Topics such as maintaining attention (concentration) and making decisions are also important within cognitive psychology. Cognitive psychology, however, does not only study our functioning as intellectuals - it is much broader because many of our actions, thoughts, and feelings depend on our cognition (knowledge). Most (and perhaps all) experiences in the world depend on the knowledge you have and use. Even when trying to understanding a simple story, you use the knowledge you have. So even activities that are not intellectual in nature are important within cognitive psychology.
However, cognition or knowledge is only useful when this knowledge is stored in memory. There is no use in learning when you cannot remember the information later. That is why the memory is also a very important topic within cognitive psychology.
There were two important ideas during the cognitive revolution. The first idea was that the human psychology (mental processes) could not be studied directly. The other idea was that this human psychology múst be studied if we want to understand behavior.
Before the emergence of the cognitive revolution, there were other traditions within the field of psychology. The first tradition was that of Wilhelm Wundt and his student Edward Bradford Titchener. They argued that researchers in psychology should focus primarily on conscious mental events such as feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and memories. They also stated that no one but the individual could experience his or her mental processes. That is why Wundt and Titchener proposed the use of introspection: 'looking inside' to observe the content of the mental events of individuals.
This way of doing research was very popular for a number of years. Nevertheless, there were a number of problems with introspection. The first problem is the fact that people are not conscious of all of their mental processes. It is therefore impossible for people to report everything that takes place in their mind. The use of introspection as a method to study mental processes is therefore limited. It was also impossible to call this research method scientific (empirical), because the self-reports could not be confirmed or rejected with the use of statistical testing. These reasons led to that introspection was eventually rejected as a valid research method.
As said before, introspection as a research method was rejected. Instead, a new tradition emerged called behaviorism. In behaviorism, researchers wanted to study only objective data, that is, behavior and stimuli that are observable. This objective data consists of observable behavior and external stimuli (noise, light). This data can be used to look at how behavior changes over time and therefore it is possible to determine one's learning history with this data.
Things that cannot be directly observed, such as someone's beliefs, wishes, goals, preferences, and experiences, are not part of the field of behaviorism. The explanation for this is that these things can only be investigated with the help of introspection, which was no longer seen as a suitable method for doing scientific research.
The transcendental method is a common research method in contemporary psychology. This means that mental processes are not studied directly, but indirectly. The reasoning behind this method is that mental processes are invisible, but the effects and / or consequences (behavior) are observable. Examples are accuracy measures, error measures and response times. By using these measures, hypotheses can be drawn up and tested about what the mental processes must have been that have led to specific effects (behavior).
What Tolman's work demonstrated was that the rats probably made a "cognitive map" of the maze. The reason why this was not visible was that before the eleventh day, the rats had no motivation to show that they knew the maze. However, when food became available, they suddenly had a goal and thus motivation to show that they had created a map of the maze.The conclusion of this experiment is that even rats have mental processes (they get to know the maze and develop a cognitive map) that can explain their behavior (they run to a specific location; the food).
In 1950, new perspectives on mental processes emerged. This was made possible in part by the rapid developments in the computer technology. Psychologists were impressed by the possibilities of computers and thought that computers had similar processes compared with mental processes. It was also expected during this time that computers would soon become truly intelligent, which led to the emergence of the field of artificial intelligence (AI).
The Capgras syndrome is a rare syndrome that can occur after brain damage. Someone suffering from this Capgras syndrome is able to recognize significant others in his or her life (such as his or her parents, friends, partner), but thinks these people are not the real people. For example, they think their partner has been abducted and that instead someone else is pretending to be the loved one.
Using neuroimaging techniques, it has been determined that the Capgras syndrome can occur due to damage to various areas of the brain. First, the syndrome can occur due to damage in the temporal lobe. Damage to the temporal lobe also disrupts the functioning of the amygdala. The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure in the brain that ensures that people without damage (people with 'normal brains') are able to recognize danger. The amygdala is also important for recognizing positive stimuli. Damage to this area therefore leads to that patients do not experience the (positive) emotional response that one normally experiences when they see familiar others.
Patients with the Capgras syndrome also have damage to their frontal lobe, which is located in the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is active when people read things or when they are analyzing situations. For example, when someone is dreaming, the prefrontal cortex is not that active, which leads to that dreams can sometimes be bizarre because the content is not analyzed by the prefrontal cortex. Therefore, for people with the Capgras syndrome, damage to the prefrontal cortex may mean that they are less able to distinguish between reality (real) and fiction (fake). This can lead to bizarre ideas, such as that someone is pretending to be a patient's acquaintance. The prefrontal cortex is also less active during the hallucinations that some patients with schizophrenia experience.
The human brain is generally divided into three parts: the forebrain, the hindbrain and the midbrain. The hindbrain brain is located directly above the spinal cord and contains various structures that are essential for controlling vital functions for life. This area is involved in controlling, among other things, the heartbeat, breathing, balance, posture and alertness. The largest part of the hindbrain, the cerebellum, has for many years been seen regarded as the center for the coordination of physical activity and balance. However, recent research shows that this area also has other functions. The midbrain has different functions, such as coordinating movement, processing auditory information and regulating pain experiences. For cognitive psychologists, the most interesting part of the brain is the forebrain and in particular the cerebral cortex. The outer layer of the brain contains convolutions, some kind of wrinkles. The grooves (fissures) between these wrinkles divide the brain into different parts. The longitudinal fissure is a deep groove that separates the left hemisphere from the right hemisphere. Other grooves divide the cortex into four lobes: the frontal lobe, the parietal lobe, the temporal lobe and the occipital lobe.
Second, different neuroimaging methods can be used, such as computed tomography (CT) scans, PET (positron emission tomography) scans, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). There is a difference between structural imaging (CT scans) and functional imaging (PET scans). Structural imaging shows the structure (shape, size and position) of the brain areas. Functional imaging examines brain activity (functions of the brain).
Another technique that can be used to map brain functions is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). This is a technique that temporarily disrupts activity in a brain area. By looking at which functions (behaviors) change, a lot can be discovered about the brain area.
Determining the functions of the brain regions is also called localization.
The cerebral cortex is the largest part of the brain and it is the thin layer over the cerebrum. The cerebral cortex is very important for researchers, because a lot of information processing takes place here. The cerebral cortex has multiple areas, each with its own function: motor areas, sensory areas and association areas.
The human brain contains about a trillion neurons and even more glial cells. Glial cells have different functions: they support the development of the nervous system, help to repair the nervous system when there is damage and provide neurons with energy. In addition, there are certain specialized glial cells that form an isolated around parts of neurons, so that neurons can spread information faster. These are called myelin layers.
Vision or visual perception starts with light. Light is produced by several things in our environment (the sun, lamps, candles). This light then reflects on other objects and is reflected again. Part of this reflected light hits, passes through the cornea and the lens and then hits the retina. The retina is a piece of tissue that is very sensitive to incoming light. The retina is located at the back of the eyeball. The cornea and lens focus the incoming light, resulting in a sharp image on the retina. All around the lens are muscles, which provide sharpness through movements. If the lens muscles contract, vision is better for nearby objects and if the lens muscles relax, focus is better for objects farther away. There are two types of photoreceptors within the retina. These are neural cells that respond directly to light that enters. One type of photoreceptors are rods. These rods are color blind, sensitive to low amounts of light and therefore important in distinguishing among different light intensities. The other type of photoreceptors are cones. Cones are less sensitive than rods and need more light to function. Cones are also sensitive to differences in color. There are three types of cones that each have a different sensitivity to wavelengths (colors). In addition to color, the cones are also important when discerning fine detail, which is also referred to as acuity. This explains the fact that we point our eyes toward a target whenever we want to perceive it in detail. By doing this, the image of the target falls onto the fovea, the center of the retina. This is the place where most cones are located and where visibility is therefore the sharpest. The bars are located more on the sides of the eyes, which in turn is an explanation for why we can see very dim lights out of the corner of our eyes.
Single-cell recording is a technique that has yielded a great deal of knowledge about the visual system. This is a procedure in which researchers can see and record the electrical changes within a neuron from moment to moment. Hereby they mainly look at the frequency of firing a single neuron. With this, the receptive field of a cell can be determined.
The visual system registers colors, but also shapes. For example, if you look at a coffee mug, you see both colors and shapes. How is it then possible that you see the coffee mug as a coffee mug, and not as distinct shapes and colors? There is a lot of discussion about this topic, but roughly there are three answers:
Spatial position: The part of the brain that identifies the shape is a different part than the part that processes color and movement. What all areas of the brain have in common is that each keeps track of which forms are where, which colors are where and which motion patterns are where.
Neural synchronization: Our brains use a special rhythm to identify which sensory elements belong where. There is evidence that by means of neural synchronization the brain merges different attributes into one object. This happens because different neurons in the different areas "fire" at the same time. Firing together creates synchronization, which means that various aspects are registered together and observed together.
Conjunction error: This is the correct detection of various elements of a visual display, but mistakes in determining how these features are bound together (conjoined). individuals who experience problems with maintaining and sustaining attention (concentration) are particularly impaired in tasks in which they judge how features are conjoined.
Another crucial aspect of perception is perceptual constancy. This means that one observes the constant properties of objects, while the sensory information we receive about these properties change whenever our viewing circumstances change. For example, if you see an object far away, the object is small on your retina, but as it gets closer, it becomes larger. Although it seems to have a different size at that time, that is due to the distance and not to the object (size constancy). This also applies to the perception of forms (form constancy). We know what shape an object has even though we see it from a different angle, just as we know what kind of brightness an object has, even though we see it in a different light (brightness constancy).
The process of object recognition starts with the observation of simple visual features (shape, size). However, the Gestalt psychologists noted in the twentieth century that our perception of the visual world is different than the objective the stimulus. That this is the true can be seen when observing ambiguous figures such as the Neckerman cube. The input (the object, the stimulus) is neutral for everyone, but the perception (perception) differs between people. Many other, everyday stimuli also depend on our interpretation, although this is less noticeable because this is a very fast, almost automatic, process. Our perception is guided by various simple principles. These principles are: equality, proximity, persistence, continuation, closure and simplicity. Everyone uses these organization principles when perceiving things and that is why people often perceive the world in an equal way.
The recognition by components (RBC) model contains a level of detectors that are sensitive to geons, which are basic "building blocks" for all objects that we recognize. This model, like the other networks discussed, uses a hierarchy of detectors. Geons are merged into geon assemblies, which then activate the object model. There are several advantages of this. In the first place, recognition based on a geon's point of view is independent of perspective. In addition, most objects can be recognized by using only a few geons.
The networks that have been discussed so far all start with analyzing parts that later get assembled into larger wholes. During face recognition, however, there is not only the processing of different parts, but instead there is a holistic perception of the face, so face recognition depends on the overall configuration of the face. Of course, a face's features (nose, mouth, eyes) still play a role in face recognition. However, these characteristics cannot be observed separately from the face (the context). Some of the evidence for holistic processing comes from the composite effect in face recognition. This effect is demonstrated when the top half of one face is combined with the bottom half of another, and participants need to identify only the top half. The task is difficult when the two halves are properly aligned: participants see the top of the face as part of the whole.
William James is a very famous psychologist who described selective attention. Selective attention is the skill through which a person focuses on one input or one task while ignoring other stimuli that are also on the scene.
During an experiment in which participants had to look at a fixation target, almost ninety percent of the participants did not realize that this target changed into different shapes. According to some researchers, the participants had seen the shapes, but did not notice it. This is called unintentional blindness. Unintentional blindness is a pattern in which people do not notice something while they look at it. A related effect is that of 'unintentional deafness', which means that participants do not hear certain stimuli if they do not expect these stimuli. There is also something called 'unintentional numbness', which means that people do not feel certain stimuli when these stimuli are unexpected. When something is unexpected, there is no attention paid to it. All of these statements therefore emphasize the role of attention. Attention therefore influences our perception. Our perception is therefore an active process. This is also reflected in 'change blindness', which means that people do not notice changes in scenes that they are watching
Priming also affects attention. The explanation for unintentional blindness was that people do not expect the stimulus and therefore do not notice it. In other words, when the stimulus is shown, the participants' detectors are not primed, not responsive and therefore the stimulus is not perceived. During selective hearing (dichotic listening task) this is the same: one is instructed to ignore a certain ear, which becomes the unattended channel. Therefore, no attention is paid to the input or stimuli, which means that the detectors are not primed. This makes it difficult to hear the distractor (the input in the unattended channel).
Selection by priming is based on three ideas. First, it states that perception or perception depends on the degree to which detectors are primed. Second, the priming is sometimes stimulus-driven, which means that priming is done on the basis of what was previously encountered. This is called repetition priming: priming produced by a prior encounter with the stimulus. This type of priming requires no effort and no resources. Third, there is also another type of priming that is expectation-driven. This type of priming is controllable and occurs when people expect to hear certain things. This priming is not done for inputs that someone has no interest in and this type of priming cannot be done for inputs that someone cannot anticipate.
The two types of priming mentioned can be distinguished in different ways. In the first place, it takes longer for expectation-driven priming to take effect. Secondly, a distinction can be made between 'costs' or disadvantages: expectation-driven priming involves costs. This means that if one does not get what he or she has prepared for, this will be at the expense of the detectors (for example, people make more mistakes on a task when he or she gets unexpected responses). This can be seen in studies where spatial attention was used. This means that you have to focus on a certain place in the room (for example above, below, left, right) which leads to not perceiving a stimulus that is shown in the centrum. The disadvantages of expectation-driven priming is that if one is instructed to focus on a stimulus on the left side of a room, then less attention is paid to a stimulus that is shown on the right side. If the stimulus then appears on the right, it is often not noticed. This shows that people have a limited capacity system for processing stimuli. Stimulus-driven priming is seen as "free of costs", which means that priming a detector is not at the expense of other detectors.
Cognitive psychology used to focus primarily on how information was perceived and then stored in memory. One of these models is the modal model. According to this model, different types of memory are involved during information processing. When information arrives for the first time, it travels to the sensory memory, where the content is stored in a "raw" sensory form. For visual information this is the iconic memory and for auditory information this is the echoic memory. After selection and interpretation, the information is sent to the short-term memory, where information can be retained while you are working on it. Some information is then stored in the long-term memory, a larger and more permanent repository where all your knowledge and beliefs are stored
Almost all mental activities require coordination of different parts of information that can be processed simultaneously in the working memory. People differ in the amount of information they can have in their working memory at the same time.
When explaining the recency effect, the importance of rehearsal has already been demonstrated. Rehearsal means that someone thinks about something. In general, a distinction is made between two types of rehearsal: maintenance rehearsal and relational or elaborative rehearsal. With maintenance rehearsal, the items are simply repeated without further thinking about the meaning of the items. Relational or elaborative rehearsal does reflect on the meaning of the items. For example, with the number 26051998, someone can see this number as 26 May 1998. By using relational or elaborative rehearsal, one can remember much more, as is shown by studies with the measurement of brain activity during learning. Higher levels of brain activity, especially in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, are associated with a greater chance of remembering things. Research shows that it does not immediately matter whether you have the intention to learn something (intentional learning). Learning without intention, incidental learning, is just as effective if you approach the materials properly. It is important to make a distinction between surface-processing, which means that you pay no attention to the meaning of the material, and deep processing. Deep processing is about paying attention to deeper characteristics of the stimuli, such as the meaning. Deep processing leads to better memories of the studied material.
Elaborative coding also ensures more connections and therefore better storage of things in the memory. Elaborative sentences are 'rich' sentences, such as: The cat walks to the house and jumps over the fence. Non-elaborative sentences are: The chicken is white. Elaborative sentences ensure that things are better remembered, because it provides more connections (the cat, house, fence) instead of one connection (chicken, white).
Various studies have shown that the learning environment can influence the recall of material (context-dependent learning). For example, if you learn at home in your room every day, then you are expected to perform best when you take the test in your room as well. This can be explained by encoding specificity. This means that while learning something, someone also stores information about the context. When the person is then placed in the same context, this context ensures that connections are activated, which makes it easier to remember the things he or she has learned. What is very important here to mention is that it is not so much about the physical context, but also about the mental context. So things like the color, smell, size of a room and things like listening or not listening to music are also stored while learning. In one study, participants had to take a test in a context other than the context in which they studied. However, just before the test, they were instructed to imagine the context in which they studied. They then performed as well as the people who took the test in the same context. This is important to remember! Thinking back to the context therefore also has an effect on performance.
In a number of memory studies, participants were asked to read a list of words without being told that they should remember these words. Then, with the help of the lexical decision task, it was examined whether these words would have primed the participant. Participants indeed noticed the words on the word list faster. This was true even when they could not remember these words! This was tested using a recognition task, in which the participants were shown a number of words and then had to say whether they had seen these words before or not. The participants therefore seem 'primed' by the word list, but are not aware of this and cannot recognize the words. This was also apparent from the 'word-stem-completion task', in which one gets a number of letters as the start of a word and has to finish the word. This also showed that if participants have seen a word recently, they are more likely to mention this word!
These results make researchers think that there are two types of memory: an explicit and an implicit memory. The explicit memory can be tested with the help of tests that test the direct memory (remember, identifier). The implicit memory, on the other hand, can only be tested by indirect testing of the memory and is often viewed in priming effects. This type of memory can be tested using the lexical decision task and the word-stem-replenishment task.
Research shows that a stimulus will seem familiar if the following points are met:
People have previously been exposed to the stimulus
Thanks to this previous exposure (and the 'exercise' you've had), the processing speed is faster
This fluidity is noticed and the stimulus is thought to be special
They try to find out why this stimulus feels special
One concludes why this stimulus is special ("it must be a celebrity")
Memory errors can occur at different times and in different forms. In the previous chapter, memory was described as a network with different nodes connected by connections. These connections serve as retrieval paths for memories. By adding connections (through information that you get to hear from others, for example), information is added and a memory can be distorted. A transplantation error can also occur if information is used that does not actually belong to the specific memory, but to a different memory. The connections can therefore cause intrusion errors where other knowledge is added to the event. When participants get to read a prologue before reading a text, they can understand the text much better and therefore remember it, but at the same time they make four times as many intrusion errors compared to participants who didn't read a prologue. Similar effects occur when remembering word lists and during recognition tests. A well-known paradigm is used for the latter tests: the DRM, Deese-Roediger-McDermott procedure. This means that participants are shown a list of words such as bed, pillow, dark, night, dreams and then later state that they have seen the word "sleep" through the associations they have with this word. Even when people are warned in advance, they make mistakes. This shows that some of these mechanisms are so automatic that people are not able to inhibit them.
People are therefore sensitive to false memories. This can be seen in a study in which one different word made a big difference in answers (how fast was the car driving vs. how fast was the car racing). The use of suggestions can therefore cause people to create erroneous memories. Complementary information is also better remembered than contradictory information. Finally, it is easier to plant false memories when participants are instructed to imagine something.
The misinformation effect means that memory errors occur after people receive information after an event has occurred. Creating such errors is a fairly easy process. In one study, students were told that researchers were investigating how well different people could remember the same events. The students were given a list of events that (they were told) had been reported by their parents. They were asked to recall these events as well as they could, so that the investigators could compare the students' recall with their parents'. Some of the events on the list actually had been reported by the participants' parents, other were bogus (made up by the experimenters). The college students were easily able to remember the genuine events, but none of the students recalled the bogus events. After repeated attempts at recall, this pattern changed. After three interviews, twenty-five percent of the students were able to remember the bogus events.
When people evaluate memories, they rely on expressions of certainty. People tend to trust memories that are expressed with confidence. However, evidence suggests that a person's degree of certainty is not a good indicator of whether a memory is true or false. In fact, researchers suggest that there are simply no indicators that can reliably guide us in deciding which memories are true. It seems that memory errors may often be undetectable.
Flashbulb memories are a special kind of emotional memories. These memories are special because they are often very clear and detailed. People remember these events "as if it were yesterday". Flashbulb memories are often about special, emotional events. For example, many people remember the moment when they heard that Michael Jackson had died. Some factors, such as how often someone talks about a memory and who the person talks about, affect how accurate the flashbulb memories are. Sometimes people adjust the original memory based on what they have heard from others; information is then replaced by newer information. People also sometimes adjust their memory based on what a 'good story' is. In this way they can omit certain details or, on the contrary, mention certain details, to make the story more beautiful.
Ordinary concepts, such as 'shoe' or 'spoon', are the building blocks out of which all knowledge is created. As we've seen in previous chapters, you depend on your knowledge in many aspects of day-to-day functioning. So, you know what a restaurant is, because you understand the basis concept of 'restaurant'. So the idea is that you need concepts in order to have knowledge, and you need knowledge in order to function. In this chapter, the hypothesis is that understanding a concept is like knowing a dictionary definition. However, this hypothesis quickly runs into problems, so there are other, more complicated proposals needed.
According to some models, individual ideas are represented with local representations: each node represents a certain idea and when you think about that idea, that node is activated. This is called connectionism. Connectionism is based on distributed representations (again spread activation), where ideas are represented by a pattern of activation of the network. This processing and representation takes place in parallel (parallel distributed processing, PDP).
PDP models refer to a potential and not to a state. According to connectionism, learning is about adjustments (in the strength) of the connections between nodes, so after learning, the activation is spread in such a way that it fits in with the newly learned information. In other words: learning arises from changes in the activation pattern of nodes.
Language contains different parts:
Sound (the order of the phonemes that make up the word)
Orthography (the sequence of letters with which you can spell a word)
Syntax (the way you should use words in sentences; grammar rules)
Semantic representation (the meaning of the word)
Phonological representation (the sound of a word).
That language is generative becomes even more apparent when looking at the upper levels within the hierarchy of language. Here too, there are limitations on which combinations are acceptable and which are not. Syntax are rules that govern the structure of a phrase or sentence. An example of such a rule is that a sentence consists of a noun part and a verb part. Exactly how this is organized is shown in a tree structure.
Some rules are prescriptive and they describe how something is supposed to be. Phrase-structure rules are not prescriptive, they are descriptive. This means that these rules characterize language as it is ordinarily used by fluent speakers and listeners.
The anthropologist Benjamin Whorf came up with the "Whorfian hypothesis". He stated that when people use a different language, they also think differently. This is called linguistic relativity. Studies into this have shown that people who use a language with a rich, broad vocabulary, perceive colors differently and make a 'finer' distinction between colors. The language that people use also influences how they remember things. In addition, languages differ in how they describe events. For example, an active voice is often used in the English language, while this is not the case in the Japanese or Spanish language. These results can lead to different conclusions. First, it can be thought that language has a direct influence on our knowledge, which would mean that a Japanese person could think about things in a way that an Englishman could not. Another, more realistic explanation is that language determines what you focus on. In this case, the use of another language has an indirect influence on your thoughts.
People have written about imagery and the mind's eye for hundreds of years. Galton was the first to systematically study this imagery. He was particularly interested in how people differ with regards to these visual images. To investigate this, he asked people to describe the images in their minds and to judge them for vividness. This is an example of the use of introspection: people must 'look inside' and then report what they see or think. Many of the participants in Galton's study said the images in their brains were as clear as photos.
What was striking in this study is that participants differed a great deal. Some said the the images they saw were very clear, and others stated that they saw much less or nothing at all. These claims are difficult to study, because it requires a translation of an inner experience in words and everyone has their own interpretations. The data from Galton's study could therefore show that people differ in how they talk about their visual imagination, rather than reflecting real differences between people's visual imagination. Because of this, it is necessary to use other objective research methods.
It has been found that when describing an object, people identify the most striking features. However, when they draw an object, more attention is paid to the size and position of the object and this is drawn. Visual imagery shows that people follow the same rules as when drawing something, instead of the rules used when describing something.
Image scanning procedures that look at people's eye movements while looking at mental images show that people scan images at a constant pace. When the image becomes twice as large, scanning also takes twice as much time. The same applies to when people are asked to zoom in or out on a certain task. The response times are therefore proportional to the amount of zooming in which is required, indicating that "traveling" or searching through mental images resembles traveling in the real world. These results tell us something about the nature of mental images: images are 'natural', which means that the images reflect the real world.
We have seen that you need more time when you "travel" further in mental rotation and scan images. We have interpreted this as the way in which images represent a natural layout. However, there is another way in which this data can be explained. Perhaps participants consciously check their timing to create a "normal" response pattern. This can be caused by demanding characteristics of an experimental situation: participants want to do all they can to give the experimenter "good" data.
It appears that imagination and perception overlap. Research by Segal and Fusella shows that when people are imagining an image, they are less able to perceive an image. When they are busy imagining a 'sound', it is difficult for them to listen to other, real sound at the same time. This also means that imagery and perception can prime each other.
Lay people (non-scholars) use the term 'photographic memory', while this is actually not correct. Often these are people who have developed good strategies with regard to memory and learning. This is therefore not about the memory itself, but about well-applied memory strategies, such as mnemonics. However, there are people who have a photographic memory. These people have an extremely detailed picture of what they have seen. Researchers usually call this an eidetic memory. It is often individuals with autism who have this eidetic memory. They can often look at a scene (picture, image) for a very short time and can then draw this scene very accurately. So it is as if they have taken a picture of the scene. An example of a person with an eidetic memory is a woman (without autism). She was able to memorize a poem in a language unknown to her, and read it aloud, even years after she had seen this face. Another example is that of a boy who was shown a picture for thirty seconds. After seeing the picture, he was asked unexpected questions, such as "how many stripes did the cat have?" or "how many leaves did the flower have?". The boy answered these questions accurately. Not much is known about this type of memory, but researchers know that it is a rare type of memory that not everyone owns.
Images have a significant impact on memory and generally improve memory. For example, materials that evoke images are easier to remember than materials that do not evoke images. "Bizarre" scenes can also provide a stronger memory, but only if not all images are presented that way. The advantage of images is probably caused by a pattern of dual coding. Based on this hypothesis, it is to be expected that at least two types of information are used in the long-term memory. Although some researchers argued that there were also different memory systems for these types, others believe there is a system that contains these types. Based on this, we expect that different types of information have many similarities in characteristics, and this appears to be true. For example, visual knowledge is influenced by schemas. When people try to understand a story, they place the story within a schematic frame. This can often lead to errors.
A pattern that can arise as a result is also referred to as 'boundary extension', in which participants remember more of an image than was depicted. Intraub stated that this shifting boundary arises because people create their own perception of images. They understand images through a schema. This schema places the image in a larger context. People therefore store the experience (perception) of an image in their memory, instead of the objective image.
People can learn a lot from experience, but there are defects in this form of learning. For example, sometimes the information given in the world around us is ambiguous or incomplete. It is also possible that our memories are selective or distorted.
Certain events, such as very emotional events, are generally well stored in memory and are therefore easy to remember, so it is readily available. The availability heuristic is about the ease with which you can come up with examples.
Errors made through the use of heuristics can also lead to other errors, such as errors in covariance. Covariance is about the extent to which two variables (stimuli, input) are related to each other. This covariance can be strong or weak and positive or negative. Covariance is important for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it's what you need to consider when checking on a belief about cause and effect. But how accurately do people judge covariation? Sometimes people seem to perceive relationships that don't exist, even though people have had a lot of training and experience. These errors can be caused by people being distorted in their judgment. For example, people are often guided by the confirmation bias, which is the tendency for people to accept beliefs that fit their ideas rather than beliefs that don't match their ideas.
Problems with assessing covariance also arise when people neglect base rate information, which is information about how frequently something (a disease, syndrome) generally occurs. Although this information is very important, people often ignore this information when making statements. Instead, they often use short descriptions that fit certain stereotypes instead of using information about the base rate. Part of this problem is caused by people making use of representativeness heuristics.
A frequently applied problem-solving strategy is the "hill-climbing". You should imagine that you are hiking through the woods and trying to figure out which trail leads to the mountaintop. You need to climb uphill to reach the top, so whenever you come to a fork in the trail, you select the path that's going uphill.
The problem-solving strategy works the same way: at any time you choose the option that leads upwards (to your goal). However, this strategy can only be used to a limited extent, because it is sometimes important to move away from your goal. Only then, from this new position, the problem can be solved. Yet many people apply this heuristics. They often have difficulty withdrawing, even when this is necessary to achieve their goal.
Another problem-solving strategy is a means-end analysis. In this strategy, people compare their current state with their end state (or ideal state, their goals). They then wonder: what means do I have to make my current state and my end state more equal?
A new problem often resembles a problem from the past. Then you can solve the new problem through the experience you have with the old problem. The old problem then serves as an 'analogy' for the new problem.
Experts often seem to tackle problems by looking at the deeper, underlying structure of the problem. They also make more use of analogies. To do this, one needs to have specific expertise in a relevant domain. Experts are also good at using sub-goals to solve a problem and they are good at organizing relevant information and knowledge, so that they can remember more. For example, they focus their attention on the relationships between certain units, which gives them an idea of the broad structure. Also, experts simply know more about a domain.
There are often several ways to solve problems. Sometimes solving a problem requires that you think further than you initially did. An example of this is the 'candle problem': You have two candles, countless pins and a box of matches. The instruction is to use these items, to find out how to attach the candles to a wall.
Most people use the pins immediately to attach the candles to the wall. Because of functional fixedness, people only think of one way to use the pins. However, there is another solution, namely that the matches are used to melt the lower part of each candle and use the hot wax to stick the candle to the matchbox. Once the candles are attached to the box, the pins can be used to attach the box to the wall. To arrive at this solution, one must distance oneself from 'functional fixedness' and view the matchbox as a 'box', rather than as matches intended to light the candle.
There is also a distinction between fluid and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is about the extent to which someone can deal with new, unknown problems. Crystallized intelligence, on the other hand, is about the knowledge that someone has (through education, parents, books, etc.) about things that he or she has experienced before. These forms of intelligence are highly correlated. There are, however, important differences. First, crystallized intelligence increases with someone's age. Fluid intelligence, on the other hand, peaks in young adulthood and then decreases. There are also factors (alcohol, smoking, depression) that have more influence on fluid intelligence than on crystallized intelligence.
Activities such as thinking, remembering and categorizing happen quick and effortless. However, these activities can only be carried out by the fact that processes and mechanisms are working "behind the scenes". Psychologists call this activity the cognitive unconscious: the broad set of mental activities that people are not aware of, but that are needed for everyday interactions in the world.
A distinction must be made between the products that one creates (beliefs, conclusions) and the processes that led to these products. The difference here is that people are aware of the products, but not of the processes. For example, if you have had dinner in a restaurant and think back to this dinner later, this is a product (your memory). However, the way you made up this memory is a process, which you are not aware of. As a result, you may not be able to know what is really in your memory and which parts you may have supplemented (think: was there a menu present? Even if this was not the case, chances are that you think so, because this is usual at a restaurant). Partly because of this, memory errors are often unnoticeable: the process that leads to the memory is unconscious, so you cannot immediately know if your memory is wrong and what exactly went wrong (because this happened in the process).
The question is how people sometimes make such mistakes when determining their thoughts or feelings. The answer is that the processes that people use to reach these conclusions are unconscious. People cannot view and assess these processes (introspection is not possible). So when they judge their behavior, they need a different source of information. This goes as follows: after an event, people wonder: "Why did I behave this way? I don't know exactly, but maybe I can use the knowledge I have about how people normally behave in this situation. On that way I can try to understand why I behaved so much in the situation. " This often leads to plausible reasoning. An example is: "Why am I angry with Zara? She just insulted me and I know that people often get angry when they are insulted. That is why I think I am angry with Zara now because she has offended me." However, this reconstruction can also be wrong.
John Flavell noted that children who are developing, also develop metacognition. Metacognition is about being able to monitor and control one's own thoughts. This metacognition is needed for many different things, but especially for memory. As a result, researchers focus on 'meta-memory': the knowledge, awareness and control that people have over their own memory. Metacognition is also important for adults. An example of this is when you study for an exam. As you learn, you notice that some things are easy and others are more difficult to remember. Then you choose to pay more attention and time to the things that you feel are more difficult. Meta-memory also influences your beliefs, such as whether you believe mnemonics are useful, or that deep processing leads to better memories.
Every idea one has is represented in the brain through a specific pattern of activity. Here, each different brain region represents an element of the idea. However, people only become aware of the idea when the various elements are connected to each other. Here are a few facts about consciousness: the experience one has feels unitary and coherent. You are therefore not aware of 'orange, red and round', but of 'an apple'. This is due to the work of the workplace neurons. Conscious experience is selective: people are therefore aware of a specific (and a limited) number of things. In addition, this conscious experience is controllable: it is therefore possible to choose what you want to pay attention to.
Various researchers believe that we must distinguish between different types of conscious experiences. This chapter mainly addresses access consciousness, which is defined as someone's sensitivity to certain types of information (and thus the person's access to that information). Less has been said about the subjective experience of consciousness (what it actually feels like to have certain experiences), which is also called phenomenal consciousness. Philosophers use the term qualia to refer to these subjective experiences. However, much remains unclear regarding this topic.
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