Cognitive Psychology Glossary

The cognitive process of selectively concentrating on relevant information while ignoring other perceivable stimuli.

The ability to perform a task with minimal conscious attention or effort, typically developed through extensive practice.

Perception that is driven by incoming sensory data rather than prior knowledge or expectations.

Organizing individual pieces of information into larger, meaningful units to increase the effective capacity of short-term memory.

The theoretical framework describing the structure and organization of the human cognitive system.

A systematic pattern of deviation from rationality in judgment, caused by heuristic processing or motivational factors.

The psychological discomfort experienced when holding contradictory beliefs, values, or attitudes simultaneously.

The total amount of mental effort being used in working memory at any given time.

A mental representation of the spatial layout of an environment, first described by Edward Tolman.

Memory for facts and events that can be consciously recalled, divided into episodic and semantic memory.

The process of transforming sensory input into a form that can be stored in memory.

A set of higher-order cognitive processes including planning, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and working memory management.

A cognitive shortcut or rule of thumb that simplifies decision-making but can lead to systematic errors.

Memory that influences behavior without conscious awareness, including procedural memory and priming effects.

The cognitive approach that views the mind as a system that encodes, stores, and retrieves information, analogous to a computer.

The disruption of memory retrieval caused by competing information, including proactive and retroactive interference.

The memory system with virtually unlimited capacity that stores information for extended periods, from minutes to a lifetime.

An internal representation of an external reality used to anticipate events, reason, and make decisions.

The cognitive process of organizing and interpreting sensory information to give it meaning.

The influence of exposure to one stimulus on the response to a subsequent related stimulus.

The process of accessing and bringing stored information into conscious awareness.

An organized mental framework of knowledge that guides perception, memory, and interpretation of new information.

A type of declarative memory that stores general knowledge, facts, and concepts independent of personal experience.

Perception that is guided by prior knowledge, expectations, and context rather than raw sensory data.

The principle that memory performance is best when the cognitive processes during retrieval match those used during encoding.