Cognitive Psychology
The Cognitive domain tests how people take in, store, transform, and use information: attention, memory systems, language, problem solving, and judgment. Items usually describe a result and ask which mechanism explains it, so knowing the name of an effect matters less than knowing what produces it.
Memory
- Three-store model: sensory registers (iconic ~1 s, echoic ~4 s), short-term store (about 20–30 s unrehearsed, capacity roughly 7±2 chunks, or about 4 by newer estimates), and long-term store (unlimited).
- Baddeley's working memory: phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, central executive, episodic buffer.
- Long-term memory splits into declarative (episodic, semantic) and nondeclarative (procedural skill, priming, conditioning).
- Craik and Lockhart: deeper, semantic processing yields better retention than rote rehearsal.
- Encoding specificity: retrieval cues that match the encoding context help (context- and state-dependent memory).
- Serial position curve: primacy reflects long-term storage, recency reflects short-term availability.
Attention and thought
- Broadbent's filter model blocks unattended input early; Treisman's attenuation model lets it through weakly, explaining why you hear your own name at a party.
- Divided attention suffers when tasks compete for resources; automatic processes (Stroop interference) resist suppression.
- Heuristics: availability (ease of retrieval), representativeness (similarity to a prototype, with base-rate neglect), anchoring and adjustment. Functional fixedness and mental set block problem solving; means–end analysis reduces the gap to a goal.
Worked example
Participants hear 20 words once and recall them: recall is strong for the first and last few words and weak in the middle. A second group counts backward for 30 seconds before recalling: the recency advantage vanishes while primacy remains. Reasoning: the filled delay displaces the final items from short-term storage, so only items consolidated into long-term memory survive. That is why "recency reflects STM" is defensible, while "primacy reflects STM" is not.
Traps
- Equating working memory with a single short-term store.
- Confusing representativeness with availability: base-rate neglect belongs to representativeness.
- Choosing rehearsal when the item specifies meaning-based study; that is levels of processing.