Cognition
What to know
Cognition covers attention, memory, language, problem-solving, and decision-making. Memory has three stages: sensory memory (brief, iconic/echoic), short-term/working memory (capacity about 7±2 chunks, ~20 seconds without rehearsal), and long-term memory (unlimited). Encoding can be automatic or effortful; deep (semantic) processing beats shallow. Types include explicit (episodic, semantic) and implicit (procedural) memory.
Forgetting and retrieval
Ebbinghaus's curve shows rapid early forgetting. Interference (proactive = old disrupts new; retroactive = new disrupts old), decay, and encoding failure explain forgetting. Retrieval cues, context-dependent memory, and the serial position effect (primacy and recency) matter. Memory is reconstructive-Loftus's misinformation research shows leading questions distort recall.
Thinking and language
Concepts and prototypes organize categories. Problem-solving uses algorithms (guaranteed) vs. heuristics (fast rules of thumb). Biases include availability, representativeness, confirmation bias, and fixation/functional fixedness. Language has phonemes, morphemes, syntax, and semantics; Skinner (learning) and Chomsky (innate language acquisition device) represent competing views; the Whorf hypothesis links language and thought.
Traps
Don't swap proactive and retroactive interference. Algorithms are slow but accurate; heuristics fast but error-prone. The misinformation effect concerns memory distortion, not lying.
Rule of thumb
For interference questions, identify which memory is being harmed: if the OLD interferes with NEW, it is proactive; if NEW disrupts OLD, it is retroactive.