Perception
When looking at a puzzle, Jamal starts by focusing on the individual colors and lines before recognizing the overall image.
What is Bottom-Up Processing?
After spending hours fixing a broken phone, Jake refuses to give up even when it’s clearly beyond repair.
What is Sunk-Cost Fallacy?
Megan studies by grouping grocery items into fruits, dairy, and grains.
What is Chunking?
When asked to list the U.S. presidents, Sam writes down as many as he can remember without any cues.
What is Recall?
How do you calculate IQ?
IQ = (Mental Age / Chronological Age) x 100
You’re sitting in class and don’t notice your friend change seats during a video until she points it out.
What is Change Blindness?
Maia buys a lottery ticket because the news just showed someone winning millions.
What is Availability Heuristic?
Noah remembers a vocabulary word by linking it to a personal memory.
What is Elaborative Rehearsal?
Helen remembers where she left her keys only after returning to the same room where she lost them.
What is Context-Dependent Memory?
Students take a math test twice and get nearly the same scores both times.
What is Test-Retest Reliability?
Two overlapping circles are seen as a complete figure, even though part of one is missing.
What is Closure?
A scientist is stuck trying to use a paperclip only as a fastener and doesn’t think to use it to hit a reset button.
What is Functional Fixedness?
When recalling a list of words, Caleb remembers the first few and last few best.
What is Serial Position Effect?
During a happy moment, Liam suddenly recalls another happy memory from years ago.
What is Mood-Congruent Memory?
A test designed to predict future success in artistic careers.
What is Predictive Validity / Aptitude Test?
The ability to attend to one voice among many, like at a noisy party.
What is Cocktail Party Effect?
Logan always solves algebra problems using the same formula, even when a new shortcut could work faster.
What is Mental Set?
After suffering a head injury, Amy cannot remember events that happened before the accident.
What is Retrograde Amnesia?
After learning new student names this year, Mr. Lopez can’t recall many of his students from last year.
What is Retroactive Interference?
Over the decades, average test scores in a country have steadily risen.
What is Flynn Effect?
Because of his expectations, a hunter mistakes a bush for a deer in the woods.
What is Perceptual Set?
Alex meets a quiet man who enjoys reading poetry and assumes he’s more likely a literature professor than a truck driver — even though truck drivers are far more common.
What is Representativeness Heuristic?
A neuroscientist observes that certain synapses fire more easily after repeated activation.
What is Long-Term Potentiation?
A witness confidently recalls details of a robbery after hearing others’ descriptions, but many details are wrong.
What is Misinformation Effect / Constructive Memory?
Before a math exam, female students reminded of gender stereotypes perform worse.
What is Stereotype Threat?