ELITE COMPREHENSIVE
ADVANCED PLACEMENT (AP) PSYCHOLOGY
UNIT 2 — COGNITION COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW
GUIDE
THINKING • MEMORY • LANGUAGE • PROBLEM
SOLVING • INTELLIGENCE
SPRING EXAMINATION MAY 2026
Gestalt psychology
• a psychological approach that emphasizes that we often perceive the whole
rather than the sum of the parts
Closure
• the tendency to complete figures that are incomplete
Figure and ground
• the organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out
from their surroundings (the ground).
1|Page
,proximity
• the way relationships are formed between things close to one another
similarity
• the tendency to perceive things that look similar to each other as being part
of the same group
attention
• focusing awareness on a narrowed range of stimuli or events
selective attention
• the ability to focus on only one stimulus from among all sensory input
cocktail party effect
• Ability to concentrate on one voice amongst a crowd
inattentional blindness
• failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere
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, Change blindness
• failing to notice changes in the environment; a form of inattentional
blindness
binocular depth cues
• clues about distance based on the differing views of the two eyes
retinal disparity
• a binocular cue for perceiving depth by comparing images from the retinas
in the two eyes, the brain computes distance—the greater the disparity
(difference) between the two images, the closer the object.
convergence
• A binocular cue for perceiving depth; the extent to which the eyes converge
inward when looking at an object
monocular depth cues
• aspects of a scene that yield information about depth when viewed with
only one eye
3|Page
ADVANCED PLACEMENT (AP) PSYCHOLOGY
UNIT 2 — COGNITION COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW
GUIDE
THINKING • MEMORY • LANGUAGE • PROBLEM
SOLVING • INTELLIGENCE
SPRING EXAMINATION MAY 2026
Gestalt psychology
• a psychological approach that emphasizes that we often perceive the whole
rather than the sum of the parts
Closure
• the tendency to complete figures that are incomplete
Figure and ground
• the organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out
from their surroundings (the ground).
1|Page
,proximity
• the way relationships are formed between things close to one another
similarity
• the tendency to perceive things that look similar to each other as being part
of the same group
attention
• focusing awareness on a narrowed range of stimuli or events
selective attention
• the ability to focus on only one stimulus from among all sensory input
cocktail party effect
• Ability to concentrate on one voice amongst a crowd
inattentional blindness
• failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere
2|Page
, Change blindness
• failing to notice changes in the environment; a form of inattentional
blindness
binocular depth cues
• clues about distance based on the differing views of the two eyes
retinal disparity
• a binocular cue for perceiving depth by comparing images from the retinas
in the two eyes, the brain computes distance—the greater the disparity
(difference) between the two images, the closer the object.
convergence
• A binocular cue for perceiving depth; the extent to which the eyes converge
inward when looking at an object
monocular depth cues
• aspects of a scene that yield information about depth when viewed with
only one eye
3|Page
