psych u 2

  • Memory: The persistence of learning over time, through encoding, storage and retrieval of information 

  • Recall: Retrieving information that was learned at an earlier time

  • Recognition: Identifying items previously known

  • Relearning: Learning something more quickly when you learn it again

  • Executive Functions: set of cognitive skills that allow individuals to plan, organize, initiate, and manage complex behaviors

  • Information Processing Model

    • Encoding: Process of getting information into the brain

    • Storage: The process of retaining said information in the brain

    • Retrieval: Process of getting said information out of the brain

    • Parallel Processing: Processing multiple aspects of information at once

  • Atkinson-Shiffrin Model

    • Sensory memory: What information is first processed as

    • Short term memory: limited memory that shortly holds information

    • Long term memory: Limitless memory that we have access to forever

    • Working memory: A new understanding of short term memory that adds conscious active processing of incoming auditory and visual information

  • Central executive: controls aspects of memory

  • Phonological loop: memory that briefly holds auditory information

  • Visuospatial sketchpad: memory that allows you to visualize memory

  • Automatic Processing: the unconscious processing of information, where cognitive tasks are performed without requiring conscious effort or attention, often relating to well-learned skills or familiar stimuli

  • Effortful processing: the active mental process of encoding information that requires conscious effort and attention

  • Shallow Processing: when you recognize the structure of a word or object

  • Deep Processing: when you recognize the meaning of a word or object

  • Semantic Memory: explicit memory of facts and general knowledge

  • Episodic Memory: Explicit memory of personally experienced events

  • Context Dependent Memory: memory improves based on the context around you

  • State Congruent Memory: Improved memory recall based on state you’re in

  • Mood Congruent Memory: Improved memory recall based on mood

  • Memory Consolidation: Fancy way of saying storing memories

  • Rehearsal: 

  • Spacing effect: Tendency to increase memory by spacing out rehearsal 

  • Serial position effect: Our tendency to recall first and last items on a list

  • Mnemonic devices: memory aids, may use vivid imagery 

  • Chunking: organizing items into familiar, manageable units

  • Encoding specificity Principle: 

  • Iconic Memory: A momentary visual stimuli (Picture memory lasting 3/10 sec)

  • Echoic memory: A momentary auditory stimuli

  • Amnesia: 

  • LTP: Increase in a synapses firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation

  • Flashbulb memory: A clear memory of an emotionally significant event

  • Implicit memory (part of brain?): retention of learned skills (non-declarative/ procedural memory). Located in cerebellum by basal ganglia 

  • Explicit memory (part of brain?): Retention of facts and experiences that you know and can declare (declarative memory) located in the hippocampus, the neocortex and the amygdala

  • Hippocampus role: vital for long-term memory formation, particularly declarative memories, or memories that can be purposely recalled like facts and events

  • Metacognition: the ability to be aware of and control one's own thought processes 

  • Interleaving:  a process where students mix, or interleave, multiple subjects or topics while they study in order to improve their learning

  • Proactive interference:The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information. Forward learning, old learning hurts new learning. 

  • Retroactive interference: The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information. Backwards acting, new learning impacts old learning, memory games we played last class.

  • Misinformation effect: In cooperation misleading information into one’s memory of an event.

  • Anterograde Amnesia: An inability to form new memories

  • Retrograde Amnesia: an inability to retrieve information from one’s past

  • Source amnesia: Attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about or read about, or imagined. Source amnesia, along with the misinformation effect is at the heart of many false memories. Remember the memory but not the context we acquire it.

  • Elizabeth Loftus:known for her research on the malleability of human memory, particularly regarding the unreliability of eyewitness testimony and the phenomenon of "false memories" which can be easily influenced by misleading information after an event occurs, often referred to as the "misinformation effect.”

  • George Miller: Said 7 bits of info, +/- 2, strengthen short term memory through rehersal

  • Karl Lashley: a prominent researcher who conducted experiments on rats with brain lesions, leading to his theories of "equipotentiality" and "mass action," which suggest that memories are not localized in a single brain region but are distributed across the cerebral cortex

  • Herman Ebbinghaus (retention and forgetting curve) Made both the forgetting and retention curve. Forgetting: found at first we forget information quickly, but if you retain it levels off after like 10 days. Rentintion: repeating equals retention

  • Are children reliable witnesses?:

  • How do you improve memory?

Language

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

  • Grammar: A languages set of rules that enables people to communicate

  • Phoneme: Smallest distinctive sound unit

  • Morpheme: Smallest unit of language that carries meaning

  • Babbling stage: Starts at 4 months where the infant spontaneously utters various sounds

  • One word stage: Starts at age 1-2 where child speaks mostly in single word statements

  • Two word stage: Starts at 2 years old, child speaks in mostly 2 word segments

  • Telegraphic speech: Early speech stage where child speaks like a telegram or broken english

  • Noam Chomsky: Thought we had a universal aptitude for learning language

Problem Solving

  • Concepts: A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

  • Prototypes: A mental image or best example of a category

  • 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

  • Heuristics: A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently, faster, but not guaranteed like an algorithm

  • Representative Heuristics: Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes.

  • Availability Heuristics: Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (because of vividness), we presume such events are common.

  • Insight: A sudden realization of a solution to a problem. 

  • Confirmation Bias: Search for information that supports our preconceptions and ignores or distorts contrary evidence

  • Mental set: Our tendency to approach a problem

  • Belief perseverance: Clinging to one’s intentional concepts after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

  • Framing: The way an issue is posed

Intelligence

  • Achievement test: measures what you learned

  • Aptitude test: measures future performance

  • The Flynn effect: The rise of average intelligences scores as human kind progresses

  • Intelligence: Ability to learn from experiences, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations

  • General intelligence: A general intelligence factor that underlies specific mental abilities and is therefore measure by every task on an intelligence test

  • Factor analysis: Spearman’s statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items on a test

  • Savant Syndrome: A condition in which a person otherwise limited in mental ability has an exceptional specific skill, such as drawing.

  • Emotional intelligence: The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions

  • Crystallized intelligence: Our accumulated knowledge that accumulates over course of time

  • Fluid intelligence: Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly, decreases over course of time

  • Mental Age: Measure of intelligence based on average score of age

  • WAIS: Most widely used intelligence test today

  • Stanford Binet Test: Widely used american revisions of Binet’s original test

  • IQ: Measure of intelligence (mental age/chronological age) x100

  • Standardization: Comparing performance with a pretested group

  • Reliability: Test yields consistent results

  • Validity: accuracy of tests

  • Content validity: a test that measures actual behavior or criteria

  • Construct validity: a test that measures a concept or a trait

  • Predictive validity: predicts future performance

  • Alfred Binet: Was tasked by the French gov. To identify students that needs more specific instruction. 

  • Howard Gardner: Views intelligence as multiple abilities that come in packages

  • Robert Sternberg: Agrees with multiple intelligences, but has 3