APPSYCH- Unit 2.2- Cognition

AP Psychology

Cognition

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

Metacognition

cognition about our cognition, or keeping track of and evaluating our mental processes

Concept

mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people, to simplify and order the world around us

Prototype

best examples 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 (understandings) to incorporate new information

Executive Functions

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

Algorithm

methodical, logical, rule, or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem

Heuristic

simple thinking strategy-mental shortcut-that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently

Available Heuristic

judging the likelihood events based on their availability in memory

Mental Set

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

Priming

activation, often unconsciously, of certain association, thus predisposing one’s perception, memory, or response

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

Gambler’s Fallacy

the mistaken belief that past random events can influence the probability of future independent events, leading someone to think that an outcome is more likely to occur simply because it hasn’t happened recently, even though each event is statistically separate and has the same chance of occurring

Sunk-Cost Fallacy

we stick to our original plan because we’ve already invested time and energy into it

Functional Fixedness

a cognitive bias where a person is unable to think of an object being used for anything other than what it’s typically used for

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

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

Creativity

the ability to produce new and valuable ideas

Divergent Thinking

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

Convergent Thinking

narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution