Unit 7: Accuracy and Inaccuracy in Memory and Cognition

Cognitive Biases

Errors in memory or judgment that are caused by the inappropriate use of cognitive processes

Misinformation Effect

Errors in memory that occur when new information influences existing memories.

Cognitive Accessibility

People's first person perspective leads them to overestimate the degree to which they played a role in an event or project

We tend to attend to and remember things that are highly ___, meaning that they attract our attention

Salient

Source Monitoring

The ability to accurately identify the source of a memory

Overconfidence

The tendency for people to be too certain about their ability to accurately remember events and to make judgments.

Availability Heuristic

The tendency to make judgments of the frequency or likelihood that an event occurs on the basis of the ease with which it can be retrieved from memory

Counterfactual Thinking

The tendency to think about and experience events according to "what might have been"

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to verify and confirm our existing memories rather than to challenge and disconfirm them

Psi-Gamma

Those phenomena that involve anomalous information transfer, like ESP, clairvoyance, and remote viewing

Psi-Kappa

Those phenomena that involve anomalous transfer of matter

Flashbulb Memory

A vivid and emotional memory of an unusual event that people believe they remember very well

Sleeper Effect

An attitude change that occurs over time when we forget the source of information

Heuristics

Information-processing strategies that are useful in many cases but may lead to errors when misapplied.

Schemata (plural of schema)

Mental representations of the world that are formed and adjusted using the processes of assimilation and accommodation as a person experiences life

Algorithms

Recipe-style information-processing strategies that guarantee a correct answer at all times.

Two of the Most Frequently Applied (and Misapplied) Heuristics: the ___ heuristic and the ___ heuristic

Representativeness and Availability

Functional Fixedness

When people's schemas prevent them from using an object in new and nontraditional ways.

Representativeness Heuristic

When we base our judgments on information that seems to represent, or match, what we expect will happen, while ignoring other potentially more relevant statistical information