Cognitive Psychology

Front 1

What is Information Theory?

Back 1

The idea that the information provided by a particular message is inversely related to its probability to occur. The less likely something is to happen, the more information it conveys.

Front 2

What is the Filter Model?

Back 2

Theory based on the idea that information-processing is restricted by channel capacity.

Front 3

What is channel capacity?

Back 3

The maximum amount of information that can be transmitted by an information-processing device.

Front 4

What is Introspection?

Back 4

"looking inward" to observe ones own thoughts and feelings.

Front 5

What is Primary memory?

Back 5

What we are currently aware of in the immediate moment. Also called short-term memory.

Front 6

What is Secondary Memory?

Back 6

Knowledge acquired at an earlier time that is stored indefinitely and is absent from awareness. Also called longer-term memory.

Front 7

What is the ecological approach (in regards to cognitive research)?

Back 7

A form of psychological inquiry that reflects conditions in the real world.

Front 8

What are Affordances?

Back 8

The potential functions or uses of a stimuli (objects or events) in the real world. (ex. hammers can hit things, bikes can transport you, etc)

Front 9

What is Information pickup?

Back 9

The process whereby we perceive information directly.

Front 10

What are Schema?

Back 10

An expectation concerning what we are likely to find as we explore the world.

Front 11

What is a Perceptual Cycle?

Back 11

The process whereby our schemata guide our exploration of the world and in turn are shaped by what we find there.

Front 12

What is Cognitive Ethology?

Back 12

A new research approach that links real-world observations with laboratory-based studies.

Front 13

what is Metacognition?

Back 13

Knowledge about the way that cognitive processes work or understanding our own cognitive processes.

Front 14

What are Modules (in regards to the brain)?

Back 14

Different parts of the brain, each of which is for a particular cognitive function.

Front 15

What is Phrenology?

Back 15

The study of the shape, size, and protrusions of the cranium in an attempt to discovery the relationships between parts of the brain and various mental activities and abilities.

Front 16

What is localization of function?

Back 16

The idea that there is a direct correspondence between specific cognitive functions and specific parts of the brain.

Front 17

What is the Law of Mass action?

Back 17

Learning and memory depend on the total mass of the brain tissue remaining rather than the properties of individual cells.

Front 18

What is the Law of Equipotentiality?

Back 18

Even though some areas of the cortex may become specialized for certain tasks, any part of an area can (within limits) do the job of any other part of that area.

Front 19

What is Interactionism?

Back 19

Mind and brain are separate substances that interact with and influence each other. (dualism)

Front 20

What is Epiphenominalism?

Back 20

"Mind" is a byproduct of of bodily functioning (particularly the brain). (Materialism)

Front 21

What is Parallelism?

Back 21

Mind and brain are two aspects of the same reality and flow in parallel.

Front 22

What is Isomorphism?

Back 22

Mental events and neural events share the same structure.

Front 23

What is Broca's Aphasia?

Back 23

The deficit in the ability to produce speech as a result of damage to Broca's area.

Front 24

What is Broca's area?

Back 24

The area of the brain's left hemisphere that is involved in forming speech sounds.

Front 25

What is Wernicke's aphasia?

Back 25

A deficit in the ability to comprehend speech as a result of damage to Wernicke's area.

Front 26

What is Wernicke's area?

Back 26

An area of the brain's left hemisphere that is responsible for processing the meaning of words.

Front 27

What is interhemispheric transfer?

Back 27

Communication between the brain's hemispheres enabled in large part by the corpus collosum.

Front 28

What is split brain?

Back 28

A condition created by severing the corpus collosum resulting in a loss of interhemispheric communication.

Front 29

What is an emergent property?

Back 29

A property that emerges as a result of combined brain processes but is not itself a component of the brain. In the case of the mind, this means that consciousness if neither reducible to, nor a property of, a particular brain structure or region.

Front 30

What is Emergent Causation?

Back 30

Causation brought about by an emergent property. Once the "mind" emerges from the brain is has the power to influence lower-level processes.

Front 31

What does Supervenient mean?

Back 31

mental states that may simultaneously influence neuronal events and be influenced by them.

Front 32

What are Event-Related Potentials (ERP)?

Back 32

An electrical signal emitted by the brain after the onset of a stimulus.

Front 33

What is Positron Emission Tomography (PET)?

Back 33

An imaging technique in which radioactive substances are injected into the blood stream and circulated through the brain. A scanner is used to detect the flow of blood by detecting the radioactive decay products.

Front 34

What is Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)?

Back 34

A magnetic based imaging technique that detects the flow of oxygenated blood to various parts of the brain.

Front 35

What is Magnetoencephalography (MEG)?

Back 35

a non-invasive brain imaging technique that directly measures neuronal activity.

Front 36

What is connectionism?

Back 36

A theory that focuses on the way cognitive processes work at the physiological/neurological level (as opposed to information processing level). It holds that the brain consists of an enormous number of interconnected neurons and attempts to model cognition as an emergent process of networks of simple units communicating with each other.

Front 37

What is Diffuse tensor imaging (DTI)?

Back 37

An MRI based neuroimaging technique that makes it possible to visualize the white-matter tracts within the brain.

Front 38

What are neural networks?

Back 38

Neurons that are functionally related or connected.

Front 39

What is the Hebb Rule?

Back 39

A connection between two neurons takes place only if both neurons are firing at approximately the same time.

Front 40

What is Parallel processing?

Back 40

Many neural connections/neural networks active at the same time.

Front 41

What is serial processing?

Back 41

Only one neural activity may take place at any one time.

Front 42

What is visual agnosia?

Back 42

An inability to identify objects visually even through they can be identified using other senses.

Front 43

What is blindsight?

Back 43

A condition in which patients with damage to the primary visual cortex are able to make accurate judgements about objects presented to their blind area even though they report no conscious experience of the objects and believe they are only guessing.

Front 44

What is perception?

Back 44

The processing of sensory information in such a way that it produces conscious experiences and guides action in the world.

Front 45

What is encoding (in regards to perception)?

Back 45

The process of transforming information into one or more forms of representation (ex. from photons to neural signals)

Front 46

What is subliminal perception?

Back 46

AKA unconscious perception. Occurs when an observer is unaware of perceiving a stimulus can still have an impact on his or her behavior.

Front 47

What is a stimulus?

Back 47

An entity in the external environment that can be perceived by an observer.

Front 48

What is backward masking?

Back 48

Presenting a stimulus, called the target, to the participant and then covering or masking the target with another stimulus.

Front 49

What is Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA)?

Back 49

The temporal delay between the first stimulus and a masking stimulus.

Front 50

What is priming?

Back 50

The tendency for some initial stimuli to make subsequent responses to related stimuli more likely.

Front 51

What is direct vs indirect measures?

Back 51

Participants reports that they have seen a stimulus as opposed to the effects of an undetected stimulus on a subsequent task. (direct is reported by the participant. indirect is gleaned by their performance or physiological response)

Front 52

What is the Dissociation paradigm?

Back 52

An experimental strategy designed to show that it is possible to perceive stimuli in the absence of any conscious awareness of them.

Front 53

What is Perception without awareness?

Back 53

A stimulus has an effect even though it is below the participants subjected threshold of awareness.

Front 54

What is the difference between objective and subjective thresholds?

Back 54

Objective is the threshold whereby participants can detect a stimulus at chance level while subjective is the point at which they say they did not perceive it.

Front 55

What is process dissociation procedure?

Back 55

An experimental technique that requires participants not to respond with items they have observed previously.

Front 56

What is Implicit perception?

Back 56

The effect on a persons experience, thought, or action of an object in the current stimulus environment in the absence of, or independent of, conscious perception of that event.

Front 57

What is a Percept?

Back 57

The visual experience of sensory information.

Front 58

What is the Theory of Ecological Optics?

Back 58

The proposition that perception is based on direct contact of the sensory organs with stimulus energy emanating from the environment and that an important goal of perception is action.

Front 59

what is Ambient optical array (AOA)?

Back 59

All the visual information that is present at a particular point of view.

Front 60

What is Gradient of texture density?

Back 60

Incremental changes in the pattern on a surface which provide information about the slant of the surface.

Front 61

What is topological breakage?

Back 61

The discontinuity created by the intersection of two textures.

Front 62

What is scatter reflection?

Back 62

The degree to which light scatters when reflected from a surface

Front 63

What is Transformation (according to Gibson's theory)?

Back 63

The change of optical information hitting the eye when the observer moves through the environment.

Front 64

What is Optic flow field?

Back 64

The continually changing pattern of information that results from the movement of either objects or the observer through the environment.

Front 65

What is pattern recognition?

Back 65

The ability to recognize an event as an instance of a particular category of event.

Front 66

What is memory trace?

Back 66

The trace that an experience leaves behind in memory.

Front 67

What is Hoffding function?

Back 67

The process whereby an experience makes contact with a memory trace resulting in recognition.

Front 68

What does prototypical mean?

Back 68

Representative of a pattern or category.

Front 69

What is template-matching theory?

Back 69

The hypothesis that the process of pattern recognition relies on the use of templates or prototypes.

Front 70

What is multiple trace memory model?

Back 70

Traces of each individual experience are recorded in memory. No matter how often a particular kind of event is experienced, a trace of the individual event is recorded each time.

Front 71

In regards to Multiple trace memory model, what is a probe?

Back 71

A snapshot of information in primary memory that can activate memory traces in secondary memory.

Front 72

In regards to Multiple trace memory model, what is an echo?

Back 72

When a probe goes out from the primary memory, memory traces are activated to the extent that they are similar to the probe.

Front 73

What is feature detection theory?

Back 73

Detecting patterns on the basis of their features or properties.

Front 74

What is Pandemonium (theory)?

Back 74

A model of pattern recognition consisting of three levels: data, cognitive demons, and decision demons.

Front 75

What is a feature?

Back 75

A component or characteristic of a stimulus.

Front 76

What is a cognitive demon (in regards to pandemonium)?

Back 76

A feature detector in the pandemonium model that decides whether a stimulus matches its pattern.

Front 77

What is a decision demon (in regards to pandemonium)?

Back 77

A feature detector in the pandemonium model that determines which pattern is being recognized.

Front 78

What is contrast energy?

Back 78

The relative ease with which a stimulus can be distinguished from the background against which it is displayed. (black of white=high energy vs grey on white=low energy)

Front 79

What is squelching?

Back 79

The tendency of the nervous system to inhibit the processing of unclear features. (useful for inhibiting static and noise signals)

Front 80

What is recognition by components (RBC)?

Back 80

The theory that we recognize objects by breaking them down into their fundamental geographic shapes.

Front 81

What are geons (in regards to recognition by components theory)?

Back 81

The set of 36 basic three dimensional shapes from which all real-world objects can be constructed.

Front 82

What are context effects?

Back 82

The influence of the proximate stimuli and the situation on the perceptual experience of a stimulus.

Front 83

What is the moon illusion?

Back 83

The tendency for the moon to appear different in size depending on where it is in the sky.

Front 84

What is apparent distance theory?

Back 84

An explanation for the moon-illusion; it positcs that the moon on the horizon appears larger because "distance" cues lead the observer to perceive it as being father away than the zenith moon (directly overhead).

Front 85

What is the jumbled word effect?

Back 85

The ability to read words in sentences despite having mixed up letters in the middle of some of the words.

Front 86

What is word superiority effect?

Back 86

It is easier to identify a letter if it appears in a word than if it appears alone.

Front 87

What is parallel distributed processing (PDP)?

Back 87

A model of perception according to which different features are processed at the same time by different "units" (simple processing elements) connected in a network.

Front 88

What is the empirical theory of colour vision?

Back 88

The theory that colour perception involves not only the processing of wavelengths of light but also the influence of prior experiences with the way different surrounding objects and different lighting conditions affect he appearance of objects.

Front 89

What is the McGurk effect?

Back 89

The auditory experience of the syllable "da" when seeing a mouth silently saying "ga" while at the same time hearing a voice say "ba"

Front 90

What is top-down influences?

Back 90

The influence of context and an observers knowledge, expectations, and high-level goals on perceptual experience

Front 91

What are bottom-up influences?

Back 91

The influence of the stimulus on the resulting perceptual experience.

Front 92

What is change blindness?

Back 92

The failure to consciously detect an obvious change in a scene.

Front 93

What is the grand illusion of perception?

Back 93

The illusion that what we see in our visual field is a clear and detailed picture of the world.

Front 94

What is feature integration theory (FIT)?

Back 94

Before we can attend to objects in the world we must extract the features that constitute them.

Front 95

What is preattentive processing?

Back 95

the unconscious extraction of features that must take place before we can perceive an object.

Front 96

What is feature binding?

Back 96

The combining of visual features to form whole objects; a process that takes place when attention is directed at a particular location.

Front 97

What is blind spot?

Back 97

A region in the eye that does not contain any photoreceptors and so the visual system cannot process visual stimulation that falls in that region.

Front 98

What is perceptual completion (filling in)?

Back 98

The incorrect impression that a stimulus occupies a section of the visual scene when in fact it occupies only the surrounding region.

Front 99

What is Gestalt psychology?

Back 99

A branch of psychology that focuses on wholes as opposed to parts.

Front 100

What is Bi-stable figures?

Back 100

Images from which two separate percepts can be formed.

Front 101

What is holistic mean?

Back 101

Focusing on the whole configuration of an object.

Front 102

What is atomistic?

Back 102

focusing on the features of the components of objects.

Front 103

What is grouping?

Back 103

The combination of individuals elements to form a perceptual whole.

Front 104

What is organizational principles?

Back 104

The rules or laws that govern how whole objects or events are perceived from a collection of individual elements.

Front 105

What is the principle of experience?

Back 105

Visual elements are grouped together based on the prior experience and knowledge of the observer.

Front 106

What is figure-ground segmentation?

Back 106

Perceptual organization of a scene such that one element becomes the foreground (figure) and the other element(s) become(s) the background (ground)

Front 107

What is denotivity?

Back 107

The degree to which an object is meaningful and familiar to an individual observer.

Front 108

What is the principle of proximity?

Back 108

visual elements that are close to one another are grouped to form a whole

Front 109

What is the principle of closed forms?

Back 109

Visual elements that form the edges of closed shapes are grouped together to form a whole.

Front 110

What is the principle of good contour?

Back 110

Visual elements that form the most direct continuation of each other are grouped together.

Front 111

What is the principle of similarity?

Back 111

Visual elements that are similar are grouped together.

Front 112

What is the principle of common movement?

Back 112

Visual elements that move simultaneously and in the same way are grouped to form a whole.

Front 113

What is Ceteris Paribus?

Back 113

A latin phrase meaning "other things being equal"

Front 114

What is Gestaltist's error?

Back 114

The assumption that whole objects will always dominate over the elements of an image.

Front 115

What is optic ataxia?

Back 115

Patients with this condition can identify objects but are unable to successfully reach for them, especially when the object is presented to their peripheral vision.

Front 116

What is dichotic listening?

Back 116

Participants are exposed to two verbal messages simultaneously and are required to answer questions posed in only one of the messages.

Front 117

What is selective attention?

Back 117

Attending to relevant information and ignoring irrelevant information.

Front 118

what is the Cocktail party phenomenon?

Back 118

The ability to attend to one conversation when many other conversations are going on around you.

Front 119

What is a shadowing task?

Back 119

A task in which the subject is exposed to two messages simultaneously and must repeat one of them.

Front 120

What is a filter (in regards to attention)?

Back 120

A hypothetical mechanism that would admit certain messages and block others.

Front 121

What is selective looking?

Back 121

Occurs when we are exposed to two events simultaneously, but attend to only one of them.

Front 122

What is early selection?

Back 122

The hypothesis that attention prevents early perceptual processing of distractors.

Front 123

What is late selection?

Back 123

The hypothesis that we perceive both relevant and irrelevant stimuli, and therefore must actively ignore the irrelevant stimuli in order to focus on the relevant ones.

Front 124

What is a stroop task?

Back 124

A naming task in which colour names are printed in colours other than the colours they name.

Front 125

What are controlled vs automatic processes?

Back 125

Processes that demand attention if we are to carry them out properly versus processes that operate without requiring us to pay attention to them.

Front 126

What is the Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)?

Back 126

An area of the brain that may exert top-down bias that favors the selection of task-relevant information.

Front 127

What is the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACG)?

Back 127

An area of the brain that may detect conflicting response tendencies of the sort that the stroop task elicits.

Front 128

What is attention capture?

Back 128

The diversion of attention by a stimulus so powerful that it compels us to notice it even when our attention is focused on something else.

Front 129

What is inattentional blindness?

Back 129

Failure to attend to events that we might be expected to notice.

Front 130

What is meant by ecologically valid?

Back 130

Generalizable to conditions in the real world.

Front 131

What is deja-vu?

Back 131

The impression of having previously experienced the situation in which one finds oneself, accompanied by the sense that this is not actually the case.

Front 132

What is the Flanker task?

Back 132

An experiment in which participants may be influenced by an irrelevant stimulus beside the target.

Front 133

What is domain-specific modules?

Back 133

The hypothesis that parts of the brain may be specialized for particular tasks, such as recognizing faces.

Front 134

What is the capacity model?

Back 134

The hypothesis that attention is like a power supply that can support only a limited amount of attentional activity.

Front 135

What are structural limits?

Back 135

the hypothesis that attentional tasks interfere with one another to the extent that they involve similar activities.

Front 136

What is a central bottleneck?

Back 136

The hypothesis that there is only one path along which information can travel and it is so narrow that the most it can handle at any one time is the information relevant to one task.

Front 137

What is divided attention?

Back 137

The ability to attend to more than one thing at a time.

Front 138

What is mind wandering?

Back 138

A shift of mental resources away from the task at hand and towards internal thoughts.

Front 139

What is a sustained attention to response task (SART)?

Back 139

a continuous response task in which digits are sequentially presented on a computer screen and participants are asked to press a button in response to all but one of them. Response to this infrequent digit is supposed to be withheld.

Front 140

What is commission error (in regards to SART)?

Back 140

Failure to withhold a response to the infrequent digit in the SART.

Front 141

What is a default network?

Back 141

A set of brain areas that are active when an individual does not have a specific task to do and is absorbed in internal thought.

Front 142

What are action slips?

Back 142

The kind of behavioral errors that often occur in everyday life.

Front 143

What is parallel mental activity?

Back 143

Thinking about something other than the task at hand.

Front 144

What is attentional blink?

Back 144

Failure to notice the second stimuli presented within 550 milliseconds of each other.

Front 145

What is a Rapid Serial visual presentation (RSVP)?

Back 145

The presentation of a series of stimuli in quick succession.

Front 146

What is a set (in regards to attention)?

Back 146

A temporary, top-down organization in the brain that facilitates some responses while inhibiting others in order to achieve a certain goal; also referred to as a mental set.

Front 147

What is task switching?

Back 147

Changing from working on one task to working on another; usually studied in situation in which the switch is involuntary.

Front 148

What is switch cost?

Back 148

The finding that performance declines immediately on switching tasks.

Front 149

What is meant by embodied?

Back 149

Existing within a body; the term reflects the general view that cognition depends not only on the mind but also on the physical constraints of the body in which the mind exists.

Front 150

What is overt attention?

Back 150

Attending to something with eye movement.

Front 151

What is covert attention?

Back 151

Attending to something without eye movement.

Front 152

What is sequential attention hypothesis?

Back 152

A hypothesis about the relationship between overt and covert attention that posits a tight relationship between the two whereby covert attention is shifted first and overt eye movement follows.

Front 153

What is the retina?

Back 153

Tissue at the back of the eye that is filled with photoreceptors.

Front 154

What are photoreceptors?

Back 154

Receptor cells in the retina that help transform energy from photons into neural signals.

Front 155

What is the fovea?

Back 155

The central region of the retina where photoreceptors are most densely packed.

Front 156

What are saccades?

Back 156

the rapid, jerky movements made as the eye scans an image.

Front 157

What is fixation?

Back 157

Holding the eye relatively still in order to maintain an image on the fovea.

Front 158

What is Nystagmus?

Back 158

Small but continuous movements made by the eye during fixation.

Front 159

What are regressions?

Back 159

Right to left movements of the eyes during reading, directing them to previously read text.

Front 160

What is the moving window technique?

Back 160

A method of determining how much visual information can be taken in during a fixation, in which the reader is prevented from seeing information beyond a certain distance from the current fixation.

Front 161

What are entry points?

Back 161

The locations to which we direct our eyes before starting to read a second in a piece of complex material such as a newspaper.

Front 162

What are smooth pursuit movements?

Back 162

Movements of the eye that,because they are not jerky, enable the viewer to maintain fixation on a moving object.

Front 163

What is task-related knowledge?

Back 163

An observers knowledge of the goals and the task at hand as it guides the eyes during a visual task.

Front 164

What is meant by quiet eye?

Back 164

Sustained and steady eye gaze prior to an action or behavior.

Front 165

What is the location-suppression hypothesis?

Back 165

A two-stage explanation for the Quiet eye phenomenon: in the preparation stage, the quiet eye maximizes information about the target object; then, during the location stage, vision is suppressed to optimize the execution of an action or behavior.