Regular Psychology - Unit 2: Cognition Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering concepts of sensation, perception, cognition, problem-solving, intelligence, memory, and research methods based on Unit 2 test material.

Selective attention

Focusing conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.

Cocktail party effect

The ability to attend to one voice among many.

Inattentional blindness

Failing to see a visible object because attention is elsewhere.

Change blindness

Failing to notice changes in the environment.

Perceptual set

A mental predisposition to perceive one thing rather than another.

Context

The effect of surrounding information on perception.

Motivation

A factor that can bias interpretations of neutral stimuli because of a goal.

Gestalt psychologists

Psychologists who emphasize our tendency to integrate pieces of information into a meaningful whole.

Figure-ground organization

Separating objects from their surroundings.

Proximity

The tendency to group nearby objects together.

Closure

Filling in gaps to create a whole object.

Depth perception

Allows us to judge distance and see objects in three dimensions.

Binocular cue

A depth cue that depends on two eyes.

Convergence

A binocular depth cue.

Monocular cues

Depth cues available to either eye.

Stroboscopic motion

The illusion of continuous movement produced by rapidly viewing slightly different still images.

Phi phenomenon

The illusion of movement when nearby lights blink on and off.

Perceptual constancy

Perceiving objects as unchanging even when illumination and retinal images change.

Perceptual adaptation

The ability to adjust to changes in sensory input.

Cognition

Mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Metacognition

Thinking about our thinking.

Prototype

A mental image of the best example of a category.

Assimilation

Interpreting new experiences using existing schemas.

Accommodation

Adapting current schemas to incorporate new information.

Convergent thinking

Narrowing solutions to determine the best one.

Divergent thinking

Expanding the number of possible solutions.

Intrinsic motivation

One of Sternberg's components of creativity.

Algorithm

A logical rule or procedure for solving a problem.

Heuristic

A mental shortcut that is faster but can lead to errors.

Insight

A sudden realization of a problem's solution.

Confirmation bias

The tendency to search for information supporting preconceptions.

Fixation

The inability to see a problem from a new perspective.

Availability heuristic

Assuming that vivid memories or examples are more common than they actually are.

Overconfidence

The tendency to be more confident than correct.

Belief perseverance

Persisting with an initial conception after its basis has been discredited.

Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences

Theory that identifies linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, and other relatively independent intelligences.

Spacing effect

The concept that spreading study sessions out over time improves long-term memory compared to cramming.

Representative heuristic

Judging or choosing based on how much something reminds us of a prototype, even despite contradicting evidence.

Context-dependent memory

The retrieval principle where a person remembers information more easily when tested in the same environment where they studied.

Proactive interference

Interference that occurs when older learned information interferes with recall of newer information.

Retroactive interference

Interference that occurs when newly learned information interferes with the recall of older information.

Reliability

The quality evaluated to determine whether a test consistently produces similar results when taken more than once.

Construct validity

The concept questioned when a test designed to measure one construct instead measures another, such as vocabulary knowledge instead of intelligence.

Cross-sectional study

A study that compares people of different ages during the same year.

Longitudinal study

A study that tests the same group of people repeatedly over an extended period of time.

Framing

The effect produced when changing the wording or presentation of a question changes people's choices or judgments.