Cognition AP Psych WIP

Selective attention

focusing conscious awareness on a particular stimulus

Cocktail party effect

ability to focus on one voice/conversation while lots of background noise is occuring

Inattentional blindness

failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere

Change blindness

failing to notice changes in the environment; a form of inattentional blindness

Bottom-up processing

Beginning with sensory receptors and working way up to brain’s integration of sensory information

Top-down processing

Draw from experiences/expectations first when constructing perceptions

Perceptual set

A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another

People tend to organize visual sensations into a gestalt

meaning a ‘‘form’’ or a ‘‘whole’’

Figure-ground

organization of the visual field into objects that stand out from their surroundings

Grouping

perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups

Depth perception

ability to see objects in 3d although images that strike the retina are 2d; allows us to judge distance

Binocular cues

a depth cue; such as retinal disparity, that depends on the use of two eyes

Convergence

a cue to nearby objects’ distance, enabled by the brain combining retinal images

Retinal disparity

a binocular cue for perceiving depth; greater disparity (difference) between two images, the closer the object

Monocular cues

a depth cue, such as interposition or linear perspective, available to either eye alone

Stroboscopic movement

an illusion of continuous movement (as in motion picture) experienced when viewing a rapid series of slightly varying still images

Phi phenomenon

an illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession

Autokinetic effect

illusory movement of a still spot in a dark room

Perceptual constancy

perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images change

Perceptual adaptation

ability to adjust to changed sensory input

Cognition

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Metacognition

cognition about our cognition; keeping track of and evaluating our mental processes

Concepts

a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

Prototype

a mental image or best example of a category

Schemas

a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information

Assimilate

interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas

Accommodate

(1) in sensation and perception, the process by which the eye’s lens changes shape to focus images of near or far objects on the retina or (2) in developmental psychology, adapting our current schemas (understandings) to incorporate new information

Convergent thinking

narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution

Divergent thinking

expanding the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that diverges in different directions

Executive functions

cognitive skills that work together, enabling us to generate, organize, plan, and implement goal-directed behavior

Algorithms

logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem

Heuristics

a simple thinking strategy — a mental shortcut — that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than an algorithm

Insight

a sudden realization of a problem’s solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions

Conformation bias

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

Fixation

in cognition, the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an obstacle to problem solving

Mental set

a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past

Intuition

an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning

Representative heuristic

judging the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information

Availability heuristic

judging the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common

Belief perseverance

the persistence of one’s initial conceptions even after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

Framing

the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgment