Perception Is Reality… Or Is It?
This type of processing begins with raw sensory information and builds toward a complete interpretation.
What is bottom-up processing?
This term describes the most typical or representative example of a particular concept.
What is a prototype?
Copy clueRemembering your first day of kindergarten is an example of this type of explicit memory.
What is episodic memory?
Breaking a long phone number into three meaningful groups instead of memorizing ten separate digits is an example of this encoding strategy.
What is chunking?
Answering an essay question without being given possible answers requires this form of memory retrieval.
What is recall?
This psychologist's famous forgetting curve demonstrates that most memory loss occurs relatively soon after learning, with forgetting slowing over time.
Who is Hermann Ebbinghaus?
This term refers to the proposed general mental ability that influences performance across many different cognitive tasks.
What is general intelligence, or g?
A person reads a badly misspelled sentence correctly because their existing knowledge of language fills in the gaps. This type of processing is responsible.
What is top-down processing?
After watching several dramatic news stories about shark attacks, a vacationer becomes convinced that shark attacks are extremely common. This mental shortcut is responsible.
What is the availability heuristic?
Knowing how to ride a bicycle without consciously thinking about each movement is an example of this type of implicit memory.
What is procedural memory?
A student remembers a grocery list by imagining each item sitting in a different room of their house. This mnemonic technique is being used.
What is the method of loci?
A student remembers information more easily when taking a test in the same classroom where they originally studied it. This memory principle explains why.
What is context-dependent memory?
A student cannot remember where a classroom clock is located because they've never really paid attention to it. This memory problem explains the failure.
What is encoding failure?
A school administers the same intelligence test to every student using identical instructions, time limits, and testing conditions. The school is following this psychometric principle.
What is standardization?
When viewing a series of dots, people automatically group the dots that are closest together. This Gestalt principle explains why.
What is proximity?
A child initially believes every four-legged animal is a dog. After learning that cats are a separate category, the child changes their original mental framework. This process has occurred.
What is accommodation?
This component of working memory temporarily stores and rehearses spoken information, almost like an internal voice.
What is the phonological loop?
Two students study for the same number of hours. One crams the night before the test, while the other studies in shorter sessions across several days. This psychological effect predicts better long-term memory for the second student.
What is the spacing effect?
A person who studied while highly caffeinated finds certain information easier to retrieve when experiencing the same physiological condition. This phenomenon is involved.
What is state-dependent memory?
After learning a new locker combination, a student keeps accidentally entering the old combination instead. This specific type of interference is occurring.
What is proactive interference?
A student takes an intelligence test twice, several weeks apart, and receives nearly identical scores. This specific form of reliability is demonstrated.
What is test-retest reliability?
While carefully counting basketball passes, a student completely fails to notice someone in a gorilla costume walking through the scene. This phenomenon explains the oversight.
What is inattentional blindness?
A family continues pouring money into an unreliable car because they've already spent $5,000 repairing it, even though replacing it would be cheaper. This decision-making error is at work.
What is the sunk-cost fallacy?
After looking at a picture for only a moment, a person can briefly visualize it even after the picture disappears. This sensory memory system is responsible.
What is iconic memory?
After hearing a list of 20 words, a student remembers the first few and the last few much better than those in the middle. This overall memory phenomenon explains the pattern.
What is the serial position effect?
Instead of rereading her notes, a student closes her textbook and repeatedly quizzes herself. This memory principle explains why her approach may produce better long-term retention.
What is the testing effect?
After witnessing a minor car accident, a student hears someone falsely claim that one driver ran a red light. Days later, the student confidently recalls seeing the driver run the light. This memory distortion has occurred.
What is the misinformation effect?
Before a difficult mathematics exam, female students are reminded of a negative stereotype about their group's mathematical ability. Their performance declines because of this psychological phenomenon.
What is stereotype threat?
Copy clueIn a photograph, two parallel railroad tracks appear to come together in the distance. This specific monocular depth cue creates the illusion of depth.
What is linear perspective?
A student must find a way to hold a door open but cannot think of using a heavy textbook because they see it only as something to read. This cognitive limitation is preventing a solution.
What is functional fixedness?
Repeated activation of connections between neurons strengthens their ability to communicate, helping memories form. Psychologists call this biological process by this name.
What is long-term potentiation (LTP)?
Following a brain injury, a man can vividly describe his childhood but cannot form new long-term memories, even though he can hold a conversation. This specific memory disorder explains his condition.
What is anterograde amnesia?
A student believes he knows a chapter because everything looks familiar while rereading it. When he tries to explain it without notes, he realizes how little he understands. This ability to monitor and evaluate one's own thinking is essential to improving his studying.
What is metacognition?
A student remembers a fascinating psychological fact correctly but insists they learned it from a professor when they actually heard it on a podcast. This specific memory error has occurred.
What is source amnesia?
A test intended to measure intelligence consistently produces the same scores, but its questions depend so heavily on reading comprehension that students' scores largely reflect reading ability rather than the broader construct of intelligence. This specific psychometric quality is questionable.
What is construct validity?