CH 1 Reading Exam

Cognitive Psychology

The study of mental processes like attention, reasoning, and memory.

Mental Representations

Encoded and stored pieces of information about the environment.

Computational Level of Analysis

Understanding and defining the nature of the information that the mind must compute and its purpose.

Algorithmic Level of Analysis

Understanding the rules and processes that contribute to cognitive tasks, such as face recognition.

Implementational Level of Analysis

Focus on the physical processes that enable cognitive processing.

Cognitive Revolution

A movement in the 1950s and 1960s that led to the emergence of cognitive psychology as part of mainstream experimental psychology.

Speed of Nerve Impulses

A milestone that suggested the speed of mental processes could also be measured.

Fechner's Law

The intensity of the subjective experience of a stimulus is proportional to the intensity of that stimulus.

Introspection Validity

Wundt believed introspection was valid only if the researcher had been properly trained.

Ebbinghaus's Research

He used himself as his primary test subject in memory experiments.

Cognitive Maps

Evidence from rats learning mazes without rewards suggests the existence of cognitive maps.

Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Revolution

Demonstrated that understanding information-processing rules could model human-like behavior.

Broadbent's Filter Model

An attempt to model how we pay attention to some stimuli while ignoring others.

Critiques of Cognitive Psychology

Concerns about the relevance of lab experiments to real-world cognition and the need to consider meaning in cognition.

Emotion and Cognitive Processing

Fluctuating emotions can profoundly affect cognitive functions such as attention, memory, and decision making.