Introduction to Cognitive Psychology Exam Terms

A comprehensive set of flashcards covering key vocabulary terms and definitions from the Introduction to Cognitive Psychology course material.

Cognitive Psychology

Studying behavior to understand human cognition.

Cognitive Neuroscience

Combining information from behavior and brain neuroimaging techniques to understand human cognition.

Bottom-up Processing

Processing directly influenced by physical characteristics of stimuli.

Top-down Processing

Processing influenced by a person’s feelings and expectations.

Serial Processing

Completely processing one stimulus before processing the next.

Parallel Processing

Multiple cognitive processes occur at the same time.

Dissociation

Intact performance on one task but impaired performance on a different task for patients with acquired brain injury.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)

Magnetic pulses briefly disrupt brain function in a given area.

Lesion

Structural alteration within the brain caused by disease or injury.

Retinopy

Mapping between retina receptor cells and points on the surface of the visual cortex.

Lateral Inhibition

Activity in one neuron decreases because of activity in a nearby neuron.

Ventral Stream

Visual processing; object perception and recognition as well as perceptual representation.

Dorsal Stream

Visual processing; visually guided action.

Dichromacy

Deficiency in color vision with one missing cone class.

Negative Afterimage

Illusion of perceiving the complementary color to the one that has been fixated.

Law of Pragnanz

We perceive the simplest possible organization of the visual environment.

Holistic Processing

Processing that involves integrating information from an entire object.

Fusiform Face Area

Part of the brain associated with face and object processing.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

Brain-scanning technique based on the detection of positrons; good at spatial location but not time course.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

Brain-scanning technique based on imaging blood oxygenation using an MRI machine; good at spatial location and time course.

Mirror Neuron System

Neurons that respond to your own or someone else’s actions; help in imitation.

Change Blindness

Failure to detect various changes in objects in the visual environment.

Inattentional Blindness

Failure to detect an unexpected object appearing in the visual environment.

Divided Attention

Performing two tasks at the same time.

Neglect

Acquired brain injury with impaired visual processing of the left side of objects or objects presented in the left visual field.

Extinction

Acquired brain injury with impaired visual processing of an object in the left visual field when there is another one presented simultaneously in the right visual field.

Phonological Similarity Effect

Worse at recalling words in order when they sound the same than when they do not rhyme.

Word-Length Effect

Worse at remembering longer than shorter words.

Stroop Task

Harder to name ink color of words than to say word names.

Explicit Memory

Memory for information you can describe in words.

Implicit Memory

Memory for information you can’t describe in words.

Testing Effect

Retrieving information after studying leads to better retention than simply restudying.

Serial Reaction Time Task (SRT)

Participants respond quickly to a repeated sequence.

Proactive Interference

Recalling old instead of new information.

Retroactive Interference

Recalling new instead of old information.

Encoding Specificity Principle

Recalling information depends on match between encoding and retrieval environment.

Optic Array

Whole; the structural pattern of light falling on the retina.

Optic Flow

Part; changes in the pattern of light with movement of the observer or aspects of the environment.

Dichotic Listening Task

Listening to only one message when each ear receives different messages.

Cross-Modal Attention

Coordinating attention across multiple senses.