Ap Psych Cognition and Memory

Cognition

Mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Meta-Cognition:

Thinking about thinking; tracking and evaluating mental process; the awareness of one’s own cognitive processes

Concept

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

Prototypes

A mental image or best example of a category which provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories and can help organize

Schemas

A framework that organizes and interprets information into groups of similar objects, events, states, items, people, etc.

Accommodation

process of adjusting a schema and modifying it

Assimilation

incorporating new experiences into our current understanding 

Convergent thinking

narrows down the solution to the single best solution

Divergent thinking

expanding the number of possible solution

Creativity

the ability to produce new and valuable ideas

Factors involved: Expertise, imagination, venturous, intrinsic motivation, creative environment

Trail and Error

Trying various possible solution and if it fails, trying others.

Executive functions

mental skills used everyday to learn, work, and manage daily life. Self-monitoring, planning and priorities, organization, etc.

Algorithms

Step by steps strategy that leads to a specific solution

Heuristic

step-saving strategy which generate a quick solution

Insight

Sudden realization, a leap forward in thinking, that leads to a solution.

Representative heuristics

judgements based on how well they math our prototypes

Gambler’s Fallacy

the mistaken belief that if a particular outcome has occurred several times in a row in a random event.

Availability Heuristics

judgements based on availability, what comes readily to mind; sometimes based upon our more recent experiences; memory of specific instances.

Intuition

an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought with explicit conscious reasoning to make a decision

Confirmation Bias

the tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

Mental Set

the tendency to persist in using the same problem solving strategy that have worked in the past.

Functional fixedness

the inability to view problems form a new angle.

Overconfidence

the tendency to be more confident than correct - to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments

Sunk-cost fallacy

the tendency for people to continue investing time, money, or effort into something even when it is no longer beneficial, simply because they have already invested significantly in it.

Belief Perseverance

clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed.

Framing

the way an issue is presented or worded can impact how people respond to it.

Memory

any indication that learning had persisted over time. It is our ability to encode, store, and retrieve information.

Recall

retrieving information that in not currently in your conscious awareness but were learned at some earlier time

ex: a fiil-in-the-blank question on a test.

Recognition

identifying items previously learned

ex: a multiple choice question on a test.

Relearning

asses the amount of time saved when learning material again

ex: studying for a semester exam

Encode

the process of getting information into the memory system

Store

the process of retaining information over time.

retrieve

The process of getting information out of our memory storage.

Sensory Memory

the immediate very brief recording of sensory information. Lasts a few second but the capacity is unlimited.

Iconic: Visual

Echoic: auditory

Short-Term Memory

Lasts for 20 seconds to 20 minutes and the capacity = 7/ -2. Activated memory that holds a few (5-9) items briefly before the information is stored and forgotten.

Long-Term Memory

The duration and capacity is unlimited. The relatively permanent and limitless store house of memory system.

Central Executive

Responsible for distributing resources between the two loop: Phonological loop and Visuspatial sketchpad

Phonological Loop

briefly holds auditory information

Visuospatial Sketchpad

briefly holds objects’ apperances and location in space.

Prospective Memory

the ability to remember to carry out intended actions in the future.

Flashbulb Memories

Clear, sustained memories of an emotionally significant moments or events. These can be personal or general.

Neurogenesis

the formation of new neurons

Long-Term Potentiation

an increase in a cell’s firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation and is the neural basis for learning and memory.

Implicit Memory

Automatic/Unconscious memories that involves retention of learned skills or classically conditions and associations independent of conscious recollection.

• Processed in the cerebellum and basal ganglia

Explicit Memories

Effortful/Conscious memories involved in the retention of facts and experiences that one can consciously know. 

• Processed in the Hippocampus and frontal lobes.

Chunking

organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically

Mnemonics

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

Hierarchies

A structure where ideas are organized from broader categories at the top to more specific subcategories at the bottom.

Massed Practice

learning a large amount of material in a single session; less effective than distributed practice

Distributed Practice

the most effective technique to enhance encoding by spacing out studying

Spacing Effect

the tendency for distributed practice or study to yield better retention than is achieved through massed study or practic.

Testing Effect

enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading information.

Method of Loci

involves associating information with visual imagery in familiar spatial environments

Shallowing encoding/processing

encodes on an elementary level, such as word’s letters or, at a more intermediate level, a word’s sound.

Deep Encoding/processing

encodes semantically based on the meaning of the words. Better retention explains why information that is meaningful to us is retained longer.

Elaborative rehearsal

the process of using active thinking about the meaning of the term that needs to be remembered rather than just repeating the word/information over and over again.

Hippocampus (and frontal lobes)

Process Explicit memories → episodic and semantic memory

Semantic Memory

A category of Explicit memory that focuses on facts and general knowledge

Episodic memory

A category of Explicit memory that focuses on personally experienced events

Cerebellum

Processes implicit memories

Basal ganglia

process motor movement and skills that are involved in implicit memories

Amygdala

triggered by stress hormones and boosts activity in the memory process; processes emotional memories.

Priming

the activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory

Context-dependent memory

the activation of memory when one returns to the setting of the original encoding

State-dependent encoding

the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with the state in which a person was at the time of encoding

mood-dependent encoding

the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one’s good or bad mood.

Serial Position effect

our tendency to best remember the items at the beginning and end of a list of items.

Recency effect

only remembering the end of a list

Primacy effect

only remembering the beginning of a list

Interleaving

A retrieval practice strategy that mixes the study of psychology with different disciplines.

Amnesia

memory lose due to brain damage/injury

Interference

memory lose due to competing information

Retrograde Amnesia

an inability to remeber information/memory from one’s past

Anterograde Amnesia

an inability to form new memories

Proactive interference

the forward-acting disruptive effect of older learning on the recall of new information,

Retroactive interference

the backward-acting disruptive effect of newer learning on the recall of old information.

Repression

the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.

Reconsolidation

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

Constructive memory

the psychological process of memory not being a perfect recording but an active reconstruction that uses current knowledge, beliefs, and general knowledge to fill in the gaps of past experiences

Misinformation effect

occurs when a memory has been corrupted by misleading information

Imagination Inflation

the psychological phenomenon where imagining an event, especially repeatedly, makes a person more confident that the event actually happened

Source Amnesia

faulty memory for how, when, or where information was learned or imagined.

Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon

the memory is there but you can find it             ( Retrieval failure)

Alzheimer’s Disease

a progressive and irreversible brain disorder characterized by gradual deterioration of memory, reasoning, language, and physical function.

Infantile Amnesia

experience of not consciously remembering the first 3 years of our lives (we do recall skills and reactions.)