Cognitive Psychology

Question 1

affordances

Answer 1

The aspects of objects and events that allow

their meaning to be perceived directly (Gibson).

Question 2

artificial intelligence

Answer 2

Computer simulation of human

thinking (Newell, Simon).

Question 3

attention

Answer 3

“The taking possession by the mind, in clear
and vivid form, of one out of what seem several
simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought”
(James).

Question 4

availability

Answer 4

The ease with which an item can be brought
to mind as a label for experience (Asch, Tversky,
Kahneman).

Question 5

channel capacity

Answer 5

Physiological mediating processes

responsible for representing stimulation (Hebb).

Question 6

cocktail party phenomenon

Answer 6

Attending to one conversation
in a crowded room in which many other
conversations are ongoing (Cherry). See “dichotic
listening:’

Question 7

concept attainment

Answer 7

The process by which categories are

learned (Bruner).

Question 8

cybernetics

Answer 8

The science of communication and control

Wiener

Question 9

deep structure

Answer 9

The abstract mental structure that
underlies surface structures of language, which are themselves derived from deep structure (Chomsky).
See “surface structure:’

Question 10

dichotic listening

Answer 10

An experimental procedure in which
participants are exposed to two verbal messages
and required to answer questions posed in only one
of the messages (Broadbent). See “cocktail party
phenomenon:’

Question 11

ecological validity

Answer 11

The extent to which the information
available to a perceiver is truly representative of the
environment (Brunswick, Neisser ).

Question 12

feedback loop

Answer 12

A process in which the output of one part
of a system affects another part of the system, which
in turn affects the first part.

Question 13

heuristics and biases

Answer 13

Rules of thumb, which may work
in some situations, but which mislead them in
others. Biases are ways in which we are predisposed
to make judgments (Tversky, Kahneman).

Question 14

iconic storage

Answer 14

A brief period during which information
from a stimulus is preserved and available for further
processing (Neisser).

Question 15

intuition (System 1)

Answer 15

A rapid, involuntary process the
output of which is only loosely monitored by reason
(Tversky, Kahneman). See “reason (System 2):’

Question 16

law of small numbers

Answer 16

The belief that a small sample is
representative of the population from which it is
drawn (Tversky, Kahneman) See “representativeness
heuristic:’

Question 17

long-term store

Answer 17

A relatively permanent aspect of memory

Atkinson and Shiffrin

Question 18

method of serial reproduction

Answer 18

method that allows
the experimenter to track the way in which memory
changes over time with successive attempts at
recall (Bartlett).

Question 19

minimax axiom

Answer 19

An axiom which states that people
“organize the perceptual field in such a way as to
maximize percepts relevant to current needs and
expectations and to minimize percepts inimical to
such needs and expectations” (Bruner).

Question 20

parable of the watchmakers

Answer 20

A parable whose meaning
is that cognitive processes can be decomposed into
modules each of which solves a particular kind of
problem. By combining the appropriate modules,
problems of great complexity can be solved with the
same kinds of strategies that solve simple problems
(Simon).

Question 21

pattern recognition

Answer 21

The process whereby a stimulus is

recognized as an instance of a particular category.

Question 22

perceptual readiness

Answer 22

The degree to which one is prepared

to perceive what is in the environment (Bruner).

Question 23

reappearance hypothesis

Answer 23

The hypothesis that information
is retrieved from memory in the form in which
it is stored (Neisser).

Question 24

reason (System 2)

Answer 24

A controlled, effortful process of judgment
and decision making (Tversky, Kahneman).
See “intuition (System 1 ):’

Question 25

representativeness heuristic

Answer 25

Making inferences on the
assumption that small samples resemble one another
and the population from which they are drawn
(Tversky, Kahneman). See “law of small numbers:’

Question 26

schema

Answer 26

An internal setting within which individual
events are understood and remembered (Head,
Bartlett).

Question 27

short-term store

Answer 27

An aspect of memory in which information
can be retained indefinitely by means of
rehearsal (Atkinson and Shiffrin).

Question 28

span of immediate memory

Answer 28

The number of items we

can be aware of at one time (Miller).

Question 29

spurious correlation

Answer 29

A correlation between two variables

due to a common cause.

Question 30

subjective behaviourism

Answer 30

The willingness to combine
subjective and objective methods to investigate
internal processes (Miller).

Question 31

surface structure

Answer 31

The particular words that make up a

sentence (Chomsky).

Question 32

thinking aloud

Answer 32

Speaking while one is thinking and
reporting directly on what one is thinking as it
occurs.

Question 33

TOTE mechanisms

Answer 33

Test -operate-test -exit. A mechanism
that works in the same way as a thermostat. First,
the input is tested against a standard. If the input
does not match the standard, then the system operates
so as to reduce the discrepancy between the
two. Once this difference is eliminated, the routine
is exited.

Question 34

Turing’s test

Answer 34

An experiment in which a computer is
programmed so that it can imitate the behaviour of
humans. If the computer’s behaviour cannot be discriminated
from the human’s behaviour, the computer
is said to have passed Turing’s test.

Question 35

utilization hypothesis

Answer 35

The hypothesis that memories
are reconstructed from fragments of previous cognitive
activity (Neisser).

Question 36

working memory

Answer 36

A temporary memory store that can

be used to manipulate information (Baddeley).