Chapter 7

The prefrontal cortex, which does not finish developing until late adolescence or early adulthood, is involved of the following functions?

- self control - reasoning - decision making

Due to the lack of full development of the prefrontal cortex, adolescents have trouble with which of the following?

-Reasoning -Decision making -Self-control

Two aspects of attention that develop in early childhood are:

-executive attention -sustained attention

Refers to the focusing of mental resources on select information

attention

Sustained attention is known as

vigilance

occipital lobe

vision

At which age are joint attention skills frequently observed?

11 months

frontal lobe

A region of the cerebral cortex that has specialized areas for movement, abstract thinking, planning, memory, and judgement

parietal lobe

A region of the cerebral cortex whose functions include processing information about touch.

cognitive control

Effective control of thinking in a number of areas, including controlling attention, reducing interfering thoughts, and being cognitively flexible.

What memory is demonstrated to infants early on?

Implicit memory

implicit memory

Memories we don't deliberately remember or reflect on consciously

When is expertise more likely to occur?

Middle adulthood

fuzzy trace theory

States that memory is best understood by considering two types of memory representations: (1) verbatim memory trace, and (2) gist. In this theory, older children's better memory is attributed to the fuzzy traces created by extracting the gist of information.

gaze following

The automatic, reflexive action by which one individual's eyes move when another individual's eyes move, so that both end up looking at the same object

processing speed

The speed with which an individual can perceive auditory or visual information and respond to it.

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 Ex: making decisions, solving problems, and comprehending problems

Autism

a disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding of others' states of mind

The concept of use it or lose it refers to

a lack of use that may result in elimination of the ability

Concepts

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

hippocampal atrophy

a wasting or decrease in the hippocampus size causing seizures.

executive function

conscious control of thoughts, emotions, and actions to accomplish goals or solve problems

Another name for explicit memory

declaritive memory

elaboration

engagement in more extensive processing of information, benefiting memory

reminiscence bump

enhanced memory for adolescence and young adulthood found in people over 40

temporal lobe

hearing

cognitive function

how attitudes influence our thoughts

prefrontal cortex

part of frontal lobe responsible for thinking, planning, and language

executive attention

involves action planning, allocating attention to goals, error detection and compensation, monitoring progress on tasks, and dealing with novel or difficult circumstances

Metamemory

knowledge about memory

semantic memory

memory for knowledge about the world

episodic memory

memory for one's personal past experiences

explicit memory

memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare"

research have found that autistic children tend to do ___ reasoning in false-belief tasks and ____ on reasoning tasks requiring an understanding of physical causality.

poorly; better

executive functioning refers to a number of higher-level cognitive processes linked to the development of the brains ___.

prefrontal cortex

source memory

recall of when, where, and how information was acquired

prospective memory

remembering to do things in the future. Stronger when there are cues. E.g. an older person may require to write down to take pills three times a day.

Working memory is closely linked to ___ memory.

short term

Contemplative science

study of how various types of mental and physical training might enhance children's development

Aerobic Fitness

the ability of the heart, lungs, and blood vessels to supply oxygen to the working muscles and the ability of the muscles to utilize oxygen to continue work or exercise

joint attention

the ability to focus on what another person is focused on

sustained attention

the ability to maintain attention to a selected stimulus for a prolonged period of time

Automaticity

the ability to process information with little or no effort

perceptual categorization

the grouping together of objects that have similar appearances

dual-process model

the idea that two modes of thinking exist within the human brain, one for intuitive emotional responses and one for analytical reasoning

What is infantile or childhood amnesia?

the inability to retrieve memories from much before age 3

cognitive neuroscience

the interdisciplinary study of the brain activity linked with cognition (including perception, thinking, memory, and language)

memory

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

Encoding

the processing of information into the memory system

Theory of Mind (ToM)

the understanding that others have thoughts that are different from one's own

Metacognition

thinking about thinking

critical thinking

thinking that does not blindly accept arguments and conclusions. Rather, it examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, and assesses conclusions.