AP Psychology Unit 7 & 11 Vocab

Memory and Related Concepts

Memory*: The persistence of learning over time through the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information.

Encoding*: The process of getting 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.

Parallel Processing*: The brain’s ability to process multiple aspects of a problem simultaneously; contrasts with the step-by-step (serial) processing of computers.

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 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.

Explicit Memory*: Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare" (also called declarative memory).

Effortful Processing*: Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.

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

Implicit Memory*: Retention of learned skills or classically conditioned associations independent of conscious recollection (also called nondeclarative memory).

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.

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

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

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

Testing Effect*: Enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information. Also sometimes referred to as retrieval practice effect or test-enhanced learning.

Shallow Processing*: Encoding on a basic level based on the structure or appearance of words.

Deep Processing*: Encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best retention.

Hippocampus*: A neural center located in the limbic system; helps process explicit memories for storage.

Flashbulb Memory*: A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event.

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

Recall*: Retrieving information that is not currently in your conscious awareness but that was learned at an earlier time.

Recognition*: Identifying items previously learned.

Relearning*: Learning something more quickly when you learn it a second or later time.

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

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

Serial Position Effect*: Our tendency to recall best the last (a recency effect) and first items (a primacy effect) in a list.

Anterograde Amnesia*: An inability to form new memories.

Retrograde Amnesia*: An inability to retrieve information from one’s past.

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.

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

Cognition and Problem Solving

Cognition*: All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Concept*: A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

Prototype*: A mental image or best example of a category.

Creativity*: The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.

Convergent Thinking*: Narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution.

Divergent Thinking: Expands the number of possible problem solutions (creative thinking that diverges in different directions).

Algorithm*: A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.

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.

Insight*: A sudden realization of a problem’s solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions.

Confirmation Bias: A tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.

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

Intuition*: An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning.

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

Availability Heuristic*: Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind, we presume such events are common.

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

Belief Perseverance: Clinging to one’s initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.

Framing*: The way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgments.

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Language and Its Development

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

Phoneme*: In language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.

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

Grammar: A system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others.

Babbling Stage: Beginning around 4 months, the stage of speech development in which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language.

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

Two-word Stage: Beginning at about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements.

Telegraphic Speech*: Early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram—using mostly nouns and verbs (e.g., "want cookie").

Aphasia*: Impairment of language, usually caused by left-hemisphere damage either to Broca’s area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke’s area (impairing understanding).

Broca’s Area*: Controls language expression—an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech.

Wernicke’s Area*: Controls language reception—a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe.

Linguistic Determination*: Whorf’s hypothesis that language determines the way we think.

Intelligence and Testing

Intelligence*: The ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

Intelligence Test*: A method for assessing an individual’s mental aptitudes and comparing them with those of others, using numerical scores.

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

Factor Analysis*: A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie a person’s total score.

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

Grit*: Passion and perseverance in the pursuit of long-term goals.

Emotional Intelligence*: The ability to perceive, understand, manage, and use emotions.

Mental Age*: A measure of intelligence test performance devised by Binet; the chronological age that most typically corresponds to a given level of performance.

Stanford-Binet*: The widely used American revision (by Terman at Stanford University) of Binet’s original intelligence test.

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)*: Defined originally as the ratio of mental age (ma) to chronological age (ca) multiplied by 100. On contemporary intelligence tests, the average performance for a given age is assigned a score of 100.

Achievement Test*: A test designed to assess what a person has learned.

Aptitude Test*: A test designed to predict a person’s future performance; aptitude is the capacity to learn.

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)*: The most widely used intelligence test; contains verbal and performance (nonverbal) subtests.

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

Normal Curve*: The symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes. Most scores fall near the average, and fewer and fewer scores lie near the extremes.

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

Validity*: The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to.

Content Validity*: The extent to which a test samples the behavior that is of interest.

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.

Cohort: A group of people from a given time period.

Crystallized Intelligence: Our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills; tends to increase with age.

Fluid Intelligence: Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly; tends to decrease during late adulthood.

Intellectual Disability*: A condition of limited mental ability, indicated by an intelligence test score of 70 or below and difficulty in adapting to the demands of life.

Down Syndrome: A condition of mild to severe intellectual disability and associated physical disorders caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21.

Heritability: The proportion of variation among individuals that we can attribute to genes. The heritability of a trait may vary, depending on the range of populations and environments studied.

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

Notable Figures

Richard Atkinson*: Co-developed the Atkinson-Shiffrin model of memory, proposing three stages of memory: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

Richard Shiffrin*: Worked alongside Atkinson on the multi-store model of memory.

George A. Miller*: Proposed that short-term memory can hold about 7 items (plus or minus 2).

Hermann Ebbinghaus*: Pioneered the study of memory; known for the forgetting curve and the spacing effect.

Eric Kandel*: Studied the biological basis of memory, showing that learning and memory involve strengthening of synapses.

Elizabeth Loftus*: Conducted research on the misinformation effect and false memories.

Robert Sternberg*: Proposed the triarchic theory of intelligence, which includes analytical, creative, and practical intelligence.

Wolfgang Köhler*: Demonstrated insight learning in chimpanzees.

Amos Tversky*: Worked with Daniel Kahneman on heuristics and biases in decision-making.

Daniel Kahneman*: Known for work on decision-making and behavioral economics; shared the Nobel Prize for his research.

Steven Pinker*: Known for his work on language and the mind.

Noam Chomsky*: Proposed the theory of universal grammar and argued that humans have an innate ability for language learning.

Paul Broca*: Identified Broca’s area, which is associated with speech production.

Carl Wernicke*: Identified Wernicke’s area, which is involved in language comprehension.

Benjamin Lee Whorf: Proposed the linguistic relativity hypothesis, suggesting that language influences thought.

Charles Spearman*: Proposed the concept of general intelligence (g).

L.L. Thurstone*: Identified seven primary mental abilities.

Howard Gardner*: Proposed the theory of multiple intelligences.

Francis Galton*: Pioneered the study of eugenics and psychometrics.

Alfred Binet*: Developed the first intelligence test to identify children needing special education.

Louis Terman*: Revised Binet’s test to create the Stanford-Binet intelligence test.

David Wechsler*: Developed the WAIS and other intelligence tests.

Carol Dweck*: Known for her research on mindset (fixed vs. growth).