Cognitive Psychology Verbal Test Study Guide Flashcards

A complete set of vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical figures, and psychological concepts based on the unit study guide.

Cognitive psychology

The study of mental processes such as thinking, learning, memory, attention, perception, language, and problem solving.

Cognitive neuroscience

The study of how brain activity supports mental processes like memory, attention, language, decision making, and emotion.

Wilhelm Wundt

Helped establish psychology as a scientific field and is associated with early laboratory psychology.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Studied memory and forgetting; known for the forgetting curve.

William James

Studied consciousness, attention, and habits; viewed the mind as active and changing.

Behaviorism

Focuses on observable behavior, rewards, punishment, and learning from the environment.

Cognitive revolution

A shift back to studying internal mental processes scientifically, after behaviorism was seen as too limited.

EEG

Measures electrical activity in the brain.

MRI

Shows brain structure.

fMRI

Shows brain activity by measuring blood-flow changes.

Case studies/lesion studies

Study people with brain injury or differences to learn what areas support certain abilities.

Information processing model

Memory works through encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Sensory memory

The first, very brief stage of memory that holds sensory information.

Iconic memory

Visual sensory memory; what you briefly see.

Echoic memory

Auditory sensory memory; what you briefly hear.

Haptic memory

Touch sensory memory.

Short-term memory

Briefly holds information.

Working memory

Holds and uses information at the same time; a mental workspace.

Long-term memory

Stores information for longer periods, from minutes to years.

Explicit memory

Conscious memories, such as facts and personal events.

Implicit/procedural memory

Memories shown through actions and skills, such as driving or tying shoes.

Memory encoding

The process of taking in information and changing it into a form the brain can store.

Semantic encoding

Encoding meaning; usually the strongest type.

Recall

Retrieving information without many clues, such as an essay question.

Recognition

Identifying the correct answer from choices, such as multiple choice.

Relearning

Learning information again faster after forgetting it.

Decay theory

Memories fade over time if not used or reviewed.

Interference theory

Other information gets in the way of remembering.

Proactive interference

Old information blocks new information.

Retroactive interference

New information blocks old information.

Transience

Memories fade over time.

Absent-mindedness

Forgetting because of lack of attention.

Blocking

Temporary inability to retrieve information; tip-of-the-tongue feeling.

Misattribution

Remembering information but confusing its source.

Suggestibility

Memory is influenced by misleading information.

Bias

Current beliefs or feelings influence memory.

Persistence

Unwanted memories keep returning.

Sensation

Detecting information from the environment through the senses.

Perception

Interpreting and giving meaning to sensory information.

Bottom-up perception

Processing starts with sensory details and builds into meaning.

Top-down perception

Processing uses prior knowledge, expectations, memory, and context to interpret sensory information.

Multimodal perception

Combining information from more than one sense.

Heuristic

A mental shortcut used to make decisions quickly.

Availability heuristic

Judging based on what comes to mind easily.

Representativeness heuristic

Judging based on how much something matches a category or stereotype.

Anchoring

Relying too much on the first information given.

Confirmation bias

Looking for information that supports what you already believe.

Hindsight bias

Believing after an event that you knew it would happen.

Framing effect

Choices change depending on how information is presented.

Inductive reasoning

Specific examples lead to a general conclusion.

Deductive reasoning

A general rule leads to a specific conclusion.

Algorithm

A step-by-step method that guarantees a solution if followed correctly.

Means-end analysis

Breaking a big problem into smaller steps.

Working backward

Starting from the goal and figuring out prior steps.

Well-defined problem

Clear starting point, rules, goal, and usually one correct answer.

Ill-defined problem

Unclear goal or many possible solutions.

Functional fixedness

Seeing an object only in its usual use.

Mental set

Using an old strategy even when it does not work.

Creativity

The ability to produce ideas, solutions, or products that are new and useful.

Divergent thinking

Generating many possible ideas or solutions.

Convergent thinking

Narrowing options to one best or correct answer.

Wallas stages

Preparation, incubation, illumination, verification.

Selective attention

Focusing on one thing while filtering out distractions.

Automaticity

A task becomes automatic after practice and requires little conscious attention.

Phoneme

Smallest unit of sound.

Morpheme

Smallest unit of meaning.

Syntax

Rules for word order in sentences.

Semantics

Meaning of words and sentences.

Pragmatics

Social use of language.