PSYC 213 Chapter 1: Chapter 1
Document Summary
Affordances (16): the potential functions or uses of stimuli in the real world. What things furnish, for good or ill (gibson). Believed by gibson to be necessary to perceive the meanings of objects. Bit (8): short for binary digit," an event that occurs in a situation with two equally likely outcomes provides one bit" of information. Every time the number of equally likely alternatives doubles, the number of bits goes up by one. Brown-peterson task (15): an experimental paradigm in which subjects are given a set of objects and a number. Subjects immediately begin counting backwards by threes from the number. After a specific interval, subjects are asked to recall the original items. Used to test differences between long- and short-term memories. Channel capacity (12): the maximum amount of information that can be transmitted by an information processing device. Cognitive ethology (17): a new approach that links real-world observations with lab-based investigations.