What Is Cognitive Psychology?

• Study of mental processes: how we take in information → process it → produce a response.
• Core processes:
  • Memory
  • Attention
  • Language & perception
  • Thinking & reasoning

Types of Memory

Declarative (Explicit)

• Autobiographical → personal life events
• Semantic → general knowledge, facts, concepts
• Episodic → time-stamped personal memories

Non-Declarative (Implicit)

• Procedural → skills, habits (riding bike, typing)
• Priming → prior exposure speeds later processing
• Conditioning → learned associations

Prospective Memory

• Remembering future actions (appointments, tasks).

Multi-Store Model of Memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1971)

Sensory Memory

• Duration: 0.5–2 sec
• Format: original sensory form
• Types: iconic, echoic, tactile

Short-Term Memory (STM)

• Duration: 20–30 sec
• Capacity: 5–9 items
• Encoding: mainly verbal/speech-based

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

• Duration: minutes → lifetime
• Capacity: unlimited
• Retrieval after attention has shifted

Serial Position Effect

• Primacy effect → items at beginning recalled (LTM transfer)
• Recency effect → items at end recalled (still in STM)
• Manipulations:
  • Fast presentation → reduces primacy
  • Distractor task → eliminates recency

Amnesia & Neuropsychological Evidence

Patient H.M.

• Hippocampus removed for epilepsy
• No new long-term memories (anterograde amnesia)
• STM intact; old memories intact
• Shows hippocampus = LTM consolidation

Patient E.P.

• Viral encephalitis → similar to H.M.
• Severe anterograde amnesia
• Constant repetition of stories without awareness

Organic Amnesia

• Anterograde → cannot form new memories
• Causes:
  • Surgery (H.M.)
  • Head injury
  • Stroke
  • Encephalitis (E.P.)
  • Degenerative diseases (e.g., Alzheimer’s, Korsakoff’s)

Frontal Lobe Amnesia

• Source amnesia (can’t recall where info came from)
• Confabulation (“honest lying,” filling gaps)
• Anosognosia (lack of awareness of memory deficits)

Case: Patient H.W.

• Bilateral frontal damage
• Accurate facts mixed with fabricated details
• Shows importance of frontal cortex in memory monitoring

Revising the Multi-Store Model

Chunking

• Grouping information into meaningful units
• Shows STM interacts bidirectionally with LTM

Maintenance Rehearsal

• Repetition keeps material in STM
• BUT does not guarantee LTM transfer
• Craik & Watkins → repetition alone ≠ durable memory

Levels of Processing Theory (Craik & Lockhart)

Core Idea

• Depth of processing determines memory durability
• Deep = meaning → better recall
• Shallow = surface features → poor recall

Craik & Tulving (1975)

• Orienting tasks:
  • Visual (“uppercase?”) → shallow
  • Phonological (“rhymes?”) → moderate
  • Semantic (“fits in sentence?”) → deepest
• Result:
  • Semantic > Rhyme > Visual

Schemas, Context & Reconstructive Memory

Schemas

• Mental frameworks for organising knowledge
• Help encode and retrieve faster
• Examples: restaurant script, birthday schema

Schema Experiment

• Confusing balloon-serenade story
• Picture provided → schema formed → immediate understanding
• Shows schemas = essential for meaning-making

Retrieval Failure

• Memory stored but cannot be accessed due to mismatch between:
  • Encoding context vs retrieval context
• Example: not recognising your barista at a party

Childhood Amnesia

• Before age 3:
  • Limited language
  • Underdeveloped schemas
    → poor retrieval later

Reconstructive Memory

• Memory = rebuilding, not replaying
• Vulnerable to distortion

False Memories & Suggestion

Elizabeth Loftus

• Leading researcher in false memories
• Demonstrated how suggestion can implant false events

Recovered Memory Debate

• Controversial whether “recovered” memories in therapy are real
• Suggestion can create false recollections

Misinformation Effect

• Wording alters memory
• “Smashed” → higher speed estimates than “collided”

Neuroanatomy of Memory

Limbic System

• Hippocampus:
  • Forms new memories
  • Links memories to emotion + context
• Thalamus:
  • Sensory relay
  • Attention & alertness → affect encoding

Neocortex

• Long-term storage distributed across:
  • Visual → occipital
  • Auditory → temporal
  • Olfactory → olfactory bulb
• Works with limbic system to create full memories

Prefrontal Cortex

• Strategic retrieval
• Consistency checking
• Metamemory (awareness of own memory)

Implicit Memory & Procedural Learning

Implicit Memory (Unconscious)

• Priming → identification easier after exposure
• Amnesics show intact priming, despite no conscious recall
• Tasks:
  • Word stems: “pen___”
  • Degraded picture recognition
  • Word fragment completion

Procedural Memory

• Motor skills (riding a bike, typing)
• Amnesics can learn new procedures → separate system from declarative memory

Declarative Memory

• Facts + autobiographical events
• Impaired in anterograde amnesia

Summary Table

Memory System	Brain Area	Impaired in Amnesia?
Episodic	Hippocampus	Yes
Semantic	Neocortex	Sometimes
Procedural	Basal ganglia / cerebellum	No
Implicit (priming)	Multiple	Usually no
Source Monitoring	Prefrontal cortex	Yes