WGU Cognitive Psychology OA Exam Study Guide

What did Vygotsky state was important for development in children?

Social interaction and Culture

What is Primary Inference?

A direct conclusion drawn from observable facts

"The grass is wet, it must have rained."

What is Causal Inference?

Cause and effect

"She drinks water everyday, that's why she skin cleared up"

What is a Schema?

A mental framework or organized knowledge structure that helps people interpret and understand information.

"Based on your restaurant schema, when you walk into a restaurant, you expect to be seated, given a menu, order food, and pay afterward."

What is a Flash Bulb memory?

A very clear and vivid recall of a shocking event in one's life.

What is explict memory?

Memories of facts and experiences that one can consciously recall and describe; also called declarative memories.

You remember and can explain that you visited Paris in 2020 and that the Eiffel Tower was larger than you expected.

what is implicit memory?

Memories that influence our behavior without conscious awareness; typically, skills and conditioned responses.

You automatically know how to ride a bike even after many years without consciously recalling how you learned.

What is illusory correlation?

Cognitive bias where two events are associated and individuals mistakenly believe they are related even if there is no connection.

"False belief or stereotype"

What is the conjunction rule?

Possibility of two events happening together is always less than or equal to the probability of either one happening alone.

Probability

How does one still have the ability to perceive an object with Ballistic vision?

Prior information gathered of surrounding environment

What is Tacit memory?

Form of implicit memory where Memory for skills and actions that you perform without thinking about them unconscious memory you can't easily explain.

Why did Watson disagree with other Psychologist?

Watson disagreed with the philosophy of psychology that emphasized subjective experiences and mental states, which were central to schools of thought like introspectionism and structuralism

What is the term for for information that is acquired

Learning

contingency strategy

A negotiating strategy is one in which a person gets what he or she wants if something else happens.

"In the event of"... " "I WILL DO A, IF YOU DO B FIRST"

Trade-Off Strategy

A negotiating strategy in which one person says to another, "I'll give you A, if you will give me B."

Functional Fixedness

The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving

Oblique effect

An effect where humans

perceive horizontals and

verticals more quickly than

other orientations due to

the physical regularity of

more frequent vertical and

horizontal orientations in

the environment.

Gestalt Approach

The mind perceives

things as whole forms

rather than just a

collection of parts.

"GESTALT" IS GERMAN

FOR "SHAPE" OR "FORM.

Weapon Focus

WEAPON BLINDNESS

the tendency to focus attention on a weapon that results in a narrowing of attention. Apparently, the presence of a weapon that was fired distracted attention from other things that were happening

Source Monitoring Error

misidentifying the source of a memory

Misinformation Effect

misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event can change how the person describes that event later.

Misidentifications Due to Familiarity

The results indicate that participants in the experimental group, who had seen the male reading to the students, were three times more likely to pick the male teacher than were participants in the control group.

Eye Witness Error

Mistakes made by people when recalling details of a crime or event they witnessed. Memory can be distorted:

by stress

leading questions

time or suggestions.

Witnesses may confidently recall incorrect information

Mueller and Oppenhiemer thoughts on Active note takers?

They saw students taking notes on laptops( simply transcribing or "mindless transcribing") as SHALLOW PROCESSING and it "works against learning".

Where for hand-written (active and involved) notes are more to result in DEEP ENCODING for "better learning

Spacing Effect

Taking breaks

Short bursts of study sessions instead of a long continuous one result in better test and study performance.

Elaborate Rehearsal (deeply processed)

Putting meaning to information helps in better memory of information. Results in strong memory encoding.

Maintenance Rehearsal (Shallow Processing)

Repeating information over and over without any consideration or meaning or making connections withe other information. Results in poor memory encoding

Episodic Memory

Memories of specific events including the time and place of the event.

Mirror Neurons

Frontal lobe neurons that fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so. The brain's mirroring of another's action may enable imitation, language learning, and empathy.

Inductive Reasoning

Conclusion based on common logic.

A type of logic in which generalizations are based on a large number of specific observations.

Deductive Reasoning

Conclusion based on frequent observation and patterns.

reasoning in which a conclusion is reached by stating a general principle and then applying that principle to a specific case (The sun rises every morning; therefore, the sun will rise on Tuesday morning.)

Unconscious Inference

Filling in the gaps.

Automatic mental process where the brain fills in missing information based on past experience or prior knowledge.

Newell and Simon

Artificial Intelligence(AI)

Introduced computer simulation models that solve problems like humans.

Broadbent's Filter Model

Filter theory of Attention.

dichotic listening selective attention and information processing.

Shiffrin and Steyvers

Memory models and Bayesian inference.

sensory memory, short term memory and long term memory.

Bayesian approaches to understanding how people infer and recall information.

Schank and Abelson

Scripts and Schema.

concepts of scripts: structures sequences of expected behaviors in familiar situations

Ebbinghaus' Retention Curve

the amount remembered depends on the time spent learning.

Saving method to measure forgetting which occurs rapidly in the first 1 to 2 days after original learning

Neisser

Higher mental processes

thinking, problem solving and long term remembering.

Donders

Reaction time

Simple reaction time versus choice reaction time.

choice reaction to take 1/10 seconds longer therefor it takes 1/10 seconds to make a decision.

Cocktail Party Effect

The ability to focus on one conversation in a noisy environment while filtering out other background noise.

"At a crowded party, you can pay attention to your friend's story but still notice when someone across the room says your name."

your name having a Lower threshold in the brain

Analogical Encoding

A technique where people are encouraged to find similarities between two different problems to understand the underlying principle.

"In a business class, students compare a successful marketing strategy for a restaurant to a campaign for a tech company, learning the deeper principle of customer engagement."

Analogical Problem Solving

Using the solution of a past similar problem to solve a new, but related, problem.

"A doctor recalls how radiation was used at low intensities from different angles to treat a tumor in one patient and applies the same method to a different type of tumor."

Law of Pragnanz (Gestalt)

A Gestalt psychology principle stating that people perceive complex images in the simplest form possible.

"When you see a group of overlapping circles, you naturally interpret them as complete circles rather than confusing shapes."

method of loci (mnemonic)

A way of remembering sequential information by linking the new information to locations along a familiar route.

Pineal gland and Sleep Cycle

The pineal gland plays a crucial role in regulating the sleep-wake cycle by producing and releasing melatonin. Melatonin, a hormone primarily released at night, helps signal to the body that it's time to rest.

George Miller's Magic Number 7

Known for the "magic number 7" people can hold about 7 +/- 2 items in short-term memory.

"You can remember around 7 grocery items without writing them down"

Paivio's Dual Coding Theory

Dual-coding theory (we process info better when it's both verbal and visual).

Learning is easier when a diagram accompanies written instructions.

Atkinson and Shiffrin

Proposed the multi-store model of memory (sensory, short-term, and long-term memory).

You briefly see a phone number, repeat it to yourself (short-term), and later remember it by writing it down (long-term).

Kosslyn

Known for mental imagery and visual-spatial reasoning.

When asked to picture your bedroom and mentally walk through it, you're using visual imagery.

Adaptive Process

The mental and behavioral adjustments individuals make in response to changes in their environment or new challenges

"After moving to a new country, a person learns the new language and adopts local customs to fit into their new environment."

Wernicke's Aphasia

A language disorder caused by damage to Wernicke's area, leading to fluent but nonsensical speech and impaired language comprehension

"After brain damage, a woman speaks in long, flowing sentences, but they are confusing and meaningless ("The butter talks when the wall runs"), and she has trouble understanding or comprehending questions."

Wernicke's Area

A region in the brain's left temporal lobe that is crucial for understanding language.

"When you listen to a podcast and understand what the speaker is saying, your Wernicke's area is actively comprehending the language."

Broca's Aphasia

A speech disorder resulting from damage to Broca's area (frontal lobe), causing difficulty in producing speech while comprehension largely remains intact.

"After suffering a stroke, a man tries to say, "I need help," but can only say "help... need," struggling with speech but understanding others perfectly."

Heuristic

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

"When deciding which route to drive during rush hour, someone quickly chooses the side streets without checking traffic because the side streets are usually faster"

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

A brain-scanning technique that measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow

"A brain-scanning technique that measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow."

Lexical Priming

When exposure to one word makes it easier to recognize or respond to a related word later.

"After hearing the word "cat," a person more quickly recognizes the word "dog" because they are commonly associated in memory."

Priming

The exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a later stimulus, without conscious guidance.

"After seeing a billboard for a vacation in Hawaii, you're more likely to think about beaches when asked to name a relaxing place."

Crowding Effect

This occurs when the perception of a target (like "C") is impaired by the presence of nearby distractors (like multiple "G"s), especially in peripheral vision.

Visual Masking

A target is harder to see when it appears near or between other stimuli that interfere with recognition.

Feature Search (easy and fast)

A cognitive process where a person scans the environment to locate a specific target among distractors.

If your friend is the only person wearing a red hat, and red hats are unique in the crowd, it's a Feature Search (easy and fast).

Feature Search (Quick, effortless and easy find)

A type of visual search task in which the target item differs from the surrounding distractors by a single, easily identifiable feature, such as color, shape, size, or orientation.

only one distinct feature (e.g., color or shape, not both)

Reaction time doesn't increase much with the number of distractors.

Relies on bottom-up processing — the stimulus itself grabs your attention.

Imagine you're shown a screen full of blue circles, and there's one red circle among them.

You're asked to find the red circle.

Since color is a distinct feature, the red circle pops out immediately.

That's a feature search — quick and easy!

a combination of features

If you had to find a red square among red circles and blue squares, which becomes a conjunction search — slower and more effortful.