Vocabulary

Adoption study: A behavior genetic research method that involves comparison of adopted children to their adoptive and biological parents.
Anchoring: The bias to be affected by an initial anchor, even if the anchor is arbitrary, and to insufficiently adjust our judgments away from that anchor.
Anecdotal evidence: A piece of biased evidence, usually drawn from personal experience, used to support a conclusion that may or may not be correct.
Autobiographical memory: Memory for the events of one’s life.
Awareness: A conscious experience or the capability of having conscious experiences, which is distinct from self-awareness, the conscious understanding of one’s own existence and individuality.
Behavioral genetics: The empirical science of how genes and environments combine to generate behavior.
Biases: The systematic and predictable mistakes that influence the judgment of even very talented human beings.
Big-C Creativity: Creative ideas that have an impact well beyond the everyday life of home or work. At the highest level, this kind of creativity is that of the creative genius.
Bounded awareness: The systematic ways in which we fail to notice obvious and important information that is available to us.
Bounded ethicality: The systematic ways in which our ethics are limited in ways we are not even aware of ourselves.
Bounded rationality: Model of human behavior that suggests that humans try to make rational decisions but are bounded due to cognitive limitations.
Bounded self-interest: The systematic and predictable ways in which we care about the outcomes of others.
Bounded willpower: The tendency to place greater weight on present concerns rather than future concerns.
Cartesian catastrophe: The idea that mental processes taking place outside conscious awareness are impossible.
Causality: In research, the determination that one variable causes—is responsible for—an effect.
Chunk: The process of grouping information together using our knowledge.
Classical conditioning: Describes stimulus-stimulus associative learning.
Conceptual Replication: A scientific attempt to copy the scientific hypothesis used in an earlier study in an effort to determine whether the results will generalize to different samples, times, or situations. The same—or similar—results are an indication that the findings are generalizable.
Confederate: An actor working with the researcher. Most often, this individual is used to deceive unsuspecting research participants. Also known as a “stooge.”
Conscious: Having knowledge of something external or internal to oneself; being aware of and responding to one’s surroundings.
Conscious experience: The first-person perspective of a mental event, such as feeling some sensory input, a memory, an idea, an emotion, a mood, or a continuous temporal sequence of happenings.
Consolidation: The process occurring after encoding that is believed to stabilize memory traces.
Contemplative science: A research area concerned with understanding how contemplative practices such as meditation can affect individuals, including changes in their behavior, their emotional reactivity, their cognitive abilities, and their brains. Contemplative science also seeks insights into conscious experience that can be gained from first-person observations by individuals who have gained extraordinary expertise in introspection.
Convergent thinking: The opposite of divergent thinking, the capacity to narrow in on the single “correct” answer or solution to a given question or problem (e.g., giving the right response on an intelligence tests).
Correlation: In statistics, the measure of relatedness of two or more variables.
Cue overload principle: The principle stating that the more memories that are associated to a particular retrieval cue, the less effective the cue will be in prompting retrieval of any one memory.
Data (also called observations): In research, information systematically collected for analysis and interpretation.
Deductive reasoning: A form of reasoning in which a given premise determines the interpretation of specific observations (e.g., All birds have feathers; since a duck is a bird, it has feathers).
Distinctiveness: The principle that unusual events (in a context of similar events) will be recalled and recognized better than uniform (nondistinctive) events.
Distractor task: A task that is designed to make a person think about something unrelated to an impending decision.
Distribution: In statistics, the relative frequency that a particular value occurs for each possible value of a given variable.
Divergent thinking: The opposite of convergent thinking, the capacity for exploring multiple potential answers or solutions to a given question or problem (e.g., coming up with many different uses for a common object).
EEG: (Electroencephalography) The recording of the brain’s electrical activity over a period of time by placing electrodes on the scalp.
Empirical: Concerned with observation and/or the ability to verify a claim.
Encoding: The pact of putting information into memory.
Encoding: The initial experience of perceiving and learning events.
Encoding specificity principle: The hypothesis that a retrieval cue will be effective to the extent that information encoded from the cue overlaps or matches information in the engram or memory trace.
Engrams: A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event; also, memory trace.
Episodic memory: Memory for events in a particular time and place.
Eureka experience: When a creative product enters consciousness.
Exact Replication (also called Direct Replication): A scientific attempt to exactly copy the scientific methods used in an earlier study in an effort to determine whether the results are consistent. The same—or similar—results are an indication that the findings are accurate.
Fact: Objective information about the world.
Falsified data (faked data): Data that are fabricated, or made up, by researchers intentionally trying to pass off research results that are inaccurate. This is a serious ethical breach and can even be a criminal offense.
Falsify: In science, the ability of a claim to be tested and—possibly—refuted; a defining feature of science.
First-person perspective: Observations made by individuals about their own conscious experiences, also known as introspection or a subjective point of view. Phenomenology refers to the description and investigation of such observations.
Flashbulb memory: Vivid personal memories of receiving the news of some momentous (and usually emotional) event.
Framing: The bias to be systematically affected by the way in which information is presented, while holding the objective information constant.
G: Short for “general factor” and is often used to be synonymous with intelligence itself.
g or general mental ability: The general factor common to all cognitive ability measures, “a very general mental capacity that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—‘catching on,’ ‘making sense of things,’ or ‘figuring out’ what to do” (Gottfredson, 1997, p. 13).
Generalize: In research, the degree to which one can extend conclusions drawn from the findings of a study to other groups or situations not included in the study.
Habituation: Occurs when the response to a stimulus decreases with exposure.
Heritability coefficient: An easily misinterpreted statistical construct that purports to measure the role of genetics in the explanation of differences among individuals.
Heuristics: cognitive (or thinking) strategies that simplify decision making by using mental short-cuts
Hypothesis: A tentative explanation that is subject to testing.
Implicit learning: Occurs when we acquire information without intent that we cannot easily express.
Implicit memory: A type of long-term memory that does not require conscious thought to encode. It's the type of memory one makes without intent.
Incidental learning: Any type of learning that happens without the intention to learn.
Induction: To draw general conclusions from specific observations.
Inductive reasoning: A form of reasoning in which a general conclusion is inferred from a set of observations (e.g., noting that “the driver in that car was texting; he just cut me off then ran a red light!” (a specific observation), which leads to the general conclusion that texting while driving is dangerous).
Intelligence: An individual’s cognitive capability. This includes the ability to acquire, process, recall and apply information.
Intentional learning: Any type of learning that happens when motivated by intention.
IQ: Short for “intelligence quotient.” This is a score, typically obtained from a widely used measure of intelligence that is meant to rank a person’s intellectual ability against that of others.
Latent inhibition: The ability to filter out extraneous stimuli, concentrating only on the information that is deemed relevant. Reduced latent inhibition is associated with higher creativity.
Levels of analysis: In science, there are complementary understandings and explanations of phenomena.
Little-c creativity: Creative ideas that appear at the personal level, whether the home or the workplace. Such creativity needs not have a larger impact to be considered creative.
Memory traces: A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event.
Mere-exposure effects: The result of developing a more positive attitude towards a stimulus after repeated instances of mere exposure to it.
Metacognition: Describes the knowledge and skills people have in monitoring and controlling their own learning and memory.
Misinformation effect: When erroneous information occurring after an event is remembered as having been part of the original event.
Mnemonic devices: A strategy for remembering large amounts of information, usually involving imaging events occurring on a journey or with some other set of memorized cues.
Multicultural experiences: Individual exposure to two or more cultures, such as obtained by living abroad, emigrating to another country, or working or going to school in a culturally diverse setting.
Nonassociative learning: Occurs when a single repeated exposure leads to a change in behavior.
Norm: Assessments are given to a representative sample of a population to determine the range of scores for that population. These “norms” are then used to place an individual who takes that assessment on a range of scores in which he or she is compared to the population at large.
Null-hypothesis significance testing (NHST): In statistics, a test created to determine the chances that an alternative hypothesis would produce a result as extreme as the one observed if the null hypothesis were actually true.
Objective: Being free of personal bias.
Openness to experience: One of the factors of the Big Five Model of personality, the factor assesses the degree that a person is open to different or new values, interests, and activities.
Operant conditioning: Describes stimulus-response associative learning.
Originality: When an idea or solution has a low probability of occurrence.
Overconfident: The bias to have greater confidence in your judgment than is warranted based on a rational assessment.
Perceptual learning: Occurs when aspects of our perception changes as a function of experience.
Population: In research, all the people belonging to a particular group (e.g., the population of left handed people).
Priming: The process by which exposing people to one stimulus makes certain thoughts, feelings or behaviors more salient.
Probability: A measure of the degree of certainty of the occurrence of an event.
Probability values: In statistics, the established threshold for determining whether a given value occurs by chance.
Pseudoscience: Beliefs or practices that are presented as being scientific, or which are mistaken for being scientific, but which are not scientific (e.g., astrology, the use of celestial bodies to make predictions about human behaviors, and which presents itself as founded in astronomy, the actual scientific study of celestial objects. Astrology is a pseudoscience unable to be falsified, whereas astronomy is a legitimate scientific discipline).
Quantitative genetics: Scientific and mathematical methods for inferring genetic and environmental processes based on the degree of genetic and environmental similarity among organisms.
Recoding: The ubiquitous process during learning of taking information in one form and converting it to another form, usually one more easily remembered.
Remote associations: Associations between words or concepts that are semantically distant and thus relatively unusual or original.
Representative: In research, the degree to which a sample is a typical example of the population from which it is drawn.
Retrieval: The process of accessing stored information.
Retroactive interference: The phenomenon whereby events that occur after some particular event of interest will usually cause forgetting of the original event.
Sample: In research, a number of people selected from a population to serve as an example of that population.
Sample Size: The number of participants in a study. Sample size is important because it can influence the confidence scientists have in the accuracy and generalizability of their results.
Satisfaction: Correspondence between an individual’s needs or preferences and the rewards offered by the environment.
Satisfactoriness: Correspondence between an individual’s abilities and the ability requirements of the environment.
Scientific theory: An explanation for observed phenomena that is empirically well-supported, consistent, and fruitful (predictive).
Semantic memory: The more or less permanent store of knowledge that people have.
Sensitization: Occurs when the response to a stimulus increases with exposure
Specific abilities: Cognitive abilities that contain an appreciable component of g or general ability, but also contain a large component of a more content-focused talent such as mathematical, spatial, or verbal ability; patterns of specific abilities channel development down different paths as a function of an individual’s relative strengths and weaknesses.
Standardize: Assessments that are given in the exact same manner to all people . With regards to intelligence tests standardized scores are individual scores that are computed to be referenced against normative scores for a population (see “norm”).
Stereotype threat: The phenomenon in which people are concerned that they will conform to a stereotype or that their performance does conform to that stereotype, especially in instances in which the stereotype is brought to their conscious awareness.
Storage: The stage in the learning/memory process that bridges encoding and retrieval; the persistence of memory over time.
System 1: Our intuitive decision-making system, which is typically fast, automatic, effortless, implicit, and emotional.
System 2: Our more deliberative decision-making system, which is slower, conscious, effortful, explicit, and logical.
Third-person perspective: Observations made by individuals in a way that can be independently confirmed by other individuals so as to lead to general, objective understanding. With respect to consciousness, third-person perspectives make use of behavioral and neural measures related to conscious experiences.
Transfer-appropriate processing: A principle that states that memory performance is superior when a test taps the same cognitive processes as the original encoding activity.
Twin studies: A behavior genetic research method that involves comparison of the similarity of identical (monozygotic; MZ) and fraternal (dizygotic; DZ) twins.
Type I error: In statistics, the error of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is true.
Type II error: In statistics, the error of failing to reject the null hypothesis when it is false.
Unconscious: Not conscious; the part of the mind that affects behavior though it is inaccessible to the conscious mind.
Under-determined or misspecified causal models: Psychological frameworks that miss or neglect to include one or more of the critical determinants of the phenomenon under analysis.
Unusual uses: A test of divergent thinking that asks participants to find many uses for commonplace objects, such as a brick or paperclip.
Value: Belief about the way things should be.
Working memory: The form of memory we use to hold onto information temporarily, usually for the purposes of manipulation.