UCSD Psych 3 - Cognitive Foundations Lecture Flashcards

Vocabulary-style flashcards covering cognitive foundations, memory systems, perception, and key psychological studies.

Cognitively Active Learning

A process where learning occurs by making sense of the information with the goal of quality understanding instead of just learning facts.

Working Memory

An active workplace containing all information currently held active in the mind, characterized by a limited capacity.

Short Term Memory

A simple storage system for information.

Long Term Memory

Information we know but are not currently thinking about, possessing an unlimited capacity.

Prior Knowledge

What you already know; it guides the processes of selecting, organizing, and integrating new information.

Metacognition

Involves monitoring one's own learning and choosing appropriate study strategies.

Generative processing

Actively constructing knowledge by elaborating, integrating with prior knowledge, and organizing info into a comprehensible layout.

Non-Generative processing

Passively receiving knowledge, such as maintenance rehearsal or verbatim recall.

Generative Strategy Round-Ups

Five strategies including self-explaining, summarizing, mapping, self-testing (testing effect), and teaching others.

Cognitive Psychology

The scientific study of mental processes.

Cognitive Revolution

A response to behaviorism influenced by two major contributors.

Limitations of Behaviorism

Evidence from animals (Tolman) and humans (Chomsky) that behaviorism lacks sufficient explanatory power for all mental events.

Produced Response

A measurement in research involving analyzing actual responses during free recall.

Sensation

The stimulation of sensory receptors which produces neural impulses.

Perception

Our experience as a result of the stimulation of the senses.

Retina

The back of the eye containing photosensitive cells.

Cones

Photoreceptors good for detailed and color vision but poor in low light conditions.

Rods

Photoreceptors good for low light and motion sensing but poor for detail and color.

Fovea

The center of the retina which consists of densely packed cones.

Depth cue

Information that helps the visual system infer depth from the environment.

Ponzo Illusion

An illustration or lab example of linear perspective.

Color Constancy

The perception of an object's color as relatively constant even under varying illumination conditions.

The Dress Illusion

A visual phenomenon caused by the brain guessing about lighting conditions.

Algorithm

A rule that guarantees the right solution at its most basic form.

Heuristic

A mental shortcut that generally works for problem solving.

Gestalt principles

A set of principles stating perception is more than the sum of its parts, including good continuation, similarity, and pragnanz.

Blakemore & Cooper ($1970$)

Study where kittens raised with only vertical lines for $5$ months could not perceive horizontal orientations, showing the environment shapes the perceptual system.

Lee & Aronson ($1974$)

Moving room study showing vision has a powerful effect on balance and can override other senses.

Palmer ($1975$) Scene Schema

Research showing objects fitting a scene are identified correctly $80\%$ of the time, while non-fitting objects are only identified $40\%$ correctly.

McGurk Effect ($1976$)

The integration of visual and auditory info where seeing a "g" sound and hearing a "b" sound results in perceiving a "d" sound.

Early Selection

Minimal processing of unattended information, typically occurring with complex inputs when few cognitive resources are left over.

Late Selection

Relatively more processing of unattended info, typically occurring with simple inputs when more cognitive resources are available.

Dichotic listening

A task where different information is presented to each ear; subjects generally cannot report the content of the unattended ear.

Low-load task

A task that uses a small amount of a person's processing capacity.

High-load task

A task that uses a large amount of a person's processing capacity.

Automatic Processing

Processing that occurs without intention, uses only some cognitive resources, and requires extended training; it is impossible for difficult tasks.

Simons and Levin ($1998$)

A study on change blindness where $50\%$ of subjects did not notice a stranger was replaced by another person during an interaction.

Feature search

Searching for a target defined by a single attribute, such as a salient color or orientation.

Conjunction search

Searching for a target defined by the presence of two or more attributes.

Miller ($1956$) Capacity

Proposed the capacity of Short Term Memory is "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" ($7 \pm 2$) chunks.

Chunking

The process of combining smaller units into larger, meaningful units based on prior knowledge.

Chase & Simon ($1973$)

A memory task involving the reconstruction of a chess board, demonstrating that chunking depends on prior knowledge.

Phonological loop

A storage system in working memory for verbal and auditory information with a capacity of approximately $2$ seconds.

Visuospatial sketchpad

A storage system in working memory for visual and spatial information; it is limited in capacity.

Central Executive

The component of working memory that controls regulation, coordinates storage systems, focuses attention, and inhibits responses.

Word length effect

The phenomenon where memory for short words is better than memory for long words.

Phonological similarity effect

The confusion of words that sound similar, indicating that information in the phonological loop is coded acoustically.