2 Cognition
- Syllabus
- 2025
- Section
- 2
- Level
- —
2.1 Perception
- Syllabus
- 2025
- Topic
- 2.1
- Level
- —
Perception Filters and Organizes Sensation
| Processing route | Primary influence |
|---|---|
| Bottom-up processing | External sensory information builds the percept |
| Top-down processing | Prior expectations guide interpretation of sensory information |
Schemas and perceptual sets are internal filters: what a person already expects can make one interpretation more likely. Context, experience, and cultural experiences and expectations are external factors that also filter what is perceived. Perception usually reflects an interaction rather than only one route.
| Gestalt principle | Organization move |
|---|---|
| Closure | Perceive an incomplete pattern as complete |
| Figure–ground | Separate a focal object from its background |
| Proximity | Group nearby elements |
| Similarity | Group elements that share features |
Attention selects only part of the available input. The cocktail party effect shows selective attention to personally relevant information, such as one’s name, in a distracting setting. Change blindness shows the limit: an environmental change may go unperceived when attention is elsewhere. Missing the change does not mean the eyes received no stimulation.
Depth, Constancy, and Visual Illusions
| Cue family | Information used | Included cues |
|---|---|---|
| Binocular | Comparison of input from both eyes | Retinal disparity: the retinal images differ; convergence: the brain merges the images |
| Monocular | Information available to one eye and usable on a flat surface | Relative clarity, relative size, texture gradient, linear perspective, interposition |
Depth cues make a two-dimensional retinal image useful for judging three-dimensional distance. The same rules can create an illusion of depth on a flat image, so a coherent interpretation is not always a literal property of the stimulus.
Visual perceptual constancies maintain a stable perception of an object even when its image in the visual field changes. Apparent movement is the complementary reminder that the visual system can perceive motion even when objects are not actually moving.
Binocular cues require information from both eyes; monocular cues do not. AP Psychology limits monocular depth cues here to the five listed in the table.
2.2 Thinking, Problem-Solving, Judgments, and Decision Making
- Syllabus
- 2025
- Topic
- 2.2
- Level
- —
How Thinking Solves—and Creates—Problems
| Mental structure/process | Function |
|---|---|
| Concept | Category that forms a basis for thought |
| Prototype | Ideal example used to represent a concept |
| Schema | Framework for organizing thought |
| Assimilation | Fit new information into an existing schema without changing it |
| Accommodation | Change a schema so it incorporates new information |
| Problem-solving strategy | Benefit | Risk or limit |
|---|---|---|
| Algorithm | Attempts all possible solutions until the correct one is found | Can require more time or effort |
| Heuristic | Uses a mental shortcut for a faster judgment | Can produce systematic errors |
| Representativeness heuristic | Judges by prior expectations or stereotypes | Similarity may outweigh relevant evidence |
| Availability heuristic | Uses the first or most vivid example recalled | Ease of recall may be mistaken for likelihood |
| Influence | How judgment can shift |
|---|---|
| Mental set | Reuse a previously successful approach even when another may fit better |
| Priming | Surrounding or prior exposure changes what comes readily to mind |
| Framing | Different presentation of the same choice changes a decision |
| Gambler’s fallacy | Misjudge later outcomes based on earlier random outcomes |
| Sunk-cost fallacy | Continue because resources were already spent rather than because the next choice is best |
Executive functions generate, organize, plan, and carry out goal-directed behavior and support critical thinking. Creativity generates novel ideas and uses divergent thinking to produce multiple possibilities, unlike convergent thinking toward one answer. Functional fixedness hinders creativity when an object or idea is considered only in its usual role.
A heuristic is not automatically irrational and an algorithm is not automatically better: heuristics trade completeness for efficiency. The AP task is to explain the mechanism and identify when it can bias a judgment.
2.3 Introduction to Memory
- Syllabus
- 2025
- Topic
- 2.3
- Level
- —
Memory Has Types, Systems, and Depth
| Memory type | What distinguishes it | Included form or use |
|---|---|---|
| Explicit | Easier to describe or explain consciously | Episodic memory for events; semantic memory for learned knowledge |
| Implicit | More difficult to describe or explain consciously | Procedural memory for procedures and processes |
| Prospective | Oriented toward remembering a future action | Carrying out an intended action later |
Long-term potentiation provides a biological process for memory: frequent activation strengthens synaptic connections between neurons. This gives repeated neural activity a lasting effect that can support later memory processing.
| Model | Main claim | Key components |
|---|---|---|
| Working-memory model | Active processing dynamically coordinates information toward long-term memory | Central executive, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad |
| Multi-store model | Information passes through interacting stores to be remembered | Sensory memory (iconic and echoic), short-term memory, long-term memory; automatic and effortful processing affect encoding, storage, and retrieval |
| Levels-of-processing model | Encoding depth affects memory | Structural → phonemic → semantic, from shallowest to deepest |
A remembered life event is episodic explicit memory; remembered factual knowledge is semantic explicit memory; knowing how to perform a practiced procedure is procedural implicit memory; remembering to complete a future task is prospective memory. These labels classify content, while the three models explain processing structure or encoding depth.
Do not treat working memory and short-term memory as interchangeable labels in every model. Working memory emphasizes active, component-based processing; the multi-store model emphasizes movement among stores.
2.4 Encoding Memories
- Syllabus
- 2025
- Topic
- 2.4
- Level
- —
Encoding Determines What Memory Can Use
Encoding uses processes and strategies to get information into memory. Because later storage and retrieval can operate only on what was encoded, the organization, associations, timing, and order used during learning can change later remembering.
| Encoding strategy | How it organizes information |
|---|---|
| Mnemonic device | Adds a memorable association; method of loci links information with imagined locations |
| Chunking | Groups separate items into meaningful units |
| Categories | Groups information by shared meaning or features |
| Hierarchies | Nests broad groups and narrower subgroups |
| Practice pattern | Timing | Encoding relationship |
|---|---|---|
| Massed practice | Information encoded all at once | Contrasts with spacing over time |
| Distributed practice | Encoding spread across time | The spacing effect predicts meaningful differences in encoding and consolidation |
The serial-position effect concerns where information appears, not how practice is scheduled. Items at the beginning of a list are more memorable through the primacy effect; items at the end are more memorable through the recency effect; middle items are less favored by either position.
Spacing and serial position are different mechanisms: spacing compares learning all at once with learning over time, while serial position compares beginning, middle, and end locations in a sequence.
2.5 Storing Memories
- Syllabus
- 2025
- Topic
- 2.5
- Level
- —
What Keeps a Memory Available
Storage retains encoded information over time. Sensory memory, short-term memory, working memory, and long-term memory differ in duration, capacity, and the kind of content they hold or process. The CED requires comparing these dimensions rather than assuming every memory system stores information in the same way.
| Rehearsal process | What the learner does | Storage relationship |
|---|---|---|
| Maintenance rehearsal | Repeats information over time | Prolongs availability through continued rehearsal |
| Elaborative rehearsal | Rehearses by adding meaning and connections | Promotes stronger retention |
Highly superior autobiographical memory may indicate biological processes that support unusually strong storage. More generally, autobiographical memory helps explain why information connected with one’s own life or self can be especially memorable: self-relevance supplies an organized network of meaning.
| Limitation or impairment | Storage-related distinction |
|---|---|
| Retrograde amnesia | Loss involving memories from before the impairment |
| Anterograde amnesia | Difficulty forming or storing new memories after the impairment |
| Alzheimer’s disease | Physical impairment that can negatively affect memory storage |
| Infantile amnesia | Developmental limitation involving early-life memories |
Repeated exposure is not automatically elaboration. Maintenance rehearsal repeats; elaborative rehearsal connects information with meaning. Also, exceptional autobiographical memory is evidence of possible biological storage processes, not proof that all autobiographical memories are perfectly accurate.
2.6 Retrieving Memories
- Syllabus
- 2025
- Topic
- 2.6
- Level
- —
Retrieval Depends on Cues and Practice
| Retrieval process | Cue relationship |
|---|---|
| Recall | Produce remembered information without provided cues |
| Recognition | Identify remembered information with help from retrieval cues |
| Retrieval effect | Match with encoding |
|---|---|
| Context-dependent memory | Same environmental space |
| Mood-congruent memory | Same or relevant mood |
| State-dependent memory | Same physical state |
These effects show that information present during encoding can later function as a retrieval route. Matching conditions do not create a missing memory; they can make stored information easier to access by reinstating associated cues.
Retrieval practice strengthens the process of getting information out of memory. The testing effect predicts that practicing retrieval can improve later retrieval. Metacognition—monitoring one’s own learning and knowing—helps direct practice toward information that is not yet reliably retrievable.
Recognition is usually more cue-supported than recall, but it is still retrieval. Rereading exposes information again; it is not the same operation as actively retrieving it.
2.7 Forgetting and Other Memory Challenges
- Syllabus
- 2025
- Topic
- 2.7
- Level
- —
Why Memories Fail or Change
The forgetting curve shows a time pattern: forgetting is rapid soon after initial learning and then levels off. Time matters, but the curve does not claim that every forgotten item failed for the same reason.
| Mechanism | Why access fails |
|---|---|
| Encoding failure | Information was not adequately entered into memory |
| Proactive interference | Earlier information disrupts access to later learning |
| Retroactive interference | Later information disrupts access to earlier learning |
| Inadequate retrieval | The memory may be stored but current cues do not access it; tip-of-the-tongue is an example |
| Repression | Psychodynamic theorists propose forgetting as defense of the ego from distress |
| Accuracy challenge | What can go wrong |
|---|---|
| Misinformation effect | Later misleading information changes remembered details |
| Source amnesia | Information is remembered but its source is not correctly remembered |
| Constructive memory | Remembering rebuilds an account rather than replaying an exact record |
| Imagination inflation | Imagining an event can increase its apparent familiarity or remembered plausibility |
Memory consolidation helps stabilize information, but later reconstruction can still alter accuracy. A confident or vivid memory can therefore be accessible yet contain an error.
Repression is presented as a psychodynamic belief, not as the universal explanation for forgetting. Also distinguish forgetting from distortion: source amnesia and misinformation may leave a person with a memory, but not an accurate one.
2.8 Intelligence and Achievement
- Syllabus
- 2025
- Topic
- 2.8
- Level
- —
What Does Intelligence Mean?
Intelligence is a psychological construct: researchers infer it from performance rather than observing it directly. There is no complete consensus about one definition, so any test begins with a theoretical decision about what counts as intelligence.
| Account | Main claim | What a score is meant to represent |
|---|---|---|
| General ability (g) | A broad ability contributes across many cognitive tasks | A common factor underlying performance across tasks |
| Multiple abilities | Intelligence consists of several distinguishable abilities | A profile or combination of different abilities rather than one undivided capacity |
A person who performs strongly on one kind of task but less strongly on another illustrates the debate: a general-ability account looks for the common capacity behind both results, whereas a multiple-abilities account emphasizes the different strengths being sampled.
A test score does not settle the theoretical debate. Definitions and measures can reflect bias, so interpret a score as evidence produced by a particular model and assessment—not as a complete, context-free description of a person.
What Makes an Intelligence Test Useful?
Early formal intelligence tests produced an intelligence quotient (IQ) by dividing mental age by chronological age. Modern IQ scores may be used to identify students for educational services, but describing or labeling cognitive abilities and disabilities is outside AP Psychology exam scope.
| Criterion | Question it answers | AP examples |
|---|---|---|
| Standardization | Was the test administered under consistent procedures and environments? | The same directions and testing conditions are used |
| Reliability | Does the test yield similar results consistently? | Test-retest compares occasions; split-half compares parts of the test |
| Validity | Does the test measure what it is designed to measure? | Construct validity concerns the intended construct; predictive validity concerns later outcomes |
| Socio-cultural responsiveness | Does design and use attend to cultural context and potential inequity? | Researchers seek to reduce stereotype threat and inequity associated with stereotype lift |
A test can satisfy one criterion and fail another. Consistent scores show reliability, not automatically validity; perfectly uniform administration shows standardization, not automatically fairness or accurate measurement of the intended construct.
Testing context can change performance. Stereotype threat can create pressure connected to a negative stereotype, while stereotype lift can create an advantage when comparison with a negatively stereotyped group affects performance. Responsiveness aims to reduce these context-linked inequities.
Intelligence Scores in Social Context
The Flynn Effect is the general rise in IQ scores across much of the world over time. The CED connects this pattern to societal factors such as higher socioeconomic status and improved access to health care and nutrition, showing that scores can change with social conditions.
Interpret group data carefully:
- IQ scores tend to vary more within a group than between groups.
- A group average does not describe every individual in that group.
- Personal and sociocultural bias can affect how an individual score is interpreted and linked to other outcomes.
- Poverty, discrimination, and educational inequity can negatively influence scores.
When two groups have different average scores, the difference alone does not identify a cause. A defensible interpretation considers testing conditions, unequal opportunities and resources, bias, and the large variation among individuals within each group.
Scores are not neutral once institutions act on them. Intelligence tests have been used to restrict access to jobs, military ranks, educational institutions, and immigration to the United States. This history is evidence for evaluating how quantitative scores are interpreted and used, not a reason to infer an individual's worth from a score.
Achievement, Aptitude, and Mindset
| Test type | Intended purpose | Example interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Achievement test | Measure what someone currently knows | Performance is evidence of learned knowledge at the time of testing |
| Aptitude test | Predict how someone may perform in the future | Performance is used as a forecast, not a direct inventory of everything already learned |
| Belief about intelligence | Likely academic experience |
|---|---|
| Fixed mindset | Intelligence is viewed as fixed from birth, so difficulty may be interpreted as evidence of an unchangeable limit |
| Growth mindset | Intelligence is viewed as malleable through experience, so difficulty may be interpreted as part of learning and improvement |
Mindset can affect academic achievement because beliefs shape how a learner experiences challenge and responds to setbacks. The key relationship is between the belief about malleability and achievement-related behavior or experience; mindset is not itself an achievement or aptitude test score.
Do not treat an aptitude result as a guaranteed future outcome or an achievement result as a complete measure of intelligence. Each assessment supports conclusions only about its intended purpose, and academic outcomes can also be affected by experience and context.