PSY 111 - Exam #3

System 1

memory system characterized by being fast, automatic, no sense of voluntary control; intuition & most common

System 2

memory system characterized by slow, effortful, requires attention; associated with logic and reasoning

Cognitive Heuristic

mechanisms to facilitate efficient information processing

Five Cognitive Heuristics

1. Availability
2. Representativeness
3. Conjunction Error
4. Anchoring
5. Confirmation Bias

Availability

cognitive heuristic used to judge frequency or likelihood; based on the assumption that things that are easy to think of occur more frequently

Representativeness

cognitive heuristic based on the relationship between a single instance or member of a whole category; assumes individuals are indicative of the whole category or group

Conjunction Error

cognitive heuristic based on the idea that people that the simultaneous occurrence of two events is more likely than the two events occurring separately, ignoring base rates

Anchoring

cognitive heuristic in which a reference point is used to guide decision making

Confirmation Bias

cognitive heuristic in which people seek out information that confirms their expectations and hypotheses

Short-Term Memory (STM)

type of memory involving information that is active

characterized by a short duration (30-60 sec) and a limited capacity (~7 pieces of info.)

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

type of memory involving past information not currently being thought about

characterized by long duration and unlimited capacity

Serial Position Effect

tendency to remember the first and last items in a list better than those in the middle

Recency Effect

phenomenon in which information you are exposed to later on is recall well because it is being dumped from working memory

Primacy Effect

phenomenon in which information you are exposed to early on is recalled well because rehearsal moves the information to long-term memory

Explicit Memory

memory involving conscious retrieval of past information

Implicit Memory

memory involving retrieval without thinking back to past information

Anterograde Amnesia

type of amnesia characterized by an inability to encode new information

Imagination Inflation

memory distortion with the tendency to falsely remember something when only just imagined

Leading Questions

questions worded to suggest a particular answer

The Testing Effect

finding that taking a test on previously studied material leads to better retention than repeated studying

Fluency Error

repeated exposure to material that leads to overconfidence in ability

Social Cognition

study of how we make sense of our own and other's behavior (demonstrates cognitive heuristics in action)

Downward Comparison

comparing yourself to something worse because it makes you seem better and improves self-esteem

False Uniqueness / Lake Wobegon Effect

tendency to see oneself as like others only a bit better on behaviors and traits expected and valued by reference groups

if a trait is highly valued, you are more likely to think you are above average

Egocentric Processing

your world is constrained by what you see and experience; we overweight our own perspective and underweight other's

Correspondence Bias

tendency to draw inferences about a person's dispositions from behaviors that can be explained by the situation

Fundamental Attribution Error

we attribute behavior to people's traits/personality rather than to the situation/environment

Stereotyping

drawing inferences based on category membership
^ usually a negative association, but essential to everyday life

Discrimination (social cognition)

unfair treatment of people based on category membership

Gestalt Principles

states that the "whole" of anything is greater than its parts and cannot be determined by studying parts in isolation

Illusion

principled mistake that occurs because of mechanisms that are normally correct

Types of Sensory Processing (4)

1. Transduction
2. Discrimination
3. Adaptation
4. Interpretation

Transduction

conversion of physical matter or energy into neural code

Discrimination (sensation + perception)

the perceptual differentiation of stimuli, particularly closely related sensory stimuli

Adaptation

processes by which our senses adjust to different stimuli

Troxler's Fading

phenomenon in which repeated staring normalizes the eye to a stimulus, the eye becomes fatigued, and the stimulus fades out

(example of Adaptation)

Opponent Processing

phenomenon in which input from cones is processed by opponent cell (red/green or blue/yellow) and signals are suppressed

(example of Adaptation)

Interpretation

part of the perception process, in which we assign meaning to our experiences using mental structures known as schemata

Proximal Stimulus

patterns of stimuli from objects and events that actually reach your senses

supplemented by context, expectations, and cognitive heuristics

Distal Stimulus

objects or events in the environment that stimulate or act on a sensory organ

Apparent Motion

objects appearing in nearby locations that appear to have moved there

Depth Perception

ability to see objects as having volume and to see relative position in 3D environment

Monocular Depth Cues (4)

1. occlusion/interpretation
2. relative size
3. texture gradients
4. linear gradients

Inattentional Blindness

failure to perceive an unexpected stimulus in plain sight

Attention

the concentration of awareness on some phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli

Intelligence

capacity to acquire, manipulate, and apply knowledge

how well the mind can solve novel problems and learn from experiences

Crystallized Intelligence

acquired knowledge
(increases with age)

Fluid Intelligence

ability to manipulate information, think logically, and problem solve
(decreases with age; impaired by fatigue, depression, and TBI)

Spearman's Analysis/General Intelligence (G)

states intelligence is determined by a single measurable factor that underlies performance in cognitive domains (which are interrelated)

Binet's 1911 Mental Age Scale

(first IQ test) developed to identify French children who needed extra help in school

Flynn Effect

tendency of IQ scores to change over time, specifically an increase in population's IQ scores generationally

Emotional Intelligence

ability to understand, recognize, and control your own emotion and the ability to understand, identify, and respond to other's

Multiple Intelligence Theory

theory that proposes nine different types of intelligence but since scores across different types are correlated, there is no supportive evidence

Grit

ability to stay focused on a long-term goal

Development

a result of interaction between biological, physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional factors

Piaget's Theory of Development

theory that children's intelligence undergoes changes as they grow, in stages that approximately correspond with different age periods

Schema

mental frameworks developed to understand the world

Assimilation

process of expanding one's mental framework

Accommodation

process of developing brand new mental frameworks

Piaget's Stages of Development (4)

1. Sensorimotor
2. Preoperational
3. Concrete Operational
4. Formal Operational

Sensorimotor Stage

developmental stage characterized by:
- some reflexes
- trouble differentiating self from objects
- lack of object permanence

[age range = birth-2 years old]

Preoperational Stage

developmental stage characterized by:
- development of language
- symbolic thought (imagination + symbolism)
- egocentric processing
- conservation (can only think of one thing at a time)

[age range = 2-7 years old]

Concrete Operational Stage

developmental stage characterized by:
- logical thinking
- comfortable with conservation and reversibility
- still struggle with abstract ideas and connecting logic to specific cases

[age range = 7-12 years old]

Formal Operational Stage

developmental stage characterized by:
- thinking logically about abstract ideas
- testing hypotheses systematically
- playing with hypothetical or counterfactual ideas and the future

[age range = 12+ years old]

Executive Function

set of control processes that enable goal-directed thought and behavior

Response Inhibition

ability to override inappropriate response tendencies