Untitled Flashcards Set

Selective attention

The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.

Inattentional blindness

Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.

Visual capture

The tendency for vision to dominate the other senses.

Gestalt

An organized whole; emphasizes our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.

Figure-ground

The organization of the visual field into objects (figures) that stand out from their surroundings (ground).

Grouping

The perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups.

Depth perception

The ability to see objects in three dimensions and judge distance.

Visual cliff

A laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals.

Binocular cues

Depth cues that depend on the use of two eyes.

Retinal disparity

A binocular cue for perceiving depth; comparison of images from two eyeballs allows the brain to compute distance.

Convergence

A binocular cue for perceiving depth based on how much the eyes converge inward.

Monocular cues

Depth cues available to either eye alone.

Phi phenomenon

An illusion of movement created when adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession.

Perceptual constancy

Perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images change.

Perceptual adaptation

The ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or inverted visual field.

Perceptual set

A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.

Human factors psychology

A field exploring how people and machines interact and ensure safety and ease of use.

Extrasensory perception (ESP)

The controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input.

Parapsychology

The study of paranormal phenomena, including ESP and psychokinesis.

Memory

The persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information.

Flashbulb memory

A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event.

Encoding

The processing of information into the memory system.

Storage

The retention of encoded information over time.

Retrieval

The process of getting information out of memory storage.

Sensory memory

The immediate, very brief recording of sensory information.

Short-term memory

Activated memory that holds a few items briefly.

Long-term memory

The relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system.

Working memory

A newer understanding of short-term memory involving active processing.

Automatic processing

Unconscious encoding of incidental information.

Effortful processing

Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.

Rehearsal

Conscious repetition of information for maintenance or encoding.

Spacing effect

The tendency for distributed practice to yield better long-term retention.

Serial position effect

The tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list.

Visual encoding

The encoding of picture images.

Acoustic encoding

The encoding of sound, especially the sound of words.

Semantic encoding

The encoding of meaning, including word meanings.

Imagery

Mental pictures that aid effortful processing.

Mnemonics

Memory aids that use vivid imagery and organizational devices.

Chunking

Organizing items into familiar, manageable units.

Iconic memory

A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli.

Echoic memory

A momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli.

Long-term potentiation (LTP)

An increase in a synapse’s firing potential after rapid stimulation.

Amnesia

The loss of memory.

Implicit memory

Retention independent of conscious recollection;

Explicit memory

Memory of facts and experiences that can be consciously known.

Hippocampus

A neural center in the limbic system; processes explicit memories for storage.

Recall

A measure of memory that requires retrieving information learned earlier.

Recognition

A measure of memory that requires identifying previously learned items.

Relearning

A memory measure assessing the amount of time saved when learning material again.

Priming

The unconscious activation of particular associations in memory.

Déjà vu

The eerie sense that you have experienced something before.

Mood-congruent memory

The tendency to recall experiences consistent with one’s mood.

Proactive interference

The disruptive effect of prior learning on recall of new information.

Retroactive interference

The disruptive effect of new learning on recall of old information.

Repression

The defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts.

Misinformation effect

Incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event.

Source amnesia

Attributing an event to the wrong source.

Cognition

The mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Concept

A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

Prototype

A mental image or best example of a category.

Algorithm

A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a problem.

Heuristic

A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to solve problems efficiently.

Insight

A sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem.

Confirmation bias

The tendency to search for information that supports preconceptions.

Fixation

The inability to see a problem from a new perspective.

Mental set

A tendency to approach a problem in a particular way.

Functional fixedness

Thinking of things only in terms of their usual functions.

Representativeness heuristic

Judging likelihood based on how well things represent prototypes.

Availability heuristic

Estimating likelihood based on available memories.

Overconfidence

The tendency to be more confident than correct.

Belief perseverance

Clinging to initial conceptions after they have been discredited.

Intuition

An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought.

Framing

The way an issue is posed; can significantly affect decisions.

Language

Our spoken, written, or signed words and combinations to communicate meaning.

Phoneme

The smallest distinctive sound unit in language.

Morpheme

The smallest unit that carries meaning in a language.

Grammar

A system of rules in a language to enable communication.

Semantics

The set of rules for deriving meaning from language.

Syntax

The rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences.

Babbling stage

The stage of speech development starting at about 4 months.

One-word stage

The speech development stage from ages 1 to 2, where children speak mostly in single words.

Two-word stage

The stage of speech development where children speak mostly in two-word statements.

Telegraphic speech

Early speech stage where children use mostly nouns and verbs.

Linguistic determinism

The hypothesis that language determines thought.

Intelligence

Mental quality involving learning from experience and problem-solving.

Factor analysis

A statistical procedure identifying clusters of related items on a test.

General intelligence (g)

A general intelligence factor that underlies specific mental abilities.

Savant syndrome

A condition where a person has an exceptional specific skill despite general limitations.

Emotional intelligence

The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.

Creativity

The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.

Intelligence test

A method for assessing an individual's mental aptitudes using scores.

Mental age

A measure of intelligence test performance corresponding to a level of performance.

Stanford-Binet

The widely used American revision of Binet’s original intelligence test.

Intelligence quotient (IQ)

Defined as the ratio of mental age to chronological age multiplied by 100.

Aptitude test

A test designed to predict a person's future performance.

Achievement test

A test designed to assess what a person has learned.

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)

The most widely used intelligence test.

Standardization

Defining meaningful scores by comparison with a standardization group.

Normal curve

The symmetrical bell-shaped curve describing the distribution of attributes.

Reliability

The extent to which a test yields consistent results.