Lecture 9: Visuospatial

Question 1

Shepard Study

Answer 1

• Presented people with 612 pictures for 6 seconds each, then asked people which pictures had they seen before
• People still remembered over 87% of the picture a week later
• Memory was much worse for words

Question 2

Standing Study

Answer 2

• Used 2560 vacation pictures
  
  • Subjects remembered 85%-95% of images
• He then went up to 10,000 pictures for 5 seconds each (took 5 days)
  - Remembered 6600 on the 5th day

Question 3

Exceptions to good visual memory

Answer 3

• Visual memory is poor for unimportant or unattended details
• Poor when stimuli lack meaning
• Poor when distractors (foils) are similar

Question 4

Good recognition involves

Answer 4

• Attention to details
• Meaningfulness and relevance of details
• Distinctive alternates

Question 5

Richer Code Hypothesis

Answer 5

• Visual code has more information so memory is better
• Was disproven by people recognizing photos, line drawings, and embellished line drawings at the same rate, and text description was worse

Question 5

Cognitive Map

Answer 5

Map in the mind of a physical space and the objects contained in that space

Question 6

Dual Code Hypothesis

Answer 6

• Represent stimuli using multiples codes, i.e. an image and a word. This leads to better memory because of the dual code
• Evidence: Concrete words like apple and car are remembered better in a list than abstract words like virtue and peace

Question 7

Tolman’s Rat Maze Study

Answer 7

• Rats learned where the food was in a maze with no need for exploring after a while
• Created a new maze with many different openings, rather than one turning pathway
• Rats went to where the food was in space
• Showed that the rats did not memorize turns, but rather knew where the food was in space

Question 8

Jonides and Baum Experiment

Answer 8

Had people judge distances between different Ann Arbor landmarks and people did well

Question 8

Heuristics

Answer 8

Mental shortcuts that allow people to make fast decisions

Question 9

Right-Angle Bias

Answer 9

We tend to imagine things as having right angles

Question 10

Symmetry Heuristic

Answer 10

We tend to imagine things as being symmetric

Question 11

Alignment Heuristic

Answer 11

We tend to imagine things as in alignment with each other

Question 12

Rotation Heuristics

Answer 12

We tend to rotate things to have them be vertical or horizontal

Question 13

Relative Position Heuristic

Answer 13

We tend to imagine things according to their relative positions, i.e. most in Canada is north of most of America, so we assume Seattle is south of Montreal

Question 14

Subjective Clusters

Answer 14

Conceptual knowledge affects representations of distances
Ex. two coffeeshops are thought of to be closer together than a coffeeshop and barbershop