Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Unit VIIB Outline


I. Thinking
-Thinking (AKA Cognition)
-The mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating
-Cognitive psychology
-The study of the ways in which we created concepts, solve problems, make decisions, and form judgments
A. Concepts
-Mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas, and people
-Chair
-High chair
-Dentist chair
-Reclining chair
-Lawn chair
-Chairs vary, BUT a chair is still a chair!
-Life without “concepts” would be difficult!
-Categories get divided into hierarchies
-We form concepts by developing prototypes
-Define a bird…
-Which of the following is a bird?
-Which is “birdier”
- “Mixed” Face Study
-People shown a mix of 70% Caucasian and 30% Asian recall seeing a Caucasian
-Would pick a more prototypically Caucasian face out of a lineup
-Same results with a male/female mix
-Is a tomato a fruit or is it a vegetable?
-Is a whale a mammal or a is it a fish?
B. Solving Problems
-Humans are good problem solvers
-How to best escape a crowded situation
-How to deal with a friend’s criticism
-How to get into our own house/car when we have locked ourselves out
i. Strategies
-Algorithm-A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem
-Heuristic-A simple thinking strategy that allows us to make judgments.  Faster, but more error-prone than algorithms
-Sometimes, insight is enough
-A sudden, and often novel realization
ii. Creativity
-The ability to produce ideas that are both novel and valuable
-Expertise-you must have a good foundation
-Imaginative thinking skills-connect the dots
-A venturesome personality-seek new experiences
-Intrinsic motivation-being driven by interest
-A creative environment-iron on iron
iii. Obstacles to Problem Solving
-Even though we are excellent problem solvers, sometimes the answer will continue to elude us!
-Multiple reasons for “forgetting”
-Multiple reasons for not “encoding”
-Multiple reasons we struggle with problem solving
-Avoid looking for a single cause
C. Making Decisions and Forming Judgments
-How many decisions do you make every day?
-Sometimes, intuition is enough
-We don’t always use a problem solving approach
i. Using and Misusing Heuristics
-Intuitive judgments are instant
-Quick decision making is often bad decision making
-Intelligent people make really dumb mistakes!
a. The Representative Heuristic
-Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes
-Short, slim, and likes to read poetry
-Ivy League Scholar or Truck Driver?
-Stereotyping
b. The Availability Heuristic
-Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory
-Recency, vividness, or distinctiveness
-Ethnicity and terrorism…
-Casino techniques
ii. Overconfidence
-Combination of bad ingredients!
-Intuitive heuristics
-Eagerness to confirm our own beliefs
-Ability to explain away failures
-Overconfidence in history
-Lyndon B. Johnson and Vietnam
-George W. Bush and Iraq
iii. The Belief and Perseverance Phenomenon
-Belief perseverance-Clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited
-Consider the opposite
-Be objective and unbiased
iv. The Perils and Powers of Intuition
-Intuition-an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning.
-BASICALLY-Our “gut” feeling
-Sometimes, we just know
-Intuition is adaptive
v. The Effects of Framing
-10 people will die vs 90 people will live
-Information is the same, but does it seem the same?
-Presentation is EVERYTHING
-Marked down prices
-Always “on sale”
-Opting out vs Opting in (Organ donors)
II. Language
-Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning
-“jewel in the crown of cognition”
-Translation process from keyboard to your brain
A. Language Structure
-Creating a language is no small task!
-There are 3 major building blocks
-Phonemes
-Morphemes
-Grammar
-J.R.R. Tolkien
-The Hobbit
-Lord of the Rings
i. Phonemes
-The smallest distinctive sound units
-Surveyed 500 languages
-Found 869 different phonemes
-English uses 40
-Many languages use fewer, many use more
-People who learn one language have difficulty pronouncing phonemes from other languages
ii. Morphemes
-The smallest unit of language that carries meaning
-Morphemes include prefixes and suffixes
-Preview
-Edited
iii. Grammar
-A system of rules that enable us to communicate with and understand others
-Semantics-The set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language
-Syntax-The rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language
-white house/ casa blanca
B. Language Development
-Humans learn about 60,000 words between their first birthday and high school graduation
-10 words a day!
-Pulling from a HUGE dictionary (3 words a second)
i. When Do We Learn Language?
-Several milestones in language development
-Receptive Language
-Productive Language
a. Receptive Language
-In fantis- “not speaking”
-By 4 months-can discriminate speech sounds
-Can also read lips
-Infants as young as 7 months can comprehend speech
b. Productive Language
-4 months-babbling stage
-Can produce sounds from ANY language
-10 months-may be able to identify language
-After 1-one-word stage
-18 months-move from learning 1 word a week to 1 word a day
-By 2-two-word stage
-Telegraphic speech
-“TERMS ACCEPTED.  SEND MONEY”
-“want juice”
-“big doggy”
-After the two-word stage full sentences will begin to form
ii. Explaining Language Development
-How do we learn language?
-Nature vs Nurture
-Innate or learned
a. Skinner: Operant Learning
-B.F. Skinner (Behaviorist)
-Association
-Imitation
-Reinforcement
b. Chomsky: Inborn Universal Grammar
-Noam Chomsky
-“I hate you daddy”
-Language acquisition device
-Universal grammar
-A natural process
-Biology+Experience
c. Statistical Learning and Critical Periods
-Acquiring language at an early age is easier!
-Ability to learn greatly diminishes over time
III. Thinking and Language
-Thinking and language are one!
-This is why we have you write essays in school…
-We will start writing second semester!
A. Language Influences Thinking
-Linguistic determinism-language determines the way we think
-Hopi tribe has no past tense
-How can you think about the past if you can’t talk about it?
B. Thinking in Images
-Mental preparation works!
-We think in pictures!

New Late Work Policy!!!

I will no longer be giving 75% credit for late work.  If you are present the day the work is due and fail to turn it in, you will receive no credit for the assignment.  We are taking another step closer to being a college level class.  Our Unit VII test will be on Monday (Dec. 5).  Items due that day are:

-Unit VII A Vocabulary
-Unit VII A Outline
-Unit VII A Online Quizzes
-Unit VII B Vocabulary
-Unit VII B Outline
-Unit VII B Online Quizzes

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Unit VIIA Outline


I. The Phenomenon of Memory
-Memory is learning that persists over time
-Shereshevskii or “S”
-Could repeat up to 70 digits back
II. Information Processing
-Encoding / Storage / Retrieval
-Computer model
Keyboard, Hard drive, Recovery
-Atkinson and Shiffrin’s three-step model
-Sensory Memory
-Short-Term Memory
-Long-Term Memory
-Processed directly into long-term
-Working memory
A. Encoding: Getting Information In
-What do we encode automatically?
-What do we encode effortfully?
-How does the distribution of practice influence retention?
i. How We Encode
-Some information is processed with great ease
-Route from one class to another
-Your drive home
-A new phone number requires more effort
a. Automatic Processing
-Parallel processing
-Automatic processing
-Space: visualization of location
-Time: retracing your steps
-Frequency: keep track of how many times you experience certain things
-Well-learned information: long term memory
-!tnatropmi si ygolohcysp rof gniydutS
b. Effortful Processing
-Rehearsal
-Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)
-Able to learn nonsense “words”
-Spacing effect
-Serial Position Effect
-Primacy and Recency
ii. What We Encode
-Like sorting through email
-Some are deleted as spam
-Some are read and retained
a. Levels of Processing
-Eye-screem
-Ice cream
-I scream
-Context and experience
-Visual encoding-Picture
-Acoustic encoding-Sound
-Semantic encoding-Meaning
b. Visual Encoding
-Mental pictures are easier to encode
-Mnemonic Devices: Planets
c. Organizing Information For Encoding
-Chunking
-Acronyms
B. Storage: Retaining Information
-Memories lie dormant waiting to be reconstructed by a cue
-Three Stage Model
-Sensory/ Short-Term/ Long-Term
i. Sensory Memory
-9 letter experiment
-George Sperling (1960)
-High, Medium, and Low Tone
-Momentary Photographic Memory (Iconic)
-Echoic Memory-The Echo chamber of the mind
ii. Working/Short-Term Memory
-1959-Three consonant group (CHJ)
-Count backward from 100 by threes
-Half recalled the “word” after 3 seconds
-Few recalled the “word” after 12 seconds
-The Magical Number Sever, plus or minus two
-Seven wonders of world
-Seven seas
-Seven deadly sins
-Seven primary colors
-Seven musical scale notes
-Seven days of the week
iii. Long-Term Memory
-Long-Term memory is essentially limitless!
-Rajan Mahadevan
-Given any 10 digits from the first 30,000 of Pi
-Would pick up from there
-Could repeat 50 random digits—backward
-Rajan’s father memorized Shakespeare’s works…all of them
iv. Storing Memories in the Brain
-Memories are stored all throughout the brain
-There is no one “memory center”
-Rat experiment
-Learn maze
-Lesion brain
-Retest memory
a. Synaptic Changes
-Memory trace using the California Sea Slug
-Increased activity in synapses
-Long-Term Potential:
an increase in a synapse’s firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation
-Boosting CREB
-Enhanced CREB production has been linked with increased memory
-Boosting Glutamate
-Neurotransmitter that enhances synaptic activity
b. Stress Hormones and Memory
-The brain receives more “food” in emotional times
-Traumatic events become seared into our memory
-People on meds that block stress hormones
-Flashbulb memories: Accurate?
c. Storing Implicit and Explicit Memories
-H.M.-Henry Molaison
-Lost the ability to form new memories
-Did not recognize his long-term researcher (ever)
-Jimmie
-Brain damaged
-No ability to form new memories
c. Storing Implicit and Explicit Memories (cont)
-Implicit-nondeclarative (independent of conscious recollection)
-Explicit-declarative (memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and “declare”)
-Hippocampus-a neural center that is located in the limbic system that helps process explicit memories
-Left vs Right
-Verbal Left Visual Right
-The cerebellum plays an important role in forming and storing implicit memories
-Dr. classically conditioned patient to fear shaking hand
C. Retrieval: Getting Information Out
-Recall-A measure of memory in which a person must retrieve information learned earlier.  Fill in the blank.
-Recognition-A measure of memory in which a person need identify previously learned items.  Multiple choice.
-Relearning-A measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material for a second time.
i. Retrieval Cues
-Retrieval cues
-Mnemonic devices
-Priming-Memoryless memory
-The activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory.
ii. Context Effects
-Putting yourself in a similar context increases the odds of recalling the memory
-Déjà vu (already seen)
iii. Moods and Memories
-State-dependent memory
-Drunk hiding money
-Mood-congruent memory-The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one’s current good or bad mood.
III. Forgetting
-Remembering everything is not always good
-“S” had difficulty summarizing stories after reading them
-Three Sins of Forgetting
-Absent-mindedness-Inattention
-Transience-Storage decay over time
-Blocking-Inaccessibility of stored information
-Three Sins of Distortion
-Misattribution-Putting words in someone’s mouth
-Suggestibility-Leading questions in a trial
-Bias-Belief colored recollections
-One Sin of Intrusion
-Persistence-Unwanted memories
A. Encoding Failure
-Much of what we sense we fail to notice
-Failure to encode information leads to an inability to later recall information
B. Storage Decay
-Over time, our memories fade
-Facts are forgotten
C. Retrieval Failure
-Books in the library
-We don’t have enough information to look it up!
-Forgetting an actor’s name
i. Interference
-Learning new combinations or phone numbers
-Proactive interference-disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information
-Retroactive interference-disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information
ii. Motivated Forgetting
-Self-serving personal histories
-Repression of memory
-Self-serving personal histories
-Repression of memory
-Self-serving personal histories
-Repression of memory
-Self-serving personal histories
-Repression of memory
IV. Memory Construction
-Paleontologists infer what dinosaurs may have looked like based on their remains
-We infer our past from stored information
-Items we later imagined, expected, saw, and heard
-We “reweave” memories as we recall them
A. Misinformation and Imagination Effects
-Misinformation effect-incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event
-Smashed vs Hit
B. Source Amnesia
-Attributing to the wrong source an event which we have experienced, heard about , read about, or imagined
-“Mr. Science”
-4 out of 10 children recalled events that had only happened in the “story” about Mr. Science’s visit
C. Discerning True and False Memories
-Can eyewitness testimony be trusted?
D. Children’s Eyewitness Recall
-Leading questions can “plant” false memories
-MOST preschoolers can be induced to report false events
-Rabbit in the daycare…  78% recall seeing the rabbit
E. Repressed or Constructed Memories of Abuse?
-Sexual abuse happens
-Injustice happens
-Forgetting happens
-Recovered memories are commonplace
-Memories of things that happened before age 3 are unreliable
-Memories “recovered” under hypnosis or the influence of drugs are especially unreliable
-Memories, whether real or false, can be emotionally upsetting
V. Improving Memory
-Study REPEATEDLY
-Space out the material
-Study actively
-Make the material meaningful
-Take text and class notes in your own words
-Apply concepts to your own life
-Activate retrieval cues
-Mentally recreate the situation and mood that you were in while you learned the material
-Use mnemonic devices
-Make up stories that create images
-Chunk information
-Minimize interference
-Study before bed
-Don’t study different stories back to back
-Sleep more
-Test your own knowledge

Friday, November 4, 2011