Author Archives: Raenisha M Williams

Cog blog Extra Credit: Heuristics

Raenisha Williams
12/11/2014
Cog blog Extra Credit:
Heuristics

One day after work my mother needed me to withdraw $50 out her account to buy my sister’s Christmas gift. Since I was going to the ATM anyway to withdraw $50 out mine to pay for some Eagles tickets, she thought I could kill two birds with one stone if I did the same for her.
Getting up to the ATM I used my debit card first to withdraw $50 from my account. While working through the ATM settings I noticed a $50 fast cash button. I felt like instead of getting any farther I could merely use this button and cash my $50 faster. It took less than 1 minute to finish my transaction.
After using my card, I processed to swipe my mother’s card. Knowing we have the same bank institution and I’m using the same ATM machine, the $50 fast cash button should pop up as well. Like before I flicked along the fast cash $50 button. A couple of seconds went by and the ATM machine seemed like it was preparing for something big. The money didn’t come out fast like mines did, that’s when I knew something was wrong. When the money started to come out the machine, it was more than $50. Going over my ticket I noticed it said, “$500 withdraw.” That’s when it dawned on me. The machine didn’t say fast cash $50 it said, “Fast cash $500.” I looked at my mother’s card to see why it came out different, and I saw her card wasn’t a debit card, it was a savings card. At that instant I knew I was a dead woman walking.

My experience was an example of lesson 14 reasoning and decision making, heuristics. Heuristics rely on past experience as a guide for a shortcut. (Goldstein. 2011) Since I used my card first to do the $50 fast cash I thought it would work using my mother’s card too. Instead of going through the options I jumped for a shortcut that landed me in trouble with my mother.
Work cities
Goldstein, B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience, 3rd Edition. Wadsworth, Inc.

Cog Blog Post: #3 Imagery and Perception

Raenisha Williams
11/30/2014
Psych 256
Cog Blog Post: #3

Imagery and Perception

When I was 7 months pregnant my mother brought me my very first car. She brought my car because she knew I was scared to drive, which lead me to not want to buy it myself. Since I was coming home from state college, I needed a car to get around in the city. During the summer break, I drove that car as much as I could around my neighborhood. The only thing about my driving was that my perception was off. I could see what I was doing, but I could perceive how close I was from another car.

During one of my many parking sessions on a small row home on a Philadelphia Street, I got upset because I couldn’t park. Not only was have I been parking for 10 minutes, but there were 2 cars behind me. My sister told me to just drive around the block and start over. My parking isn’t that bad, but the way my car is made, I have a tinted back window and sport’s car like bar (I have no idea what it’s called) on my trunk that prevented me from seeing fully.

When I pulled off to drive down the street I noticed all the cars lined up on the block, but I didn’t notice the last car at the end of the block was parked closer to the street than the other cars. Riding down the street a little annoyed, I got to the end of the block and all I heard a loud “BANG” on the right side of my car. I went around the block and stopped at my house. When I got out my car to check the damages, I noticed my side mirror was hanging off my car. The imagery in my mind made my perception off by a couple of meters.

My story relates to Lesson 12 Visual Imagery on Imagery and Perception. In E. Bruce Goldstein book Cognitive Psychology chapter 10, he had an example of an experiment by Kosslyn where they looked at car far away and tried to see the details, then looked at the car closer to perceive the details more. The point of the experiment was to, “look at how imagery is affected by the size of an object in a person’s visual field with the observation about the perception in the mind.” Being a far distance away from the car I thought it was lined up and close to the pavement like the others. The imagery of the car being far away and lined up like the rest, affected my perception of how close I was.

Work cited

Goldstein, E B. Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience. 3rd. ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.

Coffee may boost brain’s ability to store long-term memories

Blog Post #2:
Long- term Memory

This week for my blog, I have chosen an article published by The Guardian that illustrates how long term memory can be affected. Specifically, this article illustrates how caffeine may affect the brain’s ability to store long term memories. According to Ian Sample, science correspondent for The Guardian newspaper, “People who had a shot of caffeine after looking at a series of pictures were better at distinguishing them from similar images in tests the next day”. (Sample, 2014)

In order to study this relationship the scientists collected 44 volunteers who are moderate caffeine consumers that abstained from caffeine for about one day. The volunteers were then shown a sequence of pictures that included a hammer, a chair, an apple, a seahorse, a rubber duck, and a car. The participants were not asked to memorize these pictures, but were to say whether the object was normally found indoors or outdoors. After the completion of the indoor or outdoor task, the participants were randomly assigned either a 200mg caffeine pill or a placebo. The relationship between the caffeine pill and the average cup of coffee is about 50mg more. (Sample, 2014)

The next day the volunteers were brought back to review another sequence of images that included many that they had seen the day before, new ones, and others that were similar. The task was to figure out which was new, old, or similar. The researcher Michael Yassa stated, “The caffeine and placebo groups scored the same except when it came to spotting the similar images.” What caught my attention was how the caffeine group scored around 10% higher than the placebo group when spotting similar images. (Sample, 2014)

I think this article relates to lesson 8, Long-term Memory: Encoding and Retrieval because of the way the study uses imagery and repetition that could possibly prove caffeine could be another factor that influence the process and the strength of our LTM. In my opinion, the study could be improved by having a longer duration, and a larger sample of volunteers.

Sample, Ian. “Coffee May Boost Brain’s Ability to Store Long-term Memories, Study Claims.” Http://www.theguardian.com/. The Guardian, 12 Jan. 2014. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

Coffee may boost brain’s ability to store long-term memories, study claims

Blog Post #2:
Long- term Memory

This week for my blog, I have chosen an article published by The Guardian that illustrates how long term memory can be affected. Specifically, this article illustrates how caffeine may affect the brain’s ability to store long term memories. According to Ian Sample, science correspondent for The Guardian newspaper, “People who had a shot of caffeine after looking at a series of pictures were better at distinguishing them from similar images in tests the next day”. (Sample, 2014)

In order to study this relationship the scientists collected 44 volunteers who are moderate caffeine consumers that abstained from caffeine for about one day. The volunteers were then shown a sequence of pictures that included a hammer, a chair, an apple, a seahorse, a rubber duck, and a car. The participants were not asked to memorize these pictures, but were to say whether the object was normally found indoors or outdoors. After the completion of the indoor or outdoor task, the participants were randomly assigned either a 200mg caffeine pill or a placebo. The relationship between the caffeine pill and the average cup of coffee is about 50mg more. (Sample, 2014)

The next day the volunteers were brought back to review another sequence of images that included many that they had seen the day before, new ones, and others that were similar. The task was to figure out which was new, old, or similar. The researcher Michael Yassa stated, “The caffeine and placebo groups scored the same except when it came to spotting the similar images.” What caught my attention was how the caffeine group scored around 10% higher than the placebo group when spotting similar images. (Sample, 2014)

I think this article relates to lesson 8, Long-term Memory: Encoding and Retrieval because of the way the study uses imagery and repetition that could possibly prove caffeine could be another factor that influence the process and the strength of our LTM. In my opinion, the study could be improved by having a longer duration, and a larger sample of volunteers.

Sample, Ian. “Coffee May Boost Brain’s Ability to Store Long-term Memories, Study Claims.” Http://www.theguardian.com/. The Guardian, 12 Jan. 2014. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

Illusions occur when the brain attempts to perceive the future

“An illusion is a phenomenon in which our subjective perception doesn’t match the physical reality of the world.” (Nierenberg, 2009) In the Best Illusion of The Year Contest Arthur Shapiro and a couple of his friends submitted a project called “The Break of The Curve Ball” where their illusion was the effect of a baseball curve ball. The object of the project was to make you see how a curve ball looks at a batter’s point of view and why the abrupt shift of the pitch fool the hitter at different viewpoints with a physical effect and a perceptual puzzle all in one.
Arthur and his friends won this contest because they generated 2 different illusions. The first illusion is the rotating reversals where there were six rotating oval. When you look in the center, the six ovals are rotating counter-clockwise and when you look into your periphery the six ovals are rotating clockwise. The second illusion is the curve ball and it’s a single black and white ball moving with a blue circle near the edge. When you look directly at the spinning disk it will appear to fall vertically, then when you look at the blue circle the ball will appear to fall at a 20 degree angle. (Shapiro, 2009)
This type of illusion that Arthur created is called common fate from the Gestalt grouping laws that we learned in lesson 3 of perception. The reason why it’s common fate is because it’s based on movement like the hidden bird illusion. The object’s such as the rotating balls move together to make you perceive something at one viewpoint and then perceive something totally different from another view point.
Illusions main goal is to show you that you do not see what you think you do, but what your brain and visual system perceive and interpret. (Nierenberg, 2009) Arthur and his friends won that contest because they had the best example.

Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Introduction to Cognitive Psychology. Cognitive psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience 3rd edition. Australia: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Shapiro, A. (2009). The break of the curveball. Retrieved September 15, 2014, from http://illusionoftheyear.com/2009/the-break-of-the-curveball/
Unit, C. (2009, October 13). Optical Illusions: When Your Brain Can’t Believe Your Eyes. Retrieved September 15, 2014, from http://abcnews.go.com/Health/EyeHealth/optical-illusions-eye-brain-agree/story?id=8455573