PSY

Topics:

I am reluctant to provide this because I don’t want you to lose sight of the forest for the trees, but...

What is cognitive psychology? What are the components of the paradigm? (Know something about the various parts.) Methodology: Double dissociation, strong inference What is the basic cognitive architecture? Properties of sensory store. Difference between bottom-up and top-down. The idea of constraint satisfaction. Three models of identification. Properties of the interactive activation model. What is attention? Theory of signal detectability. Filtering. Search. Automatic processing. Concentration. Why a division into short and long term memories? Properties of STM (duration, capacity, code, forgetting, and search). Working memory.

Sample Questions:

2. While proofreading your friend’s English paper (with messy handwriting), you come across a word that you can’t recognize. After reading more of the sentence you do recognize the word. Outline the word superiority effect and explain how something like that might be going on here. (It would help to use some of the ideas and language of the interactive activation model.)

3. a. We complained that one of the problems with behaviorism was that it ruled out a lot of interesting questions as unscientific (e.g., thinking). Why did they do that?

b. Our current method lets us get around the problems that behaviorists saw with the content of cognitive psychology. Explain how they do that in the context of Sternberg’s memory search experiment.

4. The box model of the cognitive system has two separate memory boxes, one for short- term and one for long-term. Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) proposed that serial position curves actually represent both types of memory and they provided evidence to support

that claim (simultaneously providing evidence that the two memory systems are different things). Describe their evidence and how it lets us draw that conclusion.

5. I’m walking to the KUC and see a penny. When I pick it up I realize it’s a piece of a leaf. How might that be related to the theory of signal detectability?

6. a. Peterson and Peterson (1959) (and Brown, to be fair) investigated the duration of short-term memory. What did they do and what did they find? b. Describe a real-world application of this research (besides my “calling for pizza” example).

8. Here is a picture of a $28,000, partially eaten grilled cheese sandwich with an image of the Virgin Mary on it. I’ve also provided a picture of Jesus on a piece of toast. Pick one.

a. Bottom-up processing contributes to recognition of the Virgin Mary/toast Jesus in these ways: b. Top-down processing contributes to recognition of the Virgin Mary/toast Jesus in these ways:

10. Match each of the following bad designs to its reason. Explain why each is a bad design.

a. 1) Signal detection

Reason: _____ Because:

b. 2) Search

(Shampoo and hand lotion bottles) Reason: _____ Because:

c. 3) Filtering

(Green right turn arrow is being pointed to) Reason: _____ Because:

13. Working memory differs from short-term memory in that it has both storage and processing components. Short-term memory is just the storage part. For each below, is it a short-term memory or working memory task? Why? a. I ask you to multiply 247 x 16. b. You look up the phone number of your chiropractor and try to remember it to dial it. c. You’re reading.

1. In the first meeting, we discussed some things that were questionably cognitive psychology. Thinking about the methodology and subject matter aspects of the paradigm, address the following: a. Paranormal believers see more faces in ambiguous stimuli than non-believers. Why might I think that finding is part of the cognitive paradigm? b. What makes me think that maybe it isn’t part of the cognitive paradigm?

5. A Valentine’s Day special: This is entitled “dolphins or lovers.” Let’s assume you see the lovers. For each model below, can it explain your perception? Why or why not? Which is probably the best explanation?

a. Template models:

b. Feature models:

c. Gestalt models:

14. Working memory has visuo-spatial sketchpad and articulatory loop resources. For each below, use an example of your own, not one I have ever used. a. Describe a task that you do regularly that would require articulatory loop resources. b. Describe a task that you do regularly that would require visuo-spatial sketchpad resources. c. Describe a task that you do regularly that requires both articulatory and visuo-spatial resources simultaneously.

11. Think of the experiment related to build-up of PI. For each of the following, what would you do to “cheat” and make the effect bigger? Describe why/how it would work. a. The amount of counting between the third and fourth lists.

b. The content of the fourth list. c. The difficulty of the counting backwards task between the third and fourth lists.