Unit 5: Cognitive Psychology

Question 1

Memory

Answer 1

Learning that persists over time

Question 2

recall

Answer 2

retrieving information that is not currently in your conscious awareness but that was learned at an earlier time (ex: a fill-in-the-blank question tests your recall)

Question 3

recognition

Answer 3

identifying items previously learned (ex: a multiple choice question tests your recognition)

Question 4

relearning

Answer 4

learning something more quickly when you learn it a second or later time (ex: when you study for a final or engage in a language used in early childhood, you relearn the material more easily than you did initially)

Question 5

Encoding

Answer 5

get information into our brain

Question 6

Storage

Answer 6

Retain the information

Question 7

Retrieval

Answer 7

get the information back out

Question 8

sensory memory

Answer 8

immediate, brief recording of sensory information in the memory system; first step to the 3 stage memory forming model

Question 9

short-term memory

Answer 9

activated memory that holds a few items briefly such as digits of a phone number while calling, before the information is stored or forgotten; 2nd model to the 3 stage memory forming model

Question 10

long term memory

Answer 10

the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system; includes knowledge, skills, and experiences; final step to the 3 stage memory forming model

Question 11

working memory

Answer 11

psychologists’ newer understanding of short-term memory that adds conscious, active processing of incoming auditory/visual information, and of information retrieved from long term memory

Question 12

effortful processing

Answer 12

encoding that requires attention and conscious effort, process by which we encode explicit memories

Question 13

explicit/declarative memories

Answer 13

retention of facts/experiences that one can consciously know and declare

Question 14

automatic processing

Answer 14

unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time and frequency or of well-learned information, such as word meanings

Question 15

implicit/nondeclarative memories

Answer 15

retention of learned skills classically conditioned associations independent of conscious recollection

Question 16

iconic memory

Answer 16

a sensory memory of visual stimuli; a picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second

Question 17

iconic memory

Answer 17

a sensory memory of visual stimuli; a picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second

Question 18

echoic memory

Answer 18

the momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled with 3-4 seconds (auditory version of iconic mem)

Question 19

chunking

Answer 19

organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically

Question 20

mnemonics

Answer 20

memory aids; especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices

Question 21

Spacing effect

Answer 21

the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice

Question 22

shallow processing

Answer 22

encodes on a basic level, such as the structure or appearance of words

Question 23

deep processing

Answer 23

encodes semantically, based on the meaning of the words; the more meaningful the processing, the better the retention

Question 24

flashbulb memory

Answer 24

clear memory of an emotionally significant event

Question 25

long-term potentiation

Answer 25

increase in a cell's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation; a neural basis for learning and memory

Question 26

semantic memory

Answer 26

explicit memory of facts and general knowledge, one of our two conscious memory systems

Question 27

episodic memory

Answer 27

explicit memory of personally experienced events, one of our two conscious memory systems

Question 28

hippocampus

Answer 28

neural center located in the limbic system(temporal lobe), helps process for storage explicit memories of facts and events

Question 29

memory consolidation

Answer 29

the neural storage of long-term memory; the hippocampus acts as a loading dock for the to-be-remembered episodes while other memories migrate elsewhere

Question 30

basal ganglia

Answer 30

deep brain structures involved in motor movement; facilitate formation of procedural memories for skills

Question 31

priming (memory)

Answer 31

the often unconscious activation of certain associations that predispose one’s perception, memory or response

Question 32

encoding specificity principle

Answer 32

the idea that cues and contexts specific to a particular memory will be most effective in helping us recall it

Question 33

mood congruent

Answer 33

the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood

Question 34

serial position effect

Answer 34

our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list

Question 35

recency effect

Answer 35

when given a list of items, we recall the last items quickly and well as they are still in our working memory

Question 36

primacy effect

Answer 36

when given a list of items, after a delay and when our attention is elsewhere, we tend to recall the first items best

Question 37

anterograde amnesia

Answer 37

an inability to form new memories

Question 38

retrograde amnesia

Answer 38

an inability to retrieve information from one's past

Question 39

proactive interference

Answer 39

when prior learning disrupts recall of new information

Question 40

retroactive interference

Answer 40

when new learning disrupts recall of old information

Question 41

repression

Answer 41

in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings and memories

Question 42

reconsolidation

Answer 42

a process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again

Question 43

misinformation effect

Answer 43

occurs when misleading information has distorted one's memory of an event

Question 44

source amnesia

Answer 44

fault memory for how, when, or where information was learned or imagined, a.k.a. source misattribution

Question 45

deja vu

Answer 45

the eerie sense that "I've experienced this before", cues from the current situation may unconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience

Question 46

concepts

Answer 46

a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas or people

Question 47

prototypes

Answer 47

a mental image or best example of a category; matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into category

Question 48

creativity

Answer 48

ability to produce new and valuable ideas

Question 49

convergent thinking

Answer 49

the ability to provide a single correct answer

Question 50

divergent thinking

Answer 50

the ability to consider many different options and to think in novel ways

Question 51

algorithms

Answer 51

a methodical, logical rule/procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem; contrasts with the faster but more erroneous heuristics

Question 52

heuristics

Answer 52

a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more erroneous than algorithms

Question 53

insight

Answer 53

a sudden realization of a problem's solution; opposite of strategy-based solutions

Question 54

confirmation bias

Answer 54

tendency to search for information that supports preconceptions and to ignore/distort contradictory evidence

Question 55

fixation

Answer 55

an inability to come to a fresh perspective

Question 56

mental set

Answer 56

tendency to approach a problem with the mindset of what has previously worked

Question 57

intuition

Answer 57

an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning

Question 58

representativeness heuristics

Answer 58

estimating the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information

Question 59

availability heuristics

Answer 59

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps due to their vividness) we presume such events are common

Question 60

overconfidence

Answer 60

the tendency to be more confident than correct; to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgements

Question 61

belief perseverance

Answer 61

our tendency to cling to our beliefs in the face of contrary evidence

Question 62

telegraphic speech

Answer 62

early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram ("go car") using mostly nouns and verbs

Question 63

aphasia

Answer 63

impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage to Broca's area (speaking) or Wernicke's area (understanding

Question 64

Broca's area

Answer 64

helps control language expression; an area of the frontal lobe; usually in the left hemisphere that direct muscle movement involved in speech

Question 65

Wernicke's area

Answer 65

a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression in the left temporal lobe

Question 66

linguistic determinism

Answer 66

idea that language controls the way we think and interpret the world around us; Whorf's hypothesis

Question 67

linguistic influence

Answer 67

the weaker form of linguistic determinism; idea that language affects thought and world view is relative to our cultural language

Question 68

Stanford-Binet

Answer 68

the widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet's original intelligence test

Question 69

standardization

Answer 69

defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group

Question 70

normal curve

Answer 70

a symmetrical, bell shaped curve that describes the distribution of data, 68% w/in one standard deviation, then 95%, 99%.

Question 71

reliability

Answer 71

the extent to which a test yields consistent results as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternative forms of the test, or on retesting

Question 72

content validity

Answer 72

the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest

Question 73

predictive validity

Answer 73

the success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation b/w test scores and the criterion behavior

Question 74

crystallized intelligence

Answer 74

accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tend to increase with age

Question 75

fluid intelligence

Answer 75

Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tend to decrease with age, especially during late adulthood