Psychology: Thinking, Conditioning, Language Acquisition, and Neuroanatomy

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering cognitive decision making, dual-process theory, learning and classical conditioning, developmental language acquisition, and the functional anatomy of the human brain.

Salience Bias

The cognitive error of assessing an event or phenomenon as more prevalent or likely simply because it comes to mind very readily.

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to selectively attend to, seek out, and interpret evidence that confirms preexisting expectations or hypotheses while ignoring disconfirming information.

Heuristics

Quick rules of thumb that work well in most situations to make judgments and decisions rapidly without exhaustive logical computation.

Representativeness Heuristic

A mental shortcut whereby people classify an object or person by assessing how closely it matches their prototype for that category.

Availability Heuristic

The tendency to assess outcomes as more probable if they come to mind readily; this serves as the foundational cognitive mechanism for salience bias.

System 1

Fast, automatic cognitive processing that draws on concepts, routines, and rules of thumb acquired through extensive practice.

System 2

Slow, effortful cognitive processing required in unfamiliar situations, when precision is paramount, or when creativity is demanded.

Schemas

Mental knowledge structures built from experience that organize information about objects, environments, or concepts (such as snow textures).

Scripts

Common action routines and event sequences learned from experience that guide expected behavior in specific situations (such as going to a restaurant).

Thinking

The conscious experience of generating mental representations and operating on them in some way.

Default Mode Network (DMN)

A widely distributed brain network active during rest and open-ended reflection, mediating mind wandering, integrating past and present, imagination, and episodic future thinking.

Episodic Future Thinking

The cognitive process of projecting forward in time to imagine and construct scenarios for future actions, supported by the Default Mode Network.

Executive Control Network

The brain network engaged during goal-directed thinking and working memory tasks requiring mental concentration and distraction suppression.

Tower of Hanoi Problem

A goal-directed problem-solving task requiring participants to transfer a stack of discs to a target peg in as few moves as possible, moving only one disc at a time without placing a larger disc onto a smaller one.

N-back Task

A working memory assessment requiring participants to maintain information online and indicate when the current stimulus matches one presented $n$ trials earlier.

Learning (Klein, 1996)

An experiential process resulting in a relatively permanent behaviour change that cannot be explained by temporary states, maturation, or innate tendencies.

Classical Conditioning

A learning process in which a biologically potent unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is paired with a neutral stimulus to transform the neutral stimulus into a conditioned stimulus (CS) that elicits a conditioned response (CR).

Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS)

A stimulus that inherently and automatically elicits a physiological or reflexive response without any prior training or conditioning.

Unconditioned Response (UCR)

An unlearned, innate, reflexive reaction triggered naturally in response to an unconditioned stimulus.

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

A formerly neutral stimulus that, through repeated pairings with an unconditioned stimulus, acquires the ability to elicit a conditioned response.

Conditioned Response (CR)

The learned reaction elicited by a conditioned stimulus after classical conditioning has occurred.

Stimulus Generalisation

The tendency for stimuli that are similar to the established conditioned stimulus to elicit the same conditioned response.

Stimulus Discrimination (Conditioning)

The learned ability to differentiate between a conditioned stimulus and other stimuli, restricting the conditioned response from applying inappropriately to all situations.

Extinction (Classical Conditioning)

The gradual weakening and elimination of a conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented in the absence of the unconditioned stimulus.

High Amplitude Sucking (HAS)

An experimental procedure used to measure infant speech discrimination by assessing increases in sucking rate when novel speech sounds are introduced following habituation.

Voice Onset Time (VOT)

The time interval between the release of a consonant burst and the onset of vocal fold vibration (voicing).

Categorical Speech Perception

The cognitive phenomenon where continuous variations in an acoustic spectrum (such as voice onset time) are perceived as discrete phonetic categories rather than continuous shades of sound.

Cooing

The earliest stage of speech sound production emerging around $2\,\text{months}$ of age, characterized by extended vowel sounds.

Reduplicated Babbling

The developmental speech stage appearing around $6\text{--}7\,\text{months}$ involving repetition of the identical consonant-vowel syllable over and over.

Variegated Babbling

The speech production stage emerging around $11\text{--}12\,\text{months}$ characterized by combining varied consonant and vowel syllable strings.

Vocabulary Burst

The rapid acceleration in an infant's productive vocabulary acquisition rate that occurs typically after learning the first $50\,\text{words}$.

Underextension

An early language error where a child applies a word too narrowly, restricting it to a specific single exemplar (e.g., applying 'dog' solely to the family pet).

Overextension

An early language error where a child uses a word too broadly to encompass items outside the appropriate category that share perceptual traits (e.g., using 'moon' for an orange or lamp).

Holophrase

A single word used by an infant that stands for and communicates an entire complex sentence or statement depending on situational context.

Reflex Arc

A neural circuit controlling a reflex action consisting of a receptor, sensory neuron, dorsal root ganglion, spinal relay neuron, ventral root, motor neuron, and effector muscle.

Thalamus

A subcortical forebrain structure that functions as the central sensory gateway, relaying incoming sensory signals to relevant areas of the cerebral cortex.

Basal Ganglia

A collection of subcortical forebrain nuclei responsible for motor control and movement regulation, as well as reward processing.

Hypothalamus

A subcortical brain structure located below the thalamus that regulates vital homeostatic body functions.

Amygdala

A temporal lobe subcortical structure critical for processing emotion, emotional memories, and fear conditioning.

Hippocampus

A subcortical forebrain structure necessary for the creation and consolidation of new long-term memories, though not responsible for storing memories permanently.

Anterograde Amnesia

The inability to form new episodic or semantic memories after the onset of brain trauma or surgical damage, while memories formed prior to the event remain intact.

Cortical Homunculus

A distorted physical representation of the human body mapped along the motor and somatosensory cortices, where anatomical size corresponds to the density of neural representation.