Glossary • 393Broca’s aphasia A condition associated with damage to Broca’s area, in the frontal lobe,
characterized by difficulty in using speech to express thoughts, but with a remaining facility
for understanding speech. (2)
Broca’s area An area in the frontal lobe associated with the production of language. Damage
to this area causes Broca’s aphasia. (2)Candle problem A problem, first described by Duncker, in which a person is given a num-
ber of objects and is given the task of mounting a candle on a wall so it can burn without
dripping wax on the floor. This problem was used to study functional fixedness. (12)
Categorical syllogism A syllogism in which the premises and conclusion describe the
relationship between two categories by using statements that begin with all, no, or
some. (13)
Categorization The process by which objects are placed in categories. (9)
Category Groups of objects that belong together because they belong to the same class of
objects, such as “houses,” “ furniture,” or “schools.” (9)
Category-specific knowledge impairment A result of brain damage in which the patient has
trouble recognizing objects in a specific category. (9)
Causal inference An inference that results in the conclusion that the events described in one
clause or sentence were caused by events that occurred in a previous clause or sentence. See
also Anaphoric inference; Instrument inference. (11)
Cell body Part of a cell that contains mechanisms that keep the cell alive. In some neurons,
the cell body and the dendrites associated with it receive information from other
neurons. (2)
Central executive The part of working memory that coordinates the activity of the phonologi-
cal loop and the visuospatial sketch pad. (5)
Cerebral cortex The 3-mm-thick outer layer of the brain that contains the mechanisms
responsible for higher mental functions such as perception, language, thinking, and problem
solving. (2)
Change blindness Difficulty in detecting changes in similar, but slightly different, scenes that
are presented one after another. The changes are often easy to see once attention is directed
to them, but are usually undetected in the absence of appropriate attention. (4)
Choice reaction time Reacting to one of two or more stimuli. For example, in Donders’
experiment (see Chapter 1), participants had to make one response to one stimulus and a
different response to another stimulus. (1)
Chunk Used in connection with the idea of chunking in memory. A chunk is a collection
of elements that are strongly associated with each other, but are weakly associated with
elements in other chunks. (5)
Chunking Combining small units into larger ones, such as when individual words are
combined into a meaningful sentence. Chunking can be used to increase the capacity of
memory. (5)
Classical conditioning A procedure in which pairing a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that
elicits a response causes the neutral stimulus to elicit that response. (1, 6)
Cocktail party effect The phenomenon that occurs when, in the process of focusing attention
on one message or conversation, a message from another source enters consciousness. This
can occur when a person is focusing attention on a conversation at a party and suddenly
hears his or her name from across the room. (4)
Coding The form in which stimuli are represented in the mind. For example, information can
be represented in visual, semantic, and phonological forms. See also Neural code, which
refers to how stimuli are represented in the firing of neurons. (5)
Cognition The mental processes involved in perception, attention, memory, language, problem
solving, reasoning, and making decisions. (1)
Cognitive economy A feature of some semantic network models in which properties of a cat-
egory that are shared by many members of a category are stored at a higher level node in the
network. For example, the property “can fly” would be stored at the node for “bird” rather
than at the node for “canary.” (9)
Cognitive hypothesis An explanation for the reminiscence bump, which states that memories
are better for adolescence and early adulthood because encoding is better during periods of
rapid change that are followed by stability. (8)33559_14_glossary_p391-410.indd 39333559_14_glossary_p391-410.indd 393 13/04/10 5:47 PM13/04/10 5:47 PM
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