Key Terms Flashcards
What is cognitive psychology?
It examines the effects of information processing on our behaviour.
What is memory?
The process where information about the world is encoded, stored and retrieved.
What is encoding?
Allows information from the outside to be coded in terms of the 5 senses.
What is storage?
how information is held in the memory until needed.
What is retrieval?
finding information and bringing it back out of storage.
What is a schema?
a mental representation of information about a specific event based on prior knowledge from past experiences.
What does assimilate mean?
fitting a new experience into a previous schema
What does accommodation mean?
where schemas are modified due to new information
What is confabulation?
where gaps in our memory are filled to fit with pre-existing information
What is rationalisation?
where we make sense of information we have received based on our schemas
What is levelling?
when we remove details from our memory based on our schema that may not seem important to us
What is sharpening?
where details are added/exaggerated based on our schemas expectations
