Cognitive Psychology Overview and Key Concepts

Hello AP Psych class and welcome back to our virtual classroom. I figured this time around I would give you guys a fun entrance. My back's a little sore from that skydive. In today's review we will be digging into the world of cognitive psychology and how our brain processes all the information it receives. receives on a daily basis. In this review, we're going to be taking a look at memory, thinking and problem solving, intelligence, and we'll finish off with language. This unit is going to deal all with cognitive processes. Remember, cognition is just going to be the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge. knowledge and understanding through thought, experiences, and our senses. Oh yeah, and before I forget, be sure to be following along with your review guide. Take the notes. You will thank me when you have it all finished. Scientists have constructed several models that explain how our memory works. However, no single model has been able to capture every single aspect of human memory. One very influential model, the stage model of memory, proposed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Schreifen, will be very useful in explaining the basic workings of human memory. In this model, memory is characterized into three distinct stages. We have the sensory memory registry, our short-term memory, and our long-term memory. Remembering starts with our sensory memory. Sensory information from the outside world is first picked up by our sensory registry. Our sensory memory is just going to be the stage of memory that registers information from the environment and holds on to it for a very brief amount of time. I'm talking seconds here. Has something like this ever happened to you? You're sitting on the couch watching TV when someone in your house... asks you a question such as, hey, where are the car keys? You respond with what, but not a split second later, the question registers in your mind and you're able to respond before the person repeats themselves. You are able to process this information from your environment because your sensory memory picked up on the audio stimuli for just enough time for you to process the information. Our sensory memory is where all of our sensory information is registered. The sensory memory is going to have a very large capacity for information. However, since it can hold large amounts of information, it's... duration does suffer, only lasting a quarter of a second to three seconds, depending on which sense is taking in the information. Sensory memory is going to deal with all of our senses, but most of the sensory information that we take on on a daily basis is going to be either visual or audio. Our audio or echoic memory is going to process sound and keep it in our sensory registry for about three seconds. Our visual or iconic memory is going to process visual stimuli and registers it for roughly a quarter of a second. Visual information is a little more prominent than echoic information.... explaining why our echoic memory lasts a little bit longer than our iconic memory. Our sensory memory registry was discovered in 1960 by a scientist named George Sperling. Sperling would have subjects stare at a screen where rows of letters were projected anywhere from 1 20th of a second to 1 second. After the letters were projected, a tone would sound, signifying a specific row for the subject to recall. A low tone represents the bottom row. A medium tone represents the middle row. And a high tone represents the bottom row. High tone represents the top row. In the center of our screen, you can see there is a matrix. Now we are going to replicate Sperling's experiment. What I want you to do is stare at this matrix. Roughly two seconds after I say go, I will flash letters on the projector. Immediately after the letters leave the screen, a tone will sound. Use that tone to determine which row to recall. All right, are we ready? Three, two, one, go. So, did you pick up on that? The high-pitched tone sounded, meaning we recall the top row of letters, which is MWH. If you got it, great job. If not, don't worry about it. For an accurate test of your sensory memory, you would go through multiple rounds of this type of... testing. Erling found that when letters were projected for at least a quarter of a second, subjects could recall the sensory information. Once the information is in our sensory registry, one of two things can happen next. We can disregard the information and forget all about it, or we can pay attention to it. When we give attention to a certain stimuli, it moves from our sensory memory to our short-term memory. Our short-term memory is just going to be a brief storage system that holds items that we are aware of and working with at any given time. These are things that we are consciously aware of and currently thinking about. The magical number seven plus or minus two, some limits on our capacity for processing information, published by George M. Miller in 1956, is one of the most highly cited research papers in psychology. Miller's research argues that our short-term memory can contain seven items plus or minus two. So our capacity for short-term memory is going to be anywhere from five to nine items. However, we are not solely limited to this number. Miller found that we have the cognitive ability to chunk together information in order to improve the... ...capacity of our short-term memory. Let's try an example. I'm going to display 12 random letters on the screen and give you 10 seconds to study these letters. After the 10 seconds is up, I want you to try and recall as many of these letters as possible. If Miller's research is correct, a majority of us will only be able to recall anywhere from five to nine of these letters. So are we ready? Go! Alright, ten seconds is up. So chances are you had some issues remembering all of the letters. So let's try this again. This time I'm going to try and take this meaningless list of letters and provide some meaning to them. In order for you to recall the information a little easier. So are you ready for test number two? Alright, here we go. Ten seconds on the clock. Let's get started. Alright, so chances are you were able to recall all 12 letters the second time around. Even though in both tests we used the same letters, why was it so much easier to remember more of the letters in the second test? Well, in the second test, we used the cognitive process of chunking. Chunking is going to... allow us to retrieve information from our long-term memory in order to provide meaning to newly formed memories, allowing for us to retain and pick up on this information much easier. When studying short-term memory, we often see this phrase working memory being thrown around. Oftentimes working memory and short-term memory are used interchangeably, but for the AP test, that's not going to be the case. In 1974, psychologist Alan Baddeley theorized a model for working memory. Baddeley's model for working memory basically states that working memory is going to be the temporary storage space and used for active conscious manipulation of information needed for complex cognitive tasks such as learning and problem solving. Baddeley argued that our short-term memory is responsible for much more than just chunking, rehearsing, and the passive storage of information. He argued that we are not only storing this information in the short term, but manipulating it as well. Our short-term memory lasts roughly 20 seconds unless this information is rehearsed. Maintenance rehearsal or shallow processing is when we simply repeat information to ourselves in order to surpass the 20-second limit that our short-term memory has. Once information is properly encoded into our short-term memory, we arrive at our final destination of long-term memory. Encoding referrals to the process of transforming information into a form that can be entered into and retained by the memory systems. Long-term memory is going to refer to the storage of information over an extended period of time. Technically, any information that is stored longer than 20 seconds is considered a long-term memory. Theoretically speaking, our long-term memory has a limitless capacity and can last forever. For information to be properly encoded into our long-term memory, we have to utilize some form of rehearsal. We already talked about maintenance rehearsal. which is just going to be the simple repetition of information, now we're going to talk about a more detailed form of rehearsal, elaborative rehearsal. Elaborative rehearsal is going to be connecting old memories with new memories in order to strengthen the encoding of the new information. To effectively use elaborative rehearsal, you need to associate this new information with information that is already stored. So we know how information is stored into our long-term memory, but exactly what type of information is stored in long-term memory? We have episodic and semantic memories which we consider declarative and we have our procedural memories which are considered non-declarative. Episodic memories are going to refer to our personally experienced events. These are things like what you had for breakfast or what you did last year for your birthday. Semantic memories are going to be general factual knowledge. When you're remembering different terms and concepts for the AP psych test that information is being stored semantically. Procedural memories are those that relate to skills or habits. Think of typing on your laptop or texting on your phone. These are procedural memories. You are not conscious aware of a lot of these actions. Think about it, you can probably text away on your phone without even looking at your keyboard and have minimum errors. However, if I asked you to put your phone away and to draw out each key on the keyboard, chances are it will be pretty challenging. Recall refers to the act of retrieving information or events from the past while lacking a specific cue to help in the retrieval of the information. While recognition is going to be characterized by a feeling of familiarity when something previously experienced is again encountered. event is re-experienced, this environmental content is matched to stored memory representation. The serial position effect is our tendency to recall items first and last. ...last on the list rather than those in the middle. If I were to take a shopping list with me to the store and I accidentally left it in my car, and since I'm too lazy to go back to my car and get it, chances are it would be easier for me to recall the information that was first on the list and the information that was last on the list. struggle a little bit to get those items that were located on the center of the list. The encoding specificity principle states that human memories are more easily retrieved if external conditions at the time of retrieval are similar to those in existence at the time the memory was stored. If you were set to take a very important test at school, according to the encoding specificity principle, it might benefit you to study in the classroom where the test is being administered. Bringing back the context effect, which is a cognitive process that describes the influence of environmental factors on our perception. The context effect explains why we are flooded with retrieval cues when visiting our old school or a childhood home. Mood congruent memory indicates that when we as humans store memories, we not only store the memory of what happened, but also the mood we were in when it happened. Forgetting is going to be our... inability to recall information that we were previously able to recall. Although forgetting can be annoying, it does have a practical value. Our brain would be filled with tons of pointless information if it remembered every little thing that came its way. In the 1870s, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus began his research on the scientific study of forgetting. Ebbinghaus'goal was to study how much information was forgotten over different periods of time, but he wanted to make sure that it was completely new information that was being forgotten rather than information he had pre-existing associations with. Ebbinghaus carefully noted how many times he had to repeat a list of 13 nonsense syllables before he could recall the list perfectly. After Ebbinghaus learned the nonsense syllables, he tested his recall after varying amounts of time, ranging from 20 minutes to 31 days, where he plotted his results on what is now known as the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve. One major issue with Ebbinghaus'experimental design was the sample size. It was just himself. But why exactly do we forget? We are going to take a look at a few things. theories. Have you ever had someone introduce themselves to you and just seconds later you completely forgot their name? Why exactly does this happen? Well, chances are you never properly encoded all of this information into your long-term memory in the first place. This is what is known as encoding failure. Encoding failure is just going to be the inability to recall information because you did not encode enough of that information into long-term memory. The decay theory is going to be the biological explanation for why we forget. The decay theory states that we forget because of normal biological processes in our... brain. Metabolic processes occurring in our brain eventually break down a memory if it is not used. The idea is that when a new memory is formed, a metabolic change in the brain occurs. If this memory is not refreshed, it will eventually decay away. Think of this as an old billboard you see when you're driving down a country road. All the letters and the pictures are probably a little faded or torn as a result of the weather or outside elements. Since this billboard is not refreshed, it starts to decay and will eventually be completely blank. Kind of like our memory if consistently not refreshed. Proactive interference is when pre- previously learned information inhibits the retrieval of newly encoded information, while retroactive interference is when newly learned information interferes with the retrieval of older information. An example of this could be you calling your ex-best friend by your new best friend's name. Uh oh to that drama. Suppressed memories are those that we are actively trying not to think of, like trying to forget about the fact that you called your ex-best friend by your new best friend's name, while repressed memories are going to be memories that have been blocked from conscious awareness. This could be you blocking out the fact that your new best friend doesn't want to talk to you ever again. again after finding out about the incident with your ex-best friend. We just talked about what happens when we forget and how we forget, but what exactly has to occur for us to remember something that never actually occurred in the first place? Elizabeth Loftus is a famous cognitive psychologist who has committed years of research in an attempt to explain things called false memories. We're going to see human memory does not function like a video camera. It does not take a perfect copy of information and store it into our brain. A false memory is just going to be a case where we remember things differently from the way they actually occur. In extreme cases, remembering events that never happened at all. Over the years, Loftus has come up with several theories explaining why our memories are so malleable. The misinformation effect is going to be a memory distortion effect, where existing memories can be altered if we're exposed to misleading information. The misinformation effect can be explained through source confusion. Source confusion is going to be when you forget the original source of a memory. If you have holes in your memory, misinformation provided after the fact can fill these holes, leading to false memories. Schema distortion can occur when we fill in the blanks of our memory. memories with pre-existing schemas. In the classic psychology professor office study, students were sat in a psychology professor's office by themselves for a few minutes. They were then brought to another room where they were asked to recall any of the items they remember seeing in the psychology professor's office. A lot of participants remembered things in the room that were not actually there, such as books, cabinets, filing papers. Why exactly did this happen? Well, when digging around for this information, we will fill holes in our memory with these schemas or pre-existing schemas. existing expectations. It's reasonable to think that items like those would be in a psychology professor's office, so it helps explain why the false memory occurs. Loftus also stated that false memories can occur as a result of imagination inflation. In a classic experiment, Loftus gave participants written description of four childhood memories that the experimenters said were provided by relatives. Three of the events actually did occur. However, one of the events of getting lost in a shopping mall was made up. The participants were then asked to think in detail about these events over the next few weeks. weeks. When the participants returned, some had elaborate stories and even added information about the time that they supposedly got lost in the shopping mall. Loftus concluded that vividly imagining an event can increase the confidence that that event actually occurred. Several areas of our brain are responsible for memory. The prefrontal cortex helps with memories involving the sequencing of events. The amygdala encodes our emotional aspects of memory. The cerebellum assists with memories involving movement. And the hippocampus encodes and transfers. new explicit memories to long-term memory. Problems with memory do occur and for various underlying reasons. Retrograde amnesia is a form of amnesia where someone is unable to recall events that have occurred before the development of the amnesia, even though they may be able to encode and remember new things after the amnesia has developed. Retrograde amnesia is a major symptom found in Alzheimer's disease. Antrograde amnesia is the opposite. Antrograde amnesia occurs when there is a decreased ability to encode information and to form new memories. Henry Molaison knew as HM was an American man who had a temporal lobotomy which removed his entire hippocampus. At age seven Henry was struck by a bicycler and started to experience daily epileptic seizures. Dr. William Scoville localized the source of the seizures to the hippocampus. Scoville performed the first ever surgery where the entire hippocampus was removed. The surgery was a success in the fact that Henry stopped experiencing seizures. However, Henry is now unable to form new memories. As a result of the HM case, study, scientists now know the importance of the hippocampus. Now that we know how we remember information, we can start to focus on how we actively process incoming information and how information that is already stored acts with incoming stimuli. To start things off, I want to run a little experiment and problem solving with you. All you need to do is answer the simple questions that I give you as fast as you can. This can all be done in your head, no need to write anything down. Are we ready? All right, let's go. 113 plus 65. 54 plus 44. 78 plus 52. 83 plus 72. Now quickly, think of a color and a tool. Now there's a very high chance that you just thought of Red Hammer. If you did, there's a very simple explanation for this. I am not a mind reader. Maybe. Thinking involves the use of concepts and prototypes. A concept is just going to be a mental category. of objects or ideas based on the properties that they share. A prototype is going to be the most typical instance of a particular concept. In our experiment, both prototypes and concepts were used. Concepts of what a tool is and what colors are allowed us to pull information from from these mental categories. Since I asked for you to think of a response as quickly as possible, it gives you very little time to think. Your brain goes directly to the prototype of these concepts. A hammer can be considered a prototype for tools, while red can be considered a prototype for colors. Now let's take a look at some problem solving strategies. When we are faced with a problem, how do we go about solving it? Psychologists have identified several cognitive processes involved in problem solving. An algorithm is a step-by-step procedure that when used properly will always lead to a solution. An example of an algorithm could be the following. formula for converting Celsius to Fahrenheit. Whatever temperature it is in Celsius, you multiply that by 9 over 5, then you add 32, and that will always equal Fahrenheit. Regardless of the degree Celsius, this formula will always produce a correct solution when used properly. Sometimes we take mental shortcuts in order to cut down on the problem-solving time. Let's say you need to find a definition in your textbook. Well, you know the definition is going to be in chapter 5, so you skip ahead to chapter 5 instead of flipping through each page looking for your definition. Heuristics are going to be... rule of thumb strategies that allow us to solve problems and make judgment. Trial and error is considered one of our most fundamental heuristics. Trial and error is a problem solving strategy that involves attempting different solutions and eliminating ones that do not work. As we learned in our last review, insight learning is the sudden realization of the solution to a problem. Remember, we talked about salt and the chimp combining two rods together in order to get a banana that was placed out of his reach. Even though we as humans are great at solving problems, we do sometimes face obstacles during our problems. solving. Confirmation bias is when we tend to seek out evidence that only confirms to our existing beliefs while ignoring evidence that contradicts them. Fixation occurs when we have the inability to see a problem from another perspective. Fixation often occurs as a result of a mental set. A mental set refers to our tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, especially ways that have worked in the past. Let's say my computer has recently been running very slow. In the past to fix this I've simply turned it off and back on again. Now I come to the problem with a mental set in mind. After turning it off and on again it still runs very slow. I try resetting it once more and still nothing. Fixating on this mental set is hindering my ability to solve my problem. Functional fixedness is going to be our tendency to view things or objects only in their customary manner, this is going to prevent us from fully seeing all of the options that we might have available in helping us solve a problem. A simple example, let's say there's something out of my reach and all I have is a chair. The function of a chair is a tool that we use to sit on. If I were not able to overcome functional fixedness, that's the only way I would view a chair. But since we as human have problem solving abilities, I know that I can grab the chair, stand on top of it, and reach up to grab my object. This is an example of overcoming functional fixedness. Overconfidence is our tendency to be more confident than correct. With overconfidence, we overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments. Overconfidence can lead us to overlooking certain aspects of our problem. The way we are presented with or frame issues can also hinder our ability to solve problems. Framing is simply the way an issue is posed. How an issue is framed can significantly affect the decisions and judgments of individuals. Let's say a new medicine to treat the common cold just came out and the only side effect was migraines. We Which medicine would you buy? One that says 3% chance of migraine, or one that states that it has a 97% chance of no side effects. Heuristics can also lead to issues with our problem solving. The representative heuristic is a rule of thumb for judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they fit a particular prototype. For instance, meet Bob. He loves reading published psychology research and writing poetry. Chances are you would not assume that Bob's career is a sanitation engineer, which it is. The availability heuristic is when we estimate the likelihood of an event occurring. occurring based on the availability of the information that we have. We always hear about people who cash out big on the lottery. So when we're at the gas station and we see the Mega Million sign, that information comes available to us and influences our decision to purchase a lottery ticket. Even though we're more likely to be struck by lightning, we still buy that ticket. Next up, we have intelligence. According to psychologists, intelligence is our ability to think rationally, to act purposefully, and to deal effectively with our environment. When looking at intelligence in regards to psychology, there are two important questions. How do we measure intelligence and what is the nature of intelligence? So how exactly do we measure intelligence? What are the characteristics of an intelligent person? This has been a debate going back and forth between cognitive psychologists for years now. Amongst some of the well-known cognitive psychologists, we have Alfred Binet, Louis Terman, and David Weschler. In the early 1900s, the French government passed a law stating that all children must attend school. With this new challenge of having to educate a bunch of children from a... wide variety of educational backgrounds, the French government hired Alfred Binet to create an intelligence test. Binet would then go to establish the first systematic intelligence test. Binet structured the questions on the test so that the further you go into the test, the harder the questions get. He found that bright children appear to perform like older children, meaning a bright seven-year-old performs like an average nine-year-old, while a least capable child who was seven might score around the same as the average five-year-old. This gave Binet the idea of a... a mental age, which is just going to be a measure of intelligence where the mental level of a child is expressed in terms of the average ability of a given age group. The popularity of Binet's test in the United States led to Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman developing a revised version which he named the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. First published in 1916, the test for many years was the standard for intelligence testing in the US. The results of Terman's test gave an intelligence quotient or an IQ, which is going to be a measure of general intelligence. intelligence that we get by comparing individual scores with the score of others in that same age group. David Weschler's dissatisfaction with the Stanford-Binet test led him to create an intelligence test of his own, known as the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale, or the WAIS, which was first published by Weschler in 1955. The major difference between Weschler's test and the Stanford-Binet test was that the goal of Weschler's test was to measure several different mental abilities, such as a verbal score or a performance score. Weschler believed that intelligence was much more than just being very very smart. He thought there were several factors involved in being intelligent. Sabin syndrome is a condition where an extremely high level of talent can co-occur with developmental conditions. Psychologists today still do not agree on the basic nature of intelligence, including whether it is a single mental ability or if it includes multiple mental abilities. Charles Spearman is going to agree on a general mental capacity. So he basically thinks that if you do poor on one area of an intelligence test, you'll do poor on all areas. Spearman believed in general intelligence or the g factor. The g-factor is basically a notion of the of a general intelligence factor that is going to be responsible for a person's overall performance on tests of mental ability. Charles Spearman is a huge proponent of IQ being an accurate measure of a person's mental ability. Psychologists such as Howard Gardner and Robert Sternberg would disagree with Spearman's idea of a G-factor. Howard Gardner is going to stretch the definition of intelligence. Rather than analyzing intelligence test results, Gardner is going to look at the kind of skills and products that are valued in different cultures. Gardner's test measured multiple intelligence and identified different learning methods. learning styles such as logical, mathematical, musical, or bodily kinesthetic. Very popular in the field of education for over 30 years, recently the learning style theory has come under some scrutiny. According to a major report published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, nearly all studies that attempt to provide evidence for learning styles fail to satisfy key criteria for scientific validity. Robert Sternberg is going to agree with Gardner that intelligence is a much broader quality than is reflected in the narrow range of mental abilities measured by conventional... IQ test of multiple independent intelligences. Sternberg is going to propose the triarchic theory of intelligence, which states that there are three distinct forms of intelligence. We're going to have analytical intelligence, creative intelligence, and practical intelligence, which is just referring to our street smarts or how we adapt to our environment. Today, psychologists use several factors in measuring intelligence. Abstract versus verbal measures refers to IQ tests containing a diverse mix of questions that tap abstract reasoning skills. They are intended to measure intellectual potential rather than factual knowledge, but they really reflect a little of both. Speed of processing refers to how quickly we're able to process information. For example, the IQ test is a timed test. This leads to the assumption that faster is smarter. Fluid intelligence is our ability to solve new problems, use logic in new situations, and identify patterns. While crystallized intelligence refers to our ability to use learned knowledge and experience. Many kinds of psychological tests measure various aspects of mental ability or intelligence. An achievement test test is designed to measure a person's level of knowledge, skill, or accomplishment in a particular way. These types of tests attempt to measure what you have already learned. Things like an AP psych test or a math test fall under this category. Aptitude tests are designed to predict a person's future performance. Things like the SAT or a college entrance exam fall under this category. The overall goal of an aptitude test is to predict your ability to learn certain types of information or perform certain skills. Just like in Unit 1 when we talked about reliability and validity and research. The same holds true for test construction. A test must be reliable or producing consistent results, and it also must be valid or measuring what it's intended to measure. Now back to our reoccurring theme of nature versus nurture. How much of our intelligence is a result of our genetics versus the influence of our environment? As mentioned before, the best way to settle the nature versus nurture debate appears to be with twin studies. The graph here shows the average correlation of IQ scores of individuals who are genetically related to varying degrees. The graph shows summaries of results from 100 different twin studies. using a hundred thousand pairs of relatives. Well what conclusions can we draw from this graph? Well we can see that both genetic and environmental influences play a role in our level of intelligence. Genetics is shown by the fact that the closer the genetic relationship the more similar IQ scores. Environmental influences are demonstrated by two findings. One, two people who are genetically identical but raised in different environments have different IQ scores. And two, people who are genetically unrelated but raised in the same house have IQs that are much more similar than are those of two unrelated people from randomly selected homes. This is the idea of heritability. Heritability is the percentage of variation within a given population that is due to heredity. Using studies based on genetic relatedness, as well as sophisticated statistical techniques to analyze the data, researchers have estimated that 50% of the difference in IQ scores within a given population is due to genetic factors. Keywords here being within a given population. So if I have an IQ of 200, which is actually pretty close, which is around... and down a little bit. It does not mean a hundred of those points are because of where I went to school and a hundred of those points are due to my genetics. It simply means that 50% of the differences in IQ scores within a specific group of people is due to the differences in their genetic makeup. Group differences in average IQ scores do exist. In many societies, minority groups tend to score lower than majority groups. The reason for this is often explained in a two pot analogy. Suppose you have a bag of corn seeds and two pots. You spread an even amount of seeds into pot A and pot B. Pot A is filled with rich, well-fertilized soil, while Pot B is filled with very poor soil with very few nutrients. Since the seeds are not genetically identical, the plants in both pots will vary in height. Given the environment, which is our soil, is the same for all the plants in each particular pot, the variation within each group shows the effect of heredity. However, when the average height of the plants are measured, Pot A's plants have a higher average. Due to the environment of each plant being so different, it is impossible to estimate the overall overall genetic difference between the two groups of seeds. And our last topic of discussion for our Unit 5 review on cognition is going to be language. Language is simply going to refer to the way that we communicate meaning to ourselves and others. This can be spoken, written, or gestured. A phoneme is the smallest distinct unit of sound found in a language. These are just the sounds we produce that make up our words. The word dog uses four phonemes as shown here on the screen. Morphemes are the smallest unit of meaning in a language. The word dog is the smallest unit of meaning in a language. The word incoming has three morphemes. We have in, come, and ing. All three of those words have meaning in the English language. Grammar refers to a system of rules in a language that enable us to communicate with and understand others. Semantics are the set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences. An example would be by adding the letters ed at the end of the word laugh to show that it has happened in the past. Over-regularization occurs when a grammatical rule is applied too widely and it creates... in incorrect form, most commonly seen when little kids say things like, I beat him in the game, or I holded the door open. Syntax are the rules for combining words into grammatically correct sentences. Babies are going to go through three stages of speech before coming little talking machines. Babbling starts around the age of four months and consists of noises made by all babies. Hollow phrases are one-word phrases babies make around 12 months. Telegraphic speech is going to be two-word phrases that babies use around the age of 24 months. In 1967, linguist Eric Leningberg is going to further popularize Montreal neurologist Wilder Penfield's critical period hypothesis. The critical period hypothesis basically states that if children are not exposed to language before a certain age, they will be unable to acquire language. A cognitive psychologist and linguist, Noam Chomsky, would further Leningberg's research. Chomsky stated that we are all born with innate speech-enabling structures in our brain that allow us to learn language. This structure Chomsky referred to as the cognitive structure. referred to as the Language Acquisition Device, or LAD. Chomsky noted that all language, regardless of geographic restriction, have the same grammatical building blocks. These are things such as nouns, verbs, and objects. Chomsky referred to this as universal grammar. Chomsky concluded that all language is biologically determined in the human brain, and hence genetically transmitted, and making it a product of nature and not nurture, which psychologists such as B.F. Skinner previously assumed. Can language affect our cognition? That is a question Benjamin Worf tasked himself with answering. Worf wanted to know if language does more than just describe a person's cultural background. He argued that language may also shape a person's thoughts and perceptions through his linguistic relativity hypothesis. Worf's hypothesis is not necessarily apparent to those who only speak one language. But for those who speak two dissimilar languages, such as English and Japanese, it becomes much more apparent. Unlike English, which has a rich vocabulary for self-explanatory, self-focused emotions such as anger. Japanese has many more words for interpersonal emotions such as sympathy. Researchers have even shown that bilingual individuals can reveal two different personalities on the same personality tests when taken separately in both languages. And that does it for our Unit 5 review. As always, be sure you are answering the questions at the end of each unit in your review packet. This will make sure that you understand everything we talked about today. Now I will see you guys. guys next time for our unit six review on developmental psychology peace out

receives on a daily basis. In this review, we're going to be taking a look at memory, thinking and problem solving, intelligence, and we'll finish off with language. This unit is going to deal all with cognitive processes.

Remember, cognition is just going to be the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge. knowledge and understanding through thought, experiences, and our senses. Oh yeah, and before I forget, be sure to be following along with your review guide.

Take the notes. You will thank me when you have it all finished. Scientists have constructed several models that explain how our memory works.

However, no single model has been able to capture every single aspect of human memory. One very influential model, the stage model of memory, proposed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Schreifen, will be very useful in explaining the basic workings of human memory. In this model, memory is characterized into three distinct stages.

We have the sensory memory registry, our short-term memory, and our long-term memory. Remembering starts with our sensory memory. Sensory information from the outside world is first picked up by our sensory registry. Our sensory memory is just going to be the stage of memory that registers information from the environment and holds on to it for a very brief amount of time. I'm talking seconds here.

Has something like this ever happened to you? You're sitting on the couch watching TV when someone in your house... asks you a question such as, hey, where are the car keys? You respond with what, but not a split second later, the question registers in your mind and you're able to respond before the person repeats themselves. You are able to process this information from your environment because your sensory memory picked up on the audio stimuli for just enough time for you to process the information.

Our sensory memory is where all of our sensory information is registered. The sensory memory is going to have a very large capacity for information. However, since it can hold large amounts of information, it's...

duration does suffer, only lasting a quarter of a second to three seconds, depending on which sense is taking in the information. Sensory memory is going to deal with all of our senses, but most of the sensory information that we take on on a daily basis is going to be either visual or audio. Our audio or echoic memory is going to process sound and keep it in our sensory registry for about three seconds.

Our visual or iconic memory is going to process visual stimuli and registers it for roughly a quarter of a second. Visual information is a little more prominent than echoic information.... explaining why our echoic memory lasts a little bit longer than our iconic memory. Our sensory memory registry was discovered in 1960 by a scientist named George Sperling.

Sperling would have subjects stare at a screen where rows of letters were projected anywhere from 1 20th of a second to 1 second. After the letters were projected, a tone would sound, signifying a specific row for the subject to recall. A low tone represents the bottom row.

A medium tone represents the middle row. And a high tone represents the bottom row. High tone represents the top row.

In the center of our screen, you can see there is a matrix. Now we are going to replicate Sperling's experiment. What I want you to do is stare at this matrix. Roughly two seconds after I say go, I will flash letters on the projector. Immediately after the letters leave the screen, a tone will sound.

Use that tone to determine which row to recall. All right, are we ready? Three, two, one, go.

So, did you pick up on that? The high-pitched tone sounded, meaning we recall the top row of letters, which is MWH. If you got it, great job. If not, don't worry about it. For an accurate test of your sensory memory, you would go through multiple rounds of this type of...

testing. Erling found that when letters were projected for at least a quarter of a second, subjects could recall the sensory information. Once the information is in our sensory registry, one of two things can happen next.

We can disregard the information and forget all about it, or we can pay attention to it. When we give attention to a certain stimuli, it moves from our sensory memory to our short-term memory. Our short-term memory is just going to be a brief storage system that holds items that we are aware of and working with at any given time. These are things that we are consciously aware of and currently thinking about.

The magical number seven plus or minus two, some limits on our capacity for processing information, published by George M. Miller in 1956, is one of the most highly cited research papers in psychology. Miller's research argues that our short-term memory can contain seven items plus or minus two. So our capacity for short-term memory is going to be anywhere from five to nine items. However, we are not solely limited to this number. Miller found that we have the cognitive ability to chunk together information in order to improve the...

...capacity of our short-term memory. Let's try an example. I'm going to display 12 random letters on the screen and give you 10 seconds to study these letters. After the 10 seconds is up, I want you to try and recall as many of these letters as possible.

If Miller's research is correct, a majority of us will only be able to recall anywhere from five to nine of these letters. So are we ready? Go!

Alright, ten seconds is up. So chances are you had some issues remembering all of the letters. So let's try this again. This time I'm going to try and take this meaningless list of letters and provide some meaning to them.

In order for you to recall the information a little easier. So are you ready for test number two? Alright, here we go.

Ten seconds on the clock. Let's get started. Alright, so chances are you were able to recall all 12 letters the second time around.

Even though in both tests we used the same letters, why was it so much easier to remember more of the letters in the second test? Well, in the second test, we used the cognitive process of chunking. Chunking is going to...

allow us to retrieve information from our long-term memory in order to provide meaning to newly formed memories, allowing for us to retain and pick up on this information much easier. When studying short-term memory, we often see this phrase working memory being thrown around. Oftentimes working memory and short-term memory are used interchangeably, but for the AP test, that's not going to be the case. In 1974, psychologist Alan Baddeley theorized a model for working memory. Baddeley's model for working memory basically states that working memory is going to be the temporary storage space and used for active conscious manipulation of information needed for complex cognitive tasks such as learning and problem solving.

Baddeley argued that our short-term memory is responsible for much more than just chunking, rehearsing, and the passive storage of information. He argued that we are not only storing this information in the short term, but manipulating it as well. Our short-term memory lasts roughly 20 seconds unless this information is rehearsed.

Maintenance rehearsal or shallow processing is when we simply repeat information to ourselves in order to surpass the 20-second limit that our short-term memory has. Once information is properly encoded into our short-term memory, we arrive at our final destination of long-term memory. Encoding referrals to the process of transforming information into a form that can be entered into and retained by the memory systems. Long-term memory is going to refer to the storage of information over an extended period of time. Technically, any information that is stored longer than 20 seconds is considered a long-term memory.

Theoretically speaking, our long-term memory has a limitless capacity and can last forever. For information to be properly encoded into our long-term memory, we have to utilize some form of rehearsal. We already talked about maintenance rehearsal. which is just going to be the simple repetition of information, now we're going to talk about a more detailed form of rehearsal, elaborative rehearsal.

Elaborative rehearsal is going to be connecting old memories with new memories in order to strengthen the encoding of the new information. To effectively use elaborative rehearsal, you need to associate this new information with information that is already stored. So we know how information is stored into our long-term memory, but exactly what type of information is stored in long-term memory? We have episodic and semantic memories which we consider declarative and we have our procedural memories which are considered non-declarative. Episodic memories are going to refer to our personally experienced events.

These are things like what you had for breakfast or what you did last year for your birthday. Semantic memories are going to be general factual knowledge. When you're remembering different terms and concepts for the AP psych test that information is being stored semantically. Procedural memories are those that relate to skills or habits. Think of typing on your laptop or texting on your phone.

These are procedural memories. You are not conscious aware of a lot of these actions. Think about it, you can probably text away on your phone without even looking at your keyboard and have minimum errors. However, if I asked you to put your phone away and to draw out each key on the keyboard, chances are it will be pretty challenging.

Recall refers to the act of retrieving information or events from the past while lacking a specific cue to help in the retrieval of the information. While recognition is going to be characterized by a feeling of familiarity when something previously experienced is again encountered. event is re-experienced, this environmental content is matched to stored memory representation.

The serial position effect is our tendency to recall items first and last. ...last on the list rather than those in the middle. If I were to take a shopping list with me to the store and I accidentally left it in my car, and since I'm too lazy to go back to my car and get it, chances are it would be easier for me to recall the information that was first on the list and the information that was last on the list.

struggle a little bit to get those items that were located on the center of the list. The encoding specificity principle states that human memories are more easily retrieved if external conditions at the time of retrieval are similar to those in existence at the time the memory was stored. If you were set to take a very important test at school, according to the encoding specificity principle, it might benefit you to study in the classroom where the test is being administered.

Bringing back the context effect, which is a cognitive process that describes the influence of environmental factors on our perception. The context effect explains why we are flooded with retrieval cues when visiting our old school or a childhood home. Mood congruent memory indicates that when we as humans store memories, we not only store the memory of what happened, but also the mood we were in when it happened. Forgetting is going to be our... inability to recall information that we were previously able to recall.

Although forgetting can be annoying, it does have a practical value. Our brain would be filled with tons of pointless information if it remembered every little thing that came its way. In the 1870s, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus began his research on the scientific study of forgetting. Ebbinghaus'goal was to study how much information was forgotten over different periods of time, but he wanted to make sure that it was completely new information that was being forgotten rather than information he had pre-existing associations with.

Ebbinghaus carefully noted how many times he had to repeat a list of 13 nonsense syllables before he could recall the list perfectly. After Ebbinghaus learned the nonsense syllables, he tested his recall after varying amounts of time, ranging from 20 minutes to 31 days, where he plotted his results on what is now known as the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve. One major issue with Ebbinghaus'experimental design was the sample size. It was just himself.

But why exactly do we forget? We are going to take a look at a few things. theories. Have you ever had someone introduce themselves to you and just seconds later you completely forgot their name? Why exactly does this happen?

Well, chances are you never properly encoded all of this information into your long-term memory in the first place. This is what is known as encoding failure. Encoding failure is just going to be the inability to recall information because you did not encode enough of that information into long-term memory.

The decay theory is going to be the biological explanation for why we forget. The decay theory states that we forget because of normal biological processes in our... brain.

Metabolic processes occurring in our brain eventually break down a memory if it is not used. The idea is that when a new memory is formed, a metabolic change in the brain occurs. If this memory is not refreshed, it will eventually decay away.

Think of this as an old billboard you see when you're driving down a country road. All the letters and the pictures are probably a little faded or torn as a result of the weather or outside elements. Since this billboard is not refreshed, it starts to decay and will eventually be completely blank. Kind of like our memory if consistently not refreshed. Proactive interference is when pre- previously learned information inhibits the retrieval of newly encoded information, while retroactive interference is when newly learned information interferes with the retrieval of older information.

An example of this could be you calling your ex-best friend by your new best friend's name. Uh oh to that drama. Suppressed memories are those that we are actively trying not to think of, like trying to forget about the fact that you called your ex-best friend by your new best friend's name, while repressed memories are going to be memories that have been blocked from conscious awareness. This could be you blocking out the fact that your new best friend doesn't want to talk to you ever again.

again after finding out about the incident with your ex-best friend. We just talked about what happens when we forget and how we forget, but what exactly has to occur for us to remember something that never actually occurred in the first place? Elizabeth Loftus is a famous cognitive psychologist who has committed years of research in an attempt to explain things called false memories.

We're going to see human memory does not function like a video camera. It does not take a perfect copy of information and store it into our brain. A false memory is just going to be a case where we remember things differently from the way they actually occur. In extreme cases, remembering events that never happened at all. Over the years, Loftus has come up with several theories explaining why our memories are so malleable.

The misinformation effect is going to be a memory distortion effect, where existing memories can be altered if we're exposed to misleading information. The misinformation effect can be explained through source confusion. Source confusion is going to be when you forget the original source of a memory.

If you have holes in your memory, misinformation provided after the fact can fill these holes, leading to false memories. Schema distortion can occur when we fill in the blanks of our memory. memories with pre-existing schemas.

In the classic psychology professor office study, students were sat in a psychology professor's office by themselves for a few minutes. They were then brought to another room where they were asked to recall any of the items they remember seeing in the psychology professor's office. A lot of participants remembered things in the room that were not actually there, such as books, cabinets, filing papers. Why exactly did this happen? Well, when digging around for this information, we will fill holes in our memory with these schemas or pre-existing schemas.

existing expectations. It's reasonable to think that items like those would be in a psychology professor's office, so it helps explain why the false memory occurs. Loftus also stated that false memories can occur as a result of imagination inflation. In a classic experiment, Loftus gave participants written description of four childhood memories that the experimenters said were provided by relatives. Three of the events actually did occur.

However, one of the events of getting lost in a shopping mall was made up. The participants were then asked to think in detail about these events over the next few weeks. weeks. When the participants returned, some had elaborate stories and even added information about the time that they supposedly got lost in the shopping mall.

Loftus concluded that vividly imagining an event can increase the confidence that that event actually occurred. Several areas of our brain are responsible for memory. The prefrontal cortex helps with memories involving the sequencing of events.

The amygdala encodes our emotional aspects of memory. The cerebellum assists with memories involving movement. And the hippocampus encodes and transfers. new explicit memories to long-term memory. Problems with memory do occur and for various underlying reasons.

Retrograde amnesia is a form of amnesia where someone is unable to recall events that have occurred before the development of the amnesia, even though they may be able to encode and remember new things after the amnesia has developed. Retrograde amnesia is a major symptom found in Alzheimer's disease. Antrograde amnesia is the opposite. Antrograde amnesia occurs when there is a decreased ability to encode information and to form new memories.

Henry Molaison knew as HM was an American man who had a temporal lobotomy which removed his entire hippocampus. At age seven Henry was struck by a bicycler and started to experience daily epileptic seizures. Dr. William Scoville localized the source of the seizures to the hippocampus.

Scoville performed the first ever surgery where the entire hippocampus was removed. The surgery was a success in the fact that Henry stopped experiencing seizures. However, Henry is now unable to form new memories.

As a result of the HM case, study, scientists now know the importance of the hippocampus. Now that we know how we remember information, we can start to focus on how we actively process incoming information and how information that is already stored acts with incoming stimuli. To start things off, I want to run a little experiment and problem solving with you. All you need to do is answer the simple questions that I give you as fast as you can. This can all be done in your head, no need to write anything down.

Are we ready? All right, let's go. 113 plus 65. 54 plus 44. 78 plus 52. 83 plus 72. Now quickly, think of a color and a tool.

Now there's a very high chance that you just thought of Red Hammer. If you did, there's a very simple explanation for this. I am not a mind reader.

Maybe. Thinking involves the use of concepts and prototypes. A concept is just going to be a mental category.

of objects or ideas based on the properties that they share. A prototype is going to be the most typical instance of a particular concept. In our experiment, both prototypes and concepts were used.

Concepts of what a tool is and what colors are allowed us to pull information from from these mental categories. Since I asked for you to think of a response as quickly as possible, it gives you very little time to think. Your brain goes directly to the prototype of these concepts. A hammer can be considered a prototype for tools, while red can be considered a prototype for colors. Now let's take a look at some problem solving strategies.

When we are faced with a problem, how do we go about solving it? Psychologists have identified several cognitive processes involved in problem solving. An algorithm is a step-by-step procedure that when used properly will always lead to a solution. An example of an algorithm could be the following.

formula for converting Celsius to Fahrenheit. Whatever temperature it is in Celsius, you multiply that by 9 over 5, then you add 32, and that will always equal Fahrenheit. Regardless of the degree Celsius, this formula will always produce a correct solution when used properly. Sometimes we take mental shortcuts in order to cut down on the problem-solving time.

Let's say you need to find a definition in your textbook. Well, you know the definition is going to be in chapter 5, so you skip ahead to chapter 5 instead of flipping through each page looking for your definition. Heuristics are going to be...

rule of thumb strategies that allow us to solve problems and make judgment. Trial and error is considered one of our most fundamental heuristics. Trial and error is a problem solving strategy that involves attempting different solutions and eliminating ones that do not work.

As we learned in our last review, insight learning is the sudden realization of the solution to a problem. Remember, we talked about salt and the chimp combining two rods together in order to get a banana that was placed out of his reach. Even though we as humans are great at solving problems, we do sometimes face obstacles during our problems. solving.

Confirmation bias is when we tend to seek out evidence that only confirms to our existing beliefs while ignoring evidence that contradicts them. Fixation occurs when we have the inability to see a problem from another perspective. Fixation often occurs as a result of a mental set. A mental set refers to our tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, especially ways that have worked in the past.

Let's say my computer has recently been running very slow. In the past to fix this I've simply turned it off and back on again. Now I come to the problem with a mental set in mind.

After turning it off and on again it still runs very slow. I try resetting it once more and still nothing. Fixating on this mental set is hindering my ability to solve my problem.

Functional fixedness is going to be our tendency to view things or objects only in their customary manner, this is going to prevent us from fully seeing all of the options that we might have available in helping us solve a problem. A simple example, let's say there's something out of my reach and all I have is a chair. The function of a chair is a tool that we use to sit on. If I were not able to overcome functional fixedness, that's the only way I would view a chair. But since we as human have problem solving abilities, I know that I can grab the chair, stand on top of it, and reach up to grab my object.

This is an example of overcoming functional fixedness. Overconfidence is our tendency to be more confident than correct. With overconfidence, we overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments. Overconfidence can lead us to overlooking certain aspects of our problem. The way we are presented with or frame issues can also hinder our ability to solve problems.

Framing is simply the way an issue is posed. How an issue is framed can significantly affect the decisions and judgments of individuals. Let's say a new medicine to treat the common cold just came out and the only side effect was migraines.

We Which medicine would you buy? One that says 3% chance of migraine, or one that states that it has a 97% chance of no side effects. Heuristics can also lead to issues with our problem solving. The representative heuristic is a rule of thumb for judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they fit a particular prototype.

For instance, meet Bob. He loves reading published psychology research and writing poetry. Chances are you would not assume that Bob's career is a sanitation engineer, which it is. The availability heuristic is when we estimate the likelihood of an event occurring.

occurring based on the availability of the information that we have. We always hear about people who cash out big on the lottery. So when we're at the gas station and we see the Mega Million sign, that information comes available to us and influences our decision to purchase a lottery ticket. Even though we're more likely to be struck by lightning, we still buy that ticket.

Next up, we have intelligence. According to psychologists, intelligence is our ability to think rationally, to act purposefully, and to deal effectively with our environment. When looking at intelligence in regards to psychology, there are two important questions. How do we measure intelligence and what is the nature of intelligence?

So how exactly do we measure intelligence? What are the characteristics of an intelligent person? This has been a debate going back and forth between cognitive psychologists for years now.

Amongst some of the well-known cognitive psychologists, we have Alfred Binet, Louis Terman, and David Weschler. In the early 1900s, the French government passed a law stating that all children must attend school. With this new challenge of having to educate a bunch of children from a... wide variety of educational backgrounds, the French government hired Alfred Binet to create an intelligence test. Binet would then go to establish the first systematic intelligence test.

Binet structured the questions on the test so that the further you go into the test, the harder the questions get. He found that bright children appear to perform like older children, meaning a bright seven-year-old performs like an average nine-year-old, while a least capable child who was seven might score around the same as the average five-year-old. This gave Binet the idea of a... a mental age, which is just going to be a measure of intelligence where the mental level of a child is expressed in terms of the average ability of a given age group. The popularity of Binet's test in the United States led to Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman developing a revised version which he named the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale.

First published in 1916, the test for many years was the standard for intelligence testing in the US. The results of Terman's test gave an intelligence quotient or an IQ, which is going to be a measure of general intelligence. intelligence that we get by comparing individual scores with the score of others in that same age group. David Weschler's dissatisfaction with the Stanford-Binet test led him to create an intelligence test of his own, known as the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale, or the WAIS, which was first published by Weschler in 1955. The major difference between Weschler's test and the Stanford-Binet test was that the goal of Weschler's test was to measure several different mental abilities, such as a verbal score or a performance score.

Weschler believed that intelligence was much more than just being very very smart. He thought there were several factors involved in being intelligent. Sabin syndrome is a condition where an extremely high level of talent can co-occur with developmental conditions. Psychologists today still do not agree on the basic nature of intelligence, including whether it is a single mental ability or if it includes multiple mental abilities.

Charles Spearman is going to agree on a general mental capacity. So he basically thinks that if you do poor on one area of an intelligence test, you'll do poor on all areas. Spearman believed in general intelligence or the g factor. The g-factor is basically a notion of the of a general intelligence factor that is going to be responsible for a person's overall performance on tests of mental ability.

Charles Spearman is a huge proponent of IQ being an accurate measure of a person's mental ability. Psychologists such as Howard Gardner and Robert Sternberg would disagree with Spearman's idea of a G-factor. Howard Gardner is going to stretch the definition of intelligence.

Rather than analyzing intelligence test results, Gardner is going to look at the kind of skills and products that are valued in different cultures. Gardner's test measured multiple intelligence and identified different learning methods. learning styles such as logical, mathematical, musical, or bodily kinesthetic.

Very popular in the field of education for over 30 years, recently the learning style theory has come under some scrutiny. According to a major report published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, nearly all studies that attempt to provide evidence for learning styles fail to satisfy key criteria for scientific validity. Robert Sternberg is going to agree with Gardner that intelligence is a much broader quality than is reflected in the narrow range of mental abilities measured by conventional... IQ test of multiple independent intelligences.

Sternberg is going to propose the triarchic theory of intelligence, which states that there are three distinct forms of intelligence. We're going to have analytical intelligence, creative intelligence, and practical intelligence, which is just referring to our street smarts or how we adapt to our environment. Today, psychologists use several factors in measuring intelligence.

Abstract versus verbal measures refers to IQ tests containing a diverse mix of questions that tap abstract reasoning skills. They are intended to measure intellectual potential rather than factual knowledge, but they really reflect a little of both. Speed of processing refers to how quickly we're able to process information.

For example, the IQ test is a timed test. This leads to the assumption that faster is smarter. Fluid intelligence is our ability to solve new problems, use logic in new situations, and identify patterns.

While crystallized intelligence refers to our ability to use learned knowledge and experience. Many kinds of psychological tests measure various aspects of mental ability or intelligence. An achievement test test is designed to measure a person's level of knowledge, skill, or accomplishment in a particular way.

These types of tests attempt to measure what you have already learned. Things like an AP psych test or a math test fall under this category. Aptitude tests are designed to predict a person's future performance.

Things like the SAT or a college entrance exam fall under this category. The overall goal of an aptitude test is to predict your ability to learn certain types of information or perform certain skills. Just like in Unit 1 when we talked about reliability and validity and research.

The same holds true for test construction. A test must be reliable or producing consistent results, and it also must be valid or measuring what it's intended to measure. Now back to our reoccurring theme of nature versus nurture. How much of our intelligence is a result of our genetics versus the influence of our environment?

As mentioned before, the best way to settle the nature versus nurture debate appears to be with twin studies. The graph here shows the average correlation of IQ scores of individuals who are genetically related to varying degrees. The graph shows summaries of results from 100 different twin studies. using a hundred thousand pairs of relatives. Well what conclusions can we draw from this graph?

Well we can see that both genetic and environmental influences play a role in our level of intelligence. Genetics is shown by the fact that the closer the genetic relationship the more similar IQ scores. Environmental influences are demonstrated by two findings. One, two people who are genetically identical but raised in different environments have different IQ scores. And two, people who are genetically unrelated but raised in the same house have IQs that are much more similar than are those of two unrelated people from randomly selected homes.

This is the idea of heritability. Heritability is the percentage of variation within a given population that is due to heredity. Using studies based on genetic relatedness, as well as sophisticated statistical techniques to analyze the data, researchers have estimated that 50% of the difference in IQ scores within a given population is due to genetic factors. Keywords here being within a given population.

So if I have an IQ of 200, which is actually pretty close, which is around... and down a little bit. It does not mean a hundred of those points are because of where I went to school and a hundred of those points are due to my genetics. It simply means that 50% of the differences in IQ scores within a specific group of people is due to the differences in their genetic makeup.

Group differences in average IQ scores do exist. In many societies, minority groups tend to score lower than majority groups. The reason for this is often explained in a two pot analogy.

Suppose you have a bag of corn seeds and two pots. You spread an even amount of seeds into pot A and pot B. Pot A is filled with rich, well-fertilized soil, while Pot B is filled with very poor soil with very few nutrients. Since the seeds are not genetically identical, the plants in both pots will vary in height. Given the environment, which is our soil, is the same for all the plants in each particular pot, the variation within each group shows the effect of heredity.

However, when the average height of the plants are measured, Pot A's plants have a higher average. Due to the environment of each plant being so different, it is impossible to estimate the overall overall genetic difference between the two groups of seeds. And our last topic of discussion for our Unit 5 review on cognition is going to be language. Language is simply going to refer to the way that we communicate meaning to ourselves and others. This can be spoken, written, or gestured.

A phoneme is the smallest distinct unit of sound found in a language. These are just the sounds we produce that make up our words. The word dog uses four phonemes as shown here on the screen.

Morphemes are the smallest unit of meaning in a language. The word dog is the smallest unit of meaning in a language. The word incoming has three morphemes.

We have in, come, and ing. All three of those words have meaning in the English language. Grammar refers to a system of rules in a language that enable us to communicate with and understand others. Semantics are the set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences.

An example would be by adding the letters ed at the end of the word laugh to show that it has happened in the past. Over-regularization occurs when a grammatical rule is applied too widely and it creates... in incorrect form, most commonly seen when little kids say things like, I beat him in the game, or I holded the door open.

Syntax are the rules for combining words into grammatically correct sentences. Babies are going to go through three stages of speech before coming little talking machines. Babbling starts around the age of four months and consists of noises made by all babies. Hollow phrases are one-word phrases babies make around 12 months.

Telegraphic speech is going to be two-word phrases that babies use around the age of 24 months. In 1967, linguist Eric Leningberg is going to further popularize Montreal neurologist Wilder Penfield's critical period hypothesis. The critical period hypothesis basically states that if children are not exposed to language before a certain age, they will be unable to acquire language. A cognitive psychologist and linguist, Noam Chomsky, would further Leningberg's research.

Chomsky stated that we are all born with innate speech-enabling structures in our brain that allow us to learn language. This structure Chomsky referred to as the cognitive structure. referred to as the Language Acquisition Device, or LAD. Chomsky noted that all language, regardless of geographic restriction, have the same grammatical building blocks. These are things such as nouns, verbs, and objects.

Chomsky referred to this as universal grammar. Chomsky concluded that all language is biologically determined in the human brain, and hence genetically transmitted, and making it a product of nature and not nurture, which psychologists such as B.F. Skinner previously assumed.

Can language affect our cognition? That is a question Benjamin Worf tasked himself with answering. Worf wanted to know if language does more than just describe a person's cultural background. He argued that language may also shape a person's thoughts and perceptions through his linguistic relativity hypothesis. Worf's hypothesis is not necessarily apparent to those who only speak one language.

But for those who speak two dissimilar languages, such as English and Japanese, it becomes much more apparent. Unlike English, which has a rich vocabulary for self-explanatory, self-focused emotions such as anger. Japanese has many more words for interpersonal emotions such as sympathy. Researchers have even shown that bilingual individuals can reveal two different personalities on the same personality tests when taken separately in both languages.

And that does it for our Unit 5 review. As always, be sure you are answering the questions at the end of each unit in your review packet. This will make sure that you understand everything we talked about today.

Now I will see you guys. guys next time for our unit six review on developmental psychology peace out

Transcript for:Cognitive Psychology Overview and Key Concepts

Transcript for:
Cognitive Psychology Overview and Key Concepts