Test: Psychology and Sociology - 7 - MCAT MCQ

Episodic memory refers to the ability to recall specific personal experiences or events, such as a birthday party or a vacation.

Piaget's preoperational stage, which typically occurs between the ages of 2 and 7, is characterized by egocentrism (difficulty seeing things from others' perspectives) and difficulty understanding conservation (the idea that quantity remains the same despite changes in appearance).

Cognition refers to the mental processes involved in acquiring, processing, and organizing information, including perception, attention, memory, and problem-solving.

The capacity of short-term memory is typically limited to about 7-9 items (known as Miller's magic number), although this can vary depending on factors such as chunking and individual differences.

The hippocampus, a structure located in the medial temporal lobe, plays a critical role in the formation and consolidation of long-term memories.

Heuristics are mental shortcuts or rules of thumb that help in problem-solving and decision-making. They involve using intuition or past experiences to quickly arrive at a solution or judgment.

Extinction in classical conditioning refers to the gradual weakening and eventual disappearance of a conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus is presented without the unconditioned stimulus.

In a fixed-ratio schedule of reinforcement, a reward is delivered after a fixed number of responses or behaviors. For example, winning a prize after winning a certain number of games represents a fixed-ratio schedule.

According to the information-processing model, information is encoded (processed and organized), then stored (retained over time), and finally retrieved (accessed when needed).

The prototype theory of categorization suggests that objects are categorized by comparing them to a mental average or prototype that represents the typical features of that category.

REM sleep, which stands for Rapid Eye Movement sleep, is the stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements, increased brain activity, and vivid dreaming.

Anchoring bias is the tendency to rely heavily on the first piece of information encountered when making judgments or decisions, even if that information is irrelevant or misleading.

Piaget's theory proposes that cognitive development occurs in a sequence of stages, starting with the sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2), followed by the preoperational stage (ages 2 to 7), concrete operational stage (ages 7 to 11), and finally, the formal operational stage (age 11 and beyond).

Selective attention refers to the ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out or shifting attention away from other competing stimuli in the environment.

The linguistic relativity hypothesis suggests that language not only influences but also shapes the way we think and perceive the world around us, affecting our cognitive processes and cultural interpretations.