Thinking & Problem-Solving
This effect occurs when exposure to certain words or images subtly prepares a person to respond in a particular way later on.
Priming
This effect shows that spreading out study sessions over time improves memory more than cramming.
Spacing effect
This condition involves the inability to form new memories after a brain injury, even though past memories may remain intact.
Anterograde amnesia
This system holds a limited amount of information—about seven items—for roughly 20–30 seconds unless it is rehearsed.
Short-term memory
This social bias leads people to see members of another group as more similar to one another than members of their own group.
out-group homogeneity bias
This type of thinking involves generating many possible solutions to a problem, often used in brainstorming sessions.
Divergent thinking
This phenomenon reveals that people remember items at the beginning and end of a list better than those in the middle.
This progressive brain disorder destroys memory and cognitive abilities, often beginning with difficulty forming new memories. It is associated with low levels of ACh.
Alzheimer's disease
This relatively permanent and limitless storehouse contains knowledge, skills, and experiences that can last a lifetime.
Long-term memory
This mental shortcut involves judging something by comparing it to the most typical example you can think of for a given category or class.
representativeness heuristic
This occurs when the way information is presented influences the decisions people make, even when the facts stay the same.
Framing
This encoding strategy involves organizing information into meaningful units to increase retention.
Chunking
This common retrieval failure occurs when you know you almost remember something but can’t quite bring it to mind.
Tip of the tongue phenomenon
This deeper form of rehearsal links new information to existing knowledge, greatly improving long-term retention.
Elaborative rehearsal
According to James Marcia, this stage of identity development is marked by active exploration of identities and interests without having made a final commitment.
identity moratorium
This problem-solving "set" can become an obstacle when you keep using the same approach that worked before—even if it’s not helping now.
Mental set
This shallow form of encoding focuses on the physical features of a stimulus, such as how a word looks on the page.
Structural encoding
This type of interference happens when old information disrupts learning or recalling newer information.
Proactive interference
This brief initial stage of memory captures exact sensory information for a split second before it fades, such as iconic or echoic inputs.
Sensory memory
This type of information processing begins with raw sensory input and moves upward toward more complex interpretation.
bottom-up processing
This happens when earlier stimuli influence your interpretation of new information without your conscious awareness—like seeing “yellow” and then noticing bananas faster.
Priming
This type of repetition keeps information active in short-term memory but doesn’t necessarily transfer it to long-term memory.
Maintenance rehearsal
This kind of interference occurs when new information makes it harder to remember older information.
Retroactive interference
This active processing system manipulates information you are currently using, such as when solving a math problem or listening and responding at the same time.
Working memory
This form of learning occurs when a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a stimulus that naturally produces a response, eventually causing that response on its own.
Classical conditioning