AP PSYCH UNIT 2a: COGNITION VOCAB

Cognition

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

Concept

a mental grouping 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).

Schema

a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

Assimilation

interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.

Accomodation

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.

algorithm

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.

heuristic

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.

Confirmation bias

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

Mental set

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

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

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

Framing

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

Priming

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

Gambler’s Fallacy

A heuristic in which a person thinks the probability of an outcome has changed, when in reality, it has stayed the same. 

Sunk-Cost Fallacy

A tendency for people to continue something because they’ve already invested their time, energy, or money, even when abandoning it would be more beneficial

Functional Fixedness

When the fixation applies to an object; you can only see “one” way to use an object

Memory

persistence of learning over time through the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information.

Explicit Memory

retention of facts and experiences that we can consciously know and“declare.” (Also called declarative memory.)

Episodic Memory

explicit memory of personally experienced events; one of our two conscious memory systems (the other is semantic memory).

Semantic Memory

explicit memory of facts and general knowledge; one of our two conscious memory systems (the other is episodic memory).

Implicit Memory

retention of learned skills or classically conditioned associations independent of conscious recollection. (Also called nondeclarative memory.)

Procedural Memory

a type of memory that allows people to perform tasks without conscious thought or effort after they've been learned and practiced

Prospective Memory

the ability to remember to do something in the future, such as carrying out a planned action or recalling an intention

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)

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

Short-Term Memory

briefly activated memory of a few items (such as digits of a phone number while calling) that is later stored or forgotten.

Working Memory

a newer understanding of short-term memory; conscious, active processing of both (1) incoming sensory information and (2) information retrieved from long-term memory.

Working Memory Model

a cognitive model that describes working memory as a system with multiple components that work together to manipulate information

Visuospatial Sketchpad

a memory component that briefly holds information about objects’ appearance and location in space.

Long-Term Memory

the relatively permanent and limitless archive of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.

Multi-Store Model

a psychological theory that describes how human memory works by dividing it into three separate stores

Sensory Memory

the immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system.

Central Executive

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

Phonological Loop

a memory component that briefly holds auditory information.

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.

Shallow Processing

encoding on a basic level, based on the structure or appearance of words.

Deep Processing

encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best retention.

Automatic Processing

unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of familiar or well-learned information, such as sounds, smells, and word meanings.

Effortful Processing

encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.

Encoding

the process of getting information into the memory system — for example, by extracting meaning.

Storing

the process of retaining encoded information over time.

Retrieval

the process of getting information out of memory storage.

Structural Processing

when we remember only the physical quality of the word (how the word is spelled and how letters look)

Phonemic Processing

remembering the word by the way it sounds

Semantic Processing

the stage of language processing that occurs after one hears a word and encodes its meaning

Levels of Processing Model

a theory that explains how memory recall is affected by the depth of mental processing

Mnemonic Devices

memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices.

Method of Loci

a mnemonic device that involves associating items to be remembered with specific locations within a familiar environment

Chunking

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

Categories

the mental groupings we create to organize information, where we classify objects, ideas, and events based on shared characteristics

Hierarchies

systems where individuals or concepts are ranked one above another based on specific criteria.

The Spacing Effect

the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice.

Memory Consolidation

the neural storage of a long-term memory.

Massed Practice

a learning technique where a person practices a skill or learns information in a single session or over a short period of time with little to no rest

Distributed Practice

a learning technique where practice is spread out over multiple short sessions over a longer period of time

Serial Position Effect

our tendency to recall best the last items in a list initially (a recency effect), and the first items in a list after a delay (a primacy effect).

Primacy Effect

a psychological phenomenon that describes the tendency to remember information presented first in a list

Recency Effect

a cognitive bias that causes people to remember information presented most recently better than information presented earlier

Rehearsal

a cognitive process that involves repeating information to improve memory and learning

Maintenance Rehearsal

a memory technique that involves repeating information to keep it in short-term memory

Elaborative Rehearsal

a memory technique that helps people move information from short-term to long-term memory

Autobiographical Memory

a specific category of long-term memory that encompasses an individual's personal memories of life experiences and events

Superior Autobiographical Memory

the ability to accurately recall an exceptional number of experiences and their associated dates from events occurring throughout much of one's lifetime

Retrograde Amnesia

an inability to remember information from one’s past.

Anterograde Amnesia

an inability to form new memories.

Alzheimer’s Disease

a brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills and, eventually, the ability to carry out the simplest tasks

Infantile Amnesia

the inability to recall memories from early childhood, typically before the age of 3 or 4

Retrieval

the process of getting information out of memory storage.

Recall

a measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the-blank test.

recognition

a measure of memory in which the person identifies items previously learned, as on a multiple-choice test.

Retrieval Cues

stimuli that assist in memory retrieval

Encoding Specificity Principle

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

Context-Dependent Memory

the phenomenon where memory is recalled more easily when the same environment is present during both encoding and retrieval

Mood-Congruent Memory

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

State-Dependent Memory

the phenomenon where people remember more information if their physical or mental state is the same at time of encoding and time of recall.

Testing Effect

enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information. Also referred to as a retrieval practice effect or test-enhanced learning.

Metacognition

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

The Forgetting Curve

a psychological model that illustrates how people lose information over time if they don't make an effort to retain it

Encoding Failure

a cognitive phenomenon that occurs when information is not effectively stored in memory due to inadequate processing during the encoding stage

Proactive Interference

the forward-acting disruptive effect of older learning on the recall of new information.

Retroactive Interference

the backward-acting disruptive effect of newer learning on the recall of old information.

Tip-of-the-tongue Phenomenon

a psychological state where someone is temporarily unable to recall a word they know well, but has some partial information about it

Repression

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

Misinformation Effect

occurs when a memory has been corrupted by misleading information.

Source Amnesia

faulty memory for how, when, or where information was learned or imagined (as when misattributing information to a wrong source). Source amnesia, along with the misinformation effect, is at the heart of many false memories.

Constructive Memory

a psychological concept that describes how the brain creates memories, which can be altered by new information, perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes

Imagination Inflation

a memory distortion that occurs when someone imagines an event that never happened and then becomes more confident that it actually happened