Chapter 1: What is cognitive psychology?

1.1 Cognitive psychology and the mind

Basic definition
 The scientific study of mental processes in acquiring, storing and transforming info
 Examples: perception, attention, memory, language, decision-making, reasoning…
 all functions interact with each other

The MIND
 The agent that performs all mental processes
 The mind is in the brain!!
o Brain damages during war or in stroke patients
 Impair perception and awareness
 Cause cognitive dysfunction
 Cause changes in personality

1.2 Mind-body problem

 Philosophical positions
1. Materialism
 the mind is physical  mind = brain
2. Substance dualism
 The mind is non-physical  mind is distinct from human body (brain)
3. Property dualism
 The mind is non-physical  mental properties are distinct from physical
properties, but they can both be possessed by the brain
 Scientists’ view
o Most take a materialist’s point of view
o Mental phenomena are identical to brain activities
 E.g. Confused (mental state)  activates a brain representation that
symbolizes a confused feeling (physical state)

1.3 Marr’s three levels of analysis

 All information systems can be analyzed at 3 different levels [independent]
1. Computational level: goals and approaches
Cognitive psychology!!
2. Algorithmic level: representations and algorithms
3. Implementation level: physical implementations Biology

 Example: depth perception

o Computation level—computations (strategies) performed to estimate the depth
of an object
 Approaches, e.g. stereopsis, perspective, relative size, occlusion
o Algorithmic level
  How to know depth from relative size
 recognize the object
 retrieve typical size from memory
 compare typical size with observed size

o Implementation level—actually implement the representation and algorithms

 E.g. action potential, neuronal structures

 Cognitive psychology VS Biology

CogPsy
Scope of study how info processing is carried
out in terms of mental
computations
Computations Rule-based manipulations of
symbols
Bio/neuroscience
Neural structures and functions
How mental computations are
carried out in the form of
neural activities

1.4 History of cognitive psychology

 Introspection—systematic investigation of one’s own thoughts
o Low accuracy: reports of conscious experience may be distorted; introspective
evidence is unverifiable
o Limited conscious capacity: conscious experience is fast and automatic
processes delay in reporting its existence
o Unaware of processes outside of consciousness: behavior, motivational
processes are out of consciousness we are generally consciously aware of
the outcome of cognitive processes instead of processes themselves

 Behaviorism
o Reject introspection by Wundt (analytic introspection)
o John Watson (1913) focused on observable stimuli & observable responses +
abandoned mental events
o Skinner focused on operant conditioning  ignored internal mental and
physiological processes  failed to account for complex human cognition
(e.g. creativity, problem solving)
  Cognitive revolution
o Emphasizes internal aspects of the mind
o Psychological theories as computer programs/process models
o Psychological theories can be verified objectively

1.5 Contemporary cognitive psychology

I. Experimental cognitive psychology
 Systematic measurement of behaviors to infer internal representation and
processing mechanisms
 Measures inc accuracy, response time, judgements, estimations
II. Cognitive neuroscience
 Information about brain activity during performance of cognitive tasks
 Brain-imaging techniques
o fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) assess brain areas
that accumulate oxygenated red blood cells suggestive of activity
 good spatial resolution: precision with which the area of brain
activity can be measured
o EEG (Electroencephalogram)/ERP  based on recordings of electrical
brain activity measured at the surface of the scalp
 good temporal resolution: precision with which the timing of
brain activity can be assessed
o MEG
 Measure magnetic field generated by electrical activity of the
neurons
III. Cognitive neuropsychology
 Lesion—structural damage to the brain caused by injury or disease 
malfunctioning
 Examples
o Molaison—cannot form new memory
o Gisela—cannot see motion
o Gage—cannot inhibit responses

 Major assumptions
o Modularity/domain specificity  modules respond to only 1
particular class of stimuli, e.g. face recognition
o Generalization  the way the modules are organized is very
similar across people
o Subtractivity  brain damage impairs modules but cannot lead of
development of new ones or use of new processing strategies
o Double dissociation
 TMS
 o Mostly inhibitory effect  reduces activation in the brain areas
affected  impair task performance
o Sometimes excitatory effect
o Purpose: find out that the area affected is required for effective
performance of the cognitive task
IV. Computational cognitive science (p.25-27)
 Develop computer models based on experimental findings to explain
human cognition

1.6 Common topics with behavioral methods

 Controlled or automatic?
o Stroop effect: controlled [name the color] VS Automatic [read the word]
processes  causing interference
o By measuring the response time & accuracy  infer there are 2 processes
going on  interference
 Serial or parallel?
o Some processes can only be done one at a time, whereas some can be done
simultaneously
o If more attention is needed/more objects for visual search, possibly serial
processing
o By measuring how reaction time increased when the no. of objects increases
 slower when more objects  serial processing
 Top-down or bottom-up?
o Bottom-up  mental processes are driven by stimulus input
(e.g. sensation)
o Top-down  mental processes influenced by expectations and knowledge

o Top-down may dominate bottom up

 Expectation dominate information available from stimulus

o Interactive processing
 Top-down processes influence perception
 E.g. more likely to perceive color of sock as orange after previously
seen an orange object
 Top-down has to be added to bottom-up processing to form memory
E.g. goals influence what we attend to and remember

Chapter 2: Visual perception

2.1 From sensation to perception
Sensation Perception
Intake of information by receptors & Interpretation and understanding of
translation to brain signals sensations
e.g. images, tastes, smells

To uncover the underlying transitional process:

a. Degrading a stimulus
b. Visual illusions
 Basic assumptions in our brain: (i) very few objects in the world are flat  tries to
project depth in a flat stimulus; (ii) light usually comes from above
 Automatic  info is projected by our brain upon the incoming sensations

2.2 Perceptual organization

The Gestalt laws we typically perceive the simplest possible organization
The law of Visual elements are grouped tgt Examples

Proximity If they are close to each other

Similarity If they are similar

Good If they require the fewest changes

continuation or interruptions in straight or
smoothly curving lines

Closure //Missing parts of a figure are

filled in to complete the figure

Figure-ground segregation
 The figure is perceived as having distinct form or shape, whereas ground lacks form

Put little emphasis on past knowledge and experience

Figure-ground segregation does NOT always occur before object recognition

 can at the same time

2.3 Pattern recognition

 Identification of 2D patterns, by matching the stimulus to a category of objects
 Flexibility!  input need not fully match the stored category info

a. Template theory (*improvements)

 Templates: forms or patterns stored in long-term memory
 Consider which template provides the closest match to the stimulus input 
pattern is recognized
  *Visual stimulus undergoes normalization process  produces internal
representation of the visual stimulus in a standard position before the search
for matching template
 *More than 1 template for each stimulus (e.g. 前中後) permit accurate
matching of stimulus and template across a wider range of stimuli

Disregards flexibility
 stimulus belong to 1 category can take many forms

Explains fast recognition of well-known stimuli

b. Feature theory
 A pattern consists of a set of features or attributes
 Faster reaction time when distractors show fewer features with the target
 Mostly assume pattern recognition involves local processing followed by more
global or general processing to integrate info from the features
o global processing can precede more specific processing
o the level processed first depends on the ease with which the features
can be discerned + attention allocation
c. Object superiority effect
 Feature is easier to process when it is part of a meaningful object
 Context and expectations provide useful info of the target stimulus
 disambiguating the perceptual input
2.4 Object recognition
a. Recognition-by-components / Geon theory
 Visible structure of the object is encoded
 About 36 different geons
 Geon-based info about common objects is stored in long term memory 
geons can be identified from different viewpoints
 viewpoint-invariant
 The concavities (hollows) in object’s contour provide especially useful info
 Repetition priming  stimuli are processed more efficiently the 2nd time they
are encountered compared to 1st time

Bottom-up process is emphasized

 top-down processes are important when object recognition is difficult
 e.g. blurred photographs of animals

Only accounts for fairly subtle perceptual discriminations

 e.g. cat or dog, but not which breed

Geons can be variant

 e.g. shape of clouds  no identifiable geons
 b. View-based theory
 The visible view is encoded
 Object recognition is faster and easier when they are seen from certain angles
(familiar)  viewpoint-dependent
Viewpoint-dependent Viewpoint-invariant
More important for difficult within- Typically involved in easy
category discrimination discriminations/categorizations
e.g. different brands of cars e.g. car VS bike

c. Disorders of object recognition (p.56-57)

 Apperceptive agnosia
o Deficits in perceptual processing
o Cannot go from sensation to perception
 Associative agnosia
o Able to recognize patterns perceptually
o Difficulty in accessing relevant knowledge about objects from long-
term memory on the basis of visual input

2.5 Face recognition

Effects
I. Part-whole effect
 Holistic processing is more reliable  different individuals share similar
facial features & individuals’ features can change
 Memory for “feature-in-face” (within context) is more accurate than only a
face feature
 The effect does not occur for objects, e.g. house  recognition performance of
house features is very similar in whole- or single- feature condition
 The effect does not occur for inverted faces  holistic processing is specific
for upright faces

II. Composite face effect

 Holistic face processing
 Slower identification of aligned faces than misaligned faces
 processing of the irrelevant bottom-half faces interfered with recognition of
top-half faces
 due to holistic processing of aligned faces
 No composite effect when faces are inverted

III. Face inversion effect

 Holistic processing only works for whole, aligned, upright faces
  When faces are inverted, recognition can only be based on parts
 featural processing NOT affected by inversion
 Configural processing is exclusive to recognizing upright faces

IV. Own-race effect

 Larger part-whole effect with own-race faces
 Own-race advantage in face recognition relying on either featural or configural
information

Theories
V. The Bruce and Young model
Step 1: Face detection
2 Structural encoding: separate processing routes
3 face identity (process face structure and match to memory
representation)
OR, facial expressions (recognize emotion, gender)
4 name
 Typically harder to retrieve name before retrieving personal info
VI. The face-space model
 Memories of faces are in multidimensional space
 each dimension represents a characteristic of a face, e.g. position of eyes,
length of nose
 values of all dimensions determine the position of face in the face-space
 Faces having extreme/exaggerated characteristics (caricature faces) are easier
to recognize

Views/Hypotheses
VII. Domain-specific view
 Face-specific brain mechanisms
 holistic processing is a unique characteristic of face recognition mechanism
 Double dissociation between recognition of face vs other objects
 Evidence supports:
o Prosopagnosia (face blind) with intact object recognition
o Object agnosia with intact face recognition
 face & object recognition are independent
 Further evidence on face areas in the brain:
Code face identity Sensitive to what faces Expression, gaze
info
OFA (Occipital FA) Upright & inverted
fSTS (face region in Upright
Superior Temporal
Sulcus)
 FFA (Fusiform FA) Upright**
**
** responsible for
holistic face
recognition
o How to know if sensitive to face identity?
 If a brain area responds more strongly when it sees 2 different
faces  must be sensitive to face identity [selective
adaptation]

VIII. Expertise hypothesis

 Holistic processing is a result of extensive training
 FFA is used for processing any object category that the observer has special
knowledge in
 Overall evidence does not support:
o Babies prefer looking at faces  not trained
o No composite effect in congenital cataract patients  early visual
inputs appears to be critical for development of holistic processing 
general training no use!!!
 However,
o FFA responds most to faces, but also responds to objects of expertise
 activation strength based on levels of expertise

2.5 Perception and action

Vision-for-perception system
 For identifying objects
 Prone to visual illusions
Vision-for-action system
 For visually guided action  our
position with respect to objects
 Action-based performance reduces
or eliminates visual illusionary
effects

 Partially independent visual systems, but also have interchange of info between
them
 Actions are influenced by vision-for-perception system when they are not automatic
& based on conscious cognitive process
e.g. Appropriate grasping  requires retrieval of knowledge
 Chapter 3: Attention and performance

3.1 What is attention

 A resource and processing capacity
 can be flexibly allocated to different tasks

Basic categories
Focused Ability to focus on what you are doing, and not distracted by
attention/concentration other thoughts or events

Divided attention Ability to multitasking

Shifting attention Ability to switch attention between one task and another

Selective attention Attention as filter

 stimuli that are selected (attended) are processed
 stimuli that are not selected (unattended) are not processed

Signal enhancement To amplify perceptual signals

Vigilance Capability to stay awake and monitor a certain event

Divided attention=multitasking
High multitaskers
Unselective attention
 easily affected by distractions
 switch between tasks less efficiently
Low multitaskers
Lack of creativity & adaptiveness
 too focused on the immediate task
 ignore other potentially useful info

 Multitasking impairs processing & verification of written info

e.g. reading textbook & instant messaging
 Fulfils emotion needs/habits

 Concurrent multitasking—execute >1 action simultaneously

  Serial multitasking—pursue multiple task goals by rapidly alternating between tasks
[task switching]
 How much interference during multitasking?
Multiple resources model
Distinctions Less costly to combine…
Stages of processing Perceptual & cognitive [e.g. response execution] tasks
Codes of processing Spatial & verbal tasks
Modalities Auditory & visual tasks

 Practice & dual-task performance

o Practice allows some processing activities to become automatic
Controlled process Automatic process
Capacity Limited No limitations

Attention Required Not required

Can change? Flexible Very hard to modify once learned

 inflexible

Processing Serial Parallel

Mapping? Varied Consistent**
**better performance
o Psychological refractory period (PRP) effect
 Slowing of the response to the 2nd stimuli when 2 stimuli are
presented close tgt in time
 No effect/better multitasking when 2 tasks possess most of the
features below
 Unconscious
 Use very little attentional capacity
 Fast
 Goal-unrelated

3.2 Selection theories

 Information exists externally (environment) and internally (knowledge, memory,
etc.)
 Mind/brain has insufficient capacity to process info
 Therefore, selection of info is required
 Early attention studies:
o Assume mental processing is increasingly complex from stage to stage
o Assume selection occurs at a certain complexity level “bottleneck”
o All inputs are available to simple processing, but only selected inputs are
available to complex processing
  Selection theories provide description of the selection criteria & selection mechanism

3.3 Selective auditory attention

Early selection- Broadbent’s filter theory
Main assumptions:
o Early selection: based on physical characteristics of the stimuli
o All-or-none filter (bottleneck): unattended inputs remain briefly in a sensory
buffer and is NOT processed
 Supporting evidence:
o Cocktail party problem  the ability to filter out unnecessary noises out of a
conversation in early stage
o Dichotic listening task:
 Listen to 2 messages from 2 ears, shadow 1 of the messages
 In unattended channel, participants (i) can detect pure tone; (ii) cannot
detect foreign language/playing backward
 Therefore, pure tone is processed before selection  selection based
on physical characteristics
 Refuting evidence:
o Own-name effect  at least some of the unattended info is processed, e.g.
your own name
o Dichotic listening task:
 1/3 participants can detect their names in unattended channel
 “Who 6 there?” & “4 goes 1”  participants reported by meaning:
“Who goes there & 461”
 Therefore, meaning is processed in the unattended channel
Late selection- Deutsch & Deutsch (1963)
 Main assumptions
o All stimuli, from physical characteristics to meaning, are fully processed
without selection
o Late selection: bottleneck at response level
o Selection of response: only respond to important stimuli
 Refuting evidence:
o Inputs from attended and unattended channels are not equally processed
 Reduced processing in unattended channel

Attenuation theory- Treisman (1964)

 Main assumptions:
o Early selection based on physical cues, syllable pattern and specific words;
then move on to process grammatical structure and meaning
 o If processing capacity is insufficient for full stimulus analysis
 omit later processes
o Unattended input is reduced instead of blocked
 Compatible with:
o Own-name effect  important LTM items are more easily activated
o Reduced processing for unattended inputs

Recent developments: bottom-up & top-down

Bottom-up—stimulus-driven attentional system
 Segregates different input sources
 Takes effect when unexpected & potentially important stimulus occur
 circuit-breaking function, e.g. flash of light
 Processes:
o High similarity produced interference  cannot be processed both inputs fully
o Temporal coherence  if listeners can identify at least 1 distinctive feature of
target voice  able to distinguish the rest  easier to segregate distinctive
features of voice inputs, e.g. children’s voice from a man’s
o Change in brain activity: active (enhancement of attended message)
VS less active (suppression of unattended message)
Top-down—goal-directed attentional system
 Based on listeners’ knowledge & expectations
 E.g. familiarity of the voice, expertise
 Use of visual information to attend to the speaker’s message

3.4 Selective visual attention

Overt VS Covert
Overt visual attention Covert visual attention
Shifting visual attention by explicit eye Shifting visual attention without moving the
movements eyes

Goal-directed VS Stimulus-driven
Posner (1980)’s experiment

Endogenous attention control Exogenous attention control

(voluntary/goal-directed)
 Use arrows
 Attention is driven top-down by the
participant’s intentions to allocate
attention
(involuntary/stimulus driven)
 Present a salient stimulus in the
periphery
 Attention is captured by bottom-up
new stimulus
 Theeuwes (1991)—Salient distractor
(high similarity with target) would
 capture attention, slow down RT

Spilt attention
Awh & Pashler (2000)
 Attention is directed to multiple regions of space that are not adjacent to each other
 does not benefit the middle region
 Multiple attentional foci

Object-based attention VS Location-based attention

Egly, Driver & Rafal (1994)
Location-based attention Object-based attention

It took time to shift attention within an It took longer time to shift attention across
object objects

Therefore, attention has both spatial and object-based component

Distraction effects
Factors:
 Anxiety
o Performance of high-anxious people are impaired by distraction
 Personality trait
o Ability of maintaining attentional focus
 Relevance of distractors to current task
o more relevant
 Load theory
o The level of selectivity [distractor interference] can vary  depends on
current attentional demands
o High selectivity results in smaller compatibility effect (takes similar RT across
distractors of different compatibilities)
Perceptual load Cognitive load
Definition Complexity of the stimulus Working memory usage of the
stimulus

Compatibility
effect

Selectivity High load, more selective High load, less selective

(low: distractors
slow down search
 process)
Internal stimuli High load, fewer task-irrelevant /
thoughts

Cross-modal attention
 Combine info from different sense modalities at the same time
 Visual selective attention is supported by a congruent sound
 Ventriloquist illusion:
o Mistaken perception that sounds come from their apparent visual source
o Conditions for it to occur:
 Visual & auditory stimuli must occur close tgt in time & space for the
sources
 Sound must match expectations raised by the visual stimulus, e.g.
high-pitched from small objects

3.5 Visual search

 More efficient visual search
o When targets differ from distractors on a salient characteristic
o A moving target among stationary distractors

The two-stage theory- Neisser (1967)

 Distinguish pre-attentive and attentive processing
 Pre-attentive: processing before we have attention to it
 Attentive: processing requires focal attention

Feature integration theory

 Describes a visual processing architecture
Feature map Master map
Items Basic visual features Conjoining visual features to object
e.g. color, orientation files

Processing Parallel processing Serial processing

 each feature can be processed
independently
 comparisons within a single
feature can be done in parallel
Attention Pre-attentive processing
Visual RT independent of set size
search (total no. of items)
 need to inspect all items to decide
where the target is
Requires focal attention
 to combine 2 or more features 
form unitary objects from the
available features
RT increases with set size
experiment
 Illusionary conjunction
o Definition: features from different objects are combined at random
o E.g. shape of one stimulus is combined with the color of another
o Conditions:
 Absence of focused attention
 The stimuli are presented very briefly

 Search asymmetry
o Feature maps only support detection of a feature, not its absence

 Limitations of the FIT theory

o Does not specify how focal attention is allocated
o Other factors affecting speed of visual search
 Similarity among distractors  faster search when distractors are very
similar
 Similarity between target and distractors
 single feature: slower search when target resemble distractors
 multiple features: slower search when distractors share at least one
of target’s features

o Guided search model

 Proposes that outcome of pre-attention processing can guide attentional
allocation
 Bottom-up inputs and top-down commands (task demands) form
activation map  ignoring stimuli not sharing any features with target
 Attention is guided to salient locations & locations containing the
desired features
o Peripheral vision model
 Visual search is easy when info in peripheral vision is sufficient to
detect the target & direct attention towards it
  Combinations of features requires detailed vision and more frequent
eye movements

3.6 Inattentional blindness

 Neither goal-directed nor stimulus-driven attention to the unexpected object
 undetected
 Unexpected object attracts more attention and is more easily detected when
o similar to the task-relevant stimuli  attended
o has distinctive feature
 We can be blind to something because it is not in the center of our attention

3.7 Change blindness

 We combine info to determine location to attend to
o Our knowledge about diff kinds of scene (scene schema)
o Layout and gist of the current scene
 Marginal interest VS Central interest
 change in central interest can be more easily detected
 Changes that could occur to visual scene
o Type change—object replaced by another from diff category
o Token change—object replaced by another from same category
 changes are more easily detected when
(i) changed object had been fixated
(ii) a change in the type of the object
 Representations of former stimulus decay or are overwritten by subsequent stimulus
 blind to changes
 Attention supports visual memory which is necessary for detecting changes
 pre-change and post-change visual stimulus at the change location must be
encoded into memory

3.8 Disorders of attention

a. Neglect and extinction
o Neglect patients ignore info in their affected side of the visual field
o Extinction—inability to detect visual stimulus on contralesional side
 competition mechanism
Reasons Attention system Attentional resources
Damage to stimulus-driven Limited attentional resources
system

o Solutions:
 Enhance top-down control  prism-adaptation  able to use goal-
directed processes to shift attention leftwards voluntarily
  Enhance alertness to affected visual field
b. ADHD
o Difficulty in inhibiting distractors and keep control on current task
o Effective medication is a stimulant  increase brain activity (alertness)

Chapter 4: Short-term and working memory

4.1 Atkinson & Shiffrin’s multistore memory model (1968)

a. Sensory registers
- Large capacity with full percept of all details
- Decay very quickly
 - Sense-specific, e.g. iconic store (visual), echoic store (auditory), haptic store (touch)
Sperling’s (1960) partial report paradigm
 Iconic memory decays rapidly  insufficient time to verbally report all memory
 Results suggested that iconic memory had very high storage capacity (~9 letters), but
info decayed within 1sec (~300ms)
 Memory span was ~4 letters after 1sec  STM size
b. Short-term memory c. Long-term memory
(hold info for conscious access) (knowledge, past experience and
skills)
Time course of Short Long
retention
Access to info Immediate Offline
(need to access to STM before using
LTM)
Brain Activation patterns Connectivity patterns
mechanisms

d. Limitations
- Similar to Broadbent’s early selection model (unattended info was completely lost
due to decay)
 unattended info can still be processed
- Info must go thr STM before accessing LTM
 top-down (LTM) interacts with bottom-up (sensory) in processing,
e.g. participants saw meaningful letters instead of arrays of line segments
- STM is not merely a storage facility of limited capacity
 involves processing of stimuli
- LTM is not unitary store
- Rote rehearsal is not the only mechanism to transfer info from STM to LTM
 e.g. elaborative rehearsal: linking new info to info aldy stored in LTM

4.2 STM capacity

 Memory span—no. of items that one can recall immediately in correct order Miller
(1956) suggested that STM has fixed capacity of 7±2 memory slots
 Chunking—group multiple items as meaningful units (depends on personal
experience!)to save memory slots  improve memory

 Word-length effect—word span is greater for short words than long

 STM size is smaller when word takes longer pronunciation time, e.g. digit span is
longer in Chinese speakers than English speakers
 capacity of STM for words depends on phonological info (not fixed!) but not
visual letter info
 Phonological similarity effect—worse recall performance when words are
phonologically similar, e.g. FEE, HE, PEA, KEY
  can be 25% worse than recalling dissimilar words
 Articulatory suppression—repeat irrelevant info during retention period
 abolishes WLE & PSE
 STM relies on verbal mechanisms

4.3 STM duration

Peterson-Peterson task
- Proactive interference—forgetting due to interference from previous trials during
retention interval
- Decay
 Ricker and Cowan (2010): decreased memory performance for longer retention
intervals even in no load condition
- Ephemerality—info is so rapidly lost if it is not refreshed

4.4 Interplay of STM and LTM

Serial position effect
Primacy effect Recency effect
Definition Better recall early items Better recall late items

Memory Rehearsal  LTM STM

Double
Dissociation
 If intervening task (e.g. interpolated task  count backwards)  different
between encode and recall LTM & STM
 no recency effect, but primacy effect remains processes
 For amnesic patients (impaired LTM)  recency effect, no primacy
effect

4.5 Working memory

- System combining processing and STM memory functions
- Both storage device and device controlling the storage
Baddeley & Hitch (1974)
- 4 components of WM have
limited capacity
- Each component functions fairly
independently

e.g.1 Articulatory suppression

 interferes with rehearsal in
phonological loop
e.g.2 Corsi
span
  not significantly reduced under articulatory suppression

a. Phonological loop
- Passive phonological store (fixed in duration)
- Articulatory control process (maintenance rehearsal and speech production)
Function Description
Acquisition of - Connect new knowledge to the ordered sequence of syllables
new words Evidence :3
- Articulatory suppression greatly slows down the learning of
foreign language
 greater difficulty to work out the pronunciation

Understand very - Interpret relationships between words

long &
syntactically
complex
sentences

b. Visuo-spatial sketchpad
- Passive visual cache  store visual & spatial info
- Inner scribe  refresh info in the visual cache & transfer info to central executive
- Word span task
o Better performance for orthographically dissimilar (than similar) words
(but phonologically similar) visual info in spellings improved
performance
- Capacity: ~4 items
o Decide if 2 displays are identical
o Corsi blocks test  report sequence of blocks
- A single system?
Test Evidence
Blind people - Performed better at learning routes than sighted ones
 maybe becuz of extensive practice in spatial processing
 larger hippocampus

Separate spatial & - Spatial interference task disrupt performance on spatial

visual components main task more
- Visual interference task disrupt performance on visual main
task more

c. Central executive
 - Planning and coordination
- Inhibitory processes on attention
- Process info from any sensory modality, but no storage capacity
Executive functions Description

Mental set shifting - Shift between tasks by controlling activation of goals

Update and monitor - Task setting  simple planning of the task

WM representation
Inhibition of irrelevant - Energization  sustain attention to relevant task
response -

* dysexecutive syndrome

d. Episodic buffer
- Limited-capacity storage system to hold info from phonological loop, visuo-
spatial sketchpad, LTM
- Close link with central executive
- E.g. immediate prose recall needs (1) capacity of episodic buffer (2) efficient
central executive maintaining info in the buffer

e. WM capacity
- Reading span
- Reverse digit span
- Operation span
 Chapter 5: Learning and long-term memory

5.1 Implicit VS Explicit learning

Intention Intentional - Goal-directed to retain learned info

Incidental - Without any intent to learn

Consciousness Implicit* - Learning that produces LTM

- No conscious awareness of what has been
learned
Explicit - Learning that produces LTM
- Involves conscious awareness of what has
been learned

Assessing implicit learning*

- Serial reaction time task  learning effect of the repeated sequences as reaction time
becomes shorter
- Word-fragment task
Characteristics of implicit VS explicit learning
a. Robustness
- implicit relatively unaffected by disorders
 e.g. amnesic patients have well preserved implicit memory
b. Age independence
- implicit less influenced by age
 e.g. younger performed better than older on explicit task
c. Variability
- smaller individual differences in implicit
d. IQ independence
- implicit is less affected by IQ
  e.g. +correlation between WM capacity, IQ and explicit learning
e. Commonality of process
- Implicit are common to most species

5.2 Variables affecting explicit learning

Levels of processing theory
- Deeper levels of analysis produce longer lasting memory traces (LTM)
- Evidence:
o Shallow grapheme task [physical characteristics] // Intermediate phoneme
task [rhyme] // Deep semantic [meaning]

Effect LTM is enhanced when

Elaboration of processing words accompanying complex sentences
Self-reference effect info that is related to self at the time of the learning
[maybe becuz self-ref encourages deeper semantic
processing]

Survival info that is important to survival enhances

**Strong effect on processing depth & self-ref on performance of all explicit memory tests
but not implicit

Limitations:
- Relevance of the stored info with subsequent memory test
[transfer-appropriate processing]
- Focuses too much on semantic elaboration  cannot predict many other findings

Distinctiveness
- Distinctive memories are better remembered
- Distinct stimuli usually have strong, unique memory cues  can better retrieve a
stored memory trace
- Distinct stimuli are less subject to interference  becuz they are dissimilar to other
memory traces

The testing effect

- Long-term retention of material is better when memory is tested during the time of
learning
- ONLY effortful & demanding retrieval improves LTMs

5.3 Long-term memory

Episodic memory
- (Re)Constructive  prone to errors and illusions
o Too many events for processing
o Used to make plans for future  new possibilities are constructed +
memories are reconstructed based on incomplete info
- Hippocampus is activated when individuals imagine future  higher activation when
responding to personally relevant cues
- Semantic memory is also involved in imagining future

- Familiarity vs recollection
Task Remember/know task
- Whether positive recognition decisions are based on recollection
of contextual info (remember) & familiarity (know)
Recollection - More complex & attention-demanding
- More easily distracted by irrelevant stimuli
- Requires binding of info about stimuli (what) & context (where)
 with hippocampus (medial temporal lobe)
Familiarity - Comparable recognition performance for MTL lesion and non-
MTL lesion
*episodic memory is more vulnerable than other memory systems to neuronal dysfunction

Flashbulb memory
- Constructed over several days
- Become fragile during recall
- Consistency varies across features, e.g. location, ongoing activities
- Intense emotional experience is required for genuine flashbulb memories
e.g. individuals close to WTC on 9/11 had more vivid memories due to more
activation of amygdala

Semantic memory
- Organized general knowledge about the world
5.4 Memory retrieval
During perception, sensory areas activate MTL
To recall, MTL reactivates perceptual areas  recapitulation~
Cue-dependent retrieval Encoding specificity principle
- Better memory when info available at retrieval
overlaps with info encoded together with the
memory
Recognition is better than recall
- Many more memory cues in recognition Qs
- Marginal knowledge: knowledge not available
for un-cued retrieval
Context-dependent retrieval External environment
Internal environment
- Higher word recall rate when cardiovascular
state at retrieval = learning
Language-dependency effect

for realistic situations, people are more focused on

info conveyed rather than surroundings

Interference effects
a. Proactive interference
- Previous learning disrupts later learning and memory
- Competition between two responses  the incorrect response is very strong
b. Retroactive interference
- Later learning disrupts memory for previous learning
- Mainly due to strength of the incorrect response
- Greatest when new learning resembles previous learning
- Occurs even when no learning, but people expend mental effort during retention
interval

Consolidation theory
- Recently formed memories that are still being consolidated  vulnerable to
interference (esp retroactive) & forgetting
- 1. Hippocampus (hours)  2. Interactions between the hippocampal region &
neocortex (days to years)(during sleep)

Reconsolidation theory
- Reconsolidation  reactivation of a memory trace into fragile state
- Brief rehearsal makes memory traces of the 1st sequence fragile  produce errors in
memory or mixed up with 2nd sequence
- Hindsight bias
- Post-event misinformation effect  misleading qs distort memory