Perception, cognition and information processing
What you must know
Cognition covers attention, memory, language, problem solving, and decision making. For memory, know the three-stage model: sensory memory (brief, iconic/echoic), short-term and working-memory models (limited capacity thatdepends on the task, material and measurement; the classic 7±2 immediate-span estimate is not a universal working-memory limit), and long-term memory (effectively unlimited). Distinguish explicit (declarative; episodic and semantic) from implicit (procedural, priming) memory. Know encoding, storage, retrieval and phenomena like the serial position effect (primacy and recency), spacing effect, context-dependent and state-dependent memory, and interference (proactive: old disrupts new; retroactive: new disrupts old).
For thinking, understand heuristics (availability, representativeness, anchoring) and biases (confirmation bias, belief perseverance, overconfidence). Know problem-solving obstacles: functional fixedness, mental set, and the difference between algorithms and heuristics. Language concepts include phonemes (sounds), morphemes (smallest meaning units), syntax, semantics, and the critical-period idea in language acquisition.
Traps
Questions mix proactive and retroactive interference; anchor on direction: old→new is proactive. They confuse availability (ease of recall) with representativeness (match to a prototype). They treat working memory as unlimited. They blur encoding failure with retrieval failure.
Worked example
A student studies French, then Spanish, and finds French harder to recall. Direction: the new learning disrupts the old; that is retroactive interference. Flip the order and it becomes proactive.
Rule of thumb
Name the direction of interference out loud: old disrupting new = proactive; new disrupting old = retroactive.
Perception, representation and evidence
Sensation concerns receiving/transducing stimulation, while perception organizes andinterprets it. Gestalt principles describe patterns such as grouping by proximity or similarity, figure-ground organization and completion. Expectations, context and prior knowledge can influence interpretation; they do not imply that all perception is arbitrary. In social perception, compare the available evidence with the categories or expectations the observer brings. A classroom illusion can show an effect under supplied conditions without proving that every person always perceives identically. Evaluate the task, measurement and sample before generalizing. Separate a model's description from a direct observation, and consider alternative explanations. When applying a theory, identify the particular feature in the case, explain the concept and state what remains unestablished rather than simply naming a psychologist.