Mental Rotations in Children/Infants

• Spatial Ability: think about 3D things and draw conclusions.
• Men have better spatial ability, shown as young as 4 years old, but not yet in infants.
• Mental rotation is effected by gender differences quite a bit.
• A 4 month old can track, but mental rotation needs to deal with 3D objects, not 2D.
• They wanted to know, if the babies would habitualize the rotated object, that is they wouldn't see it as novel.
• Experiment recorded eye fixations and durations and saw either left or right parts of a mirrored object.
• In the habituation trials, the objects rotated. In the Test object, they switched between left and right.
• Novel object (mirrored image) - males looked at it longer - significant difference.
• Females saw them the same, females did not recognize familiar objects, males did.
• Maybe due to hormones (testosterone), or in the hemispheric differences.
• They also showed that 3-4 month old infants would have differences showing preference for the mirrored objet shows you have done the mental representation-rotation.
• familiarized trials, then preference trials.
• Males did better, even at 3-4 months.
• Social experience/influences may play a big role here.

Cognitive and Neural Contributions to Understanding the Conceptual System

Barsalou article:

• conceptual system: extensive system distributed throughout the brain, and represents knowledge about all aspects of experiences.
• What is the role of attention in these categorizations?
• It allows us to focus on distinctive elements that separate categories (ex. spatial, physical, social).
• The conceptual system (whole of knowledge representation) is used for basically anything we want to think about or do mentally. There is no such thing as a knowledge-free cognitive process... top down knowledge.
• What's semantic memory?
• facts. Its amodel, that is, its not linked to episodic memory or anything else... specifically not particular senses.
• This is a big debate between cognitive science and neuroscience. Barsalou questions this idea in the article. If we don't have vision, then visual memory decreases, so perhaps semantic memory is liked to vision in some way.
• Conceptual system: an entire system of knowledge that includes concepts, categories, and how they're linked together.
• It is used for everything that we do with our minds.
• There is no such thing as a knowledge free action.
• Semantic memory is amodal, meaning it is not based on vision or hearing, etc.  Semantic memory is another name for the conceptual system.
• Cognitive revolution came about around 1970, breaking out of behaviorism... so they concluded it was amodal.
• How does neuroscience view differ from cognitive?
• Its grounded in modal cortexes, so, knowledge is perhaps based in vision, or auditory, not separate areas that are abstracted from the senses. Perhaps some knowledge is based in the areas that process the senses.
• What happens when those areas are damages?
• Lesions to visual areas produce deficits in categories that rely heavily on visual processing (ex. animals).
• In imagery studies, the people imagining still have areas activated like they were seeing something.
• the knowledge is somewhat stored in the areas that do the processing in the same way... otherwise you wouldn't know if you were perceiving or imagining.
• Cognitive science and neuroscience are disagreeing: Perhaps cognitive students need to be open to the modal processing areas bringing about the knowledge.
• Neural network theory: entities that hold knowledge may have some of the same properties as neurons... which may begin to bring about common ground between the cognitive and the neuro perspective. 
• Impact on grounded theories: the brain attempts to redefine the experience when remembering - knowledge: simulating the way in which we learned it at first... same mental state.

Environment and Goals Jointly Direct Category Acquisition / Wikibook - Semantic Networks

Love Article

• Why and how do people categorize?
• why- to develop a schema that corresponds well to their real life. We need that so we aren't routinely mislead.
• how- from either exemplars or prototypes (maybe both? we're unsure)
• What issue is important but ignored by prototype and exemplar?
• The author argues that its not so clear, but we have to take into account flexibility of structures as well as people's goals. Instead we should use clusters.
• clusters: bundles of experiences that group together - a more flexible way of representing info.
• Encompass both prototypes and exemplars in that a category represented by one cluster is a prototype and one category with many clusters is an exemplar.
• exemplar prototype continuum (a spectrum)
• Knowledge gets more complex the more we learn, and this model follows that.
• The author says the world comes in natural chunks, so it makes sense that we would make clusters out of those things that naturally go together
• from this perspective, clustering is driven by the environment, but it may also be influenced by goals. -ex. you may look at a cow differently if you are a vet or a butcher.

Wikibook - Semantic Networks

• A node represents a concept, also stores various characteristics of that concept.
• a link represents what ties different concepts together.
• They argue that it is stored heirachically in nodes.
• demonstrated that the time it takes to respond correlates with the distances in the networks.
• Collins and quillian were key in the move to semantic networks.
• Semantic network: evidence that things are stored by specificity. Specifics are stored, and the rest of the process is inferred, (but its not always this way).
• ex. you can say very quickly that a sports car is fast and needs fuel.
• Spreading activation: adjacent concepts are activated, and then are more easily retrieved fro memory, they are joined. Thinking of one thing makes you think of another.
• This was proved with the lexical decision task - is this a word or isnt it?
• Typicality effect: reaction times are faster for more typical members of a category
• Connectionistic Approach (vs. semantic approach, saying a node is not just one concept): A concept is distributed across other networks - Multiple elements working together.
• Neural network:
• input layer - sensory perception/from environment
• hidden layer- inter-neurons between the two
• output layer- what we do in response to those things
• Connectivist approach may be more likely as they are more complex networks, not just a single model.
• Neural networks work well in practice
• Parallel distributed processing- processing takes place in parallel lines, output is distributed across many units (which leads to neural networks), not a single node in a network.
• so, if you destroy one unit, the whole thing won't break down.
• Computational Knowledge Representation
• knowledge is full of useful information, rather than as supporting a model of cognitive activity. 
• it doesn't come before the actual cognitive or neural processes, but it is something we draw on during those.
• Applications of knowledge Representation: computational knowledge representation provides tools to make knowledge accessible.

Love article continued:

• He uses a neural network approach to understand concepts: SUSTAIN model about categorization
• Clusters: like the hidden layer (represented by circles on diagram) formed mental averages... refine themselves.
• 2 kinds of learning: supervised and unsupervised.
• new clusters are created when old clusters fail for goals (supervised)
• SUSTAI N changes when its surprised by experiences, and creates new clusters.
• Inference: related to concepts - you know that something is in a category but you don't know a lot about it... but you can infer. A missing factor inferred from others.
• classification categorization - focuses on information that distinguishes categories.
• the SUSTAIN model, he claims, can handle both types of learning.
• he found inference learning leads them to more complete knowledge - best for classroom learning.
• Two groups with different goals (like fisherman) and can draw different inferences from the same information - the SUSTAIN model can account for differences in goals, like this.
• SUSTAIN is good for the relationship between clusters and rules: clusters with selective attention are mimicking rules/ maybe they then are rules.
• SUSTAIN takes into account rules.
• conclusion: categorization - searching for regularities in the world (taking into account what's in the environment (and differing goals). It starts simple, then experience leads to added clusters as experiences and surprises are encountered.

Neural Markers of Relicious Construction

• Religion pros: have better mental health, physical health, lower mortality rates
• Religion cons: terrorist attacks, wars, conviction
• Religious conviction provides relief from uncertainty - it reduces anxiety, but then we ignore the inconsistencies.
• A system that responds to out comes different than what we expected is in the anterior cingulate cortex, an "alarm" is activated which produces anxiety
• Religion as xanax:
• we have ideals, it reduces our experience of error, and we can become more extreme in our convictions
• religion is too structured and rigid that any inconsistencies are restructured to fit their existing beliefs.
• Religious conviction reduces uncertainty because it minimized the ACC response to error, like an anti-anxiety pill.
• Study 1: Religious Zeals
• Assess people's religious conviction
• They used the Stroop.
• People with religious zeal had less ACC reaction to an error, and responded more accurate. They sacrificed speed for accuracy.
• Study 2: Belief in God
• greater belief in God was correlated with less ACC activation too, when all other factors were controlled for. 
• So, people who believe in God overall have neural signs of lower anxiety.
• Causes? Religion lowers ACC arousal, not vise versa.
• Maybe not specific to religion, probably strong convictions of anything.
• Makes us prone to a mental set, though.

Wikibook - Knowledge Representation

• What is knowledge? Why is it so important to us?
• mental representations of the world, a structured collection of information that can be acquired through learning , perception of reasoning.
• ex. "Watson"the computer playing jeopardy, and beating others... its a computer manipulation of knowledge representation.
• It is so important because it is essential to so many other things we do with our minds.
• Why are categories or concepts so important to knowledge?
• Saving time and effort so we don't have to remember every detail of everything - efficiently and save space.
• Category: a group of something that are labeled with similar properties of and other general information.
• Perhaps the categories and concepts are important for survival, too, so we can know dangerous from not dangerous, and we don't have to dawdle. 
• Concepts can't always be so rigidly defined, because real concepts tend to overlap - hard to figure out, what are the core of the essential features?
• Definitions don't work very well for real concepts (ex. cars)
• This brings about the idea of family resemblance: members of a category resemble each other in several ways.
• Prototype Approach: a kind of mental average
• typicality effect: high-prototypical members are faster recognized as a member of a category, ex. sparrow is more prototypical of a bird than a penguin.
• Exemplar Approach: judging by comparison to examples you have in your mind... can also explain the typciality effect.
• Heirarchical organization of categories.:
• Supordinate level: ex. animal (decrease of information)
• Basic level: ex. dog
• Most common and preferred.
• Subordinate level: ex. Retriever (low gain of information)
• most expert.
• Maybe your base level is higher if you're an expert.

A Basic-Systems Approach to Autobiographical Memory

• What are autobiographical memories made of?
• spatial, temporal, emotional elements, but most importantly, they have personal significance.
• The basic systems are: components from senses, spatial system, narrative system, explicit memory system (which coordinates and binds information from the other systems, like explicit memory with Schacter).
• What does this perspective tell us about the self?
• The self is not a single entity, but parts linked together.
• So, what seems to be uniquely you, actually depends on what people in your culture emphasize.
• 2 main properties of autobiographical memory?
• sense of recollection
• belief that memories are accurate
• Measured by ratings on scales of vividness of visual imagery, and auditory imagery, and spatial context.
• What may be the basis of a person's sense of recollection?
• how vivid the imagery was - more = stronger sense of recollection (correlation)
• So these are somewhat separable.
• What about the belief that the memory is accurate?
• (somewhat visual), clarity of spatial context and narrative coherence (correlation)
• People with amnesia - can have loss of autobiographical memory, because the elements of the memory can't be bound together and retrieved later (like Schacter imaging studies of future and past).
• So, if you damage visual memory, is autobiographical memory damaged? Yes!
• so, visual components are key for autobiographical memory. 
• But, an interesting catch is that the old memories are damages, but the people studied could still make new autobiographical memories! It may be that visual is preferred, but it is possible to make new memories with other senses.
• But auditory loss or language loss doesn't effect the memories as much.
• Psychopathology- memories of worry and social phobia are rated lower on recollection.
• One major claim - PTSD memories are unorganized, but this article finds that that is not the case, there is no difference compared to others.
• The more a person makes the trauma a central part of who they are, the more PTSD they will show.
• To test this, he did a experiment where people take pictures of something, and then are shown pictures of something, and asked whether or not the picture they took that one.
• There seem to be certain areas that are activated more for biographical information.

Sierra's presentation and Schater's Seminar

Sierra's Presentation:
Article One:

• We infer rather than perceive the moment we decide to act.
• We have a neurological prep before and action - conscious will is not an instigator of choice.
• 'W' is the time participants select on the basis of available cues.
• Eagleman - the critical cue for judgement of intention is perception of the response.
• Experiment one: Dot going around the clock, participant was supposed to report the number when they made the choice to press the button.
• W is probably based on the time of response (rather than motor response or prior brain events)
• Experiment 2: wanted to make sure experiment one wasn't specific to auditory cues, and it wasn't.
• Intention causing actions are backwards according to this, its actually actions that cause intentions.
• Movements of decision come from perceived movements of action.

Article two:

• attending to a certain thing increases oxygen to that level - attentional spotlight
• 2 conditions attending to the action movements, or attending to the urge to move.
• greater activation during the first condition in areas like:
• PreSMA
• Dorsal Prefrontal cortex (intention to move?)
• IPS - interparietal sulcus
• Patients with parietal lesions - no distinction between the I and the M condition. 
• There are separate brain areas between attending to intention and movement.
• We don't think about thinking a thought, we may not be the authors of our own thoughts.

Schater's Webinar and Slideshow

• Bartlett (during behaviorism) quotation:  memory as a constructive process, i.e. linking bits and pieces of info from different sources. Memory is not reproduction, but construction.
• Why would memory be constructive, are there advantages?
• economy of storage - we don't need to know every detail, but the gist. The bad side of that is that it can lead to memory errors.
• Episodic memory: the ability to recollect our experiences. But episodic memory is also important for the future as well as the past, because we imagine the future (constructive)
• amnesic patients - medial temporal lobe damage
• Can't make new lasting memories, but also have trouble imagining their personal futures.
• Patient KC could not remember his past - he had hippocampal damage, but also couldn't think of what he'd do tomorrow.
• There is a correlation between remembering the past and imagining the future.
• This is supported by individual differences studies
• also be remembering and imagining studies - study for younger and older people, evidence of this link.
• The parts that are involved are the medial temporal love - hippocampus, frontal lobe, parietal lobes too, - implicated in both past and future tasks.
• Hypothesis: imagining and remembering both use the same information.
• A flexible recombination of details from past events
• but that makes us more likely to make errors, but also imagine the future.
• The major questions :  How does hippocampus contribute? How do we interpret the correlation between imagining and remembering?
• They ask participants both about imagining and remembering, but they are really in the same brain areas when compared to a control group.
• but levels may vary - stronger for future or stronger for memory.
• Hippocampus (a particular part) engages more during imagining the future than remembering the past.
• So, they are trying to test this experimentally - recombination
• For more experimental control, first they had participants generate a memory pool.
• Experimenters mix these memories up, and have you imagine the future or imagine something in the past (vs. a control)
• they want to know if its critical for future or just imagining in general.
• All the core networks come online, but the front part of of the hippocampus was still most closely tied to imagining than remembering.
• Age-related changes in the past and future events (article in moodle)
• Recalling events - younger people have more internal and less external memories, and its the same when they are imagining.
• Still, younger people have more internal details, and old have more external details for imagining and recalling.

Sequence Memory in Music

• Why study music for sequence memory?
• Untrained people seem to be able to remember long sequences of rhythm, pitch, movements, and timing of notes.
• Music is unique in the role of rhythm, so its a good testing ground.
• How are rhythm, pitch, and movements represented in the mind?
• They are represented as both sequences of action and sequences of sound.
• It helps if they have similar movements and similar pitches
• they each have independent effects on the results, so both representations help, that is it is doubly easier (mostly transfer studies - positive).
• Positive transfer - makes the 2nd task easier
• How are they different in beginners vs. experts?
• novice - dependent on motor skills - movements changes effected them the most.
• expert- they depended more on the notes.
• How is rhythmic sequence different from motor sequence?
• Rhythmic sequence: patterning of key pressed sequenced time
• Motor: sequence of finger movements.
• Are these two truly the same?
• Both are being remembered separately. They contribute independently.
• 3 sort of different representations in the mind are movements, pitch, and rhythm.
• timing is just a different ways to think about it.
• So, is all of this imagery in a way?
• People have differences.
• Pianists scored high on imagery tests. So, does imagery ability effect artists performance? Yes. Getting both types of feedback helps the most, but motor didn't matter, auditory did. -Supposed to imagine what they were plating, and it did matter.
• Auditory imagery was significant, not motor
• What information about memory for music comes from pitch ordering skills?
• You have to think ahead, so 3-4 pitches can be remembered in a sequence.
• Older people make mistakes that are farther away.
• Working memory supports musical imagining.
• Errors are not just random.
• the slower the tempo you get a broader range of errors and vise versa.
• errors become more and more about anticipation.
• Older pianists did better than younger, and also showed evidence of a greater working memory capacity that allows them to perform better in sequential memory tasks.
• Kinds of errors made with more experience are anticipatory errors.
• can get evidence of anticipatory movements from finger positions.

Imagery, Food Cravings

Wikibook : Imagery

·      People have been talking about imagery for a long time.

o   Aristotle, Wundt, Watson

·      Is imagery necessary to thought? Do you have to be able to imagine to think?

o   Aristotle said “God is impossible without and image”

o   Wundt said, “imagery, sensations, and feeling are the base of consciousness”

o   Watson said, “there is no visible evidence of imagery, so it doesn’t matter).

·      More recent imagery debate:

o   Pylysyiyn: says imagery is represented in the mind as linked with propositions.

§  Any given sentence can be broken down into a true or false proposition ( a network with links)

§  Imagery is an epiphenomena (it has no causal role, not part of the essential basics of thought.

·      Like the light on a dvd player, it shows up, but it is more of an indicator or side effect ot he main function.

·      Task: asked to generate associates to words. More likely to generate one that was within a proposition rather than between propositions.

·      Even if a word is spatially or temporally closer, it is still more likel if it is in the proposition.

·      Some sort of spatial representation in the mind and brain.

·      “The advantage of a coordinate representation is that tit is directly analogous to the structure of the real space”

o   ex. An image representation of a dog vs. the word dog (part of the image that correspond to a particular part of the dog, but “D” or “”O” doesn’t correspond. Point to point correspondence between image and representation. Words are relatively arbitrary for the things they represent ((except maybe words like “Buzz”)))

·      Topographic maps apply here – such as a spatial map on the occipital cortex in vision.

·      Keeping spatial information preserved seems pretty important/

o   So maybe when you imagine something, this same principle is activated.

·      Our perceptions can come into the brain a lot of ways. Our representations may come from a lot of different things.

o   Such as language, photographs, movies, etc.

o   Some information stands for other information (such as maps, photos, but some info is just literal.

·      The author here argues that part of the real world may also be symbolic, such as spirals in churches representing something else.

·      Mental representations interact with other parts of memory.

·      Big question: what these images are and how they may function?

o   Perky Experiment: used a back projected image – the participant described what was on the screen without realizing it.

·      What happens when people are asked to scan an image in their mind?

o   Things that are spaced more widely on a picture, it takes them longer to can it (an analogy)

·      In blind people, it seems to work the same (except its spatial, not visual).

·      Mental rotation tasks: 2-stimuli say are they the same shape of different?

o   It takes longer the father they have to rotate – its like they are doing mentally to the shape what you would do physically.

·      Do they use these mental spatial representations for only touch and vision?

o   No, when you read a book or hear words, they get translated into mental images too.

·      Size/distance relationship in representation of objects (up close vs. far away = larger vs. smaller = more detail vs. less detail.)

·      Do image representations work this same way?

o   Yes, it seems so.

·      Overall, mental representations are linked closely with the things the represent, and perceptions too. The brain processes overlap a lot.

o   They don’t overlap entirely though, within vs. external difference

·      Motor imagery – can imagine doing things which activates motor areas.

o   Perhaps this activates mirror neurons too?

Kemps Article : Food Cravings.

·      Food cravings: specific food, not just for nutritional value

o   Motivation based: desire or urge-intense for a food.

o   Not necessarily a psych disorder, but it could indicate one.

o   Mental imaging of the food seems to be a key component of craving.

·      Does imagining something make you crave it?

o   Yes, strength of craving and strength of image are linked.

·      Dual tasks methods – craving can be like a cognitive task, so pairing it with another cognitive task à limited capacity working memory – the tasks are harder when you do 2 at once, and craving counts as one of them.

·      Food cravings consume limited cognitive resources.

·      Evidence for this – induced cravings in people and surprise word recall or math problems and a reaction time.

• Strategy for reducing food cravings: occupy your mind with other things so your working memory is full.
• This article does show evidence that craving occupies working memory, so it reducing our abilities.
• A visual imagery or olfactory task will reduce cravings, but an auditory task won't really help. Maybe because visual and olfactory are the s=ways in which we experience food in the first place.
• These teactics may also help reduce cigarette cravings, but they don't work very well in everyday life, it needs to be more readily applied to everyday settings.
• maybe eventually the randomized dots screen could be an app on a phone, but dynamic visual noise seems to work... these flashing white and black dots.
• maybe this is perceptual load, not cognitive load? perhaps imagery and perception are very closely linked.

Eyewitness Memory Article

Eye-Witness memory article:

·      Major possible influences on the eye witness memory?

o   Whether or not they talked to others

§  People CONFORMING to other people: Can forget info, mis-remember, are influenced by others.

§  UNCERTAINTY : informational influences (questioning their own feelings or memories)

§  FALSE MEMORIES: incorporating the other’s view into your own memory.

·      Timothy Mcveigh’s case is a good example. He probably didn’t have an accomplice, but the two other eye-witnesses conformed to the other’s opinion.

·      Another example is Barry George: Only 1/16 witnesses identified him, but the person talked to others in the cab, and not they are 95% sure.

·      1. Normative influence: weighing the social cost of disagreeing, you want to conform to the norm.

·      2. Informational influence – being uncertain of your own memory up against someone else’s.

·      3. Memory distortion: you now think that this is what happened – it becomes part of your episodic memory.

·      What determines the magnitude of a normative influence?

o   Weighing the social cost of agreeing or disagreeing.

·      People talk or conform, and then they are interviewed separately. Do they still agree with the social norms?

o   Yes, maybe they want to appear consistent.

o   Maybe they trust in the other person’s opinion based on their confidence, their expertise, if they are in the majority, or how important the issue is.

§  An example is listening to school children vs. listening to police officers.

·      Source monitoring errors – you’ve forgotten the source of your memory – lost representation of the source from the representation of the memory itself (confuse what they actually saw with what someone else told them).

·      There are three different processes:

o   Conform

o   Unsure

o   Create a new memory

·      Big point: memory, then, does have a social component.

Eyewitness Memory Article

Eye-Witness memory article:

·      Major possible influences on the eye witness memory?

o   Whether or not they talked to others

§  People CONFORMING to other people: Can forget info, mis-remember, are influenced by others.

§  UNCERTAINTY : informational influences (questioning their own feelings or memories)

§  FALSE MEMORIES: incorporating the other’s view into your own memory.

·      Timothy Mcveigh’s case is a good example. He probably didn’t have an accomplice, but the two other eye-witnesses conformed to the other’s opinion.

·      Another example is Barry George: Only 1/16 witnesses identified him, but the person talked to others in the cab, and not they are 95% sure.

·      1. Normative influence: weighing the social cost of disagreeing, you want to conform to the norm.

·      2. Informational influence – being uncertain of your own memory up against someone else’s.

·      3. Memory distortion: you now think that this is what happened – it becomes part of your episodic memory.

·      What determines the magnitude of a normative influence?

o   Weighing the social cost of agreeing or disagreeing.

·      People talk or conform, and then they are interviewed separately. Do they still agree with the social norms?

o   Yes, maybe they want to appear consistent.

o   Maybe they trust in the other person’s opinion based on their confidence, their expertise, if they are in the majority, or how important the issue is.

§  An example is listening to school children vs. listening to police officers.

·      Source monitoring errors – you’ve forgotten the source of your memory – lost representation of the source from the representation of the memory itself (confuse what they actually saw with what someone else told them).

·      There are three different processes:

o   Conform

o   Unsure

o   Create a new memory

·      Big point: memory, then, does have a social component.

Stereotype Threat Article, Adaptive Memory Article

Stereotype Threat Article:

·      Academic settings – presume the incompetence of several groups “threat in the air”

·      Stereotype threat: your social environment is threatening to stereotype you, not treat you as an individual

·      So, stereotype threat decreases good performance. How?

o   It limits working memory capacity because you are thinking about your bad environment, and you’re self conscious about your performance. Which takes away from your performance of complex cognitive tasks. (It gives you a cognitive load).

o   They want to make sure they aren’t confirming the stereotype, and it eats up resources.

o   Ex. Women vs. men in math – women did much worse when told the task would measure gnder differences.

·      Who is most susceptible to stereotype threat?

o   Those we are most invested in doing well in that domain (ex. Academics) –those who were the most achievement oriented were effected more.

·      Error-related negativity – reaction to an error.

o   The stereotyped who cared the most had higher error readings – it all ironic. It makes them more sensitive to their own errors.

·      How does stereotype threat effect our response to our own anxiety?

o   Sensing our own anxiety is a signal to us, and it plays a part in making us more nervous.

·      Under what conditions does anxiety reduce our working memory?

o   When we’re not confident or are doubtful – anxiety and doubt become a distraction.

o   (For everyone, not just for a certain group)

·      Do people try to not think anxious thoughts?

o   They try, but it doesn’t help. In fact, it makes it worse. Though suppression means you’re constantly monitoring so that takes cognitive resources too!

o   A vicious cycle – impair performance more and more.

·      By reappraising your emotions, you can break the cycle, an see your anxiety as a helper.

·      Measured sympathetic nervous system activation – is that a bad thing?

o   Yes, for women who though of the anxiety in a negative light, they couldn’t reappraise their emotions. So, anxiety is not always bad for performance …. Unless you think it is!

Adaptive Memory Article:

·      Maybe coming from a functionalists perspective?

·      Proximate mechanisms: Psychological processes that we think explain how something works. A chain of events that leads to an outcome we measure, as opposed to evolutionary changes.

·      In their study, the 95% confidence interval didn’t overlap – strong results showing that survival words are recalled better.

·      The author is more interested I how these mechanisms worked a long time ago and how were they adaptive?

·      What makes memory strong? Some factors that make things memorable are:

o   Forming an image

o   Processing for meaning

o   (both of these are proximate mechanisms that make memories strong).

·      So why do they work? Largely an unaddressed question.

·      What three suggestions does the author have about why we have the memories that we have? i.e. that respond to images, etc.

o   Not just so we can remember things from the past, but instead to help us in the present – learning from things that have happened to us and for the future too.

o   Memories are domain-specific – they are designed to help us remember useful things that help us. (maybe also working memory is around to help us forget trivial things. So, we wonder, to what extent is our memory due to future ideas?)

o   Memory also helps  us survive and produce offspring.

·      Table one from this article shows that we should be able to remember where what is, etc, what food is good, what isn’t, what prey looks like…

o   If  you couldn’t remember these things (like navigation) you would be at a disadvantage to survive.

·      The author thinks a functional perspective on memory is important.

·      What evidence supports the survival-relatedness with memory?

Memory wiki:

·      2-major theories about why we forget:

o   Trace-decay theory – the memory itself deteriorates, so it doesn’t maintain is form and we can’t retrieve it.

o   A major explanation is Interference. There are two types:

§  Proactive interference: things you learn now are hard to learn because of old memories, they disrupt. Or it can work the opposite way:

§  Retroactive interference: new memories disrupt the old ones

·      What is the pattern of forgetting over time?

o   Its very rapid at first, and hen slowly after that (like  a power log)

Survival article continued:

·      Survival processing enhances retention – we are more likely to remember things we are likely to need again, and we are less likely to remember things we won’t need again.

o   Its like our mind is adapted to know things about our surroundings.

·      Other major claims:

o   Does thinking about how items of information may be related to survival effect how easy it will be to remember them?

§  They did three tasks, survival words, moving words, and pleasantness. (They were rating these words)

§  In the end, the experimenters gave them a surprise recall test, and survival related condition of words did indeed have more words remembered. Significantly!

o   It remains against other conditions too that don’t have anything to do with fitness , like taking a vacation.

o   Levels of processing phenomena: thinking about the meaning of a word makes it more likely to remember than words about something like color.

o   Thinking about– does this word apply to me? – self reference are very well remembered – relevance to the self may have a special stance.

§  Is this just deep processing of the words in this article?

·      No, a graph shows that surviving is still better remembered than self-reference, generating the words, intentional, pleasantness, imagery – survival is better than all on recall.

·      Why does thinking about survival make so much difference?

o   Its an important research for the future.

o   Survival is very elaborate encoding

o   That kind of thinking (survival brings out strong emotions)

o   There may be survival module?

Magical Mystery of Four and lab notes

Magical Mystery Four: How is working memory capacity limited, and why? (Cowan)

·      George Miller says 7ish chunks, but Cowan says 3-5

·      Chunking: grouping smaller items into larger ones. Perhaps chunking in different ways effects the number of items you can get.

·      So, whats the significance or working memory for cognition?

o   We are relying on it whenever. We are thinking about something/processing it (like the beginning of a sentence should be remembered by the end of it).

o   Working memory may vary and be predictive of cognitive ability

·      What are the ways in which people hold things in working memory?

o   Remembering their voice, mentally, see the situation, running span procedure (don’t know where the end is going to be)

o   Its hard to answer because there are a variety of ways to remember things.

·      Distinguishing  between processing-related and storage-specific measures of wm capacity??

o   Raw info holding capacity- how much is there? Without rehearsing etc. no tricks – this is storage-specific.

·      Cowan regards storage-specific as more important because it’s the core of how the memory processes work, not a contaminated measure by tricks. Etc.

·      How can one ensure storage-specific measurement of capacity? We have to stop other various kinds of processing.

o   Brief simultaneous spatial array

o   Attention taking place after the sound has ended (dichotic listening – report unattended channel.

o   Overt repetitive saying of one word – “the the the the” while trying to remember something

o   Series with unpredictable ending – running span.

·      Why may this be more relevant/important for working memory?

o   Practical implications, maybe sometimes we don’t have time to use those tricks – much of the times, we can’t use tricks so we need to see what the most basic memory is.

·      Cowan sees working memory as needing to be tested without tricks or contaminants.

·      Central memory (working memory) is important because it underlies problem solving and abstract thoughts

·      HE thinks there are developmental trends in memory – it changes across the lifespan, and may predict intelligence. So, it is fundamental to figure out how to measure it.

·      What is the significance of the working memory storage? Is it a strength or a weakness?

o   How can it be a strength?

§  It is a strength in that we don’t have to be overwhelmed with to much info because we can’t store that.

§  Short lists can be organized effectively.

§  An average of 3.5  items seemed to work best

§  Simple means we can manipulate info better

o   How is it a weakness?

§  No more brain tissue to assign to this task, etc.

Lab Notes:

·      Degrees of Freedom – 2-values (f(df1,df2)=____P

·      The difference between _____  and __________ was significant (paired + (df) = ______, p=_______)

·      The standard error of the mean =SD/sqrt(n)

·      Larger sample size = smaller standard error

·      Bonferroni tests: dividing the p-value by the number of tests. A general strategy to control experiment wise error. (how likely that they’re producing false alarms)

·      A 2-way interaction is different at different levels of the 3^rd variable

·      There are special tests you can use if you don’t have normal data

o   1-way repeated measures (Friedman)

o   between subjects (Kruskal)

·      The one difficulty of t-tests after ANOVAS is that you can’t control the error overall.