Cognition Unit Flashcards (150)

Achievement Test

Textbook: A test designed to assess what a person has learned
Mine: Type of assessment used to measure a person's knowledge or skills in a particular area

Retrieval Cues:
-Achievement has the letter ‘m’ in it, m also stands for measured knowledge

Algorithm

Textbook: A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier-but also more error-prone-use of heuristics
Mine: A guaranteed solution using steps-by-step procedures.

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Recipe for baking a cake

Alternate-forms reliability

Textbook: Different forms of the same assessment yield similar results
Mine: Consistent test results

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Same results from taking the SAT multiple times

Amygdala

Textbook: Neural clusters in the limic system; linked to emotion
Mine: Center of emotions, motivation and fear. Involved in memory consolidation (turning it into long-term memory).

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Remembering losing a loved one or first kiss
-Stronger emotion = Will remember will

Anchoring effect

Textbook: Favoring the first information offered
Mine:

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Mississippi River length estimation

Anterograde Amnesia

Textbook: An inability to form new memories.
Mine: Able to recall past but unable to form brand-new memories

Retrieval Cues:
-Opposite of Retrograde Amnesia

Aphasia

Textbook: Impairment of language, usually caused by left-hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding).
Mine: Impairment of language of Broca’s area or Wernicke’s area

Retrieval Cues:

Aptitude Test

Textbook: A test designed to predict a person’s future performance aptitude is the capacity to learn.
Mine: A test designed to assess what a person has learned/capacity to learn

Retrieval Cues:

Artificial Concept

Textbook: A perfect example; sometime we don’t really see in real life
Mine: Has a specific set of characteristics

Retrieval Cues:
-A triangle will always have 3 sides and 3 angle

Automatic Processing

Textbook: Unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings.
Mine: Not needing constant human involvement or intervention.

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Recognizing faces of familiar people

Availability Heuristic

Textbook: Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if
instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common.
Mine: Recall examples, that are available, in your mind

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: When someone asks you “What is the first thing that comes to mind when you thik of..?”

Basal Ganglia

Textbook: Cluster of frontal lobe neurons that plays a role in procedural memories and habits information
Mine: Helps with procedural memories such as habits / how to (implicit memory)

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Tying your shoe

Belief Perseverance

Textbook: clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.
Mine: People tend to give weight to the existing belief even if there is evidence against them

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Groupthinks; when a person expresses an idea and it becomes the majority without others considering alternate POVs

Broca’s Area

Textbook: controls language expression—an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere that directs the muscle movements involved in speech.
Mine: Impairment of speaking

Retrieval Cues:

Cerebellum

Textbook:
Mine: Storing implicit memories from classical conditioning and conditioned reflexes.

Retrieval Cues:
-Riding a bike
-Balance & Movement

Cohort

Textbook: a group of people from a given time period.
Mine: Group of people born around the same time

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Younger generations have more diverse attitude regarding gender, race, etc

Confirmation Bias

Textbook: a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.
Mine: Searching for what aligns with our beliefs

Retrieval Cues:

Construct Validity

Textbook: There’s a plan for how to define and measure a concept
Mine: The measure's ability to capture the intended concept.

Retrieval Cues:
-Construct = Making a plan

Content Validity

Textbook: the extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest.
Mine: Test measure what it says it measures

Retrieval Cues:
-Solving 1+1 represents basic addition knowledge, but it does not represent mathematical knowledge as a whole

Context-Dependent Memory

Textbook: Refers to the need to put yourself back in the context where you experienced
something to prime your memory retrieval.
Mine: Only recalling information when you are in the same place where it was initially learned

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Leaving the room to sharpen your pencil and then entering another room only to forget why you went there and when you go back to your desk you realize you need to sharpen your pencil.

Convergent thinking

Textbook: Narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution.
Mine: Focuses on one-defined solutions to a problem

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: IQ Tests: One single answer

Criterion/concurrent validity

Textbook: Test results match the results of other tests or an outside measure
Mine: Results were the same as a previous test

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: A new test for math skills shows a strong correlation with students’ current math grades

Cross-sectional study

Textbook: A study in which people of different ages are compared with one another.
Mine: Collecting data from all different types of people

Retrieval Cues:

Crystallized intelligence

Textbook: Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.
Mine: Recalling information from a stored base of knowledge, knowledge can be applied to new situations.

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Jasmine has been cooking for decades. She no longer needs any cookbooks because she has so many recipes memorized

Deductive reasoning

Textbook: Looking at facts and determining the answer you know to be true based on facts
Mine: facts/a definite truth

Retrieval Cues:
- DE = DE-finite truth

Deep processing

Textbook: Encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best
retention.
Mine: In depth analysis and understanding for comprehension, retention, and long-term memory formation.

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Defining important terms from a text

Divergent thinking

Textbook: Expands the number of possible problem solutions (creative thinking that
diverges in different directions).
Mine: Being creative and generating new ideas

Retrieval Cues:
-Thinking a number of solutions

Echoic memory

Textbook: A momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds.
Mine: Holds auditory information until it can be processed and comprehended

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: When a teacher asks what they just said

Effortful processing

Textbook: Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.
Mine: Needs effort in order to encode to memory

Retrieval Cues:

Eidetic memory

Textbook: When a person has visual images clear enough to be retained for 30+ seconds that are vivid and realistic, occurs most in children and disappears in adolescence.
Mine: Like photogenic memory, studying the image for 30 seconds of an image with specific details and then it disappears.

Retrieval Cues:
-AKA: Photogenic Memory
-Forms letter G

Elaborative rehearsal

Textbook: N/A
Mine: Commit information to long-term and creating meaningful associations

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Retrieval Cues!

Emotional intelligence

Textbook: The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.
Mine: Understanding emotions about yourself and others around you

Retrieval Cues:

Encoding failure

Textbook: Much of what we sense we never notice, and what we fail to encode, we will never remember
Mine: Failure to encode information

Retrieval Cues:

Encoding specificity principle

Textbook: N/A
Mine: Recalling information better in the same condition it was originally learned

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: A note taker of the meeting stays behind because they feel they will remember the information better because they are still where it took place

Episodic memory

Textbook: N/A
Mine: Experiences that transfer to long-term storage of information

Retrieval Cues:
-Remembering everything about the first time you went fishing with your dad such as what happened, how you felt, and what you/your dad said.

Exemplar

Textbook: Great example from experience
Mine: model or example

Retrieval Cues:
-Similar to prototype

Explicit/declarative memory

Textbook: Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and “declare.”
Mine: Needs attention in order to remember; in the hippocampus and amygdala

Retrieval Cues:

Factor analysis

Textbook: 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.
Mine:

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: People who get a high score on the verbal ability also get a high score on tests that need verbal abilities.

Face validity

Textbook: Appears to the test-taker to measure what it says it should
Mine: Extent to which a study appears to measure what it says it is measured

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Basic arithmetic test
-Face=Surface=Appear

Fixation

Textbook: An inability to see a problem from a fresh perspective.
Mine: Only looking from one POV

Retrieval Cues:

Flashbulb memory

Textbook: A clear memory of an emotionally significant moments or event
Mine: Memories are clear because there is emotion attached to it.

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: What you did during 9/11

Fluid intelligence

Textbook: Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood.
Mine: Ability to solve new problems using logic and reason

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Susan and her friends love to go to murder-mystery dinners and try to solve crimes before anyone else

Flynn effect

Textbook: N/A
Mine: IQ scores increase from one generation to the next and IQ can be shaped by our environment such as education

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Education gets better every generation so IQ is increased

Framing

Textbook: Framing the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments.
Mine: Biased towards picking a positive option over a negative one even if they bring the same results

Retrieval Cues:

Functional fixedness

Textbook:
Mine: Fixation (thinking of familiar function) but with objects

Retrieval Cues:

General (g) intelligence

Textbook: A general intelligence factor that, according to Spearman and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.
Mine: More than one specific factor for people’s perofrmance on IQ test

Retrieval Cues:

Heritability

Textbook: The proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied.
Mine:

Retrieval Cues:

Heuristic

Textbook: A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms.
Mine: Educated guess/Logical thinking

Retrieval Cues:
-Common sense

Hippocampus

Textbook: Described as the hub through which complex neural memory networks are made
Mine: In the limbic system and temporal lobe. Forming memory and processing explicit memories.

Retrieval Cues:
-Save button for memory

Iconic memory

Textbook: A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second.
Mine: Processes and stores visual images

Retrieval Cues:

Imagination effect

Textbook: N/A
Mine: Creating false information through nonexistent actions

Retrieval Cues:
-Imagination = nonexistent action

Implicit/nondeclarative memory

Textbook: Retention independent of conscious recollection.
Mine: In basal ganglia and cerebellum and stored without effort

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Unconsciously learning lyrics to a song

Inductive reasoning

Textbook: Looking for a trend or generalizing when looking at data
Mine: prediction/not a definite truth

Retrieval Cues:

Insight

Textbook: A sudden realization of a problem’s solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions.
Mine: Solution to a problem presents itself

Retrieval Cues:
-Insight = automatic solution

Intelligence quotient (IQ)

Textbook: Defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100 (thus, IQ = ma/ca × 100). On contemporary intelligence tests, the average
performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100, with scores assigned to relative performance above or below average.
Mine: Score from standardized tests to measure intelligence

Retrieval Cues:

Interrater reliability

Textbook: 2+ graders of the test should give it the same score
Mine: Agreement among the multiple evaluators

Retrieval Cues:

Intuition

Textbook: An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning.
Mine: Automatic actions that happen without much reasoning

Retrieval Cues:
-Trusting your gut

Justification effort

Textbook: The tendency to love the things that we work hardest for
Mine: More effort = more love

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Loving an expensive bag because you saved a lot for it

Long-term memory

Textbook: The relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes
knowledge, skills, and experiences.
Mine: Virtually unlimited capacity of storage and can store information for years

Retrieval Cues:

Long-term potentiation

Textbook: An increase in a cell’s firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory.
Mine: Making neuron connections in order to strength memory

Retrieval Cues:
-Long-term = needs to put into memory

Linguistic determinism

Textbook: Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think.
Mine: Structure and vocabulary determine people’s POV

Retrieval Cues:

Linguistic influence/relativity

Textbook: N/A
Mine: Language structure and content can direct how one comprehend reality

Retrieval Cues:

Longitudinal study

Textbook: Research in which the same people are restudied and retested over a long period.
Mine:

Retrieval Cues:
-Capturing data over a long period of time in order to analyze trends/changes
-Long = Long period of time

Maintenance rehearsal

Textbook: Repeating information over and over to prolong its presence in short-term memory typically adds ~30 seconds
Mine: Continuously repeating information/hold the information

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Phone Number

Memory consolidation

Textbook:
Mine: Temporary short term memory is transferred to a stable long-lasting form

Retrieval Cues:
-Stage 2 sleep improves memory consolidation
-Studying the same material over a long period of time = pathways form in order make remembering information more stronger

Mental set

Textbook: A tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past.
Mine: Only having one perspective to accomplish a goal

Retrieval Cues:
-Approaching the same problem over and over with only one perspective

Misinformation effect

Textbook: Incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event.
Mine: Insert/mixing information, thus changing the correct information.

Retrieval Cues:
-Hit vs Smash - Car Incident

Mnemonics

Textbook: Memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices.
Mine: Includes devices like acronyms to help memorize information

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: PEMDAS

Mood congruent memory

Textbook: The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one’s current good or bad mood.
Mine: Emotions bring up memories that correlate to the same emotions.

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: You are relaxing during a holiday and think of all the other holiday fun times in your memory.

Morphemes

Textbook: In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix).
Mine: smallest unit that carry meaning

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: The word “Night” can stand by itself and hold meaning

Motivated reasoning

Textbook: N/A
Mine: Humans believe what they want to believe, often subconsciously.

Retrieval Cues:

Negative transfer

Textbook: When the memory of one task conflicts with learning another
Mine: Old memories conflict new memories which makes new tasks harder

Retrieval Cues:
-Opposite of Positive
-Speaking Telugu hindering the learning of Malayalam.

Normal curve

Textbook: A symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many types of data; most scores fall near the mean (about 68 percent fall within one standard deviation of it) and fewer and fewer near the extremes.
Mine: Bell-shaped curve

Retrieval Cues:
-Normal curve = bell shape = where the mean is

Overgeneralization of grammar

Textbook: The application of grammar rules in instances when they do not apply; tends to occur during telegraphic speech
Mine: Grammar rules aren’t properly established yet

Retrieval Cues:
-I goed to the park

Parallel processing

Textbook: The processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain’s natural mode of information processing for many functions, including vision. Contrasts with the step-by-step (serial) processing of most computers and of conscious problem solving
Mine: Taking in multiple aspects of information at the same time.

Retrieval Cues:
-Seeing a bus’s color, motion, shape, depth, etc

Phonemes

Textbook: In a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.
Mine: Sound in a language

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Table = /t//a//bl//

Planning fallacy

Textbook: Tendency to overestimate our free time and money
Mine:

Retrieval Cues:
-
-

Positive transfer

Textbook: When the memory of one task aids learning or performing another
Mine: Learning information helps with another task

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Learning the piano to help you with other musical instrument

Predictive validity

Textbook: Test predicts future performance over large sets of data (Group)
Mine: Prediction of future scores or how well a person will do

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Students with higher SAT scores will return next year.

Prefrontal cortex

Textbook: Enables judgment, planning, and processing new memories
Mine: Dampens feelings of physical pain

Retrieval Cues:
-Cortext = Learning decision-making, etc

Primacy effect

Textbook: The first items in a list are remembered best in the long term (possibly moved to long-term memory)
Mine: Remembering the first items in the list

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: First items in a grocery list

Priming

Textbook: The activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one’s perception, memory, or response.
Mine: Exposure to one thing can alter behavior/thought to another thing

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: After seeing fast food TV commercials all day, a viewer may be more inclinted to eat a hamburger compared to a salad.

Proactive interference

Textbook: The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information.
Mine: Old memories interfering with new memories

Retrieval Cues:
-POIN: Proactive = old interferes new

Procedural memory

Textbook: Automatic skills in implicit memory
Mine: Automatically processed information

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Learning to use a computer keyboard

Prospective memory

Textbook: A memory to do with something in the future
Mine: Planning so you can recall in the future

Retrieval Cues:
-Putting a bracelet next to your Apple Watch so you can remember to grab it

Prototype

Textbook: A mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories.
Mine:

Retrieval Cues:
-As when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin

Recall

Textbook: A measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier
Mine: Person must use effort in order to retrieve information

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: fill-in-the-blank test.

Recency effect

Textbook: N/A
Mine: Recalling the last items better than the middle items

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Remembering the last items in a grocery list

Recognition

Textbook: A measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned
Mine: Identifying previous learned information by using the external cues

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: A multiple-choice test

Reconsolidation

Textbook: N/A
Mine: Action of reactivating existing memories from the past

Retrieval Cues:

Reductionism

Textbook: N/A
Mine: Complicated behaviors and phenomena that are being reduced in order to break down and understand its meaning

Retrieval Cues: Reduction = Reducing the term

Reliability

Textbook: The extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternate forms of the test, or on retesting.
Mine: Results are consistent and avoids bias

Retrieval Cues:

Representative heuristic

Textbook: Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information.
Mine: Judging based on the prototype you have envisioned.

Retrieval Cues: Truck Driver VS Professor, which one went to a ivy league school?

Retrieval failure

Textbook: Sometimes even stored information cannot be accessed, which leads to forgetting.
Mine: Unable to retrieve information

Retrieval Cues:

Retroactive interference

Textbook: The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information
Mine: Recall of old information is obstructed by new information.

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Changing passwords; you forget your old password after you used a new one for weeks.

Retrograde amnesia

Textbook: An inability to retrieve information from one’s past.
Mine: Cannot recall old memories and event, but can encode new information

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Forgetting when you brought a car but still know how to drive it
-Retro definition: Back

Risk/loss aversion

Textbook: Tendency to prefer avoiding loss to achieving equivalent gains
Mine: Bring conservative with losses.

Retrieval Cues:

Savant syndrome

Textbook: A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as in computation or drawing.
Mine: Limited mental ability but can suppress average in specific skills

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Reading and remembering things at faster peace
-Eg: Performing faster calculations

Self-reference effect

Textbook: Information deemed “relevant to me” is processed more deeply and remains
more accessible. Knowing this, you can profit from taking time to find personal meaning in
what you are studying.
Mine: Making information personal to yourself for better memory

Retrieval Cues:
-Eg: Remembering names by making it personal to you

Semantic memory

Textbook: N/A
Mine: Declarative memory and long-term storage of facts

Retrieval Cues:
-Findings facts in your mind to refute your debate opponent