PSYC 111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Working Memory, Parietal Lobe, Divergent Thinking

• School: Binghamton University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 111
• Professor: Maggie Parker (Ma)

Document Summary

All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering and communicating information. Mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people. Ex: the concept chair includes many items - a baby"s high chair, a reclining chair, a dentist"s chair - all for sitting. A mental image or best example of a category. Ex: people more quickly agree that a robin is a bird than that a penguin is a bird because a robin more resembles our bird prototype. If we move away from our prototypes, category boundaries start to blur. When symptoms don"t fit one of our disease prototypes, we are slow to perceive an illness. Ex: people whose heart attack symptoms (shortness of breath, exhaustion, a dull weight in the chest) don"t match their heart attack prototype (sharp chest pain) may not seek help. When behaviors don"t fit our discrimination prototypes, we often fail to notice prejudices.