Glossary • 407Similarity, law of Law of perceptual organization that states that similar things appear to be
grouped together. (3)
Simple reaction time Reacting to the presence or absence of a single stimulus (as opposed to
having to choose between a number of stimuli before making a response). See also Choice
reaction time. (1)
Simplicity, law of See Pragnanz, law of. (3)
Single dissociation A situation that occurs in cases of brain damage, in which the damage
causes a problem in one function while not affecting other functions. A single dissociation
occurs when one function is present and another is absent. See also Double dissociation. (3)
Situation model A mental representation of what a text is about. (11)
Size constancy The tendency to perceive an object as remaining the same size even if it is
viewed from different distances. This leads to the conclusion that perception of an object’s
size does not depend solely on the size of its image on the receptors. (3)
Social exchange theory An important aspect of human behavior is the ability for two people
to cooperate in a way that is beneficial to both people. According to the evolutionary per-
spective on cognition, application of this theory can lead to the conclusion that detecting
cheating is an important part of the brain’s cognitive makeup. This idea has been used to
explain the results of the Wason four-card problem. (13)
Source misattribution Occurs when the source of a memory is misidentified. Equivalent toTesting for Source Monitoring
Source monitoring The process by which people determine the origins of memories,
knowledge, or beliefs. Remembering that you heard about something from a particular
person would be an example of source monitoring. (8)
Source monitoring error Misidentifying the source of a memory. Equivalent to source
misattribution. (8)
Source problem (or story) A problem or story that is analogous to the target problem and
which therefore provides information that can lead to a solution to the target problem. See
also Analogical problem solving; Target problem. (12)
Spacing effect The advantage in performance caused by short study sessions separated by
breaks from studying. (7)
Spatial representation A representation in which different parts of an image can be described
as corresponding to specific locations in space. See also Depictive representation. (10)
Specific (subordinate) level The level in Rosch’s categorization scheme that is a level below the
basic level (e.g., “kitchen table” for the basic category “table”). See also Basic level; Global
(superordinate) level. (9)
Specificity coding The representation of a specific stimulus by the firing of neurons that
respond only to that stimulus. An example would be the signaling of a person’s face
by the firing of a neuron that responds only to that person’s face. See also Grandmother
cell. (2)
Speech segmentation The process of perceiving individual words within the continuous flow
of the speech signal. (3, 11)
Spreading activation Activity that spreads out along any link in a semantic network that is
connected to an activated node. (9)
Standard model of consolidation Proposes that memory retrieval depends on the hippocampus
during consolidation, but that once consolidation is complete, retrieval no longer depends
on the hippocampus. (7)
State-dependent learning The principle that memory is best when a person is in the same state
for encoding and retrieval. This principle is related to encoding specificity. (7)
Stereotype An oversimplified generalization about a group or class of people that often
focuses on negative characteristics. See also Illusory correlation. (13)
Stimulus salience Bottom-up factors that determine attention to elements of a scene. Examples
are color, contrast, and orientation. The meaningfulness of the images, which is a top-down
factor, does not contribute to stimulus salience. See also Salience map. (4)
Stroop effect An effect originally studied by J. R. Stroop, using a task in which a person is
instructed to respond to one aspect of a stimulus, such as the color of ink that a word is
printed in, and ignore another aspect, such as what the word spells. The Stroop effect refers
to the fact that people find this task difficult when the ink color differs from what the word
spells. (4)33559_14_glossary_p391-410.indd 40733559_14_glossary_p391-410.indd 407 13/04/10 5:47 PM13/04/10 5:47 PM
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