PSY 305 Study Guide - Final Guide: Risk Aversion, Utility, Conjunction Fallacy
29 Jun 2018
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PSY 305 FINAL EXAM STUDY GUIDE
Materials from exams 1&2: All exams are somewhat comprehensive!Focus especially on
general principles in cognition for the final exam
2.Which are the two main processing streams in visual perception?How do they differ?
Example modules in each?
●Dorsal Stream: also known as the “where” pathway, helps us perceive where objects are
in space.
○Activation from the occipital lobe is passed along the where pathway to the
parietal cortex
●Ventral Stream: also known as the “what” pathway, helps us identify objects
○Some of the activation from the occipital lobe is passed along to the cortex of the
temporal lobe
3.What is the difference between top-down and bottom-up processing? Discuss how each
contributes to our perception of the world, our memories and/or thinking?
●Top Down Processing
○Relies on your knowledge, “concept driven” and processes shaped by knowledge
○Context driven like reading the words “THE” and “CAT” pg 106
○For instance, you are presented with a paragraph written with difficult
handwriting. It is easier to understand what the writer wants to convey if you read
the whole paragraph rather than reading the words in separate terms. The brain
may be able to perceive and understand the gist of the paragraph due to the
context supplied by the surrounding words.
●Bottom Up Processing
○Processes that are directly shaped by the stimulus are sometimes called “data
driven”
○In the bottom-up processing approach, perception starts at the sensory input, the
stimulus. Thus, perception can be described as data-driven. For example, there is
a flower at the center of a person's field. The sight of the flower and all the
information about the stimulus are carried from the retina to the visual cortex in
the brain. The signal travels in one direction.
4.What is a heuristic? Why is it useful? Give one example of when they fail in perception or
in reasoning/decision making.
●Heuristic:is any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a
practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate
goals.
●While heuristics can speed up our problem and decision-making process, they can
introduce errors. Just because something has worked in the past does not mean that it will
work again, and relying on an existing heuristic can make it difficult to see alternative
solutions or come up with new ideas. As you saw in the examples above, heuristics can
lead to inaccurate judgments about how common things occur and about how
representative certain things may be.
●Heuristics can also contribute to stereotypes and prejudice
5.Role of context and experience.What is the role of schemas and scripts in organizing
concepts, and thinking?
●schemata or generic knowledge (Boundary extension!)
●Friedman (1979) found that participants failed to notice differences between previously
seen and new pictures if both were consistent with a schema (e.g., a kitchen or barnyard).
●Pictures that contained violations of a schema (e.g., a kitchen with a fireplace) were
readily noticed.
6.Discuss the role of selective attention and divided attention in performance.
●Selective Attention:
○Attending to one thing while ignoring others
●Some aspects of the environment are more important and interesting than others
●There is too much incoming stimulation at the retina to process everything–
●Selection is achieved partially through use of foveation
●Scanning a scene -eye movements can take in different parts of a scene
●•Saccades-small, rapid eye movements
●•Fixations-pauses in eye movements that indicate where a person is focusing/attending•
○Approximately 3 fixations per second Characteristics of the scene:
●Stimulus salience-areas of stimuli that attract attention due to their properties
○Color, contrast, and orientation are relevant properties
○Bottom-up process that is unrelated to meaning
●Picture meaning and observer knowledge
○Scene schema-prior knowledge about what is found in typical scenes
■Fixations are influenced by this knowledge
●Influence of the observer’s task
○Task demands override stimulus saliency
○Eye movements usually precede motor movements by fraction of a second
●Divided Attention
○The effort to divide your focus between multiple tasks or multiple inputs
○Tasks that use the same resource will be performed more poorly than tasks
that involve two very different resources
○More interference for similar tasks = task - specific resources
○More interferences as task complexity increases = task-general resources
(response selector for initiating different steps; executive control for avoiding
habit
○Bottom line***if task needs exceed resources, tasks cannot be combined
○This is only possible when the sum of the tasks’ demands is within the “cognitive
budget.”
7.What is the modal model/the information processing model of memory? Discuss the
components or working memory and their neural correlates.
●Modal Model
○According to this model, when info first arrives, is it stored briefly in sensory
memory which holds on to the input in “raw” sensory form-an iconic memory for
visual inputs and an echoic memory for auditory inputs. A process of selection
and interpretation then moves the information into short term memory-the place
where you hold info while you’re working on it. Some of the info is then
transferred into long term memory, a much larger and more permanent storage
place
Components of Working Memory:
-virtually all mental activities require working memory
-Digit span task -- determines an individual's WM capacity (7 plus or minus 2)
8.Discuss 5 factors that affect encoding and maintenance of LTM? Describe studies or
examples to show how each may affect LTM.
1. Attention: starts process, necessary component for any other cognitive process, the more
attention devoted to something the stronger that memory is likely to be
Levels of Processing
○Typeface task (shallow)
○Phonological task (intermediate)
○Semantic Task (deep)
2. Repetition
●The more times you encounter the material, the better you will remember it
●Massed or Distributed
○Massed: reencounter material over and over again in a short period of time
○Distributed: re-encountering material, but spacing it out across time
●The type of repetition will impact the quality of memory formed
3. Rehearsal
Rehearsal
○Two types of rehearsal
○Maintenance rehearsal
■reciting
○Relational collaborative rehearsal
■linking
4. Organization
Document Summary
Materials from exams 1&2: all exams are somewhat comprehensive!focus especially on general principles in cognition for the final exam. Dorsal stream: also known as the where pathway, helps us perceive where objects are in space. Activation from the occipital lobe is passed along the where pathway to the parietal cortex. Ventral stream: also known as the what pathway, helps us identify objects. Some of the activation from the occipital lobe is passed along to the cortex of the. Discuss how each contributes to our perception of the world, our memories and/or thinking? temporal lobe. Relies on your knowledge, concept driven and processes shaped by knowledge. Context driven like reading the words the and cat pg 106. For instance, you are presented with a paragraph written with difficult handwriting. It is easier to understand what the writer wants to convey if you read the whole paragraph rather than reading the words in separate terms.
