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Psychology 213 Review
2/13/2012 3:24:00 PM
Chapter 1
high-level processing is dependent on lower-level processing
rationalism: Plato’s theory of arriving at the truth through rational thought
and logic, important in theory development
empiricism: Aristotle’s theory of arriving at the truth through observation,
and experimentation, important for the scientific method
structuralism: Wundt’s theory that the best way to study the mind is through
studying perception and through introspection
functionalism: William James’s theory that placed a focus on the functions
that the brain carries out by any method that’s effective
associationism: synthesis of structuralism and functionalism, study the
association of events and how that association leads to learning
behaviorism: all behavior can be attributed to associations between behavior
and/or object and reward, also called the law of effect
all communication can be broken down into three parts: sender,
communication channel, and receiver
information theory: the less likely a message is, the more information it
transmits
 e.g. saying “I’m terrible” transmits more information than “I’m
good” in response to “how are you?”
bit: the amount of information transmitted by an event, defined as the
amount of questions necessary to reach an answer
the more possible responses, the longer the response time, because the
more information each signal transmits
there’s a limit to the amount of information a sensory system can process at
a time
the interference between two stimuli is defined by the amount of information
they transmit and the overlap between the kind of processing that they
depend on
Broadbent’s Filter model: attentional processing works in the model of a
channel with a filter that selects for certain features and allows them
through to attention
Waugh and Norman’s Model of Information-Processing: stimuli go into
primary memory automatically, but are only committed to secondary
memory if they’re rehearsed
Brown-Peterson task: a task requiring participants to recall stimuli after
some kind of interference preventing rehearsal
 decay of memory increases with interfering stimuli
ecological approach: approach that tries to approximate real-life conditions
affordances: what objects imply/afford
information pickup: the process of learning what different parts of our
environment afford
schema: a means of cognitively exploring the world through our
expectations based on previous experience
 can have schemas for people (including the self) as well as for
objects, person schemas help to interpret behavior
perceptual cycle: Neisser’s paradigm of schema development, whereby
exploration of environment through a schema, which provides further
information that can then affect the schema
cognitive ethology: studies carried out in the real world to complement
laboratory studies, based on evidence that cognitive processes change based
on the situation and setting (and therefore will be different in a lab than in
real life)
pattern classification: a means of studying behavior by observing its
coincidence with patterns of neuroimaging
Chapter 2
phrenology: idea that bumps on the skull revealed peoples’ personality traits
by revealing the parts of their brains that were more developed than others,
disproved, but served as a precedent for the idea of localization of brain
functions
law of mass action: destruction of function after a lesion depends not on the
individual cells lesioned but rather the amount of brain tissue lesioned
law of equipotentiality: while certain functions might be specialized, pretty
much any part of the brain can function as any other part of the brain
interactionism: Descartes’s theory that the mind and brain exist separately
but interact, specifically at the pineal gland
epiphenomenalism: the mind is a byproduct of the brain’s functioning, and
has no impact on behavior
parallelism: the mind and the brain are two parallel aspects of the same
reality, where anything that happens to one happens at the same time to
the other
isomorphism: any event of the mind (experience) and event of the brain
(neural patterns) take the same shape
 e.g. for the Necker cube, our altered perception of it is coupled with
altered brain processing patterns
based on the results of his studies of split brain patients and animals, Sperry
hypothesized that consciousness was an emergent property of the brain,
meaning that it can’t be reducible to individual brain functions
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with the emergence of consciousness, consciousness can enact
emergent causation on lower-level brain functions
 the mind is supervenient, meaning that it has the capacity for topdown influence despite having emerged from the processes that it
is influencing
connectionism: the theory that cognitive processes emerge from a large
number of interconnected neurons, which then form neural networks, and
changes in neural processing (like learning) come from changes in the
strength of the connections of these neural networks, which then affects
behavior
 assumes parallel processing, the idea that many neural connections
can be active at once, in contrast to serial processing, which is the
theory that only one connection is active at a time
Hebb rule: when a neuron is repeatedly involved in causing another neuron
to fire, the connection between those two neurons is strengthened
single dissociation: damage to the temporal lobe causes damage to memory
but not planning
double dissociation: damage to the temporal lobe causes damage to memory
but not planning, and damage to the frontal lobe causes damage to planning
but not memory
the caveat in neuroimaging studies is that they always show a correlational
but not necessarily causational link between brain processes and behavior
chronometric measures: behavioral measures of performance like reaction
time and accuracy on a task
necessary to study behavior as well as brain function because just because a
subject seems to be attending to a task (and therefore that their brain
function is a reaction to it) doesn’t necessarily mean that they are
Chapter 3
our perception of vision comes from the brain, constructed around the light
information received from the retina, the eyes aren’t necessary for seeing
 auras with migraines, imagining things we’ve never seen
associative agnosia: a visual agnosia in which patients can copy images but
are incapable of recognizing them
optic ataxia: incapacity to reach for objects despite being able to perceive
them normally, due to damage in the dorsal visual stream
optic apraxia: problems with smooth pursuit and initiating saccades
time spaces: a phenomenon in which some people see a representation of
time (in months, weeks, hours, etc.) as existing in the physical world
surrounding them
theory of ecological optics: Gibson’s theory that the information received by
sensory organs is directly used to guide behavior in our environments
ambient optical array (AOA): Gibson’s term for the patterns of light that we
see in our environment at any given time that give rise to visual perception,
transforms as we move
topological breakage: discontinuity that results from the meeting of two
different texture gradients
optic flow: the pattern of constant transformation of the AOA that results
when an observer moves through their environment
Gibson wasn’t interested in illusions, but a more ecological approach, by
studying our perceptions in normal real-world situations of visual perception
pattern recognition: the recognition of an individual instance or object as
part of a larger pattern (e.g. seeing a coffee cup and recognizing it as
belonging to the schema of coffee cups)
percept: categorization of a certain type of object, formed by the experience
of those objects creating a memory trace
Hoffding function: the meeting of an emerging perception and a memory
trace, which leads to recognition
template-matching theory: the theory that we have a template of known
objects in our minds (specific objects or prototypes can both serve as
templates), and recognition depends on the matching of that template to a
particular instance of perception
multiple-trace memory model: Hintzman’s theory that each perceptual
experience causes a memory trace
 experience is thought to initiate a probe into secondary memory,
where it is matched to similar memory traces and then returns an
echo to primary memory
 experiment: subjects were shown distorted versions of a prototype,
and were able to classify the original prototypes well when they saw
them, and mistakenly thought they’d seen it before
o Hintzman said that the distorted prototypes created an echo
that contained everything the prototypes had in common,
which was then recalled by the probe when shown the nondistorted prototype
pandemonium: a version of feature detection theory consisting of three
levels
 features: aspects of an object like color, shape, and size
 cognitive demons: specialized processes the selectively detect
features of the object
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decision demon: selects for the “demon” that is responding most,
determining which pattern is recognized
contrast energy: determined by the degree of contrast between an object
and its background
squelching: blocking of processing by the visual system when there’s not
enough information for feature processing, can occur if the contrast energy
isn’t high enough
recognition by components (RBC): the theory that every object can be
reduced to combinations of 36 geons
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recognition gets better with the inclusion of more geons (and
therefore more detail)
 recoverability of geons refers to how easy they are to make out
 the template of an image would include most of the usual angles
from which we would see it
context effects: the restricting effect of context on the interpretation of
perceptual information
 demonstrated by the jumbled word effect

word superiority effect: finding that it’s easier to recognize a letter
in a word than in a non-word or alone
parallel distributed processing (PDP): processing occurs through the
interactions of units sending excitatory and inhibitory signals to one another
 when recognizing a word, knowing that the first letter is a
consonant inhibits the likelihood of recognizing the second letter as
also being a consonant and thereby facilitates recognition of the
word as a whole
empirical theory of color vision: the theory that perception of color depends
on the processing of the wavelengths of light, but is also affected by
previous experience of color perception and the effect of different lighting on
perception, etc.
cross-modal context: context provided by information from other sensory
modalities, the McGurk effect demonstrates this
change blindness: our failure to notice change if we’re not explicitly
attending to the object or area that’s undergoing the change
 doesn’t occur if we’re able to perceive the change as movement,
because our visual system is attuned very highly to recognize
movement
feature integration theory (FIT): Anne Treisman’s theory that we perceive
objects by parsing out their individual features and then binding them
together
 pre-attentive processing: occurs for features like color and shape
(as well as for meaningful words) that we process unconsciously
and without necessarily attending to them
 feature binding only occurs at the level of attentive processing,
which is conscious, and involves binding together two or more preattentive features
bi-stable figures: figures like the Necker cube that can be perceived in two
different but equally stable ways
Gestalt theory postulates that perception is holistic and emerges from our
grouping of the elements of an object according to certain organizational
principles
 principle of emergence: perceptions arise as a whole, not parts (i.e.
Necker cube)
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principle of reification: perceptions of an object can contain more
information than the object itself (i.e. illusory figures)
principle of invariance: we recognize simple shapes regardless of
size, orientation, color, etc.
principle of experience: grouping based on our previous experiences
with similar objects
figure-ground segmentation: distinguishing between what makes up
the background of an image and what the object/focus is
o Gibson thought that we did this according to the denotivity of
each part of an image, which is its relative
meaningfulness/recognizableness
principle of proximity: grouping based on objects’ physical
proximity to one another
principle of closure: grouping based on forming a closed object
principle of good continuation: grouping objects to form smooth,
continuous lines or curves
principle of similarity: grouping based on the similarity of two or
more objects
principle of common fate: grouping based on objects moving in the
same direction or fashion
 however, processing of particular elements of an image can
sometimes override the overall perception of the image, which
suggests that Gestalist principles don’t apply to all perception
congenital prosopagnosia: face blindness or deficiency in recognition of faces
resulting not from brain damage but from a congenital defect, and despite
the fusiform face area functioning normally, suggesting that it is due to a
problem with connections to the area rather than a problem with the area
itself, shows that prosopagnosia seems to exist more on a spectrum than in
the all-or-none fashion of brain damage that we previously believed it to be
Chapter 4
shadowing task: dichotic listening task in which the participant has to repeat
the message from one ear, shows that we have a filter to selectively attend
to certain information
early selection theory: attention can prevent the processing of irrelevant
information in the early stages of processing
late selection theory: all information is processed, and attention relies on
people actively ignoring that which is irrelevant
automatic process: process that happens whether or not we pay attention to
executing it
controlled process: process that requires the devotion of attention to
execute
activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex
are involved in selecting relevant information from a group
attention capture: a stimulus that grabs attention involuntarily
inattentional blindness: the failure to notice something that otherwise
should’ve been attended to because attention is elsewhere
spotlight metaphor for attention: Posner’s idea that attention is like a
spotlight of fixed size, where we attend to exclusively what’s illuminated by
the metaphorical spotlight
zoom lens metaphor for attention: Eriksen’s idea that attention is like a
zoom lens where we zoom in selectively on certain parts of visual percepts
while effectively ignoring all others, and when we zoom out, it expands our
attentional field while decreasing the amount of processing that can be
allocated to each item
gradient metaphor for attention: LaBerge’s idea that there’s a gradation of
attention where what’s in the center of our attention is in sharp resolution
and everything around it is allocated gradated degrees of processing, which
decrease with the distance from the center
despite the fact that these theories imply selection of attention based on
space, evidence (i.e. the gorilla video) indicate that we can also select for
objects
flanker task: people had to search for someone’s name while a face (either
that of the searched person or not) was displayed in the periphery, people
couldn’t ignore the face even when it was incongruous and therefore
increased response time
 face processing seems to be an instance of attention capture
capacity model: the model of attention that postulates that we have limited
attentional resources, and that performance on a given task is a direct result
of how much attention we have available to dedicate to it
structural limits: the theory that we have attentional capacity for certain
kinds of tasks, and that similar tasks will interfere more with each other
because they draw on the same capacity
attending to something increases the processing of that thing while
decreasing processing of all other things
central bottleneck: the theory that we have a filter through which
information relevant to only one task at a time can pass
 unclear whether this filter acts before or after perceptual processing
of information, some evidence (like the cocktail party phenomenon:
our attention can be grabbed by someone saying our name)
suggests that it happens after processing, because clearly at least
some information is being processed and ignored if the attentiongrabbing stimulus is also processed
divided attention: the theory that we are capable of dividing our attention
between two tasks simultaneously
set: top-down organization of cognitive processes that facilitates attention in
one area while inhibiting it in other areas
attentional set: a temporary organization of cognitive processes that
facilitates responses when attending to a particular task
task switching: switch between carrying out two different tasks, exacts a
switch cost, which is a dip in the performance level on the task, occurs
whether or not the switch was voluntary
additive factors logic: if we’re capable of performing two tasks
simultaneously without interference, then they draw on different attentional
resources
interacting factors logic: if we’re incapable of performing two tasks
simultaneously without interference, then they draw on the same attentional
resources
backward masking: the experimental procedure of presenting a stimulus and
then masking it with another stimulus, allows study of the priming effect of
the original stimulus
 stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA): time period between the
presentation of the stimulus and its masking
cuing task: task developed by Posner where the subject’s attention is cued
somewhere or to something and then the stimulus is presented either where
the attention was cued (valid target) or elsewhere (invalid)
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for reflexive attention (subject is told that the cue only predicts the
target at a chance level): if the SOA is between 0 and 1 seconds,
the reaction time is faster if the target is valid, and if it’s longer, the
reaction time is slower if the target is valid, because attention will
abandon the cued area or object and not return to it until all other
objects or areas have been inspected, called inhibiting orienting
response (IOR)
for volitional attention (subject is told that the cue predicts the
target at a level higher than chance): no attentional effect at SOAs
less than 1 second because volitional attention isn’t yet engaged
(should be effect of reflexive attention but not included in models)
but no IOR effect at longer SOAs (i.e. cuing facilitates target
identification on valid trials)
dissociation paradigm: strategy that relies on the presumption that it’s
possible to process stimuli without being consciously aware of it
objective threshold: the threshold at which a stimulus is no longer being
processed and the subject’s response can be assessed through indirect
measures as being at chance level, lower than the subjective threshold
subjective threshold: the level at which the subject reports to not have
perceived the stimulus
process dissociation procedure: a research paradigm in which stimuli are
shown and then the subject is asked not to respond with the stimulus they
were just shown, once the SOA was below the subjective threshold, the
subjects were more likely to respond with the stimulus, showing that they
had unconsciously perceived it but didn’t have the conscious control to not
provide it as a response
rapid stream visual presentation (RSVP): an experimental method that
studies the temporal constraints of attention, revealed the phenomenon of
attentional blink
attentional blink: the lack of processing of a stimulus when it’s presented
within 550 millisceonds after another one, thought to be because the first
stimulus is still being processed, more likely to occur if the first stimulus was
extensively attended to
attention is constrained by the physical limitations of our bodies
hemispatial neglect: neglect of the contralesional space due to damage to
the parietal lobe (almost always the right parietal lobe), also causes
sluggishness to use contralesional limbs, anytime there’s competition for
attention between the two halves of attentional space, the contralesional
space is always neglected, but if stimuli are presented separately to each
half of space, attention and processing are normal
Balint’s syndrome: bilateral parietal damage resulting in simultagnosia and
optic ataxia and apraxia
sequential attention hypothesis: the hypothesis that overt attentional shifts
follow covert attentional shifts
physiological nystagmus: the minute movements of the eyes that are
constantly occurring, small movements indicate fixation while large
movements indicate saccades
moving window technique: the technique of obscuring a text except for the
area where the person is focusing, has no affect on reading as long as the
person can see between 17 and 20 characters at a time
entry point: the place in a text where a person begins reading, often a
heading or picture in newspapers
saccadic movements aren’t random, but seem to center around the most
relevant information
task-related knowledge: knowledge about the task at hand that guides the
eye’s exploration of an image or scene
reflexive attention is faster but shorter-lasting, whereas volitional attention
is slower but longer-lasting
 reflexive attention can also interrupt volitional attention (i.e. a loud
sound
 reflexive attention relies on the ventrolateral frontoparietal network,
which seems to consist of the medial and inferior front gyri, as well
as the tempoparietal junction in the right hemisphere
 volitional attention relies on the dorsolateral frontoparietal network,
which seems to consist of the superior and inferior parietal lobules
as well as the front eye field (which controls voluntary eye
movements) bilaterally
Yerkes-Dawson law: optimal retrieval of a memory is at a moderate level of
emotional arousal, which implies attention to the task at hand without
excessive arousal causing anxiety
memory suffers with depression, both clinical and temporarily lab-induced

greater the severity of the symptoms the greater the memory
impairment
 thought to be due to a depletion of attentional resources because
they’re tied up in the depression, which leads to a lower degree of
attention available to allocate to a task, as well as an unwillingness
to do a task unless it seems to be relevant or necessary (which a
laboratory task probably won’t)
Velten procedure: a means of inducing a mood in a laboratory by having the
subject read phrases designed to exemplify a certain mood and asking them
to try to identify with them
state-dependent memory can apply for mood, context, culture, and roles as
well as for drugs, and affects free-recall most
 state seems to affect both encoding and retrieval
sensory memory: measured in units of seconds, traces are found in sensory
cortices
 sensory buffer: iconic/echoic memory, iconic memory can last up to
a second and echoic memory up to ten seconds, can hold a lot of
material but only for a very limited period of time and only sensory
material, which hasn’t been semantically processed and therefore
isn’t contextualized
short-term memory: measured in seconds and minutes, has a limited
capacity (about seven items) but is conscious
 information can be lost from short-term memory through decay
(natural fading) or interference (other information, either
retroactive or proactive, interferes with encoding), which causes the
information to leave short-term memory earlier than it otherwise
would have and to drop off more precipitously
working memory: Baddeley’s theory of short-term memory that it exists
both to retain and manipulate memories that come both from sensory and
long-term memory storage
long-term memory: measured in minutes to years, thought at first that
memory has to go through short-term memory and be rehearsed in order to
be committed to long-term memory (Atikson and Shiffrin), but lesion studies
in humans have shown that some kinds of information can go straight from
sensory memory to long-term memory
Chapter 5
mystic writing pad: Freud’s metaphor for memory, perceptual experiences
leave traces that are overlaid, our experience of memory is the sum of those
overlaid traces
reappearance hypothesis: idea that when we recall a memory we are merely
calling the same thing up over and over again
flashbulb memories: memories of a consequential event (e.g. Kennedy’s
assassination) that seem especially vivid and detailed but aren’t actually any
more accurate or immune to degradation than normal memories
 seem to emerge because they’re the intersection of memories and
telling our life story, flashbulb memories represent a memory that
also serves as a significant life story event
Now Print theory: theory that accounts for flashbulb memories, according to
which certain memories are recorded in vivid and accurate detail when
they’re perceived to be both surprising and especially significant
 because they’re surprising and significant, we tend to rehearse
them more than other memories, both to ourselves and to other
people
consolidation theory: the theory that memory traces aren’t fully consolidated
into memory for some time after the initial experience
retroactive interference: something that happens after an experience that
can affect our recall of it because the memory is still being consolidated
 can either be something that interferes directly with the
consolidation of the memory by affecting our perception of it, or
indirectly just by drawing on mental resources during the
consolidation process
false memories: memories of things that didn’t actually occur, can arise from
suggestion after the fact, demonstrated by experiment in which 30% of
people said they recalled a plausible but never-occurred event from
childhood as well as Loftus’s study where she changed the intensity of the
word used to describe a car accident and thereby changed peoples’
perception of the accident
reconsolidation: changes that can occur to a memory trace after recall based
on the conditions under which it was recalled, occurs in the hippocampus
rationalization: automatic process of making sense of remembered
information in a way that’s not always the most faithful to the truth
it’s possible that body schema is able to change more readily when the
change is gradual (i.e. growth over a period of time rather than abrupt loss
of a limb)
schema theories usually see memory as being described most accurately by
4 processes
 selection: we select information that’s relevant to our interests at
the time (e.g. extract information relevant to a burglar or
prospective home buyer depending on which role the subject’s
asked to play), doesn’t mean we completely ignore the other
information if it later becomes relevant
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abstraction: we extract the meaning from an event rather than the
absolute details of the event itself, effect of abstraction becomes
more powerful as time passes
interpretation: we interpret this meaning based on context at the
time and the context of our other memories (e.g. example of the
roman numerals on the grandfather clock, interpretation can
override sensory information)
integration: we integrate the information into our schema, doesn’t
always occur
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schemas can make information easier to remember, demonstrated
by the experiment with seemingly nonsensical information if the
subject wasn’t first provided with a schema
misinformation effect: the phenomenon by which misleading information
after an event can affect our recall of the event itself, often impossible to
know where the misleading information came from and it’s therefore
attributed to be from the experience itself
source monitoring framework: a theory that people often fail to adequately
monitor the sources of information and can thereby easily be misled about
the details of an event
script: a predetermined set of expectations for a specific experience of
situation
life scripts: culturally-shared and -determined expectations about the scope
and timing of a life course, not determined by personal experience as most
other scripts are
primary memory: the initial experience and processing of a perceptual event
secondary memory: the stored perceptions of events that can be activated
by probes and thereby produce an echo of the original perception
depth of processing: the degree of complexity to which information is
processed (e.g. shallow would be processing based on simple features like
the font of letters and deep would be processing based on the word’s
semantic meaning), the more deeply we process an event the better we
remember it
elaboration: extra processing of a memory that forms connections between
it and other memories/information
distinctiveness: the degree of precision to which a memory is encoded (i.e.
“cabbage” is more distinct than “food”)
general levels of representation: the basic underlying meaning behind
information or a memory, is retained even as people age (e.g. who someone
is, relationship to you)
specific levels of representation: more specific and often superficial aspects
of memory or information, often lost as people age (e.g. someone’s name)
the parts of the brain activated when an experience is occurring tend to be
the same as those activated in the recall of that experience
general principles approach to research: laboratory study that focuses on
finding the principles underlying experience and behavior
ecological memory approach to research: study focusing more on real-world
observation to lead to practical applications
forgetting curve: result of Ebbinghaus’s experiments with nonsense
syllables, which shows that memory drops off rapidly at first and then
plateaus over time
 varies with amount of information, depth of processing, and
temporal distribution of studying
Jost’s law of forgetting: if two memory traces are of equal strength, the
decay of the younger trace will be faster than that of the older trace,
expression of the pattern of the forgetting curve
Ribot’s law of retrograde amnesia: the fact that for patients with retrograde
amnesia due to brain damage, newer memories are more likely to be lost
than older memories
law of progressions and pathologies (last in, first out): the newer a system
is, the more quickly it will show degeneration
permastore: the theory that there’s a relatively permanent store of memory,
that at a certain point, memory ceases to decay, or decays at such a slow
rate that the memory loss is imperceptible (demonstrated by the studies of
people who had studied Spanish), rehearsal after information is learned
doesn’t seem to affect its transfer to permastore
level and length of retention seems to depend much less on aptitude and
much more on the method by which the material was learned, more
successful retention is associated with learning the material over a relatively
extended period of time, and repeated exposure to it afterwards
Chapter 6
principle of encoding specificity: if a cue was originally coded with an item,
it’s more likely that that cue will facilitate recall
episodic memory: memory of something that has happened to you, a
personal experience, autonoetic because it involves memory of personal
experiences
semantic memory: memory of facts, general knowledge, noetic because it
implies consciousness of the current situation as well as of the past and
future
it’s possible for a person to have access to semantic memory without having
access to episodic memory
recency bias: bias to remember something that was most recently
experienced
primacy bias: bias to remember the thing that happened first in a series,
due to increased rehearsal
the middle of the series tends to be remembered least effectively, because it
doesn’t have the benefit of the recency bias and rehearsal of the first
information interfered with its encoding
procedural memory: a kind of implicit memory that contains information
about how to carry out well-rehearsed procedures (e.g. walking), anoetic
because it’s concerned only with the task at hand
prefrontal leucotomy: procedure that cuts off all connections between the
prefrontal lobe and the rest of the brain, greatly decreases autonoetic
functioning
chronesthesia: our subjective experience of our existence in time, thought to
be one important distinguishing factor between humans and non-human
animals
 while birds have been shown to have a conception of time passing
in regards to the past, but not necessarily for the future
butcher-on-the-bus phenomenon: the characteristic of memory that context
is often important for memory
method of opposition: experimental method of presenting subjects with
stimuli under either full or divided attention, and then asking them to
complete word stems either with a word for the previous list or with
anything but words from the previous list, subjects exposed to the words
with divided attention complete the word stems with words from the list
whether they were asked to or asked to avoid doing so
perceptual representation system: a kind of implicit memory that consists of
a system of representation of events that’s thought to be responsible for
priming
generic recall: recall of words similar to but not exactly the word one’s trying
to recall when suffering from tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
teachable language comprehender (TLC): computer model of semantic
memory that functions by using units (e.g. fish) that are characterized by
properties (e.g. scales) and related by pointers (e.g. has), the more
connected things are the easier it is to verify relationships
Moses illusion: peoples’ tendency to respond to corrected versions of
otherwise nonsensical questions when the error is close enough to the
correct version semantically and phonologically (i.e. How many animals of
each kind did Moses take on the ark?)
spreading activation: the activation of a semantic network and the nodes
connected to it, an activated network can be searched more quickly and
therefore a response that can be found in a semantic network that’s already
active will be faster, explains priming
inhibitory response: means of recall facilitation by inhibiting certain semantic
connections that are irrelevant
excitatory response: means of recall facilitation by exciting certain semantic
connections that are relevant
involuntary semantic memories: memories that pop into your head for
seemingly no reason (e.g. a song), seem to be primed by events that we’re
generally unconscious of unless we actively search for them as causes, this
mind popping is a form of priming
fan effect: the more information we have about a concept, the longer it
takes to identify specific information related to it
propositional network: network of information containing both the
information itself and relationships between individual units of information
working memory: Baddeley’s theory of short term memory that
encompasses both the temporary storage and the manipulation of
information
phonological loop: the audio/language aspect of working memory,
temporarily holds language-related information, based in the auditory cortex
visuo-spatial sketchpad: the visual aspect of working memory, temporarily
holds visual information, based in the striate cortex
episodic buffer: working memory system that controls the movement of
information both to and from episodic long-term memory, coordinates the
phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad with long-term memory
central executive: means by which information is both selected and
integrated from different memory systems, associated with conscious
experience, based in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
fluid systems: systems that manipulate information but are unchanged by it
crystallized systems: systems that accumulate information
episodic memory is especially affected by aging, more so than semantic
memory
it’s possible to have a deficit in semantic but not episodic memory (due to
brain damage)
associative deficit hypothesis: thought to be an explanation of memory
degradation in older people, deficiency in both creating and maintaining links
between information units (e.g. not being able to pair a name with a face),
only affects explicit memory
Korsakoff’s syndrome: a kind of amnesia resulting from brain atrophy
because of a thiamine deficiency, thought to be a kind of disconnection
syndrome, which means that implicit learning can take place but there’s no
awareness of learning having taken place, also characterized by emotionally
flatness and an unawareness of any memory deficit
Alzheimer’s disease: characterized not by retrieval failure but a loss of
information that was once there
prospective memory: memory system that deals with events that will
happen in the future
errorless learning: the most effective way of teaching amnesics new skills by
not allowing them to commit errors, which maximizes on their implicit
learning skills
method of vanishing cues: method of removing cues slowly until the amnesic
is capable of naming a word when given its definition without any cues,
relies on not having to generalize to contexts very disparate from the
original context of learning
cryptomnesia: unintended plagiarism resulting from the failure to recognize
something as being familiar
dissociative memory disorders: can arise when a part of someone’s
personality becomes dissociated due to a traumatizing event without any
brain damage
 psychogenic amnesia: can’t recall personal memories, temporary
 psychogenic fugue: psychogenic amnesia with an ensuing flight to
live as someone else, the person can’t remember the fugue episode
once they recover from the amnesia
 dissociative identity disorder: no explicit memory transfer between
alters, but implicit memory transfer can occur
childhood amnesia: the incapacity to remember events from before a certain
age, usually three or four, thought to be due to differing memory schemas in
children that could prevent retrieval, as well as encoding by general schemas
instead of by individual memories, and possibly the lack of language to
organize the information
Chapter 7
Paivio’s dual-coding theory: theory that there are two separate systems
(verbal and non-verbal) that code events
 logogens: units of the verbal coding system, information lying
behind our use of a word, relies more on the left hemisphere
 imagens: units of the non-verbal coding system, images that
represent concepts, relies more on the right hemisphere
 concreteness: the degree to which a word refers to a concept that
can be experienced through the senses, highly correlated with the
degree of imagery associated with a concept

concrete words are coded by the verbal and non-verbal systems,
and are therefore easier to learn than abstract words, which are
only coded by the verbal system
 concrete and abstract words are processed differently by the two
hemispheres but not preferentially by either (refutes hypothesis
that the right hemisphere would show heightened processing of
concrete words)
method of loci: a mnemonic device dependent on remembering something
by remembering it as being associated with a certain location
 thought to function because it organizes otherwise disparate
information into meaningful units
von Restorff effect: phenomenon of an item being more memorable if it’s
different from all the other items in a given set
 if all the other items are common, a bizarre item will be best
remembered, but if all the other items are bizarre, a common item
will be best remembered
humorous items appear to be more memorable than simply weird items in a
set of otherwise mundane items, humor in and of itself may have an effect
on how memorable something is
special places theory: theory that putting something in a distinctive/unlikely
place will allow the person to remember while not allowing others to guess
the place, similar strategy used in creating passwords
 not effective: distinctiveness aids memory in remembering
individual items, but not in remembering associations between
items
o e.g. putting valuables in the freezer will be more difficult to
remember than putting valuables in a safe, because the
distinctiveness is in the association, not in either of the items
individually
chromasthesia: experience of synesthetes of colored hearing
 inducer: stimulus that elicits a synaesthetic experience
 concurrent: synaesthetic experience itself
 synaesthesia can aid memory if the information isn’t presented in a
way that confounds the synaesthetic experience, like presenting
numbers in colors different from the concurrent colors


theory: synaesthesia evolved because the connections between
different sensory modalities in the brain that are normally pruned
weren’t pruned normally, and that these sensory modalities then
activate one another when they’re activated
o a synaesthestic experience can be provoked by a concept as
well as a sensory experience, suggests that these connections
aren’t necessarily exclusively between sensory processing
centers of the brain
weak synaesthetes: most people, capable of appreciating parallels
between sensory modalities (e.g. sunlight is judged to be louder
than moonlight) without actually having synaesthetic experiences
imagery seems to activate the same brain areas as actually seeing what
we’re imagining, the visual cortex as well as higher cognitive areas
 people who are told to imagine flying over their house show eye
movements that would correspond to looking at something from
above
imagery seems to rely on a feedforward-feedback loop between the early
sensory systems and the cognitive systems
 feedback input from the higher cognitive areas allows the lower
sensory systems to recreate perceptual experiences, feedforward
loop is responsible for normal perception
 we usually close our eyes when we imagine, which prevents
interference between the two systems because there’s nothing
coming through the feedforward loop
 the only difference between actual perception and imagined
perception is slightly less activation in the visual cortex
imagery seems to exist separately from visual perception systems, because
some patients can draw objects despite not being able to recognize them

possible that LTM input is what’s necessary for imagery, but it’s still
unresolved
icon: representation of a visual stimulus that persists briefly after that visual
stimulus has gone away
eidetic imagery: representation of a visual stimulus that persists for a
minute or longer after the stimulus has gone away, reports of details from
perceptions of eidetic images allow more rapid and assured than reports
from memory, but not more accurate

seems that describing an eidetic image causes it to fade more
rapidly
 some people have especially clear and long-lasting eidetic images,
but seems to exist to a certain extent in everyone
vividness of visual imagery: measure of the degree of richness of a certain
memory, not necessarily correlated with accuracy
mental rotation: the capacity to mentally rotate an object, evidence
suggests that people actually go through the process of rotating the object
in their mind, takes about one second to rotate an object 60

right hemisphere seems to be preferentially engaged for simpler
mental rotation tasks, but both hemispheres are engaged for more
complex tasks, like mental folding
 women tend to be worse at mental rotation, but improved much
more than men after training playing video games to the point
where there was no discrepancy
objective distance: the perceived true distance between two objects with
respect to their representation on a map
 the farther two objects are objectively, the longer it takes to scan
from one to the other mentally, we incorporate objective distances
into our mental processing
categorical distance: the number of landmarks that lie between two objects
on a map
 also a positive correlation between mental scanning time and
categorical distance
images as anticipations: the phenomenon that we will more readily perceive
something if we were imagining it already or if the stimulus falls within the
area where we were imagining something
 in general, we pick up information that we expect better than
information that we don’t
we don’t have the capacity to imagine an ambiguous figure and flip between
perceptions of it the way that we do with actual images of ambiguous
figures, imagery and perceptions are fundamentally different
emergent properties of imagery: new properties or interpretations of images
can emerge even if they didn’t exist/weren’t perceived during the initial
perception of the image or if the imagery is completely invented, suggests
that imagery isn’t only one thing, as the ambiguous figure experiment might
suggest
 analog form of representation: the theory that imagery is not just a
mental representation of the relationships between objects, but can
give rise to new perceptions of those relationships
egocentric perspective transformations: imagining one’s movement through
space while the environment remains constant
 people using this paradigm take longer to identify an object located
in the imaginary space behind them than that in front of them
 spatial framework: imaginary representation of our body by which
we distinguish ahead/behind, above/below and left/right
o takes relatively longer to distinguish left/right because it’s the
only dimension in which both sides are symmetrical
tasks relying on imagery, like mental rotation, are more and more
susceptible to error depending on the subject’s unfamiliarity with the object
 imagery is not simply the scanning of an image across our visual
cortex, it requires inferences and therefore higher cognitive
processes
cognitive maps: our mental representation of the relationship between
objects/locations, subject to error because we make general classifications of
categories of objects (i.e. by country) which are generally but not always
accurate
 cognitive maps seem to rely on the hippocampus, example of the
London taxi drivers
 consulted by means of an egocentric frame of reference rather than
the way we would consult a real map
o path integration: the process by which we and other animals
update our positions on cognitive maps in relation to relevant
landmarks/the destination
mental models: our mental representations of objects or situations, which
are often unscientific and therefore sometimes inaccurate
 e.g. anthropomorphizing the vacuum cleaner
Chapter 9
finite state grammar: idea that language emerges from the construction of
sentences starting at the first word and ending at the last word

Chomsky says it’s not possible, we’d have to learn a ridiculous
number of sentences before we could speak properly, and that
finite state grammar is an insufficient way to describe the
emergence of language, because a sentence making sense and
being grammatical are dissociated
phrase structure rules: process describing how linguistic symbols can be
replaced by other linguistic symbols to eventually create sentences
 e.g. sentence = noun phrase + verb phrase
grammatical transformations: the transformation of a whole string of
structures as opposed to just on one structure by the tenets of phrase
structure rules
competence: a person’s command of a language determined by their
internalization of a system of rules relating sound or symbols to meaning
performance: a person’s display of their ability to communicate, affected by
language competence as well as by cognitive and situational factors
deep structure: the underlying meaning of a sentence
surface structure: the words used to represent the deep structure of a
sentence
process of comprehension is the transformation of the surface structure to
the deep structure of a sentence
innateness hypothesis: Chomsky’s idea that linguistic competence is innate
 poverty of the stimulus argument: supports the innateness
hypothesis through the postulation that the sample of language that
children are exposed to is too limited and full of errors for the child
to grow up and communicate properly without having an innate
mechanism to interpret and produce grammatical communication
 language acquisition device: Chomsky’s name for this innate
mechanism to understand language and communicate using
language by containing the principles of universal grammar found in
any language
language acquisition doesn’t seem to happen through conditioning, because
parents affirm or deny what their children say based on its intended
meaning and not whether it’s grammatically correct
parental reformulations: evidence that parents reformulate children’s
incorrect sentences as feedback, even if they don’t explicitly say “no” or
“yes” depending on if the sentence is grammatical

suggests that language acquisition could occur through a more
complex kind of conditioning
syntactic development: capacity of the child to organize words into
grammatical sentences, seems to be influenced by the child’s exposure to
complex and varied speech by both parents and other adults, like teachers
 challenges the inference of the poverty of the stimulus argument
that a child’s future speech isn’t affected by the degree of their
exposure to correct and varied speech early in life
minimalism: the theory that language acquisition occurs through a method
in which a person incorporates only those characteristics that are absolutely
necessary
 parameter setting: the process by which one acquires a particular
language, by selecting the parameters of that particular language
among the options offered by universal grammar, accounts for the
differences between languages
concealing function of language: the aspect of language that allows it to
conceal the communicated meaning from those who don’t speak it while
revealing that meaning to those who do
 allows it to function as a sort of code
code model of communication: communication begins with the stage of the
speaker’s thoughts being encoded into speech, and the listener subsequently
decoding the speech stimulus into meaning
 correct interpretation of the speech stimulus requires that the
speaker and listener share sufficient mutual knowledge of the
situation
inferential model of communication: communication can be classified as a
series of intentions and inferences; the speaker has certain intentions in
communicating through speech, and the listener must make certain
inferences to properly decode that speech
 conversation maxims: certain rules (like striving to be clear and
truthful) that a listener must assume that the speaker is following
in order to make correct inferences about meaning
 co-operative principle: the assumption that the speaker is striving
to be both truthful and relevant that allows the listener to infer the
intent of the speaker
communication probably consists alternately of speech and understanding
following the code and inferential models of communication
syntactic parse: the breakdown of a sentence into its components allowing
comprehension of its literal/propositional meaning
 can be ambiguous depending on the polysemous nature of words
 sometimes units only have meaning in the context of the other
units
 also have to incorporate the social-pragmatic context, including
tone of voice, situation, social relationship between speaker and
listener, etc.
standard theory of irony: process of the comprehension of irony whereby the
listener first takes the irony literally, then realizes that this interpretation is
impossible, and therefore takes the intent of the speaker to be the
communication of exactly the opposite of what they have just said
 relies on the listener realizing that the speaker can’t be both
relevant and truthful if the sentence is taken literally, and therefore
that it must be irony if it’s not a violation of the co-operative
principle
 not clear if irony always needs to be interpreted literally first,
perhaps only when it’s unexpected
prosody: melody of the speech, including accentuation of certain words
hesitation pauses: pauses in speech filled with speech disfluencies like um or
uh
 um and uh seem to play different roles, um indicates the
expectation of a longer pause than does uh
o suggests that we are capable of anticipating how long it will
take to retrieve the information necessary to produce speech
even before we’ve actually retrieved it
egocentric speech: speech characteristic of children that doesn’t take the
listener’s perspective into account, becomes inner speech as the child
becomes socialized
 inner speech: silent, rapid speech that regulates thought,
occasionally externalized when trying to get other people to pay
attention to one’s inner state (e.g. oops!, brr)
zone of proximal development: distance between problem-solving
capabilities alone and the degree of potential development as determined by
problem-solving capabilities with the help of someone else
 correlation between the zone of proximal development and the
development of inner speech
literacy: the ability to read and write, which is generally accompanied by the
capacity to think about and discuss language (including books, plays, etc.)
as well as the vocabulary to do so, known as metalanguage
 degree of exposure to printed exposure is correlated with the
degree of development of metalanguage
can communicate through speech or writing, comprehension varies as a
function of handwriting and accents/pronounciation
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the theory that differences in language between
peoples can affect those peoples’ perceptions of the object described by that
word, a phenomenon called linguistic relativity
 for example, Inuit peoples having more words for what we call
snow is a result of having much more extensive experience with
snow and therefore the capacity and need to distinguish much more
extensively between different kinds of snow
polysemous words: words that have multiple meanings, which can lead to
delayed comprehension of the meaning of a word because it depends on
context
the more abstract a word is, the less likely it is that it will have a direct
translation equivalent
 because bilinguals split their speaking time between two languages,
they necessarily speak each language less, and therefore they use
language-specific words less in each language
interlingual homographs: words that are spelled the same between two
languages but have different meanings, will cause an interference in
comprehension in bilinguals
 shows that we employ non-selective access of language when
reading/listening
level of semantic constraint: the degree to which the context forces a
particular semantic interpretation of a word
 high semantic constraint eliminated interference for interlingual
homographs at higher levels of processing
degree of cognitive processing of a word increases the longer we spend
looking at it/the more times we go back to look at it
Berlin-Kay hypothesis of basic color terms: while different languages might
have different numbers of words for different colors, there is a particular
order in which color words develop, starting with the most simple (e.g. black
and white) and progressing to the most complex (e.g. purple and pink)
 derives this order from Hering’s theory of color opponency, where
words for Hering’s primary colors arise first
 experiment showing that memory for color was dependent on the
words in the subject’s language that referred to that color and how
specific they were (e.g. blue-green distinctions were difficult for
people who spoke a language which had one word for the color
spanning blue and green), challenges the Berlin-Kay hypothesis and
seems to support the linguistic relativity hypothesis
intrinsic frame of reference: judgment of the relationships of objects based
on the relationships between those objects
relative frame of reference: judgment of the relationships of objects based
on the observer’s position, most common to English-speakers
absolute frame of reference: judgment of the relationships of objects based
on an absolute and unchanging set of co-ordinates, like north-south
evidence that the language one speaks has a great impact on conception of
frame of reference
Chapter 10
Gestalt switch: sudden change in perception, can be sensory perception or
cognitive, like understanding of a problem
Gestaltists theorized that there’s something special about insight in that it
requires unconscious leaps in thinking and is characterized by accelerated
mental processing and a short circuit of normal processing
 but, some people experience insight on non-insight problems or
solve insight problems without experiencing insight, suggesting that
it’s perhaps just an extension of normal thinking
 given that insight is a specific kind of subjective experience,
suggests that it’s special in some way, perhaps the temporal
collusion of several different kinds of mental processes
insight problem: a problem that requires the restructuring of its
representation through the experience of insight before it can be solved
chimpanzees have the capacity for insight
productive thinking: thinking that results from a comprehension of the
problem at hand and its parameters
 e.g. child solving the altar window problem despite having
knowledge of geometry
structurally blind thinking: engaging in reasoning appropriate for other
situations but not the situation at hand
 e.g. adult trying to apply the principles of geometry to the altar
window problem unnecessarily
well-structured problems: problems that have a specific and well-defined
path to resolution requiring following specific rules
ill-structured problems: problems that don’t have an immediately clear path
to the solution, problems that require insight
isomorphic problems: problems that have the same underlying structure as
another problem but are contextualized/framed in a different way
analysis of the situation: first stage of problem solving in which we
determine the functions of the objects involved in the situation and how they
can be used to solve the problem
 if a situation doesn’t require going beyond the giving information to
reach a resolution, it’s not a problem
functional fixedness: the incapacity to see past the standard function of an
object to use it in a different way to solve a problem
 doesn’t have an effect on children five and younger, who are also
unaffected whether or not the object is presented in a way that
serves to remind the problem-solver of its usual function
 functional fixedness occurs across cultures, even those with much
less technology than our own, seems to have evolved because
thinking about using an object for its design is evolutionarily
adaptive
in trying to solve a problem that requires insight, hints can’t be useful unless
they’re consistent with the direction of the person’s thinking and help to
resolve a difficulty that that person has already faced
insight is all-or-none and (to the person who experiences it) it doesn’t seem
to arise from any hints the person might have received
 solution emerges suddenly as a whole
feeling of warmth: the feeling of growing closer to the goal that arises from
attempting to solve non-insight problems, but not insight problems
feeling of knowing: the degree to which a person can predict whether or not
they’re going to be able to solve a given problem, possible only with noninsight problems
progress monitoring theory: the theory that people monitor their own
progress when approaching an insight problem, and after reaching an
impasse following what seemed to be the most direct route to solution, they
become open to experiencing insight
representational change theory: the theory that reaching an insightful
solution to a problem requires a change in the problem-solver’s
representation of it
 constraint relaxation: one way by which this change in
representation can occur, which is by overcoming assumptions
about the problem that are blocking insightful solution to it
 chunk decomposition: another way by which this change can occur,
by thinking about parts of the problem that might otherwise be
seen as an undivided whole as separate parts

successful problem solvers spend more time looking at the parts of
the problem that require constraint relaxation and/or chunk
decomposition in order to reach the insightful solution, research
shows that guiding peoples’ attention to those parts of the problem
increased their chances of reaching the insightful solution
activation of the anterior cingulate cortex is correlated with having an
insightful experience
 thought to be because the ACC detects conflicting response
tendencies, person becoming aware of this conflict is necessary for
experience of insight
performance on insight problems increased after sleep, possible that sleep
causes the restructuring process that’s necessary for insight to occur
Einstellung effect: tendency to respond in an inflexible pre-ordained fashion
even if there’s a simpler way to solve the problem
 e.g. following the set of steps usually necessary to solve the water
jar problem even when presented with an analogous problem that
doesn’t require all the steps

effect becomes more powerful when the problem-solver is under
pressure
 negative transfer: problem-solvers showing the Einstellung effect
even when the previous set is inappropriate
o strong but wrong tendency: the analogy of this effect to more
every day life situations, our tendency to act according to
habit even if that habit is inappropriate because of a change
in situation
left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is crucial in the inhibition of obvious
responses in order to make less obvious ones when necessary
mindfulness: the openness to alternative solutions that allows for insightful
problem-solving
mindlessness: the rote application of previously seen paradigms to reach a
solution
positive transfer: past success facilitates problem solution
negative transfer: past mental sets impede finding a solution, can be
minimized by putting the problem to the side for a period of time
heuristic: a pre-established problem-solving procedure whose application
can often impede reaching insightful solution

artificial intelligence designers convert heuristics into algorithms to
allow the machine to problem solve using the heuristic
evaluation function: the process by which a machine develops a plan to
solve the problem by evaluating the problem and applying an algorithm to
solve it, selecting the most advantageous plan of all possible courses of
action
problem space: the representation of the problem including the goal and the
various possible procedures to reach that goal
 search tree: the representation of all the possible moves to reach
the goal
production rules: the set of conditions and ordained actions as a result of
those conditions that guide problem solving for artificial intelligence
machines
iterations: repetitions of a certain maneuver to reach an end goal
means-end analysis: the analysis of the difference between the current state
and the goal state, as well as the different possible mechanisms to reduce
that difference
subgoals: goals that must be attained before reaching the final goal
 goal stack: the series of subgoals that must be accomplished, in
order, with the final goal at the bottom
concurrent verbalization during problem solving is a representation of inner
speech and serves as a window into the human problem-solving process
model of insight in artificial intelligence: program a stop in the program after
it’s been unsuccessful for a certain period of time, and order it to search in a
different problem space after it’s resumed problem solving
cognitive theory of science: the study of the notes and problem-solving
process of famous scientists throughout history in order to better understand
problem-solving techniques and insightful discovery
 further investigation of unexpected findings is key to scientific
problem solving
Zeigarnik effect: the tendency to persist in unfinished tasks to reach a
solution
BACON: artificial intelligence technology that analyzes patterns between two
variables using several heuristics, capable of discovering certain alreadyestablished scientific laws
 test subjects who successfully discovered some of the same laws as
BACON did so using the same techniques
Chapter 11
deductive reasoning: reasoning from the general to the specific
inductive reasoning: reasoning from the specific to the general
 impossible to prove anything using induction, can only indicate
what’s likely
conditional reasoning: drawing conclusions in the form of if-then
propositions


modus ponens: reasoning that takes the form if p then q; p,
therefore q
o impossible to reach a conclusion by denying the antecedent
(i.e. no p, therefore no q, is not a valid conclusion)
modus tollens: reasoning that takes the form if p then q; no q,
therefore no p
o impossible to reach a conclusion by affirming the consequent
(i.e. q, therefore p, is not a valid conclusion)
o we’re not always naturally inclined to test for modus tollens,
as evidenced by our failure on the Wason’s card selection
task, unless it’s structured to test for breach of the social
contract
syllogism: two premises and a conclusion
universal affirmative: all A are B (doesn’t necessarily mean that all B are A)
universal negative: no A are B, and no B are A
particular affirmative: some A are B, and some B are A (could mean that all
A are B or all B are A)
particular negative: some A are not B (could mean that no A are B)
logicism: the belief that logical reasoning is an integral part of human nature
practical syllogism: a syllogism whose conclusion necessitates an action
(e.g. vegetarianism!)
a syllogism can be valid even if its premises are false and therefore its
conclusion is also false
 however, people make errors and are much more likely to accept
invalid syllogisms with believable conclusions as valid than to
accept invalid syllogisms with unbelievable conclusions
 we also make errors in evaluating syllogisms involving the word
some, we judge it to imply less than half of a given group, and
certainly not the entire group
relational reasoning/linear syllogisms: reasoning that relies on the
relationship between two items
three-term series problem: a problem consisting of two comparative
sentences from which a conclusion must be drawn
 emergent consequences: the phenomenon that a mental model
constructed to represent a three-term series problem necessarily
leads to its conclusion
principle of parsimony: the fact that people will always tend to construct the
simplest mental model possible to represent a problem
natural deduction system: use of deduction rules to draw conclusions from
propositions
generative problem: a problem in which people must generate their own
information in order to solve it (e.g. by making guesses and having them
refuted or affirmed)

eliminative strategy: attempt to falsify hypotheses in order to reach
the correct conclusion, not how people intuitively problem solve
Wason’s card selection task: have to engage in an eliminative strategy and
resist confirmation bias to solve it properly
 people are more likely to do this if the problem is presented as a
paradigm in which the goal is to identify someone violating the
social contract (i.e. cheating)
o shows that we don’t use the same reasoning strategies in all
situations
law of large numbers: the larger a sample of events, the more likely that the
proportion of those events to one another will be closer to the true statistical
value
law of averages: fallacious belief that events of one kind of balanced by
events of the other, and that the law of large numbers also applies to
smaller samples
gambler’s fallacy: the idea that individual events aren’t separate from one
another and that the likelihood of future events occurring is affected by the
occurrence of previous events
law of small numbers: fallacious belief that small samples are necessarily
representative of the larger population from which they were drawn
 representativeness heuristic: use of inferences based on the law of
small numbers leading to judgments that a sample more likely
belongs to a certain category because it’s more representative of
that category
o e.g. we’ll judge a coin toss of THTTH to be more likely to be
random than one of THTHT because the first is more
representative of random events, despite the fact that both
are equally likely
people will judge the product of numbers to be greater if the starting
number is greater, shows that our judgments are dependent on the situation
in which they are made
availability heuristic: the fallacious strategy of judging the
likelihood/commonness of an event based on how easily it comes to
mind/how memorable it is
illusory correlation: the fallacious judgment that two things are more likely
to occur together because they’re related in our minds, buoyed by our
tendency to remembering confirming instances and ignore disconfirming
instances
regression to the mean: the tendency of a second value to be closer to the
mean (or less extreme) than the first when two variables aren’t perfectly
correlated
 we tend to judge this as having a cause even though it has none,
and we’re less likely to do this in situations that we’re familiar with
Kahneman and Tversky showed that we used heuristics to make decisions
because they make cognitive processing simpler and easier, but using them
can lead to errors
problem space: the frame within which a problem’s understood, can lead to
faulty problem solving
recognition heuristic: the reasoning ecologically rational technique of
choosing that that we’re familiar with over that that we’re not
 suggestion that techniques like this are only rational for decisions of
less importance
Chapter 12
Binet-Simon intelligence test: calculates intelligence as the ratio between
mental age (what’s typical of a person of that age) and actual age, where an
exact matching of the two would lead to a score of 100
 problem: initial measure was only for children, because mental age
of adults doesn’t vary enough for it to be salient
now WAIS (Wechler’s Adult Intelligence Scale) is used, tests for verbal IQ,
performance IQ, and overall IQ
two-factor theory of intelligence: Spearman’s theory that level of intelligence
is determined by two factors, general intelligence (g), which remains
constant in an individual, and specific intelligence (s), which varies in an
individual between that person’s different abilities
 any given ability is determined in part by s and in part by g
 theorized that heredity was more important for g, while
environment was more important for s
 g predicts 50% of variability in performance, rest is determined by
work
crystallized intelligence: everything we’ve learned, increases over a lifetime
fluid intelligence: capacity to manipulate that information, remains constant
over a lifetime, thought to be very similar to g
Raven Progressive Matrices: test designed to measure a person’s capacity to
draw out novel relationships in a situation, which was central to measuring g
central executive aspect of working memory seems to be performing the role
that could be classified as fluid intelligence, and therefore as the functional
representation of g
 test of working memory do have something of a correlation with
performance on the Raven Progressive Matrices
neural plasticity: the degree to which the brain adapts as a function of
experience, now thought to be what underlies g
dedicated intelligence: domain-specific modules that have evolved to deal
with specific problems (e.g. Chomsky’s language acquisition device)
improvisational intelligence: intelligence that’s evolved to deal with
unforeseen problems, thought to be analogous to g, because it requires the
manipulation of new information to reach a solution
 g is useful in evolutionarily novel situations, not situations that our
brain would have already evolved a mechanism to deal with
Flynn effect: the phenomenon that IQ scores increase over time, seems to
be flattening
 requires that intelligence tests be constantly recalibrated
 could be attributed to our increasingly enriched environment,
stimulating greater neural plasticity and therefore us coming closer
to our full g potential
 advances in nutrition and overall health could also contribute
intellectual components: the information process that consists of the way
that we transform our cognitive representations of objects or experiences
metacomponents: components that control the execution of other
components
performance components: components used in the execution of a task
knowledge acquisition components: components involved in learning new
information and storing it in memory
triarchic theory of intelligence: Sternbeg’s theory that intelligence is made
up of three different kinds, which vary in the processes that they use to
manipulate information




analytical intelligence: what’s usually tested by standard
intelligence tests
o made up of metacomponents (executive processing),
performance components (their implementation) and
knowledge-acquisitoin components (learning how to solve
problems)
creative intelligence: capacity to reason using novel concepts
o entrenched concepts: natural ways of reasoning that can be
applied to familiar situations
o non-entrenched concepts: more unnatural reasoning
mechanisms that may be necessary to deal with unfamiliar
situations, capacity to use these is a measure of creative
intelligence
practical intelligence: capacity to function in situations demanding
expertise of a non-academic sort
o involves adapting to the new environment, selecting its
interesting features, and shaping the environment
o shown to be separate from measures of academic intelligence
tests have shown the three kinds of intelligence to be correlated
theory of multiple intelligences: Gardner’s theory that there are many
different kinds of intelligences, all of which are related to a specific and
distinct part of the brain and represented by a different symbol system, and
exist separately from each other
 symbol system: way of representing information related to a certain
kind of intelligence, like music or dance
 thought that intelligences could be determined by looking at
prodigies and the areas that they excelled in
 U-shaped development: shape that certain skills, like drawing, take,
where they decrease during the conventional stage and then
increase again during the post-conventional stage (if the person
reaches that stage)
 environment has an impact on the development of these skills,
people tend to develop musical skills more when they grow up in
societies that value music highly
it’s possible that more intelligent brains rely more on expertise and
automatized processes, which would explain the negative correlation
between IQ and cortical glucose metabolism, because automatized processes
require less energy to carry out
the correlation between cognitive thickness and IQ is positive in childhood,
and becomes negative approaching adulthood
 cortical thickness in childhood indicates brain plasticity and thinness
in adulthood indicates effective pruning
prodigies: children that display extraordinary skills in a domain before that
level of skillfulness would be expected
 usually, prodigies have to devote a great degree of time into
developing their skills, relies on the encouragement of their families
10-year rule: the hypothesis that it takes about ten years of practice to
become an expert in a domain
experts show functional anatomical differences when processing information
in the domain or their expertise, related to different cognitive strategies, but
not structural differences
 example: chess players chunk chess pieces into positions, expert
memorizers show activity in hippocampal areas related to
navigation when memorizing strings of digits (evidence that they’re
using the method of loci)
creativity is related to finding problems and defining them in a unique way,
rather than solving them
 this kind of problem-finding often facilitates problem solution
blind variation: blind exploration of alternatives without knowledge in
advance of which will be fruitful, important facet of creative thinking, leads
to serendipity through selective retention of those alternatives that turn out
to be fruitful
 the process by which it occurs is unimportant
 too much education interferes with the working of this process and
therefore inhibits creative potential, optimal level of education will
vary between fields
o creative potential: the ability to generate useful ideas
creative people tend to have intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivations, work
hard and are extremely motivated
Price’s law: the idea that half of all contributions to a specific field will come
from a number of people equal to the square root of the total number of
people working in that field
 these people are thought to have greater creative potential
hierarchy of responses: series of responses to a particular word or stimulus,
progressing from most to least obvious, capacity to make use of responses
lower in the hierarchy is important for originality
 alternate uses test: requires people to list possible uses for a given
object, measures their progression in the hierarchy of responses
and thereby their capacity to escape functional fixedness
 creative people are thought to have flat hierarchies, where those
responses lower on the hierarchy are just as evident as those that
are higher
unclear if there are any salient differences between Einstein’s brain and
normal peoples’ brain after the glial cell finding turned out to be misleading
Chapter 14
important to balance methodology with focus on the practical problem of
interest in psychological research
we base our analysis of gravity on visual cues, important for pilots to be
informed whether they were upside down because they’d have no way of
knowing just by looking at the sky
colors are a misleading way to represent a continuum, brightness is more
effective
study showed that people think articles with brain images are more credible
and make more sense than those with bar graphs, important for
psychologists and neuroscientists to know and vary the representation of
their research accordingly
field studies of driving have to take place in a closed course if the driver is
going to be impaired, which is more unnatural than simulated driving tasks
drivers using handheld phones drove more slowly than normal, whereas
those using handless phones drove more quickly than normal
 possible explanation: holding the phone reminded the driver that
they were impaired
reaction time studies showed that talking on the phone slowed reaction time
regardless of phone type
simulated driving studies showed that phone users had more accidents,
more variable following distance, and slower reaction time, regardless of
phone type
analysis of hospital records showed the phone users had a four times greater
likelihood of getting in an accident, which is the same as that of legally
drunk drivers
 although they didn’t show trouble in lane maintenance as drunk
drivers did, people did shoe this impairment if texting
 texting impairs driving in terms of split attention as much as does
cellphone use, and has the added effect of causing the driver to
look away from the road
we can train to reduce switch costs of splitting attention, but our
performance will never reach 100% on either task
knowledge of cognitive processes allows us to identify where our errors
come from
activation-trigger-schema theory: the theory that certain situations trigger
certain schemas, and that multiple schemas can be triggered at the same
time, leaving us open to the possibility to incorrectly apply a schema and
therefore make an error
we’re bad at remembering to do a postponed task when we’re actively
engaged in another, necessary to keep that postponed task in awareness for
it not to be overridden by habitual responses
mode errors: errors that would be fine for a certain situation, but not the
current situation (e.g. taking out keys to get on the subway)
description errors: errors resulting from an insufficient understanding of the
situation (e.g. pouring orange juice into a coffee cup)
capture errors: following the actions of an overlearned sequence rather than
the action demanded by the current situation/one’s intentions
anticipation errors: responses that occur earlier in the sequence than they
should
ergonomics: study of people and their working environment
user interface: the relationship between a person and a device necessary to
carry out a task
the fact that calculators and telephones have different keypad layouts
because each is more efficient for the task, but that the use of one doesn’t
interfere with the other shows that different contexts allow for different
solutions to co-exist without interfering
affordances: the possible functions of an object, a successfully designed
object will afford actions that are appropriate and not those that are
inappropriate
statistical graphics: field concerned with presenting visual data in a way
that’s clear and causes the viewer to draw the correct inferences
population impact number: the number of people in the population that will
be positively affected by an intervention
 often not provided by health authorities because it reveals that the
risk of refusing a medical procedure are less than what other
statistics might suggest
information foraging: the search for information analogous to the search for
food, successful foraging provides the most information for the smallest
among of effort
information scent: imperfect clues used by the information forager to find
the sought-after information
information diet: creating a pool of a large sample of information and then
retaining only those that are relevant
modularity: the representation of the chunks into which a process can be
decomposed

if a task can’t be decomposed into chunks and its completion has to
be carried out in an all-or-none fashion, then it will be much harder
to complete
while consistency is important for a good user interface, as it grows more
complicated, a certain degree of inconsistency is also valuable in order to not
lead to rampant featurism and allow the interface to be adapted to specific
user needs
 rampant featurism: the expansion of features beyond necessity
spaced-out learning resulted in the best performance on tests as long as the
learning reaches completion
 perhaps due to the fact that learning over time allows for more
experiences of one’s failures and therefore more opportunities to
work further on those areas to improve
systematic learning is faster, but random practice results in better
performance in the long run
periodic feedback, rather than immediate feedback, better imitates realworld situations and allows for more effective learning
foresight bias: fallacious belief that one will be able to recall an answer later
when one’s in the presence of the answer
 judgments of learning: believing that you’ve learned something
better than you have, related to foresight bias
region of proximal learning: theory that people will choose to work on
material of moderate difficulty, will move up in difficulty as expertise
increases and the region of proximal learning moves
Social cognition
impact factor: number of times a journal article’s been cited
readability index: how easy it is to read
review article: summary of the literature on a topic, peer reviewed
adolphs: processes of behavior in response to individuals of the same
species, specifically higher level processes seen in highly social animals, like
primates
having social skills is adaptive not only for cooperation, but for coercion and
manipulation
social brain/Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis: higher proportion of
cortical matter to the rest of the brain is correlated with and a consequence
of the complexity of the social structure of a species
temporal cortex is important for the higher-level processing of visual stimuli
(e.g. fusiform face area)
amygdala may play a role in preferentially processing all kinds of social
stimuli, not just threatening stimuli, and in tagging that information that
merits further inspection
 patients with amygdala lesions don’t look at eyes and have trouble
identifying fearful expressions, perhaps due to a problem with
marking the eyes in fearful expressions as stimuli meriting further



inspection
patients with amygdala damage judge fearful or aggressive faces to
be more trustworthy than controls
failure to interpret animacy
in humans, we also have alternate methods to process information,
impairment of social functioning in monkeys with bilateral amygdala
damage is greater than that in humans
damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex results in a fundamental
incapacity to incorporate social knowledge into behavior
 Iowa gambler’s task: patients don’t show autonomic changes seen
in controls, and an incapacity to convert emotional hunches into
useful behavior (i.e. avoiding the bad deck)
 Wason card sorting task: showed greater impairment in reasoning
for social version of the task, and lesser impairment than controls
for the standard version
right somatosensory damage can impair ability to attribute mental states to
others, important aspect of theory of mind

probably has to do with damage to the mirror neuron system
o activation of mirror neurons depends on there being an
interaction between the effector and an object (no activation
if there’s no object)
 thought that we might understand other peoples’ emotional states
by recreating their facial expressions in our minds
monkey “pay per view” experiment: monkeys would “pay” more to see
“monkey porn” and the faces of high-status monkeys, but had to be “paid”
more to look at images of low-status monkeys
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