Unit 1: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology Flashcards
semantic memory
A person’s organized knowledge about the world, including knowledge about words and other factual information.
positron emission tomography (PET scan)
A procedure for measuring blood flow in the brain by injecting the participant with a radioactive chemical, just before this person performs a cognitive task. A special camera makes an image of this accumulated radioactive chemical in the regions of the brain active during the task.
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
A method of measuring brain activity based on the principle that oxygen-rich blood is an index of brain activity. A magnetic field produces changes in the oxygen atoms in the brain while a person performs a cognitive task. A scanning device takes a “photo” of the changes.
The perspective called the “parallel distributed processing approach” includes the word “parallel” in its name because
A) the human brain can process several items simultaneously.
B) both the human brain and the PDP models have parallel weaknesses in terms of processing speed.
C) an item stored in your brain is registered in just one very small location.
D) the neural network in your brain is arranged in parallel columns.
A) the human brain can process several items simultaneously.
computer metaphor
A way of describing cognition as a complex, multipurpose machine that processes information quickly and accurately.
sensory memory
The large-capacity storage system that records information from each of the senses with reasonable accuracy
parallel processing
A type of cognitive processing in which a person performs many operations simultaneously, in contrast to serial processing.
long-term memory
The large-capacity memory for experiences and information accumulated throughout one’s lifetime. Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed that information stored in long-term memory is relatively permanent and not likely to be lost.
In the introspection technique,
A) people describe what they are thinking as they perform a task.
B) people report their daily experiences in an informal, unstructured fashion.
C) the experimenter observes how people respond to learning tasks.
D) emotional responses are emphasized, rather than a variety of thought processes.
A) people describe what they are thinking as they perform a task.
major depression
A psychological disorder characterized by feeling sad, discouraged, and hopeless; fatigue and lack of interest in leisure activities are also common. This disorder can interfere with the ability to perform daily cognitive and physical tasks.
A researcher wants to study how people’s attention shifts when they see a visual stimulus in an unexpected portion of a screen that they are viewing; this attention shift occurs in just a fraction of a second. Which of the following techniques is this researcher most likely to use?
A) the neural-network approach
B) a positron emission tomography (PET) scan
C) the functional magnetic resonance imaging
technique (fMRI)
D) the event-related potential technique (ERP)
D) the event-related potential technique (ERP)
recency effect
A tendency for items at the end of a list to be recalled better than items in the middle of a list.
magnetoencephalography (MEG) technique
A procedure for recording fluctuations in the magnetic fields produced by neural activity while simultaneously providing course-grained information about the neural sources of observed effects.
operational definition
In psychology research, a precise definition that specifies exactly how researchers will measure a concept.
Suppose that you attend a lecture on the bottom-up processes involved in speech perception. The lecturer is likely to emphasize
A) how the listener’s auditory system registers and transmits information about the speech sounds.
B) the listener’s familiarity with the language.
C) the listener’s knowledge about grammar.
D) the listener’s expectations about what the speaker will say.
A) how the listener’s auditory system registers and transmits information about the speech sounds.
discourse
Interrelated units of language that are longer than a sentence.
short-term memory
The part of memory that holds only the small amount of information that a person is actively using. The more current term for this type of memory is working memory.
event-related potential (ERP) technique
A procedure for recording the very brief, small fluctuations in the brain’s electrical activity in response to a stimulus such as an auditory tone.
brain lesions
Specific brain damage caused by strokes, tumors, blows to the head, accidents, or other traumas.
Which of the following statements is correct?
A) A reflex, such as a knee-jerk reflex, is an example of cognition.
B) Cognition refers to the acquisition and retrieval of knowledge, but not the use of that knowledge.
C) “Cognitive psychology” is sometimes used as a synonym for “cognition.”
D) Cognitive psychology emphasizes mental processes that are easily observable.
C) “Cognitive psychology” is sometimes used as a synonym for “cognition.”
cognition
Mental activity, including the acquisition, storage, transformation, and use of knowledge.
metacognition
Knowledge and control of cognitive processes; metacognition helps to supervise the way one selects and uses memory strategies. The general term, metacognition, includes metamemory, metacomprehension, and metalinguistics. It is also related to both the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon and the feeling of knowing.
