Cognitive Approach - Terminology Flashcards
Multi store model of memory
A model of memory developed by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968. It described the flow between three permanent storage systems of memory: the sensory register (SR), short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM).
Working memory model
It was developed by Baddeley and Hitch in 1974. It proposes that STM is a collection of multiple stores which actively process different types of STM. According to the model, it consists of 3 components: the central executive, the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad.
Long term memory (LTM)
A relatively permanent memory storage system that holds huge amounts of information for LONG periods of time.
Short term memory (STM)
The capacity to store a small amount of information in the mind and keep it readily available for a short period of time.
Working memory
A form of memory that allows a person to temporarily hold a limited amount of information at the ready for immediate mental use.
Declarative memory
(“knowing what”) is the memory of facts and events and refers to those memories that can be consciously recalled. There are two subsets of declarative memory: semantic memory and episodic memory
Episodic memory
the memory of specific events that have occurred at a given time and in a given place.
Procedural memory
(“knowing how”) is the unconscious memory of skills and how to do things.
Encoding
the initial learning of information by placing information into memory storage.
Displacement
In the MSM this is what happens to information in STM if it is not rehearsed. It is displaced - or “knocked out” of the STM store by other incoming stimuli.
Primacy effect
The ability to recall words at the beginning of the list because they had already been transferred to long-term memory.
Recency effect
The ability to recall words that have just been spoken because they are still in short-term memory.
Dual process model
Argues that there are two systems of decision making - System 1 and System 2.
System 1/2
- System 1 is an automatic, intuitive and effortless way of thinking.
- System 2 is a slower, conscious and rational mode of thinking.
The Wason selection task
A problem designed to explore the ways people reason with conditional statements, those that can be expressed using “if. (People had to pick between 4 cards based on a condition, e.g. “if there is a D on one side of the card, there is a 3 on the other side. Which cards do you have to flip to see if the proposition is true? The cards: D,F,3,7)
Cognitive bias
A systematic error in thinking that occurs when people are processing and interpreting information in the world around them and affects the decisions and judgments that they make.
Heuristic
Simple and efficient rules that guide decision making.
Cognitive misers
An interpretation of stereotypes as psychological mechanisms that economize on the time and effort spent on information processing by simplifying social reality, which would otherwise overwhelm our cognitive capacities with its complexity.
Anchoring bias
The idea that we use pre-existing data as a reference point for al subsequent data, which can skew our decision-making processes.
Availability heuristic
A mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind when making a decision.
Framing effect
When people react to a particular choice in different ways depending on how it is presented.
Peak-end rule
People judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.
Representativeness heuristic
A cognitive bias that happens when people falsely believe that if two objects are similar, then they are also correlated with each other.
Effort heuristic
The idea that if more effort is put into something, people tend to value it more.
Confirmation bias
The idea that people seek out information that confirms their pre-existing ideas and ignore contrary information.
Schema
Mental representations that are used to organize our knowledge, to assist recall, to guide our behaviour, to predict likely happenings and to help us to make sense of current experiences. Schemas are cognitive structures that are derived from prior experience and knowledge. They simplify reality, setting up expectations about what is probable in relation to particular social and textual contexts.
Assimilation
The cognitive process of making new information fit in with your existing understanding of the world.
Accomodation
Used to describe what occurs when new information or experiences cause you to modify your existing schemas.
Reconstructive memory
The theory that when memories are accessed, they are not retrieved as a single, whole memory, but rather as a collection of independent memories put together. It is in this “reconstructive process” that distortions occur.
Memory distortion
It is when our brain creates false memories or changes the memories we already have.
Misinformation effect
Refers to the tendency for post-event information to interfere with the memory of the original event.
Serial position effect
The psychological tendency to remember the first and last items in a list better than those in the middle.
Episodic buffer
The component of Baddeley & Hitch’s Working Memory Model dedicated to linking information across domains to form integrated units of visual, spatial, and verbal information with time sequencing (or chronological ordering), such as the memory of a story or a movie scene.
Phonological loop
The component of Baddeley & Hitch’s Working Memory Model responsible for processing auditory information.
Central executive
The part of Baddeley & Hitch’s Working Memory Model responsible for the control and regulation of cognitive processes. It binds information from a number of sources into a coherent “episode”, coordinates the “slave systems”, shifts between tasks and handles selective attention and inhibition.
Dual task technique
Widely used in experimental psychology to study the degree to which different mental faculties are independent of one another (if the two tasks do not interfere), or load upon shared resources (if they do interfere).
Visuo-spatial sketchpad
The component of Baddeley & Hitch’s Working Memory Model which holds information about what we see. It is used in the temporary storage and manipulation of spatial and visual information, such as remembering shapes and colors, or the location or speed of objects in space. It is also involved in tasks that involve planning of spatial movements, like planning one’s way through a building.
Cocktail party effect
The ability to focus one’s attention a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli (i.e., noise).
Word-length effect
Refers to the fact that lists of words that take more time to articulate—longer words—are more poorly remembered than words that take less time to articulate.
Eyewitness testimony
An individual’s recollection of an event, often a crime or accident of some kind, that they personally saw or experienced. The reliability of eyewitness testimony is a major issue in forensic psychology, given the existence of such phenomena as the misinformation effect.
Special mechnaism hypothesis
Argues for the existence of a special biological memory mechanism that, when triggered by an event exceeding critical levels of surprise and consequentiality, creates a permanent record of the details and circumstances surrounding the experience.
Flashbulb memory
Brown & Kulik’s theory that memories created as the result of high levels of emotion - particularly surprise - are like “photographs.” The theory argues that a lot of peripheral and irrelevant information is retained.
(HL) Transactive memory
(HL) Google effect
(HL) Media multitasking
