cognitive approach gossary

Cross-sectional design

Comparing two or more groups on a particular variable at a specific time. The opposite is a longitudinal design where the researcher measures a change in an individual over time.

Longitudinal study

research over a period of time using observations, interviews, or psychometric testing. (Similar to a repeated measures design in an experiment).

Cross-sectional design

Comparing two or more groups on a particular variable at a specific time. The opposite is a longitudinal design where the researcher measures a change in an individual over time.

Longitudinal study

research over a period of time using observations, interviews, or psychometric testing. (Similar to a repeated measures design in an experiment).

Prospective research

A study that attempts to find a correlation between two variables by collecting data early in the life of participants and then continuing to test them over a period of time to measure change and development.

Retrospective research

A study of an individual after an important change or development. For example, the study of a person after a stroke. This requires the research to "reconstruct" the life of the individual prior to the event.

Verbal protocols

A type of interview where the researcher has the participant "think aloud" while solving a problem.

Declarative memory

“knowing what”) is the memory of facts and events and refers to those memories that can be consciously recalled. There are two subsets of declarative memory

Episodic memory

the memory of specific events that have occurred at a given time and in a given place.

Procedural memory

(“knowing how”) is the unconscious memory of skills and how to do things.

Semantic memory

general knowledge of facts and people, for example, concepts and schemas and it is not linked to time and place.

Transactive memory

a mechanism through which groups collectively encode, store, and retrieve knowledge

Cognitive concepts

Anchoring bias

an individual relies too heavily on an initial piece of information offered (known as the "anchor") when making decisions.

Availability heuristic

a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when making a decision.

Central Executive

The part of Baddeley & Hitch's Working Memory Model responsible for the control and regulation of cognitive processes. It binds information from a number of sources into a coherent "episode", coordinates the sub-systems, shifts between tasks, and handles selective attention and inhibition.

Cognitive bias

a systematic error in thinking that impacts one's choices and judgments.

Cognitive load

The amount of information that working memory can hold at one time

Cognitive misers

the tendency of people to think and solve problems in simpler and less effortful ways rather than in more sophisticated and more effortful ways, regardless of intelligence.

Confabulation

a memory error that produces fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world.

Displacement

In the MSM this is what happens to information in STM if it is not rehearsed. It is displaced - or "knocked out" of the STM store by other incoming stimuli.

Encoding

the initial learning of information by placing information into memory storage.

Episodic buffer

The component of Baddeley & Hitch's Working Memory Model dedicated to linking information across domains to form integrated units of visual, spatial, and verbal information with time sequencing (or chronological ordering), such as the memory of a story or a movie scene.

Framing effect

When people react to a particular choice in different ways depending on how it is presented.

Heuristic

a mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make judgments quickly and efficiently.

Misinformation effect

when misleading information is incorporated into one's memory after an event.

Peak-end Rule

people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.

Phonological loop

The component of Baddeley & Hitch's Working Memory Model responsible for processing auditory information.

Primacy effect/recency effect

Primacy and recency effect are two components of the Serial Positioning Effect. The primacy effect results in a participant recalling information presented earlier in a list of information better than information presented later on. It is believed that covert rehearsal has already moved this information to LTM. The recency effect results in a participant recalling information presented at the end of a list of information better than information presented in the middle of a list. It is believed that this is because the information is still in STM and has not been displaced.

Retrieval

the ability to access information from memory when you need it.

Schema

mental representations that are used to organize our knowledge, assist recall, guide our behavior, predict likely happenings, and help us to make sense of current experiences. Schemas are cognitive structures that are derived from prior experience and knowledge. They simplify reality, setting up expectations about what is probable in relation to particular social and textual contexts.

Visuospatial Sketchpad

The component of Baddeley & Hitch's Working Memory Model which holds information about what we see. It is used in the temporary storage and manipulation of spatial and visual information, such as remembering shapes and colors, or the location or speed of objects in space. It is also involved in tasks that involve planning of spatial movements, like planning one's way through a building.

Working memory

Another term for Short-Term Memory, this is the system that actively holds multiple pieces of transitory information in the mind, where they can be manipulated. Baddeley & Hitch called it working memory because they wanted to differentiate their concept from the "Memory Store Model" which made it appear that STM was simply a temporary, passive store for information.

Dual Process Model

Argues that there are two systems of decision-making - System 1 is an automatic, intuitive, and effortless way of thinking. System 2 is a slower, conscious, and rational mode of thinking.

Flashbulb memory

Brown & Kulik’s theory that memories created as the result of high levels of emotion – particularly surprise – are like “photographs.” The theory argues that a lot of peripheral and irrelevant information is retained.

Multi-Store Model

proposed that memory consisted of three stores

Prospect theory

describes the way people choose between alternatives that involve risk, where the probabilities of outcomes are known. The theory states that people evaluate these losses and gains using heuristics.

Reconstructive memory

The theory that when memories are accessed, they are not retrieved as a single, whole memory, but rather as a collection of independent memories put together. It is in this “reconstructive process” that distortions occur.

Somatic marker hypothesis

suggests that good decision-making depends on an ability to access appropriate emotional information linked to the situation in which the decision is being made.

Working memory model

the theory that short-term memory is not a single store but rather consists of a number of different stores.