PSY 431

• Continuous Assessment (40 Marks)

- Notes (10 marks)
- Assignment/Attendance (10 marks)
- Test (20 marks)

• Examination (60 Marks)

Note: Towards the end of each lecture, attendance will be

taken.
Cognitive
Processes
Studying the Mind
Where is the Mind?
 What is the Mind
Definition 1
The mind refers to the intangible, cognitive,
and (sub)conscious aspects of human
experience, including thoughts, emotions,
perceptions, memories, attention, language,
deciding, thinking, and reasoning.

This definition reflects the mind’s central role in

determining our various mental processes and
abilities.
 What is the Mind
Definition 2
The mind is an intangible body system that creates
representations of the world so that we can act
within it to achieve our goals

Dog Bottle Fricumb Bone

This definition reflects the mind’s importance for

functioning and survival, and also provides the
beginnings of a description of how the mind
achieves these goals
It is no coincidence that all of the
cognitions in the first definition play
important roles in acting to achieve goals
of the second definition

Stimulus – Perception – Response

(A Bear) – (Awareness – Danger?)- (Fight/Flight)
(Processes – Representation) – (Goal)
 Early Works in Cognitive Psychology
• Donders’s Pioneering Experiment
• Wundt’s Psychology Laboratory
• Ebbinghaus’s Memory Experiment
• William James’s Principles of Psychology

These early pioneers played crucial roles in the

formation and development of cognitive
psychology as the scientific study of the mind.
Their work laid the foundation for the field's
future growth and exploration
 Read Up
• John Watson’s Behaviourism Approach
• Skinner’s Operant Conditioning
 PERCEPTION
• We define perception as experiences resulting
from stimulation of the senses.
• Perception is a multifaceted and dynamic
cognitive process that encompasses the entire
spectrum of experiences and mental phenomena
arising from the intricate interplay between
external stimuli and the sensory apparatus of the
human organism.
• It is the remarkable capacity of the human mind
to transform raw sensory input into rich,
coherent, and meaningful representations of the
world
Clara looks down the beach and notices
something about 100 yards away that
wasn’t there yesterday. “What an
interesting piece of driftwood,” she thinks,
although it is difficult to see because of the
mist and dim lighting. As she approaches
the object, she begins to doubt her initial
thought, and just as she is wondering
whether it might not be driftwood, she
realizes that it is, in fact, the old beach
umbrella that was lying under the lifeguard
stand yesterday.
Continuing down the beach, she passes
some coiled rope that appears to be
abandoned. She stops to check it out.
Grabbing one end, she flips the rope and
recognizes it as the umbrella strap. She
continues running, because she is
supposed to meet a friend at Beach Java, a
coffee shop far down the beach. Later,
sitting in the coffee house, she tells her
friend about the piece of magic driftwood
that was transformed into an umbrella.
 Characteristics of Perception
• Perception is can Change Based on Information
• Perception Can Involve Reasoning or Problem
Solving
• Rules and Past Experiences Influence Perception
• Perception Can Be a Process
• Perception Is Linked to Action
• Perception Is Essential for Cognition
• Perception Processes are unconscious
• Perception Processes can occur within Split
Seconds
 How are perceptions formed?
The Gestalt Principles of Organization
• According to structuralism as proposed by Wundt, a
number of sensations add up to create our perception.
• However, the Gestalt psychologists rejected the idea
that perceptions were formed by “adding up”
sensations. According to them ‘The whole is different
than the sum of its parts’

• This idea that the whole is different than the sum of its
parts led the Gestalt psychologists to propose a
number of principles of perceptual organization to
explain the way elements are grouped together to
create larger objects.
 Good Continuation
• According to this principle, individuals tend to
group and interpret visual elements in a
manner that creates continuous, smooth
paths or lines.
• When observing a series of connected or
overlapping elements, they are more likely to
perceive these elements as belonging to the
same object or form, especially if the
elements follow a regular trajectory or
contour.
Based on the principle of Good Continuation,
you are quick to perceive this as a coil of one
long strand of rope without stretching it out.
 Similarity
The principle of similarity relates to the
perceptual grouping of similar visual elements.
When individuals observe a set of objects or
elements that share common characteristics,
such as shape, color, size, texture, or orientation,
they are more likely to group these elements
together and perceive them as a unified whole.
Introducing similarity based on colour
changes our perception
 Regularities
The principle of regularities, suggests that
people tend to perceive and organize visual
stimuli based on certain regular patterns or
rules, which can help them make predictions
and interpret their surroundings more
efficiently.
• Physical Regularities
• Semantic Regularities
• Physical regularity refers to the consistent and
predictable patterns, rules, or structures
present in the physical world. These
regularities are characterized by the consistent
repetition of certain physical attributes,
properties, or phenomena in a given
environment or system.

• The Oblique Effect is a good example of the

principle of physical regularities.
• Semantic regularities are the characteristics
associated with the functions carried out in
different types of scenes. In language,
semantics refers to the meanings of words or
sentences. Applied to perceiving scenes,
semantics refers to the meaning of a scene.
This meaning is often related to what happens
within a scene.

• For example….waiting in line, buying tickets,

checking luggage, and going through security
checkpoints happens in _____________
 Proximity
The principle of proximity states that objects or
elements that are physically close to each other
are perceived as a group or as belonging
together. When we see a cluster of items close
to each other, we tend to perceive them as
related.
 Closure
The principle of closure describes the brain's
tendency to complete or close gaps in
incomplete visual information. When we
encounter objects with missing parts or
contours, we often mentally fill in those gaps to
perceive a whole object
 Simplicity
The principle of simplicity, also known as the law of
Prägnanz, suggests that we tend to perceive the
simplest or most organized interpretation of visual
stimuli. When presented with ambiguous or complex
information, our brains prefer straightforward and
meaningful explanations.
 Symmetry
Symmetrical elements or objects are often
perceived as more pleasing and stable. The brain
recognizes and appreciates symmetrical
arrangements, even when they are not perfectly
balanced.
 Movement and Perception
Movement facilitates perception by revealing aspects
of objects that are not apparent from a single
viewpoint.
E.g. Consider the “horse” in Figure a. From one
viewpoint, this object looks like a metal sculpture of a
fairly normal horse.
However……
walking around the horse reveals that
it isn’t as normal as it first appeared
 ATTENTION
• Attention refers to the cognitive process of
selectively focusing on specific aspects of the
environment or the information available to
us, while ignoring other information.

• Broadly defined, attention is a complex

cognitive process that involves the selective
allocation of mental resources to specific
stimuli, information, or tasks, while
simultaneously filtering out or ignoring other
stimuli and distractions.
 Aspects of Attention (1)
“Roger, sitting in the library, is attempting to do
his math homework when some people at the
next table start talking. But he is so focused on
the math problems that the talking from other
doesn’t distract him……….”

Selective Attention - attending to one thing

while ignoring others.
 Aspects of Attention (2)
However, a little later, when he decides to take a
break from his math homework and play an easy
game on his cell phone, he does find their
conversation distracting such that he cant fully
concentrate on the game. ‘Interesting,’ he
thinks. ‘Their talking didn’t bother me when I
was doing the math problems’.

Distraction - one stimulus interfering with the

process of attention for another stimulus.
 Aspects of Attention (3)
Deciding to stop resisting his listening to the
conversation, Roger begins to consciously
eavesdrop while continuing to play his cell
phone game, and he is able to figure out what
the couple is talking about while playing his
game.

• Divided Attention- paying attention to more

than one stimulus at a time.
 Aspects of Attention (4)
His attention is captured by a loud noise and
commotion from across the room, where it appears
a book cart has overturned, scattering books on the
floor. As he notices that one person seems upset
and others are gathering up the books, he looks
from one person to another and decides he doesn’t
know any of them”.
• Attentional Capture - a rapid shifting of attention
usually caused by a stimulus that is difficult to be
ignored
• Visual Scanning - movements of the eyes from
one location or object to another to detect
stimulus of interest.
 Models of Attention
• Broadbent’s Filter Model of Attention
Broadbent’s filter model of attention, was designed
to explain the results of Colin Cherry’s (1953)
experiment.

Colin Cherry (1953) studied attention using a

technique called dichotic listening, where dichotic
refers to presenting different stimuli to the left and
right ears.

The participant’s task in this experiment is to focus

on the message in one ear, called the attended ear,
and to repeat what he or she is hearing out loud.
• Cherry found that although his participants
could easily remember a spoken message
presented to the attended ear, they couldn’t
report what was being said in the unattended
ear. Some of them could however report
whether the unattended message was spoken
by a male or female

• The ability to focus on one stimulus while

filtering out other stimuli has been called the
cocktail party effect
Sensory memory holds all of the incoming information for
a fraction of a second and then transfers all of it to the
filter. The filter identifies the message that is being
attended to and lets only the attended message pass
through to the detector in the next stage. All of the other
messages are filtered out. The detector processes the
information from the attended message to determine
higher-level characteristics of the message, such as its
meaning which is sent to the memory
Treisman’s Attenuation Model of Attention

According to Treisman’s model, once the attended

and unattended messages have been identified,
both messages pass through the attenuator, but the
attended message emerges at full strength and the
unattended messages are attenuated—they are still
present but are weaker than the attended message.
• Both of these messages with different signal
strengths then enter into the dictionary unit
where messages are analyzed for meaning and
interpretation.

• While the entire (strong) attended message is

analyzed in the dictionary unit, only the contents
of the (weak) unattended messages that are
especially important, such as the listener’s name,
are activated for analysis in the dictionary unit.

• Meaningful contents analyzed in the dictionary

unit are then passed on to the Memory.
 Load Theory of Attention
To understand the load theory of attention, two
concepts must be understood.

• Processing capacity refers to the amount of

information people can handle and sets a limit on
their ability to process incoming information;
• Perceptual load refers to the difficulty of a task.
Easy and well-practiced tasks have low perceptual
loads; these low-load tasks use up only a small
amount of the person’s processing capacity. Tasks
that are difficult and perhaps not as well practiced
are high-load tasks and use more of a person’s
processing capacity.
The load theory of attention states that (a) Low-load tasks
that use few cognitive resources may leave resources
available for processing unattended task-irrelevant stimuli,
whereas (b) high-load tasks that use all of a person’s
cognitive resources don’t leave any resources to process
unattended task-irrelevant stimuli.
• The ability to ignore task-irrelevant stimuli is a
function not only of the load of the task you
are trying to do but also of how powerful the
task-irrelevant stimulus is.
• For example, while Roger was able to ignore
the conversation in the library while he was
focused on the difficult math problems, a loud
siren, indicating fire, would probably attract
his attention.
• A situation in which task-irrelevant stimuli are
difficult to ignore is provided by the Stroop
effect.
• The stroop effect occurs when task-irrelevant
stimuli are too difficult to ignore while trying to
pay specific attention to task-relevant stimuli.

• The difficulty in ignoring the task-irrelevant

stimuli is often because they are extremely
powerful and often automatically activated in the
dictionary unit of the attention process that they
interfere with attention on task-relevant stimuli.

• The stroop effect was first demonstrated in an

experiment conducted by John Ridley Stroop in
1935. Let’s try it out
Say the Colour of Each Shape
Say the Colour of Each Word
 PSY 431- Lecture

MEMORY PROCESSES
 What is Memory
• Memory is the process involved in retaining,
retrieving, and using information about
stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills after
the original information is no longer present.
• Memory is active any time some past
experience has an effect on the way you think
or behave now or in the future
• From these definitions, it is clear that memory
has to do with the past affecting the present,
and possibly the future.
 Types of Memory
• Sensory Memory: Brief perception of a
stimulus that lasts for a fraction of a second
• Short-Term Memory: Information stays in the
Short Term memory for brief periods, about 10
to 15 seconds. Memories here are easily lost if
there are no prompts or control processes to
transfer it to the long term memory.
• Long-Term Memory is responsible for storing
information for long periods of time— which
can extend from minutes to a lifetime.
 The Modal Model of Memory
Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968)
introduced the flow diagram for memory which
is called the modal model of memory.
Cognitive psychologists generally refer to the
main processes of memory as comprising three
common operations: encoding, storage, and
retrieval. Each one represents a stage in
memory processing:
• Encoding refers to how you transform a
sensory input into a kind of representation
that can be placed into memory.
• Storage refers to how you retain encoded
information in memory.
• Retrieval refers to how you gain access to
information stored in memory.
• When information stored in the long term
memory needed, it is retrieved and sent to back
to the short term memory where the individual
becomes aware of the information and utilizes it
accordingly.

• That why the STM is also called the working

memory.

• Encoding, storage, and retrieval often are viewed

as sequential stages. You first take in information.
Then you hold it for a while. Later you pull it out.
 ENCODING INFORMATION
• Before information can be stored in memory, it
first needs to be encoded for storage. So in order
to remember events and facts for immediate use
or over a long period of time, we need to encode
for storage in the short-term or long-term
memory.
• The process of encoding begins with perception,
which is the identification, organization, and
interpretation of any sensory information in
order to understand it within the context of a
particular environment.
The four primary types of encoding are visual, acoustic,
elaborative, and semantic.

• Visual: Visual encoding is the process of encoding

information with mental pictures.
• Acoustic: Acoustic encoding is the use of auditory stimuli
or hearing to implant memories.
• Elaborative: Elaborative encoding uses information that
is already known and relates it to the new information
being experienced.
• Semantic: Semantic encoding involves the use of sensory
input that has a specific meaning which can be applied to
a context. For example, you might remember a particular
phone number based on a person’s name or a particular
food by its color.
 Optimizing Encoding through
Organization of Information
• Use of Mnemonics
Mnemonic devices, sometimes simply called
mnemonics, are one way to help encode simple
material into memory. A mnemonic is any
organization technique that can be used to help
remember something. One example is a peg-
word system, in which the person “pegs” or
associates the items to be remembered with
other easy-to-remember items.
 Optimizing Encoding through
Organization of Information
• Chunking
Chunking is the process of organizing parts of
objects into meaningful wholes. The whole is
then remembered as a unit instead of individual
parts. Examples of chunking include
remembering phone numbers (a series of
individual numbers separated by dashes) or
words (a series of individual letters).
 Optimizing Encoding through
Organization of Information
• State-Dependent Learning
State-dependent learning is when a person
remembers information based on the state of
mind (or mood) they are in when they learn it.
Retrieval cues are a large part of state-
dependent learning.
 STORING INFORMATION
We encode information to store them in our
memories.
• Short-term memory is the capacity for holding,
but not manipulating, a small amount of
information in mind in an active, readily
available state for a short period of time.
• Long-term memory refers to the storage of
information over an extended period. This type
of memory tends to be stable and can last a
long time—often for years.
Research suggests that short term storage relies
more on acoustic codes. For example, when you
remember a telephone number from long ago,
you are more likely to remember how it sounds
when you say it to yourself than to remember a
visual image of it.

While most information stored in long-term

memory is primarily semantically encoded. In
other words, it is encoded by the meaning of the
information.
 Transfer of Information from Short-
Term Memory to Long-Term Memory
Keeping information obtained active for
subsequent retrieval and use describes the
processes of transferring such information from
the short-term memory to the long term
memory. Processes by which people keep
information active include;
• memory consolidation
• rehearsal
• Memory consolidation is defined as a time-
dependent process by which recent learned
experiences are transformed into long-term
memory, presumably by structural and
chemical changes in the nervous system. The
processes involved in consolidation tend to be
unconscious and happen at the cellular or
neurological level. In other words,
consolidation is more of a biological process
and can even happen while we sleep.
Rehearsal is the repeated recitation of an item. The effects
of such rehearsal are termed practice effects. There are two
forms of rehearsal (i) elaborative (ii) maintenance
• In elaborative rehearsal, the individual somehow
elaborates the items to be remembered. Such rehearsal
makes the items either more meaningfully integrated into
what the person already knows. To move information into
long-term memory, an individual must engage in
elaborative rehearsal.
• In maintenance rehearsal, the individual simply
repetitiously rehearses the items to be repeated. Such
rehearsal temporarily maintains information in short-term
memory without transferring the information to long-
term memory.
 RETRIEVING INFORMATION
Retrieval from Short-Term Memory
The two retrieval processes for information in the short term
memory are (i) parallel processing (ii) serial processing
• Parallel processing refers to the simultaneous handling of
multiple operations. As applied to short-term memory, the
items stored in short-term memory would be retrieved all
at once, not one at a time. This is especially important in
vision. E.g., when you see a bus coming towards you, you
see its color, shape, depth, and motion all at once.
• Serial processing is the act of attending to and processing
one item at a time.. Serial processing is important in
processing and retrieving information for text based
stimuli. E.g. answering questions about an essay just read.
Retrieval from Long-Term Memory
There are three ways you can retrieve information out of
your long-term memory storage system: recall,
recognition, and relearning.
• Recall: This involves accessing information without
cues. For example, you would use recall for an essay
test.
• Recognition: This happens when you identify
information that you have previously learned after
encountering it again. It involves a process of
comparison..
• Relearning: It involves learning information that you
previously learned. One is able to relearn and store
such information much faster due to segments of
information being retrieved from the long term
memory
 Barriers to Memory Retrieval
We may encounter some key problems when we
transfer or retrieve information from short-term
memory and long-term memory
• Interference
• Decay
• Distortion
Memory Interference
Interference refers to the view that forgetting
occurs because recall of certain information
interferes with recall of other information. At least
two kinds of interference figure prominently in
psychological theory and research
Retroactive interference (or retroactive inhibition)
occurs when newly acquired knowledge impedes
the recall of older material.
Proactive interference (or proactive inhibition)
occurs when material that was learned in the past
impedes the learning of new material.
Memory Decay
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.
Memory Distortion
Memory distortion occurs when retrieval of
memories are incorrect and information is
remembered in a different way than what it actually
is. These distortions occur in some specific ways;
• Transience: This is a process in which parts of a
memory fades away. Thus recalling such memory
will be inaccurate due to inability to access vital
parts of the information
• Absent-mindedness: This occurs when the
process of recall is terminated due to absent-
mindedness. E.g. You enter a room looking for
something only to discover that you have
forgotten what they were seeking.
• 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 (the tip-
of-the-tongue phenomenon). For example,
people may see someone they know, but the
person’s name escapes them momentarily
• 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.
• Suggestibility: People are susceptible to
suggestion, so if it is suggested to them that they
saw something, they may think they remember
seeing it.
• Bias: People may be biased in their recall. For
example, a white racist may be convinced that
the suspect he saw committing a crime was
black.
• Persistence: People sometimes ignore the major
consequential parts of an information and
remember the minor inconsequential aspects of
the information. E.g. remembering someone
hurt you one time without acknowledging the
many times he/she has been good to you.
 DISORDERS OF MEMORY
AMNESIA
• We are all prone to moments of forgetfulness,
but most people with intact cognitive
functioning can remember quite a lot about
the events in their lives, especially their most
recent experiences and events which are
important to them.
• Amnesia normally involves severe
forgetfulness which goes beyond the everyday
forgetting observed in normal people, to the
extent that it may interfere with the activities
of normal life.
 TYPES OF AMNESIA
The two main types of memory loss are defined
as follows:
• Anterograde amnesia (AA): impairment of
memory for events occurring since the onset
of amnesia.
• Retrograde amnesia (RA): impairment of
memory for events occurring before the onset
of amnesia
 CAUSES OF AMNESIA
Amnesia may arise from a number of different
causes, which can be divided into two main
groups, the organic amnesias and the
psychogenic amnesias.
• Organic amnesias are caused by some form of
physical damage inflicted on the brain.
• Psychogenic amnesias are caused by
psychological factors and usually involve the
temporary suppression of disturbing
memories which are unacceptable to the
patient at some subconscious level.
The organic amnesias are far more serious. The
main causes of organic amnesia include:

• Alzheimer’s disease (AD)

• Korsakoff syndrome
• Herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE)
• Temporal lobe surgery.
• Post-ECT amnesia.
• Other causes of organic amnesia include
strokes, tumours, head injuries, brain damage
caused by cardiac arrest, HIV infection and
degenerative conditions such as Huntington’s
chorea and Parkinson’s disease.