PSYCH 207 — Exam-Focused Study Notes

Module 1 — History, Methods, and Paradigms

Key terms

Cognition

• Mental processes involved in perception, memory, language, reasoning, and decision making.

Empiricism

• Knowledge comes mainly from experience.

Nativism

• Some cognitive abilities are innate / biologically built in.

Structuralism

• Goal: identify the basic elements of conscious experience.
• Associated with Wundt and introspection.

Functionalism

• Goal: understand what the mind does and why.
• Associated with William James.

Behaviorism

• Psychology should focus on observable behavior, not unobservable mental states.

Gestalt psychology

• Psychological experience should be studied as organized wholes, not reduced to tiny parts.

Individual differences

• Study of how people differ in cognitive abilities.

Information processing approach

• Cognition is information moving through a system in stages.

Connectionism

• Cognition arises from distributed networks of simple units; more parallel than stage-based.

Evolutionary approach

• Cognitive processes are shaped by evolutionary pressures.

Ecological approach

• Cognition depends on real-world context and environment.

Key experiments / examples / findings

Wundt & introspection

• Trained observers described conscious experience.
• Finding: helped launch experimental psychology, but introspection was limited because much cognition happens outside awareness.
• Shows: why later approaches moved away from introspection.

Gestalt line example

• Same 8 lines can be perceived as pairs, unrelated lines, or a whole shape depending on arrangement.
• Finding: perception depends on organization of the whole, not just isolated pieces.
• Shows: support for Gestalt / top-down organization.

Chomsky’s critique of Skinner

• Children say sentences they’ve never heard before and use grammar they were never explicitly reinforced for.
• Finding: imitation + reinforcement cannot fully explain language acquisition.
• Shows: behaviorism is insufficient for language; supports innate capacities.

Hubel & Wiesel kitten studies

• Kittens raised with only horizontal lines later failed to develop normal processing for vertical lines.
• Finding: specific visual cortex cells respond to specific features, and early experience shapes development.
• Shows: localization of function + experience-dependent brain development.

Smilek & Kingston eye-movement work

• People viewing scenes fixated heavily on eyes/faces.
• Finding: attention in real-world scenes is shaped by natural context.
• Shows: ecological approach.

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Module 2 — Brain Structure and Function

Brain sections you should know

Phylogenetic division

• Hindbrain: basic life support, balance, low-level functions
• Midbrain: relay functions
• Forebrain: most higher cognition happens here

Subcortical structures

• Thalamus: sensory relay / switching station
• Hypothalamus: hunger, thirst, temperature, sexual arousal, basic emotion
• Hippocampus: learning and memory
• Amygdala: emotion, aggression, emotional memory

Cortical lobes

• Frontal lobe
  • motor cortex: movement
  • premotor cortex: movement planning
  • prefrontal cortex: executive function, planning, inhibition, working memory
• Parietal lobe: spatial processing, attention, body sensation
• Occipital lobe: vision
• Temporal lobe: auditory processing, long-term memory support

Key terms

Localization of function

• Specific brain regions support specific cognitive functions.

Double dissociation

• One lesion impairs A not B, another lesion impairs B not A.
• Strong evidence that A and B rely on different systems.

Phrenology

• Old view that skull shape reflected mental traits; historically influential but wrong.

CAT scan

• Structural imaging using X-rays.

MRI

• Structural imaging using magnetic properties of tissue.

ERP

• Measures electrical brain activity over time.

PET / fMRI

• Functional imaging based on metabolism / blood flow.

BOLD signal

• Blood oxygenation level dependent signal measured in fMRI.

Subtractive logic

• Isolate a mental process by comparing a more complex task to a simpler control task.

Key experiments / examples / findings

Broca / Wernicke lesion evidence

• Broca’s area damage → speech production impaired, comprehension relatively spared.
• Wernicke’s area damage → comprehension impaired, fluent but meaningless speech.
• Shows: language functions can dissociate; supports localization of function and double dissociation.

Penfield’s Montreal Procedure

• Stimulated awake patients’ cortex during neurosurgery.
• Finding: mapped sensory and motor cortex in detail.
• Shows: direct evidence for cortical localization.

Donders subtractive logic example

• Compare a simple response task to a decision task.
• Finding: the difference estimates the time for the extra decision process.
• Shows: how psychologists isolate hidden mental processes; same logic is used in neuroimaging contrasts.

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Module 3 — Perception

Key terms

Bottom-up processing

• Perception driven by incoming sensory input.

Top-down processing

• Perception shaped by context, expectations, and prior knowledge.

Template matching

• Match input to a stored pattern.

Feature analysis

• Identify component features of a stimulus.

Prototype model

• Compare input to an idealized best-fit representation.

Visual agnosia

• Can see but cannot properly identify visually.

Apperceptive agnosia

• Trouble forming a stable percept.

Associative agnosia

• Can copy/match objects, but cannot identify meaning normally.

Prosopagnosia

• Face-recognition impairment.

Capgras syndrome

• Person is consciously recognized visually, but feels like an impostor.

Key findings / examples

Context example

• Same circle may be interpreted differently depending on context.
• Shows: top-down processing matters.

Prosopagnosia vs Capgras distinction

• Prosopagnosia: face recognition system impaired.
• Capgras: recognition may be present, but emotional response is missing.
• Shows: face recognition and emotional familiarity can dissociate.

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Module 4 — Attention

Key terms

Selective attention

• Focusing processing resources on some information and not others.

Early selection

• Selection happens before meaning is processed.

Late selection

• More meaning gets processed before selection.

Cocktail party effect

• Personally important unattended information, like your name, can break through.

Controlled processing

• Slow, effortful, attention-demanding, capacity-limited, conscious.

Automatic processing

• Fast, low-effort, often unconscious, can run in parallel.

Visual neglect / unilateral neglect / hemispatial neglect

• Failure to attend to one side of space, often after right parietal damage.

Key experiments / findings

Broadbent dichotic listening

• Two messages are played, one to each ear; participant shadows one.
• Finding: participants report very little about unattended content beyond simple physical features like pitch/volume.
• Shows: support for early selection.

Cocktail party problem

• People can notice their own name in an unattended channel.
• Finding: unattended input is not always fully blocked.
• Shows: limitation of strict early selection.

Stroop task

• Naming ink color is slower when word meaning conflicts with the ink color.
• Finding: reading interferes automatically with color naming.
• Shows: distinction between automatic and controlled processing.

Neglect line bisection

• Patients with right parietal damage bisect lines too far to the right and may ignore left-side lines.
• Finding: neglect is attentional, not just sensory.
• Shows: role of right parietal lobe in spatial attention.

Bisiach & Luzzatti

• Neglect patients ignored the left side not only in real space but also in imagined scenes.
• Finding: neglect affects mental representation too.
• Shows: imagery and attention use related spatial mechanisms.

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Module 5 — Memory Systems

Key terms

Encoding

• Getting information into memory.

Storage

• Retaining information.

Retrieval

• Getting information out.

Modal model

• Sensory memory → short-term memory → long-term memory.

Sensory memory

• Very brief initial store.
• Iconic = visual
• Echoic = auditory

Short-term memory

• Temporary limited-capacity store.

Long-term memory

• Large-capacity, durable store.

Primacy effect

• Better memory for early list items.

Recency effect

• Better memory for late list items.

Chunking

• Grouping separate items into meaningful units.

Trace decay

• Memory fades with time.

Interference

• Other information disrupts memory.
• Proactive: old interferes with new
• Retroactive: new interferes with old

Working memory

• Active mental workspace, broader than simple short-term memory.

Central executive / phonological loop / visuospatial sketchpad

• Main Baddeley working-memory components.

Episodic memory

• Personal events.

Semantic memory

• Facts and general knowledge.

Anterograde amnesia

• Cannot form new memories.

Retrograde amnesia

• Loss of old memories.

Key experiments / findings

Serial position findings

• Early and late list items are remembered better than middle items.
• Shows: primacy + recency effects.

George Miller

• “Magic number” idea: short-term capacity is limited.
• Shows: STM capacity limits; chunking can help.

Brown-Peterson paradigm

• Filled delay reduces recall.
• Usually used to examine short-term forgetting / interference.
• Shows: STM is fragile and easily disrupted.

Clive Wearing / hippocampal damage

• Severe memory impairment after brain illness.
• Shows: hippocampus is crucial for forming new memories.

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Module 6 — Memory Processes

Key terms

Levels of processing

• Deeper processing produces better memory.

Maintenance rehearsal

• Simple repetition.

Elaborative rehearsal

• Meaning-based, relational rehearsal.

Encoding specificity

• Retrieval is best when cues match the original encoding context.

Flashbulb memory

• Vivid memory for emotionally charged events.

Constructive memory

• Memory is reconstructed, not replayed exactly.

Hierarchical semantic network

• Concepts organized by levels; properties stored efficiently.

Cognitive economy

• Shared properties are stored once rather than repeated.

Spreading activation

• Activation of one concept spreads to related concepts.

Explicit memory

• Conscious recall.

Implicit memory

• Memory influences behavior without conscious awareness.

Key experiments / findings

Craik & Lockhart

• Deeper processing leads to stronger memory than shallow rehearsal.
• Shows: how information is processed matters more than just how long it is held.

Loftus misinformation work

• Wording of questions can change what people later report remembering.
• Finding: memory reports can be distorted by post-event information.
• Shows: memory is constructive, not a perfect recording.

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Module 7 — Concepts and Categorization

Key terms

Concept

• Mental representation of a thing/category.

Categorization

• Putting items into groups.

Graded membership

• Some members are better examples than others.

Prototype view

• Category represented by an idealized average.

Exemplar view

• Category represented by stored examples.

Schema view

• Organized knowledge structure.

Knowledge-based view

• Categorization also depends on background knowledge and theories.

Family resemblance

• Category members overlap in many features, even if no single feature is shared by all.

Key experiments / findings

Rosch prototype work

• Some category members are judged more typical than others.
• Finding: categories are not always all-or-none; they have more and less typical members.
• Shows: support for prototype theory and graded membership.

Seger category-learning fMRI

• Participants learned to classify paintings while in the scanner, using a visual baseline condition.
• Finding: category learning can be isolated from basic visual processing with subtraction.
• Shows: category learning has distinct neural correlates and fMRI needs proper baselines.

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Module 8 — Mental Imagery

Key terms

Mnemonic

• Memory aid.

Method of loci

• Put items along a familiar route.

Pegword method

• Link items to memorized cue words.

Dual-code theory (Paivio)

• Information can be stored both verbally and visually.

Implicit / non-intentional encoding

• Information can be encoded without deliberate intention.

Perceptual equivalence

• Images act like percepts.

Spatial equivalence

• Spatial relations in images mirror real space.

Transformational equivalence

• Transforming images resembles transforming real objects.

Structural equivalence

• Images are organized like physical objects.

Analog view

• Images are picture-like mental representations.

Propositional view

• Images are by-products of abstract verbal / symbolic code.

Demand characteristics

• Participants may behave according to perceived experiment expectations.

Key experiments / findings

Method of loci / pegword

• Both improve memory.
• Shows: imagery can function as an effective mnemonic, likely because it adds an extra code.

Shepard & Metzler mental rotation

• Reaction time increases as angle of rotation increases.
• Finding: people mentally rotate images much like physical objects.
• Shows: transformational equivalence / support for analog imagery.

Kosslyn map scanning

• Time to scan an image increases with imagined distance.
• Shows: spatial equivalence.

Farah / MGS occipital-lobe case

• After right occipital removal, imagined visual field became smaller too.
• Shows: imagery and perception share neural resources.

Bisiach & Luzzatti again

• Neglect also appears in imagined space.
• Shows: imagery uses spatial-attentional mechanisms similar to perception.

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Module 9 — Language

Key terms

Arbitrary

• No natural link between a word and what it means.

Generative

• Humans can create novel utterances.

Phoneme

• Smallest sound unit that distinguishes meaning.

Morpheme

• Smallest meaningful unit.

Syntax

• Rules for combining linguistic units.

Pragmatics

• Social rules of language use.

Speech is continuous

• Spoken input is not naturally broken into neat word units.

Context effects in speech

• Same phoneme may sound different depending on surrounding sounds.

Broca’s aphasia

• Impaired speech production / syntax; comprehension better preserved.

Wernicke’s aphasia

• Fluent but low-content speech; impaired comprehension.

Anomia

• Naming impairment.

Alexia

• Reading impairment.

Agraphia

• Writing impairment.

Key experiments / findings

Broca / Wernicke lesion evidence

• Same as in Module 2, but especially important for language.
• Shows: production and comprehension are separable language functions.

Chomsky vs Skinner

• Children generate novel sentences.
• Shows: language cannot be explained only by imitation and reinforcement.

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Module 10 — Thinking, Problem Solving, and Reasoning

Key terms

Focused thinking

• Directed, goal-oriented thought.

Unfocused thinking

• More diffuse, daydream-like thought.

Well-defined problem

• Clear initial state, rules, and goal.

Ill-defined problem

• Goal/rules are vague.

Generate and test

• Try possible solutions and check them.

Means-ends analysis

• Reduce the gap between current state and goal state.

Working backwards

• Start from the goal and reason backward.

Reasoning by analogy

• Solve a new problem using a similar old one.

Mental set

• Tendency to approach problems in a habitual way.

Functional fixedness

• Failure to see new uses for familiar objects.

Deductive reasoning

• General to specific.

Inductive reasoning

• Specific to general.

Conditional reasoning

• Reasoning with “if…then…” statements.

Categorical syllogism

• Formal reasoning with “all/some/none” category statements.

Confirmation bias

• Seeking evidence that supports what you already think.

Availability heuristic

• Judge likelihood by ease of recall.

Representativeness heuristic

• Judge by similarity to a stereotype.

Anchoring

• Initial number/idea biases later judgment.

Illusory correlation

• Perceive a relationship that is not really there.

Overconfidence

• Confidence exceeds actual accuracy.

Expected utility theory

• Ideal decision maximizes expected value.

Recognition-primed decision making

• Experts make rapid decisions by recognizing familiar patterns.

Key findings / principles

Content effect

• Reasoning is often better when the content is meaningful or social.
• Shows: human reasoning is not fully abstract; context matters.

Cosmides & Tooby

• People are especially good at reasoning about social-contract / cheating problems.
• Shows: evolutionary approach to reasoning.

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Module 12 — Intelligence

Key terms

Gardner’s multiple intelligences

• Intelligence is not just one single ability.
• Includes linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist, and possibly existential.

Bilingual advantage

• Possible advantage in directing attention to relevant information.

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High-yield “people to know”

• Wundt: structuralism, introspection
• William James: functionalism
• Watson / Skinner: behaviorism
• Chomsky: critique of behaviorist language learning
• Galton: individual differences, testing, mental imagery
• Hebb: cell assemblies
• Hubel & Wiesel: feature detectors, early experience matters
• Broca / Wernicke: language localization
• Penfield: cortical stimulation mapping
• Miller: STM capacity
• Baddeley: working memory
• Tulving: episodic vs semantic memory
• Craik & Lockhart: levels of processing
• Loftus: reconstructive memory
• Rosch: prototypes
• Paivio: dual-code theory
• Treisman: attention / feature integration
• Kahneman: heuristics and biases

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Best way to study this

For each section, make sure you can answer:

• What is the term?
• What experiment/example goes with it?
• What was the finding?
• What general principle does that finding support?

Example:

• Stroop effect
• finding: conflicting word meaning slows color naming
• principle: automatic processing interferes with controlled processing