cognitive psychology Terms 1

Cognitive psychology

The scientific branch that investigates internal mental processes, including perception, attention, memory, language, reasoning, and problem-solving.

Schema

A mental framework or organized cognitive structure that helps individuals categorize and interpret new incoming information.

Working memory

A cognitive system with limited capacity responsible for temporarily holding and manipulating information during complex mental tasks.

Selective attention

The cognitive process of focusing awareness on a specific sensory input or task while filtering out competing environmental stimuli.

Heuristic

A mental shortcut or rule-of-thumb strategy that simplifies decision-making and accelerates problem-solving.

Cognitive dissonance

The state of psychological discomfort or tension experienced when holding two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values simultaneously.

Episodic memory

A form of long-term explicit storage that preserves personal experiences and autobiographical events situated in specific times and locations.

Semantic memory

A division of long-term memory dedicated to storing generalized factual knowledge, concepts, and ideas detached from personal experience.

Confirmation bias

The systematic cognitive tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a manner that validates preexisting beliefs.

Metacognition

The awareness, monitoring, and active regulation of one's own thought processes and learning strategies.

Availability Heuristic

A mental shortcut relying on immediate, easily recalled examples when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overemphasize internal personal characteristics and underestimate external situational factors when judging the behavior of others.

Actor-Observer Bias

The tendency to attribute one's own actions to external situational causes while attributing the identical actions of others to internal dispositional factors.

Self-Serving Bias

The cognitive habit of crediting positive outcomes to personal internal abilities while blaming negative outcomes on external circumstances.

Anchoring Bias

The cognitive tendency to rely disproportionately on the initial piece of information encountered when making subsequent judgments or estimations.

Hindsight Bias

The psychological phenomenon where individuals perceive past events as having been predictable or inevitable before they occurred.

Halo Effect

A cognitive impression wherein a positive appraisal of a single prominent trait favorably influences the overall perception of an individual or entity.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

The irrational behavior of persisting with an endeavor or investment simply because prior resources of time, money, or effort cannot be recovered.

Long-Term Memory

The vast, unlimited capacity storage system that holds information, knowledge, and personal experiences over extended intervals ranging from hours to decades.

Motivated Reasoning

The emotional and psychological process of evaluating arguments and evidence to reach a preferred conclusion rather than following objective facts.