PSY 332 - Midterm 2 (Vocab terms)

Executive Functioning (Cognitive control)

A group of mental processes that include planning, being flexible in thinking, understanding rules, starting actions when needed, stopping actions when not needed, and choosing important information from the senses.

Phineas Gage

A famous case showing how prefrontal cortex damage can change personality, decision-making, and emotional control.

Prefrontal Cortex Development

Development continues develop until the early 20s.

This means that teenagers rely on emotions and impulses more than reasoning.

Updating

Constantly monitoring and changing the contents of working memory.

Inhibition

The ability to stop automatic or immediate responses.

Shifting

The mental flexibility to switch between tasks or thoughts.

Working Memory

The brain’s short-term space where you hold and use information to think or solve problems.

Mental Flexibility

The ability to switch your thinking or approach when situations or rules change.

Ego Depletion (Strength model of self-control)

A state when the ability to control oneself weakens after mental energy runs out.

Mental Energy (Strength model of self-control)

The limited supply that is used by self-control.

Self-Control Fatigue (Strength model of self-control)

What occurs after self-control is overused, similar to how muscles get tired after use.

Dual-Task Method

When people do two tasks at once to see how one affects the other, often used to test mental effort or self-control.

Emotion Suppression

Can be a cause of ego depletion.

Explicit Memory

Conscious recall of facts or events (measured by recall and recognition)

Implicit Memory

Unconscious memory that influences actions and thoughts (measured by priming or relearning)

Procedural Memory

“Knowing how” — Memory for skills and tasks.

Declarative Memory

“Know what/that” — Memory for facts, rules, and events.

Semantic Memory

General world knowledge — Facts, rules, and concepts.

Episodic Memory

Personal experiences and the context they occurred in (includes flashbulb memories)

Semantic Network

Web of related concepts.

Node

A point in the network representing a concept.

Proposition

The relationship between two concepts.

Cognitive Economy

Only store non-redundant information once.

Inheritance

Members share the properties of their main category.

Propositional Representation of Meaning

Meaning is based on relationships, categories, and features — not sensory input. Provides a shared system for people to refer to objects and ideas.

Analogical Representation of Meaning

Meaning is based on mental images that mirror real-world objects — a one-to-one match between what’s seen and what’s imagined.

Semantic Relatedness

The distance between two ideas in memory depends on how similar or related they are.

Typicality Effects

Recognizing or thinking of examples that are more common or “typical” for a category faster than uncommon ones.

Exemplar Theory (Brooks, 1978; Estes, 1986; Hintzman, 1986; Medin & Schaffer, 1978; Nosofsky, 1986)

States that we compare new information to specific examples stored in memory.

Prototype Theory (Posner & Keele, 1968, 1970; Reed, 1972).

States that we compare new information of an average or ideal version of a category.

Prototype

Ideal Representation

Spreading Activation

When a concept is activated, it spreads to related ideas in the network.

Reactivation

When spreading activation occurs in multiple cycles.

Availability

Whether the memory was actually stored in long-term memory (depends on encoding)

Accessibility

How easily the memory can be retrieved (depends on connections and activation strength)

Reproductive Memory

Very accurate, word-for-word recall of an event, almost like a perfect recording.

Reconstructive Memory

Remembering something by mixing what actually happened with what you know.

Schema

A structured group of knowledge about a certain concept, topic, or person.

Script

Schemas that represent everyday events.

Inference

Making logical connections between ideas, guessing missing information, or drawing conclusions based on what you know.

Source Misattribution

When someone can’t tell if a detail came from the original event or from something learned later.

Autobiographical Memory

Memory of one’s personal life experiences.

Flashbulb Memories

Very vivid, emotional memories of surprising or shocking events.

Hippocampus

Necessary for formation of new, explicit (Semantic and Episodic) long-term memories.

Cognitive Map Theory

States that the hippocampus builds maps of places and their landmarks.

Configural association theory

The hippocampus links combinations of stimuli and their context, not single items by themselves.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)

A long-lasting increase in how strongly two neurons respond after frequent, repeated use.

Neurons that Fire Together, Wire Together.

Synaptogenesis

Forming of new synapses.

PTSD

An anxiety disorder where people relive trauma, feel numb, and stay on alert.

Semantic Fear Network

Forgetting Curve

Shows how quickly people forget information after learning it. Can be prevented with review.

Encoding Failure

Lack of attention during storage.

Decay Theory

Memory fades with time if they are not retrieved every now and then. Use it or lose it.

Retroactive Interference

Recently learned material interferes with remembering a similar previously stored material.

Proactive Interference

Previously learned interferes with remembering a similar new material.

Anterograde Amnesia

The inability to store new long-term memories that occur after an amnesia inducing event.

Retrograde Amnesia

The loss of memory for events that occurred prior to the amnesia inducing event.

Alzheimer’s Disease

A disorder that causes loss of working, semantic, episodic, and procedural memory, usually after age 65

Predementia Stage

Problems include memory loss, slight issues with executive functions of attentiveness, planning, mental flexibility and abstract thinking, and observable apathy.

Early Dementia Stage

Problems include shrinking vocabulary and word fluency, difficulty in fine motor tasks like writing, drawing, or dressing.

Moderate Dementia Stage

Problems include progressive loss in reading, writing, motor sequences, short-term memory, long-term memory, and lack of control over urination may develop.

Advanced Dementia Stage

Problems include full dependency on caregivers, low language levels, inability to do basic tasks, impaired muscle mass and mobility.

Death may occur, however, from external factors and not the disease itself.

Senile Plaques

Accumulation of protein fragments (Amyloid Beta) between cells.

Neurotransmitter changes

Degeneration Acetycholine

Phonology

Studying the production and perception of sounds found for a particular language.

Prosody

The rhythm and stress (emphasis) found in speech.

Semantics

Studying the meaning of words.

Syntax (Grammar)

Studying the structure and rules of constructing well formed sentences.

Discourse Comprehension

Understanding the context of how sentences are related to each other and their relation to semantic memory.

Cue Validity

Refers to the reliability of a given syntactic or semantic form in guiding comprehension.

Surface Level Representation

The word-for-word and briefly activated form captures the exact syntax, semantics, and pragmatics for a sentences or series of sentences.

Propositional Level Representation

The summary meaning of a discourse is captured by a richly interconnected network of propositions in a semantic network.

Situation Level Representation

The long-term level of representation similar to the representation that results from direct experience with the situation described by a discourse.

Distinctiveness

Sentences that are different in some way produce stronger surface memory.

Interactive Content

Sentences that tell us about the relationship between the speaker and listener produce more surface memory.

Cognitive Effort

Sentences that require more processing effort produce more surface memory.

Cross-modality Integration

How do we combine the information from verbal directions (auditory) and a map (visual).

Individual Differences in Comprehension

Two people can agree on what was said but disagree on its meaning.

Learning (Differences in Comprehension)

Learning from a text is not the same as remembering a text.

Perceptual and Sensory Quality (Differences in Comprehension)

Some texts (or listening to stories) give rise to perceptual and sensory properties that are not well captured by propositions.

Updating (Differences in Comprehension)

Where and how is information from related sentences combined.

Pragmatics

Studying the ability of speakers to communicate more than that which is explicitly stated.

Paul Grice’s Conversational Maxims (1975)

Quality (Truth), Quantity (Information), Relation (Relevance), Manner and Tone (Clarity)

Aphasia

Difficulty in producing or understanding speech caused by brain damage, not due to deafness or motor deficit.

Broca’s Area

Inferior left frontal lobe; damage causes disruption of fluent speech, but meaning remains intact.

Wernicke’s Area

Agrammatism

Difficulty using grammatical constructions.

Anomia

Difficulty in finding or remembering the correct word to describe an object, action or feature.

Neologism

Creating new words that lack meaning.

Word deafness

Inability to understand speech meaning, through hearing, prosody, speaking, and often reading/writing remain intact.

Right cerebral cortex and language

Organizes speech, processes space and shapes, detects emotions, and controls tone (prosody).

Phonetic reading

Using sounds of letters to read new words.

Whole-word Reading

Reorganizing a word as a whole rather than sounding out the components of the word. (Psych reading)

Indirect Route (representing written language)

Visual — Phonological — Meaning

Direct Route (representing written language)

Visual — Meaning

Attentional Dyslexia

Patients with this dyslexia can identify letters/words in isolation but not in context.

Letter-by-Letter Reading

Reads one letter at a time; reading time increases with word length.

Surface Dyslexia

Patients with this dyslexia are unable to read irregular words.

Phonological Dyslexia

Patients with this dyslexia can’t read unfamiliar or pronounceable non-words; indirect route may be lost.

Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

People using different languages (or wording within languages) influences thoughts and mental representations of the world.