AP MEYERS PSYCHOLOGY UNIT 2 KEY TERMS

Selective Attention

The cognitive process of focusing on a specific aspect of information while ignoring other stimuli. It allows individuals to concentrate on relevant details and filter out distractions.

Inattentional Blindness

A phenomenon where individuals fail to perceive an unexpected stimulus in plain sight due to focused attention on a different task or object.

Change Blindness

A perceptual phenomenon where a change in a visual stimulus goes unnoticed by the observer, often due to a lack of attention to the area where the change occurs.

Perceptual Set

A mental predisposition to perceive things in a particular way, influenced by prior experiences, expectations, and context.

Gestalt

A psychological approach that emphasizes holistic processing of visual information, asserting that the whole of a perception is greater than the sum of its parts.

Figure-Ground

The organization of visual elements into figures that stand out against a background, where the figure is the focus and the ground is the surrounding area.

Grouping

The process of organizing visual elements into groups or unified wholes based on criteria such as proximity, similarity, closure, and continuity.

Depth Perception

The ability to perceive the distance of objects and the spatial relationship between them, allowing for a three-dimensional understanding of the environment.

Visual Cliff

An experimental setup used to test depth perception in infants and animals, consisting of a glass surface that creates an illusion of a drop-off.

Binocular Cue

A visual signal for depth perception that requires both eyes to work together, such as convergence and retinal disparity.

Convergence

The inward movement of both eyes toward each other when looking at a close object, which helps the brain gauge distance.

Retinal Disparity

The slight difference in images perceived by each eye, which provides depth information; the brain uses this disparity to calculate distance to objects.

Monocular Cue

A visual signal for depth perception that requires only one eye, such as size, texture, and overlap.

Stroboscopic Movement

The perception of motion that occurs when a series of static images are presented in rapid succession, creating the illusion of fluid movement.

Phi Phenomenon

The optical illusion of motion that occurs when a series of images are presented in rapid succession, creating the perception of continuous movement. This phenomenon is commonly observed in film and animation, where still images appear to move when shown in quick succession.

Autokinetic Effect

The illusion of motion experienced when a stationary light in a dark environment appears to move due to small eye movements.

Perceptual Constancy

The perception that objects remain stable and unchanged despite changes in sensory input, such as distance or angle. This phenomenon helps maintain a consistent experience of the environment.

Color Constancy

The perception of consistent color of objects, even when the lighting conditions change, allowing colors to appear the same in different illuminations.

Perceptual Adaptation

The ability of the brain to adjust to changes in sensory input, enabling individuals to maintain a stable perception of their environment despite alterations, such as changes in vision or hearing.

Cognition

The mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses, encompassing aspects like perception, reasoning, and decision-making.

Metacognition

The awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes, including the ability to regulate and monitor cognitive activities.

Concept

A mental representation or idea that categorizes and groups similar objects, events, or ideas, allowing individuals to organize their knowledge and experiences.

Prototype

A mental representation or typical example of a category that incorporates the most common and representative features of that category.

Jean Piaget

A Swiss psychologist known for his theory of cognitive development in children, emphasizing how they construct knowledge through interactions with their environment.

Schema

A cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and interpret information, formed based on past experiences.

Assimilation

The process of incorporating new experiences into existing schemas without changing the schema. It is a key mechanism in Piaget's theory of cognitive development.

Accommodation

The process of altering existing cognitive schemas or creating new ones in response to new information or experiences.

Creativity

The ability to generate, develop, and express new ideas or concepts, often involving original thinking and problem-solving. It encompasses both artistic expression and innovative solutions in various fields.

Convergent Thinking

A type of thinking that focuses on finding the single best answer to a problem by integrating specific information and knowledge.

Divergent Thinking

A thought process that explores multiple possible solutions and ideas, emphasizing creativity and open-ended exploration rather than a single correct answer.

Robert Sternberg

An American psychologist known for his work on intelligence, creativity, and wisdom. He developed the triarchic theory of intelligence, which includes analytical, creative, and practical components.

Executive Functions

Cognitive processes that manage and regulate other cognitive abilities, such as planning, attention, problem-solving, and impulse control.

Algorithm

A step-by-step procedure or formula for solving a problem or completing a task, often used in mathematical and computer programming contexts.

Heuristic

A mental shortcut used to simplify problem solving and decision making, enabling quicker judgments.

Insight

A deep understanding or sudden realization of a problem's solution or an idea, often leading to a new perspective.

Wolfgang Köhler

A German psychologist known for his work in Gestalt psychology and studies on problem-solving in animals, particularly apes.

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to search for, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.

Fixation

A cognitive bias where an individual becomes stuck on a particular approach to a problem, hindering their ability to see alternative solutions.

Mental Set

The tendency to approach problems using a mindset that has worked in the past, even if it's not the most effective solution in the current situation.

Intuition

The ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. It often acts as a guiding sense in decision-making.

Amos Tversky

A prominent cognitive psychologist known for his work on decision-making and heuristics, particularly in collaboration with Daniel Kahneman. He contributed significantly to understanding how people make choices under uncertainty.

Daniel Kahneman

A renowned psychologist who significantly contributed to the fields of behavioral economics and cognitive psychology. He is famous for his research on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, often in collaboration with Amos Tversky.

Representativeness Heuristic

A mental shortcut used to make judgments about the probability of an event based on how closely it resembles an existing prototype or stereotype. This heuristic often leads to faulty reasoning.

Availability Heuristic

A mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. This can lead to biased judgments based on recent or memorable events.

Overconfidence

A cognitive bias that causes individuals to overestimate their knowledge, abilities, or the accuracy of their beliefs. This often results in greater risk-taking in decision-making.

Belief Perseverance

The tendency to hold on to one’s initial beliefs even when evidence suggests they are false. This can result in an inability to consider alternative viewpoints or new information.

Framing

The way information is presented can significantly influence perceptions and decision-making, impacting how choices are perceived and values assigned.

Nudge

A subtle policy shift or change in how choices are presented, intended to influence people's decisions and behavior without restricting their options.

Memory

The mental capacity to encode, store, and retrieve information, experiences, and skills over time.

Recall

The process of retrieving information from memory, which can be aided by cues or contexts related to the learned material.

Recognition

The ability to identify previously encountered information or stimuli from a set of options, distinguishing it from new information.

Relearning

The process of learning information again that has been previously learned and stored in memory. It often leads to quicker recall and better retention compared to initial learning.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

A German psychologist known for his work on memory, specifically the forgetting curve and the spacing effect, exploring how information is relearned over time.

Encoding

The process of transforming sensory input into a form that can be stored in memory, which involves the organization and application of information for effective storage and recall.

Storage

The process of retaining encoded information in the brain for future retrieval, allowing individuals to access learned information over varying periods of time.

Retrieval

The process of accessing and recalling stored information from memory when needed, which is essential for using learned material in various contexts.

Parallel Processing

Richard Atkinson

An American psychologist known for his work on memory and the development of the multi-store model of memory, which includes sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

Richard Shiffrin

An American psychologist who, along with Richard Atkinson, developed the multi-store model of memory, contributing to the understanding of information processing and memory storage.

Sensory Memory

The initial stage of memory that retains incoming sensory information for a very brief period, typically a few seconds.

Short-Term Memory

The part of the memory system that temporarily holds information for processing, typically lasting about 20 to 30 seconds, and can hold approximately 7±2 items.

Long-Term Memory

The final stage of memory that stores information for extended periods, ranging from minutes to a lifetime.

Working Memory

A limited capacity system that temporarily holds and manipulates information for cognitive tasks, often considered an extension of short-term memory.

Central Executive

The component of working memory that directs attention and manages cognitive resources, coordinating between other memory subsystems.

Phonological Loop

A component of working memory that holds and manipulates verbal and auditory information, including speech and sounds.

Visuospatial Sketchpad

The subsystem of working memory responsible for storing and manipulating visual and spatial information, enabling tasks such as mental imagery and navigation.

Neurogenesis

The process of generating new neurons in the brain, which can occur throughout life, especially during development and in response to learning or environmental changes.

Eric Kandel

A neuroscientist known for his research on the molecular mechanisms of learning and memory, particularly in the study of sea slugs.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)

A lasting increase in synaptic strength following high-frequency stimulation of a synapse, believed to be a key mechanism underlying learning and memory.

Explicit Memory

A type of long-term memory that involves conscious recollection of facts and events, allowing individuals to recall specific experiences or information.

Effortful Processing

The encoding of information that requires conscious effort and attention to process, often involving strategies like rehearsal and organization.

Automatic Processing

The unconscious encoding of information such as space, time, and frequency, which occurs without intentional effort or attention.

Implicit Memory

A type of long-term memory that influences thoughts and behaviors without conscious awareness, often related to skills, habits, and conditioned responses.

Iconic Memory

The visual sensory memory that holds a brief snapshot of visual stimuli, typically lasting only a fraction of a second.

Echoic Memory

A type of sensory memory that retains auditory information for a brief period after the sound has ended, allowing for the processing of sounds.

George A. Miller

A prominent psychologist known for his work in cognitive psychology, particularly in the areas of memory and information processing. He is famous for the concept of "the magical number seven, plus or minus two," which describes the capacity limits of working memory.

Chunking

A memory technique that involves grouping individual pieces of information into larger, more manageable units to enhance retention and recall.

Mnemonics

Memory aids that use patterns or associations to enhance recall, often employing visual or verbal techniques.

Spacing Effect

The phenomenon where information is better retained when learning is spread out over time, rather than in a single session. It emphasizes the benefits of distributed practice for memory enhancement.

Testing Effect

The phenomenon where retrieving information from memory improves long-term retention of that information, often more effectively than just studying it.

Shallow Processing

A cognitive processing strategy that involves a basic level of encoding information, focusing on superficial characteristics such as appearance or sound, rather than its meaning.

Deep Processing

A cognitive processing method involving the semantic encoding of information, which leads to improved retention and understanding compared to shallow processing.

Semantic Memory

A type of long-term memory that involves the storage and recall of factual information and concepts, independent of personal experience.

Episodic Memory

A type of long-term memory that involves the recollection of specific events, situations, and experiences, including contextual details such as time and place.

Hippocampus

A critical brain structure involved in the formation of new memories and in connecting emotions and senses to those memories.

Memory Consolidation

The process by which short-term memories are transformed into long-term memories, often occurring during sleep.

Flashbulb Memory

A vivid, detailed memory of an emotionally significant event, often retained for a long time.

Priming

A cognitive process that makes certain ideas, memories, or concepts more accessible and influential in subsequent judgments or behaviors. It often occurs unconsciously and can be triggered by prior exposure to related stimuli.

Encoding Specificity Principle

The hypothesis that the ability to retrieve information is improved when the conditions at the time of retrieval match those present at the time of encoding.

Mood-Congruent Memory

The tendency to recall memories that are consistent with one's current mood, which can enhance memory retrieval depending on emotional state.

Serial Position Effect

The tendency to remember the first and last items in a list better than the middle items. This phenomenon is often explained by the recency and primacy effects.

Interleaving

The practice of mixing different topics or types of material while studying to improve retention and understanding.

Anterograde Amnesia

A type of memory loss that affects the ability to create new memories following an event, often due to brain damage or trauma.

Retrograde Amnesia

The inability to recall memories of events that occurred before the onset of amnesia, often affecting autobiographical memories.

Proactive Interference

The phenomenon where previously learned information disrupts the recall of new information.

Retroactive Interference

A phenomenon where new information interferes with the retrieval of previously learned information, typically occurring when learning new material affects the recall of old material.

Repression

A defense mechanism in which disturbing thoughts, memories, or feelings are unconsciously blocked from awareness.

Reconsolidation

The process by which memories are recalled and then stored again for later retrieval, potentially altering the original memory.

Elizabeth Loftus

A cognitive psychologist known for her work on the malleability of human memory, particularly the misinformation effect and the unreliability of eye witness testimony.

Misinformation Effect

A phenomenon where a person's recall of episodic memories becomes less accurate due to the introduction of misleading information after the event.