AP Psychology Unit 2 Vocab

Selective attention

Focusing conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.

Inattentional blindness

Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.

Change blindness

Failing to notice changes in the environment; a form of inattentional blindness.

Perceptual set

A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.

Gestalt

An organized whole.

Figure ground

The organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground).

Grouping

The perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups.

Depth perception

The ability to see objects in three dimensions, allowing us to judge distance.

Visual cliff

A laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals.

Binocular cue

A depth cue, such as retinal disparity, that depends on the use of two eyes.

Convergence

A cue to nearby objects' distance, enabled by the brain combining retinal images.

Retinal disparity

A binocular cue for perceiving depth; the greater the disparity between the two images, the closer the object.

Monocular cue

A depth cue, such as interposition or linear perspective, available to either eye alone.

Phi phenomenon

An illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession.

Autokinetic effect

The illusory movement of a still spot of light in a dark room.

Perceptual constancy

Perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images change.

Color constancy

Perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected.

Perceptual adaptation

The ability to adjust to changed sensory input, including an artificially displaced or inverted visual field.

Cognition

All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Metacognition

Cognition about our cognition; keeping track of and evaluating our mental processes.

Concept

Mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

Prototype

A mental image or best example of a category.

Schema

A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Assimilation

Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.

Accommodation

Adapting our current schemas to incorporate new information.

Creativity

The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.

Executive functions

Cognitive skills that work together, enabling us to generate, organize, plan, and implement problem solving.

Algorithms

Methodical, logical rule or procedures that guarantees solving a particular problem.

Heuristic

A strategy that allows us to make judgments quickly and efficiently, but can be prone to errors.

Insight

A sudden realization of a problem's solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions.

Confirmation bias

A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.

Fixation

In cognition, the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an obstacle to problem solving.

Intuition

An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning.

Memory

The persistence of learning over time.

Encoding

How we put things into memory.

Storage

How we retain information over time.

Retrieval

How we get information out of memory storage.

Recall

A measure of memory where we retrieve what we learned earlier.

Recognition

A measure of memory in which we identify items we have learned.

Relearning

A measure of memory how much time saved when learning material again.

Miller's Law

Suggests the average human can hold about 7±2 items in their short-term memory.

Working memory

A newer understanding of short-term memory; conscious, active processing of incoming sensory information and information retrieved from long-term memory.

Sensory Memory

Very brief recording of our environment by our senses.

Long Term Memory

The relatively permanent and limitless storage of information, knowledge, skills, and experiences.

Short Term Memory

Briefly activated memory of a few items that is later stored or forgotten.

Central executive

A memory component that coordinates the activities of the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad.

Phonological Loop/Echoic Memory

A memory component that briefly holds auditory information.

Visuospatial Sketchpad/Iconic Memory

A memory component that briefly holds information about objects' appearance and location in space.

Neurogenesis

The formation of new neurons.

Long-term potentiation (LTP)

An increase in a nerve cell's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation; a neural basis for learning and memory.

Explicit Memory

Retention of facts and experiences that we can consciously know and 'declare.'

Implicit memory

Retention of learned skills or classically conditioned associations independent of conscious recollection.

Effortful processing

Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.

Automatic processing

Happens in the unconscious such as space, time, and frequency, and of familiar or well-learned info.

Iconic memory

A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second.

Echoic memory

A momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds.

Chunking

Organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically.

Mnemonics

Memory aids that involve vivid imagery or help us to organize memory.

Spacing Effect

Our mind needs time to send short term into long term.

Testing Effect

Rereading information is not as effective as testing for memory.

Shallow Processing

Basic level encoding - looking at a word and trying to remember.

Deep Processing

Advanced level encoding - looking at the meaning of the word and leads to better retention.

Semantic memory

Explicit memory of facts and general knowledge.

Episodic memory

Explicit memory of personally experienced events.

Hippocampus

A neural center located in the limbic system; helps process explicit memories for storage.

Memory consolidation

The neural storage of a long-term memory.

Flashbulb memory

A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event.

Priming

The activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory.

Encoding specificity principle

The idea that cues and context specific to a particular memory will be most effective in helping us recall it.

Mood congruent memory

The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood.

Serial position effect

Our tendency to recall best the last items in a list initially and the first items in a list after a delay.

Anterograde Amnesia

An inability to form new memories.

Retrograde Amnesia

An inability to remember one's past.

Proactive Interference

Old information interfering with learning new information.

Retroactive Interference

New information interferes with the recall of old information.

Repression

In Psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.

Reconsolidation

A process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again.

Misinformation Effect

Occurs when a memory has been corrupted by misleading information.

Source Amnesia

Faulty memory of how, when, or where information was learned or imagined.

Deja Vu

The sense that you've experienced something previously.

Encoding Failure

Do we actively rehearse as we encode?

Storage Failure

The longer that information sits in storage unused or unretrieved, the more likely storage decay will happen.

Retrieval Failure

Sometimes forgetting just happens, because despite our best effort, retrieval fails.

How to improve memory?

Rehearse repeatedly, make the material meaningful, activate retrieval cues, use mnemonic devices, test your knowledge, sleep more.

Intelligence

A mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

General Intelligence (g)

According to Spearman and others, it underlies all mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.

Factor analysis

A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person's total score.

Savant Syndrome

A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing.

Crystallized Intelligence (Gc)

Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.

Fluid Intelligence (Gf)

Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease with age, especially during late adulthood.

Cattell-Horn-Carrol Intelligence Theory

The theory that our intelligence is based on g as well as specific abilities, bridged by Gf and Gc.

Grit

In psychology, passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals.

Emotional intelligence

The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.

Intelligence Testing

A method for assessing an individual's mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores.

Aptitude test

A test designed to predict a person's future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.

Mental age

A measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the level of performance typically associated with children of a certain chronological age.

Stanford-Binet

The widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet's original intelligence test.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

Mental Age/Chronological Age x 100 = IQ.

Psychometrics

The scientific study of the measurement of human abilities, attitudes, and traits.

Standardization

Defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of pretested group.