AP Psychology Unit 2 flashcards: Cognition

All 45 cards, with answers

1. 1

   What is top-down processing in perception?
   Information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, such as prior knowledge and expectations (e.g., reading a messy sentence because you understand the overall context).
2. 2

   What is bottom-up processing in perception?
   Sensory analysis that begins at the entry level with sensory receptors and works up to the brain (e.g., detecting individual lines and colors on an unfamiliar canvas before recognizing a picture).
3. 3

   What is an absolute threshold?
   The minimum stimulus energy needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time (e.g., detecting a candle flame 30 miles away on a clear, dark night).
4. 4

   What does Weber's law state regarding difference thresholds?
   Two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (rather than a constant amount) to be perceived as different (e.g., noticing a 1-ounce difference in a 10-ounce weight, but needing a 10-ounce difference in a 100-ounce weight).
5. 5

   What is a perceptual set?
   A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another based on expectations, context, or emotions (e.g., mistaking a cloud for a flying saucer after watching a science fiction movie).
6. 6

   What is the Gestalt principle of figure-ground?
   The organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground) (e.g., seeing black words as the figure against the white ground of a page).
7. 7

   What is the Gestalt principle of proximity?
   The tendency to group nearby figures together (e.g., seeing six vertical lines arranged in three pairs rather than six separate lines).
8. 8

   What is the Gestalt principle of closure?
   The perceptual tendency to fill in gaps to create a complete, whole object (e.g., perceiving a circle with small breaks in its line as a complete circle).
9. 9

   What is effortful processing?
   Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort (e.g., actively rehearsing terms and definitions for a psychology exam).
10. 10

    What is automatic processing?
    Unconscious encoding of incidental information such as space, time, and frequency (e.g., effortlessly remembering where you left your jacket without trying to memorize the location).
11. 11

    What is iconic memory?
    A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli lasting only a few tenths of a second (e.g., briefly retaining the exact visual image of a lightning strike after it disappears).
12. 12

    What is echoic memory?
    A momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli lasting about 3 to 4 seconds (e.g., repeating the last few words your teacher said when asked, even if your attention had wandered).
13. 13

    According to George Miller, the capacity of short-term memory is _____ items.
    7 ± 2
14. 14

    What is chunking in memory?
    Organizing items into familiar, manageable units to increase short-term memory capacity (e.g., remembering a 10-digit phone number as three groups: 555-867-5309).
15. 15

    What is the spacing effect?
    The tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than massed study or cramming (e.g., studying 30 minutes a day for a week instead of 3.5 hours the night before a test).
16. 16

    What is the serial position effect?
    The tendency to recall best the first and last items in a list (e.g., remembering the first few and last few grocery items on a list while forgetting those in the middle).
17. 17

    What is an episodic memory?
    Explicit memory of personally experienced events (e.g., remembering what happened on your sixteenth birthday party).
18. 18

    What is a semantic memory?
    Explicit memory of facts and general knowledge (e.g., knowing that Paris is the capital of France).
19. 19

    What is a procedural memory?
    Implicit memory of learned motor skills and habits that do not require conscious recall (e.g., knowing how to ride a bicycle or tie your shoes).
20. 20

    Which brain structure is primarily responsible for processing and consolidating explicit memories?
    The hippocampus (e.g., damage to this structure prevents the formation of new declarative memories about facts or personal events).
21. 21

    Which brain structure plays a key role in forming and storing implicit memories created by classical conditioning and motor skills?
    The cerebellum (e.g., learning to blink automatically in response to a tone paired with an air puff).
22. 22

    What is priming?
    The activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory (e.g., seeing the word "rabbit" makes you more likely to spell the spoken word "hair" as "hare").
23. 23

    What is context-dependent memory?
    Improved recall of information when retrieval occurs in the same environment where encoding took place (e.g., scoring better on an exam taken in the same classroom where the lectures were held).
24. 24

    What is state-dependent memory?
    The tendency to recall information more easily when in the same physiological or psychological state as during encoding (e.g., recalling where you hid your keys when caffeinated because you hid them while caffeinated).
25. 25

    The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood is known as _____.
    mood-congruent memory
26. 26

    What does Hermann Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve demonstrate?
    Forgetting is rapid initially and then levels off over time (e.g., losing about 50% of nonsense syllables within an hour, while remaining items stay stable for days).
27. 27

    What is proactive interference?
    When prior learning disrupts the recall of new information (e.g., accidentally typing your old phone number or password when trying to recall your new one).
28. 28

    What is retroactive interference?
    When new learning disrupts the recall of older information (e.g., forgetting your old class schedule after memorizing your new semester schedule).
29. 29

    What is anterograde amnesia?
    The inability to form new long-term explicit memories after brain trauma (e.g., patient H.M. being unable to remember people he met after his surgery).
30. 30

    What is retrograde amnesia?
    The inability to retrieve information acquired before a brain injury or trauma (e.g., waking up after a concussion unable to remember the accident or the events leading up to it).
31. 31

    What is the misinformation effect demonstrated by Elizabeth Loftus?
    Occurs when misleading post-event information distorts one's memory of an event (e.g., witnesses estimating higher car speeds when asked how fast cars were going when they "smashed" into each other versus "hit" each other).
32. 32

    What is a prototype in cognitive psychology?
    A mental image or best example of a category (e.g., thinking of a robin when asked to picture a bird, rather than an ostrich or penguin).
33. 33

    What is an algorithm in problem solving?
    A methodical, step-by-step procedure that guarantees a solution, though it may take a long time (e.g., searching every single aisle in a supermarket to locate vanilla extract).
34. 34

    What is a heuristic?
    A simple thinking strategy or mental shortcut that allows us to solve problems efficiently, but is prone to errors (e.g., checking only the baking aisle for vanilla extract).
35. 35

    What is the availability heuristic?
    Estimating the likelihood of events based on their vividness and availability in memory (e.g., fearing a shark attack after watching news reports of one, despite the statistical rarity).
36. 36

    What is the representativeness heuristic?
    Judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they match a particular prototype, often ignoring statistical odds (e.g., assuming a quiet man in a suit is an Ivy League professor rather than a truck driver).
37. 37

    What is a mental set?
    A tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past (e.g., repeatedly restarting a frozen computer because it worked previously, instead of checking if the mouse is unplugged).
38. 38

    What is functional fixedness?
    A cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used (e.g., failing to use a coin to tighten a loose screw because you only view it as currency).
39. 39

    What is confirmation bias?
    The tendency to search for, interpret, and recall information that confirms preexisting beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence (e.g., an investor reading only positive articles about a stock they already bought).
40. 40

    The _____ refers to the way an issue is presented, which significantly affects decisions and judgments (e.g., preferring ground beef labeled "75% lean" over "25% fat").
    framing effect
41. 41

    What is Charles Spearman's general intelligence (g factor)?
    A single underlying mental ability that underlies all specific mental skills (e.g., someone scoring high on a verbal test often also scores high on spatial and quantitative tests).
42. 42

    What are the three components of Robert Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence?
    Analytical intelligence (academic problem solving), creative intelligence (adapting to novel situations), and practical intelligence (everyday street smarts).
43. 43

    What is the difference between fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence?
    Fluid intelligence is the ability to reason abstractly and solve novel problems (peaks in early adulthood), while crystallized intelligence is accumulated knowledge and verbal skills (increases with age).
44. 44

    The worldwide increase in intelligence test scores over decades, necessitating the re-norming of tests, is known as the _____.
    Flynn effect
45. 45

    In psychological testing, what is the difference between reliability and validity?
    Reliability is the consistency of test results across repeated administrations, while validity is the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it claims to measure (e.g., a scale giving the exact same incorrect weight is reliable but not valid).