Term List 1
Tyler looks at a spiraled screen with blues and greens for about a minute. After he is focused on it, his teacher quickly switches the screen to a blank white screen. The image he was shown seconds earlier flashes on the screen and then quickly fades so he sees the white screen. What is this an example of?
Perceptual adaptation
What are mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating such as remembering a term for a test called?
Cognition
What is the term that means persistence of someone’s learning over time and having to do with encoding, storage, and retrieval?
Memory
While hiking, Alex stops before stepping off a steep ledge because he can tell the ground is far below him. This ability is due to what visual skill?
Depth Perception
This term refers to when old memories interfere with the learning of new information. What is this?
Proactive Interference
James has trouble coming up with a solution to a problem. He uses a method of narrowing the options and figures out what the best solution is. What type of method did he use?
Convergent Thinking
While taking a test, Jamie suddenly remembers a fact she learned months ago in class and writes it down with ease. This shows the use of this type of memory.
Long term memory
While walking into a coffee shop she’s never visited, Emma feels an odd sense that she’s been there before, even though she hasn’t. What is this feeling called?
Deja Vu
You’re studying hard for an exam focusing on your work and don’t notice someone walking into the room wearing a clown costume. What psychological term explains why you didn’t see them?
Inattentional Blindness
What visual phenomenon explains why we perceive continuous motion when watching a movie, even though it's just a series of still images?
Stroboscopic Movement
In a lab study, a baby placed on a glass platform refuses to crawl over what looks like a drop-off, showing that the baby can perceive depth. This setup is known as?
A visual cliff
What type of processing includes encoding words semantically based on their meaning, and tends to aid in retention of information? An example of this could be trying to apply the meaning of a word to aspects of your life.
Deep Processing
Adam is trying to figure out a way to solve one of his math problems for his homework. He starts thinking about different ways to solve the problem and finds out that each one gives out multiple different answers. What type of method was Adam using to think about different solutions?
Divergent Thinking
This type of memory holds a small amount of information for a small period of time, like remembering a phone number just long enough to dial it. What is it called?
Short term memory
What is the cognitive tendency where individuals favor information that supports their existing beliefs while disregarding opposing evidence?
Conformation Bias
What is a person’s inability to see a problem from new perspectives, such as refusing to be flexible and take your same approach to a math problem rather than using the shortcut recommended by your teacher that may be more accurate?
There was a plane crash that occurred recently on the news, Sara was watching TV late at night. After witnessing this news report she now starts believing that planes are dangerous to fly on and that she’ll never go on one. What was Sara’s way of thinking about the plane crash?
Availability Heuristic
Miss Hally just got proposed to last week, making her very happy. One day, while being in class with her younger students, they made her very happy. As she was smiling, she remembered the moment she shared with her fiance. What kind of memory is this an example of?
Mood-Congruent Memory
This is a mental concept or framework that helps organize and interpret information. What is it?
A schema
What is the term for the process of accessing and bringing stored information into conscious awareness from memory?
Retrieval
What is the type of memory of learned skills without conscious recollection or with classically conditioned associations instead actively trying to learn the skill and remembering? An example of this would be remembering lyrics to a song you’ve heard by chance on the radio every morning.
Implicit Memory
What is the tendency for people to yield better results in studying through distributed practice rather than massed study or cramming? An example of this is studying a few flashcards every day until the test rather than cramming all of them at once.
Spacing Effect
Daria has a list of groceries that her mom made for her. The list went like this: Tomatoes, Potatoes, Carrots, Celery. Although she tried to remember all of what her mom told her, she only remembered the Tomatoes and Celery. What term does this effect on Daria refer to?
John was holding interviews for his company, he made sure to look out for people that had the best potential. Unfortunately, John made some comments to himself during an interview. The applicant didn’t receive any education after high school and John thought that they wouldn’t be fit for a position. What was John’s way of thinking about the applicant?
This process occurs when we interpret new experiences by fitting them into our existing schemas.
Assimilation