PSY 369: Psycholinguistics Cognitive Psychology Day 2

What is “psycholinguistics”? Mental Processes - Short Term Memory - Long Term Memory - Encoding - Retrieval - Mental Representations Linguistic Theory - Phonology - Morphology - Syntax - Semantics - Rules PsychoLinguistics The study of languagefrom a psychological perspective.

The ‘standard model’ The Multistore Model

Long term memory Properties Capacity: Unlimited? Duration: Decay/interference, retrieval difficulty Organization Multiple subsystems for type of memory Associative networks (more on these next week)

Long term memory: Capacity How much can we remember? Lots, no known limits to how much memory storage we have. More important issue concerns questions about encoding and retrieval Encoding - getting memories into LTM what gets in? Rehearsal Depth of processing – organization, distinctiveness, effort, elaboration Retrieval - getting memories out of LTM what gets out? exact memories or reconstructed memories?

Long term memory: Duration How long do our memories last? Ebbinghaus (1885/1913) Ebbinghaus He memorized non-sense syllables. Memorize them until perfect performance, Test to relearn the lists perfectly. This was called the "savings."

Long term memory: Duration Bahrick (1984) He has done a number of studies asking people about memories for things (e.g., Spanish, faces of classmates, etc.) that they learned over 50 years past. He has found evidence that at least some memories stick around a really long time. How long do our memories last?

Long term memory: Organization This theory suggests that there are different memory components, each storing different kinds of information. Declarative episodic - memories about events episodic semantic - knowledge of facts semantic Procedural - memories about how to do things (e.g., the thing that makes you improve at riding a bike with practice. Procedural The Multiple Memory Stores Theory Declarative Procedural episodic semantic

Long term memory How is semantic memory structured? Networks (more next week) Networks

Attention Major tool of the central executive Limited capacity resource Filtering capabilities Integration function

AttentionAttention: Limited resource Only have so much ‘energy’ to make things go, so need to divide it and allocate it to processes Single pool (e.g., Kahneman, 1973) Central bank of resources available to all tasks that need it Multiple pools (e.g., Navon & Gopher, 1979) Several banks of specialized resources – divided up in terms of input/output modalities, stages of info processing (perception, memory, response output) Dual task experiments Dual task

AttentionAttention: An information filter Information bottleneck. There is so much info, only some is let through, while the rest is filtered out Early selection (e.g., Broadbent, 1958, Triesman, 1964) Late filters (Deutsch & Deutsch) Everything gets in, bottleneck comes at response level (can only respond to limited number of things) Cocktail party effect, dichotic listening Cocktail party effectdichotic listening

AttentionAttention: Integration Attention is used to ‘glue’ features together Feature integration theory & Visual search exps Feature integration theoryVisual search X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X Find the X O O X O O X X X O O X X O O X Pop out Slow search Where’s Waldo

AttentionAttention: How do we control it? Attention as a ‘spotlight’ Move it around

AttentionAttention: How do we control it? Attention as a ‘spotlight’ Move it around, make it focused or diffuse

AttentionAttention: How do we control it? Attention as a ‘spotlight’ Move it around, make it focused or diffuse Is it ‘aimed’ or ‘pulled’

Automaticity Controlled processes Require resources Under some volitional direction Slow, effortful Automatic processes Require little attention Obligatory Fast

Stages of skill acquisition Cognitive stage Establish declarative encoding of an action Associative stage Strengthen the connections between elements of the skill Autonomous stage Skills can be performed without interference form other activities

Bottom-up & Top-down Terms come from computer science Bottom up (data driven) relies upon evidence that is physically present, building larger units based on smaller ones Top down (knowledge driven), using higher-level information to support lower-level processes

Bottom-up & Top-down Selfridge’s Pandemonium system, 1959

Bottom-up & Top-down CT

TE

TE CT

FROG

Bottom-up & Top-down FROG

Bottom-up & Top-down Half the class close your eyes Title: Doing laundry

Bottom-up & Top-down Read story Rate how comprehensible the story is hard to easy to understand Half the class close your eyes

Summing up Psycholinguistic view Language and cognition are inextricably linked Notice that almost all of the experiment demonstrations involved language elements as stimuli