UNIT 2 COGNITION ULTIMATE STUYGUIDE! zona eigel

• Perception: The process of organizing and

  interpreting sensory information to make it meaningful.

• ●  Bottom-up Processing:Analysis that starts at the sensory level and works up to higher levels of processing.

• ●  Top-down Processing:Information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations.

• ●  Schema: A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.

• ●  Perceptual Set: A predisposition to perceive things in a certain way.

• ●  Gestalt Psychology: An approach to psychology that emphasizes that the whole is different from the sum of its parts.

• ●  Closure: The perceptual tendency to fill in gaps in order to perceive a complete image.

• ●  Proximity: Objects that are close to each other tend to be perceived as belonging together.

• ●  Similarity: Objects that are similar in appearance are more likely to be perceived as belonging together.

• ●  Figure and Ground: The organization of the visual field into objects (figures) that stand out from their surroundings (ground).

• ●  Attention: Focusing awareness on a narrowed range of stimuli or events.

• ●  Selective Attention: The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.

• ●  Cocktail Party Effect: The ability to focus one's auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, much like tuning into a single voice at a noisy party.

• ●  Inattentional Blindness: Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.

• ●  Change Blindness: Failing to notice changes in the environment.

• ●  Binocular Depth Cues: Depth cues, such as retinal disparity, that depend on the use of two eyes.

• ●  Retinal Disparity: A binocular cue for perceiving depth: By comparing images from the retinas in the two eyes, the brain computes distance—the greater the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object.

• ●  Convergence: A binocular cue for perceiving depth; the extent to which the eyes converge inward when looking at an object.

• ●  Monocular Depth Cues: Depth cues, such as interposition and linear perspective, available to either eye alone.

• ●  Relative Size: If two objects are known to be of similar size, we perceive the one that casts a smaller retinal image as farther away.

• ●  Texture Gradient: The tendency for textured surfaces to appear to become smaller and finer as distance from the viewer increases.

• ●  Linear Perspective: Parallel lines, such as railroad tracks, appear to converge with distance. The more the lines converge, the greater their perceived distance.

• ●  Interposition: If one object partially blocks our view of another, we perceive it as closer.

• ●  Perceptual Constancies:Perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent shapes, size, and color) even as illumination and retinal images change.

• ●  Apparent Movement: The perception that a

  stationary object is moving.

• ●  Prototypes: 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.

• ●  Assimilation: Interpreting new experiences in terms of existing schemas.

• ●  Accommodation: Adapting one's current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.

• ●  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 that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms.

• ●  Representativeness Heuristic: 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.

• ●  Availability Heuristic: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.

• ●  Mental Set: A tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past.

• ●  Priming: The activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, 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.

• ●  Gambler’s Fallacy: The fallacy of thinking that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality they are unchanged. The fallacy lies in the belief that a departure from what occurs on average or in the short term will be corrected in the short term.

• ●  Sunk-cost Fallacy: Making decisions about a current situation based on what one has previously invested in the situation.

• ●  Executive Functions: Higher order thinking processes that include planning, organizing, inhibition, and decision-making.

• ●  Creativity: The ability to produce novel 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.

• ●  Functional Fixedness: The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving.

• ●  Testing Effect: Enhanced performance on a memory test caused by being tested on the material to be remembered.

• ●  Metacognition: Thinking about

  thinking. It refers to the processes used to plan, monitor, and assess one's understanding and performance.

• ●  Intelligence: Mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

• ●  g (General Intelligence): A factor that, according to Spearman and others, underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measured by every task on an intelligence test.

• ●  Multiple Intelligences: Theory proposed by Howard Gardner that suggests that there are eight distinct spheres of intelligence.

• ●  Intelligence Quotient (IQ):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.

• ●  Mental Age: A measure of intelligence test

  performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance. Thus, a child who does as well as the average 8-year-old is said to have a mental age of 8.

• ●  Chronological Age: The age of an individual expressed as time elapsed since birth.

• ●  Standardization: Defining uniform testing procedures and meaningful scores by comparison with the performance of a pretested group.

• ●  Construct Validity: The extent to which there is evidence that a test measures a particular hypothetical construct.

• ●  Predictive Validity: The success with which a test predicts the behavior it is designed to predict; it is assessed by computing the correlation between test scores and the criterion behavior.

• ●  Reliability: The extent to which a test yields consistent results, as assessed by the consistency of scores on two halves of the test, on alternative forms of the test, or on retesting.

• ●  Test-Retest Reliability: A method for determining the reliability of a test by comparing a test taker's scores on the same test taken on separate occasions.

• ●  Split-Half Reliability: A measure of reliability in which a test is split into two parts and an individual's scores on both halves are compared.

• ●  Stereotype Threat: A self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype.

• ●  Stereotype Lift: When awareness of positive expectations improves performance on tasks.

• ●  Flynn Effect: The rise in average IQ scores that has occurred over the decades in many nations.

• ●  Achievement Tests: Tests designed to assess what a person has learned.

• ●  Aptitude Tests: Tests designed to predict a person's future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.

• ●  Fixed Mindset: The belief that abilities are fixed and unchangeable.

• ●  Growth Mindset: The belief that abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work.

• ●  Explicit Memory: Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare."

• ●  Episodic Memory: The ability to recall and mentally re-experience specific episodes from one's personal past.

• ●  Semantic Memory: Memory for factual information.

• ●  Implicit Memory: Retention of learned skills or classically conditioned associations independent of conscious recollection.

• ●  Procedural Memory: A type of implicit memory that involves motor skills and behavioral habits.

• ●  Prospective Memory:Remembering to

  perform a future action at the appropriate time that you previously intended to accomplish.

• ●  Long-term Potentiation: An

  increase in a cell's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory.

  Neurons that fire together wire

  together

• ●  Working Memory Model: An updated version of short-term memory that involves conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory.

• ●  Central Executive: The part of working memory that directs attention and processing.

• ●  Phonological Loop: The part of working memory that holds and processes verbal and auditory information.

• ●  Visuospatial Sketchpad: The part of working memory that holds and processes visual and spatial information.

• ●  Multi-Store Model of Memory: A model that describes memory as consisting of three distinct stages: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

• ●  Sensory Memory: The immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system.

• ●  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.

• ●  Short-Term Memory: Activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as the seven digits of a phone number while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten.

• ●  Long-Term Memory: The relatively

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

• ●  Automatic Processing:Unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings.

• ●  Effortful Processing: Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.

• ●  Encoding: The processing of

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

• ●  Storage: The retention of encoded information over time.

• ●  Retrieval: The process of getting information out of memory storage.

• ●  Levels of Processing Model: This model of memory suggests that memory retention is directly related to the depth of mental processing, with deeper processing producing better recall.

• ●  Shallow Encoding: Processing information based on its surface characteristics.

• ●  Deep Encoding: Processing information based on its meaning.

• ●  Structural Encoding: Shallow processing that emphasizes the physical structure of the stimulus.

• ●  Phonemic Encoding: Encoding of sounds, especially the sounds of words.

• ●  Semantic Encoding: The encoding of

  meaning, including the meaning of words.

• ●  Mnemonic Devices: Memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices.

• ●  Method of Loci: A mnemonic device that involves imagining placing items you want to remember along a route you know well, or in specific locations in a familiar room or building.

• ●  Chunking: Organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically.

  1 7 7 6 1 812 1 8 6 1 1 91 4 19 4 1 1776 1812 1861 1914 1941

• ●  Categories: Grouping items into categories that share similar characteristics.

• ●  Hierarchies: Systems in which concepts are arranged from more general to more specific classes.

• ●  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: Cramming information all at once. It is less effective than spreading learning over time.

• ●  Distributed Practice: Spreading out study sessions over time with breaks in between. This practice leads to better memorization and recall.

• ●  Serial Position Effect: Our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list.

• ●  Primacy Effect: The tendency to remember words at the beginning of a list especially well.

• ●  Recency Effect: The tendency to remember words at the end of a list especially well.

• ●  Maintenance Rehearsal: Repeating stimuli in their original form to retain them in short-term memory.

• ●  Elaborative Rehearsal: The linking of new information to material that is already known

  .

• ●  Memory Retention: The ability to retain information over time through the storage and retrieval of information.

• ●  Autobiographical Memory: A special form of episodic memory, consisting of a person's recollections of his or her life experiences.

• ●  Retrograde Amnesia: An inability to retrieve information from one's past.

• ●  Anterograde Amnesia: An inability to form new memories.

• ●  Alzheimer’s Disease: A progressive and

  irreversible brain disorder characterized by gradual deterioration of memory, reasoning, language, and, finally, physical functioning.

• ●  Infantile Amnesia: The inability to remember events from early childhood.

• ●  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 need only identify items previously learned, as on a multiple-choice test.

• ●  Retrieval Cues: Stimuli that aid the recall or recognition of information stored in memory.

• ●  Context-Dependent Memory: Improved recall of specific episodes or information when the context present at encoding and retrieval are the same.

• ●  Mood-Congruent Memory: The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood.

• ●  State-Dependent Memory: The theory that information learned in a particular state of mind (e.g., depressed, happy, somber) is more easily recalled when in that same state of mind.

• ●  Testing Effect: Enhanced performance on a memory test caused by being tested on the material to be remembered.

• ●  Metacognition: Thinking about thinking. It refers to the processes used to plan, monitor, and assess one's understanding and performance.

• ●  The Forgetting Curve: A graph showing retention and forgetting over time.

● Encoding Failure: The failure to process

information into memory.

• ●  Proactive Interference: The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information.

• ●  Retroactive Interference: The

  disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information.

• ●  Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon: The temporary inability to remember something you know, accompanied by a feeling that it's just out of reach.

• ●  Repression: In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.

• ●  Misinformation Effect:Incorporating

  misleading information into one's memory of an event.

• ●  Source Amnesia: Attributing to the

  wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined. Also called source misattribution.

• ●  Constructive Memory: Memory that is

  constructed from inferences as well as input information, which can be affected by biases and other influences.

• ●  Memory Consolidation: The process by which memories become stable in the brain.

• ●  Imagination Inflation: A memory

  phenomenon in which vividly imagining an event markedly increases confidence that the event actually occurred.

  Mnemonics:

  Proactive interference Pushes old memories to interfere with new ones.

  Retroactive interference Replaces old memories with new ones.

  Retrograde amnesia: Remember Retro—can't recall the past.

  Anterograde amnesia: After the incident, no new memories.

● There are unknown unknowns-there are things we do not know we don’t know (illusion of knowing). You should not be finding out that you didn’t actually know the material during the test. You should utilize practice questions to identify what you actually know and practice applications of the content, not just re-reading definitions.