AP Psychology Unit 2 Vocabulary

AP Psychology Cognition (Perception, Memory, and Intelligence)

Bottom-up procession

analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information

Top-down processing

information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations

Schemas

concepts or mental frameworks that organize and interpret information.

Perceptual set

a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another

Context

the circumstances, atmosphere, attitudes, and events that help determine meaning

Gestalt Principles

principles that describe the brain's organization of sensory information into meaningful units and patterns. (closure, figure-ground, proximity, similarity)

Selective attention

focusing awareness on a narrowed range of stimuli or events

Cocktail party effect

ability to attend to only one voice among many

Change blindness

failing to notice changes in the environment

Inattentional blindness

failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere

Habituation

Decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner.

Sensory adaptation

diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation

Visual cliff

a laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals

Binocular depth cues

cues of depth perception that arise from the fact that people have two eyes

Retinal disparity

a binocular cue for perceiving depth by comparing images from the retinas in the two eyes, the brain computes distance—the greater the difference between the two images, the closer the object

Convergence

a binocular cue for perceiving depth; the extent to which the eyes shift inward when looking at an object

Monocular cues

depth cues available to either eye alone

Relative clarity

a monocular cue for perceiving depth; hazy objects are farther away than sharp, clear objects

Relative size

a monocular cue for perceiving depth; the smaller retinal image is farther away

Texture gradient

the tendency for textured surfaces to appear to become smaller and finer as distance from the viewer increases

Linear perspective

A monocular cue for perceiving depth; the more parallel lines converge, the greater their perceived distance.

Interposition

monocular visual cue in which two objects are in the same line of vision and one partially conceals the other, indicating that the first object concealed is further away

Perceptual constancy

perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent lightness, color, shape, and size) even as illumination and retinal images change

Apparent motion

illusion of movement in a stationary object

Stroboscopic motion

illusion of movement produced by showing the rapid progression of images or objects that are not moving at all

Phi phenomenon

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

Autokinetic effect

the tendency to perceive a stationary point of light in a dark room as moving

Concepts

a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

Prototypes

a mental image or best example of a category

Metacognition

awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes.

Schemas

concepts or mental frameworks that organize and interpret information (includes assimilation and accommodation)

Algorithms

very specific, step-by-step procedures for solving certain types of problems

Heuristics

mental shortcuts or "rules of thumb" that often lead to a solution (but not always).

Representativeness heuristic

judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information

Availability heuristic

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common

Mental set

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

Functional fixedness

the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving

Priming

the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response

Framing

the way an issue is posed; how an issue is posed can significantly affect decisions and judgments

Gambler's fallacy

a cognitive bias that occurs when someone believes that the frequency of past events can influence the likelihood of a random event in the future.

Sunk-cost fallacy

the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial

Executive functions

higher order thinking processes that include planning, organizing, inhibition, and decision-making

Creativity

the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas

Convergent thinking

thinking that narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution

Divergent thinking

thinking that expands the number of possible problem solutions

Information processing model

model of memory that assumes the processing of information for memory storage is similar to the way a computer processes memory in a series of three stages

Encoding, storage, retrieval

three stages in the process of memory

Automatic processing

unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information

Effortful processing

encoding that requires attention and conscious effort

Explicit memory

memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare"

Implicit memory

retention of learned skills or classically conditioned associations independent of conscious recollection

Episodic memory

explicit memory of personally experienced events; one of our two conscious/explicit memory systems

Semantic memory

explicit memory of facts and general knowledge; one of our two conscious/explicit memory systems

Levels of processing

a continuum of memory processing from shallow to intermediate to deep, with deeper processing producing better memory

Structural encoding

relatively shallow processing that emphasizes the physical structure of the stimulus (emphasizing what a word looks like)

Phonemic encoding

emphasizes what a word sounds like

Semantic encoding

the encoding of meaning, including the meaning of words

Multi-store model

an explanation of memory proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin which assumes there are three unitary (separate) memory stores, and that information is transferred between these stores in a linear sequence

Sensory memory

the immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system (includes iconic and echoic)

Short term memory (STM)

the memory system in which information is held for brief periods of time while being used

Long term memory (LTM)

the system of memory into which all the information is placed to be kept more or less permanently

Working memory

a newer understanding of short-term memory that focuses on conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory (insludes the central executive, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, episodic buffer)

Prospective memory

remembering to do things in the future

Mnemonic devices

memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices

Method of Loci

a mnemonic technique that involves associating items on a list with a sequence of familiar physical locations

Chunking

organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically

Spacing effect

the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice

Source amnesia

attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined

Constructive memory

a psychological concept that describes how the brain creates memories by updating them based on new experiences, situations, and challenges (via memory consolidation or imagination inflation)

Serial position effect

our tendency to recall best the last (a recency effect) and first items (a primacy effect) in a list

Maintenance rehearsal

a system for remembering involving repeating information to oneself without attempting to find meaning in it

Elaborative rehearsal

A memory technique that helps transfer information from short-term to long-term memory. It involves connecting new information to what's already known in a meaningful way, such as by thinking about the meaning of the information or using associations.

Autobiographical memory (also highly superior autobiographical memory)

the memory for events and facts related to one's personal life story

Retrograde amnesia

an inability to retrieve information from one's past

Anterograde amnesia

an inability to form new memories

Alzheimer's disease

The most common type of dementia. It is a progressive disease beginning with mild memory loss and possibly leading to loss of the ability to carry on a conversation and respond to the environment, involves parts of the brain that control thought, memory, and language.

Infantile amnesia

the inability to remember events from early childhood

Retrieval cues

stimuli that aid the recall or recognition of information stored in memory

Context-dependent memory

the theory that information learned in a particular situation or place is better remembered when in that same situation or place

State-dependent memory

the theory that information learned in a particular state of mind (e.g., depressed, happy, somber) is more easily recalled when in that same state of mind

Mood-congruent memory

the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood

Retrieval practice

the repeated retrieval of an item of information from memory

Testing effect

enhanced performance on a memory test caused by being tested on the material to be remembered

Recall

a measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the-blank test

Recognition

a measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned, as on a multiple-choice test

Forgetting curve

Ebbinghaus' graph showing retention and forgetting over time

Encoding failure

failure to process information into memory

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

Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon

the temporary inability to remember something you know, accompanied by a feeling that it's just out of reach

Repression

in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories

Misinformation effect

incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event (can be a result of framing)

g theory

the theory that there is ONE KIND of overall intelligence

Multiple abilities

the theory that there are multiple types of intelligence

Fluid intelligence

our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood

Crystallized intelligence

our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age

IQ (Intelligence Quotient)

mental age/chronological age x 100

Standardization

defining meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group

Norming

administering a test to a large population so data can be collected to reference the normal scores for a population and its groups

Percentile rank

the percentage of scores below a specific score in a distribution of scores