Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as "attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and thinking". Much of the work derived from cognitive psychology has been integrated into various other modern disciplines such as Cognitive Science and of psychological study, including educational psychology, social psychology, personality psychology, abnormal psychology, developmental psychology, linguistics, and economics.
Information processing is the change (processing) of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process that describes everything that happens (changes) in the universe, from the falling of a rock to the printing of a text file from a digital computer system. In the latter case, an information processor is changing the form of presentation of that text file.
Information processing may more specifically be defined in terms used by, Claude E. Shannon as the conversion of latent information into manifest information. Latent and manifest information is defined through the terms of equivocation, dissipation, and transformation.
Semantic memory is one of the two types of declarative or explicit memory. Semantic memory refers to general world knowledge that we have accumulated throughout our lives. This general knowledge is intertwined in experience and dependent on culture. Semantic memory is distinct from episodic memory, which is our memory of experiences and specific events that occur during our lives, from which we can recreate at any given point. For instance, semantic memory might contain information about what a cat is, whereas episodic memory might contain a specific memory of petting a particular cat. We can learn about new concepts by applying our knowledge learned from things in the past. The counterpart to declarative or explicit memory is nondeclarative memory or implicit memory.
The picture superiority effect refers to the phenomenon in which pictures and images are more likely to be remembered than words. This effect has been demonstrated in numerous experiments using different methods. It is based on the notion that "human memory is extremely sensitive to the symbolic modality of presentation of event information". Explanations for the picture superiority effect are not concrete and are still being debated.
The spacing effect is the phenomenon whereby learning is greater when studying is spread out over time, as opposed to studying the same amount of content in a single session. That is, it is better to use spaced presentation rather than massed presentation. Practically, this effect suggests that "cramming" the night before an exam is not likely to be as effective as studying at intervals in a longer time frame. It is important to note, however, that the benefit of spaced presentations does not appear at short retention intervals, in which massed presentations tend to lead to better memory performance. This effect is a desirable difficulty; it challenges the learner but leads to better learning in the long-run.
Explicit memory is one of the two main types of long-term human memory. It is the conscious, intentional recollection of factual information, previous experiences, and concepts. Explicit memory can be divided into two categories: episodic memory, which stores specific personal experiences, and semantic memory, which stores factual information.
Memory has the ability to encode, store and recall information. Memories give an organism the capability to learn and adapt from previous experiences as well as build relationships. Encoding allows the perceived item of use or interest to be converted into a construct that can be stored within the brain and recalled later from short-term or long-term memory. Working memory stores information for immediate use or manipulation which is aided through hooking onto previously archived items already present in the long-term memory of an individual.
Sentence processing takes place whenever a reader or listener processes a language utterance, either in isolation or in the context of a conversation or a text.
Memory is the process of storing and recalling information that was previously acquired. Memory occurs through three fundamental stages: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Storing refers to the process of placing newly acquired information into memory, which is modified in the brain for easier storage. Encoding this information makes the process of retrieval easier for the brain where it can be recalled and brought into conscious thinking. Modern memory psychology differentiates between the two distinct types of memory storage: short-term memory and long-term memory. Several models of memory have been proposed over the past century, some of them suggesting different relationships between short- and long-term memory to account for different ways of storing memory.
Psi-theory, developed by Dietrich Dörner at the University of Bamberg, is a systemic psychological theory covering human action regulation, intention selection and emotion. It models the human mind as an information processing agent, controlled by a set of basic physiological, social and cognitive drives. Perceptual and cognitive processing are directed and modulated by these drives, which allow the autonomous establishment and pursuit of goals in an open environment.
Retrospective memory is the memory of people, words, and events encountered or experienced in the past. It includes all other types of memory including episodic, semantic and procedural. It can be either implicit or explicit. In contrast, prospective memory involves remembering something or remembering to do something after a delay, such as buying groceries on the way home from work. However, it is very closely linked to retrospective memory, since certain aspects of retrospective memory are required for prospective memory.
Priming is a technique whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. For example, the word NURSE is recognized more quickly following the word DOCTOR than following the word BREAD. Priming can be perceptual, semantic, or conceptual. Research, however, has yet to firmly establish the duration of priming effects, yet their onset can be almost instantaneous.
There is evidence suggesting that different processes are involved in remembering something versus knowing whether it is familiar. It appears that "remembering" and "knowing" represent relatively different characteristics of memory as well as reflect different ways of using memory.
Object recognition is the ability to perceive an object's physical properties and apply semantic attributes to it. This process includes the understanding of its use, previous experience with the object, and how it relates to others. Regardless of an object's position or illumination, humans possess the ability to effectively identify and label an object. Humans are one of the few species that possess the ability of invariant visual object recognition. Both "front end" and "back end" processing are required for a species to be able to recognize objects at varying distances, angles, lighting, etc....
Memory plays an important role in a number of aspects of our everyday lives and allows us to recall past experiences, navigate our environments, and learn new tasks. Information about a source of memory contains certain characteristics that reflect the conditions under which the memory representations were attained. The accuracy of their recall varies depending on the circumstances at which they are retrieved. Misattribution of memory refers to the ability to remember information correctly, but being wrong about the source of that information.
Bilingualism is the regular use of two fluent languages, and bilinguals are those individuals who need and use two languages in their everyday lives. A person's bilingual memories are heavily dependent on the person's fluency, the age the second language was acquired, and high language proficiency to both languages. High proficiency provides mental flexibility across all domains of thought and forces them to adopt strategies that accelerate cognitive development. People who are bilingual integrate and organize the information of two languages, which creates advantages in terms of many cognitive abilities, such as intelligence, creativity, analogical reasoning, classification skills, problem solving, learning strategies, and thinking flexibility.
Distributed practice is a learning strategy, where practice is broken up into a number of short sessions – over a longer period of time. Humans and animals learn items in a list more effectively when they are studied in several sessions spread out over a long period of time, rather than studied repeatedly in a short period of time, a phenomenon called the spacing effect. The opposite, massed practice, consists of fewer, longer training sessions. It is generally a less effective method of learning. For example, when studying for an exam dispersing your studying more frequently over a larger period of time will result in more effective learning than intense study the night before.
The characteristics of memory function in autism has been studied for decades. Individuals with autism both have specific difficulties with memory and memory strengths.
Memory difficulty is not part of the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but it is a common difficulty experienced by many individuals with this diagnosis. This article emphasizes declarative and non-declarative memory functions and their connection with autism, but not the relation between autism and working memory.
Among areas of strength are certain types of visual memory and intact rote memory, with some individuals showing very good rote memory.
Bilingual lexical access is an area in psycholinguistics research that studies the activation or retrieval process of the mental lexicon for people who can speak two languages. Bilingual lexical access can be understood as all aspects of word processing, including all the mental activity from the perception of the word from one language until all its lexical knowledge from the target language is available. Research in this field seeks to fully understand these mental processes. Bilingual individuals have two mental lexical representations for an item or concept and are able to successfully select words from one language without significant interference from the other language. Thus, it is important to understand whether these dual representations interact or affect one another. Bilingual lexical access researchers focus on the control mechanisms bilinguals use to suppress the language not in use when in a monolingual mode and the degree to which the related representations within the language not in use are activated. For example, when a Dutch-English bilingual is asked to name a picture of a dog in English, he or she will come up with the English word dog. Bilingual lexical access is the mental process that underlies this seemingly simple task: the process that makes the connection between the "idea" dog and the word dog in the target language. While activating the English word dog, the Dutch word hond , is most likely also in a state of activation.
Social cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of the biological processes underpinning social cognition. Specifically, it uses the tools of neuroscience to study "the mental mechanisms that create, frame, regulate, and respond to our experience of the social world". Social cognitive neuroscience uses the epistemological foundations of cognitive neuroscience, and is closely related to social neuroscience. Social cognitive neuroscience employs human neuroimaging, typically using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Human brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct-current stimulation are also used. In nonhuman animals, direct electrophysiological recordings and electrical stimulation of single cells and neuronal populations are utilized for investigating lower-level social cognitive processes.
