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Understanding Procedural Memory and Skill Acquisition Study Guide

This guide explains Working Memory Capacity (WMC), a key concept in cognitive psychology. It covers how WMC is measured, its relationship with cognitive control (inhibition, shifting, updating), and its significant correlation with academic success, particularly on standardized tests like the SAT. The guide also contrasts individuals with low and high WMC.

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Mechanisms of Attention

Selective Attention Models

Understanding Broadbent's filter model, Treisman's attenuation model, and late selection theories regarding how we filter incoming signals.

Load Theory and Capacity

Analyzing load theory, processing capacity, and how perceptual load affects distraction.

Overt and Covert Attention

Distinguishing between attention involving eye movements (overt) and attention directed without eye movement (covert), including pre-cueing effects.

Attention Phenomena

Studying the Stroop effect, the same-object advantage, and how attended objects are perceived differently.

Divided Attention and Automaticity

Examining when multitasking is possible through automatic processing and the dangers of driver inattention.

Attentional Failures

Investigating inattentional blindness, inattentional deafness, change blindness, and mind wandering.

Feature Integration and Binding

Learning how the brain combines features into coherent objects via pre-attentive and focused attention stages.

Neural Networks of Attention

Mapping the ventral, executive attention networks and the role of synchronization.

Memory Systems

Modal Model of Memory

Understanding the framework involving sensory, short-term, and long-term memory.

Sensory Memory

Exploring iconic (visual) and echoic (auditory) memory, including Sperling's research and persistence of vision.

Short-Term Memory

Studying capacity, duration, and the process of chunking.

Working Memory Model

Analyzing the model: the phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, central executive, and episodic buffer.

Working Memory Capacity

Examining individual differences in capacity, reading span tests, and the link to cognitive control and SAT scores.

  • Working Memory Capacity (WMC)
  • Reading Span Task
  • Cognitive Control
  • Inhibition
  • Shifting
  • Updating
  • SAT scores
  • Academic Achievement
  • Cognitive Load
  • Mental Workspace
  • Information Processing
  • Attention
  • Memory
  • Problem Solving
  • Standardized Tests
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Individual Differences
  • Information Manipulation
  • Temporary Storage
  • Cognitive Tasks

Long-Term Memory Structure

Distinguishing between episodic and semantic memory, including the role of the hippocampus.

Memory Coding and Retrieval

Understanding visual, auditory, and semantic coding, and the remember/know distinction.

Implicit and Explicit Learning

Explicit Memory

Focusing on conscious recollection of episodic and semantic information.

Procedural Memory

Studying skill-based learning, its automatic nature, and how it functions even in amnesic patients.

Priming

Understanding how prior exposure to a stimulus influences subsequent responses, including the propaganda effect.

Classical Conditioning

Learning through association between neutral and unconditioned stimuli.

Operant Conditioning

Examining reinforcement and punishment (positive and negative) in shaping behavior.

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