psychology unit 4

Selective attention – The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus​.

Inattentional blindness – Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere​.

Visual capture – The tendency for vision to dominate the other senses​.

Gestalt – An organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes​.

Figure-ground – The organization of the visual field into objects (figures) that stand out from their surroundings (ground)​.

Grouping – The perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups​.

Depth perception – The ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance​.

Visual cliff – A laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals​.

Binocular 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 two eyeballs, 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 cues – Depth cues, such as interposition and linear perspective, available to either eye alone​.

Phi phenomenon – An illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession​.

Perceptual constancy – Perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent lightness, color, shape, and size) even as illumination and retinal images change​.

Perceptual adaptation – In vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field​.

Perceptual set – A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another​.

Human factors psychology – A branch of psychology that explores how people and machines interact and how machines and physical environments can be made safe and easy to use​.

Extrasensory perception (ESP) – The controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input; includes telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition​.

Parapsychology – The study of paranormal phenomena, including ESP and psychokinesis​.

Memory – The persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information.

Flashbulb memory – A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event.

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.

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

Short-term memory – Activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as 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.

Working memory – A newer understanding of short-term memory that involves conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory.

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.

Rehearsal – The conscious repetition of information, either to maintain it in consciousness or to encode it for storage.

Spacing effect – The tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice.

Serial position effect – Our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list.

Visual encoding – The encoding of picture images.

Acoustic encoding – The encoding of sound, especially the sound of words.

Semantic encoding – The encoding of meaning, including the meaning of words.

Imagery – Mental pictures; a powerful aid to effortful processing, especially when combined with semantic encoding.

Mnemonics – Memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices.

Chunking – Organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically.

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.

Long-term potentiation (LTP) – An increase in a synapse’s firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory.

Amnesia – The loss of memory.

Implicit memory – Retention independent of conscious recollection. (Also called procedural memory.)

Explicit memory – Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and “declare.”

Hippocampus – A neural center that is located in the limbic system; helps process explicit memories for 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.

Relearning – A memory measure that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material for a second time.

Priming – The activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory.

Déjà vu – That eerie sense that “I’ve experienced this before.” Cues from the current situation may subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience.

Mood-congruent memory – The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one’s current good or bad mood.

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.

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.)

Cognition – The mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating​

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Concept – A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people​

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Prototype – A mental image or best example of a category​

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Algorithm – A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem​

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Heuristic – A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms​

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Insight – A sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem; it contrasts with strategy-based solutions​

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Confirmation bias – A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence​

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Fixation – The inability to see a problem from a new perspective, by employing a different mental set​

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Mental set – A tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past​

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Functional fixedness – The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem-solving​

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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​

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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​

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

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Belief perseverance – Clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited​

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Intuition – An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning​

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Framing – The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments​

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Language – Our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning​

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Phoneme – In language, the smallest distinctive sound unit​

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Morpheme – In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix)​

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Grammar – In a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others​

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Semantics – The set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences in a given language; also, the study of meaning​

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Syntax – The rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences in a given language​

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Babbling stage – Beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language​

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One-word stage – The stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words​

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Two-word stage – Beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly two-word statements​

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Telegraphic speech – Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram—“go car”—using mostly nouns and verbs​

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Linguistic determinism – Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think​

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