Comprehensive Psychology Lecture Notes: Memory, Problem Solving, Intelligence, and Behavioral Genetics

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering fundamental concepts, definitions, and theories across memory, reasoning, intelligence, and behavioral genetics.

Modal Model of Memory

Also called the three-stage model, it divides memory into three stores: Sensory Store/Memory, Short term Store/Memory, and Long term Store/Memory.

Sensory Memory

A memory store whose function is to sustain sensations for identification; it has a very large (scenic) capacity and a very short duration ($\frac{1}{2} - 3\text{ sec}$).

Iconic Memory

The visual sensory store.

Echoic Memory

The auditory sensory store.

Short-term Memory

A memory stage whose function is to do conscious work and to think, with a capacity of $7 \pm 2$ items or "chunks" and a duration of 10-15 seconds.

Chunking

Breaking things down to better remember them.

The Magic Number

The capacity limit of our short-term memory, defined as $7 \pm 2$ items or chunks.

Attention

The cognitive process that selects information from sensory memory.

Encoding

The process that sends information to long-term memory.

Retrieval

The process that brings information from long-term memory (LTM) to working memory.

Rehearsal

The cognitive process that maintains information in working memory.

Long-term Memory

A memory stage whose function is to tie together the past with the present, featuring an enormous (essentially unlimited) capacity and very long (essentially permanent) duration.

Serial Position Effect

The tendency of a person to remember the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst.

Recency

Your brain remembering the most recent information or events in a sequence.

Primacy

Where people tend to better remember items presented at the beginning of a list compared to items in the middle.

Mnemonic

Memory aids or tricks that help you store, retain, and recall difficult information by connecting it to something simple, familiar, or structured.

Imagery

The cognitive process of creating, recalling, or manipulating sensory representations.

Method of Loci

A mnemonic technique invented by the ancient Romans.

Keyword Method

A two-stage mnemonic device used in psychology and education to help people encode and recall new vocabulary words.

Algorithm

A procedure that always produces a correct solution, requires a lot of time and computational resources, and is executed by computers.

Inductive Reasoning

Reasoning from more specific exemplars to a more general solution.

Descriptive Approach

An approach that asks not how decisions are to be made, but how they are made.

Normative Approach

An approach that asks how we are to make decisions and examines the nature of rational decision making.

Availability Heuristic

A very general principle that people use in reasoning under conditions of uncertainty.

Representativeness Heuristic

A judgment strategy based on whether an answer fits our stereotypes.

Forward Chaining

In problem-solving, moving from the current state to a state or space closest to the goal.

Backward Chaining

In problem-solving, moving the goal state closer to the current state.

Paradox of Expertise

The phenomenon where solving a problem 1,000+ times causes you to cut corners and not have to think; the better you get at solving a problem, the less conscious you are about what you are doing.

Functional Fixedness

A phenomenon first studied in Europe by Carl Duncker where we look at an object (such as a box) and see it only in terms of the function that it is serving.

Linguistic Determinism

The idea that the language that you speak determines how you perceive, think about, and remember the world around you.

Intelligence

The capacity to think abstractly and learn, adapt, reason, plan, and comprehend.

Eugenics

The study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population.

Differential Psychology

The branch of psychology concerned with individual and group differences in psychological traits.

MZ Twins

Identical twins who share 100% of their genes.

DZ Twins

Fraternal twins who share 50% of their genes.

General Intelligence ("g")

Problem solving and applying thinking, rather than just knowing facts.

Reliability

How consistent and stable the results of an assessment are.

Validity

How well a test actually measures what it was created to measure.

Flynn Effect

The finding that IQ has increased by about 3 points per decade in industrialized countries, caused by factors such as improved nutrition, smaller families, more and better education, increased complexity of the modern world, and increased test-taking.

Genotype

The sequence of letters of your genome, mostly inherited from parents.

Phenotype

A measurable trait, such as height, weight, or how high you can jump.

Epigenetics

The process of controlling how tightly packed DNA is, which changes the phenotype by changing what is activated.

Heritability

A measure of how much of a phenotype is inherited mostly due to genetic factors.