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