Psychology Chapter 9 Quiz

Thinking, Intelligence, Learning & Memory

• Thinking is paying attention to information, representing it mentally, reasoning about it, and making judgments and decisions about it. It's a conscious, planned attempt to make sense of and change the world.
• Cognition involves concepts, propositions, mental images and cognitive schemas.
• Concepts group objects, relations, activities, abstractions, or qualities with common properties; making information manageable for quicker decisions.
• A prototype is a representative example of a concept such as Benjamin Lee Whorf's idea on language shaping cognition and perception.
• A proposition is a unit of meaning made up of concepts expressing a single idea.
• Cognitive schema is an integrated mental network of knowledge, beliefs, and expectations about a topic or aspect of the world.
• Mental images are mental representations resembling the thing they represent.
• Subconscious process involves mental activity outside of conscious awareness, but accessible if necessary.
• Nonconscious process is mental activity outside and unavailable to conscious awareness.
• Implicit learning is acquiring knowledge without being aware of how you learned it; inability to explain what one has learned.
• Mindlessness is mental inflexibility, inertia, and obliviousness to the current context, hindering recognition of changes needing different behavioral response.
• Reasoning is the purposeful mental activity of working on information to create conclusions and inferences based on observations, facts, or assumptions.
• Problem-solving involves defining a problem, determining the cause, prioritizing, selecting and implementing solutions. Successful understanding requires three features: related elements in the mental representation, correspondence to outer world elements, and availability of background knowledge. Expertise, mental sets and insight affect problem-solving. Expertise, mental sets, for example, can make the process easier but might mislead if inappropriately applied.
• An algorithm is a systematic procedure for solving a problem that works invariably when correctly applied.
• Deductive reasoning creates a conclusion based on true premises where the conclusion must be true. Inductive reasoning creates supporting premises for a conclusion, but the conclusion could still be false.
• Dialectical Thinking is a process where opposing facts and ideas are weighed to determine the best solution or resolve differences.
• Heuristics are rules of thumb that suggest action or guide problem-solving but do not guarantee an optimal solution; helpful but potentially flawed. Representative heuristic involves judgments on populations; availability heuristic involves recent or easily recalled information, anchoring heuristic is focusing on particular information, affect heuristic involves consulting emotions instead of probabilities; avoiding loss, fairness bias, hindsight bias, confirmation bias, framing bias, and overconfidence are all mental barriers to reasoning ability.
• The need for cognitive consistency means justifying a previously made decision or action. Post-decision dissonance occurs when you believe you made an incorrect decision. Justification of effort is the tendency of individuals to like something they've worked hard or suffered to achieve.
• Biases are useful in some situations but can lead to poor decisions; Most people understand that other’s have biases but assume their own views are unbiased, the 'bias blind spot'.
• Intelligence is a general mental capability involving reasoning, planning, problem-solving, abstract thought, comprehension, learning quickly, and learning from experiences.
• Theories of Intelligence include general intelligence, primary mental abilities, multiple intelligences, and the triarchic approach to intelligence.
• General intelligence (g factor suggests a general cognitive ability that can be numerically measured.)
• Primary mental abilities refer to separate intellectual abilities like associative memory, numerical ability, perceptual speed, and reasoning.
• Multiple intelligence refers to different types of abilities like verbal, logical, interpersonal or musical intelligence.
• The triarchic approach examines analytical intelligence (mental steps to solve problems), creative intelligence (using experience in innovative ways), and practical intelligence (adapting to contexts).
• Fluid intelligence refers to global capacity for reasoning, capacity to learn new information, and abstract thinking. Crystallized intelligence involves prior knowledge and past experiences.
• Emotional intelligence refers to applying knowledge of emotions to everyday life, including self-emotion management, motivation, and empathy.
• Intelligence testing includes various tests like Binet-Simon scale, Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
• Culture-free intelligence tests use nonverbal questions to avoid biases associated with cultural experience.
• Memory is a dynamic process involving storing, retaining, and retrieving information from past experiences. Three operations are enoding (transforming sensory data), storing (keeping encoded information), and retrieving (using information)
• Memory tasks include recall (serial, free, cued), and recognition. Explicit memory encompasses declarative and episodic tasks; implicit memory/procedural knowledge is unconscious memory;
• Memory structures include primary, which temporarily stores info, and secondary, which permanently stores info.
• The Atkinson-Shiffrin model describes memory structures. Sensory memory quickly goes away. Short-term memory holds items before they transfer to long-term memory. Long-term memory is a lasting store. Levels of processing framework emphasizes memory not residing in separate places but along a continuum of processing; deeper processing results in increased retrieval probability

Memory, and Other Brain Structures

• The cerebral cortex handles short and long-term memory.
• The prefrontal cortex deals with short-lived sensory memory.
• The hippocampus helps move information from short- to long-term memory and stores it.
• Factors affecting memory storage and retrieval include attention, rehearsal, interference, encoding type (visual, acoustic, semantic)
• Memory processes involve selective attention, presence of distractors as well as maintenance or elaborative rehearsal strategies during retrieval. Processes also include mnemonic devices.

Mnemonic Devices

• Categorical Clustering – group things into categories for remembering
• Interactive Images – using images to connect ideas and words to help remembering
• Pegword System - linking items to be remembered with associated numbers
• Method of Loci – visualizing an area to link information items to, such as landmarks and paths.
• Acrostic – using the first letter or first few letters of a keyword or set of words to help remembering as one word.
• Keyword system - creating a mental image associating the sound and meaning of a foreign word with the sound and meaning of a familiar word.

Forgetting

• Forgetting is loss of retention and/or retrieval of previously learned material. Interference is when competing info causes forgetting.
• Retroactive interference occurs when later learning disrupts earlier learning.
• Proactive interference occurs when earlier learning disrupts later learning.
• Other types of deficient memories involve amnesia, infantile amnesia, selective amnesia, Alzheimer's disease and dementia.

Factors Affecting Information Storage, Retrieval

• Encoding (visual, acoustic, semantic) and consolidation are important in organizing and storing information.
• Attention and presence of distractors affect our short-term memory.
• Rehearsal (overt, covert, distributed, massed, elaborative, maintenance) assists in memory recall.
• Different mnemonic devices enable memory acquisition; effective recall depends on how the information is organized during process.

Test your knowledge of intelligence theories and memory concepts with this quiz based on Psychology Chapter 9. Explore key definitions, theories, and types of intelligence, including Emotional Intelligence and the Stanford-Binet IQ test. Challenge your understanding of encoding, rehearsal techniques, and mnemonic devices.