Term
| What is cognitive psychology? |
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Definition
| the branch of psych. concerned with the scientific study of the mind |
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Term
| How can you define the mind? |
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Definition
| system that creates and controls mental functions such as perception, attention, memory, emotions, language, deciding, thinking, reasoning, and that creates mental representations of the world |
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Term
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Definition
| the mental processes such as perception, attention, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning, and making decisions |
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Term
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Definition
How long it takes to respond to presentation of a stimulus
(Donders 1868) |
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Term
| What is a simple reaction time? |
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Definition
| Reacting to the presence or absence of a single stimulus (as opposed to choose between a number of stimuli before making a response) |
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Term
| What is a choice reaction time? |
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Definition
| Reacting to one of two or more stimuli (Donders: participants make one response to stimulus A and a different response to stimulus B) |
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Term
| What is a savings method? (Ebbinghaus) |
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Definition
| Method used to measure retention in Ebbinghaus 's memory experiments . He read lists of nonsense syllables and determined how many repetitions it took to repeat the lists with no errors. He then repeated this procedure after various intervals following initial learning and compared the number of repetitions needed to achieve no errors |
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Term
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Definition
| Explains perception as the adding up of small elementary units called sensations (Wundt) |
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Term
| What is analytic introspection? |
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Definition
| Trained participants described their experiences and thought processes in response to stimuli (hearing a 5-note chord: was it a whole or individual sensation) (Wundt) |
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Term
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Definition
| (Watson) Observable behavior provides only valid data for psychology. A consequence of this idea is that consciousness and unobservable mental processes is not considered worthy of study by psychologists |
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Term
| What is classical conditioning? |
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Definition
| (ex: Watson & 'little baby Albert') Pairing one stimulus (very loud noise) with another previously neutral stimulus (friendly rat) that causes a change in the response to the neutral stimulus (baby fleesfrom rat because of loud noise) (Watson) |
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Term
| What is operant conditioning? |
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Definition
| Focuses on how behavior is strengthened by positive reinforcers or withdrawal of negative reinforcers (Skinner) |
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Term
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Definition
| mental conception of a spatial layout |
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Term
| What is the cognitive revolution? |
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Definition
| A shift in psychology from the behaviorist's stimulus-response relationships to an approach whose main thrust was to understand the operation of the mind |
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Term
| What is the information-processing approach? |
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Definition
| Traces the sequence of mental operations involved in cognition |
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Term
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Definition
| a representation of workings of the mind; often presented as interconnected boxes that each represent the operation of specific mental functions |
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Term
| What is artificial intelligence? |
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Definition
| the ability of a computer to perform tasks normally associated with human intelligence |
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Term
| What is the logic theorist? |
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Definition
| computer program designed by Newell and Simon that was able to solve logic problems (1955) |
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Term
| Cognitive psychologists use both __ and __ approaches to studying operations of the mind. |
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Definition
| physiologial and behavioral |
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Term
| What is memory consolidation? |
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Definition
| Process by which experiences or information that has entered the memory system becomes strengthened so it is resistant to interference caused by trauma or other events |
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Term
| What is cognitive neuroscience? |
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Definition
| The study of the physiological basis of cognition |
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Term
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Definition
| Neurons are cells that are the building blocks and transmission lines of the nervous system |
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Term
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Definition
| a network of continuously connected nerve fibers (contrasts w/ nerve fibers and synapses) |
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Term
| What is the neuron doctrine? |
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Definition
| the idea that individual cells called neurons transmit signals in the nervous system and that they are not continuous (as opposed to nerve net theory) |
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Term
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Definition
| part of cell that contains mechanisms that keep it alive |
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Term
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Definition
| part of neuron that branches out to receive signals from other neurons |
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Term
| What is the axon (nerve fiber)? |
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Definition
| part of neuron that transmit signals to other neurons |
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Term
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Definition
| Neurons located outside of the brain, with specialized functions that pick up info from the environment |
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Term
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Definition
| A gap between one neuron's axon and another's dendrite/cell body |
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Term
| What is a neural circuit? |
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Definition
| A connection of many neurons |
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