A

Question 1

Accessibility

Answer 1

The degree to which information can be retrieved from memory. A memory is said to be accessible if it retrievable; memories that are not currently retrievable are said to have become inaccessible.

Question 2

Action slips

Answer 2

Unintended, often automatic, actions that are inappropriate for the current situation.

Question 3

Actor/Agent

Answer 3

In the case of the grammar approach, the person who performs some action in a sentence is the agent, such as Bill in “Bill hit the ball with a bat.”

Question 4

Ad hoc categories

Answer 4

Categories that people can generate on the fly the have all of the qualities of more traditional categories, but which are based on situational circumstances.

Question 5

Advantage of clause recency

Answer 5

The speedup of RT to information in the most recently processed clause.

Question 6

Advantage of first mention

Answer 6

The speedup of RT to information mentioned in the first sentence.

Question 7

Agnosia

Answer 7

A disruption in the ability to recognise objects.

Question 8

Agraphia

Answer 8

A disruption in the ability to write, caused by a brain disorder or injury.

Question 9

Alexia

Answer 9

A disruption in the ability to read or recognise printed letters or words, caused by a brain disorder or injury.

Question 10

Algorithm

Answer 10

A specific rule or solution procedure that is certain to yield the correct answer if followed correctly (contrasts with heuristic).

Question 11

Ambiguous

Answer 11

Having more than one meaning, said both of words (e.g. bank) and sentences (e.g. They are eating apples.)

Question 12

Amnesia

Answer 12

Memory loss caused by brain damage or injury. Retrograde amnesia is loss of memory for information before the damage, anterograde amnesia is loss of memory for information after the damage.

Question 13

Analogy

Answer 13

A relationship between two similar systems, problems, etc; a heuristic is which a problem is solved by finding an analogy to a similar problem.

Question 14

Anaphoric reference

Answer 14

The act of using a pronoun or possessive (or synonym) to refer back to a previously mentioned concept.

Question 15

Anomia/Anomic aphasia

Answer 15

A disruption of word finding or retrieval, caused by brain disorder or injury.

Question 16

Antecedent (in conditional reasoning)

Answer 16

The ‘if’ clause in the standard conditional reasoning (‘if-then’) tasks. In the statement ‘If it rains, then the picnic will be cancelled.’ the antecedent is ‘if it rains’.

Question 17

Antecedent (in language)

Answer 17

The concept in which a later word refers; for example, ‘he’ refers to the antecedent Bill in ‘Bill said he was tired’.

Question 18

Anterograde amnesia

Answer 18

Disruption in memory for events following the brain damage, usually a disruption in the storage of new information after brain damage.

Question 19

Aphasia

Answer 19

A loss of some or all of previously intact language skills, caused by brain disorder or damage.

Question 20

Apperceptive agnosia

Answer 20

A form of agnosia in which individual features cannot be integrated into a whole percept or pattern; a basic disruption in perceiving patterns.

Question 21

Arbitrariness

Answer 21

One of Hockett’s (1960) linguistic universals, that the connections between linguistic units (sounds, words) and the concepts or meanings referred to by those units are entirely arbitrary; for example, it is arbitrary that we refer to a table by the linguistic unit ‘table’.

Question 22

Argument

Answer 22

In the proposition the arguments are the ordered concepts the specify the meaning of the proposition. The arguments of the relation ‘HIT’ in the sentence ‘Bill hit the ball yesterday’ are ‘BILL’ as the agent, ‘BALL’ as the object, and ‘YESTERDAY’ as the time.

Question 23

Articulatory loop

Answer 23

The part of the phonological loop involved in the active refreshing of information in the phonological store.

Question 24

Articulatory suppression effect

Answer 24

The finding that people have poorer memory for a set of words if they are asked to say something while they are trying to remember.

Question 25

Associative agnosia

Answer 25

A form of agnosia in which the individual can combine perceived features into a whole pattern but cannot associate the pattern with meaning, cannot link the perceived whole with stored knowledge about its identity.

Question 26

Attend

Answer 26

The verb form of attention, meaning ‘to pay attention to’.

Question 27

Attention

Answer 27

The mental energy or resource necessary for completing mental processes, believe to be limited in quantity and under the control of some executive control mechanism.

Question 28

Attention capture

Answer 28

The spontaneous redirection of attention to stimuli in the world based on physical characteristics.

Question 29

Attentional blink

Answer 29

A brief slow-down in mental processing due to having processed another very recent event.

Question 30

Audition

Answer 30

The sense of hearing.

Question 31

Auditory sensory memory/echoic memory

Answer 31

The sensory memory system that encodes incoming auditory information and holds it briefly for further mental processing.

Question 32

Authorised

Answer 32

Intended or correct. An implication of a speakers statement is said to be authorised if the speaker intended the implication to be drawn; if the listener draws the intended inference, the inference is said to be authorised (contrasts with unauthorised).

Question 33

Autobiographical memory

Answer 33

Memories are specific, personally experienced real-world information, such as of one’s activities upon learning of the Challenger space shuttle disaster; the study of those memories.

Question 34

Automatic, automaticity

Answer 34

Occurring without conscious awareness or intention and consuming little off any of the available mental resources.

Question 35

Available (in memory research)

Answer 35

Present in the memory system. Information is said to be available if it is currently store in memory (contrasts with accessibility).

Question 36

Availability heuristic

Answer 36

A decision making heuristic in which we judge the frequency or probability of some event on the basis of how easily examples or instances can be recalled or remembered; thus, the basis of this heuristic is ease of retrieval.

Question 37

Axon

Answer 37

The long, extended portion of a neuron.

Question 38

Axon terminals

Answer 38

The branchlike ending of an axon in the neuron, containing neurotransmitters.