AP Psych All Year Vocab

Achievement Test

a test designed to assess what a person has learned

Algorithm

a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier--but also more error-prone--use of heuristics

Anterograde Amnesia

an inability to form new memories

Aphasia

impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke's area (impairing understanding)

Aptitude Test

a test designed to predict a person's future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn

Automatic Processing

unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings

Availability Heuristic

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common

Babbling Stage

stage in child development and a state in language acquisition during which an infant appears to be experimenting with uttering articulate sounds but does not yet produce any recognizable words. Babbling can be seen as a precursor to language development or simply as vocal experimentation.

Basal Ganglia

- it receives messages from the motor cortex but does not send back information to the cortex for conscious awareness of procedural memory

Belief Perseverance

clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

Cerebellum's role in memory

a structure found in the back of the skull, is known to be important for the control of movement memories

Chunking

organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically

Cohort

a group of people from a given time period

Concepts

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

Confirmation bias

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

Content validity

the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest

Context dependent memory

the tendency to recover information more easily when the retrieval occurs in the same setting as the original learning of the information

Convergent thinking

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

Creativity

ability to produce ideas that are both novel and valuable

Critical period

an optimal period early in the life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development

Crystallized Intelligence

our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age

Deep processing

encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best retention

Deja vu

that eerie sense that 'I've experienced this before.' Cues from the current situation may unconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience

Divergent thinking

expanding the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that diverges in different directions.

Down syndrome

a condition of intellectual disability and associated physical disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21.

Echoic memory

a momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds

Effortful processing

encoding that requires attention and conscious effort

Emotional Intelligence

the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions

Encoding

the processing of information into the memory system--for example, by extracting meaning

Encoding Specificity Principle

the idea that cues and contexts specific to a particular memory will be most effective in helping us recall it.

Episodic Memory

A category of long-term memory that involves the recollection of specific events, situations and experiences.

Explicit Memory

memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare." Also called declarative memory

Factor Analysis

a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person's total score.

Flashbulb Memory

a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event

Fluid Intelligence

our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood

Flynn Effect

the worldwide phenomenon that shows intelligence test performance has been increasing over the years

Framing

the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments

General Intelligence

a factor that, according to Spearman and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test

Grammar

in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. IN a given language, semantics is the set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds, and syntax is the set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences

Heritability

The proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. The ability to pass down the trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied.

Heuristic

a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms

Hippocampus' role in memory

a neural center located in the limbic system; helps process explicit memories for storage

Iconic Memory

a momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second

Implicit memory

retention independent of conscious recollection. Also called nondeclarative memory

Insight

a sudden realization of a problem's solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions

Intellectual Disability

a condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life; varies from mild to profound

Intelligence

the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations

Intelligence Quotient(IQ)

defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 [thus, IQ = (ma/ca) x 100]. On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100.

Intuition

an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning

Language

Our spoken, written, or gestured word, it is the way we communicate meaning to ourselves and others.

Language acquisition device

(a neural system of the brain for understanding language) that is switched on by exposure to language in our environment

Linguistic determinism

hypothesis that language determines the way we think

Long Term Potentiation(LTP)

an increase in a cell's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory

Long Term Memory

the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences

Memory

the persistence of learning over time through encoding, storage, and retrieval of information

Mental age

a measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance

Mental Set

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

Method of Loci

a mnemonic technique that involves associating items on a list with a sequence of familiar physical locations

Misinformation Effect

incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event

Mnemonics

memory aids, especially those technique that use vivid imagery and organizational devices

Mood congruent memory

the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood

Morphemes

in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix)

Multiple Intelligences

9 different forms of intelligence, each relatively independent of the others

Overconfidence

the tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments

Peg-word system

a mnemonic in which the items in a list to be remembered are associated with the sequential items in a memorized jingle and then the list is retrieved by going through the jingle and retrieving the associated items.

Phonemes

in language, the smallest distinctive sound unit

Predictive validity

The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior.

Priming

the activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory

Proactive interference

(retrieval failure)- the disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information

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 (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin)

Recall

a measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the-blank

Recognition

a measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned, as on a multiple-choice test

Reconsolidation

a process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again.

Relearning

a measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material again

Reliability

the extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting

Representative Heuristic

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

Repression

in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories

Retrieval

the process of getting information out of memory storage

Retroactive interference

(retrieval failure) - the disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information

Retrograde Amnesia

an inability to retrieve information from one's past

Savant syndrome

a condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing

Selective attention

the focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus

Semantic encoding

the encoding of meaning, including the meaning of words

Semantic memory

a network of associated facts and concepts that make up our general knowledge of the world

Sensory memory

the immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system

Serial position effect

our tendency to recall best the last (a recency effect) and first items (a primacy effect) in a list

Shallow processing

encoding on a basic level based on the structure or appearance of words

Short-term memory

activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as the seven digits of a phone number while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten

Source amnesia

attributing to the wrong source an event we have heard, heard about, read about, or imagined. Also called source misattribution. Source amnesia, along with the misinformation effect, is at the heart of many false memories

Spacing effect

the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice

Stanford-Binet test

the widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet's original intelligence test

State-dependent memory

The theory that information learned in a particular state of mind (e.g., depressed, happy, somber) is more easily recalled when in that same state of mind.

Stereotype threat

a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype

Storage

the process of retaining encoded information over time

Syntax

The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language.

Telegraphic speech

early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram----"go car" ----using mostly nouns and verbs

Triarchic Theory

3 types of intelligence (analytical, creative, and practical)

Validity

the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale(WAIS)

is the most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests

Working Memory

a newer understanding of short-term memory that focuses on conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory