Psychology TEST 2 Study Aid: Consciousness, Conditioning, Learning, and Memory

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the key terms and core concepts for Psychology Test 2, including Consciousness, Conditioning and Learning, Factors Influencing Learning, Memory & Forgetting, and Forgetting and Amnesia.

Awareness, Consciousness, and Conscious Experience

The state of being aware of internal thoughts, feelings, and sensations, as well as external stimuli occurring in the environment, forming the subjective totality of experiential awareness.

Stream of Consciousness

A concept describing conscious thought and experience as a continuous, ever-flowing, and undivided sequence rather than isolated or disconnected segments.

First-Person and Third-Person Perspectives

The distinction between subjective, internal experience known directly only by the individual experiencing it (first-person) versus objective, observable behavioral or neurological data observed by outside researchers (third-person).

Contemplative Science

An interdisciplinary field of study investigating the effects of contemplative practices, such as meditation and mindfulness, on the brain, cognitive processes, and consciousness.

Phenomenology

The philosophical and scientific study of conscious experience and subjective mental life directly as experienced from a first-person point of view.

Dualism

The philosophical position that the mind (immaterial consciousness) and the body (physical matter and brain) are fundamentally distinct and separate entities.

Attention versus Awareness

The distinction where attention acts as a mechanism for selecting and prioritizing specific information for processing, whereas awareness refers to the subjective, conscious perception of that information.

Motion-Induced Blindness

A visual illusion in which salient, static visual stimuli disappear completely from conscious awareness when surrounded by a moving background field.

Change Blindness

The failure to notice a large or obvious change in a visual scene when that change takes place during a brief visual interruption or distraction.

Processing Without Awareness

Cognitive and perceptual processing of incoming information that occurs beneath the threshold of conscious awareness, such as in subliminal perception or implicit tasks.

Cortical Blindness and Blindsight

A condition resulting from visual cortex damage where a person lacks conscious visual perception (cortical blindness), yet remains capable of accurately guessing or responding to visual stimuli above chance levels (blindsight).

Reciprocal & Neural Synchronization

The simultaneous, coordinated firing of neurons across distant brain regions, believed to bind disparate sensory inputs into a coherent, unified conscious perception.

Spotlight Metaphor

A cognitive model comparing focal attention to a spotlight that illuminates specific visual regions or cognitive inputs, bringing them into sharp focus and conscious perception while leaving others unattended in the dark.

Global Neuronal Workspace Theory

A neurobiological theory of consciousness proposing that information becomes consciously accessible when it is broadcast across widespread, recurrent cortical networks to a global neuronal workspace.

Integrated Information Theory

A framework proposing that consciousness is an intrinsic, fundamental property of any physical system characterized by a high degree of integrated information, quantitatively represented by the metric Phi ($\Phi$).

Predictive Processing

A framework of brain function proposing that the brain continuously generates top-down predictive models of sensory inputs and updates these hypotheses based on bottom-up prediction errors.

Rubber-Hand Illusion

An experimental demonstration of bodily self-awareness wherein synchronous tactile stroking of a subject\'s hidden real hand and a visible artificial rubber hand causes the participant to feel ownership of the fake hand.

Parallel Processing

The brain\'s capacity to process multiple incoming streams of visual and cognitive information (such as color, motion, shape, and depth) simultaneously rather than sequentially.

Volition

The cognitive capability to initiate, direct, and execute intentional, self-guided, and goal-directed actions through conscious will.

Post-Decision Explanations

Retrospective justifications or narratives created after an action or decision has been made, often to reconcile unconscious choices with conscious rationalization.

Classical Conditioning (Pavlovian)

A fundamental learning procedure in which an initially neutral stimulus is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus to elicit a learned, conditioned response.

Unconditioned Stimulus (US)

A stimulus that inherently, naturally, and automatically triggers an unlearned biological reflex or physiological reaction.

Unconditioned Response (UR)

An unlearned, automatic, and naturally occurring physiological or behavioral response provoked by an unconditioned stimulus.

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

A previously neutral stimulus that, following repeated pairing with an unconditioned stimulus, acquires the ability to elicit a conditioned response.

Conditioned Response (CR)

The learned behavioral or physiological response evoked by a conditioned stimulus after classical conditioning has occurred.

Taste Aversion Conditioning

A specialized form of classical conditioning in which an organism learns to avoid a specific food after experiencing gastrointestinal illness, often acquired in a single trial even across long delays.

Preparedness

An evolutionary predisposition that facilitates the rapid and easy learning of certain survival-related associations (such as phobias of snakes or taste aversions) over arbitrary associations.

Extinction

The gradual reduction and eventual disappearance of a conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus is presented repeatedly without the unconditioned stimulus, or when operant behavior is no longer reinforced.

Spontaneous Recovery

The reappearance of an extinguished conditioned response following a period of rest or delay without any supplementary conditioning trials.

Discriminative Stimulus

A specific environmental cue in operant conditioning that signals whether a given behavioral response will be reinforced or punished.

Operant Conditioning (Instrumental)

A form of learning in which the likelihood, frequency, or strength of voluntary behavior is controlled and modified by its consequences.

Reinforcement (Positive and Negative)

Consequences that increase the likelihood of a preceding behavior: positive reinforcement increases behavior by presenting a desirable stimulus, while negative reinforcement increases behavior by removing an aversive stimulus.

Punishment (Positive and Negative)

Consequences that decrease the likelihood of a preceding behavior: positive punishment decreases behavior by introducing an aversive stimulus, while negative punishment decreases behavior by removing a desirable stimulus.

Observational Learning

A learning process occurring through the observation, retention, and replication of behaviors displayed by social models.

Models and Imitation

The individuals observed who demonstrate behaviors (models) and the subsequent reproduction or copying of those observed actions by an observer (imitation).

Vicarious Reinforcement

A phenomenon wherein an observer\'s tendency to perform a behavior increases after seeing a model receive a reward or favorable outcome for that behavior.

Perceptual Learning

An enhancement in the ability of sensory systems to respond to, detect, or discriminate between fine details of sensory stimuli as a consequence of prior experience or practice.

Habituation

A non-associative learning mechanism characterized by a progressive decline in behavioral response strength following repeated, non-threatening exposure to a constant stimulus.

Sensitization

A non-associative learning mechanism characterized by an intensified behavioral response to a stimulus following exposure to an intense, salient, or noxious event.

Metacognition

The awareness, monitoring, evaluation, and deliberate regulation of one\'s own cognitive processes and learning states (colloquially termed \'thinking about thinking\').

Transfer-Appropriate Processing

The principle stating that memory performance is optimized when the cognitive and cognitive retrieval operations match the specific processing operations deployed during initial encoding.

Memory

The mental system and underlying cognitive processes dedicated to encoding, storing, maintaining, and subsequently retrieving information across time.

Episodic Memory

A subcategory of declarative memory that stores personally experienced events and autobiographical episodes linked to specific spatial and temporal contexts.

Semantic Memory

A subcategory of declarative memory consisting of general knowledge, facts, language rules, and conceptual understandings independent of personal autobiographical context.

Explicit and Implicit Memory

The distinction between conscious, intentional recollection of factual data or events (explicit) versus non-conscious influences on behavior, skills, and priming without deliberate recall (implicit).

Autobiographical Memory

An integrative memory system consisting of an individual\'s personal history, combining episodic recollections of life events with semantic personal knowledge.

Construction/Reconstruction

The cognitive phenomenon where memory retrieval is not a direct photographic playback, but rather an active assembly process that incorporates stored traces, inferences, and current beliefs.

Encoding, Storage, Retrieval, Recoding

The four core stages of memory processing: transforming sensory inputs into neural traces (encoding), maintaining them over time (storage), accessing them when needed (retrieval), and reorganizing or updating stored traces (recoding).

Distinctiveness

The property of an item or event being unique, unusual, or set apart from surrounding background stimuli, which enhances its memorability during encoding.

Elaboration

An encoding strategy that involves forming meaningful connections between new incoming information and existing knowledge structures within long-term memory.

Flashbulb Memory

An unusually vivid, detailed, and highly confident personal memory of the exact circumstances in which one learned of a momentous, shocking, or emotionally charged public event.

Proactive Interference

A memory disruption where older, previously learned materials impede or interfere with the ability to retrieve newly acquired information.

Retroactive Interference

A memory disruption where newly learned information impairs or prevents the recall of older information stored previously.

Misinformation Effect

The contamination or alteration of an eyewitness\'s memory for an event following exposure to misleading, deceptive, or inaccurate post-event information.

Encoding Specificity Principle

The hypothesis that memory retrieval is substantially more effective when retrieval cues match the context and specific information stored during initial encoding.

Mnemonic Device

A systematic cognitive strategy, technique, or organizational structure (such as acronyms, rhymes, or the method of loci) designed to enhance memory encoding and retrieval.

Retrieval Cues

Internal or external stimuli, reminders, or environmental signals that facilitate the search, access, and activation of target memories stored in long-term memory.

Adaptive Forgetting

The beneficial and functional process of allowing outdated, irrelevant, or obsolete information to decay or be pruned, thereby preventing cognitive clutter and facilitating cognitive flexibility.

Anterograde Amnesia

A profound memory impairment characterized by the inability to form or retain new declarative long-term memories following neurological trauma or damage to the hippocampus.

Retrograde Amnesia

A memory impairment characterized by the loss of access to events, autobiographical details, or facts that were encoded and stored prior to the onset of brain injury or disease.

Declarative Memory

The overarching division of long-term memory responsible for conscious, intentional recollection of factual information, semantic knowledge, and episodic experiences.