Exam 2: Cognitive Psychology

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering key topics in working memory, sensory memory systems, selective/divided attention, and visual search paradigms.

Memory

The cognitive process involved in storing, retrieving, and using information about stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills after the original stimulus is no longer present.

Sensory Memory

The initial structural memory store holding brief, exact copies of incoming environmental sensory information for a fraction of a second to a few seconds.

Iconic Memory

A visual sensory memory buffer that holds a brief, exact perceptual trace ("icon") of visual stimuli after physical stimulus termination.

Echoic Memory

An automatic auditory sensory memory buffer that briefly retains an exact acoustic recording of environmental sound input.

Working Memory

An active system combining a central executive control mechanism with short-term storage buffers for immediate mental processing and manipulation.

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

The structural repository that stores information for extended periods, ranging from minutes to a lifetime.

Explicit (Declarative) Memory

Conscious memories consisting of semantic memory (facts and general knowledge) and episodic memory (personal experiences and events).

Implicit (Non-declarative) Memory

Unconscious memories, including procedural memory for motor skills and habits as well as priming effects.

Modal Model of Memory

The classic framework proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968 describing information flow sequentially through sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

Peterson & Peterson (1959) Experiment

A study investigating short-term memory duration using $3\text{-consonant}$ trigrams and counting backward by $3\text{s}$, finding performance drops drastically within $3\text{--}18\text{ s}$.

Proactive Interference (PI)

The phenomenon where previously learned items interfere with storing and retrieving new items, identified by Keppel & Underwood (1962) as the primary cause of short-term memory forgetting.

Release from Proactive Interference

The restoration of memory performance achieved by changing the semantic category of test items (e.g., switching from letters to numbers).

Digit Span Task

A standard measurement method for verbal short-term memory capacity, yielding an average limit of $7 \times 2$ items ($5$ to $9$ items).

Chunking

The process of combining smaller pieces of information into larger, meaningful units to increase total information held in short-term memory.

Rehearsal Fallacy

A flaw in the Modal Model stating that holding information in short-term memory through rote rehearsal does not automatically guarantee transfer to long-term memory.

Baddeley & Hitch’s Working Memory Model

An active multi-component system proposed in 1974 consisting of a Central Executive and specialized modality-specific storage buffers.

Central Executive

The supervisory system of working memory that controls attention, coordinates processing, and allocates mental resources.

Articulatory Loop (Phonological Loop)

The working memory buffer responsible for storing verbal and auditory data using active inner speech rehearsal.

Visuospatial Sketchpad

The working memory buffer responsible for holding visual spatial locations, trajectories, and movements.

Change Detection Task

A visual working memory paradigm by Luck & Vogel (1997) demonstrating that visual working memory holds approximately $3\text{--}4$ integrated object representations.

Contralateral Delay Activity (CDA)

An electrophysiological event-related potential (ERP) recorded over posterior scalp areas whose amplitude scales directly with the number of visual objects stored in working memory.

Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) in Working Memory

The neural structure required to hold location details over delay periods without visual input, as demonstrated by Goldman-Rakic's delayed-response task in monkeys.

Sustained Attention (Vigilance)

The dimension of attention involved in maintaining focus on a specific task over long periods without getting distracted.

Selective Attention

The cognitive process of focusing on specific target stimuli while filtering out surrounding distractions across visual and auditory sensory domains.

Divided Attention

Splitting attentional resources across multiple simultaneous tasks, leading to performance drops and errors.

Dichotic Listening Paradigm

An experimental paradigm where participants wear headphones playing two different audio streams simultaneously and attend to one channel while ignoring the competing stream.

Shadowing Technique

The procedure during dichotic listening where participants repeat the message from the attended ear aloud in real time to verify active focus.

Cocktail Party Effect

The cognitive ability to focus on a single speaker in a noisy, multi-talker setting while filtering out background noise.

Broadbent's Early Filter Model

A bottleneck theory proposed in 1958 asserting that attention acts as an absolute early gate before conscious awareness and semantic analysis.

Inattentional Blindness

A perceptual limitation demonstrated when only about $50\%$ of trained police officers and recruits noticed a firearm on a vehicle dashboard during a simulated traffic stop study.

Own-Name Effect

The phenomenon where participants detect their own name when spoken unexpectedly in an unattended auditory channel during dichotic listening.

"Dear Aunt Jane" Experiment

A study demonstrating automatic channel switching to preserve semantic context when the message "Dear - 7 - Jane" in the attended ear crossed with "9 - Aunt - 6" in the unattended ear.

Stroop Task

An attentional interference task developed by J. Ridley Stroop evaluating cognitive control when automatic word reading conflicts with explicit ink color naming.

Flanker Task

An experimental task where identifying a central target letter (e.g., $X$ or $O$) is slowed by mismatching flanking letters due to incomplete spatial filtering.

Flexible Selection Theories

Models proposing that attentional selection operates early during high perceptual load conditions and at later processing stages during lower load tasks.

Visual Persistence

The temporary lingering mental representation of a visual stimulus that gradually decays over time after physical light presentation ends.

Sperling's Whole Report Procedure

A memory procedure flashing a $12\text{-item}$ array for $100\text{ ms}$ where participants recalled an average of $4.5$ to $5$ items due to working memory capacity limits.

Sperling's Partial Report Procedure

An experimental innovation using a delayed tone cue after array offset, demonstrating that iconic memory possesses a virtually unlimited initial capacity.

Duration of Iconic Memory

The decay timeline of iconic memory, losing half its content within $150\text{ ms}$ and completely vanishing within $500\text{ ms}$ to $1000\text{ ms}$ ($0.5$ to $1\text{ s}$).

Foveation

The physical action of moving the eyes so an object falls directly on the central retina (fovea) to obtain maximum visual detail.

Overt Visual Attention

Directing visual attention by physically moving the eyes to look directly at an object via eye movements like saccades or smooth pursuit.

Covert Visual Attention

Directing visual attention to a location or object in the visual field without physically moving the eyes.

Posner's Cueing Paradigm

An experimental framework developed by Mike Posner using valid, invalid, and neutral spatial cues to measure covert shifts of visual attention.

Exogenous Cueing

An automatic, involuntary shift of covert attention triggered by a peripheral signal in the outer visual field.

Endogenous Cueing

A voluntary, effortful shift of covert attention directed by a central signal at gaze focus, such as an arrow.

The Binding Problem

The neural question of how distinct feature properties (color, shape, location) processed by separate neuronal groups are integrated into a single perceived object.

Feature Integration Theory (FIT)

A model by Treisman and Gelade stating visual object perception progresses from an automatic Pre-attentive Stage to an Attentive Stage using spatial focus as cognitive glue.

Pre-attentive Stage

The initial stage of Feature Integration Theory where basic features are extracted automatically, unconsciously, and in parallel across the visual field.

Attentive Stage

The second stage of Feature Integration Theory where focused spatial attention binds extracted features at a specific location into an integrated object file.

Feature Search

A visual search task for a target defined by a single unique feature, causing a pop-out effect and flat reaction times regardless of display size ($2$ to $20$ items).

Conjunction Search

A visual search task for a target defined by a combination of features, requiring step-by-step serial scanning and linear reaction time increases with display size.

Illusory Conjunctions

Cognitive binding errors occurring when distracted or deprived spatial attention leads to correctly perceived features from different objects being mistakenly combined.

Controlled Processing

Slow, conscious, intentional, effortful, and capacity-limited cognitive processing.

Automatic Processing

Fast, involuntary, unconscious, and effortless cognitive processing that consumes minimal mental resources.

In-Car Distractions

A comparison of driving hazards showing that remote phone callers cause severe cognitive distraction because, unlike passengers or radio, callers cannot see traffic to pause conversation flow.