Attention
At Thanksgiving dinner, multiple conversations are happening at once. You're somehow able to follow your aunt's story about her trip while tuning out your cousin's argument about football. This type of attention is being used.
Answer: Selective attention (cocktail party effect)
Your mom places a partially eaten pumpkin pie on the table with several slices missing, creating gaps in the circle. Even though the pie isn't complete, your brain automatically perceives it as a whole pie with missing pieces rather than just separate wedge-shaped pieces.
Answer: What is closure (your brain fills in gaps to perceive complete, whole objects)?
You're trying to fit all the Thanksgiving leftovers into the fridge. You keep trying to stack containers the same way your family always does it, but it's not working because you have more food than usual. This mental block is preventing creative solutions.
Answer: Mental set (or functional fixedness - stuck in your usual pattern)
You're planning your Thanksgiving menu. You write down 15 dishes you want to make. What strategy would be better: using an algorithm (trying to cook everything in every possible order) or a heuristic (grouping similar dishes and cooking them together)?
Answer: Heuristic (faster and more practical)
I knew my aunt would burn the rolls. She always does. It was so obvious it would happen.
Bias: Hindsight bias
Sarah was supposed to bring cranberry sauce to Thanksgiving. She wrote it on her grocery list, looked at the list at the store, but somehow completely forgot to buy it while looking at her phone. This explains why she "forgot."
Answer: What is encoding failure (she saw it on the list but didn't deeply encode it) OR divided attention (phone distracted her)?
DAILY DOUBLE (worth 400 pts) Your grandma's kitchen smells like pumpkin pie, and suddenly you're flooded with memories of Thanksgivings from your childhood. Why is smell such a powerful trigger for memory?
Answer: Smell is strongly connected to memory (especially episodic memory); it serves as a powerful retrieval cue
You study all your French vocabulary the night before Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving, your family speaks Spanish at dinner. The next day when you try to recall French words in class, Spanish words keep popping into your head instead. This type of interference is occurring.
Answer: What is retroactive interference (new learning - Spanish - interfered with old learning - French)?
Your cousin posts 50 photos from Thanksgiving on Instagram. You scroll through them quickly but only remember about 7 specific photos. What concept explains why you can't remember all 50?
Answer: Short-term memory capacity (about 7 items, plus or minus 2)
Daily Double: 400 pts - My grandma is old and always wears cardigans. She must love baking and knitting, right?
Bias: Representativeness heuristic (stereotyping based on age and appearance)
Everyone's watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV while your little cousin runs through the living room in a turkey costume. Nobody notices this happened because they were too focused on the TV.
Inattentional blindness (too focused on the TV to notice cousin)
The dining table looks rectangular from where you're sitting, even though from the side it would look like a trapezoid. This perceptual ability allows you to perceive it as the same shape from different angles.
Answer: Shape constancy
After watching several news reports about Black Friday shopping chaos and fights, you're convinced Black Friday is super dangerous and refuse to go. What heuristic are you using?
Answer: Availability heuristic (dramatic news stories make it seem more dangerous than it statistically is)
Your mom asks you to grab the salt while you're scrolling through your phone. You say "Uh-huh" but have no idea what she said. When she asks "Did you hear me?" you suddenly remember. This very brief memory system held her words.
Sensory memory
"My uncle refuses to believe that turkeys can fly (wild turkeys can). Even after I showed him videos, he says 'Nope, I've never seen one fly, so they can't.' He grew up only seeing farm turkeys."
Bias: Belief perseverance (maintaining belief despite contradicting evidence)
Your grandma rearranged all the furniture in the dining room for Thanksgiving, but you didn't notice until she pointed it out after dinner. You walked right past the changes multiple times. This phenomenon explains why you failed to notice.
Answer: Change blindness
Everyone's dressed up for Thanksgiving dinner. You automatically assume the people sitting close together at the table are family or close friends. This Gestalt principle is being used.
Answer: Proximity (things close together are perceived as belonging together)
Your family always argues about politics at Thanksgiving. Your cousin assumes anyone who supports a different political party must be uninformed, even though there are valid arguments on multiple sides. What bias is this?
Answer: Representativeness heuristic (stereotyping based on political affiliation) OR confirmation bias
At Thanksgiving dinner last year, you sat at the kids' table in the basement. This year, you're promoted to the adult table in the dining room. When your aunt asks you to recall a funny story from last Thanksgiving, you struggle to remember details. However, when you go down to the basement to get drinks, the memories suddenly flood back.
Answer: What is context-dependent memory (you remember information better in the same environment where you encoded it)?
"I think stuffing is better than mashed potatoes. Whenever people talk about Thanksgiving food, I only hear the compliments about stuffing and ignore when people praise mashed potatoes."
Bias: Confirmation bias
You're trying to help cook in the kitchen while also watching the football game and texting your friends about Black Friday plans. You burn the rolls, miss a touchdown, and send a text to the wrong person because your brain is terrible at doing this.
Answer: Divided attention / multitasking
You're watching the Thanksgiving Day football game. When you look at the players on the field, the ones farther away appear smaller, but you know they're all roughly the same size. What perceptual constancy are you using?
Answer: Relative size / size constancy
Ten people are trying to cook in one small kitchen. Nobody can find anything. Finally, Grandma says, "Everyone out except two people. We'll use an assembly line: one person preps, one person cooks, one person plates." She created this type of problem-solving strategy that guarantees getting the work done efficiently.
Answer: What is an algorithm (a step-by-step, methodical procedure)?
"Every time my family gets together, we end up arguing. But I only remember the fun times, so when Thanksgiving comes around, I always think 'This year will be different!'"
Bias: Mood-congruent memory (when happy, you remember happy memories) OR confirmation bias
You thought preparing Thanksgiving dinner would take 2 hours. It took 5 hours. You drastically underestimated how long it would take. This is a specific type of overconfidence bias.
Answer: Planning fallacy (a type of overconfidence bias)