Transcript PSY 369: Psycholinguistics - the Department of Psychology at

PSY 369: Psycholinguistics
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
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It is the body of psychological experimentation that deals
with issues of human memory, language use, problem
solving, decision making, and reasoning.
“Cognitive Psychology refers to all processes by which the sensory
input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and
used.” Ulric Neisser (1967)
Mind as computer analogy
Mind as computer analogy
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Limitations of the analogy
Computers
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fast
serial (mostly)
digital
few connections
Minds (Brains??)
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slow
parallel
analog
trillions of
connections
Computational theory of mind
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Brains and computers embody intelligence for
some of the same reasons
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The Demands of an Architecture of (Human) Cognition
• Behave flexibly as a function
of the environment
• Exhibit adaptive (rational goal
directed) behavior
• Operate in real time
• Operate in a rich detailed
complex environment
• Perceive an immense amount
of changing detail
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Use vast amounts of knowledge
Control a motor system
Use symbol systems
Use language (both natural and
artificial)
• Learn from the environment and
experience
• Acquire capabilities through
development
The ‘standard model’
Information ‘flows’ from one memory buffer to the next
The sensory store
George Sperling (1960)
Full Report:
I'm going to show you a bunch of letters, then
I'll cue you to recall as many of letters as you
can.
RECALL
Partial Report
I'm going to show you a bunch of letters, then I'll
cue you (with a blue arrow) as to which row of
letters I'd like you to recall. Immediately
following the cue, write down as many letters as
you can from that row.
RECALL
The sensory store
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Typically the result of this experiment is:
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Full report: can report about 4.5 letters on
average
Partial report: can typically report 4 letters
(that's100%)
The partial report results suggest that all of the
information is there, the 4.5 average seen in the
full report condition reflects the extremely rapid
decay of the Sensory Store.
The sensory store
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Further support of this
comes from a delay
manipulation.
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In this case you
manipulate how much
time passes between the
stimuli and the recall cue.
If you delay by about 1/4
to 1/2 a second, the
average reported drops to
about 4.5, the same rate
as in the Full report task.
The sensory store
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Properties
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sensory specific - one for vision, one for
audition, etc.
high capacity
extremely fast decay
The ‘standard model’
Short term memory
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I’ll read a list of words and ask you to recall them
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Okay, now recall as many of the items as you can
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Here is the list:
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CAT, SHACK, BOAT, CAR, PICTURE, ELEPHANT, MAP,
SWING, TACK, BEAR, BOX, DOOR, CHURCH, TREE, DOG,
DENTIST, TRAIN, SNOW, SMOKE, RADIO
Short term memory
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The typical results
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items at the beginning of a list
is remembered well (primacy)
items at the end of the list are
remembered well (recency)
Short term memory
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Typical account:
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A variant of the task:
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Recency items recalled from STM
Primacy items recalled from LTM
Count backwards by threes before recall
Here is the list:
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MOUSE, BARN, SHIP, TRUCK, PHOTOGRAPH, GIRAFFE, SIGN,
SLIDE, PIN, DEER, BOTTLE, WINDOW, GARAGE, BUSH, FISH,
DOCTOR, AIRPLANE, RAIN, FIRE, TELEVISION
Short term memory
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The typical result is that
the longer you have to
count backwards, the
worse your memory for
the letters.
The theory is that the
counting backwards
prevents the rehearsal of
information in STM, so
it decays away.
Short term memory
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Increasing your STM span
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Chunking
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Grouping information together into larger units
Dog cat mouse shoe sock toe couch pillow blanket
Down flowers the by with chased yellow several girls a river
boy.
A boy chased several girls with yellow flowers down by the
river.
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Notice that the previous two are the same words, but the syntax
allows for grouping into meaningful ‘chunks’
Short Term Memory
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Properties
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rapid access (about 35 milliseconds per item)
limited capacity (7+/- 2 chunks; George Miller, 1956)
fast decay, about 12 seconds (longer if rehearsed or
elaborated)
The ‘standard model’
Long term memory
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Organization
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The Multiple Memory Stores Theory
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This theory suggests that there are different memory
components, each storing different kinds of information.
Declarative
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episodic - memories about events
semantic - knowledge of facts
Procedural - memories about how to do things (e.g., the thing
that makes you improve at riding a bike with practice.
Long term memory
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How long do our memories last?
Ebbinghaus (1885/1913)
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He memorized non-sense
syllables.
Memorize them until perfect
performance,
Test to relearn the lists
perfectly.
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This was called the
"savings."
Long term memory
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How long do our memories last?
Bahrick (1984)
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He has done a number of
studies asking people about
memories for things (e.g.,
Spanish, faces of classmates,
etc.) that they learned over
50 years past. He has found
evidence that at least some
memories stick around a
really long time.
Long term memory
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How much can we remember?
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Lots. To my knowledge there are no known limits to how much
memory storage we have.
Perhaps the more important issue concerns questions about
encoding and retrieval
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Encoding - getting memories into LTM what gets in?
Retrieval - getting memories out of LTM what gets out? exact
memories or reconstructed memories?
Related to these issues are the theoretical construct of Attention.
Long term memory
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Properties
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Unlimited capacity
Decay/interference, retrieval difficulty
Organized
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Associative networks (more on these next week)
Working Memory