Psychology Exam III - Cognitive and Developmental Psychology

simple stimulation of a sense organ; basic registration of light, sound, pressure, odor, or taste as parts of your body interact with the physical world

the organization, identification, and interpretation of a sensation in order t form a mental representation; how sensation is registered

when sense receptors convert physical signals from the environment into neural signals that are sent to the central nervous system

sensitivity to prolonged stimulation tends to decline over time as an organism adapts to current (unchanging) conditions

methods that systematically relate the physical characteristics of a stimulus to an observer’s perception

researchers ask people to decided whether or not they see a faint spot of light, and the intensity of the light is changed systematically. Responses of the observer are recorded as a function

minimal intensity needed to just barely detect a stimulus in 50% of the trials

a boundary

a candle flame 30 miles away on a clear, dark night

a clock’s tick 20 feet away when all is quiet

a fly’s wing falling on the cheek from 1 centimeter away

a single drop of perfume diffused through an area equivalent to the volume of six rooms

a teaspoon of sugar dissolved in two gallons of water

how responsive we are to faint stimulus

sensitivity

how well we can distinguish two very similar stimuli

the minimal change in a stimulus that can just barely be detected; not a fixed quality as it depends on the particular sense being measured and the intensity of the original stimulus

fixed intensity

the ratio between the JND and the standard stimulus is a constant value except when the standard takes extreme values (e.g., is hard to perceive, or is overwhelming)

for every sense domain, the change in a stimulus that is just noticeable is a constant proportion despite variation in intensities

if you picked up a 1-ounce envelope, then a 2-ounce envelope, you’d probably notice the difference between them. But if you picked up a 20-pound package, then a 20-pound, 1-ounce package, you’d probably detect no difference at all between them.

all the other stimuli coming from the internal and external environment

the response to a stimulus depends both on a person’s sensitivity to the stimulus in the presence of noise and on a person’s decision criterion; an approach to psychophysics

the brain’s capacity to perform multiple activities at the same time

perceptional mistake whereby the brain incorrectly combines features from multiple objects

focused attention is not required to detect the individual features that make up a stimulus but it is required to bind those individual features together

the active and conscious processing of particular information

even as aspects of sensory signals change, perception remains constant

the rich store of facts and other meaningful knowledge we have about a familiar object; when we perceive an object, we don’t merely recognize what it looks like, but we understand what it is — its characteristics and significance to our behavior

process of grouping and segregating features to create whole objects organized in meaningful ways

a mental representation that groups or categorizes shared features of related objects, events, or other stimuli

something that must be true of the object in order for it to belong to the category

something that, if it is true of the object, proves that it belongs to the category

the concept that we classify new objects by comparing them to the “best” or “most typical” member of a category

we make category judgements by comparing a new instance with stored memories of other instances of the category

a neurological syndrome characterized by an inability to recognize objects that belong to a particular category, even when the ability to recognize objects outside the category is undisturbed

the classical view that we make decisions by determining how likely something is to happen, judging the value of the outcome, and then multiplying the two

A rule of thumb that items that are more readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently

fast and efficient strategy that may facilitate decision making but does not guarantee that a solution will be reached

Memory strength and frequency of occurrence are directly related

a well-defined sequence of procedures or rules that guarantees a solution to a problem

the existing probability of an event

A mental shortcut that involved making a probability by comparing an object or event with a prototype of the object or event

thinking that two events are more likely to occur together than either individual event alone because people rely on the representativeness heuristic

when people give different answers to the same problem depending on how the problem is framed

a framing effect in which people make decisions about a current situation on the basis of what they have previously invested in the situation

people believe that, compared with other individuals, they are more likely to experience positive events and less likely to experience negative events in the future

people choose to take on risks when evaluating potential losses and to avoid risks when evaluating potential gains; assumes that, in evaluating choices, people compare them with a reference point

An assumption suggesting that when making decisions, people give greater weight to outcomes that are a sure thing

the ability to store and retrieve information over time

the process of transforming what we perceive, think, or feel into an enduring memory

the process of maintaining information in memory over time

the process of bringing to mind information that has been previously encoded and stored

the process of relating new information in a meaningful way to knowledge that is already stored in memory

the process of storing new information by converting it into mental pictures

the process of categorizing information according to the relationship among a series of items

encoding strategies that improve subsequent retrieval

a type of storage that holds sensory information for a few seconds or less

a fast-decaying store of visual information

a fast-decaying store of auditory information

a type of storage that holds nonsensory information for more than a few seconds but less than a minute

the process of keeping information in short-term memory by mentally repeating it

the observation that the first few and last few items in a series are more likely to be recalled than the items in the middle

enhanced recall of the most first few items

enhanced recall of the last few items

about 7

combing small pieces of information into larger clusters or chunks that are more easily held in short-term memory

active maintenance of information in short-term storage

type of storage that holds information for hours, days, weeks, or years

the inability to transfer new information from the short-term store into the long-term store

the inability to retrieve information that was acquired before a particular date, usually the date of an injury or surgery

the process by which become stable in the brain

consolidating memories again because memories can become vulnerable to disruption when they are recalled

a process whereby repeated communication across the synapse between neurons strengthens the connections, making further communication easier

external information that is associated with stored information and helps bring it to mind

a retrieval cue can serve as an effective reminder when it helps re-create the specific way in which information was initially encoded

the process whereby information tends to be better recalled when the person is in the same state during encoding and retrieval

the idea that memory is likely to transfer from one situation to another when the encoding and retrieval contexts of the situations match

a process by which retrieving an item from long-term memory impairs subsequent recall of related items

the ability to use one’s mind to solve novel problems and learn from experience

someone’s mental level expressed through age

a metric obtained by dividing a child’s mental age by the child’s physical age and then multiplying the quotient by 100

intelligence increases dramatically in the first decade or so life and then levels off but the ratio IQ for a 7-yr-old who performs like an 14-yr-old is the same as a 20-yr-old who performs like a 40-yr-old → adults of different ages don’t have remarkably different intellectual capacities

a metric obtained by dividing an adult’s test score by the average adult’s test score and then multiplying the quotient by 100

instead of comparing a person’s mental age to their own physical age, the deviation IQ score compares their performance to the performance of others

the fact that a person’s performances on a variety of tests tend to be positively correlated

a person’s performance on a test is due to a combination of general cognitive ability and specific abilities that are unique to the test

general cognitive ability

specific abilities

mathematical technique that showed the correlations between scores on different tests are best described by a three-level hierarchy with a general factor at the tope, set of “group factors” in the middle, and some specific factors at the bottom

memory and learning, visual perception, auditory perception, retrieval ability, cognitive speediness, processing speed, crystallized intelligence, and fluid intelligence

ability to apply knowledge that was acquired through experience; generally measured by tests of vocabulary and factual information

ability to solve and reason about novel problems; generally measured by tests that present people with abstract problems in new domains that must be solved under time pressure

the ability to identify and define problems and to find strategies for solving them

the ability to generate solutions that other people do no

the ability to implement solutions in everyday settings

the ability to reason about emotions and to use emotions to enhance reasoning

the role is quite large according to correlational studies between the IQs of genetically identical twins who were raised in different households are more similar to each other than the IQs of biologically unrelated children who were raised in the same household

intelligence is influenced by the structure and function of the brain, and the structure and function of the brain are influenced by the genes

a statistic that describes the proportion of the difference between two or more people’s IQ scores that can be explained by differences in their genes; usually somewhere between 0.5 and 0.7 → ~ 50% to 70% of the differences between people’s IQ scores is due to the genetic differences between those people