Cognitive Psychology Overview

The field of psychology dedicated to studying every aspect of how people think, including memory, attention, problem-solving, language, intelligence, etc.

The world contains information. Humans select, process, interpret, and respond to that information.

A test that assesses people's vigilance. It involves a clock ticking and clicking when the hand jumps further than a tick.

<p>A state of concentration that helps people to detect specific events when not much is going on. It's the action or state of keeping careful watch for possible danger or difficulties.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Age</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Time</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>We can only do so many things at a time.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Other thoughts or stimuli that come into our mind at the same time, both external and internal.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>It describes how we process perceptual information, particularly when there is ambiguity. We rely on past experiences, schemas, and existing knowledge to make sense of what we perceive. We look around for other cues to help us interpret the situation.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Understanding when things go wrong</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Cognitive Psychology focuses on mental processes, while Cognitive Neuroscience focuses on the biological processes in the brain that underlie cognition.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>A theory of perception based on the idea that detecting a faint stimulus involves both a decision and a sensory process.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Useful and relevant information.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Irrelevant or false information, not necessarily sound.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>When the presence or absence of the signal is unclear, it is a measure of how likely you are to say the signal is present. The criterion can be influenced by factors like expectation or motivation.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>You are more likely to say yes, the signal is present.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>You are more likely to say no, the signal is absent.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Searching for one specific feature (one-dimensional). For example, finding a white square in a field of black squares.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Searching for a target that has multiple features (multidimensional) and requires attention to different dimensions. For example, finding a red X in an array of blue Xs and red Ts.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>An experiment originally intended to study Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) but has been used to study sensory adaptation. It's often used to explore the limits of perception and how sensory processing can be affected by prolonged exposure to unchanging stimuli.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The reduction of sensory sensitivity to a stimulus after constant exposure to it.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Specialized organs responsible for detecting different sensory modalities, including sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Long, rod-shaped sensory bodies in the retina responsible for detecting light and dark but not color.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Specialized neurons in the retina that connect to bipolar cells and form the optic nerve.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Optic Ataxia</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Difficulty using visuospatial information to guide movements, often affecting reaching for objects.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Unawareness of one half of space, usually the left side of the body and the left side of visual space, due to damage to the right hemisphere.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The inability to perceive motion, often described as motion blindness.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The inability to perform voluntary movements, even though there are no muscular disorders present.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Difficulty recognizing objects based on visual information, often resulting in an inability to copy or identify pictures.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Difficulty identifying objects, even though they can perceive and draw them. They can copy a presented object but cannot recognize or name it.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The process of mixing colors by removing some wavelengths of light, resulting in a darker or less saturated color.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The process of mixing colors by adding wavelengths of light together, resulting in a brighter or more saturated color.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The theory of color vision that proposes three types of cones in the retina: red, green, and blue.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>It doesn't sufficiently explain color afterimages or color exhaustion.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The theory that color vision is based on three opposing color pairs: red-green, yellow-blue, and white-black.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>An abnormal condition where individuals have low or no ability to perceive one or more colors.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Dichromatism</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Reduced sensitivity to one of the three cone types, the most common type of color blindness.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Only two cone types are functional, resulting in a lack of sensitivity to one of the three primary colors.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Only one cone type is functional, resulting in a complete lack of color perception. They see the world in shades of gray.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>A form of color blindness caused by damage to the brain, rather than the eye itself, affecting color perception.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The ability to interpret the surrounding environment by processing information contained in visible light.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Failing to notice something that is present in our environment because our attention is focused elsewhere.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Information processing that starts with sensory receptors and works its way up to the brain's integration of sensory information.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Theory of Direct Perception</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The idea that the environment provides enough contextual information for us to directly perceive objects and events without requiring complex cognitive processes.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Theories that suggest we store mental templates for different patterns and objects, and we recognize them by matching what we see to these stored templates.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Theories that propose we identify objects by matching their features to stored sets of features in memory.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>An experiment that uses stimuli with global and local features to investigate how we process visual information.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The larger letter that the smaller letters are arranged to form.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>When the global feature and the local features are the same, for example, a large &quot;E&quot; made up of smaller &quot;E&quot;s.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>It matters. When local features are tightly packed, identifying the global feature is easier and faster. When tightly packed, congruent and incongruent stimuli have similar effects on reaction times. When features are more spread out, the global feature takes priority, but identification is slowed down.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The process of detecting specific elements in visual input and assembling them into a more complex form.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Specialized neurons that respond selectively to very specific features of stimuli, such as orientation, movement, edges, and color.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The idea that focused attention is required to bind individual features together into a coherent perception, but not to detect the separate features themselves.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>An automatic and effortless stage where object features are analyzed without conscious awareness. Features are detected and processed without requiring focused attention.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The stage where features are combined into a coherent object perception, requiring attentional resources. The combined features are then compared to memory to identify objects.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, where we use our expectations, knowledge, and experiences to influence how we perceive the world.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Neither. They work together in a complementary way.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>It helps to recognize new, unfamiliar, or unusual objects, allowing us to examine them in detail and make sense of them.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Pros: Reduced cognitive workload, quick judgments about ambiguous stimuli</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Our visual system has specialized cells in the visual cortex that respond selectively to faces. This specialized processing suggests that face recognition has adaptive value, helping us to quickly identify individuals and understand their emotional expressions.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The inability to recognize faces.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The initial stages of attention involving alertness, orienting, and searching.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>More complex and deliberate attentional processes involving selection, mental resources, and conscious processing.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>A state of vigilance or sustained attention, maintaining focus over prolonged periods of time. It's the ability to stay engaged with a task even when there are few changes or distractions.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The attentional controller in working memory, responsible for coordinating and integrating different cognitive processes.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The semi-automatic conflict resolution system and the supervisory attentional system (SAS).</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Part of the Central Executive that operates without conscious awareness, helping us to resolve conflicts between competing responses or stimuli.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The executive monitoring system that oversees and controls attentional processes, including the ability to switch tasks, adapt strategies, and respond to novel situations.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>An inability to inhibit impulsive actions toward irrelevant objects in the environment.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The frontal lobes.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>A reflexive redirection of attention towards an unexpected and novel stimulus.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>A new and unfamiliar stimulus.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>A set of brain structures that are more active when we are at rest or in a state of mind wandering than when we are actively processing information.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Attentional processes that occur before the focus of attention is brought to a stimulus.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The ability to focus on specific stimuli in the environment and ignore irrelevant information.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The idea that the attended region of space can grow or shrink depending on the size of the area to be processed.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The idea that attention is restricted to a specific location in space, like a spotlight, and can be moved from one point to another.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Techniques that involve asking participants to perform two tasks simultaneously to measure the effects of divided or shared attention.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>A model that suggests the filter completely blocks out unattended stimuli, preventing them from being processed for meaning.</p> Signup and view all the answers