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Unit 2 Essentials

26 must-know vocabulary terms and the big ideas anchoring Unit 2: Cognition.

Unit 2: Cognition🏠 Unit Hub📁 Flashcards🗺 Cheat Sheet⭐ The Essentials🎙 Podcast🎨 Visual Review📝 MC Practice✍ FRQ Practice
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Perception
Organizing and interpreting sensory information to recognize meaningful objects and events.
Perception
Top-down processing
Using prior knowledge and expectations to interpret sensory input.
Perception
Bottom-up processing
Building perception from individual sensory details upward, starting with raw data.
Perception
Gestalt principles
Brain rules for organizing sensory information into wholes: proximity, similarity, closure, figure-ground.
Perception
Schema
A mental framework organizing and interpreting information based on past experience.
Thinking
Algorithm
A step-by-step procedure guaranteed to produce a correct solution — slower but reliable.
Thinking
Heuristic
A mental shortcut that speeds up decisions but can produce systematic errors.
Thinking
Availability heuristic
Judging likelihood by how easily examples come to mind — overestimates vivid or recent events.
Thinking
Representativeness heuristic
Judging likelihood by how well something matches a stereotype rather than base-rate probabilities.
Thinking
Confirmation bias
Seeking and favoring information that confirms existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence.
Thinking
Framing effect
How information is presented changes decisions even when underlying facts are identical.
Thinking
Functional fixedness
Thinking of objects only in terms of their typical function, blocking creative problem-solving.
Thinking
Sensory memory
Brief, large-capacity store holding raw sensory information for a fraction of a second.
Memory
Working memory
System briefly holding and actively manipulating information; limited capacity, maintained by rehearsal.
Memory
Long-term memory
Relatively permanent, unlimited memory store — includes explicit and implicit memories.
Memory
Levels of processing
Deeper, more meaningful (semantic) processing creates stronger memories than shallow processing.
Memory
Mnemonic devices
Memory aids (method of loci, acronyms, chunking) that organize information for easier recall.
Memory
Forgetting curve
Ebbinghaus's finding that memory drops sharply after learning then levels off.
Memory
Proactive interference
Older memories interfere with learning or recalling newer information.
Memory
Retroactive interference
Newer memories interfere with recalling older information.
Memory
Misinformation effect
Misleading post-event information distorts memory of the original event (Loftus).
Memory
Source amnesia
Remembering an event but forgetting where the information originally came from.
Memory
Intelligence
Mental ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and adapt to new situations.
Intelligence
Reliability & validity
Reliability = consistency of test results; validity = whether the test measures what it claims to.
Intelligence
Standardization
Testing a large representative sample to establish norms for score comparison.
Intelligence
Stereotype threat
Fear of confirming a negative group stereotype that can impair test performance.
Intelligence
Big Idea 1
Perception is constructed, not just received
Your brain combines bottom-up sensory data with top-down expectations to build what you 'see.' Gestalt principles, prior knowledge, and context all shape perception — meaning two people can witness the same event and perceive it differently.
PerceptionTop-DownGestalt
Big Idea 2
We rely on mental shortcuts that usually work but sometimes fail
Heuristics like availability and representativeness help us decide quickly. These shortcuts are mostly useful but introduce predictable biases — confirmation bias, framing effects — that can lead to systematic errors in judgment.
HeuristicsBiasesThinking
Big Idea 3
Memory is a multi-stage process — and forgetting happens at every stage
Information moves from sensory memory to working memory to long-term memory through encoding. Each stage has different capacities and durations. Interference, decay, and retrieval failures explain why we forget.
MemoryEncodingForgetting
Big Idea 4
How you encode determines what you remember
Deeper, meaningful (semantic) processing creates far stronger memories than shallow processing. Mnemonics, spacing practice, retrieval practice, and connecting new information to prior knowledge all dramatically improve recall.
EncodingLearningMnemonics
Big Idea 5
Memory is reconstructive, not a recording
Each time you remember an event, you rebuild it from fragments. The misinformation effect (Loftus) and source amnesia show memories can be subtly altered by later information — a major reason eyewitness testimony is less reliable than intuition suggests.
MisinformationLoftusEyewitness
Big Idea 6
Intelligence is real, measurable, and contested
Standardized tests aim for reliability and validity, but defining intelligence is debated — g-factor vs. multiple intelligences. Scores are influenced by culture, opportunity, and stereotype threat, not just innate ability.
IntelligenceTestingStereotype Threat