AP Psyc Unit 2: Cognition

AP Psychology Unit 2: Cognition

Perception

The process of interpreting sensory information influenced by external and internal factors.

Bottom-up processing

Perception that relies primarily on external sensory information.

Top-down processing

Perception that relies on internal prior expectations and knowledge.

Schemas

Cognitive frameworks or concepts that help organize and interpret information.

Perceptual set

A predisposition to perceive things in a certain way based on prior experiences.

Gestalt psychology

A theory that explains how humans organize their perceptual world through principles like closure, figure and ground, proximity, and similarity.

Attention

The interaction of sensation and perception, affected by internal and external processes.

Cocktail party effect

A phenomenon where individuals selectively attend to specific stimuli, such as their name, in a noisy environment.

Change blindness

A type of inattention where changes in the environment are not perceived.

Binocular depth cues

Cues for depth perception that involve both eyes, including retinal disparity and convergence.

Retinal disparity

The difference between the images projected onto each retina, contributing to depth perception.

Convergence

The inward movement of both eyes to perceive depth.

Monocular depth cues

Cues for depth perception that can be perceived with one eye, such as relative clarity and interposition.

Relative clarity

The perception that hazy objects are further away than clear objects.

Relative size

The perception that larger objects are closer and smaller objects are farther away.

Texture gradient

The perception that objects that are more densely clustered appear farther away.

Linear perspective

The visual effect where parallel lines appear to converge in the distance.

Interposition

The perception that an object is further away when it is partially obscured by another object.

Visual perceptual constancies

The ability to maintain the perception of an object despite changes in the visual field, including shape, size, color, and brightness constancy.

Apparent movement

The perception of movement in stationary objects.

Concepts

The mental categories that form the basis of thought.

Prototypes

The ideal or most representative example of a concept.

Assimilation

The process of incorporating new information into existing schemas without changing them.

Accommodation

The process of altering existing schemas to incorporate new information.

Algorithms

Step-by-step processes used to solve problems by trying all possible solutions.

Heuristics

Mental shortcuts used to make judgments and decisions, which can lead to errors.

Representativeness heuristic

A judgment error based on prior expectations or stereotypes.

Availability heuristic

A judgment error based on the most vivid or recent examples that come to mind.

Mental set

The tendency to approach problems in a particular way based on prior successful experiences.

Priming

The process by which exposure to a stimulus influences the response to a subsequent stimulus.

Framing

The way information is presented, influencing decision-making based on positive or negative connotations.

Gambler’s fallacy

The belief that past random events affect the probability of future random events.

Sunk-cost fallacy

The tendency to continue investing in a decision based on prior investments, even when it is not beneficial.

Executive functions

Cognitive processes that enable goal-directed behavior, organization, planning, and critical thinking.

Convergent thinking

The cognitive process of finding a single, well-defined solution to a problem.

Divergent thinking

The cognitive process of generating multiple unique ideas or solutions to a problem.

Lateral thinking

A problem-solving approach that uses unconventional reasoning to find solutions.