Cognitive Psychology Flashcards

Which type of long-term memory involves skills and habits that are expressed through performance rather than conscious recall?

Answer: Procedural (implicit) memory

Procedural memory stores skills and conditioned responses (like riding a bike) that are performed automatically without requiring conscious recollection.

What does the 'levels of processing' model (Craik & Lockhart) propose about memory?

Answer: Deeper, more meaningful processing at encoding leads to better retention

Craik and Lockhart proposed that retention depends on depth of processing, with semantic (meaningful) encoding producing far better memory than shallow structural or phonological processing.

What is 'confirmation bias' in cognitive psychology?

Answer: The tendency to search for and interpret information in ways that confirm existing beliefs

Confirmation bias is the tendency to favor information that confirms pre-existing beliefs and to discount or ignore disconfirming evidence.

Which cognitive phenomenon explains why people often overestimate how much they knew about an event before it occurred?

Answer: Hindsight bias

Hindsight bias (the 'I knew it all along' phenomenon) is the tendency to perceive past outcomes as having been predictable once those outcomes are known.

What is 'chunking' in the context of working memory?

Answer: Grouping individual items into meaningful units to increase effective memory capacity

Chunking involves organizing items into familiar, meaningful groupings, which increases the amount of information that can be held in working memory.

Which model of working memory, developed by Baddeley, includes a central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad?

Answer: Baddeley's multicomponent working memory model

Baddeley's model replaces the concept of a single short-term store with multiple specialized components: a phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, episodic buffer, and central executive.