Cognitive Psychology Lecture Notes

Flashcards about Cognitive Psychology

Cognition

The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding.

Objective Invariance

Property of remaining unchanged regardless of changes in the conditions.

Behaviorism

The study of observable human behavior through stimulus-response actions.

Classical Conditioning

Learning process in which an association is formed between two stimuli.

Operant Conditioning

Learning process guided by reinforcement and punishment to increase desired behaviors and reduce undesired behaviors.

Modularity

The mind's organization into specialized and independent regions.

Gestalt Principles

Rules that describe how humans naturally organize visual elements.

Good Figure

Objects grouped together tend to be perceived as a single figure with a tendency to simplify.

Similarity

Objects tend to be grouped together if they are similar.

Closure

Visual connection or continuity between sets of elements which do not actually touch each other.

Proximity

Objects tend to be grouped together if they are close together.

Continuation

When there is an intersection between two or more objects, people tend to perceive each object as a single uninterrupted object.

Feature Extraction Theories

How information from the environment is processed and represented in cognition, spatial awareness, sensation, and perception.

Template Matching

Visual input is compared to stored representations.

Gestalt Psychology

The way in which the components of behavior are grouped and integrated into patterns and whole figures; an approach to psychology.

Schema

A mental pattern (derived from past experiences) used to assist with the interpretation of subsequent cognitions; controls processing and makes use of stored knowledge.

Sensation

Detecting raw sensory stimuli through sense organs; a physiological process where sensory organs convert raw stimuli into neural signals.

Perception

Gives meaning to sensory information; a physiological process in the cerebral cortex involving brain processing.

Affordances

Properties of an object that afford an action.

Constructivist Approach

We actively construct our perception based on knowledge, particularly when sensory information is incomplete.

Timbre

Quality or texture of a sound.

Proprioception

The body's ability to sense its position, movement, and orientation without visual input.

Fixations

Points where we are looking (eye movement).

Saccades

Eye movement from one fixation to another (reflex or voluntary).

Pop-out Effect

Targets that are distinct from distractors on a single dimension capture attention automatically.

Attention Allocation

The process of allocating limited cognitive resources to focus on specific aspects of the environment or internal thoughts.