Vocab 1
focusing conscious awareness on a particular stimulus
selective attention
cognitive skills that work together, enabling us to generate, organize, plan, and implement goal-directed behavior
Executive functions
encoding on a basic level, based on the structure or appearance of words
shallow processing
studying physics everyday for 1 hour a day in the week leading to the test
Spacing effect
Maya is trying to fix a loose chair leg but can't find her toolbox. She notices that a stack of old magazines is nearby and decides to use one of the magazines as a shim to stabilize the leg. By using the magazine in this unconventional way, Maya demonstrates that she has overcome:
Functional Fixedness
an organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our ten-dency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes
Gestalt
a simple thinking strategy — a mental shortcut — that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than an algorithm
Heuristic
a memory component that briefly holds auditory information
phonological loop
David is looking for a new restaurant to eat at while traveling in a new city. He notices a small, cozy-looking café with a vintage decor and decides to go in because it looks just like the charming cafés he enjoys back home. Which method of problem solving did David most likely use in this situation?
Representativeness Heuristic
Sounds and words that are not immediately attended to can still be recalled a couple of seconds later because of our ________ memory.
Echoic
a cue to nearby objects’ distance, enabled by the brain combining retinal images
Convergence
the process of getting information into the memory system — for example, by extracting meaning
Encoding
processing multiple aspects of a stimulus or problem simultaneously
Parallel processing
During a science lecture, Emma is preoccupied with thoughts about an upcoming dance recital she is anxious about. While the teacher discusses important concepts about ecosystems, Emma’s mind wanders, and she doesn’t really pay attention. The next day, when she is asked to summarize what was covered in class, she finds she cannot remember any details about the lecture. The recall problem is most likely due to:
Encoding Failure
Having learned that his family pet is a dog, William sees a neighbor’s cat and says, “Dog!” would be an example of which process according to Piaget's
assimilation
a depth cue, such as interposition or linear perspective, available to either eye alone
monocular
a newer understanding of short-term memory; con-scious, active processing of both (1) incoming sensory information, and (2) information retrieved from long-term memory
Working Memory
a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people
Concept
Lila is studying for her upcoming exam and needs to memorize a lengthy list of vocabulary words. To make it easier, she groups the words into categories, such as animals, food, and emotions, instead of trying to remember each word individually. By organizing the information this way, Lila can recall the words more effectively. What strategy is Lila using to enhance her memory?
Chunking
When Cory is given a logic problem to solve, he systematically tries every possible solution until he finds the correct answer. Cory’s strategy is to use
Algorithm
a mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a crow)
Prototype
a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another
Perceptual Set
a binocular cue for perceiving depth. By compar-ing retinal images from the two eyes, the brain computes distance — the greater the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object
Retinal Disparity
Maeve wants to change her college major but has decided not to because she is close to finishing. She believes that the time she has spent in her current program will be wasted if she changes now. Maeve is experiencing
sunk cost fallicy
Ella needs to memorize a speech for her upcoming presentation. To help her remember the key points, she visualizes walking through her favorite park and associates each point of her speech with different landmarks along the path, such as the fountain and the playground. By doing this, Ella is using which of the following memory concepts to enhance her recall?
method of loci