Psychology Flashcards

A limited-capacity system that holds information in mind for a few seconds while you use it. It is where information is kept active and worked on, not just stored.

Example: Keeping a phone number in mind while you dial it, or carrying a digit during mental arithmetic.

The tendency to recall the first items (the primacy effect) and the last items (the recency effect) of a list better than those in the middle.

Example: After hearing a shopping list once, you remember the first couple of items and the last one, and lose the middle.

Memory is recalled best when the cues available at retrieval match the ones present when the memory was formed.

Example: Walking back into the kitchen suddenly reminds you what you went there to fetch.

Learning by actively recalling information rather than re-reading it. Recalling something strengthens long-term memory for it more than studying it again for the same time.

Example: Closing your notes and writing down everything you remember, then checking what you missed.

Spreading study sessions out over time leads to better long-term retention than massing the same amount of study together.

Example: Three 20-minute sessions on different days are typically remembered better a month later than one 60-minute session.

Proactive interference is old learning disrupting the recall of newer learning. Retroactive interference is new learning disrupting the recall of older learning.

Example: Proactive: writing last year's date in January. Retroactive: once you learn a new password, the old one is hard to recall.

The slower and less accurate response when naming the ink colour of a word that spells a different colour. Reading the word happens automatically and interferes with naming the colour.

Example: Saying "blue" for the word RED printed in blue ink takes longer than for a row of blue X's.

Failing to notice something fully visible and unexpected because attention is focused on something else.

Example: While counting passes in a basketball video, many viewers miss a person in a gorilla suit walking through the scene.

Failing to notice a change in a scene, especially when the change happens during a brief interruption such as a blink, a cut or a flicker.

Example: Not noticing that an actor's drink has changed between two shots of the same film scene.

The ability to focus on one conversation among many, while still picking up personally important information, such as your own name, from the ones you are ignoring.

Example: Deep in conversation at a party, you turn round because someone across the room said your name.

Focusing on some information while filtering out the rest. Attention is limited, so choosing what to process means not fully processing everything else.

Example: Reading in a noisy café and barely registering the music.

The drop in speed and accuracy when moving between two tasks, compared with sticking to one. Switching takes time to re-orient, even between simple tasks.

Example: Answering messages while writing an essay makes both slower than doing each in a block.

Adding something pleasant after a behaviour, which makes that behaviour more likely to happen again.

Example: A child is praised for tidying up and tidies up more often.

Removing something unpleasant after a behaviour, which makes that behaviour more likely. Punishment makes a behaviour less likely; negative reinforcement makes it more likely.

Example: Fastening a seat belt stops the car's warning beep, so you fasten it sooner next time.

A consequence that makes a behaviour less likely. Positive punishment adds something unpleasant; negative punishment takes away something wanted.

Example: Positive: a parking fine. Negative: losing phone time for breaking a rule.

The decline of a learned behaviour when it stops producing its usual consequence. It often briefly increases first, which is called an extinction burst.

Example: When a lift button stops working, people press it harder and faster for a while, then give up.

Learning that one stimulus predicts another, so that the first comes to produce a response originally caused by the second. It was first studied systematically by Ivan Pavlov.

Example: Dogs that were regularly fed after a sound began to salivate at the sound alone.

Learning in which a behaviour becomes more or less likely depending on the consequences that follow it. It is associated with Edward Thorndike and B. F. Skinner.

Example: A rat that receives food after pressing a lever presses the lever more often.

Understanding that objects continue to exist when they cannot be seen. Piaget placed it in the second half of the first year; later studies suggest infants show signs of it earlier.

Example: A baby lifts a blanket to find a toy they watched being hidden under it.

Understanding that other people have their own thoughts, beliefs and knowledge, which can differ from yours and from reality. Most children pass standard false-belief tests at around four to five years old.

Example: A child realises a friend who was out of the room will look for a toy where it was, not where it was moved to.

Lev Vygotsky's term for the range of tasks a learner cannot yet do alone but can do with guidance from someone more skilled.

Example: A child who cannot yet read a new book alone can read it with an adult helping on the hard words.

Temporary support, adjusted to what a learner can already do, that is gradually withdrawn as they become able to do the task independently.

Example: A teacher gives sentence starters for a first essay, then fewer each time until none are needed.

A caregiver whose reliable presence gives a child the confidence to explore, and to whom the child returns for comfort when unsure or upset.

Example: A toddler plays across the room at a new playgroup, glancing back and returning to a parent now and then.

Understanding that a quantity stays the same when its appearance changes, as long as nothing is added or taken away. Piaget linked it to the concrete operational stage, from around age seven.

Example: A younger child says a tall thin glass holds more juice than a short wide one, even after watching the same juice poured between them.

Two things can rise and fall together because one causes the other, because the causation runs the other way, or because a third factor drives both. A correlation alone cannot tell these apart.

Example: Ice cream sales and drownings rise together because both increase in hot weather.

The tendency to seek out, notice and remember information that supports what you already believe, and to discount information that does not.

Example: Someone convinced a full moon causes chaos remembers the busy full-moon nights and forgets the quiet ones.

An improvement that comes from receiving a treatment and expecting it to work, rather than from the treatment's active ingredient.

Example: In a trial, some patients given sugar pills report less pain, which is why treatments are compared against a placebo group.

Random sampling decides who is in a study, and supports generalising to the wider population. Random assignment decides which condition each participant gets, and supports conclusions about cause.

Example: A study can randomly assign volunteers from one school to two teaching methods: good evidence about cause, weak evidence about all schools.

The tendency to explain other people's behaviour by their personality while underestimating the influence of their situation.

Example: Assuming a driver who cuts in is rude, when they may be rushing to a hospital.

The finding that each individual is less likely to help in an emergency when other people are present, partly because responsibility feels shared.

Example: Everyone who sees someone fall in a busy station assumes that somebody else will call for help.