Psych. Unit 2 terms

Selective attention

The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.

Inattentional blindness

Failing to see visible objects when attention is directed elsewhere.

Change blindness

Failing to notice changes in the environment.

Perceptual set

A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.

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 (the figure) that stand out from their surroundings (the 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 cue

Depth cues, such as retinal disparity and convergence, that depend on the use of two eyes.

Convergence

A binocular cue for perceiving depth; the extent to which the eyes converge inward when looking at an object.

Retinal disparity

A binocular cue for perceiving depth by comparing images from the retinas in the two eyes.

Monocular cue

Depth cues available to either eye alone.

Stroboscopic movement

A phenomenon of apparent movement created by presenting a series of still images in rapid succession.

Phi phenomenon

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

Autokinetic effect

A phenomenon where a stationary small spot of light appears to move in a dark environment.

Perceptual constancy

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

Color constancy

Perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected.

Perceptual adaptation

In vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or inverted visual field.

Cognition

All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Metacognition

Thinking about thinking; an awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes.

Concept

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

Prototype

A mental image or best example of a category.

Jean Piaget

A renowned developmental psychologist known for his theory of cognitive development.

Schema

A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Assimilation

Interpreting new experiences in terms of existing schemas.

Accommodation

Adapting current understandings to incorporate new information.

Creativity

The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.

Convergent thinking

Narrows available problem solutions to determine the single best solution.

Divergent thinking

Expands the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that diverges in different directions.

Robert Sternberg

Psychologist known for his triarchic theory of intelligence and work on creativity.

Executive functions

A set of cognitive processes necessary for cognitive control of behavior.

Algorithm

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

Heuristic

A simple thinking strategy that often allows judgments and problem-solving more efficiently.

Insight

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

Wolfgang Köhler

A Gestalt psychologist who studied insight learning in chimpanzees.

Confirmation bias

The tendency to search for information that supports preconceptions and ignore contradictory evidence.

Fixation

The inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an impediment to problem solving.

Mental set

A tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past.

Intuition

An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought.

Amos Tversky

Cognitive and mathematical psychologist known for his work on cognitive biases.

Daniel Kahneman

Psychologist known for his research on cognitive biases and the Nobel laureate for prospect theory.

Representativeness heuristic

Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent particular prototypes.

Availability heuristic

Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory.

Overconfidence

The tendency to be more confident than correct; to overestimate the accuracy of beliefs and judgments.

Belief perseverance

Clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.

Framing

The way an issue is posed; how something is framed can affect decisions and judgments.

Nudge

An aspect of choice architecture that alters people's behavior in a predictable way.

Memory

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

Recall

A measure of memory where a person retrieves information learned earlier.

Recognition

A measure of memory where the person identifies items previously learned.

Relearning

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

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Pioneer of research on memory known for his forgetting curve and studies on relearning.

Encoding

The processing of information into the memory system.

Storage

The process of retaining encoded information over time.

Retrieval

The process of getting information out of memory storage.

Parallel processing

Simultaneous processing of many aspects of a problem.

Richard Atkinson

Psychologist who proposed the multi-store model of memory.

Richard Shiffrin

Psychologist who, along with Atkinson, proposed the influential multi-store model of memory.

Sensory memory

The immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in memory.

Short-term memory

Activated memory that holds a few items briefly.

Long-term memory

A relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system.

Working memory

Focusing on conscious, active processing of information from long-term memory.

Central executive

The component of working memory that focuses attention and allocates mental resources.

Phonological loop

A component of working memory that deals with auditory information and internal speech.

Visuospatial sketchpad

A component of working memory that stores and manipulates visual and spatial information.

Neurogenesis

The formation of new neurons.

Eric Kandel

Neuroscientist known for his research on molecular mechanisms of memory.

Long-term potentiation (LTP)

An increase in a synapse's firing potential after rapid stimulation, believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory.

Explicit memory

Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and declare.

Effortful processing

Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.

Automatic processing

Unconscious encoding of incidental information and well-learned information.

Implicit memory

Retention independent of conscious recollection.

Iconic memory

A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli.

Echoic memory

A momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli.

George A. Miller

Cognitive psychologist known for his work on short-term memory capacity.

Chunking

Organizing items into familiar, manageable units.

Mnemonics

Memory aids, especially techniques using vivid imagery and organizational devices.

Spacing effect

The tendency for distributed study to yield better long-term retention than massed study.

Testing effect

Enhanced memory after retrieving information rather than simply rereading it.

Shallow processing

Encoding based on the structure or appearance of words.

Deep processing

Encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words.

Semantic memory

Explicit memory of facts and general knowledge.

Episodic memory

Explicit memory of personally experienced events.

Hippocampus

Neural center that helps process explicit memories for storage.

Memory consolidation

The neural storage of a long-term memory.

Flashbulb memory

A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event.

Priming

The activation of particular associations in memory.

Encoding specificity principle

The idea that cues and contexts specific to a memory are most effective in helping recall it.

Mood-congruent memory

The tendency to recall experiences consistent with one's current mood.

Serial position effect

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

Interleaving

A study technique where different topics or subjects are mixed during study.

Anterograde amnesia

An inability to form new memories.

Retrograde amnesia

An inability to retrieve information from one's past.

Proactive interference

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

Retroactive interference

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

Repression

In psychoanalytic theory, the mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts from consciousness.

Reconsolidation

The process in which previously stored memories are potentially altered before being stored again.

Elizabeth Loftus

Psychologist known for her work on the misinformation effect and eyewitness memory.

Misinformation effect

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