Cognition & Emotion Review Flashcards

These flashcards cover foundational psychology concepts, neuroscience, theories of emotion, perception, attention, memory, and cognitive decision-making processes based on the provided lecture notes.

Empiricism

The belief that knowledge comes from experience and that learning takes place through the association of ideas when two experiences occur at the same time.

Nativism

A focus on “native ability,” constitutional factors, and biologically endowed capacities, suggesting cognitive functions are “hard wired.”

Structuralism

The idea that mental processes can be broken down into their most basic components using introspection.

Functionalist Perspective

Influenced by Charles Darwin and William James, this perspective focuses on the purpose of mental activity and behaviors, maintaining that we should adapt behaviors to ones that yield better results.

Behaviorism

The suggestion that psychology should focus only on the relation between environmental events and observable behavior; founded by John Watson.

Gestalt Psychology

The belief that psychological phenomena are best understood as organized, structured wholes, famously stating that “the whole differs from the sum of its parts.”

Cognitive Psychology

A field that understands human behavior in terms of how people think, often using the computer as an analogy (hardware vs. software) and viewing humans as limited-capacity processors.

Emotional Labor

Work that involves constructing specific emotions in oneself in order to induce them in others.

Neuromodulators

Peptides that influence the activation of neurotransmitters; for example, Botox prevents the release of acetylcholine to relax muscles.

Specificity Coding

The representation of a specific stimulus through the firing of a specifically tuned neuron specialized to respond to that stimulus.

Distributed Coding

Representation for a specific stimulus that is spread across many neurons firing together.

Parasympathetic branch

The part of the autonomic nervous system responsible for restorative processes.

Sympathetic branch

The part of the autonomic nervous system responsible for preparatory processes.

James-Lange Theory of Emotion

The theory that a stimulus triggers a physiological response, which then leads to the experience of an emotion.

Cannon-Bard Theory

The view that an eliciting event triggers physiological changes, behavior changes, and subjective feelings simultaneously.

Two-Factor Theory

Proposed by Schachter and Singer, the idea that the cognitive interpretation or appraisal of a body reaction drives the subjective experience of emotion.

Ventral Vagal Complex

A complex unique to mammals potentially related to compassionate and caregiving behaviors.

Prefrontal Cortex (PFC)

A brain region critical for executive functioning and emotion regulation; it is connected to many regions involved in emotion processing.

Thalamus

The sensory relay station located in the forebrain.

Amygdala

The brain structure responsible for emotional processing.

Serotonin

A chemical where low levels can lead to depression and anti-social behaviors due to an inability to regulate sadness and aggression.

Oxytocin

A chemical that promotes bonding and pro-social behaviors; research shows it helps people gauge subtle emotional cues in faces.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

A research method that uses oxygen consumption in the brain to provide a moving and detailed picture.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

A method that uses intense magnetic fields to temporarily instigate or inactivate neurons.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG)

A technique that maps brain activity in milliseconds by recording magnetic fields produced naturally by the brain.

Recognition By Components

A bottom-up theory suggesting people segment objects into simple shapes called geons.

Perceptual Set

A top-down tendency to perceive things in a certain way because of previous experiences or expectations.

Word Superiority Effect

The phenomenon where it is easier to perceive a letter when it is part of a word than when it is alone.

Monocular Cues

Depth perception cues based on only one eye, such as linear perspective and interposition.

Binocular Disparity

The difference in images between the two eyes, which is greater for objects that are close.

Visual Object Agnosia

A deficit where a person can sense all parts of the visual field but the objects seen do not have meaning.

Dorsal Pathway

The “where” pathway reaching into the parietal lobes, important for processing information about location and guiding movements.

Ventral Pathway

The “what” pathway reaching into the temporal lobes, processing information that leads to object identification.

Broadbent's Model

An early selection model of attention where a filter identifies messages based on physical characteristics before passing them to a detector.

Attenuation Theory

Anne Treisman’s model suggesting the attended message is let through at full strength while unattended messages are weakened but not completely filtered out.

Inattentional Blindness

The failure to perceive an easily visible stimulus when focused intently on another task.

Emblems

Nonverbal gestures that directly translate into words.

Encoding Hypothesis

The idea that the experience of different emotions is associated with the same distinct expressions in every culture.

Vocal Bursts

Brief non-linguistic vocalizations used to communicate emotion with very high accuracy.

Modal Model of Memory

A memory model consisting of sensory memory, short-term memory ($15-30$ seconds), and long-term memory.

Iconic Memory

Brief sensory memory specifically for visual information or icons.

Chunking

The process of combining small units into larger meaningful units to increase the capacity of short-term memory.

Proactive Interference (PI)

When information learned previously interferes with the learning of new information.

Serial Position Curve

A finding that memory is better for words at the beginning (primacy effect) and end (recency effect) of a list.

Self-Reference Effect

The phenomenon where memory is better for information if it relates to oneself.

Encoding Specificity

The principle that we encode information along with its context.

Flashbulb Memories

Vivid, detailed memories associated with strong emotional reactions; confidence in these memories remains high despite inconsistencies over time.

Schemata

Frameworks for organizing information; as seen in Bartlett's “War of the Ghosts” experiment, these can lead to distorted recall.

Hostile Attribution Bias

The tendency to view neutral situations as hostile, often found in aggressive children.

Incidence

The number of new onsets of a particular disorder in a given time period.

Cumulative Risk

The total number of adversities faced by a child; the likelihood of emotion-based disorders increases as this number rises.

Diathesis–Stress Perspective

A theory suggesting a dispositional vulnerability to environmental risk only manifests in a negative environment.

Differential Susceptibility

The theory that certain people are neurobiologically more influenced by both positive and negative environments (“orchids” vs. “dandelions”).

Homotypic Continuity

The similarity of symptoms or disorders over time.

Heterotypic Continuity

The crossover in symptoms between different disorders over time, such as depression and anxiety.

Deductive Reasoning

Logic that flows from general premises to specific conclusions, including affirming the antecedent and denying the consequent.

Inductive Reasoning

Reasoning from specific observations to general conclusions where the conclusion is probable but not guaranteed.

Availability Heuristic

Assessing probability based on how easily relevant examples come to mind.

Representativeness Heuristic

Judging the probability of an event based on how well it represents a population or process.

Framing Effects

Evaluating outcomes as changes from a reference point or current state rather than on absolute value.

Hindsight Bias

The belief after an event has occurred that one “knew it all along.”

Multiattribute Utility Theory (MAUT)

A systematic decision-making process involving breaking decisions into dimensions, weighting them, and choosing the alternative with the highest value.

Ultimatum Game

A game used to study decision-making where unfair offers are often rejected due to emotions like disgust or anger.

Affect Infusion

The process by which emotions infuse into decision-making, especially when a task is difficult.