Unit 04: Cognitive Psychology Flashcards

Concept

A mental representation that groups shared features of objects, events, or ideas. They help organize knowledge and facilitate communication of our thoughts.

Prototype

A mental image or best example that embodies a category of concepts. For example, robins might best represent the concept of a bird.

Algorithm

A sometimes time-consuming, step-by-step procedure that guarantees a solution to a problem. Examples include trial and error, and flow charts.

Heuristic

A mental shortcut or rule of thumb that simplifies decision making and problem solving, often leading to quick conclusions without exhaustive analysis, but not guaranteed to give the correct answer.

Gambler’s Fallacy

The belief that past independent events can influence the likelihood of future occurrences, such as thinking a winning streak will lead to a loss.

Sunk-Cost Fallacy

The tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment in money, effort, or time has been made, even when the costs outweigh the benefits.

Framing

The way information is presented or worded, which can significantly affect decision making and judgments by influencing the interpretation of the facts. (95% fat free sounds better than contains 5% fat)

Availability Heuristic

A mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind faster cause people to evaluate a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. If you are at the beach and first thing you think about is the movie JAWS, you are less likely to get into the water.

Representativeness Heuristic

A cognitive bias in which an individual categorizes a situation based on previous experiences or stereotypes, often leading to faulty conclusions. For instance, assuming someone is a librarian because they are introverted and enjoy reading.

Mental Set

A tendency to approach problems in a specific way, often based on past experiences, which can limit the ability to see alternative solutions. (Chocolates and Roses)

Functional Fixedness

A cognitive bias that limits a person to use an object only in the way it is traditionally used, thereby hindering problem-solving. For example, if a person only sees a hammer as a tool for driving nails, they might overlook its potential as a paperweight.

Executive Functioning

A set of cognitive processes that are necessary for controlling behavior and managing tasks, including working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. These functions enable individuals to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks efficiently.

Divergent Thinking

A cognitive process used in problem-solving that involves generating multiple, unique solutions to a question or challenge. AKA- creative thinking

Explicit Memories

A type of long-term memory in the hippocampus that involves conscious recollection of facts and events. Explicit memories can be further divided into episodic memories, which are personal experiences, and semantic memories, which are general knowledge. Sometimes called declarative memories.

Implicit Memories

A type of long-term memory that operates automatically and unconsciously in the cerebellum, allowing individuals to perform tasks without conscious awareness or recollection. Implicit memories include skills and conditioned responses, like riding a bike. Sometimes called procedural memories.

Prospective Memory

The ability to remember to perform actions or tasks in the future, such as remembering appointments or intentions. It involves planning and executing tasks at a later time.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)

A long-lasting enhancement in signal transmission between neurons that results from stimulating them simultaneously. In other words, the synapses get stronger once something is learned and repeated.

Working Memory

A cognitive system that temporarily holds and manipulates information necessary for complex tasks such as learning, reasoning, and comprehension. It plays a critical role in actively managing and processing information. Engages in a dynamic interaction with several components, namely the central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad, toprocessinformationintolong-termmemory

Central Executive

The main component of working memory that directs attention and manages the flow of information between the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad, coordinating cognitive tasks.

Multi-store Memory Model

A psychological model that describes how information is processed through three distinct stages: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory, illustrating the flow of information in memory encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Levels of Processing

A theory that suggests memory retention depends on the depth of processing, with deeper, more meaningful processing leading to better retention than shallow, surface-level processing. Shallowest to deepest: structural, phonemic, and semantic.

Method of loci

A mnemonic technique that involves visualizing a familiar place or route to associate with items to be remembered, aiding in retrieval through spatial memory.

Distributed Practice

A learning strategy known as the spacing effect that involves spreading out study sessions over time, rather than cramming, to enhance retention and performance. This approach capitalizes on the spacing effect to improve long-term memory.

Mass Practice

A learning strategy where study sessions are conducted in a single, concentrated block of time, often referred to as cramming. This approach can lead to lower retention compared to spaced out studying.

Serial Position Effect

The tendency to recall the first and last items in a series or list more effectively than the middle items, often used to explain memory performance.

Primacy Effect

The tendency to better remember the first items in a list due to increased attention and rehearsal, which enhances memory retention.

Recency Effect

The phenomenon where items presented at the end of a list are more likely to be remembered than those in the middle. It is part of the serial position effect in memory studies.

How many items are said to be stored in short-term memory

7 ± 2

Maintenance Rehearsal

A memory retention technique that involves repeatedly reviewing information to keep it in short-term memory. Not the most effective.

Elaborative Rehearsal

A memory technique that involves linking new information to existing knowledge by creating meaningful associations, enhancing long-term retention.

Superior Autobiographical Memory

A rare condition allowing individuals to recall personal life events in extraordinary detail, often with perfect accuracy.

Retrograde Amnesia

A type of memory loss where an individual is unable to recall events that occurred before a specific point in time, often due to injury or trauma.

Anterograde Amnesia

A type of memory loss where an individual is unable to form new memories due to damage of the hippocampus after a specific event, typically resulting from brain injury or illness.

Infantile Amnesia

The inability of adults to retrieve memories from early childhood, typically before the age of 3 to 4 years.

Recall

is the mental process of retrieving information from memory, without the help of context clues.

Recognition

A memory retrieval process that identifies previously learned information from a set of options, often contrasted with recall.

Priming

The activation of certain associations in memory, which influences responses to related stimuli without conscious awareness.

Context-Dependent Memory

is the phenomenon where the ability to recall information is enhanced when the retrieval context is similar to the encoding context. We remember things better in the same place we first learned them.

State-Dependent Memory

A type of memory retrieval that is influenced by the physical state an individual is in at the time of encoding and retrieval. It suggests that memory is enhanced when the state at retrieval matches the state at encoding.

Mood-Congruent Memory

A type of memory retrieval where a person's current mood influences the recall of memories that are same with that emotion. Depressed individuals recall sad thoughts easier.

The Forgetting Curve

Refers to the decline of memory retention over time, showing that information is forgotten rapidly after learning and levels off over time. Most people only retain about 1/3 of what they were first taught.

Encoding Failure

The inability to recall information due to not paying attention to the stimulus at the time of learning. It suggests that information may never have entered long-term memory. (not being able to recall what a penny looks like because you never really paid attention to it).

Proactive Interference

A phenomenon where old memories interfere with the retrieval of new information, making it difficult to remember NEW events.

Retroactive Interference

Occurs when new information interferes with the retrieval of old information, leading to forgetting previously learned material, making it difficult to remember OLD information.

Misinformation Effect

The impairment of memory that occurs when a person's recall of an event is influenced by inaccurate information presented after the event, often leading to false memories, such as in Loftus’ hit vs. smashed car crash experiment.

Source Amnesia

A memory error in which a person recalls information but cannot remember where or how they learned it, often leading to confusion about the origin of the memory.

Memory Consolidation Theory

The process by which recent memories are transformed into stable, long-term memories through various stages of storage and retrieval.

ImaginationInflation

A cognitive phenomenon where imagining an event increases the likelihood of falsely recalling that event as having happened, often leading to the creation of vivid, yet incorrect, memories.

Chunking

A memory strategy that involves grouping information into manageable and meaningful units to improve retention and recall. This technique enhances memory performance by reducing the cognitive load.

Semantic Memory

A type of long-term memory that involves the storage and recall of factual information, concepts, and general knowledge about the world.