General Psychology Review II: Cognition, Development, Memory, Motivation, and Personality

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the major concepts, theories, empirical studies, and developmental milestones from PSY 101.

Schema

An organized cluster or mental framework of knowledge about an object, event, or concept abstracted from previous experience that enables the brain to process information efficiently.

Assimilation

The Piagetian cognitive process of taking in and fitting new information into an existing schema without modifying the schema itself.

Accommodation

The Piagetian cognitive process of altering or restructuring an existing schema in response to new experiences and observations.

Prototype

A mental representation that serves as the best or most representative cognitive reference point for a category (such as a robin for the category "bird").

Algorithm

A step-by-step problem-solving procedure or formula that guarantees a correct solution when followed methodically.

Heuristic

A mental shortcut or general "rule of thumb" problem-solving framework that breaks tasks into steps to simplify decisions, but does not guarantee success.

Mental Set

A problem-solving obstacle where an individual persists in using a strategy that worked in previous situations, even when it is ineffective for the current problem.

Functional Fixedness

A cognitive barrier to problem solving characterized by the tendency to perceive an object only in terms of its typical or most common use.

Nine-Dot Problem

A classic puzzle requiring a solver to connect all nine dots using no more than four continuous straight lines without lifting the pencil, illustrating how implicit boundary assumptions and mental sets impede problem solving.

Incubation Effect

The phenomenon in which novel solutions surface for previously unsolved problems after a period of taking a break and not consciously thinking about the problem.

Availability Heuristic

A mental shortcut where an individual evaluates the frequency, likelihood, or probability of an event based on how easily relevant examples come to mind.

Representativeness Heuristic

A cognitive shortcut where people judge the probability of an event or category membership by comparing it to their prototype of that category.

Fluid Intelligence

The ability to reason abstractly, see complex relationships, and solve novel problems independent of acquired learning, which typically declines in late adulthood.

Crystallized Intelligence

The accumulation of knowledge, facts, skills, and vocabulary acquired through education and lifelong experience, which tends to hold up or increase with age.

Flynn Effect

The observed longitudinal rise in raw average intelligence quotient (IQ) test scores across the general population over the 20th century.

Stereotype Threat

A situational predicament in which a person experiences anxiety that their performance might confirm a negative stereotype about their social group, resulting in impaired performance.

Shaping

An operant conditioning procedure that involves rewarding behaviors that are increasingly close approximations of the desired target behavior.

Primary Reinforcer

A stimulus that is innately and biologically reinforcing because it provides inherent pleasure or satisfies basic physiological needs (e.g., food, water, shelter, touch).

Secondary Reinforcer

A stimulus that has no inherent biological value on its own but develops reinforcing qualities through learned association with a primary reinforcer (e.g., money, praise).

Overjustification Effect

The reduction in intrinsic motivation that occurs when an external, extrinsic reward is provided for a behavior that an individual already finds naturally satisfying.

Fixed Ratio Schedule

An operant schedule of intermittent reinforcement where a reward is delivered after a predictable, set number of completed responses (e.g., piecework pay for every $x$ items).

Variable Ratio Schedule

An operant reinforcement schedule where a reward is delivered after an unpredictable number of responses (e.g., gambling), yielding high, steady response rates highly resistant to extinction.

Fixed Interval Schedule

An operant schedule where reinforcement is delivered for the first response after predictable, fixed time intervals (e.g., pain relief every $20$ minutes), yielding moderate response rates with post-reinforcement pauses.

Variable Interval Schedule

An operant reinforcement schedule where reinforcement is delivered at unpredictable time intervals (e.g., checking social media), producing a moderate yet steady rate of response.

Bobo Doll Studies

Albert Bandura's classic research demonstrating observational learning in children, showing that aggressive behaviors are learned through observing adult models and are modulated by vicarious reinforcement and vicarious punishment.

Phoneme

The smallest unit of sound (or sign) in a language that, when altered, can change one word into another without carrying independent meaning on its own.

Morpheme

The smallest meaningful unit of a language, which may be a standalone word or a bound grammatical element (such as a prefix or suffix).

Syntax

The system of grammatical rules governing the permissible structure, order, and combination of words into phrases and sentences within a language.

Habitual "Be"

A rule-governed grammatical marker in African American English (AAE) used to indicate ongoing, recurring, or habitual action over time (e.g., "He be runnin").

Simultaneous Bilingualism

The acquisition of two or more languages concurrently during early childhood, typically leading to high proficiency across both languages.

Sequential Bilingualism

The process of learning a second language after the first language is partially or fully established, divided into early sequential (childhood) and late sequential (after adolescence).

Priming

An implicit memory phenomenon in which exposure to a prior stimulus unconsciously influences a person's cognitive processing of or response to a subsequent stimulus.

Visual World Paradigm

An eye- and mouse-tracking psycholinguistic method showing that bilingual individuals co-activate phonologically similar words from their non-target language (e.g., Russian "marka" when hearing English "marker").

Code Switching

The practice of alternating between two or more languages, dialects, or speech registers within a single conversation or across social contexts depending on identity and audience.

Bimodal Bilingualism

The state of knowing both a visual-signed language and an auditory-spoken language, commonly seen in deaf individuals and hearing children of deaf adults (CODAs).

Levels of Processing Theory

The memory framework proposing that deeper, meaning-based (semantic) encoding yields longer-lasting, more durable memory codes than shallow structural or phonemic encoding.

Short-Term Memory (STM)

A temporary memory store with a limited capacity of approximately $7 \pm 2$ items (or $4 \pm 1$ chunks) that maintains unrehearsed information for about $20$ to $30$ seconds.

Episodic Memory

A form of explicit long-term memory dedicated to personally experienced events, incorporating the specific "who, what, where, and when" along with a conscious feeling of pastness.

Semantic Memory

A division of explicit long-term memory containing generalized factual knowledge, concepts, and ideas about the world, detached from personal autobiographical context.

Procedural Memory

An implicit long-term memory system that stores motor skills, habits, and procedures for how to perform physical actions without conscious awareness.

Method of Loci

A spatial mnemonic device (also known as the Roman Room technique) where items to be remembered are mentally visualized at specific architectural landmarks along a familiar route.

Testing Effect

The phenomenon in which actively retrieving information from memory via testing produces superior long-term retention compared to repeated passive study or review.

Flashbulb Memory

A vivid, detailed, and distinct autobiographical memory of the circumstances surrounding learning of a shocking or emotionally significant public event, held with high confidence despite potential inaccuracy.

Misinformation Effect

Elizabeth Loftus's finding that exposure to post-event misleading information distorts an eyewitness's original memory, demonstrated by asking participants how fast cars were going when they "smashed" versus "contacted" each other.

Anterograde Amnesia

The loss of the ability to create new explicit episodic and semantic memories following neurological trauma or damage to the hippocampus, while older memories remain largely accessible.

Retrograde Amnesia

The loss of access to events, autobiographical details, and factual information that occurred or were learned prior to physical trauma or neurological damage.

Episodic-Like Memory in Scrub Jays

Nicola Clayton's experimental finding that scrub jays cache and retrieve perishable mealworms after short delays but switch to caching and recovering non-perishable peanuts after longer delays, demonstrating "what, where, and when" memory without human language.

Teratogen

Any biological, chemical, or physical environmental agent (such as alcohol, nicotine, lead, or Zika virus) capable of causing malformations or functional damage to a developing embryo or fetus.

Conditioned Headturn Procedure

An experimental infant testing paradigm that trains babies to turn their heads toward a sound speaker when they detect a change in auditory or phonemic stimuli.

Egocentrism

A cognitive limitation in Piaget's preoperational stage characterized by an inability to distinguish one's own visual, physical, or psychological perspective from that of others.

Centration

The tendency of preoperational children to fixate on a single salient feature or dimension of an object or situation while ignoring other relevant dimensions.

Conservation

The understanding that quantitative properties of matter (such as volume, mass, or number) remain identical despite superficial transformations in shape or arrangement.

Analog Magnitude System

Core numerical cognitive system (System 2) that represents large, approximate quantities and exhibits ratio-dependent discrimination (e.g., $1:2$ ratio at $6$ months; $2:3$ ratio at $9$ months).

Cardinal Principle Knower

A developmental milestone in numerical cognition where a child realizes that the final number word reached when counting a set indicates the total quantity of items in that set.

Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

A structural theory outlining moral growth across three levels: Pre-conventional (avoiding punishment and seeking reward), Conventional (social approval and law/order), and Post-conventional (social contracts and universal ethical principles).

Drive-Reduction Theory

A motivational theory postulating that physiological deficits create internal states of psychological tension (drives) that motivate behaviors to restore biological homeostasis.

Yerkes-Dodson Law

The empirical relationship stating that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal up to an optimal level, beyond which further arousal impairs performance.

Misattribution of Arousal

The cognitive error where individuals misidentify the true cause of their physiological arousal, as demonstrated by men crossing a scary suspension bridge mistakenly attributing fear arousal to romantic attraction.

Affective Forecasting

The cognitive effort to predict one's emotional reactions to future events, in which people accurately predict valence but routinely overestimate the duration and intensity of their reactions.

Social Referencing

The developmental behavior wherein infants and young children look to trusted adults' emotional facial expressions and vocal cues to determine how to respond to ambiguous or novel situations.

Cultural Display Rules

Culturally specific standards and expectations that dictate the appropriate types, frequencies, and contexts for expressing emotional displays.

Schachter-Singer Two-Factor Theory

The theory that emotional experience is determined by two distinct components: generalized physiological arousal followed by cognitive interpretation and situational labeling of that arousal.

Kinsey Scale

A seven-point rating scale ranging from $0$ (exclusively heterosexual) to $6$ (exclusively homosexual) illustrating that human sexual orientation exists on a continuous spectrum rather than distinct categories.

Sexual Response Cycle

Masters and Johnson's four-phase physiological model of human sexual response, comprising excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.

Gender Identity

An individual's deeply held, internal psychological sense of their own gender, which may or may not align with their chromosomal or morphological biological sex assigned at birth.

Gender Dysphoria

A DSM-5 clinical diagnosis given when a marked incongruence between experienced gender identity and assigned natal sex causes clinically significant distress lasting at least $6$ months.

Five-Factor Model

The leading trait theory of personality defining individual differences along five overarching dimensions: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (OCEAN).

Id

The unconscious, instinctual component of Freud's personality structure that contains basic biological drives and operates strictly according to the pleasure principle.

Ego

The executive, rational component of personality that operates on the reality principle, mediating realistic compromises between the demands of the id, the constraints of the superego, and the external world.

Superego

The moral and ethical component of personality in Freud's model that internalizes societal values, conscience, and rules of right and wrong.

Inferiority Complex

Alfred Adler's term for pervasive feelings of inadequacy, weakness, and insecurity that drive an individual's efforts at compensation and striving for superiority.

Collective Unconscious

Carl Jung's concept of a shared, universal layer of the unconscious mind containing archetypes and ancestral memory traces common to all humans.

Self-Efficacy

Albert Bandura's concept referring to an individual's confidence in their personal ability to execute actions necessary to successfully accomplish specific tasks.

Locus of Control

Julian Rotter's cognitive concept describing whether individuals believe outcomes are governed by their own personal agency (internal) or by luck, fate, and external circumstances (external).

Delay of Gratification

The voluntary ability to forgo an immediate, smaller reward to obtain a larger or more enduring reward later, assessed in Walter Mischel's Marshmallow Test.

Incongruence

Carl Rogers's humanistic term describing the psychological gap or disparity between an individual's subjective self-concept and their actual life experiences.

Cognitive Dissonance

Leon Festinger's theory describing the state of psychological discomfort that occurs when an individual holds contradictory attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors, motivating an attitude shift to restore consistency.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency of observers to underestimate situational influences and overestimate internal dispositional factors when explaining the behavior of others.

Bystander Effect

A social psychological phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer assistance to a person in distress when other passive bystanders are present, driven by the diffusion of responsibility.