The Gestalt approach to form perception that was developed in Germany in the

early 20th century is useful particularly for understanding how we perceive

groups of objects or even parts of objects to form integral wholes. It was
founded by Kurt Koffka (1886–1941), Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1968), and Max
Wertheimer (1880–1943) and was based on the notion that the whole differs
from the sum of its individual parts. It is one of the earliest approaches to form
and pattern perception is the Gestalt approach to form perception.

The Gestalt law of Prägnanz (We tend to perceive any given visual array in a
way that most simply organizes the different elements into a stable and coherent
form. Thus, we do not merely experience a jumble of unintelligible,
disorganized sensations.) has led to the explication of several principles of form
perception. These principles include figure-ground, proximity, similarity,
closure, continuity, and symmetry. They characterize how we perceptually
group together various objects and parts of objects.

Gestalt Principles:
 Figure-ground: When perceiving a visual field, some objects (figures)
seem prominent, and other aspects of the field recede into the background
(ground). A figure is any object perceived as being highlighted. It is
almost always perceived against or in contrast to some kind of receding,
unhighlighted (back) ground. The figure – ground effect: what stands out
from, versus what recedes into, the background.
 Proximity: When we perceive an assortment of objects, we tend to see
objects that are close to each other as forming a group.
 Similarity: We tend to group objects on the basis of their similarity.
 Continuity: We tend to perceive smoothly flowing or continuous forms
rather than disrupted or discontinuous ones.
 Closure: We tend to perceptually close up, or complete, objects that are
not, in fact, complete.
 Symmetry: We tend to perceive objects as forming mirror images about
their center.

Agnosias, which are usually associated with brain lesions, are deficits of form
and pattern perception. They cause afflicted people to be insufficiently able to
recognize objects that are in their visual fields, despite normal sensory abilities.
People who suffer from visual-object agnosia can sense all parts of the visual
field. But the objects they see do not mean anything to them. Individuals with
simultagnosia are unable to pay attention to more than one object at a time.
People with spatial agnosia have severe difficulty in comprehending and
handling the relationship between their bodies and the spatial configurations of
the world around them. People with prosopagnosia have severe impairment in
their ability to recognize human faces, including their own. These deficits lead
to the question of whether specific perceptual processes are modular—
specialized for particular tasks. Color blindness is another type of perceptual
deficit.

The “what.” People who suffer from an agnosia have trouble to perceive
sensory information. Caused by damage to the border of the temporal and
occipital lobes or restricted oxygen flow to areas of the brain, sometimes as a
result of traumatic brain injury. People with agnosia have normal sensations of
what is in front of them. They can perceive the colors and shapes of objects and
persons but they cannot recognize what the objects are—they have trouble with
the “what” pathway. People who suffer from visual-object agnosia can see all
parts of the visual field, but the objects they see do not mean anything to them.
Eg: looks at specs and calls it a bicycle – same components.
 Disturbance in the temporal region of the cortex can lead to
simultagnosia. In simultagnosia, an individual is unable to pay attention
to more than one object at a time.
 Prosopagnosia results in a severely impaired ability to recognize human
faces. A person with prosopagnosia might not recognize her or his own
face in the mirror. The disorder is associated with damage to the right
temporal lobe of the brain.

The “how” pathway. This deficit is optic ataxia, which is an impairment in the
ability to use the visual system to guide movement. People with this deficit have
trouble reaching for things. Ataxia results from a processing failure in the
posterior parietal cortex, where sensorimotor information is processed.

There are several kinds of color deficiency, which are sometimes referred to as
kinds of “color blindness.” Least common is rod monochromacy, also called
achromacy. People with this condition have no color vision at all. People with
this condition have cones that are nonfunctional. They see only shades of gray,
as a function of their vision through the rods of the eye.

Unit 2

Attention is the means by which we actively process a limited amount of

information from the enormous amount of information available through our
senses, our stored memories, and our other cognitive processes. It includes both
conscious and unconscious processes.

We have a wealth of information available to us that we are not even aware of

until we retrieve that information from our memory or shift our attention toward
it. At any given time, we also have available a dazzling array of sensory
information to which you just do not attend. After all, if we attended to each and
every detail of our environment, we would feel overwhelmed pretty fast.

Attention allows us to use our limited mental resources judiciously. By

dimming the lights on many stimuli from outside (sensations) and inside
(thoughts and memories), we can highlight the stimuli that interest us. This
heightened focus increases the likelihood that we can respond speedily and
accurately to interesting stimuli.

At any point in time, we perceive a lot of sensory information. Through

attentional processes (which can be automatic or controlled), we filter out the
information that is relevant to us and that we want to attend to. Eventually, this
leads to our taking action on the basis of the information we attended to.
Heightened attention also paves the way for memory processes. We are more
likely to remember information to which we paid attention than information we
ignored.

Consciousness includes both the feeling of awareness and the content of

awareness, some of which may be under the focus of attention. Conscious
attention serves three purposes in playing a causal role for cognition.
 First, it helps in monitoring our interactions with the environment.
Through such monitoring, we maintain our awareness of how well we are
adapting to the situation in which we find ourselves.
 Second, it assists us in linking our past (memories) and our present
(sensations) to give us a sense of continuity of experience. Such
continuity may even serve as the basis for personal identity.
 Third, it helps us in controlling and planning for our future actions. We
can do so based on the information from monitoring and from the links
between past memories and present sensations.

Four main functions of attention:

1. Signal detection and vigilance: We try to detect the appearance of a particular
stimulus. Air traffic controllers, for example, keep an eye on all traffic near and
over the airport.
2. Search: We try to find a signal amidst distracters, for example, when we are
looking for our lost cell phone on an autumn leaf-filled hiking path.
3. Selective attention: We choose to attend to some stimuli and ignore others, as
when we are involved in a conversation at a party.
4. Divided attention: We prudently allocate our available attentional resources
to coordinate our performance of more than one task at a time, as when we are
cooking and engaged in a phone conversation at the same time.
In the short term, they have to detect a crucial stimulus among the mass of
stimuli on the beach (signal detection), for example, making sure no one is
drowning; but they also have to maintain their attention over a long period of
time (vigilance) to make sure nothing is amiss during their entire working
period. (Life guards) Occupations requiring vigilance include those involving
communications and warning systems and quality control, as well as the work
of police detectives, physicians. In each of these settings, people must remain
alert to detect the appearance of a stimulus. But each setting also involves the
presence of distracters, as well as prolonged periods during which the stimulus
is absent. Once we know how people discriminate between target signals and
distracters, we will turn to the maintenance of attention over a prolonged period
of time (vigilance) in order to detect important stimuli.

Signal-detection theory (SDT) is a framework to explain how people pick out

the few important stimuli when they are embedded in a wealth of irrelevant,
distracting stimuli. SDT often is used to measure sensitivity to a target’s
presence. When we try to detect a target stimulus (signal), there are four
possible outcomes:
 First, in hits (also called “true positives”), the lifeguard correctly
identifies the presence of a target (i.e., somebody drowning).
 Second, in false alarms (also called “false positives”), he or she
incorrectly identifies the presence of a target that is actually absent (i.e.,
the lifeguard thinks somebody is drowning who actually isn’t).
 Third, in misses (also called “false negatives”), the lifeguard fails to
observe the presence of a target (i.e., the lifeguard does not see the
drowning person).
 Fourth, in correct rejections (also called “true negatives”), the lifeguard
correctly identifies the absence of a target (i.e., nobody is drowning, and
he or she knows that nobody is in trouble).
Usually, the presence of a target is difficult to detect. Thus, we make detection
judgments based on inconclusive information with some criteria for target
detections.
Signal-detection theory can be discussed in the context of attention, perception,
or memory:
• Attention—paying enough attention to perceive objects that are there;
• Perception—perceiving faint signals that may or may not be beyond your
perceptual range (such as a very high-pitched tone);
• Memory—indicating whether you have/have not been exposed to a stimulus
before.

Vigilance refers to a person’s ability to attend to a field of stimulation over a

prolonged period, during which the person seeks to detect the appearance of a
particular target stimulus of interest. When being vigilant, the individual
watchfully waits to detect a signal stimulus that may appear at an unknown
time. Typically, vigilance is needed in settings where a given stimulus occurs
only rarely but requires immediate attention as soon as it does occur. Military
officers watching for a sneak attack are engaged in a high-stakes vigilance task.
Training can help to increase vigilance, but to counteract fatigue, nothing but
taking a break really helps much. In vigilance tasks, expectations regarding
stimulus location strongly affect response efficiency. The costs of failure of
vigilance, in today’s world, can be great loss of life as well as of property.

Search involves actively and often skilfully seeking out a target. Specifically,
search refers to a scan of the environment for particular features—actively
looking for something when you are not sure where it will appear. We may
respond by making false alarms. Search is made more difficult by distracters,
non-target stimuli that divert our attention away from the target stimulus. In the
case of search, false alarms usually arise when we encounter such distracters
while searching for the target stimulus. The number of targets and distracters
affects the difficulty of the task. Display size is the number of items in a given
visual array. (It does not refer to the size of the items or even the size of the
field on which the array is displayed.) The display-size effect is the degree to
which the number of items in a display hinders (slows down) the search process.
we look for an item with a distinct feature like color or shape. We conduct a
feature search, in which we simply scan the environment for that feature.
Featural singletons, which are items with distinctive features, stand out in the
display. When featural singletons are targets, they seem to grab our attention.
Unfortunately, any featural singletons grab our attention. This includes featural
singletons that are distracters that can distract us from finding the target. A
problem arises, however, when the target stimulus has no unique or even
distinctive features. In a conjunction search, we look for a particular
combination (conjunction— joining together) of features.

Feature-integration theory explains the relative ease of conducting feature

searches and the relative difficulty of conducting conjunction searches.
Consider Treisman’s (1986) model of how our minds conduct visual searches.
For each possible feature of a stimulus, each of us has a mental map for
representing the given feature across the visual field. For example, there is a
map for every color, size, shape, or orientation (e.g., p, q, b, d) of each stimulus
in our visual field. For every stimulus, the features are represented in the feature
maps immediately. There is no added time required for additional cognitive
processing. Thus, during feature searches, we monitor the relevant feature map
for the presence of any activation anywhere in the visual field. This monitoring
process can be done in parallel (all at once). It therefore shows no display-size
effects. However, during conjunction searches, an additional stage of processing
is needed. During this stage, we must use our attentional resources as a sort of
mental “glue.” This additional stage conjoins two or more features into an
object representation at a particular location. In this stage, we can conjoin the
features only one object at a time. This stage must be carried out sequentially,
conjoining each object one by one. Effects of display size (i.e., a larger number
of objects with features to be conjoined) therefore appear.

Similarity theory: the data are a result of the fact that as the similarity between
target and distracter stimuli increases, so does the difficulty in detecting the
target stimuli. Targets that are highly similar to distracters are relatively hard to
detect. Targets that are highly disparate from distracters are relatively easy to
detect. The difficulty of search tasks depends on the degree of disparity among
the distracters. But it does not depend on the number of features to be
integrated. (Lower case easy to find, Capital letters hard to find)

Guided search theory: All searches, whether feature searches or conjunction

searches, involve two consecutive stages. The first is a parallel stage: the
individual simultaneously activates a mental representation of all the potential
targets. The representation is based on the simultaneous activation of each of
the features of the target. In a subsequent serial stage, the individual
sequentially evaluates each of the activated elements, according to the degree of
activation. Then, the person chooses the true targets from the activated
elements. According to this model, the activation process of the parallel initial
stage helps to guide the evaluation and selection process of the serial second
stage of the search.

Selective Attention: Colin Cherry referred to this phenomenon as the cocktail

party problem, the process of tracking one conversation in the face of the
distraction of other conversations. He studied selective attention in a more
carefully controlled experimental setting. He devised a task known as
shadowing. In shadowing, you listen to two different messages. Cherry
presented a separate message to each ear, known as dichotic presentation. You
are required to repeat back only one of the messages as soon as possible after
you hear it. In other words, you are to follow one message (think of a detective
“shadowing” a suspect) but ignore the other. Cherry’s participants were quite
successful in shadowing distinct messages in dichotic-listening tasks, although
such shadowing required a significant amount of concentration. The participants
were also able to notice physical, sensory changes in the unattended message—
for example, when the message was changed to a tone or the voice changed
from a male to a female speaker. However, they did not notice semantic
changes in the unattended message. They failed to notice even when the
unattended message shifted from English to German or was played backward.
Conversely, about one third of people, when their name is presented during
these situations, will switch their attention to their name. Some researchers have
noted that those who hear their name in the unattended message tend to have
limited working-memory capacity.

Three factors help you to selectively attend only to the message of the target
speaker to whom you wish to listen:
1. Distinctive sensory characteristics of the target’s speech. Examples of such
characteristics are high versus low pitch, pacing, and rhythmicity.
2. Sound intensity (loudness).
3. Location of the sound source

Attending to the physical properties of the target speaker’s voice has its
advantages. You can avoid being distracted by the semantic content of messages
from non-target speakers in the area. Clearly, the sound intensity of the target
also helps.

Theories of selective attention: Dialectical processes influenced the

development of subsequent theories. The theories described here belong to the
group of filter and bottleneck theories. A filter blocks some of the information
going through and thereby selects only a part of the total of information to pass
through to the next stage. A bottleneck slows down information passing
through.

1. Broadbent’s Model According to one of the earliest theories of attention,

we filter information right after we notice it at the sensory level. Multiple
sensory inputs reach an attentional filter. Those channels can be
distinguished by their characteristics like loudness, pitch, or accent. The
filter permits only one sensory information to proceed and reach the
processes of perception. We thereby assign meaning to our sensations.
Other stimuli will be filtered out at the sensory level and may never reach
the level of perception. Broadbent’s theory was supported by Colin
Cherry’s findings that sensory information sometimes may be noticed by
an unattended ear if it does not have to be processed elaborately (e.g., you
may notice that the voice in your unattended ear switches to a tone). But
information requiring higher perceptual processes is not noticed if not
attended to (e.g., you would likely not notice that the language in your
unattended ear switches from English to German).

2. Selective Filter Model: Moray found that even when participants ignore
most other high-level (e.g., semantic) aspects of an unattended message,
they frequently still recognize their names in an unattended ear. He
suggested that the reason for this effect is that messages that are of high
importance to a person may break through the filter of selective attention.
But other messages may not. To modify Broadbent’s metaphor, one could
 say that, according to Moray, the selective filter blocks out most
information at the sensory level. But some personally important messages
are so powerful that they burst through the filtering mechanism.

3. Late-Filter Model: Deutsch and Deutsch developed a model in which the

location of the filter is later. They suggested that stimuli are filtered out
only after they have been analyzed for both their physical properties and
their meaning. This later filtering would allow people to recognize
information entering the unattended ear.

4. Attenuation Model: Treisman proposed a theory of selective attention that

involves a later filtering mechanism. We cannot spend a lot of time
attending and attaching meaning to all the stimuli and Instead of blocking
stimuli out, the filter merely weakens (attenuates) the strength of stimuli
other than the target stimulus. So when the stimuli reach us, we analyze
them at a low level for target properties like loudness and pitch. If the
stimuli possess those target properties, we pass the signal on to the next
stage; if they do not possess those target properties, we pass on a
weakened version of the stimulus. In a next step, we perceptually analyze
the meaning of the stimuli and their relevance to us, so that even a
message from the unattended ear that is supposedly irrelevant can come
into consciousness and influence our subsequent actions if it has some
meaning for us.

Divided Attention: Anytime you are engaged in two or more tasks at the same
time, your attention is divided between those tasks. Neisser and Becklen
hypothesized that improvements in performance eventually would have
occurred as a result of practice. Controlled tasks can be automatized so that they
consume fewer attentional resources. Furthermore, two discrete controlled tasks
may be automatized to function together as a unit. The tasks do not, however,
become fully automatic. For one thing, they continue to be intentional and
conscious. For another, they involve relatively high levels of cognitive
processing. Divided attention has focused on extremely simple tasks that require
speedy responses. When people try to perform two overlapping speeded tasks,
the responses for one or both tasks are almost always slower (Pashler, 1994).
When a second task begins soon after the first task has started, speed of
performance usually suffers. The slowing resulting from simultaneous
engagement in speeded tasks, as mentioned earlier in the chapter, is the PRP
(psychological refractory period) effect, also called attentional blink. However,
they cannot readily accomplish more than one cognitive task requiring them to
choose a response, retrieve information from memory, or engage in various
other cognitive operations. When both tasks require performance of any of these
cognitive operations, one or both tasks will show the PRP effect. According to
Hunt and Lansman, more intelligent people are better able to timeshare between
two tasks and to perform both effectively.

Theories of Divided Attention: Capacity models of attention. These models

help to explain how we can perform more than one attention-demanding task at
a time. People have a fixed amount of attention that they can choose to allocate
according to what the task requires. There are two different kinds: One kind of
model suggests that there is one single pool of attentional resources that can be
divided freely, and the other model suggests that there are multiple sources of
attention.

Attentional resource theory: People are much better at dividing their attention
when competing tasks are in different modalities. At least some attentional
resources may be specific to the modality (e.g., verbal or visual) in which a task
is presented. Two visual tasks are more likely to interfere with each other than
are a visual task coupled with an auditory one.

Task similarity (two cutting tasks), task difficulty, task practice (converting a
difficult task to and comparatively easy task- muscle memory- to complete task
fast)

Divided attention in everyday life: Most automobile accidents are caused by

failures in divided attention.

Factors that influence our ability to pay attention:

 Anxiety: Being anxious, either by nature (trait-based anxiety) or by

situation (state-based anxiety), places constraints on attention.

 Arousal: Your overall state of arousal affects attention as well. You may
be tired, drowsy, or drugged, which may limit attention. Being excited
sometimes enhances attention.

 Task difficulty: If you are working on a task that is very difficult or novel
for you, you’ll need more attentional resources than when you work on an
easy or highly familiar task. Task difficulty particularly influences
performance during divided attention.

 Skills: The more practiced and skilled you are in performing a task, the
more your attention is enhanced.
Multimode theory was developed by Johnston and Heinz (1978). This theory
believes that attention is a flexible system that allows selection of stimuli over
other stimulus at three stages. At stage one, the sensory representations (visual
images) of stimuli are constructed, at stage two the semantic representations
(name of the object) is constructed and at stage three the sensory and semantic
representations enter the consciousness. It is also suggested that more
processing requires more mental effort. When the messages are selected on the
basis of stage one processing (early selection), less mental effort is required
than when selection is based on stage three processing (late selection).
Attention has different properties such as selection, alertness, concentration, and
search.

Intelligence and attention: One model of intelligence that takes attention into
account is the Planning, Attention, and Simultaneous– Successive Process
Model of Human Cognition (PASS; Das, Naglieri, & Kirby,1994; see also
Davidson & Kemp, 2010).
 Inspection time is the amount of time it takes you to inspect items and
make a decision about them. Nettelbeck found that shorter inspection
times correlate with higher scores on intelligence tests.
 Intelligence can be understood in terms of speed of neuronal conduction.
In other words, the smart person is someone whose neural circuits
conduct information rapidly, choice reaction time—the time it takes to
select one answer from among several possibilities.

People with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have difficulties in

focusing their attention in ways that enable them to adapt in optimal ways to
their environment.

Habituation involves our becoming accustomed to a stimulus so that we

gradually pay less and less attention to it. The counterpart to habituation is
dishabituation. In dishabituation, a change in a familiar stimulus prompts us to
start noticing the stimulus again. Both processes occur automatically. The
processes involve no conscious effort. The relative stability and familiarity of
the stimulus govern these processes. Any aspects of the stimulus that seem
different or novel (unfamiliar) either prompt dishabituation or make habituation
less likely to occur in the first place.

Automatic processes: Involve no conscious control. They demand little or no

effort or even intention. Multiple automatic processes may occur at once, or at
least very quickly, and in no particular sequence. Thus, they are termed parallel
processes. Controlled processes are accessible to conscious control and even
require it. Such processes are performed serially- one step at a time. They take
relatively long time to execute. Many tasks that start off as controlled processes
eventually become automatic ones as a result of practice. This process is called
automatization (also termed proceduralization). The individual gradually
combines individual effortful steps into integrated components that are further
integrated until the whole process is one single operation. This operation
requires few or no cognitive resources, such as attention. Automatic processes
generally govern familiar, well-practiced as well as easy tasks. Controlled
processes govern relatively novel as well as difficult tasks. Because highly
automatized behaviors require little effort or conscious control, we often can
engage in multiple automatic behaviors. But we rarely can engage in more than
one labor-intensive controlled behavior.

Mistakes are errors in choosing an objective or in specifying a means of

achieving it. Slips are errors in carrying out an intended means for reaching an
objective. mistakes involve errors in intentional, controlled processes. Slips
often involve errors in automatic processes. (176)

Consciousness: The state of being aware of and responsive to one's own

existence, sensations, thoughts and surroundings.

Preconscious Processing: Some information that currently is outside our

conscious awareness still may be available to consciousness or at least to
cognitive processes.Information that is available for cognitive processing but
that currently lies outside conscious awareness exists at the preconscious level
of awareness. Preconscious information includes stored memories that we are
not using at a given time but that we could summon when needed. When
prompted, you can remember what your bedroom looks like. But obviously you
are not always consciously thinking about your bedroom (unless, perhaps, you
are extremely tired). Sensations, too, may be pulled from preconscious to
conscious awareness.

Priming: Priming is a technique in which the introduction of one stimulus

influences how people respond to a subsequent stimulus. Priming works by
activating an association or representation in memory just before another
stimulus or task is introduced. This phenomenon occurs without our conscious
awareness, yet it can have a major impact on numerous aspects of our everyday
lives. Priming suggests that certain schemas tend to be activated in unison. By
activating some units of information, related or connected units also become
active.

Positive and negative priming describes how priming influences processing

speed. Positive priming makes processing faster and speeds up memory
retrieval, while negative priming slows it down.
Semantic priming involves words that are associated in a logical or linguistic
way. The earlier example of responding to the word "banana" more rapidly after
being primed with the word "yellow" is an example of semantic priming.

Associative priming involves using two stimuli that are normally associated
with one another. For example, "cat" and "mouse" are two words that are often
linked with one another in memory, so the appearance of one of the words can
prime the subject to respond more rapidly when the second word appears.

Repetition priming occurs when a stimulus and response are repeatedly paired.
Because of this, subjects become more likely to respond in a certain way more
quickly each time the stimulus appears.

Perceptual priming involves stimuli that have similar forms. For example, the
word "goat" will evoke a faster response when it is preceded by the word "boat"
because the two words are perceptually similar.

Conceptual priming involves a stimulus and response that are conceptually

related. Words such as "desk" and "chair" are likely to show priming effects
because they are in the same conceptual category.

Masked priming involves part of the initial stimulus being obscured in some
way, such as with hash marks. Even though the entire stimulus is not visible, it
still evokes a response. Words in which certain letters are obscured are one
example of masked priming.

“Dyad of triads” – pairs (dyads) of three-word groups (triads) - Coherent and

incoherent triad. Priming, however, does not have to be visual. Priming effects
can be demonstrated using aural material as well. Experiments exploring
auditory priming reveal the same behavioural effects as visual priming.

The Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon: Sometimes pulling preconscious

information into conscious awareness is not easy. Particular preconscious
information, although not fully accessible to conscious thinking, is still
available to attentional processes. When it happens, you might feel that the
information is there just outside of your grasp. You know that you know the
information, but it seems temporarily locked behind some sort of mental brick
wall. When something finally does trigger the retrieval of the memory or when
someone else offers up the missing information, the relief of those feelings of
frustration is palpable.

Tip-of-the-tongue events are more likely to happen when people are tired.
Bilingual people experience more tip-of-the-tongues than monolingual speakers
which may be because bilinguals use either one of their languages less
frequently than do monolinguals. Older adults have more tip-of-the-tongue
experiences compared with younger adults. The anterior cingulateprefrontal
cortices are involved when one is experiencing the tip-of-the-tongue
phenomenon. This is likely due to high-level cognitive mechanisms being
activated in order to resolve the retrieval failure.

Unit 3

Memory is the ability to take in information, encode it, store it, and retrieve it at
a later time. The ability of an organism to record information about things or
events with the facility of recalling them later at will.

Encoding, Storage and Retrieval: (Processes)

 Encoding (or registration): Encoding refers to the initial experience of
perceiving and learning information. It is the process of receiving,
processing, and combining information. Encoding allows information
from the outside world to reach our senses in the forms of chemical and
physical stimuli. In this first stage we must change the information so that
we may put the memory into the encoding process. An important first
principle of encoding is that it is selective: we attend to some events in
our environment and we ignore others. The process of encoding always
involves recoding—that is, taking the information from the form it is
delivered to us and then converting it in a way that we can make sense of
it. Recoding can add information that was not even seen or heard during
the initial encoding phase. Several of the recoding processes, like forming
associations between memories, can happen without our awareness. This
is one reason people can sometimes remember events that did not actually
happen—because during the process of recoding, details get added.
A second point about encoding is that it is prolific; we are always
encoding the events of our lives—attending to the world, trying to
understand it. If something does happen that seems strange then we pay
close attention and try to understand why we are seeing what we are
seeing. Flash bulb memory refers to how some memories seem to be
captured in the mind like a flash photograph; because of the
distinctiveness and emotionality of the news, they seem to become
permanently etched in the mind with exceptional clarity compared to
other memories.

 Storage: the creation of a permanent record of the encoded information.

Storage is the second memory stage or process in which we maintain
information over periods of time.
  Retrieval (or recall, or recognition): the calling back of stored information
in response to some cue for use in a process or activity. The third process
is the retrieval of information that we have stored. We must locate it and
return it to our consciousness. Some retrieval attempts may be effortless
due to the type of information. Retrieval Cues are stimuli that help the
process of retrieval. Retrieval cues include associations, context, and
mood.

Problems can occur at any stage of the process, leading to anything from
forgetfulness to amnesia. Distraction can prevent us from encoding information
initially; information might not be stored properly, or might not move from
short-term to long-term storage; and/or we might not be able to retrieve the
information once it’s stored.

Stages of memory- Sensory, Short Term and Long Term Memory: Richard
Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin- Information begins in sensory memory, moves
to short-term memory, and eventually moves to long-term memory. But not all
information makes it through all three stages; most of it is forgotten. Whether
the information moves from shorter-duration memory into longer-duration
memory or whether it is lost from memory entirely depends on how the
information is attended to and processed.

Sensory memory refers to the brief storage of sensory information. Sensory

memory is a memory buffer that lasts only very briefly and then, unless it is
attended to and passed on for more processing, is forgotten. The purpose of
sensory memory is to give the brain some time to process the incoming
sensations, and to allow us to see the world as an unbroken stream of events
rather than as individual pieces. Visual sensory memory is known as iconic
memory. Auditory sensory memory is known as echoic memory. Haptic
memory is the branch of sensory memory used by the sense of touch. In contrast
to iconic memories, which decay very rapidly, echoic memories can last as long
as four seconds. In some people iconic memory seems to last longer, a
phenomenon known as eidetic imagery (or photographic memory) in which
people can report details of an image over long periods of time.

Short-term memory (STM) is the place where small amounts of information can
be temporarily kept for more than a few seconds but usually for less than one
minute. Information in short-term memory is not stored permanently but rather
becomes available for us to process, and the processes that we use to make
sense of, modify, interpret, and store information in STM are known as working
memory.
Working memory is not a store of memory like STM but rather a set of
memory procedures or operations. Working memory is a multi-component
system (auditory, and visual).Central executive — the part of working memory
that directs attention and processing. The central executive will make use of
whatever strategies seem to be best for the given task. It is responsible for
monitoring and coordinating the operation of the slave systems (i.e.,
visuospatial sketchpad and phonological loop) and relates them to long term
memory (LTM). The central executive decides which information is attended to
and which parts of the working memory to send that information to be dealt
with.The central executive directs attention and gives priority to particular
activities. For instance, the central executive will direct the rehearsal process,
and at the same time direct the visual cortex to form an image of the list of
letters in memory.

The phonological loop is the part of working memory that deals with spoken
and written material. It consists of two parts. The phonological store (linked to
speech perception) acts as an inner ear and holds information in a speech-based
form (i.e., spoken words) for 1-2 seconds. Spoken words enter the store directly.
Written words must first be converted into an articulatory (spoken) code before
they can enter the phonological store. The articulatory control process (linked to
speech production) acts like an inner voice rehearsing information from the
phonological store. It circulates information round and round like a tape loop.
The articulatory control process also converts written material into an
articulatory code and transfers it to the phonological store.
The visuospatial sketchpad (inner eye) deals with visual and spatial information.
Visual information refers to what things look like. It is likely that the
visuospatial sketchpad plays an important role in helping us keep track of where
we are in relation to other objects as we move through our environment. The
sketchpad also displays and manipulates visual and spatial information held in
long-term memory. For example, the spatial layout of your house is held in
LTM.

One way to prevent the decay of information from short-term memory is to use
working memory to rehearse it. Maintenance rehearsal is the process of
repeating information mentally or out loud with the goal of keeping it in
memory. We engage in maintenance rehearsal to keep something that we want
to remember (e.g., a person’s name, email address, or phone number) in mind
long enough to write it down, use it, or potentially transfer it to long-term
memory. One way we are able to expand our ability to remember things in STM
is by using a memory technique called chunking. Chunking is the process of
organizing information into smaller groupings (chunks), thereby increasing the
number of items that can be held in STM.
If information makes it past short term-memory it may enter long-term memory
(LTM), memory storage that can hold information for days, months, and years.
The capacity of long-term memory is large, and there is no known limit to what
we can remember.

Types of Long Term Memory:

Explicit memories, also known as declarative memories, include all of the
memories that are available in consciousness. Explicit memory can be further
divided into episodic memory (specific events) and semantic memory
(knowledge about the world).

Implicit memories are those that are mostly unconscious. This type of memory
includes procedural memory, which refers to our often unexplainable
knowledge of how to do things. It involves memories of body movement and
how to use objects in the environment. How to drive a car or use a computer are
examples of procedural memories. A second type of implicit memory is
classical conditioning effects, in which we learn, often without effort or
awareness, to associate neutral stimuli (such as a sound or a light) with another
stimulus (such as food), which creates a naturally occurring response, such as
enjoyment or salivation. The memory for the association is demonstrated when
the conditioned stimulus (the sound) begins to create the same response as the
unconditioned stimulus (the food) did before the learning. The final type of
implicit memory is known as priming, or changes in behaviour as a result of
experiences that have happened frequently or recently. Priming refers both to
the activation of knowledge (e.g., we can prime the concept of kindness by
presenting people with words related to kindness) and to the influence of that
activation on behaviour (people who are primed with the concept of kindness
may act more kindly). Activate the knowledge and use that activation to
influence behaviour.

Process of Forgetting: The two most well-known theories are interference

theory and decay theory. Interference occurs when competing information
causes us to forget something; decay occurs when simply the passage of time
causes us to forget.

Interference theory refers to the view that forgetting occurs because recall of
certain words interferes with recall of other words. Retention interval is the time
between the presentation of the last letter and the start of the recall phase of the
experimental trial.

At least two kinds of interference figure prominently in psychological theory

and research: retroactive interference and proactive interference. Retroactive
interference (or retroactive inhibition) occurs when newly acquired knowledge
impedes the recall of older material. This kind of interference is caused by
activity occurring after we learn something but before we are asked to recall
that thing.

Proactive interference (or proactive inhibition) occurs when material that was
learned in the past impedes the learning of new material. In this case, the
interfering material occurs before, rather than after, learning of the to-be-
remembered material. The amount of proactive interference generally climbs
with increases in the length of time between when the information is presented
(and encoded) and when the information is retrieved. Proactive interference
generally has stronger effects in older adults than in younger people.
Proactive interference seems to be associated with activation in the frontal
cortex. In alcoholic patients, proactive interference is seen to a lesser degree
than in non-alcoholic patients. This finding suggests that the alcoholic patients
have difficulty integrating past information with new information. Thus,
alcoholic patients may have difficulty binding together unrelated items in a list.

All information does not equally contribute to proactive interference. For

instance, if you are learning a list of numbers, your performance in learning the
list will gradually decline as the list continues. If, however, the list switches to
words, your performance will rebound. This enhancement in performance is
known as release from proactive interference. The effects of proactive
interference appear to dominate under conditions in which recall is delayed.
However, proactive and retroactive interference now are viewed as
complementary phenomena.

Another method often used for determining the causes of forgetting involves the
serial-position curve. The serial-position curve represents the probability of
recall of a given word, given its serial position (order of presentation) in a list.
The recency effect refers to superior recall of words at and near the end of a list.
The primacy effect refers to superior recall of words at and near the beginning
of a list. The serial-position curve makes sense in terms of interference theory.
Words at the end of the list are subject to proactive but not to retroactive
interference. Words at the beginning of the list are subject to retroactive but not
to proactive interference. And words in the middle of the list are subject to both
types of interference. Therefore, recall would be expected to be poorest in the
middle of the list.

Decay theory asserts that information is forgotten because of the gradual

disappearance, rather than displacement, of the memory trace. Thus, decay
theory views the original piece of information as gradually disappearing unless
something is done to keep it intact.
A research paradigm called the “recent-probes task” has been developed that
does not encourage participants to rehearse the items presented. It was found
that:
• Decay only had a relatively small effect on forgetting in short-term memory.
• Interference accounted for most of the forgetting.
• So even if both decay and interference contribute to forgetting, it can be
argued that interference has the strongest effect.

To conclude, evidence exists for both interference and decay, at least in short
term memory. There is some evidence for decay, but the evidence for
interference is much stronger. For now, we can assume that interference
accounts for most of the forgetting in short-term memory. However, the extent
to which the interference is retroactive, proactive, or both is unclear. In addition,
interference also affects material in long-term memory, leading to memory
distortion.

Reconstructive Memory: Reconstructive memory is a theory of memory

recall, in which the act of remembering is influenced by various other cognitive
processes including perception, imagination, semantic memory and beliefs,
amongst others. People view their memories as being a coherent and truthful
account of episodic memory and believe that their perspective is free from an
error during recall. However, the reconstructive process of memory recall is
subject to distortion by other intervening cognitive functions such as individual
perceptions, social influences, and world knowledge, all of which can lead to
errors during reconstruction.

The complexity required for reconstructing some episodes is quite demanding

and can result in incorrect or incomplete recall. This complexity leaves
individuals susceptible to phenomena such as the misinformation effect across
subsequent recollections. By employing reconstructive processes, individuals
supplement other aspects of available personal knowledge and schema into the
gaps found in episodic memory in order to provide a fuller and more coherent
version, albeit one that is often distorted.

When there is little available distinctive information for a given episode there
will be more overlap across multiple episodes, leading the individual to recall
only the general similarities common to these memories. Ultimately proper
recall for a desired target memory fails due to the interference of non-target
memories that are activated because of their similarity. A large number of errors
that occur during memory reconstruction are caused by faults in the criterion-
setting and decision making processes used to direct attention towards retrieving
a specific target memory. When there are lapses in the recall of aspects of
episodic memory, the individual tends to supplement other aspects of
knowledge that are unrelated to the actual episode to form a more cohesive and
well-rounded reconstruction of the memory, regardless of whether or not the
individual is aware of such supplemental processing. This process is known as
confabulation. All of the supplemental processes occurring during the course of
reconstruction rely on the use of schema, information networks that organize
and store abstract knowledge in the brain.

After the information is encoded and stored in our memory, specific cues are
often needed to retrieve these memories. These are known as retrieval cues and
they play a major role in reconstructive memory. The use of retrieval cues can
both promote the accuracy of reconstructive memory as well as detract from it.
The most common aspect of retrieval cues associated with reconstructive
memory is the process that involves recollection. This process uses logical
structures, partial memories, narratives, or clues to retrieve the desired memory.
However, the process of recollection is not always successful due to cue-
dependent forgetting and priming.

Recovered Memory: A 1996 interview survey of 711 women reported that

forgetting and later remembering childhood sexual abuse is not uncommon;
more than a quarter of the respondents who reported abuse also reported
forgetting the abuse for some period of time and then recalling it on their own.
Of those who reported abuse, less than 2% reported that the recall of the abuse
was assisted by a therapist or other professional. Williams demonstrated that a
minority of adults failed to disclose documented childhood emergency room
visits related to sexual abuse. As well as demonstrating that some people may
forget abuse, the data trend indicates that as the amount of force used in the
abuse increases, recall also increases.

Recovered-memory therapy (RMT) is a catch-all psychotherapy term for

therapy using one or more method or technique for the purpose of recalling
memories. It does not refer to a specific, recognized treatment method, but
rather several controversial and/or unproven interviewing techniques, such as
hypnosis, age regression and guided imagery, and the use of sedative-hypnotic
drugs, which are presently rarely used in the responsible treatment of post-
traumatic stress disorder and other dissociative disorders. Proponents of
recovered memory therapy claim that traumatic memories can be buried in the
subconscious and affect current behavior, and that these can be recovered.

Some therapists who work with trauma survivors believe that the recovered
memories are true because they are accompanied by such extreme emotions.
Other therapists have reported that some of their patients have recovered
memories that could not have been true (a memory of being decapitated, for
example).
Memory Distortions: People have tendencies to distort their memories. For
example, just saying something has happened to you makes you more likely to
think it really happened. These distortions tend to occur in seven specific ways,
which Schacter (2001) refers to as the “seven sins of memory.”

1. Transience: Memory fades quickly. For example, although most people know
that O. J. Simpson was acquitted of criminal charges in the murder of his wife,
they do not remember how they found out about his acquittal. At one time they
could have said, but they no longer can.
2. Absent-mindedness: People sometimes brush their teeth after already having
brushed them or enter a room looking for something only to discover that they
have forgotten what they were seeking.
3. Blocking: People sometimes have something that they know they should
remember, but they can’t. It’s as though the information is on the tip of their
tongue, but they cannot retrieve it. For example, people may see someone they
know, but the person’s name escapes them; or they may try to think of a
synonym for a word, knowing that there is an obvious synonym, but are unable
to recall it.
4. Misattribution: People often cannot remember where they heard what they
heard or read what they read. Sometimes people think they saw things they did
not see or heard things they did not hear. For example, eyewitness testimony is
sometimes clouded by what we think we should have seen, rather than what we
actually saw.
5. Suggestibility: People are susceptible to suggestion, so if it is suggested to
them that they saw something, they may think they remember seeing it. For
example, in one study, when asked whether they had seen a television film of a
plane crashing into an apartment building, many people said they had seen it.
There was no such film.
6. Bias: People often are biased in their recall. For example, people who
currently are experiencing chronic pain in their lives are more likely to
remember pain in the past, whether or not they actually experienced it. People
who are not experiencing such pain are less likely to recall pain in the past,
again with little regard to their actual past experience.
7. Persistence: People sometimes remember things as consequential that, in a
broad context, are inconsequential. For example, someone with many successes
but one notable failure may remember the single failure better than the many
successes.

TABMSBP
Eyewitness Testimony
Eyewitness testimony is a legal term. It refers to an account given by people of
an event they have witnessed. This includes identification of perpetrators,
details of the crime scene etc. Juries tend to pay close attention to eyewitness
testimony and generally find it a reliable source of information. Eyewitness
testimony may be the most common source of wrongful convictions in the
United States. Eyewitness testimony is often a powerful determinant of whether
a jury will convict an accused person. The effect is particularly pronounced if
eyewitnesses appear highly confident of their testimony. This is true even if the
eyewitnesses can provide few perceptual details or offer apparently conflicting
responses.

However, research into this area has found that eyewitness testimony can be
affected by many psychological factors:

Anxiety / Stress: Clifford and Scott (1978) found that people who saw a film of
a violent attack remembered fewer of the 40 items of information about the
event than a control group who saw a less stressful version. As witnessing a
real crime is probably more stressful than taking part in an experiment, memory
accuracy may well be even more affected in real life.

Reconstructive Memory: Recall is subject to personal interpretation dependent

on our learnt or cultural norms and values, and the way we make sense of our
world. People store information in the way that makes the most sense to them.
We make sense of information by trying to fit it into schemas, which are a way
of organizing information. Schemas are therefore capable of distorting
unfamiliar or unconsciously ‘unacceptable’ information in order to ‘fit in’ with
our existing knowledge or schemas. This can, therefore, result in unreliable
eyewitness testimony.

Weapon Focus: This refers to an eyewitness’s concentration on a weapon to the

exclusion of other details of a crime. In a crime where a weapon is involved, it
is not unusual for a witness to be able to describe the weapon in much more
detail than the person holding it.

Leading Questions: Leading question is a type of question that pushes

respondents to answer in a specific manner, based on the way they are framed.

Children’s recollections are particularly susceptible to distortion. Such

distortion is especially likely when the children are asked leading questions, as
in a courtroom setting. The younger the child is, the less reliable the testimony
of that child can be expected to be. When a questioner is coercive or even just
seems to want a particular answer, children can be quite susceptible to
providing that. Children may believe that they recall observing things that
others have said they observed. If a child has some intellectual disability,
memory for the event is even more likely to be distorted, at least when a
significant delay has occurred between the time of the event and the time of
recall.

Line-ups also can lead to faulty conclusions. Eyewitnesses assume that the
perpetrator is in the line-up. This is not always the case, however. When the
perpetrator of a staged crime was not in a line-up, participants were susceptible
to naming someone other than the true perpetrator as the perpetrator. In this
way, they believed they were able to recognize someone in the line-up as having
committed the crime. The identities of the non-perpetrators in the line-up also
can affect judgment. In other words, whether a given person is identified as a
perpetrator can be influenced simply by who the others are in the line-up.

Confessions also influence the testimony of eyewitnesses. Feedback to

eyewitnesses affected participants’ testimony. Telling them that they had
identified the perpetrator made them feel more secure in their choice, whereas
the feedback that they had identified a filler person made them back away from
their judgment immediately. This phenomenon is called the post-identification
feedback effect.

Eyewitness identification is particularly weak when identifying people of a

racial or ethnic group other than that of the witness. Evidence suggests that this
weakness is not a problem remembering stored faces of people from other racial
or ethnic groups, but rather, a problem of accurately encoding their faces.

Memory Illusion: A distortion in remembering, analogous to a perceptual

illusion, in which one remembers inaccurately or remembers something that in
fact did not occur. The Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm is a memory
illusion. A laboratory memory task used to study false recall. It is based on a
report in 1959 that, after presentation of a list of related words (e.g., snore, rest,
dream, awake), participants mistakenly recalled an unpresented but strongly
associated item (e.g., sleep).

False Memory: A false memory is a fabricated or distorted recollection of an

event. A false memory is a recollection that seems real in your mind but is
fabricated in part or in whole. Such memories may be entirely false and
imaginary. It involves a level of certitude in the validity of the memory. In some
cases, they may contain elements of fact that have been distorted by interfering
information or other memory distortions. For eg: incorrectly recalling that you
locked the front door. Some common elements of false memory include:
  Mental experiences that people believe are accurate representations of
past events
 Trivial details (believing you put your keys on the table when you got
home) to much more serious (believing you saw someone at the scene of
a crime)

It is not about forgetting or mixing up details of things that we experienced. It is

about remembering things that we never experienced in the first place.

The crux of false memory: 1.) anything one visualizes in detail might
potentially be stored away and become undifferentiated from the experiencing
of an event; 2.) when we recall a memory we are recalling the last time we
remembered it and not the event directly, and this can lead to a disparity
between the memory and the actual event as it gets tied up with what’s going on
in one’s mind at the time.

Factors that can influence false memory include misinformation and

misattribution of the original source of the information. Existing knowledge and
other memories can also interfere with the formation of a new memory, causing
the recollection of an event to be mistaken or entirely false. It is also possible to
induce false memories through suggestion.

Misattribution: People often cannot remember where they heard what they
heard or read what they read. Sometimes people think they saw things they did
not see or heard things they did not hear. For example, eyewitness testimony is
sometimes clouded by what we think we should have seen, rather than what we
actually saw.
Suggestibility: People are susceptible to suggestion, so if it is suggested to them
that they saw something, they may think they remember seeing it. For example,
in one study, when asked whether they had seen a television film of a plane
crashing into an apartment building, many people said they had seen it. There
was no such film.

In other instances, false memories can have serious implications. Researchers

have found that false memories are one of the leading causes of false
convictions, usually through the false identification of a suspect or false
recollections during police interrogations.

Influence of time: False memories form more readily when enough time has
passed that the original memory has faded. In eyewitness testimony, for
example, the length of time between the incident and being interviewed about
the event plays a role in how suggestible people are to false memory. If
interviewed immediately after an event, when the details are still vivid, people
are less likely to be influenced by misinformation. If, however, an interview is
delayed for a period of time, people are more likely to be affected by potential
false information.

Defining Language:
Language is the use of an organized means of combining words in order to
communicate with those around us. It also makes it possible to think about
things and processes we currently cannot see, hear, feel, touch, or smell. These
things include ideas that may not have any tangible form. The words we use
may be written, spoken, or otherwise signed.

Not all communication—exchange of thoughts and feelings—is through

language. Communication encompasses other aspects—nonverbal
communication, such as gestures or facial expressions, can be used to embellish
or to indicate. Communication can also include touches, such as handshakes,
hits, and hugs.

Meaning and Structure:

Language, a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written
symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and
participants in its culture, express themselves.

The five main components of language are phonemes, morphemes, lexemes,

syntax, and context. Along with grammar, semantics, and pragmatics, these
components work together to create meaningful communication among
individuals.

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that may cause a change of meaning
within a language but that doesn’t have meaning by itself. It is simply a single
vocal sound. A given phone may or may not be part of a particular language.
These sounds are produced by alternating sequences of opening and closing the
vocal tract. Different languages use different numbers and combinations of
phonemes. In English, the difference between the /p/ and the /b/ sound is an
important distinction. These sounds function as phonemes in English because
they constitute the difference between different words. Phonetics is the study of
how to produce or combine speech sounds or to represent them with written
symbols.
A morpheme is the smallest unit of a word that provides a specific meaning to a
string of letters (which is called a phoneme). English courses may have
introduced you to two forms of morphemes—root words and affixes. Root
words are the portions of words that contain the majority of meaning. These
roots cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful units.
Affixes include prefixes, which precede the root word, and suffixes, which
follow the root word. Content morphemes are the words that convey the bulk of
the meaning of a language. Function morphemes add detail and nuance to the
meaning of the content morphemes or help the content morphemes fit the
grammatical context.

The lexicon is the entire set of morphemes in a given language or in a given

person’s linguistic repertoire. The average adult speaker of English has a
lexicon of about 80,000 morphemes. By combining morphemes, most adult
English speakers have a vocabulary of hundreds of thousands of words. For
example, by attaching just a few morphemes to the root content morpheme
study, we have student, studious, studied, studying, and studies. Vocabulary is
built up slowly. It develops through many diverse exposures to words and clues
as to their meanings.

Basic components of sentences: Syntax is the set of rules by which a person

constructs full sentences. It plays a major role in our understanding of language.
A sentence comprises at least two parts. The first is a noun phrase, which
contains at least one noun (often the subject of the sentence) and includes all the
relevant descriptors of the noun (like “big” or “fast”). The second is a verb
phrase (predicate), which contains at least one verb and whatever the verb acts
on, if anything.

Understanding the meaning of words, sentences and larger text units: Semantics
is the study of meaning in a language. A semanticist would be concerned with
how words and sentences express meaning. Discourse encompasses language
use at the level beyond the sentence, such as in conversation, paragraphs,
stories, chapters, and entire works of literature.

Context is how everything within language works together to convey a

particular meaning.

Origin of Language:
Theories about the origin of language differ in regard to their basic assumptions
about what language is. Some theories are based on the idea that language is so
complex that one cannot imagine it simply appearing from nothing in its final
form, but that it must have evolved from earlier pre-linguistic systems among
our pre-human ancestors. These theories can be called continuity-based
theories. The opposite viewpoint is that language is such a unique human trait
that it cannot be compared to anything found among non-humans and that it
must therefore have appeared suddenly in the transition from pre-hominids to
early man. These theories can be defined as discontinuity-based. Similarly,
theories based on the generative view of language pioneered by Noam Chomsky
see language mostly as an innate faculty that is largely genetically encoded,
whereas functionalist theories see it as a system that is largely cultural, learned
through social interaction.

 The Bow-Wow Theory- According to this theory, language began when

our ancestors started imitating the natural sounds around them. The first
speech was onomatopoeic—marked by echoic words such as moo, meow,
splash, cuckoo, and bang. Relatively few words are onomatopoeic, and
these words vary from one language to another. For instance, a dog's bark
is heard as au au in Brazil, ham ham in Albania, and wang, wang in
China. In addition, many onomatopoeic words are of recent origin, and
not all are derived from natural sounds.

 The Ding-Dong Theory- This theory, favored by Plato and Pythagoras,

maintains that speech arose as humans started naming objects after
sounds that were in use, relevant- to that object, in response to the
essential qualities of objects in the environment. The original sounds
people made were supposedly in harmony with the world around them.
Apart from some rare instances of sound symbolism, there is no
persuasive evidence, in any language, of an innate connection between
sound and meaning.

 The ta-ta theory- Sir Richard Paget, influenced by Darwin, believed that
body movement (imp- hand gestures) preceded language. Language
began as an unconscious vocal imitation of these movements -- like the
way a child's mouth will move when they use scissors, or my tongue
sticks out when I try to play the guitar. This evolved into the popular idea
that language may have derived from gestures.

 The La-La Theory- The Danish linguist Otto Jespersen suggested that
language may have developed from sounds associated with love, play,
and (especially) song.

 The Pooh-Pooh Theory- This theory holds that speech began with
interjections—spontaneous cries of pain ("Ouch!"), surprise ("Oh!"), and
other emotions ("Yabba dabba do!").

 The Yo-He-Ho Theory- According to this theory, language evolved from

the grunts, groans, and snorts evoked by heavy physical labor.

 The hey you! Theory- A linguist by the name of Revesz suggested that
we have always needed interpersonal contact, and that language began as
 sounds to signal both identity (here I am!) and belonging (I'm with you!).
We may also cry out in fear, anger, or hurt (help me!). This is more
commonly called the contact theory.

Properties of language:
Languages can be strikingly different, but they all have some commonalities. It
provides the basis for linguistic encoding in memory. We are able to remember
things better because we use language to help us recall or recognize them.

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. The thing or concept in the real world that a word refers to is called
referent. 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. According to the principle of
contrast, different words have different meanings. Thus, when you have two
different words, they represent two things that are at least slightly different.

3. Regularly structured: Language has a structure; only particularly patterned

arrangements of symbols have meaning, and different arrangements yield
different meanings.

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.

6. Dynamic: Languages constantly evolve. Individual language users coin

words and phrases and modify language usage. Similarly, words that are no
longer used are removed from the dictionary, further contributing to the
evolution of language.

Use/ Functions:
The functions of language include communication, the expression of identity,
play, control, imaginative expression, and emotional release. Language interacts
with every aspect of human life in society, and it can be understood only if it is
considered in relation to society.

 The expressive function of language is an attempt to express a sudden

change of state, fear, delight, pain or confusion. Most probably, these
functions are automatic instinctual functions, and found in lower
organisms also.

 The interpretative function serves to restore a state of cognitive

equilibrium. While the stimulus itself creates a condition of uncertainty or
novelty, the interpretation serves to clarify the situation and restore the
equilibrium. Such an interpretation helps to place the information in an
appropriate position or slot in one’s cognitive world. (Baby cry-
differences)

 Language helps us to encode experiences, store them and retrieve and

decode. It is language, which helps us to translate experiences into
thought and engage in processes of different types.

 Language plays a critical role in the development of the self and overall
psychological development.

 Language also serves to develop a sense of social identity, a sense of

belongingness to a particular group, marking out different degrees of
social proximity and distance. Language is used to express a national or
local identity (a common source of conflict in situations of multiethnicity
around the world.

 The “ludic” (playful) function of language—encountered in such

phenomena as puns, riddles, and crossword puzzles—and the range of
functions seen in imaginative or symbolic contexts, such as poetry,
drama, and religious expression.

Universal Language:
Universal language may refer to a hypothetical or historical language spoken
and understood by all or most of the world's population. In some contexts, it
refers to a means of communication said to be understood by all living things. It
may be the idea of an international auxiliary language for communication
between groups speaking different primary languages. In other conceptions, it
may be the primary language of all speakers, or the only existing language.
Some religious and mythological traditions state that there was once a single
universal language among all people, or shared by humans and supernatural
beings.

In historical linguistics, monogenesis refers to the idea that all spoken human
languages are descended from a single ancestral language spoken many
thousands of years ago.

Comprehension of Language:

Unit IV:
Problem Solving: The problem-solving cycle includes: problem identification,
problem definition, strategy formulation, organization of information, allocation
of resources, monitoring, and evaluation.

1. Problem identification: Do we actually have a problem?

2. Problem definition and representation: What exactly is our problem?
3. Strategy formulation: How can we solve the problem? The strategy may
involve analysis—breaking down the whole of a complex problem into
manageable elements.
It may involve the complementary process of synthesis—putting together
various elements to arrange them into something useful. Another pair of
complementary strategies involves divergent and convergent thinking.
4. Organization of information: How do the various pieces of information in the
problem fit together?
5. Resource allocation: How much time, effort, money, etc., should I put into
this problem?
6. Monitoring: Am I on track as I proceed to solve the problem?
7. Evaluation: Did I solve the problem correctly?

The ability to identify emotions in others and regulate emotions in oneself—

emotional processing can positively influence problem solving. The ability to
regulate their emotional state (among other factors) is related to higher problem-
solving ability.

Types of Thinking
Directed thinking is goal oriented and rational. Such thinking requires a clear,
well-defined goal. One must then find a path that leads to the goal, with the aim
of doing so as directly as possible. The costs of each path are certainly taken
into account (eg. it may be easier to find a steakhouse but much more affordable
to grill at home). In general, directed thinking avoids wandering aimlessly,
exploring odd options, and looking for creative solutions. Just such aimless
meandering might be necessary to arrive at highly novel solutions. For example,
"borrowing" the neighbour’s steak is creative and highly affordable, albeit
unscrupulous and possibly dangerous.

Wandering thought is called undirected thinking. Such thought meanders and is

anything but rational and goal oriented. Dreaming and daydreaming were
identified early on by Freud as forms of undirected thought that are not bound
by the ordinary constraints of reality. Undirected thinking takes us to
destinations that are sometimes murky and sometimes insightful. It can play a
role in creativity and in finding solutions to problems that are poorly defined.

Well Defined and Ill-Defined Problems

Well-structured problems have clear paths to solutions. These problems also are
termed well-defined problems. On tests in school, your teachers have asked you
to tackle countless well-structured problems in specific content areas (e.g.,
math, history, geography). These problems had clear paths, if not necessarily
easy paths, to their solutions. A particular type of well-structured problem: the
class of move problems, so termed because such problems require a series of
moves to reach a final goal state.
Directed thinking begins with the assumption that the problem at hand is a well-
defined problem. In technical terms, such a problem is said to have a definable
initial state (e.g, need for dinner), goal state (eg.. steak dinner), and one or more
paths to obtaining the goal. Each path can be specified as a series of
intermediate states, some of which are critical subgoals (e.g., burning coals).
The way in which one moves from one state to the next is defined by a set of
rules. Each legal move from the initial state to intermediate states to the final
goal state is specifically defined by an operator. In solving the problem of
having a steak dinner, there are many such operators. If theft is not among them,
then the creative solution of snatching the neighbor's steak is never even
considered. All of the states and operators taken together define what is called a
problem space. Chess is one such game. The initial state is defined by the
players lined up on the board for the opening move. The goal state is defined as
checkmate. The operators are the legal moves of each game piece (e g. the
bishop may move or attack the opponent's pieces as many spaces away as
desired, but only along its assigned diagonal on the chessboard). The 64 squares
of the chessboard and the 6 kinds of pieces yield an immense problem space,
one so large that even a supercomputer could not check all possible states
before deciding on a move in a game. It should be noted that the problem space
that exists for a given person may well include errors or omissions. If an
operator is misunderstood, such as the rule for moving a knight in chess, then a
flawed problem space would be generated. Similarly, an inexperienced chess
player who simply never moved the knights would be working within an
incomplete problem space. Well-defined problems often call for reproductive
problem solving and directed thought.

Ill-structured problems lack clear paths to solutions. These problems are also
termed ill-defined problems. Il-defined problems are those in which the goal
state, the initial state, and/or the operators are not clearly defined. Writing an
essay, painting a picture, and creating a garden are ill-defined problems because
their solutions and the paths to arrive at them cannot be specified in advance.
Problem solvers have difficulty constructing appropriate mental representations
for modelling these problems and their solutions. For such problems, much of
the difficulty is in constructing a plan for sequentially following a series of steps
that inch ever closer to their solution. Try to connect all nine dots by drawing
four straight lines, without lifting the pen from the paper. Ill-defined problems
often demand productive thinking.

Productive and Reproductive Problems

Reproductive thinking entails the application of tried-and-true paths to a
solution. The thinker reproduces a series of steps that are known to yield
workable answer by using rote memory. Trial and error can be regarded as one
form of reproductive thinking. E. L. Thorndike (1898) in his classic experiments
placed a cat in a confined box such that it could escape by discovering a lever
that opened a door. On being placed in the box, the cat pawed randomly about
the box, obviously irritated by the confinement. At first, then, the cat's behavior
was trial and error once it discovered the escape lever; however, the cat quickly
reproduced the solution to the problem by manipulating the lever each time it
was put in the box.
Productive thinking on the other hand, requires insight and creativity. In the
view of the Gestalt psychologists, the thinker must see a new way of organizing
the problem, that is, a new way of structuring the elements of thought and
perception. Köhler (1925) spent seven years studying the problem-solving of
chimpanzees while stranded on the island of Tenerife in the Atlantic Ocean
during World War I. He designed problems such as the following. A
chimpanzee is in a large cage along with several crates hanging from the top of
the cage out of reach is a banana. Köhler reported that in this setting the
chimpanzee would appear to be lost in thought, and then suddenly the
proverbial light bulb of insight would flash. The animal would then move the
crates under the banana, stacking them to form a ladder to reach the food. In
another problem, a chimpanzee insightfully learned to join together two sticks
in order to reach a banana lying outside the cage. Such productive or insightful
problem solving differed from the trial-and-error learning of Thorndike's cats.

Model of Problem Solving

Ernst and Newell (1969) developed a computer simulation called General
Problem Solver GPS) as a model for exploring the nature of human problem
solving Their intent was to show that an artificial intelligence (Al) program
based on certain general methods could, in fact solve a wide range of problems.
Human problem solving proceeds in the same manner as GPS. The two
essential components are representing the problem and problem space for a
solution.
Representation problems: Understanding and coming up with the right way to
represent a problem is a crucial step in solving the problem. The language used
to describe a problem powerfully determines how it is represented mentally. If
at first you do not succeed, search for a different problem space. An algorithm is
a rule for solving a problem that always succeeds given enough time and effort.
A heuristic is a rule of thumb that may or may not lead to a solution but has less
computational cost than an algorithm. Two general algorithms for searching a
problem space are trial and error (or random search) and systematic search.
Creativity: The process of producing something that is both original and
worthwhile. It can be a theory, a dance, a chemical, a process or procedure, a
story, a symphony, or almost anything else. Creative individuals show creative
productivity. They produce inventions, insightful discoveries, artistic works,
revolutionary paradigms, or other products that are both original and
worthwhile. Conventional wisdom suggests that highly creative individuals also
have creative lifestyles. These lifestyles are characterized by flexibility, non-
stereotyped behaviors, and non-conforming attitudes.

Fluency: The ability to keep coming up with creative ideas one after the other.
Flexibility: The ability to come up with different ideas, which are not variations
of a single idea.
Originality: The ability to think about unique and original ideas or
improvements in the existing ideas.

The people who exhibit creative behavior have a unique set of qualities, they
are:
1. Challenge Status Quo
2. Avoid Assumptions
3. Are naturally curious
4. Always explore all possibilities
5. Have vivid imagination
6. Think of the future
7. Don’t believe in an ultimate idea
8. Never think anything impossible
9. Like taking risks
10.Can adapt to changing circumstances
11.Can connect seemingly disparate events
12.Are visual thinkers
13.Can identify patterns
14.Look beyond the first ‘right idea’

Stages of Creativity
The creative process is the evolution of an idea into its final form through a
progression of thoughts and actions. The creative process involves critical
thinking and problem-solving skills. It involves characteristics of both reasoning
and imagination. The individual generates an original, unusual and productive
solution to a problem.

Preparation stage: In this stage the thinker formulates the problem and collects
the facts and materials identifying sources of inspiration, and acquiring
knowledge about the project or problem at hand. This is often an internal
process (thinking deeply to generate and engage with ideas) as well as an
external one (going out into the world to gather the necessary data, resources,
materials, and expertise). Many times the problem cannot be solved even after
days, weeks or months of concentrated efforts. Brainstorm and letting our mind
wander, or writing in a journal to foster divergent thinking will help with the
process. In this first part of the process, our brain is using its memory bank to
draw on knowledge and past experiences to generate original ideas.

Incubation stage: Aka period of germination. During this period some of the
ideas that were interfering with the solution will tend to fade. The overt activity
and sometimes even thinking about the problem is absent in this stage. But the
unconscious thought process involved in creative thinking is at work during this
period. We might work on another project or take a break from the creative
process altogether—regardless, we are not consciously trying to work on our
idea. Walking away from our idea might seem counterproductive, but it’s an
important stage of the process. During this time, your story or song or problem
is incubating in the back of your mind.

Illumination stage: Following the period of incubation the creative ideas occur
suddenly. Sometimes called the insight stage, illumination is when the “aha”
moment happens. The light bulb clicks on as spontaneous new connections are
formed and all of that material you’ve gathered comes together to present the
solution to your problem. In this third stage, the answer to your creative quest
strikes you. For example, you overcome writer’s block by figuring out the
ending to your story. It can take you by surprise but after the incubation stage,
an idea has emerged.

Verification stage: This is the final stage of the creative process. Though the
solution is found in illumination stage, it is necessary to verify whether that
solution is correct or not. Hence in this last stage evaluation of the solution is
done. During this stage, you consider the validity of your idea and weigh it
against alternatives. This is also a time of reflection when you look back at your
initial concept or problem to see if your solution aligns with your initial vision.
If the solution is not satisfactory the thinker will go back to creative process
from the beginning. If it is satisfactory, the same will be accepted and if
necessary, minor modification may also be made in solution. We then bring our
idea to life, and share it with the world.

Creativity Blocks
Creative blocks, or barriers to inspiration, can be described as the inability to
access one’s internal creativity. Those in creative professions—writers,
musicians, performers, artists—are often more likely to be affected by creative
blocks, which can last for days, weeks, months, or even years.

When creative blocks surface, they can affect work, performance, and well-
being. A creative block might be experienced by anyone, for a number of
reasons. It can be difficult to get past a creative block, but often simply
becoming aware of when, how, and why a creative block develops can help a
person work to address the creative block and prevent it from returning.

One’s inner critic, often useful in the process of completing work or developing
one’s role in society, can sometimes come to dominate certain aspects of
feelings or behavior. This self-critique may sometimes be overcome through
focused meditation that acknowledges the internal critic but disregards it. A
need for approval might also stifle the creative process. Some may fear that
their work or ideas will not be appreciated and hold back out of fear of rejection
or failure. A fear of the unknown may also be a factor in the development of
creative blocks. One might worry that a discussion of certain ideas, even
through a media outlet, may have unforeseen circumstances and resist
expressing these ideas.

Neurologist Alice Flaherty, suggests a biological theory for the development of

blocks. However, her belief that creative blocks may originate due to issues in
the frontal lobe of the brain are still controversial.

Fixation refers to the blocking of solution paths to a problem due to past

experiences related to the problem. Fixation also constrains how we represent
problems as well as search for solutions. Smith, Ward, and Schumacher (1993)
examined fixation in a design task. Participants tried to design as many new
ideas as possible for a toy creature from an inhabited planet similar to Earth.
The ideas had to be entirely novel, unlike any existing objects. One condition
was primed for fixation by briefly showing the participants three examples of
novel toys or creatures prior to the design task. The control condition saw no
examples. After seeing examples, the participants typically fixated on specific
features such as designing a creature that had four legs an antenna, and or a tail.
Despite the fact that they were told to create new ideas that would be as
different as possible from the examples, simply seeing prior examples limited
their creative vision.

Functional Fixedness: A special kind of fixation occurs when the problem

solver thinks about the normal functional uses of an object (Duncker, 1945).
Functional fixedness refers to the tendency to see objects as having only a
single typical use. A hammer is for pounding nails, for instance.

Creative blocks may also occur as a result of:

 The death of a loved one or the end of a relationship
 Major life changes
 A lack of financial support
 The depletion of all creative energy after a fully immersed period of
creating
 Self-doubt, both pertaining to ability and talent
 Repeated rejection of one's work
 Anxiety regarding the outcome of a project or task
 The need for perfection
 The dependence on substances to be creative
 Onset of an illness or medical condition
 A sudden loss of meaning and purpose in one's work
 Negative self-talk or criticism
A block might often be a temporary condition, but when one relies on creative
construction to make a living, even a short-lived creative block may cause
anxiety, doubt, and fear. Some creators might come to doubt their future ability
to create and become distressed. Depression and feelings of worthlessness may
also result. Further, because producing and creating is a significant aspect of the
identity of writers, artists, and other creators, creative blocks can have a
negative impact on one's identity or sense of self. The effects this can have on
self-esteem may lead to the development of self-doubt.
Some turn to substances to resolve creative blocks, and the abuse of substances
can lead to further harm, such as addiction.

Sources of Creativity
The problem representations search heuristics, and diverse forms of knowledge
that creators bring to their tasks all are vitally important. Creativity requires a
confluence of six distinct but interrelated resources:
1. Intellectual abilities: IQ
2. Knowledge: All relevant understanding of the topic at hand
3. Styles of thinking: How people approach a problem
4. Personality: People high on openness to experience and change are highly
creative, the role of adjustment and how they handle failure.
5. Motivation: Intrinsic passion and interest
6. Environment: That stimulates, nurtures and encourages creativity
Although levels of these resources are sources of individual differences, often
the decision to use a resource is a more important source of individual
differences.

Creative Production
Creative people create a lot. For eg: Thomas Edison, Picasso.

Simonton suggested that creative production is Darwinian in nature. First, ideas

are conceptually combined to generate a large number of variations. Second,
most are winnowed out as uninteresting ideas variation-selection process. The
high productivity rates of historical geniuses, then, are part of the secret of their
success. Darwinian view of creativity necessarily assumes that the one or two
good ideas a person might have cannot be identified without first generating a
large number of bad ideas. The variation-selection process can be viewed as
purely random. A creative problem solver in a given field undoubtedly uses
heuristics for identifying problems representing the problem space, and
searching the problem space. The problem solver's past experience may well no
longer provide any useful guidance.

The variation-selection process operates on both an individual and a social

level. For example, the problem solver first selects the ideas that must undergo
the verification step of demonstrating that an insight is, in -fact, a solution.
Proven solutions must then be selected for further development, whether this
involves publishing. seeking a patent, or putting a product into production.
Selection at a social level then takes over the work of the creator. Some articles
submitted to journals are accepted for publication through a peer review
process, whereas others are rejected. Some patents are developed by industry
into marketable products, whereas others are left on the shelf. The marketplace
further selects those products that it is willing to buy and those that it tosses
aside as uninteresting or at least not commercially viable.