This document discusses cognitive psychology and cognitive processes. It provides information on key topics including: - The mind and cognition are based on mental representations and processes like perception, memory, language, and attention. - Cognitive psychology studies how the human mind acquires and uses knowledge through cognitive processes and representations. - Working memory models have evolved from a single-store model to include multiple components like the central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad. - Memory is reconstructive and influenced by schemas, which can lead to distortions. Eyewitness memory reliability has been questioned. - Technology like PET scans and MRI scans have provided insights into brain activity during cognitive tasks.

1. Cognitive Level of Analysis
Cognitive Processes

2. Principles of the CLA
• Cognitive psychology: concerning
the structure and functions of the
mind
• Find out how the human mind comes
to know things about the world and
how this knowledge is used
• Cognitive neuroscience: Combines
knowledge about the brain with
knowledge about cognitive processes

3. The Mind
• The mind = set of mental processes
that are carried out by the brain
• Cognitive processes:
– Perception
– Problem solving
– Thinking
– Memory
– Language
– Attention
• These processes = cognition

4. Cognition
• Cognition is based on one’s mental
representations of the world
– i.e. images, words, concepts
• People have different experiences
which culminate in different mental
representations

5. 1st Principle
• Humans are information processors and
mental processes guide behavior
• CLA wants to discover possible principles
underlying cognitive processes
• The mind is like a complex machine
– Information is inputted (bottom-up
processing)
– Information is processed (top-down
processing)
– Behavior is outputted

6. Memories
• Memory is not infallible because of its
reconstructive nature
• Experiences are stored as outlines not
exact copies
• False memories occur because one
cannot distinguish between the actual
event and what they’ve heard after
– The mind can fabricate illusions that are so
realistic we think they are true

7. Perception
• Perception: Cognitive process that
interprets/organizes information
from the senses to produce some
meaningful experience of the world
• Context, frequency, and recency
influence how one percieves a
situation

8. 2nd Principle
• The mind can be studied scientifically
– By developing theories
– Using a number of scientific research
methods
• Experimental method is the most
“scientific”, but sometimes they are
not accurate to daily life
• Now psychologists use both lab
studies and real-life studies

9. 3rd Principle
• Cognitive processes are influenced
by social and cultural factors
– Frederic Bartlett pretty much came up
with this idea
• Schema: mental representation of
knowledge
• Schemas can influence the mind
– i.e. how cultural schemas influence
remembering

10. Frederic Bartlett
• How cultural schemas influence
remembering:
– People had trouble remembering a story
from another culture
– Reconstructed the story to fit the norms of
their own cultural schema
• Memory is not a tape recorder
– People remember it in ways that make
sense to them and their pre-existing
schemas
• Memory is subject to distortions

11. Studying the Mind
• Used to always use controlled experiments
– Pro: All variables can be controlled
– Con: Artificial
• Now they use other methods such as case
studies
• Nuero-imaging technology (i.e. fMRI, CAT)
– Allows researchers to see which brain areas
are active during certain activities
– See how brain damage affects cognitive
processes

12. Cognitive Processes
• Mental representations:
– How you view yourself (self-representation)
– How you view others
– Objects, ideas, people
• Used when we plan, imagine, daydream…
• Manipulations of these mental
representations allow us to think about
situations and imagine possible outcomes
– Mental representations are categorized
– Lots of mental representations stored in
memory

13. Cognitive Schemas
• Cognitive schemas: Pre-stored
mental representations
– Lead to expectations
• Mental representations are how we
store images and ideas in our
memories
– What we already know affects they way
we interpret events and store
knowledge in our memories

14. Schema Theory
• Schema Theory: cognitive theory about
information processing
• Cognitive schema: Networks of
knowledge, beliefs, and expectations
about particular aspects of the world
• Schemas can describe how specific
knowledge is organized and stored in
memory so that it can be accessed and
used when it is needed

15. Schema Theory
• Schema theory suggests that what we
already know will influence the outcome of
information processing
• Based on the assumption that humans are
active processors of information
• People don’t respond passively to information
– They interpret and integrate it to make sense of
their experiences
– (both consciously and unconsciously)
• Brain fills in blanks when info is missing with
info from schemas
– Can cause mistakes (distortions)

16. Stages of Memory Processes
• Encoding: Transforming sensory
information into a meaningful
memory
• Storage: Creating a biological trace
of the encoded information in
memory, which is either consolidated
or lost
• Retrieval: Using the stored
information
Encoding:
Put into
memory
Storage:
Maintain in
memory
Retrieval:
Recover from
memory

17. Anderson and Pichert
(1978)
• Aim: See if schema processing influences
encoding and retrieval
• Results: Schema processing must have some
effect at retrieval as well as at encoding because
the new schema could only have influenced recall
at the retrieval stage
– People encode information even when it is irrelevant to
previous schemas
• Pros: Variable control to establish cause-and-
effect
• Cons: Conducted in a lab (Low ecological validity)

18. Evolution of Schema Theory
• Theory is useful for understanding
how people categorize information,
interpret stories, make predictions,
etc.
• Helps us understand memory
distortions and social cognition

19. Limitations of Schema Theory
• Cohen (1993) says the concept of
schemas is too vague to be useful
• Not entirely clear how schemas are
acquired
• Not clear how schemas influence
cognitive processes

20. Multi-Store Memory Model
• Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)
• Model is based on two assumptions:
– Memory consists of a number of
separate stores
– Memory processes are sequential
• The memory stores operate in
conjunction with the permanent
memory store

21. Memory Stores
• Need attention, coding, and
rehearsal for memory
• Attention because you need to pay
attention to remember (obviously)
• Coding to give the information a
memorable form
• Rehearsal to keep the information
active in memory until it can be
stored

22. Memory Stores
• Sensory memory store is modality
specific
– Hearing info has its own location, visual
info has its own location, etc…
• Info stays in these stores for a few
seconds
• Only a small portion continue into
short-term memory store (STM)

23. Short-Term Memory
• Capacity is limited to approx 7 items
• Lasts about 6-12 seconds
• Material is quickly lost if not given
attention
• Rehearsal plays a key role in
determining what is stored in long-
term memory store

24. Long-Term Memory
• Vast storehouse of information
• Indefinite duration, potentially
unlimited capacity
• Memories are not perfect; stored in
outlines which can lead to errors
– We fill in the gaps of these outlines

25. Multi-Store Model
• This is an outdated model
• Very simplistic
• Shows the amount of
knowledge available in the
1960s

26. Working Memory Model
• This is a newer, more complex
model for memory
• Baddeley and Hitch (1974) based it
on the multi-store model
• Challenged the view that Short-Term
Memory is one single storage unit
– This model includes many components
for STM

27. The Central Executive
• Controlling system that
monitors/coordinates the other
components
– These other components are called
slave systems (cute, huh?)
• Central executive has limited
capacity and can process info from
any of the senses

28. Attentional Control
• Most important job of Central Executive
• Two ways for attentional control:
– Automatic level: based on habit and is more
or less controlled by the environment
• i.e. routine procedures like riding your bike to school
– Supervisory attentional level: Creates new
strategies when the old ones are insufficient
• i.e. while you’re riding your bike to school, a car
suddenly comes at you
• People rely on automatic processing in
daily lives a lot!

29. The Episodic Buffer
• How information appears when we
consciously try to recall the details of a
landscape or the sound of a song
• The buffer acts as a temporary and
passive display store until the info is
needed
– Like a television screen

30. The Phonological Loop
• Two components:
– Articulatory control system
• AKA the inner voice
• Holds information in verbal form
• Holds words ready as you prepare to speak
– Phonological store
• AKA the inner ear
• Holds speech-based material in a phonological form
• Receives information from:
– Aensory memory in the form of auditory material
– LTM in the form of verbal information
– Articulatory control system

31. The visuospatial sketchpad
• The Inner Eye
• Deals with visual and spatial
information
• Receives information from:
– Sensory memory
– LTM

32. Evidence of Working Memory
Model
• Dual-task techniques (AKA interference
tasks)
• i.e. telling a story while learning a list of numbers
• Participant carries out a cognitive task
that uses most of the capacity of working
memory
• At the same time performs a second
cognitive task
• If the two tasks interfere and impair one
another, then both tasks are from the
same component in STM

33. Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
• Asked participants to read prose and
understand it while also remembering
sequences of numbers
• Took more time to reason
• There was impairment, but it was not
catastrophic
• Concluded that STM has more than one
unitary store
• Needs more stress than that to break
down the STM!

34. Evaluation of the Model
• It includes active storage and processing
– Makes it useful for understanding all sorts of
cognitive tasks
• i.e. reading comprehension and mental arithmetic
• Assumes that mental processes are
passive
• Can explain why people are able to
perform different cognitive tasks at the
same time w/o disruption
– AKA Multi-tasking!

35. Working Memory Test Battery
for Children
• Pickering and Gathercole (2001)
• There is an improvement in performance
in working memory capacity from the age
of 5 years until about 15 years
• Their work provides evidence that
problems with working memory are
associated with problems in academic
performance
– i.e. issues with phonological loop = issues in
math and reading

36. Homes et al. (2008)
• Studied association between visuospatial
sketchpad capacity and children’s
mathematics in relation to age
• Studied age-related differences
• In older children, mathematical
performance could be significantly
predicted by performance on the visual
patterns test

37. Biology in Memory
• Learning means formation of a memory
(forming neural networks)
• Lesioning (AKA WORST THING EVER):
Cutting away brain tissue to see how
much needs to be removed before an
animal can no longer carry out a task it
has learned
• We study people with brain damage to
observe the same thing

38. Long-Term Memory System
Long-Term Memory
Explicit/Declarative
Memories
Implicit/Non-
declarative memories
Semantic Memories
Episodic Memories
Procedural memories
Emotional memories
Explicit/Declarative Memories = Fact-based (i.e. “knowing what”)
Semantic = General knowledge (i.e. “Obama is president”)
Episodic = Personal experiences (i.e. “I saw Obama’s coronation on TV)
Implicit/Non-declarative = Unconscious memories
Procedural = Skills, habits, actions (i.e. “knowing how”)
Emotional = Emotions. Duh.

39. The Hippocampus
• Case studies of people with damaged
hippocampus can’t form new explicit
memories
– Can still form new implicit memories!

40. The Amygdala
• Plays a role in storage of emotional
memories
• Not much is known about emotional
memories
• Emotional memories are remembered
better (especially for poor PTSD sufferers)
• When part of the pre-frontal cortex is
damaged:
– Emotional memory is hard to eliminate
– Hard to control emotional outbursts

41. Clive Wearing
• Suffers from the most extensive amnesia ever
seen
– Both anterograde and retrograde amnesia
– Damage to hippocampus and some frontal regions
– Episodic memory and some semantic memory are lost
– Cannot transfer new info into LTM either
• Can still play piano and conduct music he
knew before his illness (part of his implicit
memory)
– Implicit memory must be in a brain structure other than
hippocampus
– Emotional memory is intact (still loves his wife!)

42. Milner and Scoville (1957)
• Case Study of HM
• Tissue removed from temporal lobe including
hippocampus to relieve epileptic siezures
• HM could recall information, but could not
form new memories
– Could carry out a conversation
– Unable to remember faces of the people he meets
• Damage to hippocampus, amygadala, and
other close areas

43. Cultural Factors in Cognition
• Different challenges around the
world = different developments of
cognitive abilities needed to survive
• Jerome Bruner says children of any
culture learn the basics of culture
from school and daily interactions
(i.e. parents, friends, teachers,
siblings, grandparents)

44. Cole and Scribner (1974)
• Investigate memory strategies in different
cultures
• The non-schooled children did not improve
their performance on free-recall tasks after
age 10
• Recalled 10 items first time; after 15 practice
trials only recalled 2 more
• Illiterate children did not use chunking
method (grouping bits of info in larger main
group)
• Presenting information in a narrative allowed
children to chunk/recall info

45. Memory
• Ability to remember is universal, but
strategies for remembering are not!
• People learn to remember in ways that are
relevant for their daily lives
• These methods do not always mirror the
activities that cognitive psychologists use
to study their intelligence and mental
processes

46. Reliability of Memory
• Memory isn’t super reliable because
of its reconstructive nature
– Brain actively processes information to
make sense of it
• However, we use memory like
eyewitness accounts to determine
people’s fate/guilt!

47. Recovered Memories
• Sigmund Freud thought people
forgot memories with repression
• Thought that people use defense
mechanisms (like repression) to save
their conscious self from things they
cannot cope with
– Send dangerous memories to the
unconscious and repress/deny them

48. Recovered Memories
• Aim of therapy is to gain access to the
unconscious
• False Memory Sundrome Foundation
supports families who’ve been shattered
by accusations of childhood abuse after
their children have gone through therapy
• Some of these recovered memories are
false! It is possible to manipulate people’s
memories
– False memories created by post-event
information

49. Empirical testing of Reliability
• Frederic Bartlett argued memory is
reconstructive and schemas influence
recall
– Demonstrated role of culture in schema
processing
• Serial reproduction: One person tells a
story, then another retells it, then another,
etc…
– Found people reconstruct the past by trying to
fit it into existing schemas
– More complicated the story = more likely to
have distorted/forgotten elements

50. Empirical Testing of Reliability
• Efforts after meaning: people try
to find a familiar pattern in
experiences
• Memory is an imaginative
reconstruction of experience

51. Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony
• Loftus claims the nature of questions can
influence witnesses’ memory
• Suggestive questions and post-event
information can cause schema processing
which affects accuracy
– Use of different verbs used to ask about car crash
(smashed/hit/contacted) caused witnesses to
change their view of the cars’ speed
(40.8/34.0/31.8)
• Different words = different perception of
consequences as well
– i.e. Was there broken glass?

52. Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony
• It is possible to create a false memory
using post-event information
• Memory is not reliable
• Issues with Loftus’s study:
– Ecological validity (it was in a lab)
– Closed questions (only yes or no answers)
– Culturally biased (only US students)
– Not everyone is good at estimating speed!
Might not have to do with leading questions at
all!

53. Yuille and Cutshall (1986)
• Real life robbery; testing witnesses with
suggestive questions like Lofte
• No distortion on memory
– Memory for details in this situation was
amazing!
– Particularly for those close to the event
• Wording of questions had no effect on
recall
• Those who were most distressed had
the most accurate memories

54. Use of Modern Technology to
Investigate Cognition & Behavior
• New technology allows us to
understand the relationship between
cognitive processes and behavior
• Technology such as:
– PET scan (Positron emission
tomography)
– MRI scan (magnetic resonance imaging)

55. PET Scan
• Measures important functions in the
brain like glucose consumption and
blood flow
• Can detect Alzheimer’s disease very
early on

56. MRI Scan
• 3D picture of brain structures
• Detect changes of oxygen in blood
– When brain areas are active, they have
more oxygen in the blood
• Therefore, we can see what areas
are active when people are
reading/problem solving/etc