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AUTOMATICITY (continued):Experiment, Implications, Task interference

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Cognitive Psychology ­ PSY 504
VU
Lesson 12
AUTOMATICITY (continued)
Automatic processing
Experiment
Shiffrin and Schdeider (1977) ran another experiment in which the target always came from one
set of letters. These Target letters were B C D F G H J K L. And the Distracters were Q R S T V
W X Y Z.
After 2100 trials subjects were at the same level of accuracy and RT as the different condition in
the previous experiment: thus subjects need 2100 trials of practice before discriminating between
two different sets of letters had become as automatic as discriminating numbers from letters.
The results were;
Reaction Time = 80 ms, Accuracy = 95%
Implications
The results demonstrate that processes can become automatic with enough practice
When they do, devoting attention to them is no longer necessary
Performance is no longer affected by the number of processes being performed simultaneously
Five Criteria for Automaticity
Hasher & Zacks (1979) proposed five criteria to distinguish between automatic and controlled or
effortful processes. They also made predictions based on these five criteria
1. Intentional vs. incidental learning
Intentional
learning occurs when we are deliberately trying to learn; incidental learning
occurs when we are not, i.e. Class teachers ask children to do but they do not do
themselves. Like, parents say their children do not lie but parents lie themselves. Children
learn from parent's and teacher's actions rather saying.
Incidental
learning is as effective as intentional learning for automatic processes but is
less effective for effortful learning; we know that in Urdu letter "seen" occurs more often
than letter "zhe" without trying to learn this information.
2. Effect of instruction & Practice
Instructions on how to perform a task and practice on the task should not affect automatic
processes because they can already be carried out very efficiently. i.e. Expert cricketer come
in ground and coach says when you see ball hit it. It is not efficiently work because expert
cricketer already knows what he has to do.
Both instruction and practice should affect effortful processes. Practice help in learning well.
3. Task interference
Automatic processes should not interfere with each other because they require little or no
capacity.
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Cognitive Psychology ­ PSY 504
VU
Effortful processes require considerable capacity and should interfere with each other when
they exceed the amount of available capacity.
4. Depression or High arousal
Emotional states such as depression or high emotional arousal can reduce the effectiveness
of effortful processes. If we are in sad mood and someone give us a difficult and demanding
task we can not concentrate on that task and can not learn well. We are not able to learn and
pay attention in class room when we are in sad mood.
Automatic processes should not be affected by emotional states. Like, if we have to brush
our teeth we can do it even if we are in sad mood.
5. Developmental trends
Automatic processes show little change with age. Once a task is practiced then the age does
not matter. They (most of the automatic processes) are acquired early and do not decline in
old age.
Effortful processes show developmental changes. They are not performed as well by young
children or the elderly. There are many things that old people can not do. Because these tasks
are not practiced. Like, if we are teaching math to an old man he can not learn well and easily.
We have to pay attention to all task attention and practice make things automatic.
Like a
students who has habit of reading he can succeed even if he is not intelligent.
The basic differences between automatic and effortless processes, according to these five criteria
are;
Intentional vs. incidental processing
Automatic: no difference,
Effortful: intentional better
Effect of instructions and practice
Automatic: no effects,
Effortful: improve performance
Task interference
Automatic: no interference,
Effortful: interference
Depression or high arousal
Automatic: no effects,
Effortful: poor performance
Developmental trends
Automatic: none,
Effortful: poor performance
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Table of Contents:
  1. INTRODUCTION:Historical Background
  2. THE INFORMATION PROCESSING APPROACH
  3. COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY:Brains of Dead People, The Neuron
  4. COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY (CONTINUED):The Eye, The visual pathway
  5. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY (CONTINUED):Hubel & Wiesel, Sensory Memory
  6. VISUAL SENSORY MEMORY EXPERIMENTS (CONTINUED):Psychological Time
  7. ATTENTION:Single-mindedness, In Shadowing Paradigm, Attention and meaning
  8. ATTENTION (continued):Implications, Treisman’s Model, Norman’s Model
  9. ATTENTION (continued):Capacity Models, Arousal, Multimode Theory
  10. ATTENTION:Subsidiary Task, Capacity Theory, Reaction Time & Accuracy, Implications
  11. RECAP OF LAST LESSONS:AUTOMATICITY, Automatic Processing
  12. AUTOMATICITY (continued):Experiment, Implications, Task interference
  13. AUTOMATICITY (continued):Predicting flight performance, Thought suppression
  14. PATTERN RECOGNITION:Template Matching Models, Human flexibility
  15. PATTERN RECOGNITION:Implications, Phonemes, Voicing, Place of articulation
  16. PATTERN RECOGNITION (continued):Adaptation paradigm
  17. PATTERN RECOGNITION (continued):Gestalt Theory of Perception
  18. PATTERN RECOGNITION (continued):Queen Elizabeth’s vase, Palmer (1977)
  19. OBJECT PERCEPTION (continued):Segmentation, Recognition of object
  20. ATTENTION & PATTERN RECOGNITION:Word Superiority Effect
  21. PATTERN RECOGNITION (CONTINUED):Neural Networks, Patterns of connections
  22. PATTERN RECOGNITION (CONTINUED):Effects of Sentence Context
  23. MEMORY:Short Term Working Memory, Atkinson & Shiffrin Model
  24. MEMORY:Rate of forgetting, Size of memory set
  25. Memory:Activation in a network, Magic number 7, Chunking
  26. Memory:Chunking, Individual differences in chunking
  27. MEMORY:THE NATURE OF FORGETTING, Release from PI, Central Executive
  28. Memory:Atkinson & Shiffrin Model, Long Term Memory, Different kinds of LTM
  29. Memory:Spread of Activation, Associative Priming, Implications, More Priming
  30. Memory:Interference, The Critical Assumption, Limited capacity
  31. Memory:Interference, Historical Memories, Recall versus Recognition
  32. Memory:Are forgotten memories lost forever?
  33. Memory:Recognition of lost memories, Representation of knowledge
  34. Memory:Benefits of Categorization, Levels of Categories
  35. Memory:Prototype, Rosch and Colleagues, Experiments of Stephen Read
  36. Memory:Schema Theory, A European Solution, Generalization hierarchies
  37. Memory:Superset Schemas, Part hierarchy, Slots Have More Schemas
  38. MEMORY:Representation of knowledge (continued), Memory for stories
  39. Memory:Representation of knowledge, PQ4R Method, Elaboration
  40. Memory:Study Methods, Analyze Story Structure, Use Multiple Modalities
  41. Memory:Mental Imagery, More evidence, Kosslyn yet again, Image Comparison
  42. Mental Imagery:Eidetic Imagery, Eidetic Psychotherapy, Hot and cold imagery
  43. Language and thought:Productivity & Regularity, Linguistic Intuition
  44. Cognitive development:Assimilation, Accommodation, Stage Theory
  45. Cognitive Development:Gender Identity, Learning Mathematics, Sensory Memory