Cognitive Psychology – Comprehensive Vocabulary Review

A comprehensive set of vocabulary flashcards covering major theories, brain structures, cognitive processes, disorders, and research findings from the Cognitive Psychology lecture notes.

Cognition

The collection of mental processes such as memory, perception, language, decision-making, and attention.

Empiricism

Philosophical view that knowledge comes primarily from sensory experience (e.g., Locke, Hume).

Nativism

View that certain forms of knowledge are innate rather than acquired through experience (e.g., Descartes, Kant).

Structuralism

• Break down conscious experience into its smallest parts.

• Use introspection (looking inward) to examine thoughts, feelings, sensations.

Functionalism

Approach (James) focuses on the function of mental processes not stucture in real life

Behaviorism

School (Watson, Skinner) focusing exclusively on observable behavior and dismissing mental processes.

Gestalt Psychology

Perspective stressing that perception is organized as a whole, not merely the sum of parts (top-down).

Individual Differences

study of how people differ from one another in the way they think, learn, and behave.

Cognitive Revolution

Mid-20th-century shift back to studying the mind, spurred by WWII human-factors, Chomsky, neuroscience, and computers.

Information-Processing Approach

Paradigm viewing the mind as a serial, step-by-step system that processes input through memory stages.

Connectionism

Paradigm sees brain as interconnected units, parellel, learning adjusts the weight between units

Evolutionary Approach

Perspective that cognitive mechanisms evolved to solve adaptive problems faced by ancestors.

Ecological Approach

Paradigm emphasizing study of cognition in real-world, culturally embedded environments.

Hindbrain

Brain region controlling basic life functions such as breathing and heart rate.

Midbrain

Brain area involved in sensory relay and movement coordination.

Forebrain

Largest brain division housing subcortical structures and the cerebral cortex, site of most cognition.

Thalamus

Subcortical relay station that routes sensory information to appropriate cortical areas.

Hypothalamus

Brain structure regulating hunger, thirst, temperature, and other homeostatic needs.

Hippocampus

Medial-temporal structure essential for forming new long-term memories.

Amygdala

Almond-shaped structure involved in emotion processing and emotional memory.

Frontal Lobe

Cortical lobe responsible for planning, decision-making, and motor control (prefrontal, motor cortex).

Parietal Lobe

Cortical region handling spatial processing, attention, and somatosensory information.

Occipital Lobe

Primary visual processing center of the brain (shape, color, motion).

Temporal Lobe

Cortical area important for hearing, language, and memory storage.

Corpus Callosum

Broad band of nerve fibers connecting the left and right cerebral hemispheres.

Localization of Function

Concept that specific cognitive abilities reside in particular brain areas.

Double Dissociation

Neuropsychological method showing two functions rely on separate brain areas via complementary deficits.

CAT Scan

Structural imaging technique using X-rays to measure tissue density.

MRI

Non-radiative imaging technique using magnetic fields to produce detailed brain structure images.

ERP

Event-Related Potentials; meaures brain electrial activity via scalp elecrtodes

PET

Functional imaging method tracking radioactive glucose to measure metabolic brain activity.

fMRI

Technique measuring BOLD (blood-oxygen-level dependent) signals to reveal active brain regions.

Subtractive Logic

Method (Donders) isolating mental processes by comparing reaction times or brain activation between tasks.

Bottom-Up Processing

Data-driven perception flowing from sensory input to higher cognition.

Top-Down Processing

Concept-driven perception shaped by expectations, experience, and context.

Template Matching

Theory that stimuli are recognized by comparing them to exact stored patterns.

Feature Analysis

Model proposing objects are identified by detecting basic elements like lines and curves.

Prototype Matching

Recognition process comparing input to an idealized average representation, allowing flexible matches.

Apperceptive Agnosia

Disorder where patients cannot integrate visual features into a coherent whole.

Associative Agnosia

Condition involving intact copying ability but failure to name or recognize objects.

Prosopagnosia

‘Face blindness’—inability to recognize familiar faces despite normal vision.

Capgras Syndrome

Delusion that familiar people are impostors due to disrupted emotional recognition pathways.

Selective Attention

Ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out others.

Salience

Property that makes certain stimuli (e.g., one’s name) capture attention automatically.

Broadbent’s Filter Model

Early-selection theory

• Attention filters info based on physical features (e.g., pitch).
  
  

Problem: Can’t explain why we hear our name in an ignored channel (cocktail party effect).

Cocktail Party Effect

Phenomenon of noticing personally relevant stimuli (e.g., one’s name) in unattended channels.

Treisman’s Attenuation Model

Theory that unattended input is weakened, not eliminated, allowing important items through.

Deutsch-Norman Model

Late-selection theory

All info is processed for meaning; attention chooses what to respond to after processing.

Automaticity

Performance of tasks with little or no attentional resources after extensive practice.

Stroop Task

Demonstration where automatic reading interferes with naming ink colors, illustrating automaticity.

Controlled Processing

Slow, effortful, conscious mental activity used for novel or difficult tasks.

Automatic Processing

Fast, unconscious activity requiring minimal attention, typical of well-learned skills.

Visual Neglect

Attention disorder (usually right parietal damage) causing ignorance of stimuli on the opposite side.

Encoding

Process of transforming input into a memory representation.

Storage

Maintenance of encoded information over time.

Retrieval

Accessing stored information from memory.

Sensory Memory

Very brief storage of raw sensory information (iconic visual, echoic auditory).

Short-Term Memory (STM)

Temporary storage holding ~7±2 chunks for about 20 seconds without rehearsal.

Chunk

Meaningful unit grouping items in STM to expand capacity.

Brown-Peterson Task

Experimental test showing rapid decay of unrehearsed STM items.

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

Relatively permanent, unlimited storage of information encoded largely by meaning.

Primacy Effect

Better recall of early list items attributed to transfer into LTM.

Recency Effect

Enhanced recall of the most recent items due to presence in STM.

Encoding Specificity Principle

Memory retrieval is best when context at encoding matches context at retrieval.

Working Memory

Baddeley & Hitch model emphasizing active processing components rather than passive storage.

Central Executive

Working-memory component controlling attention and coordinating subsystems.

Phonological Loop

Subsystem handling verbal and auditory information in working memory.

Visuospatial Sketchpad

Subsystem maintaining visual and spatial images in working memory.

Episodic Memory

LTM system for personal experiences tied to specific times and places.

Semantic Memory

Storehouse of general knowledge, concepts, and language meanings.

Anterograde Amnesia

Inability to form new long-term memories after brain injury.

Retrograde Amnesia

Loss of memories acquired before brain damage.

Levels of Processing

Theory that deeper, semantic encoding leads to stronger, longer-lasting memories.

Elaborative Rehearsal

Deep processing by linking new info to meaning or existing knowledge.

Reconstructive Memory

View that recall is an active process influenced by schemas and expectations.

Schema

Structured knowledge framework guiding perception and memory reconstruction.

Flashbulb Memory

Vivid recollection of surprising, emotional events—often vivid but not necessarily accurate.

Eyewitness Suggestibility

Tendency for memory to be altered by misleading post-event information (Loftus).

False Memory

Remembering events or details that never occurred, often due to semantic associations.

Collins & Quillian Model

Concepts are stored hierarchically

Explicit Memory

Conscious recollection of information, assessed via recall or recognition.

Implicit Memory

Unconscious influence of past experience, seen in tasks like word completion.

Concept

Mental representation of a class or category (e.g., ‘dog,’ ‘furniture’).

Category

Collection of entities treated as equivalent because they share properties.

Classical View of Concepts

Theory that membership is determined by necessary and sufficient defining features.

Prototype Theory

Concepts represented by an ideal average; typicality determines category membership.

Exemplar Theory

Concepts stored as specific remembered examples rather than an abstract prototype.

Knowledge-Based Theory

View that categorization depends on understanding of item purpose or deeper meaning.

Conservative Focusing

Bruner’s strategy for concept learning by varying one attribute at a time.

Mental Set

Tendency to approach problems using habitual strategies that may hinder solutions.

Visual Imagery

Creation of mental pictures used for memory, reasoning, or spatial tasks.

Method of Loci

Mnemonic placing items along a familiar spatial path to aid recall.

Pegword System

Mnemonic linking items to a pre-memorized rhyming list (one-bun, two-shoe).

Dual Code Theory

Paivio’s idea that information encoded both verbally and visually is remembered better.

Analog Representation

Theory that mental images preserve the spatial properties of the original stimulus.

Propositional Representation

Theory that mental images are stored as abstract, language-like descriptions.

Mental Rotation

Task showing that rotating images mentally takes time proportional to degree rotated.

Mental Scanning

Imagery task where scanning distance within a mental image affects response time.

Phoneme

Smallest distinct sound unit in a language.

Morpheme

Smallest unit of language carrying meaning (e.g., ‘dogs’ = dog + s).