Application Paper – 60 pointsAs we’ve learned this semester, kno.docx

Application Paper – 60 points
As we’ve learned this semester, knowledge will not serve us if
we can’t connect that knowledge to other things (think deep
processing and elaborative rehearsal). So, for our next paper, I
want you to go out and find instances of cognitive psychology
in the real world.
To complete this assignment, you need to:
1. Find 3 current news articles that relate to topics we have
covered in this class. The source you get your news article from
MUST be a reputable news source (i.e., NO Wikipedia articles).
All 3 articles can be about the same topic or they can each be on
a different topic. Just be sure to stick to topics we’ve covered.
Review articles (focuses on one researcher and discusses
several of their studies) about someone’s research program
DOES NOT count. Be sure to save the article because you will
turn them in along with your writing. Do not provide me with
the link to the article only. You should copy and paste each
article into your Word document and then put your summary
beneath each article.
2. For each article you find, write a paragraph (about 6
sentences) describing how the situation in that article relates to
the topic of your choice from our textbook. Be specific! For
example, do not just tell me that the article relates to LTM.
You can do better than that – tell what type of LTM and why.
Be specific!
DO NOT summarize the article – that IS NOT the assignment.
The assignment is to say how the article relates to class
material.
3. You don’t have to do an APA citation for each article. Just
include the actual article with the written piece and make sure it
is clear which paragraph goes with which article.
a. This is an individual assignment. NO group work.

b. Make sure your paper is uploaded as a Word document
c. No need for title or reference pages
4. On iCollege I have enabled you to see the amount of overlap
between your submitted paper and other sources. Use it! The
percentage displayed is the amount of overlap. A small amount
of overlap is usually not problematic, but try to keep your
percentage as close to zero as possible. If you ask me to grade
a paper that has more than 20% overlap, you will receive a zero
on that assignment. No questions asked.
5. Please upload your papers (including 3 articles & 3
paragraphs) to the assignments folder “Application Paper” on
our classes’ iCollege page
*If you submit a file I cannot read, you will receive a zero for
that assignment/paper.*
Long-Term Memory
Cog Labs :
Remember-Know &
Levels of Processing
Long-Term Memory
This is a huge topic - LTM is the
cornerstone of all behavior.
*

LTM….what is it?LTM – system that’s responsible for storing
info for long periods of time
An archive of past events & knowledge
Needed for complex cognition:
Understanding language
Solving problems
Making decisions
Interacts w/ WM to create our ongoing experience
Example of WM, LTM interactionHear a sentence:Jacob rolled
the red ball down the hallway.
WM holds wording in mind
Simultaneously accesses meaning of words from LTM, which
help understand meaning
LTM also has add’l info regarding those topics, people sentence
refers to
Adds to understanding
Let’s begin with a
simple experiment
Please number from 1 to 15:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
Leave enough
room for one
short word
after each #
Serial Position CurvePrimacy effect – more likely to remember
words at beginning of list
Subj have time to rehearse words & transfer to LTM
Less rehearsal for later wordsRecency effect – better memory
for stimuli at end of list
Most recent words still in STM
Short- and long-term memory
The serial-position curve shows the
STM-LTM distinction
% correct recall
position of word in list
The primacy portion
reflects LTM
The recency portion
reflects STM

Chart140353020141096442281525455560
Sheet140353020141096442281525455560
Sheet2
Sheet3
Each word passes from SM to STM
STM has limited capacity, so... Rehearsal transfers info from
STM to LTMFirst few words make it to LTMLast few words
still in STM at recall
Simple theory of the serial-position curve:
Long-term
memory
Working or
Short-term
Memory
Sensory
Input
Sensory
Memory
Attention
Encoding
Retrieval
Maintenance Rehearsal
Coding in ST & LTMCoding – form in which stimuli are
presented

Visual, auditory, semanticType of coding depends on task
Auditory coding is main type of coding in STM
Phone # - by repeating (auditory coding)
Not likely by visual image, meaning
Semantic coding is main type for LTM
Read a book last week & remember it
Not likely to remember what words looked like, but meaning
THE BRAIN
Working Memory, Long-term Memory, and…..
STM & LTM are separate in the B,
but some overlap. Evidence from
neuropsychology….
Milner reported the case of H.M., who
had brain surgery to relieve epilepsy...
Epilepsy improved,
but H.M.'s memory
was messed up
by the surgery.
His memory for life before surgery (LTM)
was normal… and his STM was also normal.
BUT, he lost the ability to transfer
info from STM to LTM! (hippocampus)

Lost ability to recognize people
he saw every day...
Became unable to recognize
himself as he aged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQASyR0w8Qo
However, H.M.
could learn.
For example,
he developed
skill in “mirror
drawing,”
without having
any memory
of learning
how…
Squire (1979) studied a similar patient
(N.A.) who had a strange accident...
The fencing foil went up his nose, and
into his forebrain!
N.A. is just like H.M.,
only a little worse...

Another example….Clive Wearing
Contracted viral encephalitis, destroyed parts of medial
temporal lobe – including hippocampus, amygdala
Inability to form new memories, like H.M.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmzU47i2xgw
This syndrome was
the basis for the
movie
Memento
K.F.Damage to parietal lobe in motorcycle accident
STM was greatly impaired, but LTM was okay
Reduced digit span (2)
Could form & retain new memoriesThese 3 pts (H.M., Wearing,
& K.F.) show separation of STM and LTMAlso overlap, esp for
novel objects
hippocampus
LONG-TERM MEMORY
Types of

Episodic & Semantic MemoryEpisodic memory – memory for
personal experiences
Main characteristic is mental time travel – “reliving” (Endel
Tulving)Semantic memory – memory for facts, vocab, concepts
NOT tied to a specific event
Proof from neuropsychologyK.C.
Damage to hippocampus & surrounding structures
Lost EM
E.g., knows brother died 2 yrs ago, but doesn’t recall anything
personal – how he heard, felt at funeral
SM is intact
Knows where forks are in the kitchen, difference bw a strike &
spare in bowling
Cont’dItalian woman contracted encephalitis
Difficulty recognizing familiar people
Couldn’t remember meanings of words, where things were in
store
Couldn’t recall facts – who Beethoven was, Italy was involved
in WW2Cases show 2 types of info (EM & SM) involve
different B mechanisms
In real life….EM & SM are often intertwined
Semantic knowledge guides our experience
E.g., understanding of baseball (SM) influences EM that follows
from that experience

If you know baseball, you know where to look on the field when
certain things happen
If not, you miss a lot, don’t understanding what you’re seeing
Westmacott & Moskovitch (2003)Knowledge re public figures
can have E & S
Know Oprah had a show (S)
Memory of a specific show (E)
FORGETTING
LTM (Semantic & Episodic) and….
ForgettingNot an ‘all-or-none’ process – degrees
More recent LTMs more detailed
Detail often fades w/ time, other experiences
Don’t remember this date 1 yr ago, but surrounding
Remember-know paradigmDifference for E & S memory
measured via:
Familiarity (know) – seems familiar, but can’t remember details
Associated w/ SM
Recollection (remember) – remember specific details
Associated w/ EM
Petrican et al (2010)Examined how people’s memory for public
events change over time

Presented descriptions & subj responded: remember, know,
don’t knowResults:
Complete forgetting increased over time
Remember responses (EM) decreased much more than know
responses (SM)Semanticization of remote memories – loss of
episodic detail for long ago events
FUTURE
Imagining the
Connection bw ability to remember past & ability to create
future scenarios K.C. – lost EM
Unable to use imagination to describe personal events that
might happenD.B.
Inability to imagine future events only applied to personal
events
Could still say what might happen in politics, current events…
Addis & Schacter (2007, 2009)fMRI of subj remembering past
or imagining future
ALL B regions overlapped!!Proposed Constructive episodic
simulation hypothesis:
EMs are extracted & recombined to construct simulations of
future events
However,…Some semantic dementia pts (intact EM), also have
problems describing episodic details that might happen in the
future

Suggests we need BOTH EM & SM to think about our personal
futures
IMPLICIT MEMORY
Procedural Memory, Priming, & Conditioning
Implicit vs Explicit MemoryExplicit memory – memories we’re
aware (conscious) of
Episodic memory, Semantic memoryImplicit memory – memory
we aren’t aware of
Procedural memory, priming, conditioning
Although explicit measures are important,
we also learn a great deal from implicit
(indirect) measures.Implicit memories are not part of conscious
awareness
However, they enhance performance in various tasks
Mere exposure to information can aid later perception
May reflect a more primitive type of memory
Someone is “amnesiac” if they have
a profound memory deficit, right? Well……Clive can’t form
new LTMs, but can still play pianoAmnesiac pts can learn new
skills even thought they don’t remember practicing
H.M. mirror drawing – trace outline while looking at its image
in mirror – always thought doing it for the 1st time

Free recall
Recognition
Fragment Identification- p___um_
Stem Completion – per____
Compared amnesic patients and
age-matched controls.
All Ss completed 4 memory tests for word lists:
Warrington & Weiskrantz (1968)
Accidentally began the study of implicit vs. explicit memory.
*
W & W
results
What
The
heck
This is a very reliable finding, even
with more severe amnesiacs
Similar results also emerge in temporary amnesia,
caused by severe intoxication or electro-shock therapy!

Control subjects were told nothing about memory.
Uninformed simulated amnesics were told to pretend
they were trying to fake amnesia, but were not told that
real amnesics have normal implicit memory.
Informed simulated amnesics were told to pretend they
were trying to fake amnesia, but they were also taught
about the critical finding.
People arrested for crimes sometimes claim to have amnesia,
reducing guilt by reason of incompetence.
Horton et al. compared 3 groups: subj given word
lists to remember
Horton et al. (1992) results
These people
badly over-act
Performance on implict measures
Fragment completion task
Procedural memoryaka skill memory – memory for doing things
that usually involve learning skills
E.g., tying shoes, typing, riding bike, somersault, play piano
When try to become conscious of HOW we’re doing it, we don’t
do it so well!Associated w/
Basal ganglia – habits
Cerebellum – motor movement
Limbic system- learning, memory
This is a completely different system than
for other memory systems!! (non-hippocampus)

PrimingPriming –when presentation of 1 stimulus changes the
way a person responds to another stimulus
E..g, seeing “bird” causes you to respond more quickly to later
presentation of “bird” vs. a word you didn’t see
Can occur even though you may not remember priming stimuli!
Graf et al (1985)Amnesiac pts w/ Korsakoff’s syndrome (can’t
form new LTMs)Pts w/o amnesia being treated for
alcoholismPts w/o amnesia & no history of alcoholism
Read 10 words & rated how much they liked them
Explicit memory test – recall words
Implicit test – word completion
PER_____
Graf ResultsAmnesiac pts recalled fewer words than both
control groups (explicit)But performed just as well on
IMPLICIT measure!
Increase in performance is result of priming
Priming in everyday lifePerfect & Askew (1994) – subj scanned
articles in mag
Later asked to rate ads on various dimensions
How appealing, eye-catching, distinctive, memorableSubj gave
higher ratings to ones that had been in the mag
Implicit bc subj remembered 2.8/25 adsPropaganda effect –
more likely to rate
things as true bc you’ve been exposed to them

Classical ConditioningClassical conditioning
pairs a neutral stimulus that initially doesn’t result in a response
&
A conditioning stimulus that does result in a response
E.g, presenting a tone followed by a puff of air to the eye,
causes person to blinkContinued association even if person has
forgotten about the pairing!
CC in everyday lifeStimuli often paired with emotions
Feel +/- about someone even though don’t remember how you
know them (implicit)Non-implicit example
Drive by the place you got pulled over =
re-experience emotions
Isn’t implicit bc you remember what’s causing the response
Encoding
Retrieval
&
Consolidation
Chapter 7
Long-term memory
ENCODING
Getting info into LTM

EncodingEncoding – process used to get info into LTMMany
ways to encode:
Maintenance rehearsal – repeating continuously. No
consideration of meaning, connection
Results in poor memory
Elaborative rehearsal – relate info to something meaningful
E.g., phone #: 1st 3 same as yours, last 4 is your b-day year
Results in better memory
Craik & Lockhart (1972) –
Levels of ProcessingHow you encode influences ability to
retrieveMemory depends on the depth of processing
Shallow processing – little attention to meaning
E.g., maintenance rehearsal
E.g, paying attention to only physical features
Deep processing – close attention on meaning & relating it to
something elseBetter memory for deeper processing
Craik & Tulving (1975)Tested memory w/ different LOP
Q about physical features of words (shallow)
Q about whether word rhymes w/ a diff word (deeper)
Q about if a word fits in a sentence (deepest)Memory test for
words
Deeper processing assoc w/ better memoryDepth of processing
hard to define – waned, but retrieval affected by encoding
accepted

The Craik & Lockhart (1972) study
Subjects asked questions to achieve different LOP.
Is the word printed in capital letters?
Does the word rhyme with train?
Does the word fit into the sentence “ He saw a ____ on the
street”?
Example 1: boat: answer, no
Example 2: pain: answer, yes
Example 3: car: answer, yes
Some Real Data
LOP can be manipulated in many ways,
such as simple changes in orienting tasks…
Figure 6.9 (p. 196)
(a) Sequence of events in Craik and Tulving’s (1975)
experiment. (b) Results of this experiment. Deeper processing
(fill in the blanks) is associated with longer reaction times to
answer the question about a word, and better memory for the
word.
Surface processing
moderate processing
deep processing
Schematic example of LOP data…

Good encoding through….Visual imagery Linking words to
yourself
Self-reference effect – memory is better if you relate a word to
yourselfGenerating info
Generation effect – generating material yourself vs. passively
receiving enhances retention
Good encoding through….OrganizationRelating words to
survival value
Naine (2010)
Memory is shaped to increase survival value; so linking words
to survival increases likelihood they’ll be recalled
May not be survival actually, but just relating words to
meaningfulRetrieval practice
Testing effect – enhanced perf due to retrieval practice
E.g., making up & answering practice Qs
RETRIEVAL
Getting info out of LTM
RetrievalTo use encoded info, you have to retrieve itImportant
bc many memory
errors are retrieval errors
E.g., blanking on exam
E.g., can’t remember
someone’s name
Retrieval cuesRetrieval cue – words or other stimuli that help us

remember info stored in our memory
Location – return to place you originally encoded
Returning stimulates memories assoc w/ that place
Auditory
E.g., hearing a song
Smell
MATCHING CONDITIONS
of encoding & retrieval
Matching retrieval & encodingRetrieval can be increased by
matching the conditions @ retrieval to the conditions at
encoding3 ways to do this…..
Encoding specificityEncoding specificity – we encode info
along w/ its context
So, match the context (i.e., physical situation)
E.g., to recall childhood memories, go to house where you grew
up
E.g., you’re in the bedroom & decide to get something from the
kitchen
E.g., someone takes your seat on test day
Experimental evidence:
Godden & Baddeley (1975) had scuba divers
divers learn word lists on land or underwater...
Later tested in same or different contexts...

Godden & Baddeley’s results:
Smith (1985): Mozart or Jazz at study & test
Music at Study
State-dependent learningS-D learning – learning is assoc w/ a
particular internal state
E.g., mood, state of awareness
Memory will be better when a person’s internal state during
retrieval matches states during encodingEich & Metcalfe (1989)
– showed this with happy or sad mood
Matching the cognitive task: transfer appropriate
processingTransfer-appropriate processing – better perf when
type of processing matches at encoding & retrieval
E.g., rhyming, focus of meaning
dissociations between explicit and implicit memory

Time
Explicit memories decay fairly steadily over time
Implicit memories remain quite stable over long periods
Tulving, Schacter & Stark (1982)
Compared recognition
memory and fragment
completion for words
(1 hour versus 1 week)
Explicit measure
Implicit measure
Even classic findings show
dissociations between explicit and implicit memory
Levels of Processing
Explicit memories are strongly affected by “depth” of original
processing
Implicit memories are relatively unaffected by LOP
Why do explicit & implicit memory differ?
Separate
brain
systems?
Different
mental
processes?

GOOD LUCK
ON YOUR EXAM!
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Sensory, Short-term, & Working Memory
Chapter 5
Cog Lab: memory span
QuizShort term memory is concerned with _____ while working
memory
Is concerned with _____ of information.
Transfer, processingStorage, manipulation Manipulation,
storageNone of the aboveThe main parts of Baddeley’s working
memory model are:
Central executive, phonological loop, episodic buffer
True or False
Herman Ebbinghaus: Founder of “pure”
(laboratory) memory research.
Ebbinghaus memorized
lists of nonsense syllables
and tested himself
after various delays.
He chose nonsense syllables
so he could estimate “pure” memory…
% correct
The Ebbinghaus “forgetting curve”

Although the
shape of the
forgetting curve
was right,
Ebbinghaus
underestimated
memory.
Similar forgetting curves
arise in various tests
Ebbinghaus showed that we can study
memory with laboratory tests...
With this approach, we’ve learned that memory
is composed of various sub-systems:
Varieties of Memory
13.bin
Modal Model of Memory
Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968)Proposed 3 types of memory:
Sensory memory – holds ALL incoming info for fraction of a
second
STM – small amount of info for 15 – 20s
LTM – large amount of info for years/decades

Sensory memoryPersistence of memory – cont’d perception of a
visual stimulus after its no longer present
Last fraction of a second
E.g., sparkler trail, watching movies
Sensory Memory: Sperling (1960)How much info can be taken
in from briefly presented stimuli?
Whole report = 4.5
Subj said they had seen ALL letters but perception faded as they
reported letters
Partial report – heard tone, which
directed attn at remaining trace = 3.3Conclusion: immediately
after stim presentation
most info is available for perception
(sensory memory) but fades quickly
Short-term memory (STM)STM – stores small amounts of info
for a brief period (15 – 20 s)
E.g., letters that Sperlings subj could report
E.g., what you remember from what you’ve just read
A window to the present, so to speakMOST STMs are lost
STM DurationPeterson & Peterson (1959)
Remember FZL 45
Count down from #, out loud, in intervals of 3. When stopped,
recall
Subj recalled ~ 80% if could recall after 3s
Subj recalled ~12% after counting for 18sConcluded that the
memory decayed with time

Kepel & Underwood (1962)Reanalyzed Peterson study &
looked at just 1st trials
Memory for letters on trial 1 was high….even after 18s delay?!
….but after a few trials, performance decreasedConcluded: drop
off in performance NOT due to decay over time, but…
InterferenceProactive interference – occurs when info that was
prev learned interferes w/ new learning
French vocab words makes it more difficult to learn Spanish
words a little later
Parking!
MedsRetroactive interference – when new learning interferes w/
remembering old learning
Back to Keppel & Underwood…Concluded that proactive
interference resulted in Peterson finding
Recalling letters on first few trials created interference that
made it more difficult to remember letters from later trialsWe
face a constant stream of interference everyday!Result? an STM
that is 15 – 20 s in duration
How many items can be held in STM?Info lost rapidly AND
limited capacityMeasured by
digit span – longest string of #s you can reproduce w/o
error….typically 5 -9
George Miller (1956) – magic #7 +/- 2
Change detection – 2 scenes flashed back & forth. Subj reports

what has changed
34892765302890131324765389278639090128537452103652947
54090857863012635132867537378
Luck & Vogel (1997)Performance almost perfect when 1 – 3
squares in arrayDecreased for 4+ squaresOther research
supports this idea
of 4 items
So, how do we hold several items in mind…like a
sentence?Chunking - a collection of elements that are strongly
associated w/ 1 another, but weakly associated w/ elements in
other chunks
Chunking in terms of meaning increases our ability to hold info
in STM
Most interesting, Miller discovered that the
number of items matters; their sizes do not.
If separate items can be grouped into chunks,
STM is more efficient...
Example:
FB ITB DCI AIB MLO L 15 items
FBI TBD CIA IBM LOL 5 chunks
Again, top-down processing helps overcome
basic capacity limitations (as in perception).

Chunking cont’dS.F. had a digit span of 7
After training, he could repeat up to 79 digits
Used chunking to recode #s into running times, ages,
etcChunking expands the limits of STM!
Chunking letters into words, words into sentences, long convos
into smaller units of meaning
Concept CheckWhat is chunking?
Items vs. InfoSome say capacity shouldn’t be described in terms
of # of items, but amount of info
e.g., visual features/details of an object stored
Like storing pics on a flash drive - # of pics stored depends on
size of drive & size of pics
VS.
Proof?Alvarez & Cavanagh (2004) – change detection paradigm.
Decide same/different
Ability to make decision depended on complexity of stimuli
Colored squares =4.4
Shaded cubes = 1.6
Conclude: > detail in an image, the < items that can be held in
visual STM
Status of STM debates?Considerable agreement capacity

is ~4 itemsItems vs. info still up in the airConcept of STM in
modal model too narrow to explain research
Explained as storage ONLY
….but role of STM extends beyond just storage
e.g., requires transfer to LTM & back
WORKING MEMORY
Hey! I work out…..
WMWM – limited capacity system for temp storage AND
manipulation of info for complex tasks
Manipulation is what distinguishes WM from STM
e.g., hold 1 sentence in mind while listening to 2nd sentence &
making connection b/w the 2
e.g., doing math in your head
Visualize 43 x 6
Multiply 3 x 6
Hold 8 in memory; carry 1 to the 4
Multiply 6 x 4 = 24
BaddeleySometimes dual task is possibleIf STM has limited
capacity, filling up capacity should make it difficult to do other
tasks that depend on STM
Subj could hold short strings of #s in mind while reading,
solving word probConclude: WM is dynamicMust consist of #
of components that can function separately
Working Memory

How/what do these systems contribute to WM?
*****************************************************
****************************************
*
Baddeley’s WM ModelPhonological loop (PL):
Phonological store – limited capacity; holds verbal/auditory
info
Articulatory rehearsal process – keeps info in PL from
decayingVisuospatial sketchpad (VSSP) – holds visual & spatial
info
Form pic in mind
Solve puzzle
Find way around campus
Baddeley’s WM Model cont’dCentral executive
Pulls info from LTM
Coordinates activity of
PL & VSSP
Decides how to divide attn
Control centerE.g., coordinating verbal directions & visualizing
map of streets & ignoring radio so you can focus
Proof for PLPhonological similarity effect
Conrad (1964) – errors in remembering letters were based on
their sounds…S vs F
Contact is visual, but we remember them by repeating their

soundWord length effect – memory for lists of words are better
for short words
Bc takes longer to rehearse long words & to produce them; short
words leave room for rehearsal
More PL…Articulatory suppression – study PL by seeing what
happens when its disrupted
Prevent rehearsal by repeating “the” or #s
Reduces memory bc speaking interferes w/ rehearsal
Irrelevant sounds overloads the PL
More recently…. Baddeley added:Episodic buffer:
Provides extra storage capacity
Connected to LTM, making exchange bw WM & LTM
possibleStill a work in progress…
Other models?Cowan (1988, 99, 2005)
WM is related to attention
Suggests that WM & attention are essentially the same
mechanism!!!Many other researchers have jumped on the
attention bandwagon
E.g., Randy Engle
THE BRAIN
Working memory and ….

Evidence of STM/WM
(i.e., brain stuff)Damage to the frontal lobe = probs in
controlling attentionMemory Bx of infants is “out of sight, out
of mind” bc frontal & PFC isn’t fully developed until ~ 8
mosPFC is B area mostly closely assoc w/ WM, but other areas
– e.g., visual cortex – also involved
An example of????
Other evidence that STM/WM
exists comes from
cognitive neuroscience
Milner reported the case of H.M., who
had brain surgery to relieve epilepsy...
Epilepsy improved,
but HM's memory
was totally screwed
after surgery
His memory for life before surgery (LTM)
is normal… And his STM is also normal.
BUT, he lost the ability to transfer
info from STM to LTM!
Could not recognize people
he saw every day...
As he aged after

surgery, he could not
recognize himself either!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkaXNvzE4pk
However, H.M.
could learn
For example,
he developed
skill in “mirror
drawing,”
without having
any memory
of learning
how…
Squire (1979) studied a similar patient
(N.A.) who had a strange accident...
A fencing foil went up his nose and
into his forebrain!
NA is just like HM,
only a little worse...

This syndrome was
the basis for the
movie
Memento
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS…
Let’s begin with a
simple experiment
Please number from 1 to 15:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
Leave enough
room for one
short word

after each #
Each word passes from SM to WM
WM has limited capacity, so... Rehearsal transfers info from
WM to LTMFirst few words make it to LTMLast few words still
in WM at recall
Simple theory of the serial-position curve:
Long-term
memory
Working or
Short-term
Memory
Sensory
Input
Sensory
Memory
Attention
Encoding
Retrieval
Maintenance Rehearsal
Working- and long-term memory
The serial-position curve shows the
WM-LTM distinction

% correct recall
position of word in list
The primacy portion
reflects LTM
The recency portion
reflects WM
Chart140353020141096442281525455560
Sheet140353020141096442281525455560
Sheet2
Sheet3
Serial Position CurvePrimacy effect – more likely to remember
words at beginning of list
Subj have time to rehearse words & transfer to LTM
Less rehearsal for later wordsRecency effect – better memory
for stimuli at end of list
Most recent words still in STM
REVIEW: So, what is the nature of
short-term memory (STM)?
It's short-term! Info must either be actively
maintained or transferred to LTM.
Otherwise, it's quickly lost...
Forgetting from STM is primarily
caused by interference -- new
stuff constantly enters the mind...

Stop here
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Attention chapter 4
Coglab- attentional blink
“Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking
posession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out
of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or
trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of
consciousness are of its essence.”
“…withdrawal from some things in order
to deal effectively with others…”
What is attention?
-- William James (1890)
We can certainly introspect
about attention (à la James):

You know what it's like to think hard, or to
have your mind wander...
You know what it's like to have something
grab your attention...
You probably know how to tune out signals...
You can drive and listen
to the radio at once...
"A pool of mental effort that is selective, shiftable, and
divisable..."
But we're scientists, so we're
going to study attention
a little more carefully...
You could probably derive a reasonable
introspective definition of attention
Attention:
ability to focus on specific stimuli/locations
aka
the interface between memory systems
Attention determines what information
receives further analysis…
Why do we have attention?
You are constantly bombarded
by information, but most does
not enter consciousness.
For example…
whyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2MvoSimons
& Chabris (1999)

MANY ASPECTS
Many approaches
Attention as Info ProcessingLate 1800s/early 1900s –
introspectionE.g., describe how paying attn affects clarity of
patch1920s – 50s we lost our minds1950s – renewed interest in
attn research bc WW2 – pilotsE.g., dichotic listening task –
present different msgs to L & R ears
Let's start with selective attention
in processing auditory signals
Auditory signals were originally preferred because ears don't
move... dichotic listening was the method of choice.
Cherry (1953): One of the first dichotic listening studies
Asked subjects to shadow the message coming to
one ear and ignore the other. Subjects did very well
shadowing the attended ear.
However, they did not realize foreign languages
were included…
Did not realize a word was repeated 35 times...
Cherry also asked what they remembered about the message
presented to unattended ear…

People could recall basic physical attributes:
(male versus female voice)
(loud versus quiet)
We commonly refer to
a bottleneck in
information processing.
Many studies have been
dedicated to finding the
locus of this bottleneck.
Central assumption: attention is a limited-capacity system.
We cannot process all information at once.
Broadbent (1958) Filter Model
Sensory memory holds info for fraction of second &
passes it to filter
Filter – ids msg that is being attended based on physical
charsPitch, tone of voice, speed, accentDetermines 1 msg that
will receive further processingALL other msgs filtered out
After selection, stimuli are shunted along a limited-capacity
channel
Detector – process info from attended msg to determine higher
level charsProcesses ALL info that enters it bc only
imp/attended info let inOutput sent to STM…..then maybe LTM

Flow diagram of Broadbent’s filter model of attention.
Selective
Early Selection Model: filtering
before meaning is determined
“Early selection” bc filter operates at an early stage in
information flow
Filter model – since all of unattended msgs filter out,
we should not be conscious of info in unattended ear, but….
Moray (1959): The cocktail party effect
Some information (e.g., the subject's name)
“sneaks through” the unattended ear and
is recognized.
A Couple of Problems…
What does this say about filtering?
Treisman’s
Attenuation
Model of
Attention
The unattended
message
must receive
some semantic
analysis. Cannot
be purely
pre-attentive…
Participants told to attend just to one ear but the unattended

message got through too - attention shifted across ears
according
to word meaning
Treisman’s Attenuation Model of Attention (leaky filter)
Sensory register
Attenuator – like Broadbent’s filter. Analyzes info in terms of:
physical properties, AND language (syllables/words), AND
meaning
All stimuli in sensory memory receive some meaningful
analysis (via LTM)
But ONLY as far as necessary to id attended msg
Unattended msgs (weaker) are id’d & sent to ….
Dictionary Unit – contains words stored in memory, each w a
threshold for being activated
word w low threshold detected if presented softly,
obscured
word w high threshold need strong signal to be detected
Final output determined by DU
In Treisman's theory, pre-attentive analysis
must be almost as complete as the attentive analysis.
So what use is the pre-attentive analysis?
Another theory anyone?
MacKay (1973)
Broadbent's and Treisman's were both early
selection theories -- attention selects a subset
of information in sensory memory, allowing
passage into STM.
Mackay proposed a late selection theory

“late” = info is processed to level of meaning
BEFORE an attended msg is selected
Mackay’s experiment
Ambiguous sentence:
They were throwing stones at the bank.
river bank? or place to save money?
Shadowed the sentence in the attended ear.
Simultaneously, a biasing word
was presented to the unattended ear
river or money
At test picked closest meaning to shadowed sentence: They
threw stones toward the side of the river They threw stones at
the savings and loan yesterday
What happened
Mackay cont’dMeaning of biasing words (i.e., river, $)
affected subj choice of sentence…….even though subjs unaware
of hearing biasing words!So, meaning of biasing words must
have been processed after allConclude: most incoming info is
processed to level of meaning before its selected for further
processing…….well, according to late selection theorists….
A difference between the early- and late-selection approaches to
selective attention is the characteristics of the messages that are
used to accomplish selection. Early selection (Broadbent’s
approach) is based on physical characteristics. Late selection
(Makay’s approach) is based on meaning. Treisman’s
attenuation model falls in between these two because selection

can be based on physical characteristics, meaning, or both.
State of debate?Research looked at:Types of info used for
selecting a msg to attend toPhysical chars, meaningWHEN
selection happens (early, late)Debate still NOT solved….Results
depend on task and type of stimuli used
So….. research shifted to WHAT CONTROLS attention…..
PROCESSING CAPACITY & PERCEPTUAL LOAD
Ability to selectively attend can depend both on distracting
stimulus & nature of the task
How do people ignore distractors while trying to
focus?Processing capacity – amount of info people can handle.
LIMITED!Perceptual load – related to task difficultyLow load
tasks – use only small amount of cap. Easy, well-practicedHigh
load tasks – use more processing cap. Difficult, not well-
practiced
Lavie’s Load Theory of AttentionDistractors will ONLY slow
down processing in LOW-load taskslow-load, there is spare
capacity, so resources are available to process irrelevant high-
load, all processing capacity is already being used, no resources
are left over to process irrelevant stimuliNo effect on
performance
So, when doing a difficult task,
you are LESS likely to be distracted….

Irrelevant StimuliIgnoring irrelevant stimuli is a function
of:load (high, low) ANDHow powerful irrelevant stimulus
isYou may be better able to ignore some things….E.g., sirens
Another classic example is the Stroop Effect
in color naming
John Ridley Stroop
Part 1: Please read the
following words aloud,
as quickly as possible.
BE LOUD!
GREEN
ORANGE
RED
PURPLE
BLUE
GREEN
ORANGE
RED
PURPLE
BLUE
Again, read the
words aloud,
as quickly

as possible.
Now, please
name
the color
of these objects,
as quickly
as possible.
GRUEEN
ORANGE
MOTRED
PURPLE
BLODUE
Again, please
name
the color
of the printing,
as quickly
as possible.
GREEN
ORANGE
RED
PURPLE
BLUE
pretty funny,
isn’t it?

Why?Harder to name colors of words vs. color of shapesWords
cause a competing response with colors and slow RT
d…o…w…nTask irrelevant stimuli (color words) are powerful
here bc reading words is highly practiced & so automatic that
it’s difficult NOT to read them
Data from Stroop (1935)
Get your own
Stroop-effect
t-shirt!
Based on failures of selective attention, Kahneman
(1973) proposed a capacity theory of attention
Everyday activities that divide attention
(e.g., driving a car while talking to a friend)
seem inconsistent with filter theories.
The level of demand that signals/tasks
require seems more important.
Yay! Another theory!
Kahneman
suggests that
attention is
a limited pool
of energy
that we try
to concentrate
or divide
optimally

Kahneman's model
predicts we can
do multiple
tasks if we do
not exceed capacity.
Allocation of capacity
is flexible
and under some
strategic control.
Trying to read while someone talks to you…
Various factors determine whether dual tasks will exceed
capacity, such as...
Driving & Car radio…
Task Difficulty
Task Similarity
Amount of cognitive juice needed affects
how well you can multi-task
For support, Kahneman cites a study by…
Posner & Boies (1971) -- dual-task
Subjects did 2 simultaneous tasks:
letter-matching (A-A vs A-B)
Right index finger = same
Right middle finger = different
tone detection
Left index finger = "I heard a tone"

Timing is everything
Switching attention
between tasks - even
easy ones - has a
cognitive “cost”….
for each add’l task you take on, you lose ability to do each one
optimally
Think about cell
phones...
# = tone
Time to detect
Tone during trial
ATTENTION AS SELECTION
Overt & Covert Attention
Types of AttentionOvert – shifting attn from 1 place to another
by MOVING the eyesE.g., finding Waldo
Covert – shifting attn from 1 place to another while keeping
eyes stationary
Shifting attention2 factors determine how people shift attn by
moving eyes:Bottom-up processing – based on physical chars of
stimulusTop-down processing – based on cognitive factors such
as observer’s knowledge about scenes, objects

Scanning based on
Stimulus Salience!!Bottom up processing depends on properties
of a stimulusStimulus salience – physical chars of
stimulusColor, contrast, movementCan influence attnFind all
the blondes
in the pic
Attentional Capture
Attentional capture – when attn due to stimulus saliency causes
involuntary shift of attne.g., loud noise, bright light, fast
movement, potential evil master
Parkhurst (2002)Subj viewed saliency maps1st fixations were
assoc w highly salient areasAfter that, scanning was influenced
by T-D processes (goals, experience)
Do you know what
this is?
Saliency based on Cog FactorsWhere we look isn’t determined
ONLY by saliency, but also…MEANINGLarge variation in how
people view scenes…..
this is due to individual diffs
in T-D processingScene schemasVo & Henderson (2009) –

subj looked longer at things that seem out of place.Means attn is
being affected by their knowledge
Saliency based on Cog FactorsKnowledge of scenes can help
guide our attentionE.g., subj more likely to detect stop signs @
intersections (Shinoda et al, 2001)Used regularities in the
enviro to determine where to look for stop signs…..This is yet
ANOTHER eg
of top-down
Scanning based on
Task DemandsMost tasks require attn to different places as task
unfoldsEye movements determined by taskLinked to action
COVERT ATTENTION
Directing Attention WITHOUT Eye Movements
Attention to LocationPosner et al (1978) –
precuing method, covert80% valid precuingSubj reacted more
quickly when attn was focused where target would appearShows
we process info more effectively at the place where our
attention is directedAttn like a spotlight – improves processing
when directed tw a specific location

Attention to ObjectsSame object advantage – when attn is
directed to 1 place on an object, attn spreads to other places on
that object
DIVIDED ATTENTION
Can we attend to more than one thing at a time?
We can inadvertently pay attn
to 2 things at once – task & distractor
What about intentionally dividing attn?
Divided attn – distribtution of attn among 2+ tasks
Play game & listen to convo
Drive & listen to music, think, talk
Listen to 2 convos at once?
Practice Makes Perfect!Schneider & Shiffrin (1977)Subj held
target stimuli in memory (#s)Determine if target was present
among distractor (letters)Start 55% accurateAfter 900 trials,
90%Under consistent
mapping

Practice dedicated to a task reduces the
capacity required by that task.
A distinction of…
Automatic vs. Controlled
Processes
Automatic (or overlearned) processes
require little/no attention; can be carried out
in parallel with other processes
Remember me?
Controlled processes require attention;
are carried out
in serial manner
driving a standard-shift car...
serving a tennis ball...
using chopsticks...
typing...
reading...
We've all had the experience of being lousy at something, then
getting better with practice…
Attention and Practice
We’re relatively skilled at some divided attn tasks:
Listening in class & taking notes
Walking & talking
Watching tv & doing crossword

This sounds really, really hard…
A classic experiment….
Spelke, Hirst, & Neisser (1976)
At the same time, they read a book out loud..
Subjects listened to messages AND typed them.
Spelke et al.’s findings:
After 17 weeks, people could perform
both tasks almost perfectly!
I just knew
you could do it!
Is automaticity always learned?
Does it ever come naturally?
Work by Treisman and her colleagues
suggests that some automatic processes
are “built-in” to the human brain…
“pop-out effects” in visual search…
(e.g., Treisman & Gelade, 1980)
Feature Search – Color
Can you find a blue square?

Again -- Can you find a blue square?

And again -- Can you find a blue square?

unique targets are detected very fast
RTs not affected by # of distractor items
“yes” and “no” responses equally fast
indicates parallel search
Feature Search
unique features seem to “pop out” of the display
Conjunction Search
Now can you find a blue square?

conjunctions of features are detected rather slowly

RTs increase with # of distractors
“no” responses are slower than “yes” responses (2:1 ratio)
indicates serial search
Conjunction Search
no more “pop out”
Why do pop-out effects occur?
According to Treisman's feature integration
theory, basic features of objects (e.g., color)
are automatically detected.
Conjunction search requires features to be detected
(automatic) and then combined into objects. This requires
attention, and is done serially (controlled).
More about that….According to Treisman’s Feature
Integration Theory, binding happens in 2 stages when
processing imagePreattentive stage – before we’re conscious of
objectObjects analyzed into separate features – shape, color,
movement
Proof?
Treisman & Schmidt (1982) – flashed display below
Illusory conjunctions – combos of features from different
stimuli
Showed that features exist independently, like scrabble tiles
Focused attention stage
Attention important in combining features to create perception

of whole objects
Follow up – told subj to pay attn to ONLY shapes -eliminated
IC
Studies with Balint’s subj –
parietal damage; trouble
focusing atten on
indiv objects
Another example of
Illusory Conjunctions
"Certain aspects of visual processing seem to be
accomplished simultaneously (for the entire field at once)
and automatically (without attention being focused on any
one part of the visual field). Other aspects of visual
processing seem to depend on focused attention and are
done serially, or one at a time, as if a mental spotlight
were being moved from one location to another.“
-- Anne Treisman (1986)
Treisman’s view – The spotlight metaphor
Schneider & Shiffrin(1977)
• Subjects saw a series of 20 rapidly (2.5 sec)
presented frames. Each had 4 stimulus locations
with either letters, digits, or dots. 1 – 4
stimuli could appear on any frame.

• Each subject had a set of targets to remember
and search for (either 1, 2, 3, or 4 targets).
• Frames were shown for variable durations,
from 40 – 800 milliseconds.
However, NOT everything can me made automatic…
sample frame
Consistent mapping
Improvement in
performance with
practice. The arrow
indicates when
the task had
become automatic.
Task: identify a target
from the memory set
if one was presented
The task entailed either
consistent or varied mapping
In CM, targets and distractors came from
different categories (digits vs. letters).
In VM, targets and distractors came from
the same category.
Also, in VM, targets in one trial
might be distractors in another…
Varied mapping condition for Schneider and Shiffrin’s (1977)

experiment. This is more difficult than the consistent mapping
condition because all the characters are letters and also because
a character that was a distractor on one trial (like the T) can
become a target on another trial, and a character that was in the
memory set on one trial (like the P) can become a distractor on
another trial.
Same task
as before
Results?
Under VM, never automatic…..always controlled processing
Distractions while DrivingDingus et al (2006) – cams in
car & front & rear windows82 crashes, 771 near crashes80%
crashes & 67% of near
crashes driver was inattentive 3s beforeMost distracting
activity was CELL PHONERedelmeier & Tibshirani (1997) –
crash risk 4x higher if driver using cellHands-free offered
NO advantage!
More….Strayer & Johnston (2001) – simulated driving task.
Press brakes ASAP when see red light (notice what I did
there?)While talking on phone, missed 2x more red
lightsIncreased time to press brakesEven for hands-free again!
A little more….Nationwide Ins (2008) Majority of subj thought
they were good drivers while talking on phone45% had been
hit/nearly hit by someone talking on phoneEveryone knows

phone use is dangerous….but we don’t think it applies to
us!!Hanowski et al (2009) –
truckers 23x more likely
to cause crash if texting
Why?Talking on phone uses cog resources that would otherwise
be used for drivingAnything that distracts attn can degrade
drivingPhonesGPSVoice activated apps, voice text,
emailTalking/texting is likely using MORE resources than
people thinkSometimes situation requires ALL resources
IMMEDIATELY!
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DON’T ATTEND?
So….
Inattentional BlindnessWe can be unaware of clearly
visible stimuli if we aren’t directing attnAttention affects
perception!E.g., gorilla study (Simons & Chabris)46% failed to
notice gorillaE.g., looking in a
store window
Change
DetectionAttention is important in
detecting changeLevin & Simons (1997) – subj saw vids in
which some detail changed in EVERY shotOnly 10%
noticedFollow-up – showed same subj the same film again AND
told them there would

be changes in objects,
body position, or clothingSubj id’d fewer than ¼ of changes!
Change DetectionClassic study by Simons & Levin (1998)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWSxSQsspiQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBPG_OBgTWg
Ch. 2 Cognitive NeuroscienceBrraains……
Why do we care about Cognitive Neuroscience?
Because cognition is interconnected with behavior & physiology
Cognitive Neuroscience is the physiological basis for cognition
*
You are at a restaurant romantic dinner after a long week. It
would be perfect except for the family with the wild kids at the
table next to you. You try to ignore the noise and commotion
when you look over the shoulder of your dinning companion and
see one of the rugrats hurling a sippy cup right at your head…..
What do you do?
Duck or block or just take it in the face, the kid can’t throw that
hard, did you have time to contemplate and form a plan of

response? No. you had a quick reaction… how does this
information get communicated from your brain to your body?
Before any behavior, a neural impulse
must activate some part of the brain,
which signals a muscle
Before hitting snooze…
sound waves transduced into
electrical signals….auditory
area (hear alarm). Signal
many B areas …motor area.
….hand/arm
It all happens pretty fast!
How does it work?...
*
You are at a restaurant romantic dinner after a long week. It
would be perfect except for the family with the wild kids at the
table next to you. You try to ignore the noise and commotion
when you look over the shoulder of your dinning companion and
see one of the rugrats hurling a sippy cup right at your head…..
What do you do?
Duck or block or just take it in the face, the kid can’t throw that
hard, did you have time to contemplate and form a plan of
response? No. you had a quick reaction… how does this
information get communicated from your brain to your body?
Levels of AnalysesRelationship between mind & brainStudy in
different ways, at different levelsBehaviorWhole brainBrain

structuresChemicals that create
electrical signals w/in
these structures
Central Nervous System (CNS)
the brain and spinal cord
Peripheral Nervous System (PNS)
the sensory and motor neurons that connect the central nervous
system (CNS) to the rest of the body
Should be review from introductory psych.…
*
Nervous System
the body’s speedy, electrochemical communication system
consists of all the nerve cells of the peripheral and central
nervous systems
The Nervous System
Motor neurons
interneuron

Central
(brain and
spinal cord)
Nervous
system
Autonomic (controls
self-regulated action of
internal organs and glands)
Skeletal (controls
voluntary movements of
skeletal muscles)
Sympathetic
(arousing)
Parasympathetic
(calming)
Peripheral
*
Fight or flight!!!
information is transmitted via neurons-
Interneurons
CNS neurons that internally communicate and intervene
between the sensory inputs and motor outputs
Motor Neurons
carry outgoing information from the CNS to muscles and glands
Somatic Nervous System
the division of the peripheral nervous system that controls the
body’s skeletal muscles

Nervous system: 3 main functions
Sensing specific information about external and internal
conditions
Integrating information
Issuing commands for a response from the body’s muscles or
glands
N.S. is the foundation for the ability to perceive, understand,
and react to the environment.
What moves communication throughout the body?
Discovery!19th century anatomists stained brain
cells & viewed under microscopeNerve net theory – continuous,
in all directions
Ramon y Cajal debunked this theoryNeuron doctrine – neurons
are NOT continuous with other cells Neurons are building
blocks of the brainIndividual neurons transmit signals
Cell body - cell’s life support center
Dendrites - receive messages from other cells
Axon - sends messages away from the cell body to other
neurons

Axonal Conduction
Electrical message is sent via:
Action Potential
Stimulation of the cell raising energy beyond a threshold
leading to a reversal in electrical charge across the cell
Threshold > the level of stimulation required to trigger a neural
impulse
Signal is sent (all-or-none)
Refractory period > recovery period where cell is less
sensitive to stimulation
*
Action potential - stimulation of the cell raising energy beyond
a threshold leading to a reversal in electrical charge across the
cell. ( like a big roller coaster)
Signal is sent
Refractory period - recovery period where cell is less sensitive
to stimulation
Myelin sheath- fatty substance around axons of some cells,
speeds up conduction (multiple sclerosis - destroys myelin
leaving neurons unable to conduct action potentials)
Neural communication
*

explain that: when a neuron is stimulated the nerve impulses
travel down the axon into the terminals that causes release of
neurotransmitters
Dendrite
the bushy, branching extensions of a neuron that receive
messages and conduct impulses toward the cell body
Axon
the extension of a neuron, ending in branching terminal fibers,
through which messages are sent to other neurons or to muscles
or glands
Myelin [MY-uh-lin] Sheath
a layer of fatty cells segmentally encasing the fibers of many
neurons
enables vastly greater transmission speed of neutral impulses
Neurotransmitters-
chemicals with various functions that work like a lock and
key
** only certain NTs will work with certain receptors.**
Works in 2 ways:
reduce the likelihood of an AP
Increase the likelihood of an AP
Neural Communication
In this course our concern is with
neural communication in the brain
Much of what we know about the brain results from
abnormalities….

Example: The story of Charles Whitman
A normal guy (literally an altar
boy & an eagle scout as a kid).
He grew up, went to U. of Texas,
and everything went to hell...
He assaulted his wife & got in several fights...
He started having violent
fantasies, so he went to a
psychiatrist....
Dr. did not help...
Chuck went home, KILLED his wife and then
killed his mom!
THEN he went up a bell tower with a
high-powered rifle to thin out the herd...
Eventually, he killed another 14 people and

wounded > 20 more.
The police killed him.
Autopsy revealed a walnut-sized
brain tumor on his amygdala...
There are many other
behavior disorders &( normal behaviors)
with organic causes...
Behavior is the result of
brain activity
Figure 2.4
Cross-section of the human brain, showing a number of the
subcortical structures that are important for cognition.
Sensory hub=
Receives info
from all senses
except smell;
Routes to higher
brain function (hierarchical
processing)
Yikes!
Areas of Cerebral Cortex
Different lesions
Result in different
deficits

6th sense?
Proprioception -sense of relative position of body parts &
movement
Receptors in skeletal muscles, tendons, & jointsSignals sent to
brain in addition to vestibular info
Parietal lobe is involved in the integration of signals from
different parts of the bodyInvolved in phantom limb
syndrome….more on that next time!
Localization of function???Phrenology Franz Joseph GallHey
day in America 1830s, 40s
Principles of Phrenology
Brain is organ of the mindMind composed of multiple distinct
innate facultiesSo, each faculty must be a separate structure in
the brainSIZE of each structure is a measure of its
“POWER”Shape of brain is determined by the development of
various structuresSkull takes its shape from the brain, so skull
surface can be read as an index of psychological
aptitudes/tendencies…e.g., intelligence, personality, curiosity…
Applying phrenology1830s NY - readingsCharacter reference
for jobsEducationCriminal reformCareer advisementMatch-
making (!)Disbanded in 1967….yes, you
read that right…1967.

Localization of functionSupport comes from brain damage
ptsDamage to language areas = Lang deficitsDamage to
occipital lobe causes blindnessDamage to frontal lobe causes
problems with decision making, thinking, planning,
riskhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvpIRN9D4D4
Figure 2.18
Location of Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, which are both
involved in the processing of speech and language.
Inability to process/
comprehend
language
Inability to form words
Problems in these areas
result in speech disorders
Example of Wernicke’s aphasia
…Asked to describe a picture showing two boys stealing
cookies behind a woman’s back, one patient responded: “Mother
is away her working her work to get her better, but when she’s
looking the two boys looking the other part…
Words are formed fine, just meaningless
Damage to L temporal gyrus (22)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oef68YabD0
Example of Broca’s aphasiaSarah

Scotthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aplTvEQ6ew&list=PL
RD64ZuOLsLnXJ-eBLPAELJSSUGPErO15Tono
Tonohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CJWo5TDHLEInabilit
y to form words, produce speechDamage to L frontal lobe
Stuttering?Regions involved:Temporal lobe for auditory
processingMotor strip for speech planning & executionThose
that stutter may have:Developmental differences in these
structuresFaulty connections b/w themResults in a dis-fluency
of speech
Figure 2.17
Side view of a monkey brain showing the locations of the
inferotemporal (IT) and the medial temporal (MT) areas.
Damage results in
prosopagnosia
can’t recognize
familiar faces
Damage results
in motion agnosia-
can’t perceive movement…
pouring coffee
seems frozen
*
Mt- motion
IT- form

There is also evidence for localization
of function through new technologies….
normal
schizophrenia
*
MRI-strong magnetic field which disrupts the alignment of
atoms in the brain cells, when they come back to their normal
resting place, they send off detectable signal which are
converted to computer generated images.
Organization: Brain ImagingMagnetic Resonance Imaging
(MRI)Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
Figure 2.20
When a blue ball rolls by, a number of different cortical areas
are activated.
fMRI shows what part of the brain is activated when we are
processing different information
PETPositron Emission Tomography uses trace amounts of short-
lived radioactive material to map functional processes in the
brain When the material undergoes radioactive decay a positron
is emitted, which can be picked up be the detectorAreas of high
radioactivity are associated with brain activity

EEGElectroencephalography is the measurement of the
electrical activity of the brain by recording from electrodes
placed on the scalpnon-invasiveCan detect changes in electrical
activity on a millisecond-levelIt is one of the few techniques
available that has such high temporal resolution
MEGMagnetoencephalography is used to measure the magnetic
fields produced by electrical activity in the brain via extremely
sensitive devices known as SQUIDsUsed to:assisting
researchers in determining the function of various parts of the
brainassisting surgeons in localizing a
pathology neurofeedback
NIRSNear infrared spectroscopy
measures blood oxygenation in the brain By shining light in
the near infrared part of the spectrum (700-900nm) through the
skull & detecting how much the remerging light is
attenuatedHow much the light is attenuated depends on blood
oxygenation provides an indirect measure of brain activity
DTITracks the diffusion of water molecules in living tissue
Reveals microscopic details about tissue, either normal or
diseasedReveals neural pathways/circuitsin vivo and non-
invasive
Now we have some brain basics…
Lets look at how we put all this stuff to use

Neural RepresentationPrinciple of neural representationObject
perception is NOT based on direct contact w the object, but on
the way its represented by APs in the Brain
To understand cognition, must understand how our experiences
are represented in our mind (behaviorally) AND in the brain
(physiologically)
Neural specialization…….
Classic data from Hubel & Weisel (1957)
Feature detectors in cats...
Electrodes used to record
from individual neurons...
More in perception chapter
Table 2.1
Properties of Neurons in the Visual Cortex
Neurons in visual system fire BEST to specific types of stimuli
Figure 2.14
How a neuron in the cat’s optic nerve responds as the size of a
spot of light increases. Notice that the best response occurs to
the medium-sized spot of light in (b), but decreases when the

spot is made larger, as in (c) and (d).
Figure 2.16
Neurons have been found in the cortex that respond to (a)
complex geometrical figures; (b) common objects in the
environment; and (c) faces. Also for spatial layouts & body
parts!
For example…
How can we tell friend from foe or
my house from your house?Different patterns of firing are
associated with different people and different brain activity
Neural circuit is a group of interconnected
neurons that respond best to a specific stimuli – circuits include
synapses that are excitatory &/or inhibitory
A- light from a short bar activates neuron 3 which activates the
main neuron
B- light from a medium bar excites neurons 2,3,4, so main
neuron
responds very rapidly
C- light from a large bar excites neurons 2,3,4 but 1 & 5 are
inhibitory, reducing overall response of the main neuron
**** this neuron responds best to medium length lines****
Ex. Neuron A
Y synapse- excite
T synapse- inhibit

*
How a neural circuit works. “Y” synapses are excitatory and
“T” synapses are inhibitory. (a) When receptor 3 is stimulated
by light, excitatory neurotransmitter is released onto neuron A,
and action potentials are recorded from A’s axon.
(b) When receptors 2, 3, and 4 are stimulated neuron A receives
more excitatory neurotransmitter and firing increases. (c) When
all five neurons are stimulated, excitatory transmitter is
released from 2, 3, and 4, but the release of inhibitory
neurotransmitter from neurons 1 and 5 causes a decrease in
firing. This circuit therefore causes neuron A to fire best to a
bar of light of medium length.
Figure 2.19
How five different neurons respond to three different faces.
Notice that the pattern of firing across the five neurons is
different for each face.
Neuronal codingPopulation coding – representation of a
particular object by the pattern of firing of a LARGE number of
neurons
Sparse coding – particular object is represented by a pattern of
finding on only a SMALL group of neurons
Distributed Representation Across the BrainDistributed
representation – cognitive functions activate MANY B
areasE.g., ffa most strongly activates for faces, is weaker but

still activates for other stimuliE.g., Several areas activate for
face perception according to:Your reaction to the
faceAttractionExpressionEmotions
Distributed RepresentationSame is true for other processes such
as memoryTake home: cog processes are created by many
specialized B areas – all working together – to create a
distributed pattern of activity
Girl with half a
brainhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MKNsI5CWoU
Ramachandran mirror
therapyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc3CmS8_vUIScienc
e is so
wonderfully weird!!!
Psychology ???
Cognition
Amanda Clevinger, M.A.

Brief Intro to Cognitive Psychology
Brief Intro to Cognitive Psychology
Much of cognitive psychology is the study of stuff we take
for granted.
This is especially true bc cognitive processes are covert
This is reflected by the youth of CP
as a field: Neisser's (1967) Cognitive
Psychology coined the name...
For example….
What characterizes cognitive psychology?
Mental processes underlying
“basic” behaviors
Data-driven, empirical approach
Called "information-processing”

psychology
Cognition happens in STAGES. We trace the flow of
information through the stages & infer
the processes involved (not directly measured).
Mental structures and processes
support the way we think
Measurable time course of processing
Errors are not random
Basic Assumptions of Cognitive Psychology
1800s:
Focus- inner workings of the mind
Donders-Decision processes
reaction-time experiments
Simple vs choice RT= decision time
Wundt’s atoms of the mind…
Experience determined by combining basic elements
*Analytic introspection*
Ebbinghaus’ memory research…
Time course of forgetting; recall of words lists
Some (very little) History
*

Donders- noticed it took longer to make a decision between 2
options then to press 1 option as fast as possible, determined
that decision processes took time.
Wundt- self reports and introspection, became interested in
thoughts --- participants described their subject responses to
stimuli. --- describe what you hear when a 5-chord note is
played on the piano. Interested in whether heard all at once or
separate notes.
Ebbinghaus- word lists tested retention and rehersal
Crushed under the boots of behaviorism...
In Skinner’s
(& Watson’s) view,
psychological
science should
focus on overt
behavior, not
hidden mental
processes…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMnhyGozLyE
*
Chomsky’s penetrating critique
of Skinner…all behaviors are not a
result of reinforcement

Emergence of AI and the computer
metaphor of the mind…
Advances in cognitive neuroscience…
Advances in neural (PDP) modeling…
A Cognitive Revolution in the late 50s…
*
Chomsky wrote response to skinners book where he stated that
children learned to talk in response to rewarded encourgment
from parents.
Chomsky said – can’t be kids say things they have never heard
before.
Skinner--- kids learn to talk by using operant conditioning
Chomsky said
“what about novel
sentences?”…
explain THAT with
operant conditioning!
The demise of behaviorism…..
=
I hate
Daddy
Wait a minute… the era
of behaviorism ended
in the sixties?

What the heck???
*
Principal Research Areas of Cognitive Psychology
Perception
Cognitive Neuroscience
Artificial Intelligence
Pattern Recognition
Attention
Language
Thinking and Concept Formation
Cognitive Development
Imagery
Memory
Human Intelligence
Cognitive Psychology
Studies have shown that eyewitness testimony is usually
accurate, especially with highly stressful (i.e., memorable)
events.
True or False?
False. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously
unreliable, particularly when people are in
highly aroused states. To date there have been 330 exonerations
(see the Innocence Project)
because they were factually innocent.

We use only about 10% of our brain.
True or False?
False. We use all our brain, all the time. Even small brain
lesions can result in significant
cognitive impairment.
You can move your focus of (visual) attention without moving
your eyes.
True or False?
True. Overt shifts of attention (involving eye
movements) and covert shifts of attention
(without eye movements) often work together,
but they can be separated, and have different
neural underpinnings.
Someone who learns something while drunk will later remember
it better while drunk than while sober.
True or False?
True. State dependent learning demonstrates
the importance of context in the formation and retrieval of
episodic memories.
Controlled studies have found that "cramming" for an exam is
as effective as distributing the studying over time.
True or False?
False. Distributed practice results in better
long-term memory than massed practice.

Studies of divided attention have shown
that driving does not generally suffer during hands free cell-
phone use.
True or False?
False. Studies show that cell phones
significantly interfere with driving. In fact,
people are more impaired when driving and talking on a cell
phones even hands free
than when driving drunk.
Recent evidence supports some of the claims of Extra Sensory
Perception (ESP) advocates.
True or False?
False. In controlled “double-blind” studies, no systematic
evidence has been obtained for ESP.
Memory aids do not really improve memory.
True or False?
False. Mnemonic techniques work. They
organize information, make it less
susceptible to forgetting, and
provide useful retrieval cues.
Backwards messages hidden in music can influence our
behavior.
True or False?
eslaF -- There is no evidence that this

information is processed, let alone influences our behavior.
Some of our memories are retrieved as mental images.
True or False?
True. Brain-imaging studies show that the areas that are active
when seeing a picture
of an object are also active when
remembering that object.
Speed reading techniques can dramatically
improve reading speed without sacrificing
comprehension.
True or False?
False. Human performance shows a
speed-accuracy tradeoff -- going faster reduces
accuracy. However, good old-fashioned
practice can improve the efficiency of reading.
Information can be stored in long-term memory even if you
never attend to it.
True or False?
False. Attention is necessary for the creation
of long-term memories. Information that falls outside of
attention is lost.
Advertising using subliminal perception is
effective.
True or False?

False. Effects of subliminal perception are, at
best, minimal. There is little evidence that
stimuli presented “below threshold”
influence attitudes, beliefs, or choices.
(subliminal priming does effect immediate decisions)
There is no basis for the claim that eating
carrots will help your night vision.
True or False?
False. Rods use the photopigment rhodopsin
(made of vitamin A, found in carrots).
People with vitamin A deficiency have poor night vision
(corrected by vitamin supplements).
An infant’s ability to discriminate between the phonemes of
language is actually better than that of adults.
True or False?
True. As language develops, infants lose the
ability to discriminate or produce phonemes that are not in their
language.
Evidence supports the idea that memories are stored one-
memory-to-a-neuron.
True or False?
False. Memories are distributed over thousands of neurons.
The idea of “grandmother cells” has been generally disavowed.
There is no limit on how much information can be stored in

long-term memory.
True or False?
True. No one has ever filled up long-term
memory. There are limits on what is initially stored (attention),
but once stored, memories may be permanent.
People are always biased.
True or False?
True. Expectations and memories color the
way that we perceive and remember the world.
This process accounts
for many individual differences between people.
With enough practice, you can do two
things simultaneously as well as doing each thing by itself.
True or False?
True. Under certain conditions, people can
do two things (e.g., playing piano and
reading a novel) perfectly. This is called “perfect timesharing.”
See you next time!

Courtney
July 3, 2017
Articles and 3 paragraphs

Proof sibling rivalry can scar you for life
Listen American Accent Australian Accent British
Accent
Section:
Features
- by two sisters riven by such jealousy and loathing it takes
your breath away Ursula says I cowered in terror every t Louisa
babys Louisa says It felt like Urs had stolen m mother's love
from me : time sat s: ula y e
WHEN I look back over my long summer holidays as a child,
there's one scene that encapsulates a typical day. I am alone, at
the edge of a scrubby, sun bleached field in rural Essex.
Somewhere in the distance I can see my older sister Louisa and
her friends.
They're laughing and running away and I know I can't catch
them, so there's no point in trying. Yet I want to be with them,
not for the pleasure of their company — even though heaven
knows there is little of that — but because I'm not entirely
confident they will come back and find me.
I'm hot, tired and thirsty, but I know if I complain I'll get a
good slap. So I sit there staring at a friend's pony I'm not
allowed to ride, watching games from which I am excluded and
straining to hear gossip I don't quite understand.
I'm lonely and frightened. I could go home, but there is no one
there. Our parents are at work and Louisa is supposed to be
looking after me. I am six years old.

I think it's fair to say my sister — eight years my senior —
loathed me from the moment I was born, and bullied me
relentlessly throughout our childhood. She won't dispute either
of those facts. Cruel, frequently violent and resentful of my
very existence, her bullying has left me damaged to the point
that it will forever impinge on my happiness.
She has her own scars too and, like me, she still struggles with
depression and feelings of inadequacy caused by the chasm that
opened up when I arrived, and the terrible, pernicious rivalry
that was actively encouraged and fuelled by our parents.
Nearly four decades later, at last we can both look back on that
scene in the field and agree on one thing. It doesn't matter how
much time has lapsed, how successful you are, how happy your
marriage is, if you've been forced into a bullying relationship
by the people who are meant to love you the most, there'll
always be a part of you that feels lost.
I wasn't surprised, therefore, to read earlier this month how
researchers at Oxford University have established a link
between sibling bullying and depression in later life.
When I was born near Southend in 1971, Louisa lost a mother
— that's how she tells me it felt. She had been an adored only
child and first grandchild. But upon my birth, a cloud blocked
out her place in the sun.
Our mother Susan had my sister when TURN TO NEXT PAGE
FROM PREVIOUS PAGE she was 17, having met our dad,
Alan, at 15 and married him shortly before Louisa was born.
Understandably, my mother wasn't ready for parenthood. She
was 26 when she had me, and I think she saw this second
pregnancy as her chance to do things properly.
I was breastfed on demand and Mum practiced attachment
parenting, so I was never off her hip. I don't need to imagine
how this made my sister feel: she's told me many times.
Wounded. Jealous. Angry.
But as I grew older, we moved to the Essex countryside to a
tiny village, where my parents ran an antique-furniture business
from outhouses in our garden. The business consumed them but,

rather than employ a nanny, they relied on my sister to care for
me.
Only now, with the hindsight of an adult and a mother to four
boys, can I see how unfair this was on Louisa.
From the age of ten, she was expected to make my breakfast,
prepare supper and look after me. This continued throughout her
teens, and when I started school, she had to take me there and
pick me up later, too. No wonder she saw me as a burden.
What 14 year old wants her six-year-old little sister dragging
around after her all the time? Both our parents were harsh
disciplinarians and considered a smack the only answer to any
misdemeanor — a style my sister copied with zeal. I remember
cowering in terror whenever she babysat.
ALTHOUGH I was scared of her, all I wanted, like most little
sisters, was to be like her — but this took the form of taking her
toys.
Neither of us will forget when, as a two-year-old, I picked up a
precious ornament, given to her by our late grandmother, and
smashed it in the bath. She will never forget either how she was
told off for shouting at me.
I was a constant thorn in her side. When she was 12 or 13 and
self-consciously experimenting with make-up, I would break
into her room and smear it all over her dressing table. Again,
she was forced to forgive me as the baby of the family. On her
ninth birthday, I discovered her present of a box of chocolates
and ate the lot.
When children's naturally selfish, competitive natures are
unchecked and even encouraged, sibling rivalry easily spills
over into something far nastier: bullying. Most parents work
hard to try to ease the relationships between their offspring.
Sadly, mine didn't.
They used each of our shortcomings as a stick to beat the other
with. If my sister was good at something, they asked why I
wasn't, and vice versa. Perhaps in some warped way they
thought the competition would inspire us.
They'd openly take sides in our fights, and discuss who was

their favorite child and why. From early in life we were
labelled. My sister was the 'wild child'. First, she failed at
school — no surprise as she had no time for homework. Then,
after she left home, she'd come back broke, heart-broken,
jobless or homeless thanks to her latest crisis.
I was the goody-two-shoes destined to make up for Louisa's
mistakes. When she didn't get a place at college after failing her
A-levels, my mother piled pressure on me to excel in exams.
When my sister was 28, my parents upgraded their car and
promised her their old Fiat Uno. Then I got a place at Exeter
University and I needed a car to get me there. They promptly
gave me the Fiat instead.
To outsiders, I know these incidents will seem petty — the self-
pitying laments of an over-privileged woman. But only when
you are trapped in a gladiatorial arena presided over by your
parents, can you understand how damaging such a situation can
be.
I'm sure my parents' open disappointment at my sister's failures
in her romantic relationships is what drove me to marry my
childhood sweetheart at just 24. I was terrified of their scorn if
things were to go wrong.
They pushed me hard into the arms of this aspiring young
lawyer. Never mind if he was right for me — he was the catch
they dreamed of.
NOT surprisingly, the marriage came unstuck pretty quickly,
and we separated when I was 27. By then, my sister was happily
settled with a long-term boyfriend, and suddenly became the
favorite child.
It was horrible being the let-down, and I began to see how my
sister must have felt for all those years. Yet that old rivalry
remained.
For years, I thought our situation was unique, but having talked
to counsellors and researched the subject, it seems it's not
unusual for parents to be complicit in competitive wrangling
between their children.
Counsellor Suzie Hayman, from the parenting charity Family

Lives, says: 'Sometimes parents get a power trip from seeing
their children divided.
'If the children aren't in alliance, you have total power because
they can't join forces against you. Parents can deliberately stoke
the fire of sibling rivalry, and if this happens it can be
profoundly disabling.' Having suffered so much from the effects
of rivalry, I was determined it would not tarnish the relationship
between our own children when we had our first babies a few
months apart: my son Jacob was born in October 2003, and
Louisa's son Alex arrived in January 2004.
Our parents, as grandparents, quickly reverted to type and
resumed their practice of measuring one child against the other.
Alex was messy, Jacob was clean. Jacob was clever, Alex was
slower on the uptake.
This brought our own rivalries into stark relief. One day, when
our boys were not quite two, a stupid row over timekeeping (I'd
accused of her being late for lunch, and she accused me of being
a control freak) blew out of control.
Afterwards, we didn't speak for almost five years. But despite
all our differences, I missed her and Alex with the full force of
bereavement.
Our parents seemed to revel in the divide: reminding me how
angry Louisa still was, constantly putting me off approaching
her. It was only when their own marriage ran into difficulties
that I reached out to my sister. She was the only person who
could understand how hard it was trying to support Mum and
Dad while they took out their stress on me and my family.
When we finally spoke — I had to steel myself to phone her —
it was as if we'd never been apart. We both realised that if it
hadn't been for our parents' constant meddling, we would have
made up years ago.
family Thirty per have no cent have cent have 4 per We rebuilt
our relationship as adults and now have a strong alliance. At 43
and 51, we love one another as fellow survivors. We live ten
minutes apart in London, and our children see each other
regularly. But we don't see anything of our parents. Indeed, we

haven't spoken to them for three years.
We decided the only way to protect ourselves from our painful
past is to build our relationship alone. We are fort prob my m to
m unate to have salvaged it. And our blems have taught me that
one of most important roles as a mother is make sure that my
children grow up in a family where life is fair and full of love.
The e LOUISA SAYS: I REMEMBER walking on a beach in the
South of France, idly spotting pretty shells in the surf. The
memory is so clear I can almost feel the salty air on w cen way
nt of us my skin.
s, 40 per , 15 per wo and have siblings one tw cent h three.
So why is it so poignant? Because it is the last time I can
remember spending time alone with my mother.
I was seven, and my mother was heavily pregnant. This holiday
s to be our last as a family of three, d I recall her telling me
how much it would be for me to have a baby play with.
was and fun to p Fa to t ast forward a couple of months he day
she came home from hospital.
All the family were crowded around her and the new arrival. I
was caught at the back of this adoring throng, standing behind a
gaggle of cooing relatives, and could hardly catch a glimpse of
my baby sister.
This was to be just one of the many ways I was made to feel
excluded once Ursula arrived. My mother was obsessed with her
new baby, to the point that she seemed to have forgotten I
existed.
Before Ursula was born, bedtime was our special time. Mum
would lie on my bed with me and read me stories. After my
sister arrived, she'd even forget to tuck me in.
Things might have improved once my mother emerged from the
baby haze, but a tragedy occurred that cemented my resentment
for my little sister into cold indifference.
When Ursula was almost two, my beloved grandmother died —
but instead of comforting me in my grief, my mother continued
to focus on Ursula. I couldn't forgive either of them for that.
To say I resented my sister is an understatement. I felt as if

Ursula had stolen all of my mother's love from me.
I could never compete. Things got worse as we grew older.
When Ursula was 20 and decided for the first time to spend
Christmas with a boyfriend instead of our family, my mother
was inconsolable. I told her: 'But I'm here, we can still have a
lovely day.' She spat back: 'I don't care. You're not Ursula.' My
needs were not just secondary — I felt as if they counted for
nothing.
After Ursula started school, Mum seemed bored of motherhood
and threw herself into my father's business, travelling all over
the Continent with him, importing furniture.
By the time I was 14, she would leave us alone for days on end,
while she went away with my dad. I was expected to cook,
clean, do the school pick-up and generally all the boring bits of
having a child.
Like a harassed parent, I often took out my frustration on my
sister.
I felt as if I was missing out on being a teenager. I could never
go to parties or see friends — I was always taking care of
Ursula.
WHEN I was about 15, a boy I really liked walked me home. He
asked me out but I said I had to ask my parents first. They
instantly said no as I had to look after my sister.
It was as if my mum got to have the exciting life while I was
stuck at home looking after her baby.
I left home as soon as I could, at just 17, to go to secretarial
college in Brussels. I lived it up to compensate for my wasted
teenage years.
Ursula and I grew closer when we had our first children, but
there was still tension when it came to our parents. They were a
lot keener to help out with her son Jacob than they were with
my son Alex, for example.
Eventually, my mum did begin to spend more time with Alex
and I felt as if our relationship was starting to heal.
Then Ursula had her second son, Max, when Alex was 18
months. Once again my mother became obsessed with the new

baby, and Alex and I were out in the cold.
This led to a five-year estrangement from my sister. We didn't
speak and it was as if our parents were pleased. They would
continually tell me how much my sister hated me and didn't
want to see me.
Then, in late 2011, my parents' marriage ran into trouble. They
were dumping all their problems on both me and my sister, and
it was really hard to cope. In the end, Ursula phoned me and we
met for coffee.
In that first conversation we began to understand how our
parents had manipulated our relationship throughout our lives.
It has been five years since that coffee, and my sister and I are
closer than we have ever been.
It has taken us time to work out our issues but we have both had
therapy to help us come to terms with the problems created by
our childhood. Now it is our parents who have been left out in
the cold.
I finally realise how precious it is to have a sibling, and I am
determined that our boys will enjoy a bond as cousins that we
were denied as sisters growing up.
~~~~~~~~
By Ursula Hirschkorn
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DBeaten, bullied, betrayed
Accent
Section:
News
Their parents sent them away for the best education, but
generations of boys left boarding school traumatised for life
BOOK OF THE WEEK STIFF UPPER LIP by Alex Renton
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson £16.99)
UNDETERRED by a well-nigh unbroken litany of sex abuse
scandals over the years, the British still pack more children off
to boarding schools than any other country on Earth.
Amazon tribesmen who routinely scald their children with hot
water, or scratch their skin with shark's teeth in order to prepare
them for the rigours of life, wouldn't dream of doing anything
as drastic as sending them away from home for up to eight
months a year.
As far as Alex Renton is concerned — himself a 'boarding
school survivor', as it's rather ludicrously become known — this
enforced separation has had a catastrophic effect on the mental
health of former pupils.
Time and again in Stiff Upper Lip, there are accounts of
middle-aged men who have never been able to form loving
relationships, express their feelings, or even experience
happiness because at a very early age they effectively walled
themselves up for their own protection.
They had learned a terrible lesson — that 'love is not reliable,
that trust may be betrayed'.
Emotionally stunted, physically and often sexually brutalised,
they've stumbled through life with a nagging sense of being
incomplete, of having left some vital part of themselves behind
with which they can never be reunited.
BUT the effects of such an education are far more wide-ranging,
Renton believes. With so many ex-boarders going on to become

pillars of the Establishment, it's no wonder institutions such as
Westminster, the BBC and the NHS have traditionally turned
blind eyes to sex abuse. When faced with anything
embarrassing, anything grubby, their instinct has been to brush
it under the carpet.
As a boarding school survivor myself — I was sent to prep
school aged eight in the Sixties where, with wearisome
predictability, I was sexually abused, not by a master, but by
the head boy — I found myself nodding along with many of
Renton's points.
I, too, learned to keep secrets as a child. To bottle up my
emotions and screw on the top as tightly as possible. Certainly,
I never felt I could tell my parents what had happened. And
telling any of the masters was unthinkable — even then, I had a
pretty good inkling whose side they were likely to be on.
The first person I ever told was my wife, and I was 50 at the
time.
Periodically, I still wonder how it has affected me. These things
are hard to quantify, of course, but like a lot of the people who
Renton interviewed, I've always had a sense that my childhood
came shuddering to a premature close — and that nothing has
ever been quite the same since.
Even the Victorians recognised that sending their children off to
boarding school had a very peculiar effect on them.
Around 1850, many parents noticed their sons had stopped
crying. Prior to this, gentlemen — or those aspiring to be
gentlemen — had no qualms about bursting into tears.
Prime ministers Pitt, Fox and Wellington wept buckets without
feeling remotely embarrassed, while poet laureate Alfred
Tennyson would blub uncontrollably as he read out his own
verses.
But then, all at once, boys stopped crying. Had their tear ducts
suddenly run dry? Renton's explanation is that, sent off in ever-
increasing numbers to boarding schools, they learned to bottle
up their feelings.
So why did the Victorians start sending their children away to

be educated? In part, they wanted them to become upstanding
Christian soldiers. But there were other, less exalted motives.
Parents had grown increasingly concerned that if their children
stayed at home, little Hector or Augustus might be faced with
an irresistible temptation — wanting to have sex with the
servants.
The big problem — as we now know — is that a great many of
the men who worked in these new boarding schools were mad,
bad, or both.
Sadists, pederasts, tinpot tyrants ... all were enthusiastically
welcomed aboard. In 1860, a pupil at a 'private school of the
highest class in Eastbourne' was beaten to death by the
headmaster.
Most of the stories in Stiff Upper Lip are less drastic than that,
but still memorably awful: the persistent bed-wetter recalling
how the matron at his school would rub his nose into his urine-
soaked sheets every morning; the girl with a dairy allergy who
was forced, again by the matron, to drink a glass of milk, then
to clear up the mess after she vomited.
Renton himself was sent — aged eight — to Ashdown House in
Sussex, where on his first day he saw a 'short woman in a
checked coat presenting a curly-haired boy even smaller than
me to the headmaster'.
This turned out to be Princess Margaret and her son, David.
Renton's mother commented about the headmaster: 'He seems
very nice.' In fact, he turned out to be a sadistic drunk who beat
boys so severely that they had purple welts for weeks
afterwards. But while Renton convincingly argues the case
against boarding schools, he has overlooked one key element —
its absurdity.
Rightly, he doffs his cap to George Orwell, whose essay about
his own prep school days, Such, Such Were The Joys, is 'savage'
in its criticisms.
But however savage, Orwell's essay is also extremely funny,
and it's the absurdity of boarding school life — most notably its
idiotic rituals and traditions — that helped make it so sinister.

THE playwright David Hare remembers how at his public
school, Lancing College, boys were ordered to swim naked 'on
the unlikely pretext that if we wore trunks, the fibres from our
garments would clog up the filters'.
You can huff away with shock and indignation at this, of
course, but you'd need to have had a complete sense of humour
bypass not to crack a wry smile at the same time.
Ah, but everything has changed now. At least that's what
parents tell themselves as they pack their children off to
boarding schools.
Certainly, some things have changed. These days, fees have
increased so much that schools can afford to be far more
selective about who they employ. Partly as a result, the
beatings, the bullying, the sexual abuse are largely things of the
past.
Nor is there any doubt that a lot of the children who go off to
board aged 13 — rather than at eight — find it a rewarding and
enjoyable experience. They have their own rooms, can go home
at weekends and may call their parents whenever they want.
Yet none of this is enough to persuade me to send my children
— aged ten and nine — away to school.
Some things haven't changed. For instance, headmasters have no
more legal obligation to report instances of sexual abuse to the
police now than they did 50 years ago.
And, as Renton concludes at the end of this grimly depressing,
often lumpily written yet enormously valuable book: there's one
thing that can never change — 'they are still boarding schools'.
~~~~~~~~
By JOHN PRESTON
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I was bullied at school for being gay — but I would never
dream of asking a teacher for help
Accent
Section:
Features
After two years away from theatre to film Benedict
Cumberbatch's Richard III, director Dominic Cooke is back on
the stage with a new play about LGBT suicide, he tells Fiona
Mountford
WHEN I last interviewed Dominic Cooke, three years ago this
month, he was exhausted and looking forward to an extended
period of actual gardening leave. After six highly stressful but
hugely successful years as artistic director of the Royal Court
— Jerusalem, Enron and Clybourne Park were just three of the
triumphs — he was preparing to step down from the post and
was eagerly anticipating time spent pottering in his Acton
garden.
So it seems only right to start by asking: Dominic, how does
your garden grow? "It's actually in terrible disarray," he laughs,
"because we're doing some work on the house. I also just
stopped and reconnected with the rest of my life for a bit, which

was very, very welcome. It was like a period of decompression."
After a two-and-a-half-year hiatus from stage directing, Cooke,
49, is about to return with a new play at the Donmar Warehouse.
Teddy Ferrara, by New York playwright Christopher Shinn, is a
bracing examination of the pitfalls of progressive politics,
centring on an opinionated group of gay students on an
American university campus. "I'm excited to be back directing
again," says Cooke. "I've really got my appetite back." This
play represents another step in Cooke's long and fruitful
working relationship with Shinn; he has directed two other
dramas of his previously at the Royal Court — Other People, in
2000, and Now or Later, in 2008. "He's really good on the way
people deny their unconscious dimensions, particularly in
relation to the effect of information technology on our psyches,"
says Cooke. What was the appeal of this particular script? "One
of the areas he's talking about is that we're in an age where
introspection is being rejected in favour of projections of
versions of the self. The obvious example is social media,
where people put out a version of themselves and put a lot of
energy into creating and reshaping that version, but meanwhile
not ever going inward." He pauses, affable and thoughtful as
ever. "Those values of depth and understanding of the self are
not really applauded or rewarded in our time."
The other attraction of the play, Cooke continues, was its light-
shining focus on LGBT mental illness and suicide. "Forty per
cent of young LGBT people, according to a recent study,
consider suicide. Which given the shift in legislation and the
massive change in values in my lifetime is pretty incredible.
The play gets into who is responsible." As a gay man himself —
his long-term partner is playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell — he
has experienced some of the darker issues covered by Teddy
Ferrara. "At school I was mercilessly bullied," he says, "but you
would never dream of going to a teacher for help, and if you did
you might be told, 'too bad'." He's delighted by the increasing
numbers of people coming out, especially sports stars. "In the
Seventies when I was growing up, the only idea you had of gay

people was Quentin Crisp or John Inman. There was no notion
that you could be all sorts of different types of people and also
be gay."
Teddy Ferrara is the first of three plays that Cooke will direct
almost back-to-back. The next two, a short new one by long-
term collaborator Caryl Churchill and August Wilson's modern
American classic Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, mark the start of
his remit as one of Rufus Norris's associate directors at the
National Theatre. Cooke was thought by many to be the obvious
choice to succeed Nicholas Hytner on the South Bank but he
had no desire to go from the frying pan of the Royal Court into
the fire of the National, undoubtedly one of the most gruelling
jobs in British arts. Norris, for one, is certainly glad to have
him on board. "He brings a huge wealth of knowledge about the
leadership of arts organisations and, on a personal level, is a
terrific mentor on almost every level of my new position," he
says of Cooke. Interestingly, Cooke hasn't entirely ruled out the
possibility of running for Norris's job next time around.
However, he warns that "everything in theatre changes really
quickly. You notice that someone suddenly emerges out of
leftfield and within a year you've got someone who's a real
force." Robert Icke, rising star director at the Almeida, is one
such talent, he suggests. What doesn't he miss about running a
theatre? "Lots," he says, emphatically; it's clear that
workforcestructure "organograms" are not something about
which he is likely to wax nostalgic. "I really think theatres now
are getting to the stage where they're almost impossible to run
because the demands are greater than they've ever been," he
says. He lists the daily pressures that result from having to
balance budgets and income streams, health and safety and
employment laws, with the creative demands of a highly
stretched organisation. "I really think the Arts Council needs to
be thinking about what it can do to help this situation." Given
that all this very visibly wore Cooke out at the Royal Court, his
warning should be heeded.
Cooke oversaw a glorious golden era during his time as artistic

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