AP Psych Unit 7 Test (vocab & review)

Hippocampus

A neural center located in the limbic system that helps process explicit memories for storage.

Which of the following illustrates the serial position effect?

Alp is unable to remember the middle of a list of vocabulary words as well as he remembers the first or last words on the list

Long-term potentiation (LTP) is best described as follows:

Changes in synapses allow for more efficient transfer of information

Which of the following demonstrates the representativeness heuristic?

Deciding that a new kid in school is a nerd because he looks like a nerd

People are more concerned about a medical procedure when told it has a 10 percent death rate than they are when told it has a 90 percent survival rate. Which psychological concept explains this difference in concern?

Framing

Benjamin Lee Whorf's linguistic determinism hypothesis relates to what aspect of the power of language?

How language determines thinking.

Which of the following is not one of Robert Sternberg's components of creativity?

Incubation

According to Noam Chomsky, language acquisition occurs most especially because of

Linguistic Determinism

Which of the following statements concerning memory is true?

Memories are often a blend of correct and incorrect information

Hermann Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve shows that

Most forgetting occurs early on and then levels off.

Mave got a new car with the license plate "MAVNUM1." She is asked by the school parking clerk what her number is but can only remember her old one, "VANMOM1." Her inability to remember her new plate is most likely due to

Proactive Interference

Which of the following is an example of source amnesia?

Stephen misremembers a dream as something that really happened.

Miller's "magical number seven, plus or minus two" refers to

The capacity of short-term memory

Which of the following illustrates a heuristic?

Using three dramatic news reports of corporate fraud to estimate how often business fraud occurs

Which of the following is an example of an implicit memory?

What time you had lunch yesterday

flashbulb memories

a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event

Echoic Memory

a fleeting sensory memory of auditory stimuli

Iconic Memory

a fleeting sensory memory of visual stimuli

Concepts

a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

prototypes

a mental image or best example of a category

working memory

a newer understanding of short-term memory that focuses on conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory

reconsolidation

a process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again

Insight

a sudden realization of a problem's solution

Confirmation Bias

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

divergent thinking

ability to consider many different options and think in novel ways

convergent thinking

ability to provide a single correct answer

short-term memory

activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as the seven digits of a phone number while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten

cognition

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

anterograde amnesia

an inability to form new memories

retrograde amnesia

an inability to retrieve information from one's past

long-term potentiation (LTP)

an increase in a synapse's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory.

explicit memories

are memories of facts, including names, images and events. They are also called declarative memories.

When someone provides his phone number to another person, he usually pauses after the area code and again after the next three numbers. This pattern underscores the importance of which memory principle?

chunking

shallow processing

encoding on a basic level based on the structure or appearance of words

deep processing

encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best retention

effortful processing

encoding that requires attention and conscious effort

Testing Effect

enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information

availability heuristics

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory

semantic memory

explicit memory of facts and general knowledge

episodic memory

explicit memory of personally experienced events

intuition

fast, automatic, unreasoned feelings and thoughts

source amnesia

faulty memory for how, when, or where information was learned or imagined

Scott gets soaked in the rainstorm because he does not think of using his backpack to shield himself from the rain. Which barrier to problem solving is evidenced here?

fixation

encoding

getting information into our brain

Carl damaged his cerebellum in a car accident. As a result, he would have the most trouble remembering

how to ride his therapy bike

recognition

identifying items previously learned

Repress

in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories

Representative Heuristics

judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes

relearning

learning something more quickly when you learn it a second or later time

By waiting until the last minute to study for an exam, you are using an unrecommended strategy called

massed practice

mneumonics

memory aids

Heuristics

mental shortcuts

You are more likely to remember happy memories when you are presently happy than when you are sad due to

mood congruence

Chunking

organizing items into familiar, manageable units

serial position effect

our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list

Alice significantly underestimated how long it would take to write her term paper because of

overconfidence

When asked to think of a "desk," many students think of the desks in their classroom rather than a large desk used by an executive. This illustrates that their school desks have formed their ________ of a desk.

prototype

storage

retaining information over time

implicit memory

retention of learned skills/associations independent of conscious recollection

recall

retrieving information that is not currently in your conscious awareness but that was learned at an earlier time

The basketball players could remember the main points of their coach's halftime talk, but not her exact words. This is because they encoded the information

semantically

Algorithms

step by step procedures that guarantee a solution

Mental Set

tendency to approach a problem with a mind-set that has worked in the past

belief perseverance

tendency to cling to our beliefs in the face of contrary evidence

Overconfidence

tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our knowledge and judgements

deja vu

that eerie sense that "I've experienced this before." Cues from the current situation may subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience.

creativity

the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas

Priming

the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations

Research on the role of the amygdala in memory has found that

the amygdala help make sure we remember events that trigger strong emotional responses

retroactive interference

the disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information

proactive interference

the disruptive effect of prior (old) learning on the recall of new information

encoding specificity principle

the idea that cues and contexts specific to a particular memory will be most effective in helping us recall it

sensory memory

the immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system

Fixation

the inability to see a problem from a new perspective, by employing a different mental set

memory consolidation

the neural storage of a long-term memory

Memory

the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information

retrieval

the process of getting information out of memory storage

parallel processing

the processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously

long-term memory

the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.

Spacing Effect

the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice

mood congruent

the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood

Framing

the way an issue is posed

automatic processing

unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings

A phoneme, such as the "c" in cows, is best described as a

unit of sound in a language

misinformation effect

when misleading information has corrupted one's memory of an event