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Cognitive Psychology Models and Methods Cheat Sheet
A printable reference covering memory models, attention, decision processes, cognitive methods, and research measures for college psychology.
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Cognitive psychology studies how people perceive, attend, remember, reason, solve problems, and make decisions. This cheat sheet summarizes major models and methods that explain how information is processed in the mind. College students need it to connect theory, experimental tasks, and data patterns across lectures, readings, and research articles. It is especially useful for comparing models rather than memorizing isolated terms. Core ideas include information processing, working memory limits, long-term memory systems, attention selection, and dual-process theories of judgment. Important methods include reaction time tasks, recall and recognition tests, signal detection analysis, neuropsychological evidence, and computational modeling. Many models describe cognition as stages or interacting systems that transform input into behavior. Strong answers in cognitive psychology usually link a model to the evidence that supports or challenges it.
Key Facts
- The modal model of memory describes information flow as sensory memory to short-term memory to long-term memory.
- Working memory is often described by Baddeley's model as a central executive plus the phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, episodic buffer, and links to long-term memory.
- Miller's classic capacity estimate for short-term memory is 7 plus or minus 2 items, although modern estimates are often closer to 4 chunks.
- The serial position effect predicts better recall for early items due to primacy and late items due to recency.
- Signal detection theory separates sensitivity from response bias using hits, misses, false alarms, and correct rejections.
- Reaction time studies assume that longer response times often reflect greater processing demands, conflict, or decision difficulty.
- Dual-process models distinguish fast, automatic, intuitive processing from slower, controlled, analytic processing.
- In an experiment, the independent variable is manipulated by the researcher and the dependent variable is the measured outcome.
Vocabulary
- Working memory
- A limited-capacity system that temporarily holds and manipulates information for thinking, reasoning, and action.
- Schema
- An organized knowledge structure that guides perception, memory, interpretation, and expectations.
- Executive control
- The set of processes that manages attention, task switching, inhibition, planning, and goal-directed behavior.
- Reaction time
- The time between a stimulus and a participant's response, often used to infer mental processing demands.
- Signal detection theory
- A framework for measuring how well a person detects a signal while accounting for both sensitivity and response bias.
- Computational model
- A formal model that uses rules, equations, or simulations to explain and predict cognitive performance.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Treating working memory as the same thing as short-term storage is wrong because working memory includes active manipulation and executive control, not just temporary holding.
- Assuming faster reaction time always means better cognition is wrong because speed can reflect guessing, lower accuracy, or a speed-accuracy tradeoff.
- Confusing availability with accessibility is wrong because information can be stored in memory but still difficult to retrieve at a particular moment.
- Interpreting a correlation as proof of a cognitive mechanism is wrong because correlational evidence does not establish that one variable causes the other.
- Ignoring response bias in detection tasks is wrong because high false alarms can make performance look good unless hits and false alarms are analyzed together.
Practice Questions
- 1 In a recognition memory task, a participant has 42 hits, 8 misses, 12 false alarms, and 38 correct rejections. What are the hit rate and false alarm rate?
- 2 A student recalls the first 4 and last 5 words from a 20-word list better than the middle words. Which memory pattern is shown, and what are its two parts?
- 3 In a Stroop task, the mean reaction time is 620 ms for incongruent trials and 510 ms for congruent trials. What is the interference effect in milliseconds?
- 4 Why might two cognitive models make the same behavioral prediction but still differ in their explanation of the mental processes involved?