Cognitive Lexicon Flashcards
Arousal
State of responsiveness to sensory stimulation or excitability.
-Terms: awake, alert, asleep, groggy, attending
Orientation
Awareness of self in relation to person, place time and circumstance
Attention
- Ability to deploy mental resources for purposes of concentration
- Various attentional demands including length of time (sustained attention), competing stimuli (selective attention), multiple simultaneous stimuli (divided attn), shifting back and forth between stimuli (alternating attn)
Sustained Attention
- ability to maintain consistent behavioral response during continuous/repetitive activity (over time)
- Terms: vigilance, concentration, attn span
Selective attn
maintain sustained attn in face of distracting or competing stimuli (ignore competing stimuli)
Alternating Attn
- ability to shift attn flexibly back anf forth between tasks
- related to cognitive flexibility
Divided Attn
Ability to simultaneously respond to multiple tasks or multiple task demands
Memory
- process of information storage and retrieval.
- many conceptualizations: time based (STM, LTM), information processing (semantic, episodic, procedural); modality (visual, verbal); conscious (implicit, explicit)
4 Steps of Memory
- attend
- encode
- storage
- retrieval
Attend
- to gain access and use information
- inclusive of arousal, alertness and various attn processes
Encode
- analysis of info to be remembered
- includes use of Associations, Elaboration, Rehearsal, Repetition
Storage
Transfer of transient memory to location for permanent access/retention
Retrieval
- the search for or activation of memory traces
- also process by which we make sure what we retrieve is accurate and appropriate for the setting
- uses recall and recognition
Anterograde Amnesia
- deficit in new learning
- inability to recall information learned after brain damage
Retrograde Amnesia
-difficulty recalling memories formed and stored prior to disease onset
Sensory Memory
Brief moment of recall (few seconds) in response to a sensory stimuli
Short Term Memory
- storage of limited info for short period of time
- eg. phone number digit length
Working Memory
- set of processes which actively maintains (holds onto) and manipulates information until it is utilized, encoded or discarded
- keeping track of info needed in the moment
Long Term Memory
-permanent storage of information with unlimited capacity
Procedural Memory
Knowledge of automatic behavioral sequences, acquisition of perceptuomotor skills and learning of rules and sequences
- knowing how to perform a skill
- does not require conscious retrieval of the past
- Terms: implicit memory; non-declarative memory
Declarative Memory
- conscious recollection and explicit knowledge base
- knowing something was learned with verbal retrieval
- includes episodic and semantic memmory
- Terms: explicit memory
Episodic Memory
- Storage of events that are tagged in time, place, specific experience
- Autobiographical memory for contextually specific events
- e.g. knowing exactly where you were and what you were doing the day of 9/11
Semantic memory
-knowledge of general world, facts, word meanings, classes of information
Prospective Memory
- remembering to carry out intentions, future events
- remember upcoming appointments/chores
Metamemory
-awareness of one’s own memory functioning
Executive Functions
- Conscious coordination and control of behavior oriented toward accomplishment of goal-directed action
- includes initiation, planning, sequencing, organization and regulation of behavior
Initiaion
-ability to start a behavior to respond to information or intentions
Inhibition
- ability to stop a behavior independent of internal drives and external stimuli
- problems with this may appear as impulsiveness or perseveration
Problem Solving
-ability to recognize a problem, ID possible solutions, develop action plan/strategy and execution of intention into action
Task Persistence
- Ability to maintain attention and persist until task completion
- relies on working memory
- Sticking with a task
Planning
- attainment of a goal through series of intermediate steps
- includes ability to organize
organization
- to order steps and prepare time and sequence of behavior
- placing info, concepts and actions in order
Generative Thinking
- Ability to generate solutions to a problem and think in a flexible manner
- application of previously learned concepts and behaviors to a variety of new situations
- Terms: cognitive flexibility
Awareness
- degree of understanding one has regarding one’s own impairments
- includes appreciation of personal attributes (strengths/weaknesses) and initiation of compensatory strategies in response to known personal attributes
- Includes: intellectual awareness, emergent awareness and anticipatory awareness
Intellectual Awareness
- ability to understand/know at some level a particular skill is impaired
- knowing a specific problem
Emergent Awareness
-Ability to recognize a problem when it is actually happening
Anticipatory Awareness
-ability to anticipate a challenge or problem and plan a strategy to compensate
