AP Psychology - Unit 2 Vocabulary - Vocabulary #1

Vocab Quiz - November 4, 2024

Cognition

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

Concepts

mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

Prototype

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 (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a crow)

Schemas

a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information

Assimilate

interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas

Accommodate

in developmental psychology, adapting our current schemas (understandings) to incorporate new information

Creativity

the ability to produce new and valuable ideas

Convergent thinking

narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution

Divergent thinking

expanding the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that diverges in different directions

Executive functions

cognitive skills that work together, enabling us to generate, organize, plan, and implement goal-directed behavior

Algorithms

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

Heuristics

a simple thinking strategy — a mental shortcut — that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than an algorithm

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

Mental set

a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past

Intuition

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

Representativeness Heuristic

judging the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information

Availability Heuristic

judging 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

Overconfidence

the tendency to be more confident than correct — to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments

Belief Perseverance (packet says “Belief Preservation”)

the persistence of one’s initial conceptions even after the basis on which they were formed has been discarded

Framing

the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments

Nudge

framing choices in a way that encourages people to make beneficial decisions