Ap Psych Unit 2 Pt. 2

Concepts

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

Prototypes

a mental image or best example of a category. matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories.

Metacognition

a cognition about our cognition. keeping track of and evaluating our mental processes

Schemas

a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Assimilation

interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.

Accomodation

1. in sensation and perception, the process by which the eye’s lens changes shape.

2. in developmental psychology, adapting our current schemas to interpret new information.

Algorithms

a medical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.

Heuristics

a simple thinking strategy- a mental shortcut- that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently.

Representativeness heuristic

judging the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match particular prototypes.

Availability heuristic

Judging teh likelihood of events based on their availability in memory.

Mental set

a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past.

Functional fixedness/fixation

in cognition, the inability to see a problem from a new perspective, an obstacle to problem solving.

Priming

the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one’s perception, memory, or response.

Framing

the way an issue is posed.

Gambler’s fallacy [p. 196]

the result of unconsciously judging future events.

Sunk-cost fallacy [p. 198]

sticking to our original plan because we’ve invested our time, even when switching could save us time.

Executive functions

cognitive skills that work together, enabling us to generate, organize, plan, and implement goal-directed behavior.

Creativity

the ability to produce new and valuable ideas.

Convergent thinking

narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution.

Divergent thinking

expanding the number of possible problem solutions