🧠 AP Psychology Unit 2: Cognition

Perception

The process of organizing and interpreting the information we obtain through our senses.

Sensation

The act of detecting stimuli through the senses.

Top-down processing

Perception that relies on prior experiences and expectations to interpret sensory input.

Proofreader’s illusion

Failure to notice errors when reading typed materials.

Bottom-up processing

Perception that starts at sensory receptors and builds up to higher levels of processing.

Schemas

Mental frameworks that organize and build on past experiences.

Perceptual sets

A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.

Selective attention

Focusing on a particular stimulus while tuning out other stimuli in the environment.

Cocktail party effect

The ability to focus on a specific conversation or sound in a noisy setting.

Change blindness

Failure to notice changes in the environment.

Gestalt psychology

Focuses on human tendencies to group elements together into meaningful patterns.

Proximity (Gestalt principle)

Objects placed close together are perceived as a single group.

Similarity (Gestalt principle)

Similar objects or patterns are perceived as one cohesive unit.

Closure (Gestalt principle)

The brain fills in missing information when viewing a familiar but incomplete object.

Figure & ground (Gestalt principle)

The visual system separates what we see into two categories: figure (object of focus) and ground (background).

Depth perception

The ability to perceive relative distance of objects in the visual field.

Binocular depth cues

Depth cues that depend on the use of two eyes.

Monocular depth cues

Depth cues available to either eye alone.

Explicit memory

Information that we consciously recall, requiring effort and thought.

Implicit memory

Information learned without being fully aware of it.

Working memory model

Explains how working memory processes and temporarily holds information for cognitive tasks.

Metacognition

Thinking about one's own thinking and learning processes.

Trial and error

A problem-solving strategy that involves repeating trials and learning from errors.

Heuristics

Mental shortcuts based on past experiences that reduce mental effort in decision-making.

Cognitive biases

Systematic patterns of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment.

Flashbulb memories

Detailed memories formed around events that are extremely stressful, traumatic, or emotional.

Amnesia

Temporary or permanent loss of memory.

Context-dependent memory

Retrieval improved when an individual's environment matches the one in which the information was learned.

Proactive interference

When older memories interfere with the recall of newer memories.

Misinformation effect

When misleading information distorts memories.

Fluid intelligence

The ability to quickly reason and solve abstract problems.

Crystallized intelligence

The accumulated knowledge and verbal skills an individual possesses.

Reliability

The consistency of test results over time.

Validity

The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to.