Author Archives: Ashley A Connell

Coffee Cup or Lawyer

When we discuss knowledge, we usually start by describing categories, concepts, and categorization (PSU WC, L10, P3). How we group similar items into meaningful groups and how we access that information is very important. We learned in Lesson 10 different approaches to categorization: the classical approach (based on defining features of groups), the prototype theory (structured around a stereotypical depiction of a group), and exemplar theory (categorized based on examples we have encountered). All of which explain how we store a prototype or representation in our memory; some better than others. This lesson steered me to speculate how we categorize people we meet in our everyday lives.

We judge people and draw conclusions without realizing we form impressions of people we know nothing about. Our lesson’s classical approach example of defining a bachelor as being an unmarried male can be proven incorrect that it does not fully explain a young boy who is also unmarried because he is only 6. Similarly the prototype theory example proved difficult to explain the conceptual boundaries of why a Chihuahua shares more features with a cat than a Great Dane, yet they are both categorized as dogs (WC PSU, L10, P4). Just like these prototypes, many aspects can impact the impressions you make of other people. We take ideas from our environment, our learned social norms, personal cues, or common characteristics into consideration. When meeting new people in social environments we initially categorize individuals as old or young, as male or female, by race, and other basic appearances. We do this automatically, just as we categorize objects into different types. In my own experience, I will admit I have assumed a woman dressed in a fancy business suit that I crossed paths with at a coffee shop in the city must work at a law firm or was the CEO of her own company. Although my insinuations might be erroneous in this case, I took a rational shortcut that allowed me to conclude this based on the physical descriptions of the woman and then established based on what I know of people in this category.

We can also assume with categorization, specifically in a societal situation, it can have both constructive and adverse properties. Preventing stereotypes from forming might be difficult as we can effortlessly point out what might not fit in a particular category, just as we can infer was is similar. Exemplar theories of social categorization suggest that categorization of new, potential instances of a category stems from the similarity of those instances to particular exemplars of the category that are store in memory (Smith & Zarate, 1990). We have learned that we most likely use prototypes and exemplars, as well as different levels of categorization that we organize into numerous semantic networks. Coffee cups, birds, dogs, lawyers, buildings; categorization is a process that ultimately allows us to decipher and recognize every object in our environment. I really enjoyed applying this lesson to my everyday life and can conclude these types of categorization process’ inevitably has encoded every object I know.

 

Reference List:

Pennsylvania State University World Campus. (2014). Lesson 10: Knowledge. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa14/psych256/001/content/11_lesson/01_page.html

Smith, E.R., & Zarate, M.A. (1990). Exemplar and prototype use in social categorization. Social Cognition, 243-262.

Misinformation Effect

The misinformation effect happens when our recall of episodic memories become less accurate because of post-event information (Wayne, 2010). In other words, the information presented after we encode an event can change how the event is later recalled. People believe false material presented to them by the media every day, and many criminals are prosecuted on the foundation of eyewitness testimony. Loftus and colleagues studied the misinformation effect in which they had participants look at a series of pictures that followed a car as it stops, turns, and then crashes (1978). One group was asked if the car stopped at the stop sign, while the other group was asked if the car stopped at the yield sign. An interesting fact about this study is that each participant’s answer depended on which question they heard immediately following the accident. So when we recall information, there is a possibility that the misleading post-event information changes our memory entirely. We were given examples in our textbook and commentary readings, and given this recently learned knowledge, it wasn’t hard to find a false memory of my own.

Misinformation_Effect_Study

            Elizabeth Loftus’ game of “Remember when…” influenced me to analyze some of my own childhood memories. I recalled a young memory of sitting on a bee while trying to use a slide at my grandparent house that caused enormous pain. Keep in mind, I was little. This event caused me to be afraid of bees and wasps most of my younger years, and was brought up jokingly every time I had an encounter with the insect. Many times I recalled this memory, not to mention my family always added new details to embarrass me, and it even led to as my mom telling me that’s how I got my birthmark on my lower back. But as I grew older, I understandably learned that a birthmark usually appears shortly after birth and it nothing more than an overgrowth of blood vessels, NOT caused by the sting by a bee. Although this was a humorous memory to recall, and repeat thanks to the sense of humor of my relatives, it seems I based this memory on inferences that I took from schemas or scripts. These mental structures are used to organize our knowledge of events and in this situation implanted details of this memory that in fact did not exist. I called my grandmother who happened to video tape every childhood moment and asked if she had documented this infamous bee experience. I had to ask myself if this memory was real or is it possible that I created it.

Just like Wade and colleagues (2002) who used a procedure of creating fake childhood photographs of events such as taking a hot air balloon ride and asking family members if they recalled the event even though it never happened. Shockingly, 50% of individuals recalled the counterfeit event. We have learned in this course that memory is an assembly of details we build in our own mind. False memories are common and can form quite effortlessly, even grow more convincing as time elapses.  Well in conclusion, my grandmother sent me the videotape, there was in fact a slide that I loved to play on, and there was a bee, but in no way did I “sit” on such insect in order to create my birth mark. Just that easy, a memory was implanted into my mind. Induced false memories derived from suggestions beginning with my family transpired; overall, still an amusing story.

 

Reference List:

Loftus, E.F., Miller, D.G., & Burns, H.J. (1978). Semantic integration of verbal information into a visual memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 4, 19-31.

Wade, K.A., Garry, M., Read, J.D. & Lindsay D.S. (2002). A picture is worth a thousand lies: Using false photographs to create false childhood memories. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9, 597-603.

Wayne Weiten (2010). Psychology: Themes and Variations: Themes and Variations. Cengage Learning. p. 338.

Attention Demands of Text Messaging

Most of us have done it, taking your eyes off the road in order to send or receive a text message. We know it’s dangerous, so dangerous in fact many states have now passed a law in order to prevent us from doing it. Research proves the relationship between attention and our perceptual experience to be extremely important, but what will it take for people to put their phone down while driving? Attention plays an important role in our interpretations of the world around us, and it has been proven that texting while driving is more unsafe that talking on a cell phone or conversing with a passenger. Using a cell phone while driving uses attentional processing that could be used to attend to information in our environment.

In Lesson 4 we focused on attention which is often described as a filter that allows some information to pass onto higher levels of processing (PSU WC, L4, P4). We studied visual attention demonstrations such as change blindness, the Monkey Business Illusion, Sleight of Hand, Person Swap, and Pickpocket examples; all of which validate why attention is important in our understanding of our surroundings. What I found interesting from this material is the statistical research to back up the dangers of texting while driving. Many studies support the notion that using cell phones while driving is risky, but text messaging and conversing on either a handheld or hands-free cell phone while driving actually slows reaction time more than being drunk or high (Strayer, Drews, & Crouch, 2006). Driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs is illegal, but after diving into further research I am glad that texting has become a widespread concern as a precarious driving habit.

driving

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          Drivers who are text messaging also show more missed lane changes, and vary more in their lane positions and following distances (Hosking, Young, & Regan, 2009). Several recent studies of explicit attention capture have found that when observers are focused on some other object or event, they often experience inattentional blindness (Simons, 2000). This was demonstrated by the monkey business illusion I mentioned earlier; when the individual’s attention to one thing causes them to fail to identify an unforeseen stimulus right before their eyes. This finding has hypothetically catastrophic implications for distracted driving. How we process specific information, and how we manage so many things going on in our environment at the same time is fascinating. According to psychologist and philosopher William James, attention “is the taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what may seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thoughts…It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others” (1890).  So in this example, when you are driving and concurrently sending a text message, your mind is withdrawing some things from your environment in order to focus on the task at hand.

texting and driving

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          In 2009, almost 6,000 people were killed and a half-million were injured in crashes related to driver distraction (NHTSA, 2010). The essential factor to driving safely is keeping your eyes as well as your concentration (your mind) on the road. Text messaging distracts any driver from that crucial task. The processes by which you are able to press the gas pedal, observe and obey road signs, notice the light switching from yellow to red, be aware of the speed the car is traveling in front of you, your grip on the steering wheel, and the song you are listening to on the radio all involves attention. We select what information we need for further processing while setting other information in reserve. We are flooded by a sizeable amount of perceptual data in everything that we do, and we cannot make sense of everything at once. Texting while driving puts the attention needed on the road on the back burner while our mind focuses on our smart phone. The national campaign It Can Wait is a great tool to spread the awareness of how unsafe texting while driving truthfully is.

 

Reference List:

Hosking, S.G., Young, K.L., & Regan, M.A. (2009). The effects of text messaging on young drivers. Human Factors, 51, 582-592.

James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. New York: Holt.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (September, 2010) Traffic Safety Facts: Distracted Driving, 2009. DOT HS 811 379 Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Pastorino Ph.D., Ellen E. (2012). The Truth about Texting and Talking While Driving: Demonstrating the dangers of distracted driving to students. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/get-psyched/201204/the-truth-about-texting-and-talking-while-driving

Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2011). Lesson 4: Attention. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa14/psych256/001/content/05_lesson/01_page.html

Simons, D. J., (2000) Attentional Capture and Inattentional Blindness: Trends in Cognitive Sciences; 4(4), 147-155;

Strayer, D.L., Drews, F.A., & Crouch, D.J. (2006).A comparison of the cell phone driver and the drunk driver. Human Factors, 48, 381-391.

Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization

In order to explain how we perceive objects, a group called the Gestalt psychologists took the lead from Helmholtz’s theory of unconscious inference and focused on what they called perceptual organization. Psychology.com defines the Gestalt laws of perceptual organization as how we see and experience different perceptual phenomena in the world around us. These theories of visual perception were first identified in the 1920s and are still used today in every aspect of our lives.

According to Gestalt psychology, the whole is different than the sum of its parts. With that in mind, Gestalt psychologists established a set of laws to explain this idea. The Law of Similarity explains how items that are similar tend to be grouped or clustered together. In example (A) you see horizontal rows of circles, but if you changed the picture so none of the circles are filled in you might see vertical rows of circles, or both. The Law of Pragnanz is when reality is organized or reduced to the simplest form possible. In example (B) we see the image as a series of circles rather than as many much more complicated shapes. The Law of Proximity is when objects near each other tend to be grouped together.  In example (C) the circles on the left appear to be grouped in vertical columns, while those on the right appear to be grouped in horizontal rows. Law of Continuity is when lines are seen as following the smoothest path.  In example (D) people tend to mentally form a continuous line. The black dots are seen as continuing the first segment of the line which is then non-related or separate from the red dots. The Law of Closure is when objects grouped together are seen as a whole. In example (E) we tend to overlook gaps and complete contour lines so we see familiar shapes and images.

(A)law-of-similarity  (B)Pragnanz[1]  (C)Proximity

(D)gestalt-continuation  (E)law-of-closure

When learning this concept a few familiar images came to mind; specifically Mac, IBM, and USA Network. You’re probably wondering what computers and a television network have to do with this theory, but I ask you to think about their brand logos. Companies have become proficient at these laws and regularly integrate them into their advertising. The Mac logo can be perceived as a smiling face, or a profile of a smiling face. The IBM logo is an incomplete image where blue lines of different lengths are arranged without touching, yet we perceive three letters. The USA Network logo uses the law of closure to create its insignia when in reality there is no “S”. Companies want you to buy their advertised service or product, and what better principle to use to send this message. In commercials you remember that catchy jingle, obnoxious volume level, unique images, etc. In the same regard, advertisers target the message toward potential customers using gestalt principles that catch your eye.

mac

IBMusa network          When we look at the world around us we don’t realize that our brain is given all sorts of visual input and then makes sense of our surroundings based on these fundamental ideas. You might not have even realized the thought and effort behind company logos until I mentioned it today in my blog. Here are a few other logo examples I challenge you to imagine before you type it into google: World Wildlife Fund, McDonalds, Major League Baseball (MLB), Texaco, NASA, and the Girl Scouts.  In summary, Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization make sense of what we see and advertising uses this idea to effectively grab your attention.

 

References:

Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization by Kendra Cherry. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/ss/gestaltlaws.htm