AUPSY 263 Study Guide - Winter 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Working Memory, Memory, Syndrome
12 Oct 2018
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AUPSY 263
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
➔Cognitive psychology: the scientific study of how people remember, pay attention, and
think
◆The scientific study of the acquisition, retention, and use of knowledge
➔Cognitives psychology started as the study of knowledge
◆How do we study and memorize?
◆How do we focus our attention and concentrate?
◆How do we make decisions?
➔Perception, attention, memory, problem solving, decision making, reasoning and
language are all involved in cognition
➔Cognition: the mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through
thought, experience, and the senses
➔Amnesia: cases in which someone loses the ability to remember certain things due to
brain damage
➔What if you weren’t able to form new memories?
◆Social consequences - cannot interact with people
●Can’t form a healthy relationship if you don’t remember the person
◆Medical consequences - forgetting to take medications
●Also if you have homecare — social consequences would make you not
recognize a homecare person
◆You don’t retain traumatic information, such as the loss of someone
●Forced to continue reliving traumatic events
◆You lose a sense of self concept
●You cannot use memories to remember what to do or how to act
➔H.M. experienced this amnesia caused by extreme epilepsy
◆His uncle passed away and he had to re-experience this information daily
◆He didn’t realize that he was aging and was not safe in his environment
●You need to be able to get home and be safe in your environment
◆Doctors burned out his entire hippocampus in order to stop seizures
●Hippocampus generates glutamine in brain and therefore there was an
overproduction of calcium
●No hippocampus = less calcium = less seizures
◆Operation seemed to cure seizures, but his ability to create new memories was
damaged
●Memories prior to the surgery were largely unaffected
●Short term memory was not as affected — H.M. could recall a number 15
minutes later, but could not remember the nurse that had been working
with him daily
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
○Proved that the hippocampus is crucial in the formation and
storage of new memories
➔Declarative memories: things that you remember remembering, like facts or events
➔Procedural memories: allows us to accomplish tasks, like driving a car and having a
conversation at the same time
◆Once you reach your destination, you will still remember the conversation — but
you are less likely to remember the tasks it took to operate the car
➔Wilhelm Wundt & Edward Titchener — believed psychology needed to focus on the
study of the conscious thought (feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and memories)
➔Introspect: to “look within”; to observe and record our own mental lives and the
sequence of our experiences
➔Why introspection doesn’t work:
◆We have to look at both conscious and unconscious mental processes
◆Introspection is not testable
➔Indirect study of mental events
◆Measure stimuli and responses
◆Develop hypotheses about mental events
◆Design new experiments
➔Working memory: Storage system that holds info about what you’re working on at any
time
◆Often measured by a span test
◆Digit span: measures how many items you can hold in your working memory
●Observable — reaction time and accuracy
➔Working memory is not a single entity
◆Central Executive — coordinates activities (like a supervisor)
●Can take over for assistant components if needed
◆Assistant components
➔Concurrent articulation task: taking the span test while repeating “tah tah tah”
◆With concurrent articulation and visual presentations, errors are almost
eliminated because you have an image in your head
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Cognitive psychology: the scientific study of how people remember, pay attention, and think. The scientific study of the acquisition, retention, and use of knowledge. Cognitives psychology started as the study of knowledge. Perception, attention, memory, problem solving, decision making, reasoning and language are all involved in cognition. Cognition: the mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. Amnesia: cases in which someone loses the ability to remember certain things due to brain damage. Social consequences - cannot interact with people. Can"t form a healthy relationship if you don"t remember the person. Medical consequences - forgetting to take medications. Also if you have homecare social consequences would make you not recognize a homecare person. You don"t retain traumatic information, such as the loss of someone. You lose a sense of self concept. You cannot use memories to remember what to do or how to act. H. m. experienced this amnesia caused by extreme epilepsy.
