2.1 Perception

• Perception brings meaning to sensation

• Bottom Up Processing: Where we don’t use our prior knowledge to conduct understanding. Use smaller details.

• Top Down Processing: Where we use prior knowledge to conduct understanding. Use larger details

  • These two processes work together and helps your brain understand the outside world and what you’re looking at

• Schemas are metal frameworks that organizes information shaping how we perceive the world based on past experiences.

  • Helps guide our perception

• Perceptual Set is the readiness to perceive something in a particular way

• Gestalt Principles

  • Closure: Filling in the gaps to understand what the image is as a whole

  • Figure Ground: Figure is the object and the ground is the surroundings

  • Proximity: Grouping of items which are close together

  • Similarity: Grouping of items which are more alike

• Attention is an interaction of sensation and perception which is affected by internal and external processes

• Selective Attention is focused awareness of certain stimuli in the environment

• Cocktail party effect is listening to random topics in random areas

• Inattention can lead to a “blindness” to the aspects of the environment

• Inattentional Blindness occurs when you’re focused on one thing you unintentionally ignore other things

• Change Blindness is when, after a brief moment, you don’t notice a difference in the visual field due to inattention

• Depth Perception helps us perceive where things are (how close or far an object is from us)

• Binocular Depth Cues require two eyes

  • Retinal Disparity: Determining the depth based on the difference between what each eye sees

  • Convergence: How much your eyes go inwards

• Monocular Depth Cues only require one eye

  • Relative Clarity: Objects which are closer may look more clear

  • Relative Size: Objects which are closer may look bigger

  • Texture Gradient: Closer objects are more detailed

  • Linear Perspective: Converging/Coming together in the distance

  • Interposition: A closer object will block off another object showing that it’s closer

• Visual Perceptual Constancies maintain the perception of an object even when the images of the objects in the visual field change

  • Color Constancy: An object has the same color despite the amounts of reflection

  • Brightness Constancy: An object has the same brightness despite the changing amount of illumination

  • Shape Constancy: An object has the same shape despite the countless of angles it can be shown at

  • Size Constancy: An object has the same size despite shrinking/dilating

• Apparent Movement can be visually perceived even when objects aren’t moving

2.2 Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making

• Concepts form the basis of thought. They’re mental groupings based on shared features and come from experience

• Prototype is the best example of any given concept

• Assimilation is taking in new information but NOT changing the schema

• Accommodation is taking in new information and modifying the schema to fit it.

• Algorithm addresses the problem by attempting all possible solutions

• Heuristic chooses the quickest way to address the problem

  • Representative Heuristic can lead to error in judgement when decisions are made according to prior expectations/stereotypes

  • Availability Heuristic can lead to an error in judgement when decisions are made by recalling the first or most vivid example

• Decision making can be influenced by prior experiences that were successful or by circumstances surrounding a decision

• Gamblers Fallacy is a false belief that you can predict a chance event based on past chance events

• Sunk Cost Fallacy is a bad decision based on money, time, or effort

• Executive Functions are cognitive processes which generate, organize, plan, and carry out goal directed behavior

• Creativity is a way of thinking that generates novel ideas

  • Can be enhanced

• Creativity engages in divergent than convergent thinking

• Functional Fixedness is failing to solve a problem because you are stuck on the objects common use

2.3 Introduction to Memory

• Explicit memories

  • Episodic: Unique to our own experiences

  • Semantic: Specific facts/understandings

  • Prospective: Remembering to remember

• Implicit memories

  • Procedural: Knowing how to do something

  • Classically conditioned responses: Learned associations that evoke certain responses

  • Primed responses: Exposure that may influence our behavior

• Working Memory: Limited information, temporarily maintained, used for many cognitive tasks

  • Central Executive: “Manager”

  • Phonological Loop: Information stored through verbal processes

  • Visuospatial Sketchpad: Information stored through visual processes

• Multi-Store Model of Memory: Shows how information flows through the different stages of memory

  • Sensory memory: Held for just a few seconds

    • Iconic: Sensory memory for visual information

    • Echoic: Sensory memory for auditory

  • Short Term Memory: Holds information for a short amount of time

  • Long Term Memory: Holds information for a long period of time

• Encoding: Converting sensory input into a form that can be processed in memory

• Storage: Maintaining information over time for future use

• Retrieval: Accessing stored information

2.4 Encoding Memories

• Automatic Processing: Unconscious coding of information

• Effortful Processing: Intentional coding of information

• Shallow Processing: Focusing on surface level information

  • Structural Encoding: Involving encoding information based on its physical appearance

  • Phonemic Encoding: Involving encoding information based on its sound

• Deep Processing: Focusing on actual information

  • Semantic Encoding: Understanding the meaning of the information and relating it to previous concepts

• Improving Encoding

  • Chunking: A memory technique that involves grouping information into larger units to aid retention

  • Categories: Organize information into related groups based on shared characteristics

  • Hierarchies: Create some form of structured framework

• Spaced Practice: Distributing learning over a certain amount of time leads to LTM

  • Massed Practice: Cramming it all in one period of time with no breaks. Doesn’t end up in LTM

  • Distribution Practice: Spreading practice over time and ends up in LTM

• Serial Position Effect: We are more likely to remember those at the beginning and end of a list than those in the middle

2.5 Storing Memories

• Rehearsing Information

  • Maintenance Rehearsal: Repeating information to keep it active in STM

  • Elaborative Thinking: Linking information to existing knowledge which helps encode it into our LTM

• Autobiographical Memory: The recall of personal life experiences

  • Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM): A rare condition characterized by the exceptional ability to vividly recall nearly every personal experience and event from one’s life in remarkable detail

• Amnesia: Loss of memories

  • Retrograde Amnesia: Inability to remember anything before the injury

  • Anterograde Amnesia: Inability to form memory after injury

  • Infantile Amnesia: Inability for adults to recall memories from early childhood due to underdeveloped brains

  • Alzheimer’s Disease: Neurological disorders that can lead to brain cell loss

2.6 Retrieving Memories

• Recall: Process of retrieving information

• Recognition: Recognizing information based on a cue

• Cued Recall: Process of retrieving information by being given a cue

• Encoding Specificity Principles: The recall is most effective when the conditions when you were encoding the information was the same as the time of the retrieval

  • Context Dependent Memory: Tendency of recalling something easier because you’re in the same physical environment

  • Mood Congruent Memory: Tendency of recalling something easier because you’re in the same mood

  • State Dependent Memory: Tendency of recalling something easier because you’re in the same mental state

• Retrieval Practice

  • Testing Effect: Actively recalling information is more useful

  • Metacognition: Understanding of one’s own thought processes

2.7 Forgetting and Other Memory Challenges

• Forgetting Curve: Over time we forget things more and more

• Encoding Failure: Information wasn’t stored properly in the first place

• Interference Theory

  • Proactive Interference: Older information interferes with the ability to learn new information

  • Retroactive Interference: New information interferes with the ability to remember old information

• Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon: Feeling of knowing a word but it not coming to your mind

• Repression: When the mind blocks out traumatic memories preventing them from entering conscious awareness

• False Memory: A memory that did not happen

• Misinformation Effect: One’s memory is altered by misleading information presented after the event

• Source Amnesia: The inability to remember where you got the information from

• Constructive Memory: Process of reconstructing past events using existing knowledge

• Memory Consolidation: STM to LTM

• Imagination Inflation: Occurs when imagining an event increases the confidence that it actually happened

2.8 Intelligence and Achievement

• Intelligence: The ability to learn from experiences solve problems, and adapt to new situations, involving a range of cognitive processes.

• Measuring Intelligence

  • G-Factor: General intelligence is a concept that suggests a single underlying ability influences overall cognitive performance across various tasks and domains.

  • Triarchich Theory: Composed of 3 components

    • Analytical Intelligence

    • Creative Intelligence

    • Practical Intelligence

• Test Validity: A test is considered valid if it accurately measures what it’s supposed to measure

  • Construct Validity: How well it measures the concept of intelligence

  • Predictive Validity: How well the test predicts future performance

• Test Reliability: Consistency of a test in producing similar results over repeated administrations or across different parts of the test

  • Test Retest Method: Assesses reliability by giving a test to a group of people at two different times and comparing the scores

  • Split Half Method: Dividing a test in two halves and measuring the correlation between the two sets of scores

• Stereotype Threat: Doing worse because you’re under pressure of the negative stereotype

• Stereotype Lift: Doing better because you’re not under the pressure of the negative stereotype

• Flynn Effect: Rise of IQ over time

• Intra-Group Variability: Differences in characteristics within people of the same group

• Inter-Group Variability: Differences in characteristics within people of different groups

• Achievement Tests: Measures one’s knowledge in a subject that is learned

• Aptitude Tests: Measures one’s potential in learning or succeeding in that area

• Fixed Mindset: no way u dont know what this is

• Growth Mindset: this is sad how do u now know what a growth mindset is