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cognitive psych exam
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Cognition | Mental activity, including the acquisition, storage, transformation, and use of knowledge |
| Cognitive Psychology | (1) A synonym for cognition. (2) The theoretical approach to psychology that focuses on studying people's thought processes and knowledge |
| Cognitive Approach | A theoretical orientation that emphasizes people's thought processes and their knowledge |
| Empirical Evidence | Scientific evidence obtained by careful observation and experimentation |
| Introspection | An early approach to studying mental activity, in which carefully trained observers systematically analyzed their own sensations and reported them as objectively as possible, under standardized conditions |
| Recency Effect | The tendency to remember words at the end of a list especially well, compared to words in the middle |
| Behaviorism | An approach to psychology that focuses on objective, observable reactions to stimuli in the environment |
| Operational Definition | In psychology research, a precise definition that specifies exactly how researchers will measure a concept |
| Gestalt Psychology | Emphasizes: humans actively organize what they see, they see patterns, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Disagrees with Wundt's introspection as it separates thought into individual components. It also criticizes Behaviorists. |
| Gestalt | In perception and problem-solving, an overall quality that transcends the individual elements in the stimulus |
| Information-Processing Approach | A theory of cognition proposing that (1) mental processes are similar to the operations of a computer and (2) information progresses through the cognitive system in a series of stages, one step at a time |
| Atkinson-Shiffrin Model | The proposal that memory involves a sequence of separate steps; in each step, information is transferred from one storage area to another |
| Sensory Memory | The large-capacity storage system that records information from each of the senses with reasonable accuracy |
| Short-Term Memory/Working Memory | The part of memory that holds only the small amount of information that a person is actively using |
| Long-Term Memory | The large-capacity memory for experiences and information accumulated throughout one's lifetime. Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed that information stored in this memory is relatively permanent and not likely to be lost |
| Ecological Validity | A principle of research design in which the research uses conditions that are similar to the natural setting where the results will be applied |
| Cognitive Neuroscience | An approach to studying mental activity that uses the research techniques of cognitive psychology, along with various neuroscience techniques for assessing the structure and function of the brain |
| Social Cognitive Neuroscience | A new discipline that uses neuroscience techniques to explore the kind of cognitive processes used in interactions with other people |
| Brain Lesions | Specific brain damage caused by strokes, tumors, blows to the head, accidents, or other traumas |
| Positron Emission Tomography (PET) | Measures blood flow in the brain by injecting the participant with a radioactive chemical before this person performs a cognitive task. A camera makes an image of this accumulated radioactive chemical in the regions of the brain active during the task. |
| Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) | Method of measuring brain activity based on the principle that oxygen-rich blood shows brain activity. A magnetic field produces changes in the oxygen atoms in the brain while a person does a cognitive task. A device takes a "photo" of the changes |
| Event-Related Potential (ERP) Technique | A procedure for recording the very brief, small fluctuations in the brain's electrical activity in response to a stimulus such as an auditory tone |
| Computer Metaphor | A way of describing cognition as a complex, multipurpose machine that processes information quickly and accurately |
| Theory | A hypothesis that has been tested with a significant amount of data |
| Hypothesis | A testable prediction |
| Correlational Research | research that seeks to identify whether an association or relationship between two factors exists (cannot draw causation) |
| Experimental Research | studies that seek clues to cause-effect relationships by manipulating one or more factors (independent variables) while controlling others (holding them constant) |
| Independent Variable | The experimental factor that is manipulated; the variable whose effect is being studied. |
| Dependent Variable | The outcome factor; the variable that may change in response to manipulations of the independent variable. |
| Random Assignment | Assigning participants to experimental and control conditions by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between those assigned to the different groups |
| Theme 1 | The cognitive processes are active, rather than passive |
| Theme 2 | The cognitive processes are remarkably efficient and accurate |
| Theme 3 | The cognitive processes handle positive information better than negative information |
| Theme 4 | The cognitive processes are interrelated with one another; they do not operate in isolation |
| Theme 5 | Many cognitive processes rely on both bottom-up and top-down processing |
| Perception | The use of previous knowledge to gather and interpret stimuli registered by the senses. It requires both bottom-up and top-down processing |
| Object Recognition/Pattern Recognition | The process of identifying a complex arrangement of sensory stimuli and perceiving that this pattern is separate from its background |
| Distal Stimulus | In perception, the actual object that is "out there" in the environment, for example, a pen on a desk |
| Proximal Stimulus | In perception, the information registered on the sensory receptors—for example, the image on the retina created by a pen on a desk |
| Retina | The part of the visual system covering the inside back portion of the eye. It contains millions of neurons that register and transmit visual information from the outside world |
| Iconic Memory/Visual Sensory Memory | Sensory memory for visual information. It preserves an image of a visual stimulus for a brief period after the stimulus has disappeared |
| Primary Visual Cortex | The portion of the cerebral cortex located in the occipital lobe of the brain, which is concerned with basic processing of visual stimuli. It is also the first place where information from the two eyes is combined |
| Occipital Lobe | A region of the cerebral cortex that processes visual information |
| Figure | In gestalt psychology, when two areas share a common boundary, it is the area that has a distinct shape with clearly defined edges. This area seems closer and more dominant |
| Ground | In gestalt psychology, when two areas share a common boundary, the area that is seen as being behind the figure |
| Ambiguous Figure-Ground Relationship | A perceptual phenomenon studied by gestalt psychologists, in which the figure and the ground of a visual stimulus reverse from time to time, so that the figure becomes the ground and then becomes the figure again |
| Illusory Contours/Subjective Contours | The perception of edges in a visual stimulus even though edges are not physically present |
| Templates | According to an early theory of visual object recognition, the specific perceptual patterns stored in memory |
| Feature-Analysis Theories | In perception, the proposal that we recognize visual objects, based on a small number of characteristics or components known as distinctive features |
| Distinctive Features | In visual perception, an important characteristic of the visual stimulus |
| Recognition-By Components Theory | In visual perception, a theory proposing that people can recognize three-dimensional shapes, in terms of an arrangement of simple 3D shapes called geons. Geons can be combined to form meaningful objects |
| Geons | In recognition-by-components theory, the simple 3D shapes that people use in order to recognize visual objects |
| Top-Down Processing | The kind of cognitive processing that emphasizes the importance of concepts, expectations, and memory in object recognition and other cognitive tasks |
| Bottom-Up Processing | Cognitive processing that emphasizes stimulus characteristics in object recognition and other cognitive tasks. Physical stimuli from the environment is registered on the sensory receptors then passed to more sophisticated levels in the perceptual system. |
| Viewer-Centered Approach | A modification of the recognition-by-components theory of object recognition. However, this approach proposes that people store a small number of views of a three-dimensional object, rather than just one view |
| Word Superiority Effect | The observation that a single letter is more accurately and rapidly recognized when it appears in a meaningful word, rather than when it appears alone or in a meaningless string of unrelated letters |
| Change Blindness | The failure to detect a change in an object or a scene due to overuse of top-down processing |
| Inattentional Blindness | The failure to notice an unexpected but completely visible object that suddenly appears while attention is focused on some other events in a scene. It results from the overuse of top-down processing |
| Holistic Recognition | A term describing the recognition of faces and other selected stimuli, based on their overall shape and structure, or gestalt |
| Prosopagnosia | The inability to recognize human faces visually, though other objects may be perceived relatively normally. People with this also have comparable problems in creating visual imagery for faces |
| Face-Inversion Effect | The observation that people are much more accurate in identifying upright faces, compared to upside-down faces |
| Individual Differences | Systematic variation in the way that groups of people perform on the same cognitive task |
| Schizophrenia | A serious psychological disorder characterized by lack of emotional expression, hallucinations, disordered thinking, and poor performance on many cognitive tasks |
| Attention | A concentration of mental activity |
| Divided-Attention Task | A situation in which people try to pay attention to two or more simultaneous messages, responding appropriately to each message. Both speed and accuracy frequently suffer during this task |
| Multitask | An attempt to accomplish two or more tasks at the same time. However, the research shows that people frequently work more slowly or make more mistakes when they try to do this |
| Selective-Attention Task | A situation in which people are instructed to pay attention to certain kinds of information, while ignoring other ongoing information |
| Dichotic Listening | A laboratory technique in which one message is presented to the left ear and a different message is presented to the right ear |
| Shadow | In attention research, a task in which participants can hear two messages; however, they are instructed to listen to only one message and then repeat it after the speaker |
| Cocktail Party Effect | The phenomenon of noticing one's own name, when it is mentioned in a nearby conversation, even when paying close attention to another conversation |
| Stroop Effect | The observation that people take a long time to name an ink color that has been used in printing an incongruent word, even though they can quickly name that same ink color when it appears as a solid patch |
| Emotional Stroop Task | People are instructed to name the ink color of words that could have strong emotional significance to them, they often require more time to name the color of the stimuli, presumably because they have trouble ignoring their emotional reactions to the words |
| Phobic Disorder | An anxiety disorder characterized by excessive fear of a specific object |
| Attention Bias | A situation in which people pay extra attention to some stimuli or some features |
| Cognitive-Behavioral Approach | The theory that psychological problems arise from inappropriate thinking (cognitive factors) and inappropriate learning (behavioral factors), usually involving efforts to change these thinking patterns |
| Visual Search | A task requiring the observer to find a target in a visual display that has numerous distractors |
| Isolated-Feature/Combined-Feature Effect | In visual-search studies, the finding that people can typically locate an isolated feature more quickly than a combined feature |
| Feature-Present/Feature-Absent Effect | In visual search research, the finding that people can typically locate a feature that is present more quickly than a feature that is absent |
| Orienting Attention Network | A system responsible for the kind of attention required for visual search, in which a person must shift attention around to various spatial locations |
| Unilateral Spatial Neglect | A perceptual condition, resulting from brain damage to the parietal region, in which a person ignores part of his or her visual field |
| Executive Attention Network | A cognitive system that is responsible for the kind of attention one uses when a task focuses on conflict |
| Bottleneck Theories | In attention, the proposal that a narrow passageway in human information processing limits the quantity of information to which one can pay attention |
| Feature-Integration Theory | This theory of attention, developed by Anne Triesman, proposes two elements: (1) distributed attention, processing all parts of the scene at the same time, and (2) focused attention, processing each item in the scene, one at a time |
| Distributed Attention | In feature-integration theory, a relatively fast, low-level kind of processing, in which the viewer registers the features of the stimulus automatically and simultaneously, using parallel processing |
| Focused Attention | In feature-integration theory, slower serial processing, in which a person identifies objects, one at a time. This kind of processing is necessary when objects are more complex |
| Illusory Conjunction | An inappropriate combination of features (e.g., combining one object's shape with a nearby object's color). It is formed when the visual system is overwhelmed by too many simultaneous tasks |
| Binding Problem | A characteristic of the visual system, in which characteristics such as color and shape are registered separately; as a result, the visual system does not represent these important features of an object as a unified whole |
| Consciousness | A person's awareness of the external world and of her or his own perceptions, images, thoughts, memories, and feelings |
| Mindless Reading | A situation that occurs when a person's eyes may move forward, but they do not process the meaning of the material being read |
| Mind Wandering | A situation that occurs when a person's thoughts shift away from the external environment, and the person begins thinking about another topic |
| Thought Suppression | The attempt, usually unsuccessful, to push an undesirable idea out of consciousness |
| Ironic Effects of Mental Control | The observation that people's efforts often backfire when they attempt to control the contents of consciousness; as a result, people are even more likely to think about the topic that they are trying to avoid |
| Blindsight | A condition in which an individual with a damaged visual cortex claims not to see an object; however, he or she can accurately report some characteristics of this object, such as its location |
| Wilhelm Wundt | -Founder of experimental psychology -Used introspection -The founder of the first psychology lab (1879) -Structuralist thought (Basic elements) |
| Ebbinghaus | -Focused on human memory -Studied nonsense syllables -Discovered that it takes less time to learn old lists -The forgetting curve (we forget information at a faster rate immediately after we learn it) |
| Mary Calkins | -Recency Effect -Paired-associate learning -Found that word pairs that share more meaning are easier to remember |
| William James | -Principles of Psychology (first psychology textbook, 1890) -Rejected Wundt and Ebbinghaus -Emphasized that the human brain is active an inquiring -Focused on everyday experiences (similar to Calkins) -Behaviorism |
| Frederick Bartlett | -Rejected Ebbinghaus -Defined memory as an active process (similar to James) -Discovered that people make errors when trying to recall stories (we transform the information that we encounter) -Schema approach to memory |
| Metacognition | Thinking about your own thought processes |
| Pure Artificial Intelligence | An approach that designs a program to accomplish a cognitive task as efficiently as possible, even if the computer's processes are completely different from the processes used by humans |
| Computer Simulation | Attempts to take human limitations into account; goal is to program a computer to perform a specific cognitive task in the same way that humans actually perform this task |
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