented arguments against the
behaviorist idea that language can be explained in terms of reinforcements and without
reference to the mind.
● One of Chomsky’s most persuasive arguments was that as children learn language, they
produce sentences that they have never heard and that have never been reinforced. (A
classic example of a sentence that has been created by many children, and that is unlikely
to have been taught or reinforced by parents, is “I hate you, Mommy.”)
● Chomsky’s criticism of behaviorism was an important event that led to psycholinguistics,
the field concerned with the psychological study of language.
● The goal of psycholinguistics is to discover the psychological processes by which humans
acquire and process language
● The four major concerns of psycholinguistics are as follows:
○ 1. Comprehension. How do people understand spoken and written language? This
includes how people process language sounds; how they understand words,
sentences, and stories expressed in writing, speech, or sign language; and how
people have conversations with one another.
○ 2. Speech production. How do people produce language? This includes the
physical processes of speech production and the mental processes that occur as a
person creates speech.
○ 3. Representation. How is language represented in the mind and in the brain? This
includes how people group words together into phrases and make connections
between different parts of a story, as well as how these processes are related to the
activation of the brain.
 ○ 4. Acquisition. How do people learn language? This includes not only how
children learn language, but also how people learn additional languages, either as
children or later in life.
●

COMPONENTS OF WORDS

● Phonemes :
○ When you say words, you produce sounds called phonemes.
○ A phoneme is the shortest segment of speech that, if changed, changes the
meaning of a word.
○ Thus, the word bit contains the phonemes /b/, /i/, and /t/ (phonemes are indicated
by phonetic symbols that are set off with slashes), because we can change bit into
pit by replacing /b/ with /p/, to bat by replacing /i/ with /a/, or to bid by replacing
/t/ with /d/.
○ Because different languages use different sounds, the number of phonemes varies
in different languages. There are only 11 phonemes in Hawaiian, about 47 in
English, and as many as 60 in some African dialects.
● Morphemes
○ Morphemes are the smallest units of language that have a definable meaning or
a grammatical function.
○ For example, “truck” consists of a number of phonemes, but only one morpheme,
because none of the components that create the word truck mean anything.
○ Similarly, even though “table” has two syllables, “tabe” and “ul,” it also consists
of only a single morpheme, because the syllables alone have no meaning. In
contrast “bedroom” has two syllables and two morphemes, “bed” and “room.”
○ Endings such as “s” and “ed,” which contribute to the meaning of a word, are
morphemes. Thus even though “trucks” has just one syllable, it consists of two
morphemes, “truck” (which indicates a type of vehicle) and “s” (which indicates
more than one).

Structure of language:

● Morphology refers to the study of morphemes; morphology examines how we create

words by combining morphemes
● Syllable: Smallest unit of speech perception (Eating= eet +ing g; Bio= Bi + oh; hotel=
ho+ teel)
● Lexicon: is the entire set of morphemes in a given language or in a given person’s
linguistic repertoire
Phonemes:

● Vowels (work without obstructing the airflow) and consonants

● Consonants differ in “place of articulation”, meaning where the obstruction of the airflow
occurs B, p (closing of lips); S and z are made by placing the tongue against the palate of
the roof of the mouth
● Consonants also differ in manner of articulation (m by closing the mouth while opening
the nasal cavity f is made thru an obstruction of airflow producing a hissing sound)
● Voicing: s in sa and z in za……….in za..the vocal cords vibrate but not in sa. Thus z is
said to be voiced and s in unvoiced.
● Syntax: refers to refers to the grammatical rules that govern how we organize words into
sentences
● Grammar: encompasses both morphology and syntax; it therefore examines both word
structure and sentence structure ● Words: ● Phrase: Noun phrase + Verb phra
● Sentence:
● ● Discourse:
● ● Semantics: area of psycholinguistics that examines the meanings of words and
sentences ●
● Pragmatics: term—refers to our knowledge of the social rules that underlie language use
● Humans are capable of producing, recognizing, and using approximately 150 phonemes
(units of sound) in communication; however, no language uses more than 70 of them.
● Eg. Japanese- Doesn’t have separate phonemes for ‘la’ and ‘ra’. Japanese language does
not have a phoneme for “va,”. To native Japanese-speaking adults who never learned
English as a child, the words “rubber” and “lover” sound the same Structure of language:
● Research suggests that young infants can discriminate among all the phonemes that
humans are able to produce.
● As we are exposed to a language, we begin to categorize sounds in ways that are used by
that language. Within the first year, infants already begin to lose the ability to distinguish
between closely related sounds that are not in their own language(Heine, 2015).

Chomsky’s language development theory:

● Noam Chomsky, a pioneering linguist and a professor at MIT, put forth an idea called the
language acquisition device or LAD.
● The LAD is a hypothetical tool hardwired into the brain that helps children rapidly learn
and understand language.
● Chomsky used it to explain just how amazingly children are able to acquire language
abilities as well as accounting for the innate understanding of grammar and syntax all
children possess. The LAD is a theoretical concept.
● Just as humans are genetically programmed to walk, they are programmed to acquire and
 use language.
● Chomsky concluded that despite the wide variations that exist across languages, the
underlying basis of all language is similar.
● Two types of structures:
○ 1. Surface structure: Words that are actually spoken or written
○ 2. Deep structure: Underlying more abstract meaning of the sentence
○ Eg: Sentences with different surface structures but same deep structures: ● Sara
threw the ball. The ball was thrown by Sara.
○ Similar surface structure but different deep structure:
○ Mike is easy to please ● Mike is eager to please
○ Even the surface structures of two sentences can be identical yet deep structure
different. These sentences are called “ambiguous sentences”
○ I want to go to the bank (financial institution) I want to go to the bank (river) Or I
saw a man on a hill with a telescope.
● Chomsky (1975) also proposed that language is modular
● In contrast to Chomsky’s theory, the standard cognitive approach argues that language is
not modular. Instead, it is interconnected with other cognitive processes such as working
memory
● The surface structure is represented by the words that are actually spoken or written. In
contrast, the deep structure is the underlying, more abstract meaning of a sentence
(Garnham, 2005; Harley, 2008).
● People use transformational rules to convert deep structure into a surface structure that
they can speak or write.Brain areas related to language:
● Broca’s area ● Wernicke’s area

Speech: Perceiving Phonemes

● The powerful effect of context on perception is illustrated by the demonstration that a

phoneme that is part of a sentence can be heard even if the sound of the phoneme is
covered up by an extraneous noise.
● Richard Warren (1970) demonstrated this by having participants listen to a recording of
the sentence “The state governors met with their respective legislatures convening in the
capital city.”
● Warren replaced the fi rst /s/ in “legislatures” with the sound of a cough and asked his
participants to indicate where in the sentence the cough occurred
● No participant identified the correct position of the cough, and, even more signifi cantly,
none of them noticed that the /s/ in “legislatures” was missing.
● This effect, which Warren called the phonemic restoration effect, was experienced even
 by students and staff in the psychology department who knew that the /s/ was missing.
● This “filling in” of the missing phoneme based on the context produced by the sentence
and the portion of the word that was presented is an example of top-down processing.
● Warren also showed that the phonemic restoration effect can be influenced by the
meaning of the words that follow the missing phoneme.
● For example, the last word of the phrase “There was time to *ave . . .” (where the *
indicates the presence of a cough or some other sound) could be shave, save, wave, or
rave, but participants heard the word wave when the remainder of the sentence had to do
with saying good-bye to a departing friend.
● It is difficult to perceive isolated words. The context provided by the rest of the
conversation aids in the perception of words.
● The process of perceiving individual words in the continuous flow of the speech signal is
called speech segmentation.
● Our ability to perceive individual words, even though there are often no pauses between
words in the sound signal, is aided by a number of factors.
● Segmentation is aided by knowing the meanings of words and being aware of the context
in which these words occur.
● Listeners also use other information to achieve segmentation. As we learn a language, we
learn that certain sounds are more likely to follow one another within a word, and other
sounds are more likely to be separated by the space between two words.
● The word superiority effect refers to the finding that letters are easier to recognize when
they are contained in a word than when they appear alone or are contained in a nonword.
This effect was first demonstrated by G. M. Reicher in 1969.
● A stimulus that is either (a) a word (such as FORK), (b) a single letter (such as K), or (c)
a nonword (such as RFOK) is fl ashed briefl y. It is followed immediately by a random
pattern where the stimulus was and two letters, one that appeared in the original stimulus
(K in this example) and another that did not (M in this example). The pattern and letters
are fl ashed rapidly, and the participants’ task is to pick the letter that was presented in the
original stimulus. In the example in ● Figure 11.3a, the word FORK was presented, so K
would be the correct answer. K would also be the correct answer if the K were originally
presented alone (Figure 11.3b) or if it were presented in a nonword such as RFOK
(Figure 11.3c). Identifying the K more quickly
● The word frequency effect refers to the fact that we respond more rapidly to
high-frequency words like home than to low-frequency words like hike.

Reading
● Reading requires recognition of letters, moving eyes across the page, using WM, recall
earlier info from LTM, use metamemory, metacomprehension etc
Dyslexia
 ▪ Dyslexia—difficulty in deciphering, reading, and comprehending text
1. Phonological awareness, which refers to awareness of the sound structure of
spoke language. Measured by phoneme deletion task, phoneme counting.
2. Phonological reading, which entails reading words in isolation. (word decoding”
or “word attack“) Measured by reading words in isolation.
3. Phonological coding in working memory. This process is involved in
remembering strings of phonemes that are sometimes confusing. Measured by
comparing working memory for confusable versus non-confusable phonemes
4. Lexical access refers to one’s ability to retrieve phonemes from long-term
memory.
▪ Developmental dyslexia, which is difficulty in reading that starts in childhood and
typically continues throughout adulthood.
▪ Acquired dyslexia, caused by traumatic brain damage.
Perceptual Issues in Reading
▪ A very basic but important step in reading is the activation of our ability to recognize
letters. Somehow manage to perceive the correct letter when it is presented in a wide
array of typestyles and typefaces
▪ Translate the letter into a sound, creating a phonological code
▪ Manage to translate all those visual symbols into sounds, you must sequence those
sounds to form a word
▪ Need to identify the word and figure out what the word means
▪ Move on to the next word and repeat the process all over again.
▪ When learning to read, novice readers must master 2 basic kinds of processes: lexical
processes & comprehension processes.
- Lexical processes are used to identify letters and words. They also activate relevant
information in memory about these words.
- Comprehension processes are used to make sense of the text as a whole

Difference between reading and comprehension of spoken language:

● Readers usually encounter standardized, error-free input, whereas listeners often need to
cope with variability, grammatical errors, sloppy pronunciation, and interfering stimuli.
● Readers can see discrete boundaries between words, whereas listeners often encounter
unclear boundaries in spoken language.
● Readers encounter only the stimuli on a page, whereas listeners encounter both nonverbal
cues and auditory cues, such as emphasized words and variations in pace.

Dual route approach to reading: Language comprehension:

● Despite the differences between written and spoken language, however, both processes
require us to understand words and appreciate the meaning of sentences.
● Researchers have debated whether readers actually ‘‘sound out’’ words while reading a
passage.
● Some researchers conclude that readers always sound out the words, and other
researchers conclude that they never sound them out (Coltheart, 2005).
● Skilled readers employ both
○ Direct access route: When we access a word directly through vision without
“sounding out” We are especially likely to use direct access if the word has an
irregular spelling and cannot be ‘‘sounded out’’—for example, the words choir or
Csikszentmihalyi.
○ Indirect-access route: As soon as we see a word, we translate the ink marks on the
page into some form of sound, before you can access a word and its meaning
(Harley, 2010). We are likely to use indirect access if the word has a regular
spelling and can be sounded out—for example, the words ten and cabinet.
● According to IAR explanation, we must go through the intermediate step of converting
the visual stimulus into a phonological (sound) stimulus.
● Bradshaw & Nettleton (1974) showed people pairs of words that were similar in spelling,
but different in sound, such as mown–down, horse–worse, and quart–part.
● The participants were instructed to read the first word silently and then pronounce the
second word out loud. Now, if they had been translating the first member of a pair into
sound, the sound of mown would interfere with pronouncing down out loud.
● However, the results showed that the participants experienced no hesitation in
pronouncing the second word. This finding—and other similar studies—suggests that we
can go directly to the word; we do not silently pronounce every word during normal
reading
● Evidence for the Indirect access route (IAR): Luo et al. (1998) instructed the students to
read a series of pairs of words and decide whether the two words were related or
unrelated in meaning.
● A typical pair in the experimental condition was LION–BARE. As you know, the word
BARE sounds the same as the word BEAR, which is indeed semantically related to
LION.
● The students frequently made errors on these pairs, because they incorrectly judged the
two words as being semantically related. This error pattern suggests that they were
silently pronouncing the word pairs when they made the judgments. However, they made
relatively few errors on control-condition word pairs, such as LION–BEAN. In this word
pair, the II word looked like the word BEAR, although it did not sound the same.
● This approach argues that the characteristics of the reading material determine whether
access is indirect or direct. For instance, you may use indirect access the first time you
see a long, uncommon word; you may use direct access for a common word (Bernstein &
 Carr, 1996; Harley, 2008).
● Implications for children's reading English is an ‘‘outlier language’’ because of the
numerous irregular pronunciations for English words.
● Whole approach: Supported by direct route approach. Readers can directly connect the
written word—as an entire unit—with the meaning that this word represents. Supporters
encourages children to identify a word in terms of its context within a sentence.
● Phonics approach: states that readers recognize words by trying to pronounce the
individual letters in the word (by sounding out). Supported by IAR approach
● Whole-language approach, reading instruction should emphasize meaning, and it
should be enjoyable, to increase children’s enthusiasm about learning to read. Children
should read interesting stories and experiment with writing before they are expert
spellers. They also need to use reading throughout their classroom experiences (

Factors Affecting Comprehension

● Beginning in the 1960s, psychologists began to study how several linguistic factors can
influence language comprehension. In general, people have difficulty understanding
sentences in these four conditions:
1. If they contain negatives, such as not.
a. If a sentence contains a negative word, such as no or not, or an implied negative
(such as rejected), the sentence almost always requires more processing time than
a similar, affirmative sentence (Williams, 2005).
b. In a classic study, Clark and Chase (1972) showed a picture of a star above a plus
sign. Then they asked people to verify statements, such as the following:
c. Star is above plus.+ ∗ The participants responded quickly in this case, when the
sentence was affirmative. They responded more slowly if the sentence contained
the negative form isn’t (for example, ‘‘Plus isn’t above star’’). The participants
also made fewer errors with affirmative sentences than with negative sentences.
d. Our cognitive processes handle positive information better than negative
information.
2. If they are in the passive rather than the active voice.
a. The active form is more basicand easier to understand. For example, we need to
add extra words we want to create the passive form of a sentence.
b. As you might guess, the English language uses the active voice much more often
than the passive voice (Fiedler et al., 2011).
c. For example, Ferreira and her coauthors (2002) asked participants to determine
whether each sentence in a series was plausible.
d. The participants were highly accurate in responding ‘‘No’’ to sentences in the
active voice, such as, ‘‘The man bit the dog.’’
e. In contrast, their accuracy dropped to about 75% when the same sentences were
 converted to the passive voice, for example, ‘‘The dog was bitten by the man’’ (p.
13)
3. If they have complex syntax.
a. In a nested structure, one phrase is embedded within another phrase. Readers
often experience a memory overload when they try to read a sentence that has a
nested structure.
b. nested phrase that appears between the two dashes. Your working memory needs
to maintain the first part of this sentence, while you navigate the nested phrase.
Then you must relate the last part of this sentence to the first part.
4. If they are ambiguous
a. Psychologists have designed several methods of measuring the difficulty of
understanding a sentence with an ambiguous word or phrase (Harley, 2010;
MacDonald, 1999; Rodd et al., 2002).
b. For example, one method measures the amount of time that the reader pauses on a
word before moving his or her eyes to the next words in the sentence People
typically pause longer when they are processing an ambiguous word, for example,
when they are completing a questionnaire (Lenzner et al., 2010).
c. When people encounter a potential ambiguity, the activation builds up for all the
well-known meanings of the ambiguous item. Furthermore, people are likely to
select one particular meaning
i. (1) if that meaning is more common than the alternate meaning and
ii. (2) if the rest of the sentence is consistent with that meaning (Hurley,
2011; Morris & Binder, 2001; Sereno et al., 2003).

Reading Processes

Processes that contribute to reading Perceptual issues:

● We recognize letters, create a phonological code (sound out) and sequence them to form
words, identify them and then access their meaning. With each word, we do the same
process and then combine words into a sentence. In English, translating the letter into
sound is relatively difficult.
● When learning to read, novice readers must master 2 basic kinds of processes: lexical
processes & comprehension processes.
○ Lexical processes are used to identify letters and words. They also activate
relevant information in memory about these words.
○ Comprehension processes are used to make sense of the text as a whole.
● Saccadic eye movements, fixation & reading speed:
 ○ Readers fixate for a longer time on longer words than on shorter words.
○ They also fixate longer on less familiar words (i.e., words that appear less
frequently in the English language) than on more familiar words (i.e., words of
higher frequency).
○ The last word of a sentence also seems to receive an extra long fixation time. This
can be called “sentence wrap-up time”
○ Readers fixate up to about 80% of the content words in a text. These words
include nouns, verbs, and other words that carry the bulk of the meaning.
● Saccadic movements leap an average of about seven to nine characters between
successive fixations.
● When students speed-read, they show fewer and shorter fixations.
● But apparently their greater speed is at the expense of comprehension of anything more
than just the gist of the passage
● Lexical access: the identification of a word that allows us to gain access to the meaning
of the word from memory.
● It combines information of different kinds, such as the features of letters, the letters
themselves, and the words comprising the letters

● Rumelhart & McClelland developed an interactive-activation model suggesting that

activation of particular lexical elements occurs at multiple levels. Moreover, activity at
each of the levels is interactive
○ 3 levels: feature level, the letter level, and the word level.
● The model assumes that information at each level is represented separately in memory.
Information passes from one level to another bidirectionally. First it is bottom up. Second
it is top down
● The interactive view implies that not only do we use the visually or orally perceptible
features of letters to help us identify words, but we also use the features we already know
about words to help us identify letters. For this reason, the model is referred to as
“interactive”
● Support for word-recognition models involving discrete levels of processing comes from
studies (FMRI/PET) of cerebral processing
● Studies that map brain metabolism indicate that different regions of the brain become
activated during passive visual processing of word forms, as opposed to semantic
analysis of words or even spoken pronunciation of the words.
● Word superiority effect: letters are read more easily when they are embedded in words
than when they are presented either in isolation or with letters that do not form words.
People take substantially longer to read unrelated letters than to read letters that form a
word. Evidence eg: Lexical decision task
Factors affecting Discourse comprehension
1. Physical/social/cultural context

2. Deriving from context

○ While comprehending text, first step is lexical access, next is semantic encoding.
○ For new/unfamiliar words, we can't do semantic coding so we use context

3. Interaction b/w bottom-up & top down processes

○ Expectations
○ Knowledge of discourse structure and conten

4. Factor 3: Vocabulary
● In children, vocabulary size is positively related to performance on a number of
semantic-understanding tasks, including retelling, ecoding ability, and the ability to draw
inferences across sentences (Hagtvet, 2003).
● People with larger vocabularies are able to access lexical information more rapidly than
are those with smaller vocabularies
● Studies have found that people with large or small vocabularies (high verbal/low verbal)
learn word meanings differently.
● High-verbal participants perform a deeper analysis of the possibilities for a new word’s
meaning than do low-verbal participants. In particular, the high-verbal participants used a
well-formulated strategy for figuring out word meanings.
● The low-verbal participants seemed to have no clear strategy at all (van Daalen-Kapteijns
& Elshout-Mohr, 1981

5. Factor 4: Reader’s point of view & Context Comprehending Text Based on Context
and Point of View:
● Anderson & Pichert (1978): A passage about a wealthy person’s house was given. 2
conditions: think from the perspective of a burglar and of a prospective home buyer ●
● Passage mentioned the condition of the house including a leaky roof, a musty basement
etc. as well as contents of the house including jewellery, silverware etc.
● Ps from condition 1 remembered more about house condition while Ps from condition 2
remembered more about contents of the house from the passage

6. Factor 5: Propositional representations

● According to Kintsch’s model, (1990, 2007) as we read, we try to hold as much
information as possible in WM to understand what we read.
● However, we do not try to store the exact words we read in WM. Rather, we try to extract
the fundamental ideas from groups of words. We then store those fundamental ideas in a
simplified representational form in working memory.
● The representational form for these fundamental ideas is the proposition.
● Proposition is the briefest unit of language that can be independently found to be true or
false. It asserts an action/relationship.
● According to Kintsch, working memory holds propositions rather than words (Kintsch &
Keenan, 1973).
● When a string of words in text requires us to hold a large number of propositions in
working memory, we have difficulty comprehending the text.
● According to Kintsch, propositions that are thematically central (macro propositions) to
the understanding of the text will remain in working memory longer than propositions
that are irrelevant to the theme of the text passage.
○ Macrostructure: the overarching thematic structure of a passage of text.
○ Microstructure: Propositions that provide literal and specific information make up
a text’s microstructure.
● In an experiment testing his model, Kintsch and an associate asked participants to read a
1,300-word text passage (Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978).
● The participants then had to summarize the key propositions in the passage immediately,
at 1 month, or at 3 months after reading the passage
● Results: After 3 months, Ps recalled the macro propositions and the overall
macrostructure of the passage about as well as could participants who summarized it
immediately after reading it.
● However, the propositions providing non-thematic details about the passage were not
recalled as well after one month and not at all well after three months.
○ Example:Peter was angry with John. He wanted to punish him. Then he took his
baseball bat, and hit John over the head. John fell down
○ Example: (i) Yesterday I drove to Rotterdam. (ii) It was very foggy. (iii) I did not
see the truck before me. (iv) At the last moment I slammed the brake. (v) I was so
scared that I couldn t drive for an hour. (vi) Next time I won’t drive when it is
foggy.
● Macro propositions can help you in recall of the aforementioned examples
○ Examples of possible macropropositions:
■ ● Peter hit John
■ ● Last time I drove to Rotterdam it was so foggy that I nearly hit a truck..
● People don’t remember exact verbatim, do not recall exact syntactic structure of
sentences and do not recall all the propositions.
● While reproducing any discourse, subjects select certain propositions and/or combine the
information from various propositions into one proposition

7. Factor 6: Forming an integrated representation (using Theory of mind)

● In everyday life, we try to figure out the mental state of other people in our lives, a
concept called theory of mind (Mar, 2011). For example, we might say, ‘‘Judith is usually
very kind, but she really was mean to Kathy. Maybe she is worried about her final
 exams.’’
● Similarly, readers often try to figure out the mental states of the people they read about in
a story or a book.
● Listeners—as well as readers—form integrated representations when they hear spoken
language. They also remember information and draw inferences when they are listening
● The research on reading shows that skilled readers frequently organize and integrate
information into a cohesive story
● Gernsbacher and Robertson’s (2005) study, demonstrated that readers are attuned to
subtle linguistic evidence.
● Specifically, readers realize that a series of sentences forms a cohesive story if all the
sentences begin with the word the, but not when the sentences begin with a.

8. Factor 7: Mental Models (Forming integrated representation & drawing inferences)

● We form a cohesive representation, we often construct a mental model of the material we
are reading (Long et al., 2006; Traxler, 2012; Zwaan & Rapp, 2006).
● Readers create cognitive maps, based on a written description of various locations
● Readers also construct internal representations that include descriptions of the characters
in a story may include the characters’ occupations, relationships, emotional states,
personal traits, goals, and actions
● In fact, by middle school, some children can monitor events in the stories they are
reading, noting twists in a story’s plot or a character’s unusual behaviors
● However, some novelists can strain even an adult reader’s working memory and
long-term memory.
● For example, one of the sentences in James Joyce’s Ullyses is 12,931 words long (Harley,
2010).

The Constructionist View of Inferences.

● According to the constructionist view of inferences, readers usually draw inferences

about the causes of events and the relationships between events.
● The constructionist view argues that people typically draw inferences, even when the
related topics are separated by several irrelevant paragraphs.
● When you read a novel, you construct inferences about a character’s motivations,
personality, and emotions. You develop expectations about new plot developments, about
the writer’s point of
● Huitema et al. (1993) tested 4 conditions: far consistent, far inconsistent; near consistent;
near inconsistent.
● “1. John had a week’s vacation due 2. and he wanted to go to a place 3. where he could
swim and sunbathe. 4. He bought a book on travel. 5. Then he looked at the ads 6. in the
travel section of the Sunday newspaper. 7. He went to his local travel agent 8. and asked
 for a plane ticket to Alaska. 9. He paid for it with his charge card”
● Participants in the near condition read the consistent version significantly more quickly
than the inconsistent version. Also participants in the far condition read the consistent
version significantly more quickly than the inconsistent version in the far condition ...
even though the relevant portions of the task were separated by 4 lines.
● The data from Huitema and his colleagues (1993) support the constructionist view.
Readers clearly try to connect material within a text passage, and they consult
information stored in long-term memory,
● During discourse processing, we try to construct a representation of the text that is
internally consistent, even when irrelevant material intervenes (Klin et al., 1999; Rayner
& Clifton, 2002; Underwood & Batt, 1996).
● In other research, readers talked out loud about the text passages that they were reading
(Suh & Trabasso, 1993; Trabasso & Suh, 1993). In some of these stories, the main
character had an initial goal that was blocked but later fulfilled.
● About 90% of the participants specifically mentioned the initial goal during their
comments about the last line. Suh and Trabasso emphasized that readers create causal
inferences in order to integrate discourse and construct a well-organized story

Representing the Text in Mental Models:

● Passages of text that lead unambiguously to a single mental model are easier to
comprehend than are passages that may lead to multiple mental models
● Bridging inference: This is an inference a reader or listener makes when a sentence seems
not to follow directly from the sentence preceding it.
● In essence, what is new in the second sentence goes one step too far beyond what is given
in the previous sentences.
● Read the following two pairs of two sentences:
○ 1. John took the picnic out of the trunk. The beer was warm. 2. John took the beer
out of the trunk. The beer was warm.
● Readers took about 180 milliseconds longer to read the first pair of sentences than the
second. Haviland and Clark suggested a reason for this greater processing time. It was
that, in the first pair, information needed to be inferred (the picnic included tea) that was
directly stated in the second pair. Factors affecting Inferences
○ Large working memory capacity
○ Good metacomprehension skills
○ Expertise about the topic

Higher level Inferences: Mental preference

● One kind of higher-level inference is based on our own preferences about the way we
 want a story to turn out.
● The research shows that readers who are involved in a story do develop strong mental
preferences for a particular outcome read.
● Readers integrate material into a cohesive unit, and they are puzzled if they encounter
something that contradicts the inferences they drew. Eg: unhappy ending vs happy ending
● Inferences may be relatively rare in scientific texts and relatively common in novels. In
novels, our own preferences may interfere with text comprehension.

● To summarize, our comprehension of what we read depends on several abilities.

○ First is gaining access to the meanings of words, either from memory or on the
basis of context.
○ Second is deriving meaning from the key ideas in what we read.
○ Third is extracting the key information from the text, based on the contexts
surrounding what we read.
○ And fourth is forming mental models that simulate the situations about which we
read.

Language Production

● Producing language is another one of those cognitive processes we achieve rapidly and
easily, but which is actually extremely complex.
● The act of speaking involves assembling strings of words that have been rapidly retrieved
from memory (more than 3 words per second for normal conversation)—and is drawn
from a lexicon of more than 50,000 words.
● Not only are the correct words rapidly retrieved, but they are produced in the correct
order and combined with other words to create a grammatically correct sentence
● Psychologists who study language production often examine how we retrieve
grammatical, semantic, and phonological information.
● Some researchers argue that speakers retrieve all three kinds of information at the same
time (Damian & Martin, 1999;Saffran & Schwartz,2003).
● According to this approach,for example,you look at an apple and simultaneously access
the grammatical properties of apple, the meaning of apple, and the phonemes in the word
apple.
● Other researchers argue that we access each kind of information independently, with little
interaction among these three components (Ferreira & Slevc,2009; Meyer & Belke,2009
● Miranda van Turennout and her colleagues (1998), who conducted research with
Dutch-speaking individuals.Dutch resembles languages such as Spanish,French,and
German,because Dutch nouns have a grammatical gender.
 ● These researchers presented pictures of objects and animals, and the participants tried to
name the object as quickly as possible
● Using the event-related potential technique, researchers demonstrated that speakers
access the grammatical gender of the word about 40 milliseconds before they access the
word’s phonological properties.
● These results suggest that we do not acquire all the different kinds of information at the
exact same moment. Instead, we literally use split-second timing.

Speech errors

● Researchers have been particularly interested in the kind of speech errors called
slips-of-the-tongue.
● “Slips of the tongue,” were made famous by Sigmund Freud, who suggested that slips of
the tongue reflected the speaker’s unconscious motivations
● Although slips of this kind, which have been called Freudian slips, do occur, there is little
to support Freud’s idea that all slips are caused by unconscious motivation.
● Rather than focusing on unconscious motivation, speech researchers have used speech
errors to provide insights into basic mechanisms of language
● One of the challenges of studying speech errors is to identify them as they occur only
about 1 or 2 times out of every 1,000 words in normal conversation
● Slips-of-the-tongue are errors in which sounds or entire words are rearranged between
two or more different words.
● These slips of the tongue are informative because they reveal our extensive knowledge
about the sounds, structure, and meaning of the language we are speaking (Dell et al.,
2008; Traxler, 2012).
● Types of Slip-of-the-Tongue Errors. Gary Dell and his coauthors propose that three kinds
of slips-of-the-tongue are especially common in English (Dell, 1995; Dell et al., 2008):
○ 1. Sound errors, which occur when sounds in nearby words are exchanged—for
example, snow flurries → flow snurries.
○ 2. Morpheme errors, which occur when morphemes (the smallest meaningful
units in language, such as -ly or in-) are exchanged in nearby words—for
example, self-destruct instruction → self-instruct destruction.
○ 3. Word errors, which occur when words are exchanged—for example, writing a
letter to my mother → writing a mother to my letter
● Furthermore, we are likely to create a word (e.g., leading), rather than a nonword (e.g.,
londing) when we make a slip-of-the-tongue error (Griffin & Ferreira, 2006; Rapp &
Goldrick, 2000).
● Finally, we seldom create a word that begins with an unlikely letter sequence. For
example, English speakers rarely create a slip-of-the-tongue such as dlorm when trying to
say dorm
 ● These two principles reflect the importance of our knowledge about the English
language's emphasis on top-down processing. In almost all cases, the errors occur across
items from the same category.
● The pattern of these errors suggests that the words we are currently pronouncing are
influenced by both the words we have already spoken and the words we are planning to
speak (Dell, Burger, & Svec, 1997).

Explanations for Speech Errors.

● Dell and his colleagues propose a comprehensive theory for speech errors that is similar
to the connectionist approach and includes the concept of spreading activation
● When you are about to speak, each element of the word you are planning to say will
activate the sound elements to which it is linked.
● The words in the tongue twister ‘‘She sells seashells’’ might activate each of the six
sounds in the last word, seashells
● Usually, we utter the sounds that are most highly activated, and usually these sounds are
the appropriate ones.
● However, each sound can be activated by several different words. Notice, for example,
that the sh sound in the sound-level representation of seashells (that is, seshelz) is highly
‘‘charged’’ because it receives activation from the first word in the sentence, she, as well
as the sh in seashells.
● As Dell (1995) emphasizes, incorrect items sometimes have activation levels that are just
as high as (or higher than) the correct items.
● The activation level for sh is just as high as the level for s. By mistake, a speaker may
select an incorrect sound in a sentence, such as ‘‘She sells seashells.’’

Identification of speech errors (2 main methods):

● Identification of speech errors:

● One way to identify speech errors is to note them as they happen in everyday speech.
● Problems with this method are:
○ This requires great vigilance by the researcher, who must always be ready to write
down an error when it occurs, and also a great deal of patience, because errors
happen so infrequently.
○ a biased sample because errors that are funny or bizarre (for example, switching
first letters to create “Hissing his mystery lecture”) are more likely to be noticed.
● Another method used for studying speech errors is creating them in the laboratory by
rapidly presenting word pairs and using a tone to instruct participants to repeat the pair
they just heard (Baars et al., 1975).
● This technique has the advantage of increasing the error rate to about 10 percent and also
 makes it possible to ask some specific questions about the conditions that result in speech
errors.
● For example, using this technique, Baars and coworkers (1975) found that slips that
create nonwords, like “beal dack” (when “deal back” was intended) are three times less
likely than ones that create meaningful words, like “real dead” (when “deal red” was
intended). Identification of speech errors:
○ A disadvantage of this laboratory technique is that it creates errors artificially. It is
therefore important to collect both laboratory-produced errors and errors that
occur naturally

Gestures:

● Gestures are visible movements of any part of your body, which you use to communicate
(Hostetter & Alibali, 2008;
● The same intentional gestures may convey different meanings in different cultures
● For example, suppose that you make a circle with your thumb and your first finger. This
gesture signifies ‘‘money’’ in Japan, and ‘‘perfect!’’ in France.
● However, in Malta—an island off the coast of Italy—this same gesture is an obscene
insult.
● Use of gestures in day to day life:
○ Define the word spiral
○ Give directions on how to walk from your current location to another location
about 10 minutes away.
○ Describe how you peel a carrot.Gestures:
● Gestures can also influence how you retrieve words(Goldin-Meadow & Beilock, 2010).
● For example, the spontaneous motor movements of your hands can sometimes help you
remember the word you want to produce
● ● In a representative study, Frick-Horbury and Guttentag (1998) read the definitions for
50 low-frequency, concrete English nouns.
● Then the researchers asked each participant to identify the target word. For example, the
definition ‘‘a pendulum-like instrument designed to mark exact time by regular ticking’’
was supposed to suggest the noun metronome.
● In this study, however, half of the participants were instructed to hold a rod with both
hands; therefore, their hand movements were restricted.
● The average score for these individuals was 19 words out of 50. In contrast, the
participants with unrestricted hand movements earned an average score of 24 words out
of 50.
● According to other similar research works, when our verbal system cannot retrieve a
word, a gesture can sometimes activate the relevant information (Brown, 2012).
● We frequently produce gestures when we speak, especially when we want to discuss a
 concept that is easier to describe with body movements than with words (Ambady &
Weisbuch, 2010).
● Embodied cognition emphasizes that people use their bodies to express their knowledge
(Hostetter & Alibali, 2008).
● There is an ongoing connection between our motor system and the way we process
spoken language, for eg, when we make gestures or indicate some kind of motion
(Hostetter & Alibali, 2008; Tomasello, 2008).
● The recent attention to embodied cognition has convinced many psychologists that we
frequently think nonverbally (Ambady & Weisbuch, 2010).
● Amber Hostetter (2011) conducted a meta-analysis of the 63 studies that addressed this
question. She found that gestures actually increase the listener’s understanding, especially
when the speaker is describing concrete actions

Producing sentences:

● Speech production requires a series of stages.

● I stage: we mentally plan the gist, or the overall meaning of the message we intend to
generate i.e. we begin by producing speech in a top-down fashion (Clark & Van Der
Wege, 2002; Griffin & Ferreira, 2006).
● II stage: we devise the general structure of the sentence, without selecting the exact
words (Harley, 2008; Kaschak et al., 2011)
● III stage: we select the specific words we want, abandoning other semantically similar
words (Griffin & Ferreira, 2006). We also select the appropriate grammatical form, such
as eating, rather than eat.
● IV stage: we convert these intentions into speech by articulating the phonemes (Carroll,
2004; Treiman et al., 2003).
● The stages of sentence production typically overlap in time.
● We often begin to plan the final part of a sentence before we have pronounced the first
part of that sentence (Fowler, 2003).
● Under ideal circumstances, a speaker moves rapidly through these four stages.Producing
sentences:
● During speaking, we also plan the prosody of an utterance, or the ‘‘melody’’ of its
intonation, rhythm, and emphasis (Keating, 2006).
● A speaker can use prosody to clarify an ambiguous message.
● Eg: Imagine someone saying “What is there ahead on the road?” and “What is there- a
head on the road?”Producing sentences:
● Problem in sentence production:
● We may have a general thought or a mental image that we want to express. These rather
shapeless thoughts and images must be translated into a statement that has a disciplined,
linear shape, with the words following one another in time.
 ● This challenge of arranging words in an ordered, linear sequence is called the
linearization problem (Griffin, 2004).

Producing Discourse:

● Most of the research focuses on producing words or isolated sentences

● Narrative- the type of discourse in which someone describes a series of actual or
fictional events related research:
● Storytellers usually have a specific goal that they want to convey.
● However, they do not completely preplan the organization at the beginning of the story
(H. H. Clark, 1994).
● Storytellers typically choose their words carefully, presenting their own actions in a
favorable light (Berger, 1997; Edwards, 1997)
● During speaking, the speaker usually conveys six parts of the narrative:
○ (1) a brief overview of the story,
○ (2) a summary of the characters and setting,
○ (3) an action that made the situation complicated,
○ (4) the point of the story,
○ (5) the resolution of the story, and
○ (6) the final signal that the narrative is complete (for eg, ‘‘ ... and so that’s why I
decided that I had to learn Japanese’’).
○ These features tend to make the story cohesive and well organized (H. H. Clark,
1994).

Conversations

Producing discourse/conversations:

● Although language can be produced by a single person talking alone, as when a person
recites a monologue or gives a speech, the most common form of language production is
conversation—two or more people talking with one another.
● While conversing, we don’t know what the other person would say. Still we are able to
respond efficiently.
● One way that people deal with these difficulties is that they coordinate their conversations
on both semantic and syntactic levels

Semantic coordination:
 ● When people are talking about a topic, each person brings his or her own knowledge to
the conversation, and conversations go more smoothly when the participants bring shared
knowledge to a conversation.
● But even when everyone brings similar knowledge to a conversation, it helps when
speakers take steps to guide their listeners through the conversation.
● One way this can be achieved is by following the given–new contract.
● The given–new contract states that the speaker should construct sentences so they include
two kinds of information:
○ Given information—information that the listener already knows; and
○ New information—information that the listener is hearing for the first time
(Haviland & Clark, 1974).
○ Example: 1. John was given a toy aeroplane for his birthday.
○ Given information (from previous conversation): John had a birthday. New
information: He got a toy aeroplane. The aeroplane was his favorite present.
○ Given information (from sentence 1): John got a toy aeroplane.
○ New information: It was his favorite present.
● Susan Haviland and Herbert Clark (1974): demonstrated the consequences of not
following the given–new contract by presenting pairs of sentences and asking participants
to press a button when they felt they understood the second sentence in each pair.
● They found that it took longer for the participants to comprehend the second sentence in
pairs like this one:
● We checked the picnic supplies. The beer was warm. than it took to comprehend the
second sentence in pairs like this one:
● We got some beer out of the trunk. The beer was warm. (Bridging inference)

Syntactic coordination

● When two people exchange statements in a conversation, it is common for them to use
similar grammatical constructions.
● Kathryn Bock (1990) provides the following example, taken from a recorded
conversation between a bank robber and his lookout, which was intercepted by a radio
operator as the robber was removing the equivalent of a million dollars from a bank vault
in England.
○ Robber: “. . . you’ve got to hear and witness it to realize how bad it is.”
○ Lookout: “You have got to experience exactly the same position as me, mate, to
understand how I feel.”
● This copying of form reflects a phenomenon called syntactic priming—hearing a
statement with a particular syntactic construction increases the chances that a sentence
will be produced with the same construction.
● Syntactic priming is important because it can lead people to coordinate the grammatical
 form of their statements during a conversation.
● Holly Branigan and coworkers (2000) illustrated syntactic priming to set up a
give-and-take between two people.
● In a syntactic priming experiment two people engage in a conversation, and the
experimenter determines whether production of a specific grammatical construction by
one person increases the chances that the same construction will be used by the other
person.
● Participants in Branigan’s experiment were told that the experiment was about how
people communicate when they can’t see each other (Branigan et al. 2000).
● They thought they were working with another participant who was on the other side of a
screen. In reality, the person on the other side of the screen was a confederate who was
working with the experimenter.
● The confederate began the experiment by making a priming statement. This statement
was in one of the following two forms:
○ “The girl gave the book to the boy.”
○ “The girl gave the boy the book.
● The participant had two tasks:
○ (1) find the matching card on the table that corresponded to the confederate’s
statement, as shown on the right of Figure 10.12a;
○ (2) describe one of the response cards to the confederate.
● We can conclude that syntactic priming has occurred if the form of the participant’s
statement to the confederate matches the form of the confederate’s original statement.
● Branigan found that on 78 percent of the trials, the form of the participant’s statement
matched the form of the confederate’s priming statement.
● Thus, if the participant heard the confederate say “The girl gave the boy the book,” this
increased the chances that the participant would describe a response card: “The father
brought his daughter a present” (instead of “The father brought a present for his
daughter” or some other construction).
● This coordination of syntactic form between speakers reduces the computational load
involved in creating a conversation because it is easier to copy the form of someone
else’s sentence than it is to create your own form from scratch.

Pragmatics

● Pragmatics: Conversation is like a complicated dance (Clark, 1985, 1994). Speakers

cannot simply utter words aloud and expect to be understood. Instead, these speakers
must consider their conversation partners, make numerous assumptions about those
partners, and design appropriate utterances
● Similarly, two speakers must coordinate turn taking, they must agree on the meaning of
ambiguous terms, and they must understand each other’s intentions
 ● Pragmatics focuses on the social rules and world knowledge that allow speakers to
successfully communicate messages to other people (De Groot, 2011)
● Researchers have focused on three major topics to understand pragmatics:
○ Common ground
○ Understanding directives
● Common ground: occurs when conversationalists share the similar background
knowledge, schemas, and perspectives that are necessary for mutual understanding
(Harley, 2008; Holtgraves, 2010; Traxler, 2012).
● In fact, the speakers need to collaborate to make certain that they share common ground
with their conversational partners
● Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs (1986) conducted a classic study on the collaboration process
that we use when trying to establish common ground.
○ The participants in Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs’s (1986) study played a game for six
trials; each trial consisted of arranging twelve figures in order.
○ On the first trial, Person 1 (director) required an average of nearly four turns to
describe each figure and make certain that Person 2 (matcher) understood the
reference.
○ The director and the matcher soon developed a mutual shorthand (for example an
ice skater), and the number of required turns decreased rapidly over trials.
● Research confirms that people who work together collaboratively can quickly and
efficiently develop common ground

Neurolinguistics:-

● Neurolinguistics is the discipline that examines how the brain processes language. It
demonstrates that the neurological basis of language is very complicated

Aphasia:

● A person with aphasia has difficulty communicating, caused by damage to the speech
areas of the brain. This damage is typically caused by a stroke or a tumor (Gazzaniga et
al., 2009)
● Brain areas related with language: Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area
● Broca’s area: language production; Wernicke’s area: language comprehension

Broca’s Aphasia:

● Broca’s area is one of the locations of the brain that manages motor movement.To
 produce speech,you must move your lips and tongue. Therefore, it makes sense that these
individuals have trouble with speech production.
● However, people with Broca’s aphasia may also have some minor trouble with language
comprehension

Wernicke’s Aphasia:

● Wernicke’s area is located toward the back of the brain.

● Damage to Wernicke’s area typically produces serious difficulties understanding
language (Gazzaniga et al., 2009;Harley,2001).
● Infact, people with Wernicke’s aphasia often have such severe problems with language
comprehension that they cannot understand basic instructions such as,‘‘Point to the
telephone’’ or ‘‘Show me the picture of the watch.’’
● However, many people with Wernicke’s aphasia also have problems with language
production, as well as language comprehension.
● They usually have relatively few pauses, compared to someone with Broca’s aphasia

Hemispheric specialization:

● Left hemisphere: Mostly its role is implicated in language processing for majority of
people. However for about 5% of right-handers and about 50% of left-handers, language
is either localized in the right hemisphere or is processed equally by both hemispheres.
● Right hemisphere: For many years, people thought that the right hemisphere did not play
a major role in language processing.However, we now know that this hemisphere does
perform some tasks. For example, the right hemisphere is active when you are paying
attention to the emotional tone of a message.
● It also plays a role in appreciating humor (Harley, 2010). In general, then, the right
hemisphere is responsible for more abstract language tasks
● The left and right hemispheres often work together on tasks such as interpreting subtle
word meanings, resolving ambiguities, and combining the meaning of several sentences
SOMETIMES I WAKE UP GRUMPY. OTHER TIMES I LET HIM SLEEP IN.

Language and thought

● Different languages comprise different lexicons.

● For example, in terms of lexicon, the Garo of Burma distinguish among many kinds of
rice, which is understandable because they are a rice-growing culture. Nomadic Arabs
have more than 20 words for camels. These people clearly conceptualize rice and camels
 more specifically and in more complex ways than do people outside their cultural groups
● The syntactical structures of languages differ, too. Almost all languages permit some way
in which to communicate actions, agents of actions, and objects of actions Language and
thought:
● For example, in describing past actions in English, we indicate whether an action took
place in the past by changing (inflecting) the verb form.
● For example, walk changes to walked in the past tense.
● In Spanish and German, the verb also must indicate whether the agent of action was
singular or plural and whether it is being referred to in the first, second, or third person.
● In Turkish, the verb form must additionally indicate whether the action was witnessed or
experienced directly by the speaker or was noted only indirectly.

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis:

● The concept relevant to the question of whether language influences thinking is linguistic
relativity.
● Linguistic relativity refers to the assertion that speakers of different languages have
differing cognitive systems and that these different cognitive systems influence the ways
in which people think about the world.
● Thus, according to the relativity view, the Garo would think about rice differently than
we do. Conclusion: language may not determine thought, but that language certainly may
influence thought. Our thoughts and our language interact in myriad ways

Writing

● Writing vs. speaking:

● Writing consists of three phases:
○ Planning,
○ Sentence generation, and
○ Revising (Mayer, 2004). However these tasks often overlap in time (Kellogg,
1994, 1996; Ransdell & Levy, 1999).
● Cognitive aspects of Writing:
● Working memory: Kellogg et al. (2007): asked college students to write definitions for
words, while they worked on a secondary task at the same time. There were three
different kinds of secondary tasks, each focusing on a specific component of working
memory. If the students responded more slowly on a particular secondary task, Kellogg
and his coauthors reasoned that this particular skill would be an important component of
writing.
● To test whether the phonological loop is active during writing, Kellogg and his
colleagues included a specific secondary task.
○ This task required students to remember a spoken syllable.
○ The results showed that—when the students were writing—they required
significantly longer time to remember the syllables. Therefore, the phonological
loop seems to be an important factor when we write.
● Visuo-spatial sketchpad: To test whether the visual part of the sketchpad is active
during writing, another secondary task required students to remember the visual shape of
the item.
○ The results showed that, when students were writing about concrete nouns, they
required significantly longer to remember the item’s visual shape.
○ However, when they wrote about abstract nouns, they showed no delay in
remembering the item’s visual shape.
 ○ So, visual information is relevant when you are trying to define a concrete word,
because you are likely to create a mental image.
○ In contrast, visual activity is minimal when you are trying to define an abstract
word.
● To examine the spatial part of the sketchpad, Kellogg and his coauthors included a
different secondary task.
○ This task required the students to remember a particular location, while they were
writing definitions.
○ In this case, the students’ reaction times were not affected by the writing task. In
general, then, writing does not require us to emphasize locations.
● Central Executive: Because writing is such a complex task, the central executive is
active in virtually every phase of the writing process (Kellogg, 1996, 1998, 2001a).
○ For example, it coordinates the planning phase, and it is also essential when we
generate sentences. In addition, the central executive oversees the revision
process. Because the central executive has a limited capacity, many people report
that formal writing is a stressful task.
● Long-term memory: Long-term memory is also vitally important during writing.
● Several important factors that influence long-term memory include the following: the
writer’s semantic memory, specific expertise about the topic, general schemas, and
knowledge about the writing style to be used for the particular assignment (Kellogg,
2001b; McCutchen et al., 2008).
○ Pre-writing: Generating a list of key ideas/planning an outline of to be written
information
○ Fluent vs hesitant phases: pattern of pauses alternating with fluent writing
○ Writing errors: Researchers believe that writing errors are usually confined to a
spelling error within a single word, whereas speaking errors often reflect switches
between words (Berg, 2002).
● Writing: Stages
○ Planning:
○ Sentence generation
○ RevisionWriting:

The revision phase

● When writing their first draft, writers have numerous opportunities to make mistakes
(Kellogg, 1998).
● Revision task will include checking for organization and coherence, assessing whether
writer has achieved his goal
● The most effective writers use flexible revision strategies, and they make substantial
changes if their paper doesn’t accomplish its goal (Harley, 2001).
 ● However, college students typically devote little time to revising a paper (Mayer, 2004).
● Metacognition inaccurate Hayes and his colleagues (1987) conducted a classic study,
comparing how first-year college students and expert writers revised a poorly written
two-page letter.
● Most first-year students revised the text one sentence at a time.
● They fixed relatively minor problems with spelling and grammar, but they ignored
problems of organization, focus, and transition between ideas.
● Proofreading: According to Daneman & Stainton (1993): You can proofread someone
else’s writing more accurately than your own.
● When you are very familiar with a paper that you’ve just written, you often overlook the
errors in the text. (Top-down processing)

Bilingualism:

● A bilingual speaker is someone who is fluent in two different languages (Harley, 2008;
Schwartz & Kroll, 2006).
● Simultaneous bilingualism: bilinguals learn two languages simultaneously during
childhood,
● Sequential bilingualism: their native language is referred to as their first language, and
the non-native language that they acquire is their second language
● The world has between 6,000 and 7,000 languages (Ku, 2006; Segalowitz, 2010). Even
so, almost all of the research on bilingualism includes English as one of the two
languages (Bassetti & Cook, 2011).

Background of bilingualism:

● During the early 1900s, theorists proposed that bilingualism produced cognitive deficits
because the brain must store two linguistic systems (Erwin-Tripp, 2011; De Groot, 2011).
● However, in the 1960s, researchers controlled for factors such as age and social class.
They discovered that bilingual children actually scored higher than monolinguals on a
variety of tasks.

Advantages of bilingualism:

● Bilinguals actually acquire more expertise in their native (first) language For example,
English-speaking Canadian children whose classes are taught in French gain greater
understanding of English-language structure
● Bilingual children are also more likely to realize that a word such as rainbow can be
divided into two morphemes, rain and bow (Campbell & Sais, 1995).
● Bilinguals are more aware that the names assigned to concepts are arbitrary (Cromdal,
 1999; De Groot, 2011; Hakuta, 1986). For example, many monolingual children cannot
imagine that a cow could just as easily have been assigned the name dog.
● A number of studies have examined metalinguistics, or knowledge about the form and
structure of language. On many measures of metalinguistic skill—but not all of
them—bilinguals outperform monolinguals
● Bilinguals excel at paying selective attention to relatively subtle aspects of a language
task, while ignoring more obvious linguistic characteristics. For example, Bialystok and
Majumder (1998) gave third-grade children some sentences like: ‘‘Apples grow on
noses’’ Is this grammatically correct?
● Bialystok and Majumder (1998) gave third-grade children some sentences that were
grammatically correct but semantically incorrect (for example, ‘‘Apples grow on
noses’’).The bilingual children were more likely than the monolingual children to
recognize that the sentence was grammatically correct
● Bialystok (2009) also reported that bilingual individuals perform better on the Stroop
Test, a task that requires people to emphasize an item’s color and ignore its meaning.
Bialystok (2005) proposes that these experiences with selective attention may facilitate
the development of a portion of the frontal lobe, labeled ‘‘executive attention network’’
● Bilingual children are better at following complicated instructions and performing tasks
where the instructions change from one trial to the next (Bialystok, 2005, 2009).
Bialystok and Martin (2004) asked preschoolers to sort some cards that featured either a
blue circle, a red circle, a blue square, or a red square. The researchers first instructed
them to sort the cards on one dimension (e.g., shape).
● Later, the researchers instructed them to sort the cards on the other dimension (e.g.,
color). Bilingual children were much faster than monolingual children in switching to the
new dimension.
● Bilinguals perform better on concept-formation tasks and on tests of non-verbal
intelligence that require reorganization of visual patterns (Peal & Lambert, 1962).
● Bilinguals also score higher on problem-solving tasks that require them to ignore
irrelevant information (Bialystok, 2001; Bialystok & Codd, 1997)Advantages of
bilingualism:
● Bilingual adults who have dementia typically develop signs of dementia later than
monolingual adults with dementia (Bialystok, 2009; Bialystok et al., 2007). ● For
example, Bialystok and her coauthors (2007) examined the medical history of 184 people
at a memory clinic. All of them had a medical diagnosis of dementia. However, the
bilinguals had received this diagnosis at the average age of 75.5, in contrast to an average
age of 71.4 for the monolinguals.

Disadvantages of bilingualism:

● People who use two languages extensively may subtly alter how they pronounce some
 speech sounds in both languages (Gollan et al., 2005).
● Bilingual individuals may also process language slightly more slowly, in comparison to
monolinguals.
● Bilingual children may have somewhat smaller vocabularies for words that are used in a
home setting (Bialystok, 2009; Bialystok et al., 2010). ●
● however, these disadvantages are far outweighed by the advantages of being able to
communicate effectively in two languages (Michael & Gollan, 2005).

Second-Language Proficiency as a Function of Age of Acquisition:

● Age of acquisition refers to the age at which you learned a second language.
● According to the critical period hypothesis, your ability to acquire a second language is
strictly limited to a specific period of your life.
● Specifically, the critical period hypothesis proposes that individuals who have already
reached a specified age—perhaps early puberty—will no longer be able to acquire a new
language with native-like fluency.
● Second-Language Proficiency as a Function of Age of Acquisition:
● Fortunately, however, the current research evidence does not support a clear-cut,
biologically based ‘‘deadline’’ for learning a second language (Bialystok 2001; Birdsong,
2006; De Groot, 2011; Wiley et al., 2005).
● Phonology. The research suggests that age of acquisition does influence the mastery of
phonology, or the sounds of a person’s speech.
● Specifically, people who acquire a second language during childhood are more likely to
pronounce words like a native speaker of that language.
● In contrast, those who acquire a second language during adulthood are more likely to
have a foreign accent when they speak their new language (Bialystok, 2001; Flege et al.,
1999; MacKay et al., 2006).
● For example, Flege and his coauthors (1999) tested people who had immigrated to the
United States from Korea when they were between the ages of 1 and 23 years. At the
time of the study, all participants had lived in the United States for at least eight years.
● To test phonology, Flege and his colleagues asked their participants to listen to an English
sentence, and then repeat it. The phonology of each sentence was later judged by
speakers whose native language was English.
● Korean immigrants who had arrived in the United States during childhood typically had
minimal accents when speaking English; you can see that most have scores of 7 or 8.
● Those who had arrived as adolescents or adults usually had stronger accents, with scores
of 2 to 4.
● However, notice the fairly smooth decline with age of acquisition, rather than the abrupt
drop predicted by the critical period hypothesis (Bialystok, 2001). In later research,
MacKay and his coauthors (2006) found similar results in phonology, with people who
 had emigrated from Italy.

● Grammar: The controversy about age of acquisition is strongest when we consider

mastery of grammar (e.g., Bialystok, 2001; Johnson & Newport, 1989).
● The study by Flege and his coauthors (1999); These researchers also examined how the
native speakers of Korean had mastered English grammar. Specifically, the researchers
ask the participants to judge whether a variety of English sentences were grammatical.
● Here are three representative examples of ungrammatical sentences:
○ 1. Should have Timothy gone to the party?
○ 2. Susan is making some cookies for we.
○ 3. Todd has many coat in his closet.
● The initial analysis of the data showed that those who had learned English during
childhood had better mastery of English grammar. However, Flege and his colleagues
(1999) then discovered that the ‘‘early arrivers’’ had much more experience in U.S.
schools and therefore more formal education in the English language
● In other words, the ‘‘early arrivers’’ had an unfair advantage. The researchers therefore
conducted a second analysis, by carefully matching some of the early arrivers with some
of the late arrivers. Each subgroup had an average of 10.5 years of U.S. education.
● In this second analysis, the early arrivers received an average score of 84% on the
grammar test, virtually identical to the average score of 83% for the late arrivers.
● In other words, once we control for years of education in the United States, age of
acquisition is not related to an individual’s mastery of English grammar (Flege et al.,
1999).
● So far, we have emphasized the grammatical performance of people with an Asian first
language, a language that is very different from English.
● Following variables have been studied for examining relationship of age with language
acquisition
○ Vocabulary - Age of acquisition is not related to vocabulary in the new language.
○ Phonology Age of acquisition is related to phonology.
○ Grammar- Age of acquisition is sometimes related to grammar for people whose
first language is different from English; but there may be no relationship when the
first language is similar to English
● Several studies report that adults and children are equally skilled in learning words in
their new language (Bialystok & Hakuta, 1994).
● This finding makes sense, because people continue to learn new terms in their own
language throughout their lifetime.
 UNIT 5- Higher Cognitive Processes

● Problem occurs when there is an obstacle between a present state and a goal and it is not
immediately obvious how to get around the obstacle
● You use problem solving when you want to reach a specified goal; however, the solution
is not immediately obvious because you are missing important information and/or it is
not clear how to reach the goal
● The nature of these problems may differ. However, every problem includes three
components: Newel and Simon
○ (1) the initial state,- The initial state describes the situation at the beginning of the
problem
○ (2) the goal state- You reach the goal state when you solve the problem
○ (3) the obstacles.- The obstacles describe the restrictions that make it difficult to
proceed from the initial state to the goal state (Thagard, 2005).

Problem solving cycle:

● Problem identification: Do we have a prob?

● Problem definition: What exactly is the prob?
● Strategy formulation: How to solve the prob?
● Organization of information: how do various pieces of
● info fit together?
● Allocation of resources: Global vs local planning
● Monitoring: Am I on the right track?
● Evaluation: Did I solve the problem correctly
Problem representation

● Problem representation refers to the way you translate the elements of the problem into a
different format. If you choose an appropriate representation, you are more likely to reach
an effective solution to the problem.
● Your representation of the problem must show the essential information that you need in
order to solve it. Some of the most effective methods of representing problems include
symbols, matrices, diagrams, and visual images

Symbols.

● Sometimes the most effective way to represent an abstract problem is by using symbols,
as you learned to do in high school algebra
● A major challenge is that problem solvers often make mistakes when they try to translate
words into symbols (Mayer, 2004).
● One common error is that they reverse the roles of the two variables (Fisher et al., 2011).
● An additional error may occur when problem solvers try to translate sentences into
symbols: They may oversimplify the sentence, so that they misrepresent the information
(Mayer, 2004).

Matrices.

● You can solve some problems effectively by using a matrix, which is a grid consisting of
rows and columns; it shows all possible combinations of items (Hurley & Novick, 2010).
● A matrix is an excellent way to keep track of items, particularly if the problem is
complex and if the relevant information is categorical (Halpern, 2003). For example, you
can solve

Diagrams.

● Diagrams allow you to represent abstract information in a concrete fashion. They also let
you discard unnecessary details (Bassok & Novick, 2012; Reed, 2010; Reif, 2008;
Schneider et al., 2010).
● Diagrams can also be useful when you want to represent a large amount of information
and can represent complicated information in a clear, concrete form. As a result, you have
more ‘‘mental space’’ in your working memory for solving other parts of the problem
(Halpern, 2003; Hurley & Novick, 2006).

Visual Images.
 ● A visual image allows us to escape from the boundaries of traditional, concrete
representations.
● Good visual-imagery skills also provide an advantage when a problem requires you to
construct a figure (Gorman, 2006; Pylyshyn, 2006).

Types of Problems:

● Well-defined problem/non-insight problems- The problems presented are similar in at

least one respect: They fall into the class of problems called well defined. Well-defined
problems have a clear goal (you know immediately if you’ve reached the solution),
present a small set of information to start from, and often (but not always) present a set of
rule
● Ill-defined problem/insight problems or guidelines to abide by while you are working
toward a solution. In contrast, ill-defined problems don’t have their goals, starting
information, or steps clearly spelled out.

Gestaltist view:

● Insight problem solvers need to perceive problem as a whole.

● Acc to Wertheimer, insightful (productive) thinking involves insights that go beyond the
bounds of existing associations
● Insight problem solvers show poor ability to predict their own success as compared to
non-insight problem solvers. Insight is not sudden but often occurs gradually and
incrementally over time.
● Insight is important in ill-defined problems because you need to see the problem in a
novel way. Insight is a distinctive and sometimes seemingly sudden understanding of a
problem or of a strategy that aids in solving the problem.
● Often, an insight involves reconceptualizing a problem or a strategy in a totally new way.
● Insight often involves detecting and combining relevant old and new information to gain
a novel view of the problem or of its solution.
● Although insights may feel as though they are sudden, they are often the result of much
prior thought and hard work.
● When you solve an insight problem, the problem initially seems impossible to solve, but
then an alternative approach suddenly bursts into your consciousness. In general, people
who have a large working-memory capacity solve insight problems relatively quickly
Role of top down processes?Insight vs non-insight problems:

● In contrast, when you work on a noninsight problem, you solve the problem gradually,
by using your memory, reasoning skills, and a routine set of strategies(Davidson, 1995) ●
Top-down processing may prevent you from solving an insight problem. In contrast,
noninsight problems— such as straightforward algebra problems—typically do benefit
from top-down processing (McCormick, 2003)
● Non- Insight problems: Eg: Mathematical calculations (⅕)x+10= 25 ● Insight problems:
two string problem, Duncker’s candle problem
● Failure to solve insight problems: role of top-down processes; functional fixedness and
other obstacles

Ill structured problem example: A woman who lived in a small town married 20 different men in
that same town. All of them are still living, and she never divorced any of them. Yet she broke no
laws. How could she do this?

Ill structured problem/insight example: The Sahara Problem(based on Perkins,2001). Suppose

That You are driving through the Sahara Desert in Africa. Suddenly,you see someone lying face
down in the sand. When you explore further, you see that it’s a dead man. You cannot see any
tracks anywhere nearby,and there have been no recent winds to erase the tracks.You look in a
pack on the man’s back.What do you find?

Ill structured problem example: (Duncker’s candle problem; 1945) You are in a room with a
cork board on the wall. You are given some candles, matches in a matchbox, and some thumb
pins. Your task is to mount a burning candle on the corkboard so it will burn without dripping
wax on the floor

Problem solving strategies:

Duncker’s radiation problem (1945): Suppose you are a doctor faced with a patient who has a
malignant tumor in his stomach. You cannot operate on the patient because of the severity of
tumor, but unless the tumor is destroyed the patient will die. High intensity X rays can be used to
destroy the tumor. Unfortunately, the intensity of the X rays needed to destroy the tumor also will
destroy the health tissue through which the rays must pass. X rays of lower intensity will spare
the tissue but they will be insufficiently powerful to destroy the tumor. What type of procedure
might be used to destroy the tumor with the rays and at the same time avoid destroying the
healthy tissue?

The military problem: A small country was ruled from a strong fortress by a dictator. The
fortress was situated in the middle of the country, surrounded by farms and villages. Many roads
led to the fortress through the countryside. A rebel general vowed to capture the fortress. The
general knew that an attack by his entire army would capture the fortress. He gathered his army
at the head of one of the roads, ready to launch a full-scale direct attack. However, the general
then learned that the dictator had planted mines on each of the roads. The mines were set so that
small bodies of men could pass over them safely, since the dictator needed to move his troops
and workers to and from the fortress. However, any large force would detonate the mines. It
therefore seemed impossible to capture the fortress. What should the general do?

Solution of the military problem: However, the general devised a simple plan. He divided his
armies into small groups and dispatched each group to the head of a different road. When all
was ready, he gave the signal and each group marched down a different road. Each group
continued down its road so that the entire army arrived together at the fortress at the same time.
In this way, the general captured the fortress and overthrew the dictator.

Heuristics

1. Analogy approach:
● Participants who received the military problem with the convergence solution and then
were given a hint to apply it in some way to the radiation problem.
● About 75% of the participants reached the correct solution to the radiation problem.
● This figure compared with less than 10% of the participants who did not receive the
military story first but instead received no prior story or only an irrelevant one (Holyaak,
1983).
● When participants were asked to memorize the military story under the guise that it was a
story-recall experiment and then were given the radiation problem to solve Only 30% of
participants produced the convergence solution to the radiation problem.
● Positive transfer was seen when an isomorphic problem was given and its solution told to
the participants.
● The investigators also found that positive transfer improved if two, rather than just one,
analogous problems were given in advance of the radiation problem. Problem solving
strategies:
● When you use the analogy approach in problem solving, you employ a solution to a
similar, earlier problem to help you solve a new problem (Benjamin & Ross, 2011;
Leighton & Sternberg, 2003)
● Research clearly shows that people often fail to see the analogy between a problem they
have solved and a new problem isomorph that has similar structural features (e.g., Barnett
& Ceci, 2002) as they focus only on surface features rather than structural features.
● People often have trouble solving the same problem in a new setting; they fail to transfer
their knowledge.
● Similarly, they have trouble solving the same problem when it is ‘‘dressed up’’ with a
 superficially different cover story (Bassok, 2003).
● People who have limited problem-solving skills and limited metacognitive ability are
especially likely to have difficulty using analogies

2. Problem solving strategies: Heuristics - Means End

● Means End: The means-ends heuristic has two important components:
○ (1) First, you divide the problem into a number of subproblems, or smaller
problems, and
○ (2) then you try to reduce the difference between the initial state and the goal state
for each of the subproblems (Bassok & Novick, 2012).
● Means-ends heuristic requires you to identify the ‘‘ends’’ (or final result) that you want
and then figure out the ‘‘means’’ or methods that you will use to reach those ends
● On a daily basis, we solve problems by using means-ends analysis.
● Research demonstrates that people do organize problems in terms of subproblems.
● For example, Greeno (1974) showed that people pause at points in the problem when
they begin to tackle a subproblem and need to organize a sequence of moves. Working
memory is especially active during such actions
● Sometimes the correct solution to a problem requires you to move backward, temporarily
increasing the difference between the initial state and the goal state. Eg: Elves goblin
problem
● The research confirms that people are reluctant to move away from the goal state—even
if the correct solution requires you to make this temporary detour (Bassok & Novick,
2012; R. Morris et al., 2005).
● Computer simulation: Allen Newell and Herbert Simon (1972, 1995, 1999) developed
a theory that featured subgoals and reducing the difference between the initial state and
the goal state
● In 1972, Newell and Simon developed a now-classic computer simulation called General
Problem Solver. General Problem Solver (GPS) is a program whose basic strategy is
means-ends analysis.
● The goal of the GPS is to mimic the processes that normal humans use when they tackle
these problems (Lovett, 2002; Simon, 1996).
● GPS has several different methods of operating, including the difference-reduction
strategy
● Newell and Simon (1972) began by asking participants to talk out loud while working on
a relevant problem. They used the narrative from the participants to create specific
computer simulations.
● However, Newell and Simon eventually discarded the GPS because its generality was not
as great as they had wished, especially because real-life problems are not so clear cut
● John Anderson (1995, 2001, 2008) and his colleagues have designed and tested many
computer simulations for solving problems

3. Problem solving strategies: Hill climbing heuristics

● Hill climbing heuristic: To understand this heuristic, imagine that you are hiking along a
path in an unfamiliar area. Your goal is to reach the top of a hill. Just ahead, you see a
fork in this path. Unfortunately, you cannot see far into the distance on either of the two
paths. Because your goal is to climb upward, you select the path that has the steepest
incline.
● Similarly, if you are using the hill-climbing heuristic—and you reach a choice
point—you consistently choose the alternative that seems to lead most directly toward
your goal (Lovett, 2002; Ward & Morris, 2005).
● The hill-climbing heuristic can be useful when you do not have enough information about
your alternatives, because you can see only the immediate next step.
● However, like many heuristics, the hill-climbing heuristic can lead you astray. The
biggest drawback to this heuristic is that problem solvers must consistently choose the
alternative that appears to lead most directly toward the goal.
● For example, a hillside path that seems to lead upward may quickly come to an abrupt
end.
● Similarly, a student whose career goal is to earn a high salary may decide to take a job
immediately after graduation. Although a post graduate degree would probably yield
greater long-term benefits.
● Sometimes the best solution to a problem requires us to move temporarily
backward—away from the goal (Lovett, 2002). In doing so, they may fail to choose an
indirect alternative, which may have greater long-term benefits.
● The major point to remember about the hill-climbing heuristic is that it encourages
short-term goals, rather than long-term solutions.

4. Problem solving strategies: Availability Heuristics ●

● The availability heuristic is when you make a judgment about something based on how
available examples are in your mind. So, this heuristic has a lot to do with your memory
of specific instances and what you’ve been exposed to.
● Examples: Judging the frequency of deaths from different causes.
● People tend to overestimate the number of deaths from, say, airplane crashes, but
underestimate the number of deaths from, say, asthma.
● This is because people hear about deaths from airplane crashes in the news, so they can
 bring to mind a fair number of examples of this, but they can’t bring to mind examples of
people dying from asthma.
● This is why reading the news can actually be misleading, since rare instances can be
covered to the point of seeming commonplace.
● “Are there more words that begin with “r” or that have “r” as their third letter?”
● To answer this question, you can’t help but bring specific words to mind. Words that
begin with “r” are easy to think of; words that have “r” as their third letter are harder to
think of, so many people answer this question with “words that begin with ‘r’” when in
fact, that’s the wrong answer

5. Problem solving strategies: Representativeness Heuristic

● The representativeness heuristic: involves making a decision by comparing the present
situation to the most representative mental prototype.
● When you are trying to decide if someone is trustworthy, you might compare aspects of
the individual to other mental examples you hold.
● A sweet older woman might remind you of your grandmother, so you might immediately
assume that she is kind, gentle and trustworthy.
● If you meet someone who is into yoga, spiritual healing and aromatherapy you might
immediately assume that she works as a holistic healer rather than something like a
school teacher or nurse.
● Because her traits match up to your mental prototype of a holistic healer, the
representativeness heuristic causes you to classify her as more likely to work in that
profession.
● In this way, representativeness is basically stereotyping.
● While availability has more to do with memory of specific instances, representativeness
has more to do with memory of a prototype, stereotype or average. “Linda the bank
teller” – this is one of the most famous examples (Tversky & Kahneman, 1983).

6. Problem solving strategies: Affect Heuristic

● It involves making choices that are strongly influenced by the emotions that an individual
is experiencing at that moment.
● Research has shown that people are more likely to see decisions as having higher benefits
and lower risks when they are in a positive mood.
● Negative emotions, on the other hand, lead people to focus on the potential downsides of
a decision rather than the possible benefits
Factors influencing problem solving

● Expertise
● Mental set
● Functional fixedness
● Gender stereotype threat
● Emotions and motivation
● Irrelevant/misleading information
● Assumptions

Expertise : An individual with expertise demonstrates consistently exceptional skill and

performance on representative tasks for a particular area

● Knowledge Base. Experts and novices differ substantially in their knowledge base and
schemas
● As Michelene Chi (1981) found in her classic study of physics problem solving, the
novices simply lacked important knowledge about the principles of physics.
● Memory: Experts differ from novices with respect to their memory for information
related to their area of expertise (Chi, 2006; Robertson, 2001).
● The memory skills of experts tend to be very specific. For example, expert chess players
have much better memory than novices for various chess positions (Chi, 2006; Gobet &
Simon, 1996a).
● Factors influencing problem solving: When experts encounter a novel problem in their
area of expertise, they are more likely than novices to use the means-ends heuristic
effectively (Sternberg & Ben-Zeev, 2001). ●
● They are also more likely to approach a problem systematically, whereas novices are
more likely to have a haphazard approach (Reif, 2008).
● Speed and accuracy: Experts are much faster than novices, and they solve problems
very accurately (Chi, 2006; Ericsson, 2003b; Ericsson & Towne, 2010).
● Their operations become more automatic, and a particular stimulus situation also quickly
triggers a response (Bransford et al., 2000; Glaser & Chi, 1988; Robertson, 2001).
● On some tasks, experts may solve problems faster because they use parallel processing,
rather than serial processing. (Eg: solving anagram problems)
● Metacognitive skills: Experts are better than novices at monitoring their problem
solving.
● For example, experts seem to be better at judging the difficulty of a problem, and they
are more skilled at allocating their time appropriately when solving problems (Bransford
et al., 2000).
 ● According to a study of people who are the expert inventors skillfully monitor ideas, to
see that they are useful, as well as creative (Mieg, 2011). Experts can also recover
relatively quickly when they realize that they have made an error (Feltovich et al., 2006).

Mental Set: A common problem-solving obstacle is known as a mental set, which is the
tendency people have to only use solutions that have worked in the past rather than looking for
alternative ideas.

● A mental set can often work as a heuristic, making it a useful problem-solving tool.
However, mental sets can also lead to inflexibility, making it more difficult to find
effective solutions.
● If you have a mental set, you close your mind prematurely, and you stop thinking about
how to solve a problem effectively (Kruglanski, 2004; Zhaoetal.,2011).
● Mental set represents overactive top down processing- Eg: Abraham Luchins’s (1942)
water-jar problem
● If you have a fixed mindset, you believe that you possess a certain amount of intelligence
and other skills, and no amount of effort can help you perform better. You give up on
trying to discover new ways to improve your abilities.
● In contrast, if you have a growth mindset, you believe that you can cultivate your
intelligence and other skills. You challenge yourself to perform better,

Functional Fixedness: This term refers to the tendency to view problems only in their
customary manner.

● Functional fixedness prevents people from fully seeing all of the different options that
might be available to find a solution.
● Mental set refers to our problem-solving strategies, whereas functional fixedness refers to
the way we think about physical objects. Specifically, functional fixedness means that we
tend to assign fixed functions to an object.
● As a result, we fail to think about the features of this object that might be useful in
helping us solve a problem ● Eg: Maier’s two string problem; Duncker’s candle problem
(Duncker, 1945).
● Functional fixedness can also be demonstrated in cultures with little experience using
manufactured objects.
● For example, German and Barrett (2005) showed some simple kitchen objects to
adolescents living near the Amazon River Ecuador.
● If the adolescents saw a spoon being used to stir rice,they later had difficulty imagining
that the spoon could also serve as a bridge between two other objects.
Gender stereotypes ● Our top-down processes may be overactive because stereotypes can
influence our beliefs about our own abilities (Walton & Dweck, 2009)

● The most widely researched topic is gender stereotypes that focus on problem solving in
mathematics. A typical gender stereotype is that men are more skilled than women in
solving mathematics problems.
● Janet Hyde e al. (2008) analyzed scores on standardized mathematics tests for 7,200,000
U.S. students. They found consistent gender similarities for students of all ages, from
second grade through eleventh grade.
● In one study, the researchers found gender similarities, even when the test required
students to solve complex math problems.
● The same pattern of gender similarities has been replicated.
● Gender Stereotype threat: If you belong to a group that is hampered by a negative
stereotype—and you think about your membership in that group—your performance may
suffer (Smith et al., 2007).
● Research with Asian American females: In North America, one stereotype is that Asian
Americans are ‘‘good at math,’’ compared to those from other ethnic groups. Shih et
al.(1999) divided these Asian American women into three different conditions.
● Ethnicity-emphasis condition: One group of participants were asked to indicate their
ethnicity and then answer several questions about their ethnic identity. Then they took a
challenging math test. These women answered 54%of the questions correctly. 2.
● Control-group condition: A second group of participants did not answer any questions
beforehand. They simply took the challenging math test. These women answered 49% of
the questions correctly.
● Gender- emphasis condition: A third group of participants were asked to indicate their
gender and then answer several questions about their gender identity. Then they took the
challenging math test. These women answered only 43% of the questions correctly.
● When Asian American women are reminded of their ethnicity, they perform relatively
well. However, when Asian American women are reminded of their gender, they may
experience stereotype threat, and their problem-solving ability can decline.
● Nalini Ambady et al. (2001) demonstrated this same pattern among Asian American girls
enrolled in elementary and middle school.
● Research with European American Females: The effects of stereotype threat have also
been replicated in samples where most of the women are European American (O’Brien &
Crandall, 2003; Quinn & Spencer, 2001).
● Explanation of gender stereotype Threat
● Two factors probably contribute to the problem.
○ One factor is that stereotype threat can produce high arousal. High arousal is
 likely to interfere with working memory, especially on difficult tasks. Research
shows that people may ‘‘choke under pressure’’ on a challenging math test.
○ A second factor is that females who are taking a difficult math test may work hard
to suppress the thought that they are supposed to perform poorly. Thought
suppression requires great effort, which might reduce the capacity of working
memory even further.
● ● Quinn and Spencer (2001) proposed that these factors decrease women’s abilities to
construct problem-solving strategies.
● Researchers have examined numerous gender comparisons in mathematical problem
solving.
● In general, these studies show gender similarities in problem-solving skills (Quinn and
Spencer; 2001).
● The studies also show that female students may earn lower scores if they receive
messages that females are less competent than males in mathematics.Factors influencing
problem solving:

Irrelevant or Misleading Information: When you are trying to solve a problem, it is important
to distinguish between information that is relevant to the issue and irrelevant data that can lead to
faulty solutions.

● When a problem is very complex, the easier it becomes to focus on misleading or

irrelevant information. Eg: irrelevant info in two string taskFactors influencing problem
solving:

Emotions and motivation:

● Assumptions: When dealing with a problem, people often make assumptions about the
constraints and obstacles that prevent certain solutions. Eg: the surgeon problem, twin
problem
● Confirmation bias: Tendency to look for evidence that is in synchronicity with one’s
beliefs (Religious people/atheism) Tendency to selectively look for information that
conforms to our hypothesis and to overlook information that argues against it. This effect
was demonstrated by Wason (1960)

Theories of Decision makingTheoretical approaches: ● Classical decision making theory ●

Expected subjective utility ● Single feature ● Additive feature ● Satisficing ● Elimination by
aspects ● Heuristics
Classical Decision Theory: ● The earliest models of how people make decisions are referred to
as classical decision theory. Most of these models were devised by economists, statisticians, and
philosophers, not by psychologists. Hence, they reflect the strengths of an economic perspective.
● One such strength is the ease of developing and using mathematical models for human
behavior.Classical Decision Theory: The Model of Economic Man and Woman: ● Among the
early models of decision making crafted in the 20th century was that of economic man and
woman. This model assumed three things: ● 1. Decision makers are fully informed regarding all
possible options for their decisions and of all possible outcomes of their decision options. ● 2.
They are infinitely sensitive to the subtle distinctions among decision options. ● 3. They are fully
rational in regard to their choice of options (Edwards, 1954; see also Slovic, 1990). Classical
Decision Theory: ● Suppose that a decision maker is considering which of two smartphones to
buy. The decision maker, according to this model, will consider every aspect of each phone. The
shopper will next decide on some objective basis how favorable each phone is on each aspect.
The shopper then will weigh objectively each of the aspects in terms of how important it is. The
favorability ratings will be multiplied by the weights. Then an overall averaged rating will be
computed, taking into account all of the data. The shopper then will buy the smartphone with the
best score.Classical Decision Theory: ● Based on the assumption on rationality: People make
their choices so as to maximize something of value, whatever that something may be ●
Mathematical models of human decision making ● Too restricted, ● Does not take into account
the psychological makeup of each individual decision makerSubjective expected utility theory: ●
Subjective expected utility theory ● The goal of human action is to seek pleasure and avoid pain;
in doing so each of us uses calculations of ● Subjective utility – based on the individual’s judged
weightings of utility, rather than on objective criteria ● Subjective probability – based on the
individual’s estimates of likelihood, rather than on objective statistical computationsSubjective
expected utility theory: ● This theory is based on the belief that people seek to reach
well-reasoned decisions based on: ● Consideration of all possible known alternatives ● Use of a
maximum amount of available information ● Careful weighing of costs and benefits and
calculation of probability ● A maximum degree of sound reasoning ● However, human decision
making is more complex than even this modified theory impliesThe Additive Feature Model ●
This method involves taking into account all the important features of the possible choices and
then systematically evaluating each option. This approach tends to be a better method when
making more complex decisions. ● For example, imagine that you are interested in buying a new
camera. You create a list of important features that you want the camera to have, then you rate
each possible option on a scale of -5 to +5. Cameras that have important advantages might get a
+5 rating for that factor, while those that have major drawbacks might get a -5 rating for that
factor. The Additive Feature Model: ● Once you have looked at each option, you can then tally
up the results to determine which option has the highest rating. ● The additive feature model can
be a great way to determine the best option among a variety of choices. As you can imagine,
however, it can be quite time consuming and is probably not the best decision-making strategy to
use if you are pressed for time.Satisficing: ● We humans are not entirely rational in making
decisions (Bounded rationality-We are rational, but within limits) ● We do not consider all
possible options and then carefully compute which of the entire universe of options will
maximize our gains and minimize our losses ● Rather, we consider options one by one, and then
we select an option as soon as we find one that is satisfactory or just good enough to meet our
minimum level of acceptabilitySatisficing: ● When there are limited working-memory resources
available, the use of satisficing for making decisions may be increased (Chen & Sun, 2003). ●
The appropriateness of this strategy will vary with the circumstance. For example, satisficing
might be a reasonable strategy if you are in a hurry to buy a bottle of fruit juice and then catch a
train or a plane, but a poor strategy for diagnosing a disease.The Single-Feature Model: ● This
approach involves hinging your decision solely on a single-feature. ● For example, imagine that
you are buying soap. Faced with a wide variety of options at your local superstore, you decide to
base your decision on price and buy the cheapest type of soap available. ● In this case, you
ignored other variables (such as scent, brand, reputation, and effectiveness) and focused on just a
single feature.● The single-feature approach can be effective in situations where the decision is
relatively simple and you are pressed for time. ● However, it is generally not the best strategy
when dealing with more complex decisions.Elimination by Aspects: ● We sometimes use a
different strategy when faced with far more alternatives than we feel that we reasonably can
consider in the time we have available (Tversky, 1972a, 1972b). ● In such situations, we do not
try to manipulate mentally all the weighted attributes of all the available options. Rather, we use
a process of elimination by aspects, in which we eliminate alternatives by focusing on aspects of
each alternative, one at a timeElimination by Aspects: ● Eg: Buying a car: ● Focus on one aspect
(attribute) of the various options (cost); ● Form a minimum criterion for that aspect (Price must
be below 10 lakhs including all expenses) ● Eliminate all options that do not meet that criterion
Elimination by Aspects: ● For the remaining options, select a second aspect for which we set a
minimum criterion by which to eliminate additional options (mileage...then features….colour
etc.) ● Continue using a sequential process of elimination of options by considering a series of
aspects until a single option remains (Dawes, 2000). Decision making heuristics: ● The
Representativeness heuristic ● The Availability heuristic ● Anchoring & Adjustment ●
FramingDecision making heuristics ● Kahneman and Tversky proposed that a small number of
heuristics guide human decision making. ● As they emphasized, the same strategies that
normally guide us toward the correct decision may sometimes lead us astray (Kahneman, 2011;
Kahneman & Tversky, 1996).Teigen (2004): Suppose that you have a regular penny with one
head (H) and one tail (T), and you toss it six times. Which outcome seems most likely, T H H T
H T or H H H T T T?● A sample looks representative if it is similar in important characteristics
to the population from which it was selected. ● For instance, if a sample was selected by a
random process, then that sample must look random in order for people to say it looks
representative. ● Thus, T H H T H T is a sample that looks representative because it has an equal
number of heads and tails (which would be the case in random coin tosses). ● Furthermore, T H
H T H T looks more representative because the order of the Ts and Hs looks random rather than
orderly.Decision making heuristics: The Representativeness heuristic ● In a representative
heuristic, we judge the probability of an uncertain event according to: how obviously it is similar
to or representative of the population from which it is derived ● According to the
representativeness heuristic, we believe that random-looking outcomes are more likely than
orderly outcomes. ●Imagine that a psychologist wrote the following description of Tom W, when
Tom was a senior in high school. This description was based on some psychological tests that
had uncertain validity. Tom W is highly intelligent, but he is not genuinely creative. Tom needs
everything to be orderly and clear, and he likes every detail to be in its appropriate place. His
writing is quite dull and mechanical, although he loves corny puns. He sometimes makes up
plots about science fiction. Tom has a strong drive for competence. He seems to have little
feeling for other people, and he has little sympathy for their problems. He does not actually like
interacting with others. Although he is self-centered, he does have a deep moral sense. Now
suppose that Tom W is a graduate student at a large university. Rank the following nine fields of
specialization, in terms of the likelihood that Tom W is now a student in that program. Write 1
for ‘‘most likely,’’ and 7 for ‘‘least likely.’’______ business administration ______ computer
science ______ engineering ______ humanities and education ______ law ______ medicine
______ library science ______ physical and life sciences ______ social sciences and social
workRepresentativeness: ● Representativeness heuristic is so persuasive that people often ignore
important statistical information that they should consider (Kahneman, 2011) ● For eg: Sample
size & base rate ● For example, Kahneman and Tversky (1972) asked college students to
consider a hypothetical small hospital, where about 15 babies are born each day, and a
hypothetical large hospital, where about 45 babies are born each day. Which hospital would be
more likely to report that more than 60% of the babies on a given day would be boys, or would
they both be equally likely to report more than 60% boys?Representativeness ● The results
showed that 56% of the students responded, ‘‘About the same.’’ ● In other words, the majority of
students thought that a large hospital and a small hospital were equally likely to report having at
least 60% baby boys born on a given day. Thus, they ignored sample size. ●Representativeness:
● Small Sample fallacy: we may draw unwarranted stereotypes about a group of people on the
basis of a small number of group members (Hamilton & Sherman, 1994). ● One effective way of
combating inappropriate stereotypes is to become acquainted with a large number of people from
the target group—for example, through exchange programs with groups of people from other
countries.Representativeness: ● Base rate: how often the item occurs in the population. ●
Kahneman and Tversky (1973) showed that people rely on representativeness when they are
asked to judge category membership. ● In other words, we focus on whether a description is
representative of members of each category.When we emphasize representativeness, we commit
the base-rate fallacy.Representativeness & base rate fallacy ● If people pay appropriate attention
to the base rate in Tom’s example, they should select graduate programs that have a relatively
high enrollment (base rate). These would include the two options ‘‘humanities and education’’
and ‘‘social science and social work.’’ Representativeness & base rate fallacy ● However, most
students in this study used the representativeness heuristic, and they most frequently guessed that
Tom W was a graduate student in either computer science or engineering (Kahneman, 2011;
Kahneman & Tversky, 1973). ● The description of Tom W was highly similar to (that is,
representative of) the stereotype of a computer scientist or an engineer. (Kahneman,
2011)Representativeness: The Conjunction Fallacy: ● Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken,
and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues
of discrimination and social justice, and she also participated in anti nuclear demonstrations.
Now rank the following options in terms of the probability of their describing Linda. Give a
ranking of 1 to the most likely option and a ranking of 8 to the least likely option: _____ Linda is
a teacher at an elementary school. _____ Linda works in a bookstore and takes yoga classes.
_____ Linda is active in the feminist movement. _____ Linda is a psychiatric social worker.
_____ Linda is a member of the League of Women Voters. _____ Linda is a bank teller. _____
Linda is an insurance salesperson. _____ Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist,
movement. Conjunction fallacy: ● Tversky and Kahneman (1983) presented the ‘‘Linda’’
problem and another similar problem to three groups of people. One was a ‘‘statistically naive’’
group of undergraduates.The‘‘intermediate-knowledge’’group consisted of first-year graduate
students who had taken one or more courses in statistics. ● The ‘‘statistically sophisticated”
group consisted of doctoral students in a decision science program who had taken several
advanced courses in statistics. Representativeness: conjunction fallacy ● In each case, the
participants were asked to rank all eight statements according to their probability, with the rank
of 1 assigned to the most likely statement. ● When two critical statements were asked to
compare: (1) ‘‘Linda is a bank teller’’ and (2) ‘‘Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist
movement.’’; the people in all three groups believed—incorrectly—that the second statement
would be more likely than the first. ● In the Linda problem, the conjunction of the two
events—bank teller and feminist—cannot occur more often than either event by itself, for
instance, being a bankteller. Representativeness: conjunction fallacy ● When people commit the
conjunction fallacy, they judge the probability of the conjunction of two events to be greater than
the probability of either constituent event. ● Tversky and Kahneman (1983) traced the
conjunction fallacy to the representativeness heuristic. They argued that people judge the
conjunction of ‘‘bankteller’’ and ‘‘feminist’’to be more likely than the simple event
‘‘bankteller.’’Representativeness: conjunction fallacy ● Afterall, ‘‘feminist’’ is a characteristic
that is very representative of (that is, similar to) someone who is single, outspoken, bright, a
philosophy major, concerned about social justice, and an anti nuclear activist. ● A person with
these characteristics doesn’t seem likely to become a bank teller. However, she seems highly
likely to be a feminist. By adding the extra detail of ‘‘feminist’’ to ‘‘bank teller,’’ the description
seems more representative and also more plausible—even though this description is statistically
less likely Decision making: theoretical approaches ● Availability heuristic: Availability
heuristic is used when you estimate frequency or probability in terms of how easy it is to think of
relevant examples of something (Hertwig et al., 2005; Kahneman, 2011; Tversky & Kahneman,
1973). Representativeness and availability heuristic: ● If the problem is based on a judgment
about similarity, you are dealing with the representativeness heuristic. ● If the problem requires
you to remember examples, you are dealing with the availability heuristic.Factors which can bias
availability: ● Recency: MacLeod and Campbell (1992), who encouraged one group of people to
recall pleasant events from their past. These individuals later judged pleasant events to be more
likely in their future. The researchers also encouraged another group to recall unpleasant events.
These individuals later judged unpleasant events to be more likely in their future. ● Familiarity:
Eg: The media can also influence viewers’ ideas about the prevalence of different points of view.
For instance, the media often give equal coverage to several thousand protesters and to several
dozen counterprotesters. The Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic : ● According to the
anchoring and adjustment heuristic—also known as the anchoring effect—we begin with a first
approximation, which serves as an anchor; then we make adjustments to that number, based on
additional information (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008; Tversky & Kahneman, 1982) ● People
typically rely too heavily on the anchor, and their adjustments are too small (Kahneman,
2011)The Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic : Try to give a rough estimate of number
obtained by multiplying following in 5 seconds 8 × 7 × 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1The Anchoring and
Adjustment Heuristic : Try to give a rough estimate of number obtained by multiplying
following in 5 seconds: 1 × 2 × 3 × 4 × 5 × 6 × 7 × 8The Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic :
● In a classic study, high school students were asked to estimate the answers to these two
multiplication problems (Tversky & Kahneman, 1982). The students were allowed only 5
seconds to respond. ● The results showed that the two problems generated widely different
answers. If the first number in this sequence was 8, a relatively large number, the median of their
estimates was 2,250. ● In contrast, if the first number was 1, a small number, their median
estimate was only 512.The Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic : ● Furthermore, both groups
anchored too heavily on the initial impression that every number in the problem was only a
single digit, because both estimates were far too low. The correct answer for both problems is
40,320. ●The Anchoring and Adjustment Heuristic: confidence intervals estimates ● Studies
have shown that people provide 98% confidence intervals that actually include the correct
answer only about 60% of the time (Block & Harper, 1991; Hoffrage, 2004). ● Ideally each
confidence interval should be so wide that there was only a 2% chance of the actual number
being either larger or smaller than this interval. ● However, our estimates for these confidence
intervals are definitely too narrow