Academic literature on the topic 'Psychology of Memory Cognitive psychology'

Cowan's analysis of human short-term memory (STM) and attention in terms of processing limits in the range of 4 items (or “chunks”) is discussed from the point of view of cognitive neuroscience. Although, Cowan already provides many important theoretical insights, we need to learn more about how to build further bridges between cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

PurposeThis review aims to discuss concepts and theories from cognitive psychology, identifies tourism studies applying them and discusses key areas for future research. The paper aims to demonstrate the usefulness of cognitive psychology for understanding why tourists and particularly pleasure travellers demonstrate the behaviour they exhibit. Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviews 165 papers from the cognitive psychology and literature regarding pleasure travel related to consciousness, mindfulness, flow, retrospection, prospection, attention, schema and memory, feelings and emotions. The papers are chosen to demonstrate the state of the art of the literature and provide guidance on how these concepts are vital for further research. FindingsThe paper demonstrates that research has favoured a behaviourist rather than cognitive approach to the study of hedonic travel. Cognitive psychology can help to understand the mental processes connecting perception of stimuli with behaviour. Numerous examples are provided: top-down and bottom-up attention processes help to understand advertising effectiveness, theories of consciousness and memory processes help to distinguish between lived and recalled experience, cognitive appraisal theory predicts the emotion elicited based on a small number of appraisal dimensions such as surprise and goals, knowledge of the mental organisation of autobiographical memory and schema support understanding of destination image formation and change and the effect of storytelling on decision-making, reconstructive bias in prospection or retrospection about a holiday inform the study of pleasurable experience. These findings indicate need for further cognitive psychology research in tourism generally and studies of holiday travel experiences. Research limitations/implicationsThis review is limited to cognitive psychology and excludes psychoanalytic studies. Practical implicationsCognitive psychology provides insight into key areas of practical importance. In general, the use of a cognitive approach allows further understanding of leisure tourists’ behaviour. The concept of attention is vital to understand destination advertising effectiveness, biases in memory process help to understand visitor satisfaction and experience design and so on. Use of cognitive psychology theory will lead to better practical outcomes for tourists seeking pleasurable experiences and destination managers. Originality valueThis is the first review that examines the application of concepts from cognitive psychology to the study of leisure tourism in particular. The concepts studied are also applicable to study of travellers generally.

AbstractAccording to the foundations of economic theory, agents have stable and coherent “global” preferences that guide their choices among alternatives. However, people are constrained by information-processing and memory limitations and hence have a propensity to avoid cognitive load. We propose that this in turn will encourage them to respond to “local” preferences and goals influenced by context and memory representations.

AbstractInference-to-best-explanation from psychological evidence supports the view that phenomenal consciousness in perceptual exposures occurs before limited aspects of that consciousness are retained in working memory. Independently of specific neurological theory, psychological considerations indicate that machinery producing phenomenal consciousness is independent of machinery producing working memory, hence independent of access to higher cognitive capacities.

This article offers a framework for understanding how different kinds of memory work together in interaction with people, photographs and other resources. Drawing on evidence from two qualitative studies of photography and memory, as well as literature from cognitive psychology, distributed cognition and media studies, I highlight complexities that have seldom been taken into account in cognitive psychology research. I then develop a ‘blended memory’ framework in which memory and photography can be interdependent, blending together as part of a wider activity of distributed remembering that is structured by interaction and phenomenology. In contrast to studies of cued recall, which commonly feature isolated categories or single instances of recall, this framework takes account of people’s histories of photographic practices and beliefs to explain the long-term convergence of episodic, semantic and inferential memory. Finally, I discuss implications for understanding and designing future memory research.

This paper provides and introduction to the literature on cognitive psychology and problem solving in physical sciences. We consider the working memory and its three different components, two of which hold and record information and are controlled by an executive that controls attention. Working memory alone cannot explain problem solving ability and we review the influence of schemata, the construction of mental models, visual reasoning and the cognitive style of field dependence.