Psych - Cognition and Memory vocab

Cognition

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

Concepts

Mental representations of categories of items or ideas, based on experience

Schema

A knowledge cluster or general framework that provides expectations about topics, events, objects, people, and situations in one’s life

Accommodation

Involves adapting or modifying existing mental structures to accommodate new information or experiences

Assimilation

Involves incorporating new information into existing knowledge or schemas

Prototype

An ideal or most representative example of a conceptual category

Creativity

Ability to produce new (novel) and valuable (useful) ideas

Convergent thinking

Narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution

Divergent thinking

Expanding the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that expands in different directions

Algorithms

Problem solving procedures or formulas that guarantee a correct outcome if correctly applied

Heuristics

Cognitive strategies used as shortcuts to solve complex mental tasks; they do not guarantee a correct solution

Insight

A sudden realization of a problem’s solution; contrasts with strategy based solutions; psychologist Wolfgang Kohler

Confirmation bias

Ignoring or finding fault with information that does not fit our opinions, and seeking information with which we agree

Fixation

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

Mental set

Tendency to respond to a new problem in the manner used for a previous problem

Intuition

An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning

Representativeness heuristic

Based on presumption that, once a person or event is categorized, it shares all features of other members in that category

Availability heuristic

Estimates probabilities based on information that can be recalled from personal experience

Overconfidence

Well established bias in which a person’s subjective confidence in his or her judgements is reliably greater than the objective accuracy of those judgements

Gambler’s fallacy

Belief that the chances of something happening with a fixed probability becomes higher or lower as the process is repeated

Sunk cost fallacy

Our tendency to continue an endeavor we’ve invested money, effort, or time into, even if the current costs outweigh the benefits

Framing

The way an issue is posed; how an issue is worded can significantly affect decisions and judgement

Memory

Information processing system that works constructively to encode, store, and retrieve information

Recall

Retrieving information that is not currently in your conscious awareness but that was learned at an earlier time

Recognition

Identifying items previously learned

Relearning

Learning something more quickly when you learn it a second or later time

Encoding

The putting in of new information

Storage

Organization of information

Retrieval

The pull out of information

Parallel processing

Multiple processors work on a task simultaneously to increase speed and performance

Sensory memory

The immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system

Short term memory

Memory that holds a few items briefly before the information is stored or forgotten

Long term memory

Relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system

Working memory

A newer understanding of short-term memory that adds conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory

Explicit memory

Retention of facts and experiences from long-term memory that one can consciously know and “declare”; we encode these memories through conscious effortful processing

Effortful processing

Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort

Automatic processing

Unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings

Implicit memory

Retention of learned skills or classically conditioned associations in long-term memory independent of conscious recollection

Iconic memory

A fleeting sensory memory of visual stimuli; Sperling’s sensory memory experiment

Echoic memory

We have an impeccable, through fleeting, sensory memory for auditory stimuli

Prospective memory

Ability to remember to perform an intended action in the future

Chunking

Organizing items into familiar, manageable units

Mnemonics

Memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices, like acronyms or acrostics

Method of loci

Mnemonic device that involves associating items to be remembered with specific locations along a familiar mental journey

Spacing effect

Tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention that is achieved through massed study or practice

Massed practice

Can produce speedy short-term learning and a feeling of confidence

Distributed practice

Produces better long-term recall

Massed rehearsal

Either above is done all at once

Distributed rehearsal

Either above is spread out over a longer time

Testing effect

Effective way to distribute practice is repeated self testing, a phenomenon from researchers Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke

Shallow processing

Encoding on a basic level, based on the structure or appearance of words

Deep processing

Encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best retention

Memory consolidation

Process of strengthening and stabilizing a memory trace after its initial acquisition, converting fragile short-term memories into more durable long-term memories

Semantic memory

Subdivision of declarative memory that stores general knowledge, including meanings of words and concepts

Episodic memory

Subdivision of declarative memory that stores memories for personal events

Hippocampus

Explicit memories for facts and episodes are processed in this and fed to other brain regions for storage

Flashbulb memory

A clear, sustained long-term memory of an emotionally significant moment or event

Long term potentiation

An increase in a cell’s firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation; a neural basis for learning and memory

Priming

The activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in long-term implicit memory

Encoding specificity principle

Cues and contexts specific to a particular memory will be most effective in helping us recall it

Mood congruent memory

The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one’s current good or bad emotional state (mood)

Serial position effect

Tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list

Primacy effect

First item in a list

Recency effect

Last item in a list

Anterograde amnesia

Inability to form new memories due to injury or illness

Retrograde amnesia

Inability to retrieve information from one’s past due to injury or illness

Infantile amnesia

As adults, our conscious memory of our first four years is largely blank

Proactive interference

The forward-acting disruptive effect of older learning on the recall of new information

Retroactive interference

The backward-acting disruptive effect of newer learning on the recall of old information

Repression

Unconscious process of pushing distressing thoughts, memories, or feelings out of conscious awareness to avoid anxiety

Reconsolidation

Previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again

Misinformation effect

Occurs when misleading information has distorted one’s memory of an event

Source amnesia

Faulty memory for how, when, or where information was learned or imagined

Tip of the tongue phenomenon

The inability to recall a word, while knowing that it is in memory