STUDY GUIDE: UNIT 7 – COGNITION
AP Psychology
In addition to the information in this study guide, you are also responsible for all of the content in textbook (Chapters8 & 9), all information from class notes/discussions, videos, handouts and graphic organizers.
It’s AP – it’s all fair game
Terms & Concepts
All terms & concepts on page 367 and page 403.
(Terms & concepts are also listed on the back of the APP December calendar)
Big Ideas: Chapter 8
1: How do psychologists describe the human memory system?
Encoding, storage, retrieval
2: What information do we encode automatically? What information do we encode effortfully,
and how does the distribution of practice influence retention?
Rehearsal, spacing effect, serial position effect
3: What effortful processing methods aid in forming memories?
Semantic, visual, and acoustic encoding
Mnemonics, chunking, hierarchies
4: What is sensory memory?
Iconic, echoic, hepatic
5: What are the duration and capacity of short-term and long-term memory?
Miller’s Magical Number Seven
6: How does the brain store our memories?
Long-term potentiation, flashbulb memories
Explicit and implicit memories
Anterograde amnesia (HM)
7: How do we get information out of memory?
Recognition, recall, relearning
Retrieval cues, priming
8: How do external contexts and internal emotions influence memory retrieval?
Context effects, déjà vu, moods and memories
9: Why do we forget?
Encoding failure, storage decay, retrieval failure
Motivated forgetting, repression (Freud)
10: How do misinformation, imagination, and source amnesia influence our memory construction? How real-seeming are false memories?
Memory construction, source amnesia, eyewitness testimony
11: What is the controversy related to claims of repressed and recovered memories?
Memories of abuse
Leading psychological associations’ consensus on childhood abuse
12: How can an understanding of memory contribute to more effective study techniques?
Big Ideas: Chapter 9
1: What are the functions of concepts?
2: What strategies assist our problem solving, and what obstacles hinder it?
Trial and Error, Algorithms, Heuristics, Insight
Fixation
3: How do heuristics, overconfidence, and belief perseverance influence our decisions and
judgments?
Representative heuristics, availability heuristics
Overconfidence, exaggerated fear
4: How do smart thinkers use intuition?
5: What is framing?
Effects of framing
The Belief Perseverance Phenomenon
6: What are the structural components of a language?
The building blocks of language
7: What are the milestones in language development?
Babbling stage, one-word stage, two-word stage
8: How do we learn language?
Operant learning, inborn universal grammar
Critical period
9: What brain areas are involved in language processing?
10: What is the relationship between language and thinking?
Linguistic determinism, word power
Thinking in images
11: What do we know about animal thinking? Do other animals share our capacity for
language?
Common cognitive skills in humans and apes
Insight, problem solving, animal culture
The case of apes