Cognition: The Machinery of the Mind Lecture Notes

A series of vocabulary flashcards based on the concepts covered in the cognition lecture notes.

Attention

The ability to select a subset of input to identify what has been chosen.

Bottom-up processing

Attentional capture where you have no choice but to attend to something.

Top-down processing

Volitional attention where you choose to attend to something.

Overt attention

When you are directly looking at the object of your attention.

Covert attention

Looking at something else while mentally processing an object.

Attentional capture

A change in the world that draws your attention involuntarily.

Retinotopic Organization

Areas that are spatially near each other in the world are near each other in the visual cortex.

Primacy Effect

Better long-term memory encoding due to rehearsal of early items.

Recency Effect

The temporary benefit in recall of the last items presented.

Broadbent's Early Selection Model

Attention filters information early in the processing stream.

Late Selection Model

All information is processed through to a semantic level before attention occurs.

Treisman's Attenuation Model

Incoming information is filtered based on its importance and relevance.

Working Memory

A cognitive system that allows the active maintenance of information.

Baddeley's model of memory

An approach to understanding working memory featuring the central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad.

Anterograde Amnesia

Inability to encode new information after a specific incident.

Sensory Memory

Memory that has a large capacity but rapid decay, used for initial information processing.

Short-Term Memory (STM)

A limited capacity memory system that can hold information temporarily.

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

A vast storage system for information that holds details over an extended period.

Dual-task interference

The negative impact on task performance when trying to perform two tasks at the same time.

Visual short-term memory (vSTM)

The capacity of visual memory, typically around 3-4 items.