COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY MODULE

COMPILED BY STANLEY MAPANDA 2017

MSC in COUNSELLING
(Zimbabwe Open University)
Contents

UNIT 1. WHAT IS COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY?

1.1 Define Cognitive Psychology? ......................................................................................1

1.2 The Historical Background of Cognitive Psychology.....................................................1

1.3 Approaches To Cognitive Psychology ..........................................................................3

1.3.1 Structuralism: Understanding the Structure of the Mind………………………………..3

1.3.2 Functionalism: Understanding the Processes of the Mind……………………………..4

1.3.3 Associationism: An Integrative Synthesis………………………………………………..5

1.3.4 Behaviourism: It’s Only What You Can See That Counts……………………………...6

1.3.5 Gestalt Psychology: The Whole Is More than the Sum of Its Parts………………….18

1.4. Mental processes……………………………………………………………………………8

1.4.1 Attention…………………………………………. ………………………………………...8

1.4.2 Language……………….............................................................................................9

1.4.2.1Theories of Language Acquisition…........................................................................10

1.4.3 Metacognition.................................................... .......................................................10

1.5 Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology................................................................12

1.5.1 Experiments on Human Behaviour............................................................................12

1.5.2 Methods in Cognitive Neuroscience….......................................................................13

1.5.2. a) Neural Imaging Techniques..................................................................................13

1.5.2 b) Psychobiological Research....................................................................................15

1.5.3 Self-Reports, Case Studies, and Naturalistic Observatuion.......................................16

1.6 Key Themes in Cognitive Psychology...........................................................................16

1.7 Cognitive Psychology vs Cognitive Science..................................................................18

1.8 The Brain and the Nervous System...............................................................................19

1.8.1 Lobes of the Brain.................................................... ..................................................20

1.8.2 The Nervous System: Linking Neurons.......................................................................22

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1.8.3 Cognition in the Brain: The Anatomy and Mechanisms of the Brain…………………..23

1.8.4 Gross Anatomy of the Brain: Forebrain, Midbrain, Hindbrain………………………….24

1.8.5 Techniques for studying brain activity…………………………………………………….29

1.9 Activity.................................................... .......................................................................30

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UNIT 2 PERCEPTION

2.1 Basic terms and concepts related to sensation and perception…………….……...……31

2.2 Sensory Adaptation………………………………………………………………….……….36

2.3 From Sensation to Perception………………………………………………………………37

2.4 How Does Our Visual System Work? ..........................................................................38

2.4.1 The Human Eye and the Cross-Section of the Retina…………………..……………..39

2.4.2 Processing the Visual Message………………………………………………………….40

2.5 Approaches to Perception: How Do We Make Sense of What We See? ....................41

2.5.1 Signal detection theory…………………………………………………………………….41

2.5.2 The Gestalt laws of organization………………………………………………………….42

2.5.3 Bottom-Up Theories……………………………………………………………………..…46

2.5.3 a) Gibson’s Theory of Direct Perception …………………………………………….….46

2.5.3 b) Template Theories……………………………………………………………………...48

2.5.3 c) Recognition-by-Components Theory………………………………………………….50

2.5.4 Top-Down Theories………………………………………………………………………..51

2.5.5 How Do Bottom-Up Theories and Top-Down Theories Go Together……………......52

2.6 Perception of Objects and Forms…………………………………………………………..53

2.6.1 Viewer-Centered vs. Object-Centered Perception……………………………………..53

2.7 Visual Illusions………………………………………………………………………………..54

2.8 Do We Have to Learn to Perceive? ……………………………………………………….55

2.9 Defining Perceptual Learning………………………………………………………………56

2.10 Contrast Classes…………………………………………………………………………...60

2.10.1 Perceptual Development………………………………………………………………..60

2.10.2 Perception-Based Skills…………………………………………………………………61

2.10.3 Cognitive Penetration……………………………………………………………………62

2.10.4 Machine Learning………………………………………………………………………..64

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2.11. Varieties of Perceptual Learning…………………………………………………………64

2.11.1 Differentiation……………………………………………………………………………..64

2.11.2 Unitization…………………………………………………………………………………64

2.11.3 Attentional Weighting…………………………………………………………………….65

2.11.4 Stimulus Imprinting……………………………………………………………………….66

2.12 The Philosophical Significance of Perceptual Learning……………………………......66

2.12.1 The Contents of Perception………………………………………………………….....67

2.12.2 Cognitive Penetration……………………………………………………………………70

2.12.4 Piaget, dynamical systems……………………………………………………………...70

2.12.5 Gibsonian Theory: An Ecological Approach ………………………………………….71

2.13 Activity……………………………………………………………………………………….74

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UNIT 3 MEMORY

3.1 Memory as a Basic Cognitive Process…………………………………………………….75

3.1.1 Encoding………………………………………………….………………………………...75

3.1.2 Storage………………………………………………….…………………………………..76

3.1.2 a) Sensory Memory………………………………………………………………………..77

3.1.2b) Short-Term Memory…………………………………………………………………….78

3.1.2c) Long-term Memory……………………………………………………………………...78

3.2 Components of Memory. ……………………………………………………………….…..81

3.2.1 Sensory Memory…………………………………………………………………………..82

3.2.2 Short-Term Memory……………………………………………………………………….83

3.3 Early Research………………………………………………………………………………84

3.4 Models of Memory…………………………………………………………………………..88

3.4. 1 Multi-store model…………………………………………………………………………88

3.4.2 Unitary-store models……………………………………………………………………91

3.4.3 The Atkinson & Shiffrin Information Processing Model……………………………..91

3.5 Real-Life Memory……………………………………………………………………….…..95

3.5.1 The Present Approach……………………………………………………………….…..95

3.5.2 A Working Model……………………………………………………………………….…96

3.5.3 Memory in everyday life…………………………………………………………….……97

3.6 Processes of Forgetting and Memory Distortion…………………………………….…..99

3.6. 1 Encoding Failure……………………………………………………………………….…99

3.6.2 Interference Theory…………………………………………………………………….…99

3.6.3 Decay Theory……………………………………………………………………………..100

3.6.4 Memory Distortions / Errors……………………………………………………………..101

3.7 Parts of the Brain Involved with Memory…………………………………………………102

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3.7.1 The Cerebellum and Prefrontal Cortex…………………………………………………104

3.8 Problems with Memory……………………………………………………………………..104

3.9 Activity………………………………………………………………………………………..106

QUESTIONS TO WORK ON…………………………………………………………………...107

REFERENCE LISTS…………………………………………………………………………….108

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UNIT 1

WHAT IS COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY?

Unit Objectives
In this Unit, you will learn how to:
 Define Cognitive Psychology and the course of its history.
 Show how cognitive psychology is a science and independent field of study
 Differentiate Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Science
 Explain what are Cognitive Processes and some concepts in Cognitive
Psychology

1.1 Defining Cognitive Psychology.

 Definition – Sternberg & Sternberg, (2012) defined cognitive psychology is the

study of how people perceive, learn, remember, and think about information. A
cognitive psychologist might study how people perceive various shapes, why
they remember some facts but forget others, or how they learn language.
 Is the study of mental processes such as "attention, language use, memory,
perception, problem solving, creativity, and thinking”.
 Much of the work derived from cognitive psychology has been integrated into
various other modern disciplines of psychological study, including educational
psychology, social psychology, personality psychology, abnormal psychology,
developmental psychology, and economics.

1.2 The Historical Background of Cognitive Psychology

Two Greek philosophers, Plato (ca. 428–348 B.C.) and his student Aristotle (384–322
B.C.), have profoundly affected modern thinking in psychology and many other fields.
Plato and Aristotle disagreed regarding how to investigate ideas. Plato was a
rationalist. A rationalist / nativism believes that the route to knowledge is through
thinking and logical analysis and that we were born with innate ideas, does not need
any experiments to develop new knowledge. A rationalist who is interested in
cognitive processes would appeal to reason as a source of knowledge or justification.
In contrast, Aristotle (a naturalist and biologist as well as a philosopher) was an
empiricist. An empiricist / experiential believes that we acquire knowledge via
empirical evidence that is, we obtain evidence through experience and observation.
Empiricism therefore leads directly to empirical investigations of psychology.

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The contrasting ideas of rationalism and empiricism became prominent with the
French rationalist René Descartes (1596–1650) and the British empiricist John Locke
(1632–1704). Descartes viewed the introspective, reflective method as being
superior to empirical methods for finding truth. The famous expression “cogito, ergo
sum” (I think, therefore I am) stems from Descartes. Descartes felt that one could not
rely on one’s senses because those very senses have often proven to be deceptive
(think of optical illusions, for example).
Locke, in contrast, had more enthusiasm for empirical observation. Locke believed
that humans are born without knowledge and therefore must seek knowledge through
empirical observation. Locke’s term for this view was tabula rasa (meaning “blank
slate” in Latin). The idea is that life and experience “write” knowledge on us.
Two discoveries that would later play substantial roles in cognitive psychology were
Paul Broca's discovery of the area of the brain largely responsible for language
production, and Carl Wernicke's discovery of an area thought to be mostly responsible
for comprehension of language.

Also there are 3 main influences which rose and inspired so many to propose theories
and later liberate cognitive psychology to become a school of thought:

 With the development of new warfare technology during WWII, the need for a
greater understanding of human performance came to prominence. Problems
arose such as how to best train soldiers to use new technology and how to deal
with matters of attention while under pressure became areas of need for military
personnel.

 Developments in computer science lead to parallels being drawn between

human thought and the computational functionality of computers, and opens an
entire new area of psychological thought. Allen Newell and Herbert Simon spent
years developing the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) and later worked with
cognitive psychologists regarding the implications of AI. The effective result was
more of a framework concepts of mental functions with their counterparts in
computers (memory, storage, retrieval, etc.).
 Early Role of Psychobiology in which Ironically, one of Watson’s former
students, Karl Spencer Lashley (1890–1958), challenged the behaviourist view
that the human brain is a passive organ merely responding to environmental
possibilities outside the individual, and he considered the brain to be an active,
dynamic organizer of behaviour. Lashley sought to understand how the macro-
organization of the human brain made possible such complex, planned
activities as musical performance, game playing, and using language.

In the same vein, but at a different level of analysis, Donald Hebb (1949) proposed the
concept of cell assemblies as the basis for learning in the brain. Cell assemblies are
coordinated neural structures that develop through frequent stimulation.

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They develop over time as the ability of one neuron (nerve cell) to stimulate firing in a
connected neuron increases. Behaviourists did not jump at the opportunity to agree
with theorists like Lashley and Hebb. In fact, behaviourist B. F. Skinner (1957) wrote
an entire book describing how language acquisition and usage could be explained
purely in terms of environmental possibilities. This work stretched Skinner’s framework
too far, leaving Skinner open to attack. An attack was indeed forthcoming. Linguist
Noam Chomsky (1959) wrote a scathing review of Skinner’s ideas. In his article,
Chomsky stressed both the biological basis and the creative potential of language.

He pointed out the infinite numbers of sentences we can produce with ease. He
thereby defied behaviourist notions that we learn language by reinforcement. Even
young children continually are producing novel sentences for which they could not
have been reinforced in the past initiated what became known as the "cognitive
revolution". Formal recognition of the field involved the establishment of research
institutions such as George Mandler's Center for Human Information Processing in
1964.

1.3 APPROACHES TO COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Cognitive psychology has roots in many different ideas and approaches. The
approaches that will be examined include early approaches such as structuralism and
functionalism, followed by a discussion of associationism, behaviourism, and Gestalt
psychology. Future approaches might integrate the best features of past approaches
or reject some or even most of those characteristics. In the following section, we will
explore some of the ways of thinking early psychologists employed and trace the
development of psychology through the various schools of thinking.

1.3.1 Structuralism: Understanding the Structure of the Mind

Structuralism was the first major school of thought in psychology. Structuralism seeks
to understand the structure (configuration of elements) of the mind and its perceptions
by analysing those perceptions into their basic components (affection, attention,
memory, sensation, etc.) For example, the perception of a flower. Structuralisms
would analyse this perception in terms of its basic colours, geometric forms, size
relations, and so on. They sought to deconstruct the mind into its fundamental
components; they were also interested in how those elementary components work
together to create the mind.
Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) was a German psychologist who is often viewed as the
founder of structuralism in psychology (Structuralism, 2009). Wundt used a variety of
methods in his research such as introspection. Introspection is a deliberate looking
inward at pieces of information passing through consciousness. The aim of
introspection is to look at the elementary components of an object or process.

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The introduction of introspection as an experimental method was an important change
in the field because the main emphasis in the study of the mind shifted from a
rationalist approach to the empiricist approach of trying to observe behaviour in order
to draw conclusions about the subject of study.
In experiments involving introspection, individuals reported on their thoughts as they
were working on a given task. Researchers interested in problem solving could ask
their participants to think aloud while they were working on a puzzle so the researchers
could gain insight into the thoughts that go on in the participants’ minds.
In introspection, then, we can analyse our own perceptions but this method of
introspection has some challenges associated with it.

 Firstly people may not always be able to say exactly what goes through their
mind or may not be able to put it into adequate words. Secondly, people have
a tendency of not telling the accurate information to save their images. Third,
the fact that people are asked to pay attention to their thoughts or to speak out
loud while they are working on a task may itself alter the processes that are
going on.

Other early psychologists criticized both the method (introspection) and the focus
(elementary/basic structures of sensation) of structuralism. These critiques gave rise
to a new movement—functionalism.
1.3.2 Functionalism: Understanding the Processes of the Mind

An alternative that developed to counter structuralism, functionalism suggested that

psychologists should focus on the processes of thought rather than on its contents as
it seeks to understand what people do and why they do it. This principal question about
processes was in contrast to that of the structuralisms’, who had asked what the
elementary contents (structures) of the human mind are.

Functionalists held that the key to understanding the human mind and behaviour was
to study the processes of how and why the mind works as it does, rather than to study
the structural contents and elements of the mind. Functionalists were unified by the
kinds of questions they asked but not necessarily by the answers they found or by the
methods they used for finding those answers. Because functionalists believed in using
whichever methods best answered a given researcher’s questions, it seems natural
for functionalism to have led to rationality.

Functionalists believe that knowledge is validated by its usefulness: What can you do
with it? Were concerned in wanting to know what we can do with our knowledge of
what people do. For example, believing in the importance of the psychology of
learning and memory. Why? Because it can help us improve the performance of
children in school. It can also help us learn to remember the names of people we meet.

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A leader in guiding functionalism toward rationality was William James (1842–1910).
His chief functional contribution to the field of psychology was a single book: his
landmark Principles of Psychology (1890/1970). John Dewey (1859–1952) was
another early pragmatist who profoundly influenced contemporary thinking in cognitive
psychology. Dewey is remembered primarily for his pragmatic approach to thinking
and schooling.
Although functionalists were interested in how people learn, they did not really specify
a mechanism by which learning takes place. This task was taken up by another group,
Associationists.
1.3.3 Associationism: An Integrative Synthesis

Associationism, like functionalism, was more of an influential way of thinking than a

rigid school of psychology. Associationism examines how elements of the mind, like
events or ideas, can become associated with one another in the mind to result in a
form of learning. For example, associations may result from:
•contiguity (associating things that tend to occur together at about the same time);
•similarity (associating things with similar features or properties); or

•contrast (associating things that show polarities, such as hot/cold, light/dark, day/
night).
In the late 1800s, associationist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) was the first
experimenter to apply associationist principles systematically. Specifically,
Ebbinghaus studied his own mental processes. He made up lists of nonsense syllables
that consisted of a consonant and a vowel followed by another consonant (e.g., zax).
He memorize the list and he counted his errors and recorded his response times.
Through his thorough rehearsal, the conscious repetition of material to be learned,
among other things, he found that frequent repetition can fix mental associations more
firmly in memory, thus, repetition aids in learning.

Another influential associationist, Edward Lee Thorndike (1874–1949), held that the
role of “satisfaction” is the key to forming associations. Thorndike termed this principle
the law of effect (1905): A stimulus will tend to produce a certain response over time
if an organism is rewarded for that response. Thorndike believed that an organism
learns to respond in a given way (the effect) in a given situation if it is rewarded
repeatedly for doing so (the satisfaction, which serves as a stimulus to future actions).

Thus, a child given treats for solving arithmetic problems learns to solve arithmetic
problems accurately because the child forms associations between valid solutions and
treats. These ideas were the predecessors of the development of behaviourism
1.3.4 Behaviourism: It’s Only What You Can See That Counts

Other researchers studied responses that were involuntarily triggered in response to

what appear to be unrelated external/observable events. In Russia, Nobel Prize–

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winning physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) studied involuntary learning behavior of
this sort. He began with the observation that dogs salivated in response to the sight of
the lab technician who fed them. This response occurred before the dogs even saw
whether the technician had food.

To Pavlov, this response indicated a form of learning (classically conditioned learning),

opposite of (operant conditioning—involving the strengthening or weakening of
behaviour, contingent on the presence or absence of reinforcement (rewards) or
punishments),

Over which the dogs had no conscious control. In the dogs’ minds, some type of
involuntary learning linked the technician to the food (Pavlov, 1955). Classical
conditioning involves more than just an association based on temporal contiguity
(associating things that tend to occur together at about the same time) (e.g., the food
and the conditioned stimulus occurring at about the same time). Effective conditioning
requires contingency (e.g. the presentation of food being contingent on the
presentation of the conditioned stimulus.

Contingencies / Possibilities in the form of reward and punishment are still used today,
for example, in the treatment of substance abuse. Behaviourism may be considered
an extreme version of associationism. It focuses entirely on the association between
the environment and an observable behavior. According to strict, extreme (“radical”)
behaviourists, any hypotheses about internal thoughts and ways of thinking are
nothing more than speculation.

Behaviourism may be considered an extreme version of associationism. It focuses

entirely on the association between the environment and an observable behaviour.
The “father” of radical behaviourism is John Watson (1878–1958). Watson had no use
for internal mental contents or mechanisms. He believed that psychologists should
concentrate only on the study of observable behaviour. He dismissed thinking as
nothing more than subvocalized speech (issue of no concern).

Behaviourism also differed from previous movements in psychology by shifting the

emphasis of experimental research from human to animal participants. Historically,
much behaviourist work has been conducted (and still is) with laboratory animals, such
as rats or pigeons, because these animals allow for much greater behavioural control
of relationships between the environment and the behaviour emitted in reaction to it
(although behaviourists also have conducted experiments with humans).

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One problem with using nonhuman animals, however, is determining whether the
research can be generalized to humans (i.e., applied more generally to humans
instead of just to the kinds of nonhuman animals that were studied). B. F. Skinner
(1904–1990), a radical behaviourist, believed that virtually all forms of human
behaviour, not just learning, could be explained by behaviour emitted.

In reaction to the environment. Skinner conducted research primarily with nonhuman

animals. He rejected mental mechanisms. He believed instead that operant
conditioning involving the strengthening or weakening of behaviour, contingent on the
presence or absence of reinforcement (rewards) or punishments could explain all
forms of human behaviour. Skinner applied his experimental analysis of behaviour to
many psychological phenomena, such as learning, language acquisition, and problem
solving. Largely because of Skinner’s towering presence, behaviourism dominated the
discipline of psychology for several decades.

Behaviourism was challenged on many fronts like language acquisition, production,

and comprehension. First, although it seemed to work well to account for certain kinds
of learning, behaviourism did not account as well for complex mental activities such
as language learning and problem solving. Nonetheless, behaviourism continues as a
school of psychology, although not one that is particularly sympathetic to the cognitive
approach, which involves metaphorically and sometimes literally peering inside
people’s heads to understand how they learn, remember, think, and reason.

Bandura (1977b) noted that learning appears to result not merely from direct rewards
for behaviour, but it also can be social, resulting from observations of the rewards or
punishments given to others. The ability to learn through observation is well
documented and can be seen in humans, monkeys, dogs, birds, and even fish. In
humans, this ability spans all ages; it is observed in both infants and adults. This view
emphasizes how we observe and model our own behaviour after the behaviour of
others.

1.3.5 Gestalt Psychology: The Whole Is More than the Sum of Its Parts

Of the many critics of behaviourism, Gestalt psychologists may have been among the
most enthusiastic. Gestalt psychology states that we best understand psychological
phenomena when we view them as organized, structured wholes. According to this
view, we cannot fully understand behaviour when we only break phenomena down
into smaller parts.

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For example, behaviourists tended to study problem solving by looking for subvocal
processing they were looking for the observable behaviour through which problem
solving can be understood.

In contrast, Gestaltists, pursues to understand the unobservable mental event by

which someone goes from having no idea about how to solve a problem to
understanding it fully in what seems a mere moment of time.

The maxim “the whole is more than the sum of its parts” appropriately sums up the
Gestalt perspective. To understand the perception of a flower, for example, we would
have to take into account the whole of the experience. We could not understand such
a perception merely in terms of a description of forms, colours, sizes, and so on.
Similarly, as noted in the previous paragraph, we could not understand problem
solving merely by looking at minute elements of observable behaviour.

1.4. Mental processes

The main focus of cognitive psychologists is on the mental processes that affect
behavior. Those processes include, but are not limited to, the following:

1.4.1 Attention
The psychological definition of attention is “A state of focused awareness on a subset
of the available perceptual information” The key function of attention is to discriminate
between irrelevant data and filter it out, enabling the desired data to be distributed to
the other mental processes. The human brain may, at times, simultaneously receive
inputs in the form of auditory, visual, olfactory, taste, and tactile information.

Without the ability to filter out some or most of that simultaneous information and focus
on one or typically two at most, the brain would become overloaded as a person
attempted to process that information. Attention can be divided into two major
attentional systems: exogenous control and endogenous control. Exogenous control
works from bottom-up and is responsible for alertness, arousal, orienting reflex, spot
light attention and pop-out effects.

Endogenous control works top-down and is the more deliberate attentional system,
responsible for selective attention, divided attention, local and global attention, and
conscious processing. Attention tends to be either visual or auditory. One major focal
point relating to attention within the field of cognitive psychology is the concept of
divided attention. A number of early studies dealt with the ability of a person wearing

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headphones to discern meaningful conversation when presented with different
messages into each ear; this is known as the dichotic listening task.

Key findings involved an increased understanding of the mind’s ability to both focus
on one message, while still being somewhat aware of information being taken in from
the ear not being consciously attended to. E.g., participants (wearing earphones) may
be told that they will be hearing separate messages in each ear and that they are
expected to attend only to information related to basketball.

When the experiment starts, the message about basketball will be presented to the
left ear and non-relevant information will be presented to the right ear. At some point
the message related to basketball will switch to the right ear and the non-relevant
information to the left ear. When this happens, the listener is usually able to repeat the
entire message at the end, having attended to the left or right ear only when it was
appropriate. The ability to attend to one conversation in the face of many is known as
the cocktail party effect.

Other major findings include that participants can't comprehend both passages, when
shadowing one passage, they can't report content of the unattended message, and
they can shadow a message better if the pitches in each ear are different. However,
while deep processing doesn't occur, early sensory processing does. Subjects did
notice if the pitch of the unattended message changed or if it ceased altogether, and
some even oriented to the unattended message if their name was mentioned.

1.4.2 Language
Language is a formal system of communication which involves the combination of
words and / or symbols, written or spoken as well as some rules that govern them.
Language has rules that govern them how symbols can be arranged. These rules
allow people to understand messages in that language even if they have never
encountered those messages before.

Children develop language in a set sequence of stage, although sometimes particular

skills develop at slightly different ages;
 At 3 months old infants can distinguish between the phenomes (the smallest
units of any language e.g. t, b, ch, sh) rom any language.

 Around 6 months, infants begin babbling or producing sounds that resemble

many different languages, but as time goes on the sounds begins to be more
closely the words of the language the infant hears.

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  At about 13 months, children produces simple single words e.g. mama,

 24 months the child can combine 2 or 3 words to make short sentences

1.4.2.1Theories of Language Acquisition

 Theory of Limitation
As children listen to verbalized communication and repeated what they hear. In which
Thorndike mentioned the Law of Effect which states that the response came about
from its effect as punishment or reward. Law of Recency which states the latest
response will determine the next occurrence. The Law of Exercise made responses
stronger by repeating them.

 Behaviourists Theory
Like B. F. Skinner, argued that language acquisition and development are learned
behaviours. It is believed we learn by associating events, known as classical
conditioning. We also learn through rewards or punishments a process known as
operant conditioning. Children learn to associate objects with a sound or word for that
object e.g. infants babbles dada/ papa and he/she is rewarded by smiling and happy
parents cheer and reward their child’s effort at communication.

1.4.3 Metacognition

Metacognition, in a broad sense, is the thoughts that a person has about their own
thoughts. It is deeper level of thinking that includes your ability to think about your
thinking, how you understand, adopt, change, control, and use your thought
processes. Some ideas about when you use metacognition;

 Anytime you problem-solve or apply strategies, like figuring out a tip at a

restaurant or planning a road trip across the country,

 When you are aware of ways that work for you to remember info. Like dates or
facts for a test or when pursue a wrong ideology then later you discover my
thinking is not right.

More specifically, metacognition includes things like: How effective a person is at

monitoring their own performance on a given task (self-regulation). A person’s
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understanding of their capabilities on particular mental tasks. The ability to apply
cognitive strategies. In other words there are three (3) types of knowledge in
metacognition which are one’s ability to think about their thinking and for e.g. basic
knowledge of ourselves and our thoughts and how we use that knowledge to learn
better.

a. Person Variables – just like it sounds, this defines how individuals understand
their own learning styles, strengths and weakness.

b. Task Variables – when a person can predict and make a plan about how to
complete a task, like the time and effort needed to study for a test, the focus is
on the task variable.

c. Strategy Variables – is there something you always do to get ready for a test,
like go to the library or organize note cards. If so, you’re using strategy
variables, or knowledge of yourself as a leader to be more successful.

Much of the current study regarding metacognition within the field of cognitive
psychology deals with its application within the area of education. Being able to
increase a student’s metacognitive abilities has been shown to have a significant
impact on their learning and study habits. One key aspect of this concept is the
improvement of students’ ability to set goals and self-regulate effectively to meet those
goals. As a part of this process, it is also important to ensure that students are
realistically evaluating their personal degree of knowledge and setting realistic goals
(another metacognitive task). Common phenomena related to metacognition include:

 Déjà Vu: feeling of a repeated experience

 Cryptomnesia: generating thought believing it is unique but it is actually a

memory of a past experience, or unconscious plagiarism.

 False Fame Effect: non-famous names can be made to be famous,

 Validity effect: statements seem more valid upon repeated exposure,

 Imagination inflation: imagining an event that did not occur and having
increased confidence that it did occur.
1.5 Research Methods in Cognitive Psychology

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Researchers employ a variety of research methods. These methods include laboratory
or other controlled experiments, psychobiological research, self-reports, case studies,
naturalistic observation, and computer simulations and artificial intelligence. Each of
these methods will be discussed in detail in this section. To better understand the
specific methods used by cognitive psychologists, one must first grasp the goals of
research in cognitive psychology.

Goals of Research

Briefly, research goals include data gathering, data analysis, theory development,
hypothesis formulation, hypothesis testing, and perhaps even application to settings
outside the research environment.

1.5.1 Experiments on Human Behaviour

In controlled experimental designs, an experimenter will usually conduct research in a

laboratory setting. The experimenter controls as many aspects of the experimental
situation as possible. There are basically two kinds of variables in any given
experiment. Independent variables are aspects of an investigation that are
individually manipulated, or carefully regulated, by the experimenter, while other
aspects of the investigation are held constant (i.e., not subject to variation).
Dependent variables are outcome responses, the values of which depend on how
one or more independent variables influence or affect the participants in the
experiment.

When the experimenter manipulates the independent variables, he or she controls for
the effects of irrelevant variables and observes the effects on the dependent variables
(outcomes). These irrelevant variables that are held constant are called control
variables. For example, when you conduct an experiment on people’s ability to
concentrate when subjected to different kinds of background music, you should make
sure that the lighting in the room is always the same, and not sometimes extremely
bright and other times dim. The variable of light needs to be held constant.

In implementing the experimental method, experimenters must use a representative

and random sample of the population of interest. They must exert rigorous control over
the experimental conditions so that they know that the observed effects can be
attributed to variations in the independent variable and nothing else. In cognitive-
psychological research, though the dependent variables may be quite diverse, they
often involve various outcome measures of accuracy (e.g., frequency of errors), of
response times, or of both.

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Among the myriad possibilities for independent variables are characteristics of the
situation, of the task, or of the participants. For example, characteristics of the
situation may involve the presence versus the absence of particular stimuli or hints
during a problem-solving task.

1.5.2 Methods in Cognitive Neuroscience

Some research has involved the surgical removal of various parts of the cortex. By
observing the deficits these operations have produced, it is possible to infer the
function of the region removed. Other research has recorded the electrical activity in
particular neurons or regions of neurons. By observing what activates these neurons,
one can infer what they do.

1.5.2. a) Neural Imaging Techniques

Until recently, the principal basis for understanding the role of the brain in human
cognition has been the study of patient populations. We have already described some
of this research, such as that with split-brain patients and with patients who have
suffered damages to brain areas that cause language deficits. It was research with
patient populations such as these that showed that the brain is lateralized, with the left
hemisphere specialized for language processing. Such hemispheric specialization
does not occur in other species.

More recently, there have been major advances in non-invasive methods of imaging
the functioning of the brains of normal participants engaged in various cognitive
activities. These advances in neural imaging are among the most exciting
developments in cognitive neuroscience and will be referenced throughout this text.
Although not as precise as recording from single neurons, which can be done only
rarely with humans (and then as part of surgical procedures), these methods have
achieved dramatic improvements in precision.

Electroencephalography (EEG)

Records the electric potentials that are present on the scalp. When large populations
of neurons are active, this activity will result in distinctive patterns of electric potential
on the scalp. In the typical methodology, a participant wears a cap of many electrodes.
The electrodes detect rhythmic changes in electrical activity and record them on
electroencephalograms.

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Figure below illustrates some recordings typical of various cognitive states.

When EEG is used to study cognition, the participant is asked to respond to some
stimulus, and researchers are interested in discovering how processing this stimulus
impacts general activity on the recordings. To eliminate the effects not resulting from
the stimulus, many trials are averaged, and what remains is the activity produced by
the stimulus. For instance, Kutas and Hillyard (1980) in Sternberg & Sternberg (2012)
found that there was a large dip in the wave about 400 ms after participants heard an
unexpected word in a sentence.

Such averaged EEG responses aligned to a particular stimulus are called event-
related potentials (ERPs). ERPs have very good temporal resolution, but it is difficult
to infer the location in the brain of the neural activity that is producing the scalp activity.
A newer technique called functional MRI (fMRI) scanning adapts standard MRI
procedures to study brain activity. In most cases, fMRI scans rely on the fact that
haemoglobin—the molecule that carries oxygen in the bloodstream—is less sensitive
to magnetism when it is actually transporting an oxygen molecule than when it is not.

By keeping track of the haemoglobin, therefore, detectors can measure the ratio of
oxygenated to deoxygenated blood; this ratio yields a measurement called the blood-
oxygenation-level-dependent signal, or BOLD signal. When neural regions are
especially active, this ratio increases because the active tissue is demanding more
oxygen. By tracking the BOLD signal, therefore, we can measure activity in the brain.

1.5.2 b) Psychobiological Research

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Through psychobiological research, investigators study the relationship between
cognitive performance and cerebral events and structures. These techniques
generally fall into three categories:

 techniques for studying an individual’s brain post-mortem (after the death of an

individual), relating the individual’s cognitive function prior to death to
observable features of the brain;

 techniques for studying images showing structures of or activities in the brain

of an individual who is known to have a particular cognitive deficit;

 Techniques for obtaining information about cerebral processes during the

normal performance of a cognitive activity. Post mortem studies offered some
of the first insights into how specific lesions (areas of injury in the brain) may
be associated with particular cognitive deficits.

Psychobiological researchers also study normal cognitive functioning by studying

cerebral activity in animal participants. Researchers often use animals for experiments
involving neurosurgical procedures that cannot be performed on humans because
such procedures would be difficult, unethical, or impractical. For example, studies
mapping neural activity in the cortex have been conducted on cats and monkeys.

Can cognitive and cerebral functioning of animals and of abnormal humans be

generalized to apply to the cognitive and cerebral functioning of normal humans?
Psycho-biologists have responded to these questions in various ways. For some kinds
of cognitive activity, the available technology permits researchers to study the dynamic
cerebral activity of normal human participants during cognitive processing.

1.5.3 Self-Reports, Case Studies, and Naturalistic Observation

Individual experiments and psychobiological studies often focus on precise

specification of discrete aspects of cognition across individuals. To obtain richly
textured information about how particular individuals think in a broad range of contexts,
researchers may use other methods. These methods include;
•self-reports (an individual’s own account of cognitive processes);

•case studies (in-depth studies of individuals); and

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•naturalistic observation (detailed studies of cognitive performance in everyday
situations and non-laboratory contexts).

Research based on self-reports, case studies, and naturalistic observation is often

particularly useful for the formulation of hypotheses. These methods are also useful to
generate descriptions of rare events or processes that we have no other way to
measure. In very specific circumstances, these methods may provide the only way to
gather information. An example is the case of Genie, a girl who was locked in a room
until the age of 13 and thus provided with severely limited social and sensory
experiences.

As a result of her imprisonment, Genie had severe physical impairments and no

language skills. Through case-study methods, information was collected about how
she later began to learn language. It would have been unethical experimentally to deny
a person any language experience for the first 13 years of life. Therefore, case-study
methods are the only reasonable way to examine the results of someone being denied
language and social exposure.

1.6 Key Themes in Cognitive Psychology

We discover some of the major themes that underlie cognitive psychology, such as
nature vs. nurture and rationalism vs. empiricism. These, and the other key themes
listed here, address the core of the nature of the human mind. These themes appear
again and again in the study of cognitive psychology. We may use empirical methods
for gathering data and for testing hypotheses.

But we may use rationalist methods for interpreting data, constructing theories, and
formulating hypotheses based on theories. Our understanding of cognition deepens
when we consider both basic research into fundamental cognitive processes and
applied research regarding effective uses of cognition in real-world settings.
Syntheses are constantly evolving.

1. Nature versus nurture

Thesis/Antithesis: Which is more influential in human cognition—nature or nurture? If
we believe that innate characteristics of human cognition are more important, we might
focus our research on studying innate characteristics of cognition. If we believe that
the environment plays an important role in cognition, we might conduct research
exploring how distinctive characteristics of the environment seem to influence
cognition.

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Synthesis: We can explore how covariations and interactions in the environment (e.g.,
an impoverished environment) adversely affect someone whose genes otherwise
might have led to success in a variety of tasks.

2. Rationalism versus empiricism

Thesis/Antithesis: How should we discover the truth about ourselves and about the
world around us? Should we do so by trying to reason logically, based on what we
already know? Or should we do so by observing and testing our observations of what
we can perceive through our senses?
Synthesis: We can combine theory with empirical methods to learn the most we can
about cognitive phenomena.

3. Structures versus processes

Thesis/Antithesis: Should we study the structures (contents, attributes, and products)
of the human mind? Or should we focus on the processes of human thinking?
Synthesis: We can explore how mental processes operate on mental structures.

4. Domain generality versus domain specificity

Thesis/Antithesis: Are the processes we observe limited to single domains, or are they
general across a variety of domains? Do observations in one domain apply also to all
domains, or do they apply only to the specific domains observed?

Synthesis: We can explore which processes might be domain-general and which might
be domain-specific.

5. Validity of causal inferences versus ecological validity

Thesis/Antithesis: Should we study cognition by using highly controlled experiments
that increase the probability of valid inferences regarding causality? Or should we use
more naturalistic techniques, which increase the likelihood of obtaining ecologically
valid findings but possibly at the expense of experimental control?

Synthesis: We can combine a variety of methods, including laboratory methods and

more naturalistic ones, so as to converge on findings that hold up, regardless of the
method of study.

6. Applied versus basic research

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Thesis/Antithesis: Should we conduct research into fundamental cognitive processes?
Or should we study ways in which to help people use cognition effectively in practical
situations?

Synthesis: We can combine the two kinds of research dialectically so that basic
research leads to applied research, which leads to further basic research, and so on.

7. Biological versus behavioural methods

Thesis/Antithesis: Should we study the brain and it’s functioning directly, perhaps even
scanning the brain while people are performing cognitive tasks? Or should we study
people’s behavior in cognitive tasks, looking at measures such as percent correct and
reaction time?
Synthesis: We can try to synthesize biological and behavioural methods so that we
understand cognitive phenomena at multiple levels of analysis.

1.7 Cognitive Psychology vs Cognitive Science

The line between cognitive psychology and cognitive science can be unclear. The
differentiation between the two is best understood in terms of cognitive psychology’s
relationship to applied psychology, and the understanding of psychological
phenomena.

 Cognitive psychologists are often heavily involved in running psychological

experiments involving human participants, with the goal of gathering
information related to how the human mind takes in, processes, and acts upon
inputs received from the outside world. One of the paradigms of cognitive
psychology derived in this manner, is that every individual develops schemata
which motivate the person to think or act in a particular way in the face of a
particular circumstance. E.g., most people have a schema for waiting in line.

 When approaching some type of service counter where people are waiting their
turn, most people don't just walk to the front of the line and butt in. Their schema
for that situation tells them to get in the back of the line. This then applies to the
field of abnormal psychology as a result of individuals sometimes developing
faulty schemata which lead them to consistently react in a dysfunctional
manner. If a person has a schema that says “I am no good at making friends”,
they may become so reluctant to pursue interpersonal relationships that they
become prone to seclusion.

 Cognitive science is better understood as predominantly concerned with

gathering data through research. Cognitive science envelopes a much broader

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 scope, which has links to philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, neuroscience,
and particularly with artificial intelligence. It could be said that cognitive science
provides the database of information that fuels the theory from which cognitive
psychologists operate.

 Cognitive scientists’ research sometimes involves non-human subjects,

allowing them to delve into areas which would come under ethical scrutiny if
performed on human participants. I.e., they may do research implanting
devices in the brains of rats to track the firing of neurons while the rat performs
a particular task. Cognitive science is highly involved in the area of artificial
intelligence and its application to the understanding of mental processes.
1.8 The Brain and the Nervous System

All too often, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. And so it goes with brains:
Much of what we know about this magnificent organ comes from studying what
happens when it is damaged. Because the resulting problems depend on where the
image is located, we have evidence that the brain is made up of specialized regions.
The achievements that we can easily observe—thinking, feeling, or acting—require
exquisite coordination among these areas.

Brain Stem Region Structure Function

Pons Top region of the brain Relays signals between cerebrum
stem and cerebellum.
Helps control breathing rate
Medulla Oblongata Beneath the pons, lower Relays signals between the brain
portion of the brainstem. and the spinal cord.
Connects to the spinal Helps control blood pressure, heart
cord. rate, and breathing rate.

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Cerebral Hemispheres Largest part of the brain. Carries out higher thought
Large paired structures, processes involved with language,
divided into left and right learning, memory, and voluntary
hemispheres body movements
Cerebellum Means ‘little brain’ Smaller Responsible for balance and
structure under the base at coordination
the back of the brain
Brainstem Extending from the base of Relays signals between the brain
the brain; this continues and spinal cord
into the spinal cord, made
up of the pons and medulla
oblongata

1.8.1 Lobes of the Brain

Structure Function and other notes

Frontal lobe Conscious thought, behavior, emotion,
planning, personality, organizing,
problem solving. Most uniquely human of
all the brain structures. Front of the brain
Parietal lobe Integrations of sensory information from
primary sensory areas perception,
arithmetic, spelling, manipulation of
objects. Middle top of the brain.

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 Temporal lobe Senses of smell and sound, as well as
processing of complex stimuli like faces
and scenes, memory, understanding
language. Temple region.
Occipital lobe Sense of sight
Extreme back of the brain

1.8.2 The Nervous System: Linking Neurons

Central and Peripheral Nervous Systems

The nervous system is divided into two main parts: the central nervous system and
the peripheral nervous system. The central nervous system (CNS) is composed of
the brain and spinal cord. The spinal cord, which is about the thickness of a pencil,
contains a bundle of neurons that leaves the brain and runs down the length of the
back.

However, the spinal cord is not just a communication channel. It also controls some
simple behaviours on its own, without any help from the brain. An example is the way

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the knee jerks forward when it is tapped with a rubber hammer. This behaviour is a
type of reflex, an automatic, involuntary response to an incoming stimulus. A reflex is
also at work when you touch a hot stove and immediately withdraw your hand.
Although the brain eventually analyses and reacts to the situation (“Ouch—hot stove—
pull away!”), the initial withdrawal is directed only by neurons in the spinal cord.

Three kinds of neurons are involved in reflexes. Sensory (afferent) neurons transmit
information from the perimeter of the body to the central nervous system. Motor
(efferent) neurons communicate information from the nervous system to muscles and
glands. Interneurons connect sensory and motor neurons, carrying messages
between the two.

The importance of the spinal cord and reflexes is illustrated by the outcome of
accidents in which the cord is injured or severed. In some cases, injury results in
quadriplegia, a condition in which voluntary muscle movement below the neck is lost.
In a less severe but still debilitating condition, paraplegia, people are unable to
voluntarily move any muscles in the lower half of the body.

The peripheral nervous system branches out from the spinal cord and brain and
reaches the extremities of the body. Made up of neurons with long axons and
dendrites, the peripheral nervous system encompasses all the parts of the nervous
system other than the brain and spinal cord. There are two major divisions—the
somatic division and the autonomic division—both of which connect the central
nervous system with the sense organs, muscles, glands, and other organs.

The somatic division specializes in the control of voluntary movements—such as the

motion of the eyes to read this sentence or those of the hand to turn this page—and
the communication of information to and from the sense organs. The autonomic
division controls the parts of the body that keep us alive—the heart, blood vessels,
glands, lungs, and other organs that function involuntarily without our awareness.

As you are reading at this moment, the autonomic division of the peripheral nervous
system is pumping blood through your body, pushing your lungs in and out, and
overseeing the digestion of your last meal.

1.8.3 Cognition in the Brain: The Anatomy and Mechanisms of the Brain

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The nervous system is the basis for our ability to perceive, adapt to, and interact with
the world around us. Through this system we receive, process, and then respond to
information from the environment. In the following section, we will focus on the
supreme organ of the nervous system—the brain—paying special attention to the
cerebral cortex, which controls many of our thought processes. In a later section, we
consider the basic building block of the nervous system—the neuron.

We will examine in detail how information moves through the nervous system at the
cellular level. Then we will consider the various levels of organization within the
nervous system and how drugs interact with the nervous system. For now, let’s look
at the structure of the brain.

1.8.4 Gross Anatomy of the Brain: Forebrain, Midbrain, Hindbrain

What have scientists discovered about the human brain? The brain has three major
regions: forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain. These labels do not correspond exactly to
locations of regions in an adult or even a child’s head. Rather, the terms come from
the front-to-back physical arrangement of these parts in the nervous system of a
developing embryo. Initially, the forebrain is generally the farthest forward, toward
what becomes the face.

The Forebrain

The forebrain is the region of the brain located toward the top and front of the brain. It
comprises the cerebral cortex, the basal ganglia, the limbic system, the thalamus, and
the hypothalamus. The cerebral cortex is the outer layer of the cerebral hemispheres.
It plays a vital role in our thinking and other mental processes. The basal ganglia
(singular: ganglion) are collections of neurons crucial to motor function. Dysfunction of
the basal ganglia can result in motor deficits. These deficits include tremors,
involuntary movements, changes in posture and muscle tone, and slowness of
movement. Deficits are observed in Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease.
Both these diseases entail severe motor symptoms.

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The limbic system is important to emotion, motivation, memory, and learning.
Animals such as fish and reptiles, which have relatively undeveloped limbic systems,
respond to the environment almost exclusively by instinct. Mammals and especially
humans have relatively more developed limbic systems. Our limbic system allows us
to suppress instinctive responses (e.g., the impulse to strike someone who
accidentally causes us pain).

Our limbic systems help us to adapt our behaviours flexibly in response to our
changing environment. The limbic system comprises three central interconnected
cerebral structures: the septum, the amygdala, and the hippocampus.

 The septum is involved in anger and fear. The amygdala plays an important
role in emotion as well, especially in anger and aggression. Stimulation of the
amygdala commonly results in fear. It can be evidenced in various ways, such
as through tremors, fearful hallucinations, or frightening flashbacks in memory.

Damage to (lesions in) or removal of the amygdala can result in maladaptive

lack of fear. The amygdala also has an enhancing effect for the perception of
emotional stimuli. In humans, lesions to the amygdala prevent this
enhancement.

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  Additionally, persons with autism display limited activation in the amygdala. A
well-known theory of autism suggests that the disorder involves dysfunction of
the amygdala, which leads to the social impairment that is typical of persons
with autism, for example, difficulties in evaluating people’s trustworthiness or
recognizing emotions in faces. Two other effects of lesions to the amygdala can
be visual agnosia (inability to recognize objects) and hyper sexuality.

 The hippocampus plays an essential role in memory formation. It gets its name
from the Greek word for “seahorse,” its approximate shape. The hippocampus
is essential for flexible learning and for seeing the relations among items
learned as well as for spatial memory. The hippocampus also appears to keep
track of where things are and how these things are spatially related to each
other. In other words, it monitors what is where.

People who have suffered damage to or removal of the hippocampus still can
recall existing memories—for example, they can recognize old friends and
places— but they are unable to form new memories (relative to the time of the
brain damage). New information—new situations, people, and places—remain
forever new. A disease that produces loss of memory function is Korsakoff’s
syndrome. Other symptoms include apathy/laziness/ boredom, paralysis of
muscles controlling the eye, and tremor.

The thalamus relays incoming sensory information through groups of neurons that
project to the appropriate region in the cortex. Most of the sensory input into the brain
passes through the thalamus, which is approximately in the center of the brain, at
about eye level. To accommodate all the types of information that must be sorted out,
the thalamus is divided into a number of nuclei (groups of neurons of similar function).

Each nucleus receives information from specific senses. The information is then
relayed to corresponding specific areas in the cerebral cortex. The thalamus also helps
in the control of sleep and waking. When the thalamus malfunctions, the result can be
pain, tremor, amnesia, impairment of language, and disruptions in waking and
sleeping. In cases of schizophrenia, imaging and in vivo studies reveal abnormal
changes in the thalamus.

The hypothalamus regulates behavior related to species survival: fighting, feeding,

fleeing, and mating. The hypothalamus also is active in regulating emotions and
reactions to stress. It interacts with the limbic system. The small size of the

25
hypothalamus (from Greek hypo-, “under”; located at the base of the forebrain,
beneath the thalamus) belies its importance in controlling many bodily functions.

The hypothalamus plays a role in sleep: Dysfunction and neural loss within the
hypothalamus are noted in cases of narcolepsy, whereby a person falls asleep often
and at unpredictable times. The hypothalamus also is important for the functioning of
the endocrine system. It is involved in the stimulation of the pituitary glands, through
which a range of hormones are produced and released.

These hormones include growth hormones and oxytocin (which is involved in bonding
processes and sexual arousal). The forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain contain
structures that perform essential functions for survival as well as for high-level thinking
and feeling.

The Midbrain

The midbrain helps to control eye movement and coordination. The midbrain is more
important in non-mammals where it is the main source of control for visual and auditory
information. In mammals these functions are dominated by the forebrain. By far the
most indispensable of these structures is the reticular activating system (RAS; also
called the “reticular formation”), a network of neurons essential to the regulation of
consciousness (sleep; wakefulness; arousal; attention to some extent; and vital
functions such as heartbeat and breathing).

The RAS also extends into the hindbrain. Both the RAS and the thalamus are essential
to our having any conscious awareness of or control over our existence. The brainstem
connects the forebrain to the spinal cord. It comprises the hypothalamus, the
thalamus, the midbrain, and the hindbrain.

A structure called the periaqueductal gray (PAG) is in the brainstem. This region
seems to be essential for certain kinds of adaptive behaviours. Injections of small
amounts of excitatory amino acids or, alternatively, electrical stimulation of this area
results in any of several responses: an aggressive, confrontational response;
avoidance or flight response; heightened defensive reactivity; or reduced reactivity as
is experienced after a defeat, when one feels hopeless.

The Hindbrain

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The hindbrain comprises the medulla oblongata, the pons, and the cerebellum. The
medulla oblongata controls heart activity and largely controls breathing, swallowing,
and digestion. The medulla is also the place at which nerves from the right side of the
body cross over to the left side of the brain and nerves from the left side of the body
cross over to the right side of the brain. The medulla oblongata is an elongated interior
structure located at the point where the spinal cord enters the skull and joins with the
brain.

The medulla oblongata, which contains part of the RAS, helps to keep us alive. The
pons serves as a kind of relay station because it contains neural fibres that pass
signals from one part of the brain to another. Its name derives from the Latin for
“bridge,” as it serves a bridging function. The pons also contains a portion of the RAS
and nerves serving parts of the head and face. The cerebellum (from Latin, “little
brain”) controls bodily coordination, balance, and muscle tone, as well as some
aspects of memory involving procedure-related movements.

The prenatal development of the human brain within each individual roughly
corresponds to the evolutionary development of the human brain within the species as
a whole. Specifically, the hindbrain is evolutionarily the oldest and most primitive part
of the brain. It also is the first part of the brain to develop prenatally. The midbrain is a
relatively newer addition to the brain in evolutionary terms. It is the next part of the
brain to develop prenatally.

Finally, the forebrain is the most recent evolutionary addition to the brain. It is the last
of the three portions of the brain to develop prenatally. Additionally, across the
evolutionary development of our species, humans have shown an increasingly greater
proportion of brain weight in relation to body weight. However, across the span of
development after birth, the proportion of brain weight to body weight declines.

For cognitive psychologists, the most important of these evolutionary trends is the
increasing neural complexity of the brain. The evolution of the human brain has offered
us the enhanced ability to exercise voluntary control over behaviour. It has also
strengthened our ability to plan and to contemplate alternative courses of action.
These ideas are discussed in the next section with respect to the cerebral cortex.

1.8.5 Techniques for studying brain activity

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• Single-unit recording: This technique (also known as single-cell recording) involves
inserting a micro-electrode one 110,000th of a millimetre in diameter into the brain to
study activity in single neurons. This is a very sensitive technique, since electrical
charges of as little as one-millionth of a volt can be detected.

• Event-related potentials (ERPs): The same stimulus is presented repeatedly, and

the pattern of electrical brain activity recorded by several scalp electrodes is averaged
to produce a single waveform. This technique allows us to work out the timing of
various cognitive processes.

• Positron emission tomography (PET): This technique involves the detection of

positrons, which are the atomic particles emitted from some radioactive substances.
PET has reasonable spatial resolution but poor temporal resolution, and it only
provides an indirect measure of neural activity.

• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): This technique involves imaging

blood oxygenation using an MRI machine (described later). fMRI has superior spatial
and temporal resolution to PET, but also only provides an indirect measure of neural
activity.

• Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (efMRI): This is a type of

fMRI that compares brain activation associated with different “events”. For example,
we could see whether brain activation on a memory test differs depending on whether
participants respond correctly or incorrectly.

• Magneto-encephalography (MEG): This technique involves measuring the

magnetic fields produced by electrical brain activity. It provides fairly detailed
information at the millisecond level about the time course of cognitive processes, and
its spatial resolution is reasonably good.

• Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): This is a technique in which a coil is

placed close to the participant’s head and a very brief pulse of current is run through
it. This produces a short-lived magnetic field that generally inhibits processing in the
brain area affected. It can be regarded as causing a very brief “lesion”, a lesion being
a structural alteration caused by brain damage. This technique has (jokingly!) been
compared to hitting someone’s brain with a hammer. As we will see, the effects of
TMS are sometimes more complex than our description of it would suggest.

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1.9 Activity

1. Define Cognitive Psychology pointing out major contributors in its history.

2. Define mental processes;

i) Attention
ii) Language

iii) Metacognition
3. Point out differences between Cognitive Psychology vs Cognitive Science.

4 i) Outline brain parts and regions,

ii) Describe their functions in detail.

UNIT 2: PERCEPTION
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Unit Objectives

In this Unit, you will learn how to:

By the end of this chapter the student is expected to:

 Distinguish between sensation and perception;

 Outline some factors which determine perception;
 Explain the gestalt laws of perception;
 Explain the different theories of perception.

2.1 Basic terms and concepts related to sensation and perception

To have a better understanding of the subject matter of sensation and perception, we

need to define related basic terms.

1. Perception: It is the process whereby the brain interprets sensations, giving

information order and meaning. It takes into account experiences stored in our
memory, the context in which the sensation occurs and our internal state (our
emotions and motivations). It is the process of forming hypotheses about what
the senses tell us.

Example: Hearing sounds and seeing colours are sensory processes; whereas,
listening sweet music and detecting depth in a two dimensional picture are perceptual
processes. Without sensation of some kind perception could not occur.

2. Stimulus: It is a source of physical energy that produces a response in the

sense organs. The energy could be sound waves, light waves, and heat
pressure to which an organism is capable of responding. A sensation is a
response to that energy by a sensory system. Stimulus and sensation have
cause and effect relationship. The quality of a stimulus refers to the kind of
sensation it produces.

Example: Colour----- visual stimulation

Musical pitch------auditory stimulation

The quantity of a stimulus refers to the amount of stimulus present.

Example: brightness, loudness
Stimuli vary in both type and intensity. Different types of stimuli activate different sense
organs.

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Example: A light stimulus that activates our sense of sight and allows us to see the
colour of a tree is called type. A sound stimulus that permits us to hear the sound of a
musical instrument is called type. How high a light stimulus needs to be before it is
capable of being detected is intensity. How much perfume a person must put on before
others notice it is termed as intensity?

3. Sensation - It is the process by which an organism’s sense organs respond to

a stimulus. It is the process whereby stimulation of receptor cells (in the eyes,
ears, nose, mouth, and surface of the skin) sends nerve impulses to the brain.
After reaching the brain they are registered as a touch, a sound, a taste, and a
splash of colour.

4. Response: It is any reaction of an organism to or in the presence of a stimulus.

The reaction could be muscular or glandular.

5. Transduction: It is the sequence of operation by which physical energy

(example, sound waves, light) is transformed into patterns of neural impulse
that give rise to sensory experience.

A branch of psychology called psychophysics studies the relationship between the

intensity of a stimulus and its sensory response. In other words it studies the
relationship between the physical nature of stimuli and people’s sensory responses to
them. There are several factors that affect our perception. Some of these are:

a. Context and expectation

In an experiment by Bruner and Minturn (1955, cited by Baron), participants were
shown sequences either of letters or of numbers, for example:

 C D E F G H or
 8 9 10 11 12
When perceived with a figure/number I3 that could be either B or 13, those who had
seen the sequence or letters tended to perceive it as B, while those who had seen the
numbers perceived it as 13. The context in which it was seen produced expectation
and induced a particular set.

b. Motivation
Studies have shown the effects of motivation upon the way in which things are
perceived. Solley and Haigh (1956, cited in Baron), for instance, asked children aged
four to eight to draw pictures of Santa Claus during the month running up to Christmas.

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As Christmas approached, Santa Claus became larger, nearer, more elaborate, a
more decorated costume and a bigger bag of presents. After Christmas, Santa shrank
and his present bag all but disappeared.

c. Emotion and perception

In a study by McGinnis (1949, cited in Baron), participants were presented with either
neutral stimulus such as table apple chair or ‘taboo’ words. Each of these words was
presented very briefly, then for increasing length of time. At the same time a measure
of emotional response (Galvanic Skin Response) was taken. It was found that the
taboo words had a higher recognition threshold and were also accompanied by greater
GSR.

d. Values, culture and personality

There is evidence that suggests that an individual’s value system may induce a set.
Post man (1948, cited in Baron), rated participants on the Allport-Vernnon scale of
values. The scale divides values into six categories. These are theoretical, social,
economic, aesthetic, political and religious. The result showed that, words, which are
relatd to highly rated value categories, were found to be more easily perceived than
lower-rated values. Cultural prejudices have an effect upon perception.

In Pettigrew (1958, cited in Baron) study, different racial groups of South Africans
pictures were shown to Afrikaners. The pictures were shown to each of their eyes
simultaneously. Afrikaners tended to exhibit a cultural set in that they saw all the
pictures as either Europeans or African without differentiating Indians and those of
mixed race from the Africans.

6. Absolute threshold: It is the smallest intensity of a stimulus that must be

present for it to be detected. For a stimulus to be detected by our sense organs
it must become strong enough. The following research findings on absolute
threshold are taken from the works of Galanter (1962) as cited in (Sternberg,
2012)

 Sight: a candle flame can be seen 30 miles away on a dark, clear night.

 Hearing: the ticking of a watch can be heard 20 feet away under quiet
conditions.

 Taste: A teaspoon of sugar can be detected in nine litres of water

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  Smell: A drop of perfume can be detected when one drop is present in a three-
room apartment.

 Touch: The falling of a bee’s wing from a distance of one centimetre can be felt
on a cheek.

7. Difference threshold: it is the smallest detectable difference between two

stimuli.
A noticeable difference depends on the value of the initial intensity of the stimulus.
Example: When the moon is seen in the late afternoon, it appears relatively dim. When
it is seen in the dark, it seems quite bright.

Weber’s law: The law states that ‘the just noticeable difference is in constant
proportion to the intensity of an initial stimulus.” Weber’s law in psychophysics explains
the relationship between changes in the original value of a stimulus and the degree to
which the change will be noticed.

Example: If a one-pound increase in a ten-pound weight produces a just noticeable

difference, it would take a ten-pound increase to produce a noticeable difference in a
hundred pounds. The noticeable difference in the case of loudness becomes larger
for sounds that are initially loud than for sounds that are initially soft.

Example: A person in a quiet room is more sensitive to the ringing of a telephone than
a person in a noisy room. In order to produce the same amount of sensitivity in a noisy
room, the ring has to be very loud.

8. Sensory adaptation: It is an adjustment in sensory capacity following long

period of exposure to stimuli. It is the tendency of receptor cells in the sense
organs to respond less and less to a constant stimulus. Adaptation occurs as a
result of prolonged exposure to stimuli, a change in the attitude and expectation
of the individual.

Example: Repeated hearing of a musical sound in a bar makes a person to adjust as

if it were softer. When you enter into the dormitory with a distinct odour, the smell is
very noticeable at first, but soon it seems to fade.

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One explanation for decline in sensitivity to sensory stimuli is the inability of the
sensory nerve receptors to constantly carry messages to the brain. They stop reacting
to constant stimulation. The sense of smell and touch adapt quickly. Pain adaptation
is slower. However, sensory adaptation occurs with all the senses.

9. Attention: Attention is a general term referring to the selective aspects of

perception which function so that any instant an organism focuses on certain
features of the environment to the exclusion of other features.

A factor of importance in the study of perception is attention. Human beings are

constantly encountered with stimuli from the environment in which they live; but they
use only a very small portion of this information. Selective attention enables them to
sort out and process this information.

In this operation we can distinguish between controlled and automatic processing.

Controlled processing is serial; one thing is processed after another. Automatic
processing is parallel. More than one processing operation can occur at a time. Difficult
and unfamiliar tasks require controlled processing. Simple and familiar tasks can be
processed automatically.

Factors which determine whether or not we pay attention to a stimulus are:

1. Intensity: a bright colour will attract us more than a dull one.

2. Size: a large thing is more likely to catch our attention than something small.

3. Duration of repetition: a quickly running stimulus will not catch our attention as
easily as one, which persists or is repeated.

4. Emotional content: a stimulus, which creates emotional feeling, attracts our

attention more than a neutral one.
5. Suddenness or novelty: sudden stimulus is likely to catch our attention more
easily than one we have been expecting.

6. Contrast: contrasting stimulus will attract attention more easily than those,
which are similar to each other.

7. Movement: a stimulus, which moves, is more likely to attract attention than

something stationary.

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Activity: Observe advertisements on the NBC television. List the occasions and
describe how the above factors are evident. Assess the effectiveness of these
advertisements in attracting the attention of the public.

2.2 Sensory Adaptation

Entering your neighbours’ living room, you smell a musty odour. You wonder how they
can stand it, but within minutes you no longer notice it. Sensory adaptation has come
to your rescue. When we are constantly exposed to a stimulus that does not change,
we become less aware of it because our nerve cells fire less frequently. To experience
sensory adaptation, move your watch up your wrist an inch: You will feel it but only for
a few moments.

Imagine that we have fitted a volunteer, Mary, with one of these instruments—a small
projector mounted on a contact lens. When Mary’s eye moves, the image from the
projector moves as well. So everywhere that Mary looks, the scene is sure to go. If we
project images through this instrument, what will Mary see? At first, she will see the
complete image. But within a few seconds, as her sensory system begins to fatigue,
things get weird. Bit by bit, the image vanishes, only to reappear and then disappear—
often in fragments.

Although sensory adaptation reduces our sensitivity, it offers an important benefit:

freedom to focus on informative changes in our environment without being distracted
by background chatter. Stinky or heavily perfumed people don’t notice their odour
because, like you and me, they adapt to what’s constant and detect only change. Our
sensory receptors are alert to novelty; bore them with repetition and they free our
attention for more important things. We will see this principle again and again: We
perceive the world not exactly as it is, but as it is useful for us to perceive it.

Our sensitivity to changing stimulation helps explain television’s attention -grabbing

power. Cuts, edits, zooms, pans, sudden noises—all demand attention. The
phenomenon is irresistible even to TV researchers. One noted that even during
interesting conversations, “I cannot for the life of me stop from periodically glancing
over to the screen”.

Sensory adaptation and sensory thresholds are important ingredients in our

perceptions of the world around us. Much of what we perceive comes not just from
what’s “out there” but also from what’s behind our eyes and between our ears.

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2.3 From Sensation to Perception

We do not perceive the world exactly as our eyes see it. Instead, our brain actively
tries to make sense of the many stimuli that enter our eyes and fall on our retina. In
the diagram below you can see two high-rise buildings in the city of Windhoek. (We
live in one of them!) In the right photo, the right tower seems to be substantially higher
than the left one. The left picture, however, shows that the towers actually are in fact
exactly the same height.

Depending on your viewpoint, objects can look quite different, revealing different
details. Thus, perception does not consist of just seeing what is being projected onto
your retina; the process is much more complex. Your brain processes the visual
stimuli, giving the stimuli meaning and interpreting them. How difficult it is to interpret
what we see has become clear in recent years as researchers have tried to teach
computers to “see”; but computers are still lagging behind humans in object
recognition.

a) b)

Objects Look Different Depending on the Perspective.

The pictures show the same two high-rise buildings in Boston from two different
perspectives. In (a) they look about the same size, as they in fact are. In (b), their
image on the retina makes them seem to be of different heights, and it is only through
further processing that we can pinpoint they are the same size.

2.4 How Does Our Visual System Work?

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The precondition for vision is the existence of light. Light is electromagnetic radiation
that can be described in terms of wavelength. Humans can perceive only a small range
of the wavelengths that exist; the visible wavelengths are from 380 to 750 nanometers.
Vision begins when light passes through the protective covering of the eye (Figure
Below). This covering, the cornea, is a clear dome that protects the eye. The light then
passes through the pupil, the opening in the center of the iris.

It continues through the crystalline lens and the vitreous humour. The vitreous humour
is a gel-like substance that comprises the majority of the eye. Eventually, the light
focuses on the retina where electromagnetic light energy is transduced—that is,
converted—into neural electrochemical impulses (Blake, 2000). Vision is most acute
in the fovea, which is a small, thin region of the retina, the size of the head of a pin.
When you look straight at an object, your eyes rotate so that the image falls directly
onto the fovea.

Although the retina is only about as thick as a single page in this book, it consists of
three main layers of neuronal tissue (2nd Figure Below). The first layer of neuronal
tissue—closest to the front, outward-facing surface of the eye—is the layer of ganglion
cells, whose axons constitute the optic nerve. The second layer consists of three kinds
of interneuron cells. Amacrine cells and horizontal cells make single lateral (i.e.,
horizontal) connections among adjacent areas of the retina in the middle layer of cells.

37
2.4.1 The Human Eye and The Cross-Section of the Retina

Bipolar cells make dual connections forward and outward to the ganglion cells, as well
as backward and inward to the third layer of retinal cells. The third layer of the retina
contains the photoreceptors, which convert light energy into electrochemical energy
that is transmitted by neurons to the brain.

There are two kinds of photoreceptors—rods and cones. Each eye contains roughly
120 million rods and 8 million cones. Rods and cones differ not only in shape but also
in their compositions, locations, and responses to light. Within the rods and cones are
photo pigments, chemical substances that react to light and transform physical
electromagnetic energy into an electrochemical neural impulse that can be understood
by the brain.

The rods are long and thin photoreceptors. They are more highly concentrated in the
periphery of the retina than in the foveal region. The rods are responsible for night
vision and are sensitive to light and dark stimuli.

2.4.2 Processing the Visual Message

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By the time a visual message reaches the brain, it has passed through several stages
of processing. One of the initial sites is the ganglion cells. Each ganglion cell gathers
information from a group of rods and cones in a particular area of the eye and
compares the amount of light entering the center of that area with the amount of light
in the area around it.

Some ganglion cells are activated by light in the center (and darkness in the
surrounding area). Other ganglion cells are activated when there is darkness in the
center and light in the surrounding areas. The outcome of this process is to maximize
the detection of variations in light and darkness. The image that is passed on to the
brain, then, is an enhanced version of the actual visual stimulus outside the body.

The ultimate processing of visual images takes place in the visual cortex of the brain,
and it is here that the most complex kinds of processing occur. Hubel and Wiesel,
(1981) discover that many neurons in the cortex are extraordinarily specialized, being
activated only by visual stimuli of a particular shape or pattern—a process known as
feature detection.

They found that some cells are activated only by lines of a particular width, shape, or
orientation. Other cells are activated only by moving, as opposed to stationary, stimuli.
Different parts of the brain process nerve impulses in several individual systems
simultaneously. For instance, one system relates to shapes, one to colours, and others
to movement, location, and depth.

Furthermore, different parts of the brain are involved in the perception of specific kinds
of stimuli, showing distinctions, for example, between the perception of human faces,
animals, and inanimate stimuli.

If separate neural systems exist for processing information about specific aspects of
the visual world, how are all these data integrated by the brain? The brain makes use
of information regarding the frequency, rhythm, and timing of the firing of particular
sets of neural cells. Furthermore, the brain’s integration of visual information does not
occur in any single step or location in the brain but rather is a process that occurs on
several levels simultaneously. The ultimate outcome, though, is indisputable: a vision
of the world around us.

2.5 Approaches to Perception: How Do We Make Sense of What We See?

39
Now that we know how a light stimulus that enters our eye is processed and routed to
the brain, the question still remains as to how we actually perceive what we see. Do
we just perceive whatever is being projected on our retina, or is there more to
perception? Does our knowledge, and other rules we have learned throughout our life,
maybe influence our perception of the world? Going back to our view out of the
window, the image on our retina suggests that the buildings we see in the distance are
very small.

There are different views on how we perceive the world. These views can be
summarized as bottom-up theories and top-down theories. Bottom-up theories
describe approaches where perception starts with the stimuli whose appearance you
take in through your eye. Not all theorists focus on the sensory data of the perceptual
stimulus. Many theorists prefer top-down theories, according to which perception is
driven by high-level cognitive processes, existing knowledge, and the prior
expectations that influence perception.

2.5.1 Signal detection theory:

This theory addresses the role of psychological factors in detecting stimuli. Several
factors influence us how we answer such questions. For instance, physicians who are
seeking to identify the presence of a tumour in an x-ray are influenced by their
expectations, knowledge, and experience with patients. From this we can understand
that the ability to detect a stimulus depends not only on the type and intensity of the
stimulus but also on psychological factors. People can make mistakes in their attempt
to detect a stimulus.

According to signal detection theory there are two kinds of errors made by people in
their attempt to detect a stimulus. These are:

 Reporting a stimulus as existing when it is non-existent;

 Reporting a stimulus as non-existent when it actually exists;

In such conditions, using signal detection theory, psychologists are able to obtain an
understanding of how observer’s expectations, motivations, and judgment affect
individual’s ability to detect a stimulus. The findings in signal detection theory have
great practical importance in our life.
Example: If a radar operator, who is responsible for distinguishing incoming enemy
missiles from

40
The images of passing birds, makes a mistake, the consequence will be dangerous.
A witness who is asked to detect a criminal from people in a line, and if he/she mis-
identifies the criminal as innocent person it is dangerous. Similarly if the criminal is not
detected correctly that might be also dangerous for the society.

Psychologists have developed a procedure that enhances people’s chances of

identifying suspects. These are:

 Telling witnesses that the suspect might not be in the line-up at all.

 Trying to make people in the line up to appear equally dissimilar.

2.5.2 The Gestalt laws of organization

In the perceptual process, the senses work together to provide us with an integrated
view and understanding of the world. Perception is a constructive process by which
we go beyond the stimuli that are presented to us. From what we sense in our
environment, the brain constructs a meaningful situation.

The gestalt laws of organization are principles that describe how we organize and
construct pieces of information into meaningful wholes. They include: closure,
proximity, similarity, and simplicity.

1. Law of Closure: We perceive things by grouping them as complete figure

rather than open and breaks. We tend to ignore the breaks in the figure below
and concentrate on the overall form as a circle or square.

41
2. Law of Proximity: Things that are closer together are grouped together. The
Gestalt principle of proximity suggests that you see (a) one block of dots on the
left side and (b) three columns on the right side.

3. Law of Similarity: Elements that are similar in appearance are grouped

together. When looking at this array of dots, we likely perceive alternating rows
of colours. We are grouping these dots according to the principle of similarity.

4. Law of Simplicity: When we observe a pattern, we perceive it in the most

common straightforward manner. For example, most of us see the figure below

42
 as a square with lines on two sides, rather than as the block letter “W” on the
top of the letter “M”. We generally tend to choose and interpret the simple one.

5. Law of Continuity: We tend to perceive smoothly flowing or continuous forms

rather than disrupted or discontinuous ones. Good continuation would suggest
that we are more likely to perceive this as two overlapping lines, rather than
four lines meeting in the centre.

According to Gestalt psychologists, perception of stimuli in our environment is not

simply putting together individual elements. It requires an active, constructive process

43
of the brain. It is when we put together bits and pieces of information into a whole that
we can better understand and solve problems in our environment.

Example: To introduce a new health package into a community, it is important to see

the culture, economic and consciousness of the people in that community. It requires
an integrated approach.

6. Figure-Ground perception - It is the perceptual relationship between the

object of focus (the figure) and the field (the ground). The figure has form or
structure and appears to be in front of the ground. According to this principle,
we tend to segment our visual world into figure and ground. Figure is the object
or person that is the focus of the visual field, while the ground is the background.

As Figure below shows, our perception can vary tremendously, depending on

what is perceived as figure and what is perceived as ground. Presumably, our
ability to interpret sensory information depends on what we label as figure and
what we label as ground in any particular case, although this assumption has
been called into question. The ground is seen as extending behind the figure.
The relationship can be reversed by focusing on or attending to the ground
rather than the figure.

2.5.3 Bottom-Up Theories

The four main bottom-up theories of form and pattern perception are direct perception,
template theories, feature theories, and recognition-by-components theory.

44
2.5.3 a) Gibson’s Theory of Direct Perception

How do we connect what we perceive to what we have stored in our minds? Gestalt
psychologists referred to this problem as the Hoffding function. It was named after
19th-century Danish psychologist Harald Hoffding. He questioned whether perception
is such a simple process that all it takes is to associate what is seen with what is
remembered (associationism). An influential and controversial theorist who
questioned associationism is James J. Gibson (1904–1980). According to Gibson’s
theory of direct perception, the information in our sensory receptors, including the
sensory context, is all we need to perceive anything.

As the environment supplies us with all the information we need for perception, this
view is sometimes also called ecological perception. In other words, we do not need
higher cognitive processes or anything else to mediate between our sensory
experiences and our perceptions. Existing beliefs or higher-level inferential thought
processes are not necessary for perception.

Gibson believed that, in the real world, sufficient contextual information usually exists
to make perceptual judgments. He claimed that we need not appeal to higher level
intelligent processes to explain perception. Gibson (1979) believed that we use this
contextual information directly. In essence, we are biologically tuned to respond to it.
According to Gibson, we use texture gradients as cues for depth and distance. Those
cues aid us to perceive directly the relative proximity or distance of objects and of parts
of objects.

In Picture below, you can see different rock formations at the sea coast. For the rocks
that are closest to the photographer, you can see many details, like notches, holes,
and variations in colour. The farther away the objects on the picture are, the fewer the
details you can see. You are using texture gradients as an indicator of how far away
the rocks are. And because some of the rocks cover up parts of other rocks, you infer
from that information that the rocks that are partly covered must be farther away than
the rocks that cover them.

45
Based on our analysis of the stable relationships among features of objects and
settings in the real world, we directly perceive our environment. We do not need the
aid of complex thought processes. Such contextual information might not be readily
controlled in a laboratory experiment. But such information is likely to be available in
a real-world setting.

2.5.3 b) Template Theories

Template theories suggest that we have stored in our minds myriad sets of templates.
Templates are highly detailed models for patterns we potentially might recognize. We
recognize a pattern by comparing it with our set of templates. We then choose the
exact template that perfectly matches what we observe. We see examples of template
matching in our everyday lives.

Fingerprints are matched in this way. Machines rapidly process imprinted numerals on
checks by comparing them to templates. Increasingly, products of all kinds are
identified with universal product codes (UPCs or “bar codes”). They can be scanned
and identified by computers at the time of purchase. Chess players who have
knowledge of many games use a matching strategy in line with template theory to
recall previous games.

46
Template matching theories belong to the group of chunk-based theories that suggest
that expertise is attained by acquiring chunks of knowledge in long-term memory that
can later be accessed for fast recognition. Studies with chess players have shown that
the temporal lobe is indeed activated when the players access the stored chunks in
their long-term memory. For template matching, only an exact match will do. This is
exactly what you want from a bank computer. However, consider your perceptual
system at work in everyday situations.

It rarely would work if you required exact matches for every stimulus you were to
recognize. Imagine, for example, needing mental templates for every possible percept
of the face of someone you love. Imagine one for each facial expression, each angle
of viewing, and each addition or removal of makeup, each hairdo, and so on.
Template-matching theories fail to explain some aspects of the perception of letters.
For one thing, such theories cannot easily account for our perception of the letters and
words in THE CAT issue.

We identify two different letters (A and H) from only one physical form. We can
recognize an A as an A despite variations in the size, orientation, and form in which
the letter is written. Are we to believe that we have mental templates for each possible
size, orientation, and form of a letter? Storing, organizing, and retrieving so many
templates in memory would be unwieldy.

Why Computers Have Trouble Reading Handwriting - Think about how easy it is
for you to perceive and understand someone’s handwriting. In handwriting,
everybody’s numbers and letters look a bit different. You can still distinguish them
without any problems (at least in most cases). This is something computers do not do
very well at all. For computers, the reading of handwriting is an incredibly difficult
process that’s prone to mistakes. When you deposit a check at an ATM machine, it
“reads” your check automatically.

In fact, the numbers at the bottom of your check that are written in a strange-looking
font are so distinct that a machine cannot mistake them for one another. However, it
is much harder for a machine to decipher handwriting.

Template Matching in Barcodes and Letters.

A particular barcode will always look exactly the same way, making it easy for
computers to read. Letters, to the contrary, can look very differently although they
depict the same letter. Template matching will distinguish between different bar codes

47
but will not recognize that different versions of the letter A written in different scripts
are indeed both As.

2.5.3 c) Recognition-by-Components Theory

How do we form stable 3-D mental representations of objects? The recognition by-
components theory explains our ability to perceive 3-D objects with the help of simple
geometric shapes.

Seeing with the Help of Geons - Irving Biederman (1987) suggested that we achieve
this by manipulating a number of simple 3-D geometric shapes called geons (for
geometrical ions). They include objects such as bricks, cylinders, wedges, cones, and
their curved axis counterparts. According to recognition-by-components (RBC) theory,
we quickly recognize objects by observing the edges of them and then decomposing
the objects into geons. The geons also can be recomposed into alternative
arrangements.

You know that a small set of letters can be manipulated to compose countless words
and sentences. Similarly, a small number of geons can be used to build up many basic
shapes and then myriad basic objects. The geons are simple and are viewpoint-
invariant (i.e., distinct from various viewpoints). The objects constructed from geons
thus are recognized easily from many perspectives, despite visual noise.
RBC theory parsimoniously explains how we recognize the general classification for
countless objects quickly, automatically, and accurately.

This recognition occurs despite changes in viewpoint. It occurs even under many
situations in which the stimulus object is degraded in some way. For example, if you
see a car, you perceive it as being made up of a number of different Geon’s. You can
recognize the car even if you can’t see all of the Geon’s because the car is partly
obscured by another object in front of it. Because the Geon’s are viewpoint-invariant,
you will also recognize the car even if you look at it from the side or from behind.

2.5.4 Top-Down Theories

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In contrast to the bottom-up approach to perception is the top-down, Constructive
Approach In constructive perception, the perceiver builds (constructs) a cognitive
understanding (perception) of a stimulus. The concepts of the perceiver and his or her
cognitive processes influence what he or she sees. The perceiver uses sensory
information as the foundation for the structure but also uses other sources of
information to build the perception.

This viewpoint also is known as intelligent perception because it states that higher-
order thinking plays an important role in perception. It also emphasizes the role of
learning in perception. Some investigators have pointed out that not only does the
world affect our perception but also the world we experience is actually formed by our
perception. In other words, perception is reciprocal with the world we experience.
Perception both affects and is affected by the world as we experience it.

An interesting feature of the theory of constructive perception is that it links human

intelligence even to fairly basic processes of perception. According to this theory,
perception comprises not merely a low-level set of cognitive processes, but actually a
quite sophisticated set of processes that interact with and are guided by human
intelligence. When you look out your window, you “see” many things, but what you
recognize yourself as seeing is highly processed by your intelligence.

What you perceive is shaped, at some level, by what you know and what you think.
For example, picture yourself driving down a road you have never travelled before.
As you approach a blind intersection, you see an octagonal red sign with white
lettering. It bears the letters “ST_P.” An overgrown vine cuts between the T and the P.
Chances are, you will construct from your sensations a perception of a stop sign. You
thus will respond appropriately.

Perceptual constancies are another example (see below). When you see a car
approaching you on the street, its image on your retina gets bigger as the car comes
closer. And yet, you perceive the car to stay the same size. This suggests that high-
level constructive processes are at work during perception. In colour constancy, we
perceive that the colour of an object remains the same despite changes in lighting that
alter the hue. Even in lighting that becomes so dim that colour sensations are virtually
absent, we still perceive bananas as yellow, plums as purple, and so on.

According to constructivists, during perception we quickly form and test various

hypotheses regarding percepts. The percepts are based on three things:

49
 o What we sense (the sensory data),

o What we know (knowledge stored in memory), and

o What we can infer (using high-level cognitive processes).

The viewpoint of constructive or intelligent perception shows the central relation

between perception and intelligence. According to this viewpoint, intelligence is an
integral part of our perceptual processing. We do not perceive simply in terms of what
is “out there in the world.” Rather, we perceive in terms of the expectations and other
cognitions we bring to our interaction with the world. In this view, intelligence and
perceptual processes interact in the formation of our beliefs about what it is that we
are encountering in our everyday contacts with the world at large.

2.5.5 How Do Bottom-Up Theories and Top-Down Theories Go Together?

Both theoretical approaches have garnered empirical support. So how do we decide

between the two? On one level, the constructive-perception theory, which is more top-
down, seems to contradict direct-perception theory, which is more bottom-up.
Constructivists emphasize the importance of prior knowledge in combination with
relatively simple and ambiguous information from the sensory receptors. In contrast,
direct perception theorists emphasize the completeness of the information in the
receptors themselves.

They suggest that perception occurs simply and directly. Thus, there is little need for
complex information processing. Instead of viewing these theoretical approaches as
incompatible, we may gain deeper insight into perception by considering the
approaches to be complementary. Sensory information may be more richly informative
and less ambiguous in interpreting experiences than the constructivists would suggest.
But it may be less informative than the direct-perception theorists would assert.

Similarly, perceptual processes may be more complex than hypothesized by

Gibsonian theorists. This would be particularly true under conditions in which the
sensory stimuli appear only briefly or are degraded. Degraded stimuli are less
informative for various reasons. For example, the stimuli may be partially obscured or
weakened by poor lighting. Or they may be incomplete, or distorted by illusory cues or
other visual “noise” (distracting visual stimulation analogous to audible noise).

We likely use a combination of information from the sensory receptors and our past
knowledge to make sense of what we perceive. Some experimental evidence supports

50
this integrated view. Recent work suggests that, whereas the very first stage of the
visual pathway represents only what is in the retinal image of an object, very soon,
colour, orientation, motion, depth, spatial frequency, and temporal frequency are
represented. Later-stage representations emphasize the viewer’s current interest or
attention. In other words, the later-stage representations are not independent of our
attentional focus.

2.6 Perception of Objects and Forms

Do we perceive objects in a viewer-centered or in an object-centered way? When we

gaze at any object in the space around us, do we perceive it in relation to us rather
than its actual structure, or do we perceive it in a more objective way that is
independent of how it appears to us right this moment? We’ll examine this question in
the next section.

Then, we look at Gestalt principles for perception, which explain why we perceive
some objects as in groups but others as not so grouped (what is it that makes some
birds flying in the afternoon sky appear to be in a group whereas others do not?).
Finally, we will consider the question of how we perceive patterns, for example faces.

2.6.1 Viewer-Centered vs. Object-Centered Perception

Right now one of your authors is looking at the computer on which he is typing this
text. He depicts the results of what he sees as a mental representation. What form
does this mental representation take? There are two common positions regarding the
answer to this question.

One position, viewer-centered representation, is that the individual stores the way the
object looks to him or her. Thus, what matters is the appearance of the object to the
viewer (in this case, the appearance of the computer to the author), not the actual
structure of the object. The shape of the object changes, depending on the angle from
which we look at it. A number of views of the object are stored, and when we try to
recognize an object, we have to rotate that object in our mind until it fits one of the
stored images.

The second position, object-centered representation, is that the individual stores a

representation of the object, independent of its appearance to the viewer. In this case,
the shape of the object will stay stable across different orientations. This stability can
be achieved by means of establishing the major and minor axes of the object, which
then serve as a basis for defining further properties of the object.

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Both positions can account for how the author represents a given object and its parts.
The key difference is in whether he represents the object and its parts in relation to
him (viewer-centered) or in relation to the entirety of the object itself, independent of
his own position (object-centered).

Consider, for example, the computer on which this text is being written. It has different
parts: a screen, a keyboard, a mouse, and so forth. Suppose the author represents
the computer in terms of viewer-centered representation. Then its various parts are
stored in terms of their relation to him.
He sees the screen as facing him at perhaps a 20-degree angle. He sees the keyboard
facing him horizontally. He sees the mouse off to the right side and in front of him.
Suppose, instead, that he uses an object-centered representation. Then he would see
the screen at a 70-degree angle relative to the keyboard. And the mouse is directly to
the right side of the keyboard, neither in front of it nor in back of it.

2.7 Visual Illusions

Although perception is usually reliable, our perceptions sometimes misrepresent the

world. When our perception of an object doesn’t match its true physical characteristics,
we’ve experienced an illusion. Some illusions are due to the physical distortion of
stimuli, whereas others are due to our misperception of stimuli. An example of a
physical illusion is the bent appearance of a stick when placed in water. Visual
illusions are physical stimuli that consistently produce errors in perception

Gregory’s Explanation of Visual Illusions

Gregory argued that we treat two-dimensional illusions as if they were three-
dimensional, even though we know they are only two-dimensional. Gregory suggests
the misapplied size–constancy theory explains several illusions. Gregory suggests
that when we look at the Müller–Lyer illusion and the “fins” out of context, there are no
cues to help us perceive their length so we draw on existing hypotheses and
expectations.

These tell us that the figure with the fins diverging represents an inside corner and the
one with the fins converging represents an outside corner. Since it is part of our
expectation, that outside corners are usually further away than inside ones, when the
vertical line is the same length, the “outside” corner one is perceived as longer since
it is perceived as further away. In a sense, we perceive a two-dimensional figure as if

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it were a three-dimensional one. This may well be true since if these fins are presented
as luminous figures in a dark room, they do appear three-dimensional.

2.8 Do We Have to Learn to Perceive?

Learning is the key to survival. Because the environment and the human body
constantly changes the human brain needs mechanisms to adapt to these changes in
order to guarantee robust perception. Here we investigate several aspects of learning
as they concern human perception and action. Learning is interpreted in the framework
of statistical optimal models.

Learning to integrate
When different perceptual signals of the same physical property are integrated, e.g.,
an objects’ size, which can be seen and felt, they form a more reliable sensory
estimate. This however implies that the sensory system already knows which signals
belong together and how they relate. In other words, the system has to know the
mapping between the signals.

Can such a mapping between two arbitrary sensory signals from vision and touch be
learned from their statistical co-occurrence such that they become integrated? In
general, how adaptive is human multisensory integration and what are the conditions
under which it will occur? One of our recent publications starts answering some of
these questions.

Statistical Determinants of Visuomotor Adaptation

Rapid reaching to a target is generally accurate, but contains random and systematic
error. Random error is due to noise in visual measurement, motor planning, and reach
execution. Systematic error is caused by systematic changes in the mapping between
the visual estimate of target location and the reach endpoint. Systematic errors occur,
for example, when the visual image is distorted by new spectacles or when the reach
is affected by external forces on the arm.

Humans minimize systematic errors (i.e., maintain accurate reaching) by recalibrating

the visuomotor system. We investigated how different sorts of error affect recalibration
rate by manipulating the statistical properties of systematic error and the reliability with
which the error could be measured. We modelled the process using an optimal
predictive filter- the Kalman filter. Model and human behavior was similar: less reliable
measurements decreased recalibration rate; more variation in systematic error caused
an increase.

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Perceptual Learning

Here we investigate perceptual learning in the broad sense. Generally perceptual

learning is understood as the improvement in performance of a perceptual task due to
prolonged exposure of the learned signal and/or training of the task. An example would
be that we are better able to discriminate a certain motion direction from others after
training with that specific motion direction. But perceptual learning incorporates more
than just the improvement or adjustment in the perception of #
Signals that we are already well aware of.

One question we are pursuing at the moment is to what degree a person has to be
aware of the stimulus for perceptual learning to occur. And another question concerns
the transfer of learning to novel situations and tasks or details on these projects see
the personal page of Loes van Dam.

Learning Cue reliability and Bayesian Priors

To interpret complex and ambiguous input, the human visual system uses prior
knowledge or assumptions about the world. We show that the ‘light-from-above’ prior,
used to extract information about shape from shading is modified in response to active
experience with the scene. The resultant adaptation is not specific to the learned
scene but generalizes to a different task, demonstrating that priors are constantly
adapted by interactive experience with the environment.

The visual system uses several signals to deduce the three-dimensional structure of
the environment, including binocular disparity, texture gradients, shading and motion
parallax. Although each of these sources of information is independently insufficient
to yield reliable three-dimensional structure from everyday scenes, the visual system
combines them by weighting the available information; altering the weights would
therefore change the perceived structure.

We report that haptic feedback (active touch) increases the weight of a consistent
surface-slant signal relative to inconsistent signals. Thus, appearance of a
subsequently viewed surface is changed: the surface appears slanted in the direction
specified by the haptically reinforced signal.

2.9 Defining Perceptual Learning

“Perceptual Learning” refers, roughly, to long-lasting changes in perception that result

from practice or experience (see E.J. Gibson 1963). William James, for instance,

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writes about how a person can become able to differentiate by taste between the upper
and lower half of a bottle for a particular kind of wine. Assuming that the change in the
person’s perception lasts, is genuinely perceptual (rather than, say, a learned
inference), and is based on prior experience, James’ case is a case of perceptual
learning.

This entry has three parts. The first part lays out the definition of perceptual learning
as long-term changes in perception that result from practice or experience, and then
distinguishes perceptual learning from several contrast classes. The second part
specifies different varieties of perceptual learning. The third part details cases of
perceptual learning in the philosophical literature and says why they are
philosophically significant.

Perceptual Learning as Long-Term Perceptual Changes

Perceptual learning involves long-term changes in perception. This criterion rules out
short term perceptual changes due to sensory adaptation. In the waterfall illusion, for
instance, a person who looks at a waterfall for a minute, and then looks away at some
rocks, sees the rocks as moving even though they are not. This is a short-term change
in perception, lasting perhaps for fifteen to thirty seconds. Since it is not a long-term
change in perception, however, it does not count as perceptual learning.

In another short term adaptive change, a person who goes indoors after walking
through a blizzard may have trouble as her eyes adjust to the new lighting. There is a
change in her perception because of her experience in the blizzard. But it is not a long-
term change, and so it does not count as perceptual learning. While there are clear
cases of long-term experience-induced perceptual changes and clear cases of short-
term experience-induced perceptual changes, there may be intermediary cases where
it is difficult to tell whether they count as long-term or not.

In such cases, in order to determine whether the case is a genuine case of perceptual
learning, it may be necessary to look at the mechanisms involved. If the mechanisms
involved are characteristic of other cases of perceptual learning, then that is a reason
to count the case as an instance of perceptual learning. If the mechanisms involved
are uncharacteristic of perceptual learning, then that is a reason not to count the case
as an instance of perceptual learning.

Perceptual Learning as Perceptual Changes

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Perceptual learning involves changes in perception. These rules out mere changes in
aesthetic taste, among other things. For instance, imagine a contrarian who likes
things only insofar as other people do not like those things. Suppose he finds out that,
everyone else has come to like his favorite microbrew. This might cause him to change
how he judges that beer aesthetically. However, the beer may well taste the same to
him. So, it is not a case of perceptual learning, but a mere change in the person’s
aesthetic judgment.

The fact that perceptual learning involves changes in perception also rules out mere
changes in belief. Suppose someone acquires the belief that the symphony movement
they are hearing is a scherzo. If nothing changes in that person’s perception, this is
not a case of perceptual learning. It is a change in the person’s belief, not a change in
the person’s perception.

Perceptual learning involves changes in perception, while learning that is based on

perception need not. Looking at my table, I might learn that the cup is on the table.
However, this does not involve any long-term changes in perception. It is learning that
is based on perception, but it is not perceptual learning. Furthermore, I might learn to
put the cup on the table into the dishwasher every time it is empty.

Again, this is learning that is based on perception (I need to perceive the cup in order
to move it). However, it is not perceptual learning. One of the main reasons for holding
that improvements in perceptual discrimination can be genuinely perceptual is due to
somewhat recent evidence from neuroscience. As Manfred Fahle puts it, during the
1970s and 1980s, it tended to be the case that improvements in perceptual
discrimination were thought to be cognitive rather than perceptual.

However, during the 1990s, pressure was put on the cognitive interpretation due to
new neuroscientific evidence in perceptual learning studies. In particular, studies
found that learning-induced plasticity occurs in the adult primary sensory cortices
much more than researchers had previously thought). Neurological evidence of
plasticity in adult primary sensory cortices due to learning provides some evidence
that changes in perceptual discrimination can be due to perceptual learning.

Perceptual Learning as Resulting from Practice or Experience

Perceptual learning involves perceptual changes of a particular kind, namely, those

that result from practice or experience. For this reason, laser eye surgery or cataracts

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removal do not count as instances of perceptual learning. They are not really cases of
learning because they do not result from practice or experience. So, while such cases
involve long-term changes in perception, they do not count as cases of perceptual
learning.

To be authentic cases of learning, perceptual changes have to be the result of a

learning process. As a contrast case, suppose someone undergoes a long-term
change in his or her perception due to a brain lesion. Such a change in perception
does not result from a learning process, since the change in perception comes from
the lesion, rather from practice or experience. Because of this, the case does not count
as an instance of perceptual learning, even though it involves a long-term change in
perception.

Potential Further Criteria for Defining Perceptual Learning

The conversation above roughly follows Eleanor Gibson’s definition of perceptual

learning. However, there are also other accounts in the psychology literature. Robert
Goldstone’s account of perceptual learning, for instance, agrees with Gibson’s account
in many respects, but it additionally offers a story of why perceptual changes occur.
On his account,

Perceptual learning involves relatively long-lasting changes to an organism’s

perceptual system that improve its ability to respond to its environment and are caused
by this environment. (Italics added for emphasis)

This definition offers an answer to the question as to why perceptual learning occurs
at all. On Goldstone’s account, perceptual learning occurs to improve an organism’s
ability to respond to the environment.

Goldstone’s account admits of two different interpretations. On one interpretation, the

account places a condition on perceptual learning: that to count as an instance of
perceptual learning, a long-term perceptual change has to improve an organism’s
ability to respond to the environment. Such an account gains plausibility if one thinks
of “learning” as a success-term. The idea then is that each genuine instance of
perceptual learning leads to success for the organism, namely, it improves the
organism’s ability to respond to the environment.

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On a second interpretation of Goldstone’s account, however, it is not that each
instance of perceptual learning has to improve an organism’s ability to respond to the
environment. Rather, it is that perceptual learning is a general capacity for improving
an organism’s ability to respond to the environment, even if perceptual learning fails
to do so in some instances. Why might organisms have such a capacity? One
possibility is that the capacity is a trait that improves fitness and is the product of
natural selection. However, the biological origin of perceptual learning is an area of
research that still needs to be carefully explored.

2.10 Contrast Classes

2.10.1 Perceptual Development

How much of the perceptual development we undergo as infants and young children
is the result of learning? There are many difficulties distinguishing development from
learning, conceptually. The issue of how to distinguish development from learning
bears on the traditional philosophical debate between nativists and. In the perceptual
learning literature, for instance, Kellman and Garrigan reject the view that all
perceptual development is the result of learning, a view that they consider empiricist.

Specifically, they think that data on infant perception collected in and around the 1980s
provide evidence that at least some perceptual development is innate. What this
research has shown is that the traditional empiricist picture of perceptual development
is incorrect. Although perception becomes more precise with age and experience,
basic capacities of all sorts – such as the abilities to perceive objects, faces, motion,
three-dimensional space, the directions of sounds, coordinate the senses in perceiving
events, and other abilities – arise primarily from innate or early-maturing mechanisms.

In short, according to Kellman and Garrigan, evidence on infant perception—including

evidence about object perception, the perception of faces, and the perception of three-
dimensional space—tells against the view that all perceptual development is learned.

If not all perceptual development is learned, while all perceptual learning is learned,
then there is a distinction between perceptual development and perceptual learning.
One way to draw the distinction more fully is the following. Perceptual development
involves perceptual learning. However, it does not just involve perceptual learning. It
also involves what is called maturation. For instance, the abilities that Kellman and
Garrigan describe above (object perception, the perception of faces, the perception of
three-dimensional space, etc.) fall under the category of maturation.

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There are many ways to try to draw the further distinction between perceptual
maturation and perceptual learning. Some such ways are found in the debate between
nativism and empiricism and specifically in the difference between innate and acquired
characteristics. One potential criterion here is that cases of perceptual maturation
involve perceptual abilities that are typical of the species, while cases of perceptual
learning involve perceptual abilities that are not typical of the species. This criterion
seems to get it right for some instances of perceptual learning, say, for those involved
in bird watching.

After all, the perceptual abilities acquired in bird watching are unique to birdwatchers,
not typical of the entire human species. However, the criterion seems to get it wrong
for other, more universal, instances of perceptual learning. For instance, since human
faces are both ubiquitous and important to humans, the perceptual learning involved
in face perception is in fact typical of the species.

In the literature on perceptual learning, by contrast, the distinction between perceptual

learning and perceptual maturation is often drawn in terms of the role of the
environment. On Goldstone’s account of perceptual learning, to count as perceptual
learning, perceptual changes must be caused by the environment. It is important to
understand why exactly Goldstone thinks that caused by the environment is a crucial
feature of the definition.

He thinks it is crucial since this criterion distinguishes between perceptual changes

that are simply the result of maturation, and perceptual changes that are the result of
learning. As Goldstone puts it, “If the changes are not due to environmental inputs,
then maturation rather than learning is implicated”. Manfred Fahle puts it similarly by
saying that the term maturation “ascribe[s] the main thrust of the changes in a behavior
to genetics, not the environment”. For Fahle, this is what distinguishes it from
perceptual learning.

2.10.2 Perception-Based Skills

A further point of contrast with perceptual learning is perception-based skills, such as

dart-throwing or racecar driving. To understand the relationship between perceptual
learning and perception-based skills, start by considering the following case. Williams
and Davids (1998) cited in Gross, (2008) reported that when expert soccer players
defend opponents, they focus longer on their opponent’s hips than non-experts do.
This tuned attention is a long-term change in perception that results from practice or
experience.

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That is, it is an instance of perceptual. Such changes certainly serve to enable
perception-based skills. For instance, attending to the hips is part of what enables the
soccer players to defend well. Since the hips provide a cue for what the offensive
player will do next, when the defender attends there, it helps them to do all sorts of
things: to keep the offensive player from dribbling by them; to keep the offensive player
from completing a pass; and to keep them from shooting and scoring. Without the
attentional tuning, the expert soccer players would not be able to perform as high
above baseline as they do.

Perceptual learning can enable perception-based skills, yet it is important to

distinguish these skills from perceptual learning. In fact, arguably, perceptual learning
does not in itself gives you a skill, properly speaking. One reason why, is that skills
quite plausibly require instruction (at least initially), or observation of someone else.
Perceptual learning, by contrast, can at times be unsupervised learning. Long-term,
learning-induced changes in perception sometimes happen through mere exposure to
stimuli, and without any instruction whatsoever.

Furthermore, arguably, “our skilled actions are always under our rational control…”
Yet, there is an important sense in which one cannot control a tuned attentional pattern
like that of the expert soccer players mentioned above. Goldstone, for instance, cites
a study on attentional tuning. In that study, letters were used first as targets in the
experiment, but later letters were used as distractors to be ignored. Due to their prior
training with the letters, the subjects’ attention became automatic with respect to the
letters in the scene, even though they were trying to deliberately ignore them.

2.10.3 Cognitive Penetration

Perceptual learning involves changes in perception that are long-term. This long-term
criterion rules out some cases of cognitive penetration, that is, cases where one’s
beliefs, thoughts, or desires influence one’s perception. For instance, if Jill sees Jack
as angry because she just now believes Jack is angry, this need not be a case of
perceptual learning, since it need not be a long-term change. After all, if Jill changes
her belief that Jack is angry shortly after, she will no longer see his neutral face as
angry. It would be a short-term change in her perception, not a long-term one. And so
it would not be a case of perceptual learning.

Simply because some cases of cognitive penetration are not cases of perceptual
learning, however, it does not follow that no cases of cognitive penetration are cases
of perceptual learning. Jerry Fodor distinguishes between synchronic penetration and

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diachronic penetration, where only the latter involves “experience and training” (1984:
39). The case of Jack and Jill is a case of synchronic penetration, one where the
penetration does not involve experience and training. However, at least some cases
of perceptual learning might more plausibly fit into the category of diachronic
penetration.

2.10.4 Machine Learning

Machine perception seeks “to enable man-made machines to perceive their

environments by sensory means as human and animals do”. Standard cases of
machine perception involve computers that are able to recognize speech, faces, or
types of objects. Some types of machine perception are simply programmed into the
device. For instance, some speech recognition devices (especially older ones) are
simply programmed to recognize speech, and do not learn beyond what they have
been programmed to do.

Other types of machine perception involve “machine learning” where the device learns
based on the inputs that it receives, often involving some kind of feedback. Like cases
of perceptual learning, machine learning can be either supervised or unsupervised,
although these distinctions mean something very specific in the machine case. In
supervised learning, builders test the machine’s initial performance on, say, the
recognition of whether a given image contains a face.

They then measure the performance error and adjust the parameters of the machine
to improve performance. Importantly, in cases of supervised learning, engineers
program into the machine which features it should look for when, say, identifying a
face. In cases of unsupervised learning, by contrast, the machine does not have
information about its target features. The machine merely aims to find similarities in
the given images, and if it is successful, the machine comes to group all the faces
together according to their similarities.

In machine learning, one major difficulty is that machines can develop racist and sexist
patterns. The problem is often that engineers input a biased set of images (such as a
set of images that include too many white people) into the machine, from which the
machine builds its model. This suggests a potential corresponding source of bias in
human perceptual learning, based on the inputs that humans receive through media.

2.11. Varieties of Perceptual Learning

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The psychology literature provides ample evidence of perceptual learning. Baars and
Gage, (2010) helpfully distinguishes between four different types of perceptual
learning in the literature: differentiation, unitization, attentional weighting, and stimulus
imprinting. This section surveys these four types of perceptual learning.

2.11.1 Differentiation

When most people reflect on perceptual learning, the cases that tend to come to mind
are cases of differentiation. In differentiation, a person comes to perceive the
difference between two properties, where they could not perceive this difference
before. It is helpful to think of William James’ case of a person learning to distinguish
between the upper and lower half of a particular kind of wine. Prior to learning, one
cannot perceive the difference between the upper and lower half.

However, through practice one becomes able to distinguish between the upper and
lower half. This is a paradigm case of differentiation. Psychologists have studied
differentiation in lab environments. In one such study, experimenters took six native
Japanese speakers who had lived in the United States from between six months and
three years. The subjects were not native English speakers.

The experimenters found that they were able to train these subjects to better
distinguish between the phonemes /r/ and /l/. This is a case of improved differentiation,
where the subjects became better at perceiving the difference between two properties,
which they had more trouble telling apart before.

2.11.2 Unitization

Unitization is the counterpart to differentiation. In unitization, a person comes to

perceive as a single property, what they previously perceived as two or more distinct
properties. One example of unitization is the perception of written words. When we
perceive a written word in English, we do not simply perceive two or more distinct
letters. Rather, we perceive those letters as a single word. Put another way, we
perceive written words as a single unit.

This is not the case with non-words. When we perceive short strings of letters that are
not words, we do not perceive them as a single unit. Goldstone and Byrge provide a
list of items for which there is empirical evidence of such unitization: birds, words, grids

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of lines, random wire structures, fingerprints, artificial blobs, and three-dimensional
creatures made from simple geometric components.

While unitization and differentiation are converses, the one unifying and the other
distinguishing, Goldstone and Byrge also conceive of them as “flip sides of the same
coin”. This is because, as they put it, both unitization and differentiation “involve
creating perceptual units…” Regardless of whether the unit arises from the fusion or
the differentiation of two other units, both instances of perceptual learning involve the
creation of new perceptual units.

2.11.3 Attentional Weighting

In attentional weighting, through practice or experience people come to systematically

attend toward certain objects and properties and away from other objects and
properties. Paradigm cases of attentional weighting have been shown in sports
studies, where it has been found, for instance, that expert fencers attend more to their
opponents’ upper trunk area, while non-experts attend more to their opponents’ upper
leg area. Practice or experience modulates attention as fencers learn, shifting it
towards certain areas and away from other areas.

In the case of the expert fencer, a shift in the weight of attention to the opponents’
upper trunk area facilitates the expert’s fencing skills. However, shifts in attentional
weighting can also fail to facilitate skills or even stifle them. For example, a new golfer
with inadequate coaching might develop the bad habit of attending to their putter while
putting, rather than learning to keep their “eye on the ball.” This unhelpful shift in
attentional weighting may well stifle the new golfer’s ability to become a skillful putter.

One way to understand weighted attention is as attention that has

become automatic with respect to particular properties. In other words, when the
expert fencer attends to the upper trunk area, this attention is no longer governed by
her intention. Rather, as the result of practice, the expert fencer’s attention is now
automatic with respect to the trunk area. This italicized part is important.

On Wayne Wu’s account of attention, for instance, one might ask whether attention is
automatic with respect to different features of the process of attention: “where attention
is directed and in what sequence, how long it is sustained, to what specific features in
the scene, and so on” (p. 34). In the case of the expert fencer, plausibly her attention

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is automatic with respect to the trunk area, even if it is not automatic in other respects.
This automaticity is the product of her learning process.

2.11.4 Stimulus Imprinting

Recall that in unitization, what previously looked like two or more objects, properties,
or events later looks like a single object, property, or event. Cases of “stimulus
imprinting” are like cases of unitization in the end state (you detect a whole pattern),
but there is no need for the prior state—no need for that pattern to have previously
looked like two or more objects, properties, or events.

This is because in stimulus imprinting, the perceptual system builds specialized

detectors for whole stimuli or parts of stimuli to which a subject has been repeatedly
exposed. Cells in the inferior temporal cortex, for instance, can have a heightened
response to particular familiar faces. One area where these specialized detectors are
helpful is with unclear or quickly presented stimuli. Stimulus imprinting happens
entirely without guidance or supervision.

2.12 The Philosophical Significance of Perceptual Learning

Perceptual learning is philosophically significant both in itself, and for the role that it
has played in prior philosophical discussions. However, there are good reasons to see
perceptual learning as philosophically significant in itself, independently from the role
that it has played in prior philosophical discussions.

Why is perceptual learning philosophically significant? One reason is that it says

something about the very nature of perception—that perception is more complex than
it might seem from the first-person point of view. Specifically, the fact that perceptual
learning occurs means that the causes of perceptual states are not just the objects in
our immediate environment, as it seems at first glance.

Rather, given the reality of perceptual learning, a long causal history to our perceptions
involves prior perception. When the expert wine-taster tastes the Cabernet Sauvignon,
for example, that glass of wine alone is not the sole cause of her perceptual state.
Rather, the cause of her perceptual state includes prior wines and prior perceptions of
those wines. One way to put this is to say that perception is more than the immediate
inputs into our senses. It is tied to our prior experiences.

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Another way in which perceptual learning is philosophically significant is because it
shows how perception is a product of both the brain and the world. In this respect,
there are some similarities between the role of constancy mechanisms and the role of
perceptual learning, in that both involve the brain playing a role in structuring
perception in a way that goes beyond the perceptual input. Constancy mechanisms,
such as those involved in shape, size, and color constancy, are brain mechanisms
that allow us to perceive shapes, sizes, and colors more stably across variations in
distance or illumination.

In cases of constancy, the brain manipulates the input from the world, and this allows
the perceiver to track the shape, size, or color more easily. Similarly, in cases of
perceptual learning, the brain manipulates the input from the world. In many cases,
this may actually make the perception more helpful, as when through learning the
perceptual system weights attention in a particular way, say, towards the features
relevant for identifying a Cabernet Sauvignon.

Perceptual learning might upgrade the epistemic status of perception, putting the
perceiver in a better position with respect to knowledge. At the same time, people can
learn incorrectly, leading to perceptions that are unhelpful, as when a new golfer with
inadequate coaching develops the bad habit of attending to their putter while putting,
rather than attending to the golf ball. Perceptual learning is philosophically significant
in itself. In addition, the rest of section 3 goes on to explore the role that perceptual
learning has played in prior philosophical discussions.

2.12.1 The Contents of Perception

In the philosophy literature, cases of perceptual learning have often been used to show
that through learning we come to represent new properties in perception, which we
did not represent prior to learning. For instance, asks us to suppose that we have
been tasked to cut down all and only the pine trees in a particular grove of trees. After
several months pass, she says, pine trees might begin to look different to us.

This is a case of perceptual learning, a long-term change in our perception following

practice or experience with pine trees. Siegel uses the case to argue that perception
comes to represent kind properties, like the property of being a pine tree. The idea is
that the best way to explain the change in perception is that perception represents the
property of being a pine tree after, but not before, learning takes place. That property
becomes part of the content of perception: it comes to be presented in perceptual
experience.

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Thomas Reid’s notion of acquired perception has recently been interpreted in a way
similar to Siegel’s pine tree case. According to Reid, some of our perceptions, namely
acquired perceptions, are the result of prior experience. For instance, Reid writes
about how through experience we might come to “perceive that this is the taste of
cider,” or “that this is the smell of an apple,” or that “this [is] the sound of a coach
passing” ([1764] 1997: 171). Rebecca Copenhaver (2010, 2016) has interpreted Reid
as claiming that through experience properties like being a cider, being an apple,
and being a coach can come to be part of the content of our perception.

Cases of perceptual learning might also be used to show that through learning we
come to represent new properties in perception, even if those properties are simply
low-level properties like colors, shapes, textures, and bare sounds, rather than high-
level kind properties like being a pine tree or being a cider.

One of the most detailed contemporary discussions of cases of perceptual learning is

found in Siewert. Siewert discusses in detail the role that learning plays in altering
perceptual phenomenology, although he stops short of saying that this affects the
high-level contents of perception. He writes, for instance, that there is a difference in
perceptual phenomenology between just seeing “something shaped, situated, and
colored in a certain way,” and recognizing that thing as a sunflower (or another type).

Siewert also writes that a person might look different to you after you know them for a
long time than they did the first time you met them, and that your neighborhood might
look different to you after you have lived there for a long time than the first time you
moved in. Furthermore, he writes about how a chessboard in midgame might look
differently to a chess player than to a novice, and how a car engine might look
differently to a mechanic than to someone unfamiliar with cars. These are all examples
where learning affects one’s sensory phenomenology.

Several cases of perceptual learning in the philosophical literature involve language

learning, both in the case of written and spoken language. As an example of the
former, Christopher Peacocke writes that there is a difference between the experience
of a perceiver completely unfamiliar with Cyrillic script seeing a sentence in that script
and the experience of one who understands a language written in that script.

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With regard to spoken language, several philosophers have made the claim that after
a person learns a spoken language, sounds in that language comes to sound different
to them. It is tempting to think that this difference is explicable in terms of the fact that,
after learning a language, a person hears the meanings of the words, where they do
not before learning the language. On such a view, meanings would be part of the
contents of auditory perception. It’s argued that the difference is in fact due to a kind
of perceptual learning. Specifically, through learning we come to hear phonological
features specific to the new language.

By contrast, Brogaard (forthcoming) argues that meanings are in fact part of the
content of perception. After offering arguments against the opposing view, she relies
on evidence about perceptual learning to help make the positive case for her view. In
particular, she uses evidence about perceptual learning to rebut the view that we use
background information about context and combine it with what we hear, in order to
get meanings. Instead, she argues, language learning is perceptual in nature.

She points to changes in how we perceive utterances, more in chunks rather than in
parts, because of learning. Background information directly influences what we hear,
she argues, altering how language sounds to us. Both Siegel’s pine tree case and the
case of hearing a new language fundamentally involve phenomenal contrasts. That is,
the motivating intuition in both cases is that there is a contrast in sensory
phenomenology between two perceptual experiences.

Interestingly, in both cases the phenomenal contrast is due to learning. The question
in both the pine tree case and the new language case is what explains the difference
in sensory phenomenology. Siegel argues that the best explanation in the pine tree
case is that the property of being a pine (and, more generally, natural kind properties)
can come to be represented in perception. O’Callaghan (2011) argues that the best
explanation for the difference in sensory phenomenology in the new language case is
that we come to hear phonological features specific to the new language. Brogaard
(forthcoming) argues that the best explanation in that case is that we come to hear
meanings in the new language.

2.12.2 Cognitive Penetration

Recall that cases of cognitive penetration are cases where one’s beliefs, thoughts, or
desires influence one’s perception. One role of perceptual learning in the philosophical

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literature has been to explain away putative cases of cognitive penetration. For
instance, it might seem at first glance that Siegel’s pine tree case is a case of cognitive
penetration, a case where one’s newly acquired concept of a pine tree influences one’s
perception.

Connolly (2014b) and Arstila (2016), cited in Baron however, have both argued that
the best way to understand Siegel’s pine tree case is not as a case of cognitive
penetration, but rather through the particular mechanisms of perceptual learning.
Connolly counts it as a case of attentional weighting, while Arstila understands it as
involving both unitization and differentiation.

One reason why perceptual learning is a good instrument for explaining away putative
cases of cognitive penetration is the following. In cases of perceptual learning, the
external environment drives the perceptual changes. As Raftopoulos puts it,
“perceptual learning does not necessarily involve cognitive top-down penetrability but
only data-driven processes”. For putative cases of cognitive penetration, the strategy
for the perceptual learning theorist is to show how the perceptual changes involved
may have been data-driven instead of top-down.

The study in question found changes in the primary visual cortex due to learning, and
that these changes were brought about by higher areas in the brain influencing the
primary visual cortex. Because the perceptual changes were the result of top-down
influence, this case of perceptual learning should count as a case of cognitive
penetration.

2.12.4 Piaget, dynamical systems, and how do we learn to perceive

something new

Using dynamical systems theory, we have continued along similar lines and tackled
the question of how we ever learn to perceive something new.

The sensorimotor approach proposes that perception is constituted by the possession

(and depending on the interpretation, also the enactment) of skillful mastery of
sensorimotor regularities, so that in order to perceive something as soft, one must
already know how and where one should apply pressure to it. The question that
emerges is how we ever learn to perceive something new if, according to this
approach, perception requires already having a sort of sensorimotor mastery.

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In this way, that which we know how to perceive is perceivable, but that which we don’t
know how to perceive could never be perceived because why would we develop new
forms of mastery in order to perceive something that we don’t even know it’s there?

The problem has a solution once we admit that the notions of mastery and skill can
have degrees. At a sub-personal level, it is possible then to build a theory that
establishes how we progressively form new sensorimotor capabilities as much as a
response to internal norms as through the guidance of the world.

2.12.5 Gibsonian Theory: An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and

Development

Gibson changed the field of perception and development research by emphasizing

the importance of environment and context in learning. Perception is important
because it allows us to adapt to our environment. Thus, Gibson asked the important
question often missing in the development research until this point, "How do we learn
to perceive our world?" Gibson's answer is that "children learn to detect
information that specifies objects, events, and layouts in the world that they can
use for their daily activities" (p. 340 Miller, 2002). Thus, humans learn out of
necessity. Children are information "hunter-gatherers" (Miller, 2002), gathering
information in order to survive and navigate in the world.

Key Concepts

 Definition of perception- "our means of keeping in touch with the world, of

obtaining information about the world and where we are in it" (p. 3, Gibson &
Pick, 2000).

 The reciprocity of the perceiver and the environment- the perceiver and
environment function in a cycle that can begin by the environment providing
information or an opportunity (i.e. an affordance, see below) for action or by the
perceiver investigating for itself or instigating some action (Gibson & Pick,
2000). The environment can be both physical and social.

o Ex. Baby is poked by a sharp object in his/her crib (information from

physical environment) so the baby cries (perceiver action). Caregiver
comes to comfort child (social environment).

o Ex. Baby explores crib (no information from physical environment) to find
soft surface on which to sleep (perceiver action)

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  Affordances- "what the environment offers or provides for an
organism...opportunities for action" (p. 342, Miller, 2002)

o Gibson believes affordances are perceived directly. She says that

instead of perceiving stimuli, images, or sensations, we actually
perceived things we can eat, sit on, talk to, walk on, etc. (Miller, 2002)

o "Experience creates new affordances" (Miller, 2002)- children discover

new affordances by exploring and playing

o As children develop new motor skills, they discover new affordances

(Miller, 2002)

o "There is a fit between what the environment provides and the child's
actions, goals, and abilities" (Miller, 2002)

 Ex. Gibson performed an experiment with babies that could crawl

and babies that could walk. Infants were place on a walkway 4
feet from the floor. Their smiling mothers stood at the other end
of the walkway. In the first condition the walkway had a rigid
surface (plywood covered with fabric) that afforded the babies to
walk or crawl.

In the second condition, the walkway was a patterned fabric on a

waterbed, which afforded crawling, but not walking. The babies
that could walk spent more time investigating the waterbed
surface than the rigid surface before they decided to walk or
crawl. Meanwhile, the crawling babies did not different between
the two surfaces, crawling on both readily.

How We Perceive

 Gibson believes that affordances are perceived directly and thus, complex
information is inherent in stimulation (Miller, 2002)

 i.e. we don't just perceive images and sensations, we perceive events,

objects, and places in space and time. We see things to eat, sit on, and
write with, etc. (Instead of an apple, a chair, a pencil.) (Miller, 2002)

 At the most basic level of perceptual learning can be explained as a child

learning to discriminate one object from another based on distinctive features,
or attributes (Miller, 2002)

 i.e. Learning the difference between a dog and a cat, or a bit harder,
learning the difference between two similar looking cats

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  At a more complex level, Gibson sees perceptual learning as a "process of
learning to perceive what has always been there" (p. 345, Miller, 2002) or
the "seek and ye shall find theory"(Gibson, 1977 as cited in Miller, 2002).

 Ex. When you first listen to a piece of music you may not perceive the
nuances or complexities of the piece, but after a few listens and by
directing your attention you may be able to different melodies, key
changes, and different instruments. The music is the same, but the
information we have extracted from it has changed. (Miller, 2002).

Assumption Implication for the Theory

1. Children are "hunter gatherers" 1. Gibson's experiments pay a lot of attention to

or explorers affordances, or opportunities the environment
provides. Learning is self-directed.

2. Humans have evolved adaptive ways of 2. The information extracted from the world
perceiving the world (perceived), is species specific

3. Affordances (opportunities) are perceived 3. Gibson thus does little to explain cognition
directly. In other words, complex information is and instead studies children interacting with
inherent in stimulation. This is a controversial their environment. Gibson states that
assumption. In addition, stimulus are not static. perception makes cognition possible. We learn
about the world through perception of
affordances and then cognition becomes
grounded in this knowledge.

4. The way babies learn (through exploration of 4. Although Gibson's theory only shows micro
affordances) is the way we learn throughout development (in children), she believed it could
our lives. be applied throughout the life span. Perceptual
learning never stops. What changes is what we
learn.

5. The process of perceptual is learning to 5. Gibson stated she does not want a
perceive what is already there. "construction theory", in other words, she did
not spend time trying to break the process of
perception down and instead saw it as a whole

Gibson Asks Four Main Questions

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  What is there to perceive?
o Affordances
 What is the information for perceiving?
o Not static, perceived in time and space
 How is information obtained?
o Through interaction with the environment
 What is perceived?
o Layout and objects in the environment. Affordances (i.e. something to
eat instead of a banana)

2.13 Activity

1. Define these terms;

i) Stimulus,
ii) Sensation,
iii) Response,
iv) Transduction,
v) Thresholds,
vi) Sensory adaption.

2. Define and evaluate approaches to perception,

i) Gestalt Laws of organisation,
ii) Signal Detection Theory,
iii) Bottom- UP and Top-Down approaches.

3. In brief, how the visual system work (processing), from the retina to the visual
cortex.

4. Distinguish sensation and perception.

5. Define perceptual learning, mentioning Piaget’s Dynamic systems and

Gibsonian of Ecological Approach.

UNIT 3: MEMORY
Unit Objectives
In this Unit, you will learn how to:
By the end of this chapter the student is expected to:
 Define memory as a basic cognitive process;
 Outline some factors surrounding researches;
 Explain the models of memory and its components;
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  Issues surrounding memory.

3.1 Memory as a Basic Cognitive Process

Memory is the means by which we retain and draw on our past experiences to use
that information in the present (Tulving & Craik, 2000). As a process, memory refers
to the dynamic mechanisms associated with storing, retaining, and retrieving
information about past experience. Specifically, cognitive psychologists have identified
three common operations of memory: encoding, storage, and retrieval (Brown & Craik,
2000). Each operation represents a stage in memory processing.

• In encoding, you transform sensory data into a form of mental representation.

• In storage, you keep encoded information in memory.

• In retrieval, you pull out or use information stored in memory.

3.1.1 ENCODING
We get information into our brains through a process called encoding, which is the
input of information into the memory system. Once we receive sensory information
from the environment, our brains label or code it. We organize the information with
other similar information and connect new concepts to existing concepts. Encoding
information occurs through automatic processing and effortful processing.

If someone asks you what you ate for lunch today, more than likely you could recall
this information quite easily. This is known as automatic processing, or the encoding
of details like time, space, frequency, and the meaning of words. Automatic processing
is usually done without any conscious awareness. Recalling the last time you studied
for a test is another example of automatic processing. But what about the actual test
material you studied? It probably required a lot of work and attention on your part in
order to encode that information. This is known as effortful processing.

There are three types of encoding. The encoding of words and their meaning is known
as semantic encoding. It was first demonstrated by William Bousfield (1935) in an
experiment in which he asked people to memorize words. The 60 words were actually
divided into 4 categories of meaning, although the participants did not know this
because the words were randomly presented. When they were asked to remember
the words, they tended to recall them in categories, showing that they paid attention
to the meanings of the words as they learned them.

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Visual encoding is the encoding of images, and acoustic encoding is the encoding
of sounds, words in particular. To see how visual encoding works, read over this list
of words: car, level, dog, truth, book, value.

- If you were asked later to recall the words from this list, which ones do you think
you’d most likely remember? You would probably have an easier time recalling
the words car, dog, and book, and a more difficult time recalling the words level,
truth, and value. Why is this? Because you can recall images (mental pictures)
more easily than words alone.

- When you read the words car, dog, and book you created images of these
things in your mind. These are concrete, high-imagery words. On the other
hand, abstract words like level, truth, and value are low-imagery words. High-
imagery words are encoded both visually and semantically (Paivio, 1986), thus
building a stronger memory.

Acoustic encoding, when you are driving in your car and a song comes on the radio
that you haven’t heard in at least 10 years, but you sing along, recalling every word.
In crèche, children often learn the alphabet through song, and they learn the number
of days in each month through rhyme: “Thirty days hath September, / April, June, and
November; / All the rest have thirty-one, / Save February, with twenty-eight days clear,
/ and twenty-nine each leap year.”

These lessons are easy to remember because of acoustic encoding. We encode the
sounds the words make. This is one of the reasons why much of what we teach young
children is done through song, rhyme, and rhythm.

3.1.2 STORAGE
Once the information has been encoded, we have to somehow have to retain it. Our
brains take the encoded information and place it in storage. Storage is the creation of
a permanent record of information. In order for a memory to go into storage (i.e., long-
term memory), it has to pass through three distinct stages: Sensory Memory, Short-
Term Memory, and finally Long-Term Memory. These stages were first proposed by
Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968). Their model of human memor, called
Atkinson-Shiffrin (A-S), is based on the belief that we process memories in the same
way that a computer processes information.
3.1.2 a) Sensory Memory
In the Atkinson-Shiffrin model, stimuli from the environment are processed first in
sensory memory: storage of brief sensory events, such as sights, sounds, and tastes.
It is very brief storage—up to a couple of seconds. We are constantly bombarded with
sensory information. We cannot absorb all of it, or even most of it. And most of it has
no impact on our lives. For example, what was your professor wearing the last class
period?

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As long as the professor was dressed appropriately, it does not really matter what she
was wearing. Sensory information about sights, sounds, smells, and even textures,
which we do not view as valuable information, we discard. If we view something as
valuable, the information will move into our short-term memory system. One study of
sensory memory researched the significance of valuable information on short-term
memory storage. J. R. Stroop discovered a memory phenomenon in the 1930s: you
will name a colour more easily if it appears printed in that colour, which is called the
Stroop effect.

In other words, the word “red” will be named more quickly, regardless of the colour the
word appears in, than any word that is coloured red. Try an experiment: name the
colours of the words you are given in Figure Below. Do not read the words, but say
the colour the word is printed in. For example, upon seeing the word “yellow” in green
print, you should say “green,” not “yellow.” This experiment is fun, but it’s not as easy
as it seems. The Stroop effect describes why it is difficult for us to name a colour when
the word and the colour of the word are different.

3.1.2b) Short-Term Memory

Short-term memory (STM) is a temporary storage system that processes incoming
sensory memory; sometimes it is called working memory. Short-term memory takes
information from sensory memory and sometimes connects that memory to something
already in long-term memory. Short-term memory storage lasts about 20 seconds.
George Miller (1956), in his research on the capacity of memory, found that most

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people can retain about 7 items in STM. Some remember 5, some 9, so he called the
capacity of STM 7 plus or minus 2.

Think of short-term memory as the information you have displayed on your computer
screen—a document, a spreadsheet, or a web page. Then, information in short-term
memory goes to long term memory (you save it to your hard drive), or it is discarded
(you delete a document or close a web browser). This step of rehearsal, the conscious
repetition of information to be remembered, to move STM into long-term memory is
called memory consolidation.

You may find yourself asking, “How much information can our memory handle at
once?” To explore the capacity and duration of your short-term memory, have a
partner read the strings of random numbers (Figure Below) out loud to you, beginning
each string by saying, “Ready?” and ending each by saying,“Recall,” at which point
you should try to write down the string of numbers from memory.

Note the longest string at which you got the series correct. For most people, this will
be close to 7, Miller’s famous 7 plus or minus 2. Recall is somewhat better for random
numbers than for random letters, and also often slightly better for information we hear
(acoustic encoding) rather than see (visual encoding).

3.1.2c) Long-term Memory

Long-term memory (LTM) is the continuous storage of information. Unlike short-term
memory, the storage capacity of LTM has no limits. It encompasses all the things you
can remember that happened more than just a few minutes ago to all of the things that
you can remember that happened days, weeks, and years ago. In keeping with the
computer analogy, the information in your LTM would be like the information you have
saved on the hard drive.

It isn’t there on your desktop (your short-term memory), but you can pull up this
information when you want it, at least most of the time. Not all long-term memories are

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strong memories. Some memories can only be recalled through prompts. For
example, you might easily recall a fact “What is the capital of the United States?” or a
procedure “How do you ride a bike?” but you might struggle to recall the name of the
restaurant you had dinner when you were on vacation in France last summer. A
prompt, such as that the restaurant was named after its owner, who spoke to you about
your shared interest in soccer, may help you recall the name of the restaurant.

Long-term memory is divided into two types: explicit and implicit (Figure Below).
Understanding the different types is important because a person’s age or particular
types of brain trauma or disorders can leave certain types of LTM intact while having
disastrous consequences for other types.

 Explicit memories are those we consciously try to remember and recall. For
example, if you are studying for your chemistry exam, the material you are
learning will be part of your explicit memory. (Note: Sometimes, but not always,
the terms explicit memory and declarative memory are used interchangeably.)

 Implicit memories are memories that are not part of our consciousness. They
are memories formed from behaviours. Implicit memory is also called non-
declarative memory.
 Procedural memory is a type of implicit memory: it stores information about
how to do things. It is the memory for skilled actions, such as how to brush your
teeth, how to drive a car, how to swim the crawl freestyle) stroke. If you are
learning how to swim freestyle, you practice the stroke: how to move you’re
(arms, how to turn your head to alternate breathing from side to side, and how
to kick your legs.

You would practice this many times until you become good at it. Once you learn
how to swim freestyle and your body knows how to move through the water,
you will never forget how to swim freestyle, even if you do not swim for a couple
of decades. Similarly, if you present an accomplished guitarist with a guitar,
even if he has not played in a long time, he will still be able to play quite well.

 Declarative memory has to do with the storage of facts and events we

personally experienced. Explicit (declarative) memory has two parts: semantic
memory and episodic memory. Semantic means having to do with language
and knowledge about language. An example would be the question “what does
argumentative mean?” Stored in our semantic memory is knowledge about
words, concepts, and language based knowledge and facts. For example,
answers to the following questions are stored in your semantic memory:

• Who was the first President of the United States?

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• What is democracy?

• What is the longest river in the world?

 Episodic memory is information about events we have personally

experienced. The concept of episodic memory was first proposed about 40
years ago (Tulving, 1972). Since then, Tulving and others have looked at
scientific evidence and reformulated the theory. Currently, scientists believe
that episodic memory is memory about happenings in particular places at
particular times, the what, where, and when of an event. It involves recollection
of visual imagery as well as the feeling of familiarity.


There are two components of long-term memory: explicit and implicit. Explicit memory includes episodic
and semantic memory. Implicit memory includes procedural memory and things learned through
conditioning.

RETRIEVAL
So you have worked hard to encode (via effortful processing) and store some
important information for your upcoming final exam. How do you get that information
back out of storage when you need it? The act of getting information out of memory
storage and back into conscious awareness is known as retrieval. This would be
similar to finding and opening a paper you had previously saved on your computer’s
hard drive.

Now it’s back on your desktop, and you can work with it again. Our ability to retrieve
information from long-term memory is vital to our everyday functioning. You must be
able to retrieve information from memory in order to do everything from knowing how

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to brush your hair and teeth, to driving to work, to knowing how to perform your job
once you get there.

There are three ways you can retrieve information out of your long-term memory
storage system: recall, recognition, and relearning. Recall is what we most often think
about when we talk about memory retrieval: it means you can access information
without cues. For example, you would use recall for an essay test. Recognition
happens when you identify information that you have previously learned after
encountering it again. It involves a process of comparison. When you take a multiple-
choice test, you are relying on recognition to help you choose the correct answer. Here
is another example.

Let’s say you graduated from high school 10 years ago, and you have returned to your
hometown for your 10-year reunion. You may not be able to recall all of your
classmates, but you recognize many of them based on their yearbook photos. The
third form of retrieval is relearning, and it’s just what it sounds like. It involves learning
information that you previously learned.

Whitney took Spanish in high school, but after high school she did not have the
opportunity to speak Spanish. Whitney is now 31, and her company has offered her
an opportunity to work in their Mexico City office. In order to prepare herself, she enrols
in a Spanish course at the local community center. She’s surprised at how quickly
she’s able to pick up the language after not speaking it for 13 years; this is an example
of relearning.

3.2 Components of Memory

The three-system memory theory proposes the existence of the three separate
memory stores. Sensory memory refers to the initial, momentary storage of
information that lasts only an instant. Here an exact replica of the stimulus recorded
by a person’s sensory system is stored very briefly. In a second stage, short-term
memory holds information for 15 to 25 seconds and stores it according to its meaning
rather than as mere sensory stimulation. The third type of storage system is long-term
memory. Information is stored in long-term memory on a relatively permanent basis,
although it may be difficult to retrieve.

3.2.1 Sensory Memory

A momentary flash of lightning, the sound of a twig snapping, and the sting of a pinprick
all represent stimulation of exceedingly brief duration, but they may nonetheless
provide important information that can require a response. Such stimuli are initially—
and fleetingly—stored in sensory memory, the first repository of the information the
world presents to us. Actually, there are several types of sensory memories, each
related to a different source of sensory information. For instance, iconic memory
reflects information from the visual system.

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Echoic memory stores auditory information coming from the ears. In addition, there
are corresponding memories for each of the other senses. Sensory memory can store
information for only a very short time. If information does not pass into short-term
memory, it is lost for good. For instance, iconic memory seems to last less than a
second, and echoic memory typically fades within two or three seconds. However,
despite the brief duration of sensory memory, its precision is high:

Sensory memory can store an almost exact replica of each stimulus to which it is
exposed. Psychologist George Sperling (1960) demonstrated the existence of sensory
memory in a series of clever and now-classic studies. He briefly exposed people to a
series of 12 letters arranged in the following pattern:

F T Y C
K D N L
Y W B M

When exposed to this pattern of letters for just one twentieth of a second, most people
could recall only four or five of the letters accurately. Although they knew that they had
seen more, the memory of those letters had faded by the time they reported the first
few letters. It was possible, then, that the information had initially been accurately
stored in sensory memory. But during the time it took to verbalize the first four or five
letters, the memory of the other letters faded.

To test that possibility, Sperling conducted an experiment in which a high, medium, or

low tone sounded just after a person had been exposed to the full pattern of letters.
People were told to report the letters in the highest line if a high tone was sounded,
the middle line if the medium tone occurred, or the lowest line at the sound of the low
tone. Because the tone occurred after the exposure, people had to rely on their
memories to report the correct row.

The results of the study clearly showed that people had been storing the complete
pattern in memory. They accurately recalled the letters in the line that had been
indicated by the tone regardless of whether it was the top, middle, or bottom line.
Obviously, all the lines they had seen had been stored in sensory memory. Despite its
rapid loss, then, the information in sensory memory was an accurate representation
of what people had seen.

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By gradually lengthening the time between the presentation of the visual pattern and
the tone, Sperling was able to determine with some accuracy the length of time that
information was stored in sensory memory. The ability to recall a particular row of the
pattern when a tone was sounded declined progressively as the period between the
visual exposure and the tone increased. This decline continued until the period
reached about one second in duration, at which point the row could not be recalled
accurately at all. Sperling concluded that the entire visual image was stored in sensory
memory for less than a second.

In sum, sensory memory operates as a kind of snapshot that stores information—

which may be of a visual, auditory, or other sensory nature—for a brief moment in
time. But it is as if each snapshot, immediately after being taken, is destroyed and
replaced with a new one. Unless the information in the snapshot is transferred to some
other type of memory, it is lost.

3.2.2 Short-Term Memory

Because the information that is stored briefly in sensory memory consists of
representations of raw sensory stimuli, it is not meaningful to us. If we are to make
sense of it and possibly retain it, the information must be transferred to the next stage
of memory: short-term memory. Short-term memory is the memory store in which
information first has meaning, although the maximum length of retention there is
relatively short.

The specific process by which sensory memories are transformed into short-term
memories is not clear. Some theorists suggest that the information is first translated
into graphical representations or images, and others hypothesize that the transfer
occurs when the sensory stimuli are changed to words.

What is clear, however, is that unlike sensory memory, which holds a relatively full and
detailed—if short-lived—representation of the world, short-term memory has
incomplete representational capabilities. In fact, the specific amount of information that
can be held in short-term memory has been identified as seven items, or “chunks,” of
information, with variations up to plus or minus two chunks.

A chunk is a meaningful grouping of stimuli that can be stored as a unit in short-term

memory. According to, a chunk can be individual letters or numbers, permitting us to
hold a seven-digit phone number (such as 226-4610) in short-term memory. But a
chunk also may consist of larger categories, such as words or other meaningful units.
For example, consider the following list of 21 letters.

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3.3 Early Research
 A great deal of scientific thought about memory has developed over time or has
been influenced by people from the great philosophers of ancient Greece to
more modern times. This began with Plato (428?–347? B.C.), a rationalist
philosopher who emphasized rational thought as a means of understanding of
the world.

For him, memory serves as the bridge between the perceptual world and a
rational world of idealized abstractions (Viney & King, 1998). Plato’s ideas were
further developed by other rationalist’s philosophers, including Rene Descartes
(1596–1650) and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Plato’s most prominent pupil
was Aristotle (384–322 B.C.); he was an empiricist who believed reality itself
was the basis of inquiry.

One of Aristotle’s most powerful contributions is the idea that memories are
primarily composed of associations among various stimuli or experiences.
Aristotle’s ideas later worked into grand form by the British empiricists, including
George Berkeley (1685–1753), John Locke (1632–1704), John Stuart Mill
(1806–1873), and David Hume (1711–1776). As you will see, there are many
theories of memory that are associationistic, such as accounts of priming,
interference, or even the creation of false memories that use

Aristotle’s ideas of how various elements are mentally linked to one another.
These linking relationships often follow Aristotle’s three laws of association:
similarity, contrast, and contiguity such that memory associations link ideas that
are similar in nature, are the opposite on some critical dimension (and thus a
form of similarity in that the dimension is present and is important), or occurred
near one another in time.

 Ebbinghaus. One of the first true students of memory in a scientific form was
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909). He is best known for his 1885 publication
Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology (Über das Gedächtnis in
the original German). This work conveyed his detailed studies of memory, using
himself as both experimenter and subject, because formal methods of obtaining
research participants were not available at that time.

Ebbinghaus tried to study memory in as pure a form as possible, in the absence

of an influence of prior knowledge. To do this, he devised a form of test stimulus
called the nonsense syllable, which is a consonant-vowel-consonant trigram
that has no clear meaning in the language. Nonsense syllables for English

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would be PAB, SER, and NID. Ebbinghaus created and used about 2,300 of
these.

These nonsense syllables had a tremendous effect on the study of human

memory for many decades. Researchers not only used nonsense syllables but
also spent a great deal of effort studying them, even to the point where
nonsense syllables were rated for meaningfulness (Glaze, 1928). People
recognized that some nonsense syllables were more word-like than others. For
example, “BAL” is rated high in meaningfulness (because of “ball”), whereas
“XAD” is rated very low.

Ebbinghaus spent a lot of time memorizing lists of nonsense syllables of various

lengths, under various learning conditions, and for various retention intervals
before he tested himself. (In some of his later studies he did allow some real
words to enter his lists on the premise that it would have little effect.)

For memory retrieval he would give himself the first nonsense syllable, and he
would then try to recall the rest in the series. Using this simple approach, he
was able to discover a wide range of basic principles of human memory that
have withstood the test of time. Some of the more important ones are the
concepts of the learning curve, the forgetting curve, overlearning, and savings.

It should be noted that although Ebbinghaus discovered these using nonsense

syllables, these same patterns are observed with all types of information. The
learning curve reflects the idea that there is a period of time needed for
information to be memorized, such as the number of times a person needs to
practice information, and it can be affected by a number of things, such as the
amount of information to be learned.

The learning curve is a negatively accelerated function in which most of the

action occurs early on, with smaller and smaller benefits gained later on. So,
the largest amount of information is learned in the first segment. In the second,
although more is learned, the gain is not as much as during the first. A similar
description applies to the third segment, and so on. Thus, through this process,
information is gradually committed to memory.

Furthermore, Ebbinghaus showed that how a person went about learning, in

terms of the distribution of practice, influenced how well information was
learned. Specifically, memory is better when practice is spread out over time,

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rather than lumped together a distinction that is currently known as distributed
practice and massed practice.

The forgetting curve is the opposite of the learning curve, and yet it is strongly
similar to it. It conveys the loss of old information rather than the acquisition of
new information. However, the forgetting curve is like the learning curve in
that it is also a negatively accelerating function. As time goes on, the process
of forgetting continues but at a slower pace. Forgetting is clearly the most
problematic aspect of memory, and the forgetting curve suggests that we are
doomed, sooner or later, to lose just about every memory we acquire.

However, it should be apparent that this is not strictly the case. There are some
pieces of knowledge that you’ve had for years and are unlikely to ever forget.
One way to do this is by a process called overlearning, in which a person
continues to study information after perfect recall has been achieved. This
continued learning insulates a person against forgetting. If there is substantial
overlearning, forgetting may be delayed for quite some time, perhaps
indefinitely.

When information has been forgotten to the point that no pieces can be recalled
with accuracy or reliability, it might seem that a person must start at square one
and repeat all of the previous effort. However, this is not the case. Ebbinghaus
found that after seemingly complete forgetting, subsequent attempts to relearn
the information required less effort than the first time. This difference between
the amount of effort required on a subsequent and prior learning attempt is
called savings. The existence of savings is very important. For one thing, it
demonstrates that knowledge that appears to be lost may be residing
somewhere in the darkened corners of our mind. It is no longer consciously
available, but it can still exert an unconscious influence on behavior—in this
case, serving as a platform on which to build a new set of consciously available
memories.

Bartlett. Another major figure in the study of human memory is Sir Fredrick
Bartlett (1886–1969). Bartlett was, in some ways, the opposite of Ebbinghaus.
Whereas Ebbinghaus was interested in the operations of memory independent
of prior knowledge, Bartlett was directly interested in how prior knowledge
influenced memory. He found that prior knowledge has a profound influence on
memory.

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 Specifically, he suggested that what is stored in memory is often fragmentary
and incomplete. When people are remembering, in some sense, they are
reconstructing the information from the bits that are stored and from other prior
knowledge that they have about such circumstances. This reconstruction is
guided by what Bartlett called “schemas” (a theoretical construct also used by
Gestalt psychologists, such as Kurt Koffka). Schemas are general world
knowledge structures about commonly experienced aspects of life.

To illustrate the effects of schemas, Bartlett had people read a story and then
later try to recall it anywhere from immediately after they read it to several
months or years later. What he found was that as memories for the story
became more fragmented, the story content was altered to make it more
consistent with a stereotypical story. James. One of the most prominent of the
early psychologists was William James (1842–1910). James is so highly
regarded that, even among current researchers, it is not usual to find a quote
by James leading off a research or review article, particularly by Americans.

Much of this influence comes through his famous textbook, The Principles of
Psychology (1890/1950). In general, James was a primary mover in the
functionalist movement in early psychology. In terms of memory, James was
able to provide descriptions that are remarkably similar to theories in use today.
For example, his distinction between primary and secondary memory closely
parallels the distinction between short-term and long-term memory.

Similarly, he was one of the first academics to describe memory retrieval

problems, such as the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon (see Chapter 14) in which
a person is not able to remember something, such as someone’s name, but
there is this strong feeling that retrieval is imminent.

3.4 Models of Memory

3.4.1 Multi-store model

Several memory theorists (e.g., Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968) have described the basic
architecture of the memory system. We can identify a multi-store approach based on
the common features of their theories. Three types of memory store were proposed:

 Sensory stores, each holding information very briefly and being modality
specific (limited to one sensory modality).
 Short-term store of very limited capacity.

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  Long-term store of essentially unlimited capacity holding information over very
long periods of time.

The multi-store model of memory.

The basic multi-store model is shown in Figure above. Environmental stimulation is

initially received by the sensory stores. These stores are modality-specific (e.g., vision,
hearing). Information is held very briefly in the sensory stores, with some being
attended to and processed further by the short-term store. Some information
processed in the short-term store is transferred to the long-term store.

Long-term storage of information often depends on rehearsal. There is a direct

relationship between the amount of rehearsal in the short-term store and the strength
of the stored memory trace. There is much overlap between the areas of attention and
memory. Broadbent’s (1958) theory of attention was the main influence on the multi-
store approach to memory. For example, Broadbent’s buffer store resembles the
notion of a sensory store.

Sensory stores
The visual store is often known as the iconic store. In Sperling’s (1960) classic work
on this store, he presented a visual array containing three rows of four letters each for
50 ms. Participants could usually report only 4 –5 letters, but claimed to have seen
many more. Sperling assumed this happened because visual information had faded
before most of it could be reported. Sperling’s (1960) findings suggested that
information in iconic memory decays within about 0.5 seconds, but this may well be
an underestimate.

Iconic storage is very useful for two reasons. First, the mechanisms responsible for
visual perception always operate on the icon rather than directly on the visual
environment. Second, information remains in iconic memory for upwards of 500 ms,

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and we can shift our attention to aspects of the information within iconic memory in
approximately 55 ms (Lachter, Forster, & Ruthruff, 2004). This helps to ensure we
attend to important information.

The transient auditory store is known as the echoic store. In everyday life, you may
sometimes have been asked a question while your mind was on something else.
Perhaps you replied, “What did you say?” just before realising that you do know what
had been said. This “playback” facility depends on the echoic store. Estimates of the
duration of information in the echoic store are typically within the range of 2– 4 seconds
(Treisman, 1964).

Short- and long-term stores

The capacity of short-term memory is very limited. Consider digit span: participants
listen to a random series of digits and then repeat them back immediately in the correct
order. Other span measures are letter span and word span. The maximum number of
units (e.g., digits) recalled without error is usually “seven plus or minus two” (Miller,
1956).

However, there are two qualification’s concerning that finding.

1. Miller (1956) argued that the capacity of short-term memory should be
assessed by the number of chunks (integrated pieces or units of information).
For example, “IBM” is one chunk for those familiar with the company name
International Business Machines but three chunks for everyone else.

- The capacity of short-term memory is often seven chunks rather than seven
items. However, Simon (1974) found that the span in chunks was less with
larger chunks (e.g., eight-word phrases) than with smaller chunks (e.g., one
syllable words).
2. Cowan (2000, p. 88) argued that estimates of short-term memory capacity are
often inflated because participants’ performance depends in part on rehearsal
and on long-term memory. When these additional factors are largely eliminated,
the capacity of short-term memory is typically only about four chunks. For
example, Cowan et al. (2005) used the running memory task – a series of digits
ended at an unpredictable point, with the participants’ task being to recall the
items from the end of the list.

The digits were presented very rapidly to prevent rehearsal, and the mean
number of items recalled was 3.87. The recency effect in free recall (recalling
the items in any order) refers to the finding that the last few items in a list are
usually much better remembered in immediate recall than those from the middle
of the list. Counting backwards for 10 seconds between the end of list
presentation and start of recall mainly affects the recency effect.

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 - The two or three words susceptible to the recency effect may be in the short-
term store at the end of list presentation and so especially vulnerable. However,
Bjork and Whitten (1974) found that there was still a recency effect when
participants counted backwards for 12 seconds after each item in the list was
presented. According to Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968), this should have
eliminated the recency effect.

The above findings can be explained by analogy to looking along a row of telephone
poles. The closer poles are more distinct than the ones farther away, just as the most
recent list words are more discriminable than the others (Glenberg, 1987).

Peterson and Peterson (1959) studied the duration of short-term memory by using the
task of remembering a three-letter stimulus while counting backwards by threes
followed by recall in the correct order. Memory performance reduced to about 50%
after 6 seconds and forgetting was almost complete after 18 second, presumably
because unrehearsed information disappears rapidly from short-term memory through
decay.

In contrast, it is often argued that forgetting from long-term memory involves different
mechanisms. In particular, there is much cue-dependent forgetting, in which the
memory traces are still in the memory system but are inaccessible. Nairne, Whiteman,
and Kelley (1999) argued that the rate of forgetting observed by Peterson and
Peterson (1959) was especially rapid for two reasons. First, they used all the letters of
the alphabet repeatedly, which may have caused considerable interference.

Second, the memory task was difficult in that participants had to remember the items
themselves and the presentation order. Nairne et al, (1998) presented different words
on each trial to reduce interference, and tested memory only for order information and
not for the words themselves. Even though there was a rehearsal-prevention task
(reading aloud digits presented on a screen) during the retention interval, there was
remarkably little forgetting even over 96 seconds.

3.4.2 Unitary-store models

In recent years, various theorists have argued that the entire multi-store approach is
misguided and should be replaced by a unitary-store model. Unitary-store models
assume that, “STM [short-term memory] consists of temporary activations of LTM
[long-term memory] representations or of representations of items that were recently
perceived”. Such activations will often occur when certain representations are the
focus of attention.

Unitary-store models would seem to have great difficulty in explaining the consistent
finding that amnesic patients have essentially intact short-term memory in spite of

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having severe problems with long-term memory. Jonides et al. (2008) argued that
amnesic patients have special problems in forming novel relations (e.g., between
items and their context) in both short-term and long-term memory. Amnesic patients
apparently have no problems with short-term memory because short-term memory
tasks typically do not require relational memory.

This leads to a key prediction: amnesic patients should have impaired short-term
memory performance on tasks requiring relational memory. According to Jonides et
al. (2008), the hippocampus and surrounding medial temporal lobes (typically
damaged in amnesic patients) play a crucial role in forming novel relations (sometimes
called binding).

Multi-store theorists assume that these structures are much more involved in long-
term memory than in short-term memory. However, it follows from unitary-store
models that the hippocampus and medial temporal lobes would be involved if a short-
term memory task required forming novel relations.

3.4.3 The Atkinson & Shiffrin Information Processing Model

According to this model information must pass through two temporary storage buffers
(stores) before it can be placed into more permanent storage, and then retrieved for
later use. Take a look at the model below to get an overview of the whole process,
and then move on with the notes.

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For the memory process to begin, we must first encounter some stimulus (identified
as "input" in the model above), which goes into sensory storage.

a) Sensory Storage - the immediate, initial recording of sensory information.

Here information is preserved for a very brief time (usually only a fraction of a second)
in its original form.

The name "sensory storage" implies that something perceptual occurs. In fact, what
enters into sensory storage are images (in the case of vision), or more precisely,
afterimages. Although the actual stimulus may have disappeared, we may still
perceive it for a second or so.

The actual length of time an image exists in sensory storage depends on the modality:

1). Iconic memory - a visual image in sensory storage. Although most people seem to
believe that visual images last longer (this is based on intuition, not science), they do
not - they last approximately 1/4 of a second.

2). Echoic memory - auditory image. These (as well as other senses) seem to last up
to 3 seconds.

SO, we can see that within sensory storage we have 2 distinct stores - an iconic and
echoic.

Once one of these types of memories occur, we have some raw data that will be lost
if we do not engage in one of two processes (these two processes are required to get
information from sensory memory to short term memory).

1). Pattern recognition - when new information comes into sensory storage, we actively
search through long term memory in an effort to find a match for this new raw data.

2). Attention - this is pretty obvious. The more we pay attention to a stimulus, the more
likely it will continue onto the next memory store (short term memory)

Once we have successfully recognized or attended to the information, we are able to

bring the information into SHORT-TERM MEMORY (STM).

b). Short-Term Memory - a limited capacity store that can maintain information for
approximately 20 seconds.
It is possible to extend duration of STM (to approximately 30 seconds) by engaging in
a process called Maintenance Rehearsal.

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1) Maintenance Rehearsal - the process of repeatedly verbalizing or thinking about
the information.

For example - late at night, you have been out partying all night, you et back home
and you are hungry. you decide...it's time for pizza. So you pick up the phone and call
information to get the number of a local pizza delivery place. When the operator gives
the number, you say the number over and over so that you don't forget it in the time it
takes to hang up and dial the number. This process of repeating the number over and
over is actually maintenance rehearsal. It won't help get the information into long term
memory, but it will help keep it in short term memory a little longer.

2) Slots - STM seems to be divided into "slots" - to be precise, STM has 7 slots, each
one capable of holding one piece of information.
This is also commonly referred to as the MAGIC #7 (+/- 2), which was introduced by
George Miller.

But, we are bombarded with so much information all the time that STM can become
cluttered. In order to prevent the clutter from become too much, STM pushes some
information out in order to make room for other information. But what gets pushed
out???

3) Primacy and Recency - a) Primacy - when you are receiving information, the
information perceived first is more likely to be remembered. This more recent
information may simply get to long term memory more easily, and thus be remembered
or we may just rehearse the early information more.

b) Recency - information perceived toward the end of an event is also more likely to
be remembered. So, information in the "middle" seems to get pushed out and is less
likely to be remembered.

While maintenance rehearsal will help keep information in STM, the only way to bring
information into long-term memory is through ELABORATIVE REHEARSAL.

4) Elaborative Rehearsal - connecting new information with previously stored,

already existing associative structures.
For Example - when our sixth grade teachers used to make us put a vocabulary word
into context in a sentence - this combines the new information (the vocabulary word)
with an associative structure (the sentence).

"Johnny, the word is pimple. Can you use pimple in a sentence?" "Yes. My head is so
full of all of this Psychological information, I think it is going to pop like a big, white,
pimple"

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c). Long Term Memory (LTM) - an unlimited capacity store that can hold information
over lengthy periods.
The name is a bit of a misnomer, since information in LTM may stay there over the
course of a life-span.

1) There are 3 categories (or subcategories) of LTM:

a) Procedural memory - this is the most basic type of long term memory (very
simplistic) and primarily involves memories of rudimentary procedures and behaviors.

For example - procedural memories include our memory for eating, sitting in a chair,
etc. As you can see, these are based on behavior some even suggest that there is an
additional, basic category called DECLARATIVE memory - just information like names
and dates.

b) Semantic memory - mental models of the environment as well as procedures.

For example - knowledge of word meanings, language, strategies for problem solving,
factual information (like laws), etc.

c) Episodic memory - information about events, people, places, etc., that include an
autobiographical aspect as well as a time and place.

For example - "I saw a bear last night in my back yard."

Now that we have seen how memory works, let's look at how or why memory may
NOT work.

3.5 Real-Life Memory

Although it may be disconcerting to contemplate, true and false memories arise in the
same way. Memories are attributions that we make about our mental experiences
based on their subjective qualities, our prior knowledge and beliefs, our motives and
goals, and the social context. So we may refer it to reality monitoring as we are trying
to discriminate memories from internal or external events in simpler terms true and
false memories.

3.5.1 The Present Approach

Some Preliminary Assumptions

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Although we assume that perceptual events produce persistent memory traces, we
also assume that internally generated events produce persistent memory traces. Not
all, but many of the errors we see in memory may be the consequence of a failure to
discriminate the origin of a memory trace. The ideas that memory traces for perceptual
experiences are accurate, in that they reflect the characteristics of stimulus-
determined processes and that they exist side by side or intertwined with memories
produced by imaginative processes have particular implications for theories of
representation that are based on error data such as false recognitions.

Insofar as false recognitions reflect a failure to discriminate the origin of a trace, their
appropriateness as an indication of the nature of the memory representation of
external events

Types of Self-Generated Information

The term reality monitoring as a way of referring to the activity of discriminating
between memories primarily derived from external events and those primarily derived
from internal events.

There are many types of thoughts and imaginal events that would be relevant for reality
monitoring (real-life memories). These types can tentatively be separated into three
major categories: (a) re-representation, (b) cotemporal thoughts, and (c) fantasy.
The first category refers to the re-representation of perceptual experience or
remembering something previously experienced.

In re-representation, information that has dropped out of consciousness or working

memory is reactivated at a later time in the absence of the original external stimulus
(in contrast to, for example, rehearsing recently perceived information several times in
succession).

Cotemporal thought refers to the sort of elaborative and associative processes that
supplement/augment, bridge, or embellish ongoing perceptual experience but that are
not necessarily part of the valid representation of perceptual experience.

Fantasy involves novel/original combinations of information that produce imaginary

events that take place only in our imagination. Making up a story or dreaming would
fall primarily in this category. While recognizing that there are some problems with this
classification scheme (where does "re-representation" end and "fantasy" begin?), we
have found it useful as a starting point.

However, this term is not meant to imply that the processes involved in discriminating
the origin (internal or external) of information in memory are always the same. Rather,
the details of the processing (activating information, applying decision strategies)
might reasonably be expected to vary depending on the nature of the remembered

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information, the conditions under which the monitoring occurs, the cost of mistakes,
and so forth. Finally, reality monitoring can be thought of as one of the general class
of meta-memory processes by which people reflect varying degrees of understanding
about the nature of their own memories.

3.5.2 A Working Model

Basically, we propose that reality monitoring is affected by two major factors: the
nature of the traces being evaluated and the types of decision processes applied.
Either of these should influence the amount of confusion a person displays about the
origin of information. Our first assumption is that any memory potentially consists of
many types of information or attributes. Thus, for example, if a word is presented or
imagined, information may be stored with respect to its physical properties (e.g., pitch)
and its semantic properties.

Various subcategories could be defined within each of these four. For example,
semantic content for a spoken word, as used here, would include physical aspects of
its referent such as size and colour, functional characteristics of the referent, emotional
connotation, and so on.

We propose that, as a class, internally generated memories may differ from the class
of externally generated memories along specific dimensions;
 First, externally generated memories in general may have more spatial and
temporal contextual attributes coded in the representation of the event than
internally generated memories do.

 Second, they should also have more sensory attributes, although imaginal
processes presumably also generate some sensory information.

 Third, we propose that externally generated representations are more

semantically detailed that is, contain more information or more specific
information than internally generated representations. Thought tends to be
more schematic.

 Finally, we propose that internally generated memories may typically have more
operational attributes associated with them (coded in the trace). This latter
notion is based partly on the assumption that perception is usually somewhat
more "automatic" than imaginal processes and that attention (e.g., voluntarily
engaging in creating images) increases the chances that coded information
about operations will be available later.

3.5.3 Memory in everyday life

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I. Eyewitness testimony and the malleability of memory
a) Memory does not work like a video recorder: People do not encode or retrieve
every aspect of an event perfectly.

b) What a person encodes depends on his or her priorities, his or her past
experience, his or her expectations, and the current demands.

c) What people remember about an event can also depend on what happened
after the event, their biases and expectations, and reports from others.

d) Biases at encoding: When arousal (state of alertness) is high, people tend to

narrow their focus to only certain aspects of an event;

i. One example of an encoding bias is weapon focus. In this, victims of a violent

crime report great detail about the weapon but not about the perpetrator. People
rely heavily on their expectations and prior experience.

ii. A second example of encoding bias is own-race bias, in which we are better
able to identify individuals from our own race than individuals from a different
race.

iii. A third example of encoding bias is the reliance on schemas (cognitive

frameworks or concepts that help organize and interpret information) as we
process an event. Imagine being pulled over for a speeding ticket.

After you’ve received a ticket, a friend asks, “Did the police officer ask you if
you knew how fast you were going?” You believe he did, not necessarily
because you recall the question, but because you know that is a common
question for a traffic violation.

e) Misinformation introduced after learning: 1. E lizabeth Loftus and

colleagues (e.g., Loftus and Palmer, 1974; Loftus and Pickerell, 1995)
demonstrated that misin formation introduced after an event can alter our
recollection (memory) of the original event.

2. Participants who viewed a car moving through a yield sign were subsequently asked
how fast the car was going when it went through a stop sign. At a later memory test,
those who were asked about the stop sign during questioning misremembered seeing
a stop sign instead of a yield sign.

f) Misinformation by repeated imaginings and the use of photographs

1. Loftus & Pickerell (1995) and others have demonstrated that asking people to
repeatedly imagine childhood events that plausibly occurred (but in reality never
happened) can result in false memories for those events. People who thought

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extensively about events that never happened to them (e.g., getting lost in a mall,
knocking over a punch bowl) began to believe they did experience those events.

2. This false memory effect is exaggerated when people see altered photos made to
look like they were taken at the event (e.g., seeing a photo of you and your father in a
hot air balloon may lead you to believe you once took a balloon ride with your father).
3. The effect can also be exaggerated with real photos. If you are asked to imagine
putting slime in your teacher’s desk in second grade, you are more likely to remember
the event if you’re shown a real picture of your second-grade class.

f) Biases at retrieval - 1. We rely on expectations and experience when we

attempt to retrieve information.

2. For example, when shown a line-up of suspects for a crime, we assume the
perpetrator is somewhere in the line-up. Even when the real perpetrator is absent from
a line-up, people are far more likely to guess the wrong person than to report they
don’t see the perpetrator in the line-up. As a result, now many types of line-ups are
structured so that victims are presented with one image at a time for a “yes or no”
answer.

3.6 Processes of Forgetting and Memory Distortion

Why do we so easily and so quickly forget phone numbers we have just looked up or
the names of people whom we have just met? Several theories have been proposed
as to why we forget information stored in working memory. The two most well-known
theories are interference theory and decay theory. Interference occurs when
competing information causes us to forget something; decay occurs when simply the
passage of time causes us to forget.

3.6. 1 Encoding Failure

Sometimes memory loss happens before the actual memory process begins, which is
encoding failure. We can’t remember something if we never stored it in our memory in
the first place. This would be like trying to find a book on your e-reader that you never
actually purchased and downloaded. Often, in order to remember something, we must
pay attention to the details and actively work to process the information (effortful
encoding).

Lots of times we don’t do this. For instance, think of how many times in your life you’ve
seen a penny. Can you accurately recall what the front of a U.S. penny looks like?
When researchers Raymond Nickerson and Marilyn Adams (1979) asked this
question, they found that most Americans don’t know which one it is. The reason is
most likely encoding failure. Most of us never encode the details of the penny. We only
encode enough information to be able to distinguish it from other coins. If we don’t

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encode the information, then it’s not in our long-term memory, so we will not be able
to remember it.

3.6.2 Interference Theory

Interference theory refers to the view that forgetting occurs because recall of certain
words interferes with recall of other words. Evidence for interference goes back many
years (Brown, 1958; Peterson & Peterson, 1959). In one study, participants were
asked to recall trigrams (strings of three letters) at intervals of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, or 18
seconds after the presentation of the last letter (Peterson & Peterson, 1959).

Why does recall decline so rapidly? Because after the oral presentation of each
trigram, participants counted backward by threes from a three-digit number spoken
immediately after the trigram. The purpose of having the participants count backward
was to prevent them from rehearsing during the retention interval. This is the time
between the presentation of the last letter and the start of the recall phase of the
experimental trial.

Moreover, such forgetting also occurs when words rather than letters are used as the
stimuli to be recalled (Murdock, 1961). So, counting backward interfered with recall
from short-term memory, supporting the interference account of forgetting in short-
term memory. At that time, it seemed surprising that counting backward with numbers
would interfere with the recall of letters.

The previous view had been that verbal information would interfere only with verbal
(words) memory. Similarly, it was thought that quantitative (numerical) information
would interfere only with quantitative memory. At least two kinds of interference figure
prominently in psychological theory and research: retroactive interference and
proactive interference.

Retroactive interference (or retroactive inhibition) occurs when newly acquired

knowledge impedes the recall of older material. This kind of interference is caused by
activity occurring after we learn something but before we are asked to recall that thing.
The interference in the Brown-Peterson task appears to be retroactive because
counting backward by threes occurs after learning the trigram. It interferes with our
ability to remember information we learned previously.

Proactive interference (or proactive inhibition) occurs when material that was learned
in the past impedes the learning of new material. In this case, the interfering material
occurs before, rather than after, learning of the to-be-remembered material.

If you have studied more than one foreign language, you may have experienced this
effect quite intensely. The author studied French at school, and then started learning
Spanish when she entered college. Unfortunately, French words found their way into

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her Spanish essays unnoticed, and it took her a while to eliminate those French words
from her writing in Spanish (proactive interference). Later, she studied Italian, and
because she had not practiced Spanish in a few years, when she formulated Spanish
sentences in a conversation without much time to think, there was a good chance a
mixture of Italian and Spanish would emerge (retroactive interference).

Proactive as well as retroactive interference may play a role in short-term memory.

Thus, retroactive interference appears to be important, but not the only factor impeding
memory performance. The amount of proactive interference generally climbs with
increases in the length of time between when the information is presented (and
encoded) and when the information is retrieved. Also as you might expect, proactive
interference increases as the amount of prior—and potentially interfering—learning
increases. Proactive interference generally has stronger effects in older adults than in
younger people.

3.6.3 Decay Theory

In addition to interference theory, there is another theory for explaining how we forget
information—decay theory. Decay theory asserts that information is forgotten because
of the gradual disappearance, rather than displacement, of the memory trace. Thus,
decay theory views the original piece of information as gradually disappearing unless
something is done to keep it intact. This view contrasts with interference theory, in
which one or more pieces of information block recall of another.

Decay theory turns out to be exceedingly difficult to test because under normal
circumstances, preventing participants from rehearsing is difficult. Through rehearsal,
participants maintain the to-be-remembered information in memory. Usually
participants know that you are testing their memory. They may try to rehearse the
information or they may even inadvertently rehearse it to perform well during testing.
The task you use to prevent rehearsal may interfere retroactively with the original
memory.

For example, try not to think of white elephants as you read the next two pages. When
instructed not to think about them, you actually find it quite difficult not to. The difficulty
persists even if you try to follow the instructions. Unfortunately, as a test of decay
theory, this experiment is itself a white elephant because preventing people from
rehearsing is so difficult.

3.6.4 Memory Distortions / Errors

People have tendencies to distort their memories). For example, just saying something
has happened to you makes you more likely to think it really happened. This is true
whether the event happened or not. These distortions tend to occur in seven specific
ways, which Schacter (2001) refers to as the “seven sins of memory.” Here are
Schacter’s “seven sins”:

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1. Transience. Memory fades quickly. For example, although most people know that
O. J. Simpson was acquitted of criminal charges in the murder of his wife, they do not
remember how they found out about his acquittal. At one time they could have said,
but they no longer can.

2. Absent-mindedness. People sometimes brush their teeth after already having

brushed them or enter a room looking for something only to discover that they have
forgotten what they were seeking.
3. Blocking. People sometimes have something that they know they should
remember, but they can’t. It’s as though the information is on the tip of their tongue,
but they cannot retrieve it. For example, people may see someone they know, but the
person’s name escapes them; or they may try to think of a synonym for a word,
knowing that there is an obvious synonym, but are unable to recall it.

4. Misattribution. People often cannot remember where they heard what they heard
or read what they read. Sometimes people think they saw things they did not see or
heard things they did not hear. For example, eyewitness testimony is sometimes
clouded by what we think we should have seen, rather than what we actually saw.

5. Suggestibility. People are susceptible to suggestion, so if it is suggested to them

that they saw something, they may think they remember seeing it. For example, in one
study, when asked whether they had seen a television film of a plane crashing into an
apartment building, many people said they had seen it. There was no such film.

6. Bias. People often are biased in their recall. For example, people who currently are
experiencing chronic pain in their lives are more likely to remember pain in the past,
whether or not they actually experienced it. People who are not experiencing such
pain are less likely to recall pain in the past, again with little regard to their actual past
experience.

7. Persistence. People sometimes remember things as consequential that, in a broad

context, are inconsequential. For example, someone with many successes but one
notable failure may remember the single failure better than the many successes.

3.7 Parts of the Brain Involved with Memory

Are memories stored in just one part of the brain, or are they stored in many different
parts of the brain? Many scientists believe that the entire brain is involved with
memory. However, since Lashley’s research, other scientists have been able to look
more closely at the brain and memory. They have argued that memory is located in
specific parts of the brain, and specific neurons can be recognized for their
involvement in forming memories. The main parts of the brain involved with memory
are the amygdala, the cerebellum, and the prefrontal cortex

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Karl Lashley began exploring this problem, about 100 years ago, by making lesions in
the brains of animals such as rats and monkeys. He was searching for evidence of the
engram: the group of neurons that serve as the “physical representation of memory”
(Josselyn, 2010). First, Lashley (1950) trained rats to find their way through a maze.
Then, he used the tools available at the time—in this case a soldering iron—to create
lesions in the rats’ brains, specifically in the cerebral cortex. He did this because he
was trying to erase the engram, or the original memory trace that the rats had of the
maze.

Lashley did not find evidence of the engram, and the rats were still able to find their
way through the maze, regardless of the size or location of the lesion. Based on his
creation of lesions and the animal’s reaction, he formulated the equipotentiality
hypothesis: if part of one area of the brain involved in memory is damaged, another
part of the same area can take over that memory function (Lashley, 1950).

The amygdala is involved in fear and fear memories. The hippocampus is associated with declarative
and episodic memory as well as recognition memory. The cerebellum plays a role in processing
procedural memories, such as how to play the piano. The prefrontal cortex appears to be involved in
remembering semantic tasks.

THE AMYGDALA
First, let’s look at the role of the amygdala in memory formation. The main job of the
amygdala is to regulate emotions, such as fear and aggression. The amygdala plays

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a part in how memories are stored because storage is influenced by stress hormones.
For example, one researcher experimented with rats and the fear response. Using
Pavlovian conditioning, a neutral tone was paired with a foot shock to the rats. This
produced a fear memory in the rats. After being conditioned, each time they heard the
tone, they would freeze (a defence response in rats), indicating a memory for the
impending shock.

Then the researchers induced cell death in neurons in the lateral amygdala, which is
the specific area of the brain responsible for fear memories. They found the fear
memory faded (became extinct). Because of its role in processing emotional
information, the amygdala is also involved in memory consolidation: the process of
transferring new learning into long-term memory. The amygdala seems to facilitate
encoding memories at a deeper level when the event is emotionally arousing.

3.7.1 THE CEREBELLUM AND PREFRONTAL CORTEX

Although the hippocampus seems to be more of a processing area for explicit
memories, you could still lose it and be able to create implicit memories (procedural
memory, motor learning, and classical conditioning), thanks to your cerebellum. For
example, one classical conditioning experiment is to accustom subjects to blink when
they are given a puff of air. When researchers damaged the cerebellums of rabbits,
they discovered that the rabbits were not able to learn the conditioned eye-blink
response.

Other researchers have used brain scans, including positron emission tomography
(PET) scans, to learn how people process and retain information. From these studies,
it seems the prefrontal cortex is involved. In one study, participants had to complete
two different tasks: either looking for the letter a in words (considered a perceptual
task) or categorizing a noun as either living or non-living (considered a semantic task).

Participants were then asked which words they had previously seen. Recall was much
better for the semantic task than for the perceptual task. According to PET scans,
there was much more activation in the left inferior prefrontal cortex in the semantic
task. In another study, encoding was associated with left frontal activity, while retrieval
of information was associated with the right frontal region.

3.8 Problems with Memory

You may pride yourself on your amazing ability to remember the birthdates and ages
of all of your friends and family members, or you may be able recall vivid details of
your 5th birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s. However, all of us have at times felt
frustrated, and even embarrassed, when our memories have failed us. There are
several reasons why this happens.

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AMNESIA
Amnesia is the loss of long-term memory that occurs as the result of disease, physical
trauma, or psychological trauma. Psychologist Tulving (2002) and his colleagues at
the University of Toronto studied K. C. for years. K. C. suffered a traumatic head injury
in a motorcycle accident and then had severe amnesia. Tulving writes, the outstanding
fact about K.C.'s mental make-up is his utter inability to remember any events,
circumstances, or situations from his own life. His episodic amnesia covers his whole
life, from birth to the present. The only exception is the experiences that, at any time,
he has had in the last minute or two.

There are two common types of amnesia: anterograde amnesia and retrograde
amnesia. Anterograde amnesia is commonly caused by brain trauma, such as a blow
to the head.

 Anterograde amnesia, you cannot remember new information, although you

can remember information and events that happened prior to your injury. The
hippocampus is usually affected (McLeod, 2011). This suggests that damage
to the brain has resulted in the inability to transfer information from short-term
to long-term memory; that is, the inability to consolidate memories. Many
people with this form of amnesia are unable to form new episodic or semantic
memories, but are still able to form new procedural memories (Bayley & Squire,
2002).

This was true of H. M., which was discussed earlier. The brain damage caused by his
surgery resulted in anterograde amnesia. H. M. would read the same magazine over
and over, having no memory of ever reading it—it was always new to him. He also
could not remember people he had met after his surgery. If you were introduced to H.
M. and then you left the room for a few minutes, he would not know you upon your
return and would introduce himself to you again. However, when presented the same
puzzle several days in a row, although he did not remember having seen the puzzle
before, his speed at solving it became faster each day (because of relearning) (Corkin,
1965, 1968).

 Retrograde amnesia is loss of memory for events that occurred prior to the
trauma. People with retrograde amnesia cannot remember some or even all of
their past. They have difficulty remembering episodic memories. What if you
woke up in the hospital one day and there were people surrounding your bed
claiming to be your spouse, your children, and your parents? The trouble is you
don’t recognize any of them. You were in a car accident, suffered a head injury,
and now have retrograde amnesia. You don’t remember anything about your
life prior to waking up in the hospital.

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This may sound like the stuff of Hollywood movies, and Hollywood has been fascinated
with the amnesia plot for nearly a century, going to more recent movies such as the
Jason Bourne trilogy starring Matt Damon. However, for real-life sufferers of
retrograde amnesia, like former NFL football player Scott Bolzan, the story is not a
Hollywood movie. Bolzan fell, hit his head, and deleted 46 years of his life in an instant.
He is now living with one of the most extreme cases of retrograde amnesia on record.

3.9 Activity

1. Define memory as basic cognitive process, including;

a) Encoding,
b) Storage,
c) Retrieval.
2. a) Outline components of memory,

b) Explain these terms;

i) Sensory and working memory,
ii) Explicit memory,
iii) Implicit memory,
iv) Procedural memory,
v) Declarative and Episodic memory.
3. Discuss models and theories of memory pointing out characteristics and strengths
and weaknesses.

4. Define the issue of eye witness pointing out biases involved in giving correct
account.
5. a) Define forgetting,

b) Outline and describe forgetting theories

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QUESTIONS TO WORK ON

1. Briefly explain the importance of brain and its function.

2. Discuss the two theories of language acquisition. Include in your answer the
functions of language to humans.

3. Describe and evaluate Gibson’s Theory of Direct Perception. (Visual).

4. Discuss attention.

5. Explain what metacognition is.

6. Critically discuss Structuralism and Gestalt psychology outlining the similarities
and differences of these two approaches.

7. Critically outline the historical background of Cognitive Psychology.

8. Discuss attention
9. Discuss perception
10. Intelligence is an act of nature or nurture. Discuss
11. Discuss models of pattern recognition; clearly bring out their characteristics,
differences and
12. Discuss at least 2 theories of language acquisition; include in your answer the
function of language to humans.
13. Give an analysis of the structure of memory and explain how it functions.
14. Language is a specie specific behaviour. Discuss.
15. Discuss the claim that perception is largely an inborn ability.
16. Describe and evaluate Broadbent 1958 and Deutsch 1963’s models of attention

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Atkinson, R. C., & Shiffrin, R. M., (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its
control processes. In K. W. Spence & J. T. Spence (Eds.), The psychology of learning
and motivation: Volume 2 (pp. 89–195). New York, NY: Academic Press.

Baddeley, A. (2004). Your memory: A user's guide. Richmond Hill, Canada: Firefly
Books.
Cengage Learning charter, D. (2001). The seven sins of memory: How the mind
forgets and remembers. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.

Eysenck, M., W., & Keane, M. T., (2010). Cognitive Psychology. A Student’s

Handbook (6th edn): East Sussexx.;

Psychology Press.
Gross R., (1996). Psychology: The science of the mind and behavior, London,
Hodder and Stoughton

Hayes, N,. (1998). Foundations of Psychology, (2nd edtn): Surrey; Nelson

James W., (1890). The principles of psychology: New York; Henry Holt and com.

Sternberg R. J., & Sternberg K., (2012). Cognitive Psychology, (6TH Edn): Carlifornia;
Wadsworth.

Steinmetz, J. E. (1999). A renewed interest in human classical eyeblink conditioning.

Psychological Science, 10, 24–25.

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