GRE Psych - Cognitive

Heuristic

A mental shortcut that speeds judgment but can cause systematic errors or biases.

Phonological loop

The component of working memory that holds and rehearses verbal and auditory information.

Proactive interference

When old learning disrupts the recall of new information.

Chunking

Grouping individual items into larger meaningful units to expand short-term memory capacity.

Spreading activation

The idea that thinking of one concept primes related concepts in a semantic network.

Working memory

The limited-capacity system that holds and manipulates information briefly.

What does Baddeley’s model of working memory include?

A central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad.

Zeigarnik effect

The tendency to remember incomplete or interrupted tasks better than completed ones.

Semantic memory

Long-term memory for facts and general knowledge.

Cognitive dissonance

The psychological discomfort of holding contradictory beliefs, which motivates a change in attitude or behavior.

Serial position effect

Better recall of the first (primacy) and last (recency) items in a list.

Representativeness heuristic

Judging probability by how closely something matches a prototype, ignoring base rates.

Top-down processing

Perception guided by prior knowledge, context, and expectations.

Bottom-up processing

Perception that builds from raw sensory data without prior expectations.

Sensory memory

A very brief, large-capacity store of raw sensory input (iconic for vision, echoic for hearing).

How long does iconic memory last?

150 to 300 milliseconds.

Gardener’s multiple intelligences

Theory of several distinct intelligences, such as linguistic, spatial, and musical.

Universal grammar

Chomsky’s proposal that humans share an innate, biologically based capacity for language.

Procedural memory

Implicit long-term memory for skills and how to do things.

Algorithm

A step-by-step procedure that guarantees a correct solution, though it can be slow.

Framing effect

Letting the wording of options (e.g. gain vs loss) sway a decision.

Episodic memory

Long-term memory for specific personal experiences and events.

Availability heuristic

Judging the likelihood of an event by how easily examples come to mind.

Stroop effect

The slowed naming of an ink color when the word spells a different color.

What does the Stroop effect demonstrate?

Automatic reading interferes with controlled processing.

Retroactive interference

When new learning disrupts the recall of older information.

Morpheme

The smallest unit of meaning in a language.

Fluid intelligence

The ability to reason and solve novel problems, independent of acquired knowledge.

Functional fixedness

The tendency to see an object as usable only in its customary way.

Prospective memory

Remembering to perform an intended action in the future.

Confirmation bias

Seeking and favoring information that confirms one’s existing beliefs.

Encoding

The process of getting information to memory.

Mental set

The tendency to approach a problem in a way that worked before, even when unhelpful.

Long-term memory

Durable memory with effectively unlimited capacity; divided into explicit and implicit.

Phoneme

Smallest distinctive sound unit in a language.

Crystallized intelligence

Accumulated knowledge and skills built up over a lifetime.

Retrieval

The process of getting information back out of memory.

Short-term memory

Memory holding about seven items for roughly 15-30 seconds; expanded by chunking.

What is the capacity of short-term memory?

7 ± 2 items

Central executive

The attentional system that coordinates the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad.

Anchoring bias

Relying too heavily on the first piece of information when making decisions.

Spearman’s g

Charles Spearman’s general intelligence factor underlying performance across mental tasks.

Visuospatial sketchpad

The component of working memory responsible for handling visual and spatial information.

Sunk-cost fallacy

The tendency to follow through on an endeavor if we have already invested time, effort, or money into it, whether or not the current costs outweigh the benefits.

Belief perseverance

The tendency to cling to one's initial belief even after receiving new information that contradicts or disconfirms the basis of that belief.

Spontaneous recovery

When a behavior recovers unexpectedly after a period of extinction or lessening of the behavior when the stimulus is present.

State-dependent learning

A phenomenon in which the retrieval of information is better if the subject is in the same sensory context and physiological state as during the encoding phase.

Ebbinghaus forgetting curve

Suggests that we tend to halve our memory of new knowledge in a matter of days or weeks, unless we make a conscious effort to review the newly learned material.

Deep processing

When items are processed for their meaning; improves memory.

Shallow processing

When items are processed for their perceptual features; tends to decrease memory.

Vicarious punishment

The lessening of a behavior due to the subject observing others receiving negative reinforcement.

Overjustification effect

The process in which an external reward decreases an individual's intrinsic motivation to perform a specific task.

Flynn effect

The observed rise over time/generations in standardized intelligence test (IQ) scores.

Dichotic listening tasks

Psychological tests commonly used to investigate selective attention and how the brain processes auditory information played into both ears simultaneously.

Which schedule is most resistant to extinction?

Variable ratio

Variable ratio schedule

A schedule where rewards or reinforcements are delivered after an unpredictable number of responses.

Fixed ratio schedule

A schedule where a reward is delivered after an exact, set number of responses

Variable interval schedule

A schedule in which reinforcement is given to a response after specific amount of time has passed.

Fixed interval schedule

A schedule that provides reinforcement for the first correct response after a specific amount of time.

What is the Premack principle?

More probable behaviors can be used to reinforce less probable behaviors.

Stimulus generalization

The tendency to respond to stimuli that are similar to the original conditioned stimulus.

Stimulus discrimination

The ability of subjects to discriminate between stimuli and respond only to the stimulus that has resulted in reinforcement in past experiences.

Observational learning

The process of learning by watching others, considering their actions, and copying their behavior, attitudes, or emotional expressions.

Loss aversion

Tendency to perceive potential losses as more significant than equivalent gains.

Overextension

Early tendency to apply a word too broadly to many similar referents (e.g. calling all 4-legged animals doggie).

Overregularization

Early tendency to apply grammatical rules too broadly (e.g. saying goed instead of went).

Method of loci

Mnemonic device involving associating items to be remembered with specific physical locations.

Distributed practice combined with retrieval practice produces the ____ long-term retention.

Strongest

Inattentional blindness

A psychological lack of attention where an individual fails to perceive an unexpected stimulus in plain sight; not associated with any vision deficits.

Learning

A relatively permanent change in behavior as a result of experience.

Delayed conditioning

A conditioned stimulus is presented just before the unconditioned stimulus; the greater the delay, the less likely conditioning is to occur.

Trace conditioning

A neutral stimulus is presented and then taken away before the unconditioned stimulus appears.

Simultaneous conditioning

A neutral stimulus and unconditioned stimulus are presented together at the same time.

Backward conditioning

An unconditioned stimulus is presented before the neutral stimulus.

Extinction

The elimination of the CR through presenting the CS without the UCS repeatedly.

Higher-order conditioning

Learning which occurs when a previously learned CS is now used as the US to produce a CR to a new stimulus.

Operant conditioning

Learning that occurs when a subject performs certain voluntary behavior, and the consequences of the behavior determine the likelihood of its recurrence.

Instrumental learning

A type of associative learning where a behavior becomes more or less probable depending on its consequence.

Avoidance behaviors

Taking away the aversive stimulus before it begins.

Escape behaviors

Taking away the aversive stimulus after it has started.

Primary reinforcer

Something that is biologically, naturally important and therefore rewarding; e.g., food.

Secondary reinforcer

Something neutral that can become rewarding when associated with a primary reinforcer; e.g., tokens.

Generalized reinforcer

Secondary reinforcer that can be associated with several primary reinforcers; e.g. money.

Shaping

Positively reinforcing closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior.

Chaining

Initially positively reinforcing each behavior in a specific order, then giving rewards only when completing the whole sequence in order.

How is superstitious behavior formed?

When reinforcement occurs during an idiosyncratic behavior, the organism is likely to repeat that behavior, even though it doesn’t cause the reinforcement.

Latent learning

Learning in the absence of rewards

Insight

A sudden appearance of an answer or solution to a problem.

What are the four steps of observational learning, according to Albert Bandura?

Attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation.

What provides the biological basis for observational learning?

Mirror neurons are activated when you perform an action and when you observe someone else perform a similar action.

Long-term potentiation

Physiological change that correlates with a stable change in behavior due to experience.

Approach-avoidance conflict

The conflict one feels when a particular goal has both positive and negative valence, like going on a beach vacation when one is afraid to fly.

Overshadowing

One strong stimulus preventing conditioning to a weaker stimulus.

Discriminative stimulus

A cue that signals the availability of reinforcement or punishment following a particular behavior.

Partial-reinforcement extinction effect

Behaviors that are reinforced intermittently are more resistant to extinction than those reinforced continuously.

Phrase

Words grouped together to create a single unit of syntax in a sentence.

Syntax

An element of grammar that dictates the rules for phrase/sentence construction.

Prosody

The perception of tone inflections, accents, and emotional aspects of language that carry meaning.

You can change the ________ structure of a sentence without altering the _____ structure, or the meaning.

Surface; deep

Telegraphic speech

Taking away the grammar of a phrase and only leaving the content words, e.g. ‘Me want cookie.”