Cognitive Science Glossary
48 terms from cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology — explained without the jargon. Your brain is the most complex object in the known universe. Here's the vocabulary to understand it.
Working Memory
The cognitive system that temporarily holds and manipulates information needed for complex tasks like reasoning, comprehension, and learning.
Cognitive AbilitiesCognitive Load
The total amount of mental effort being used in working memory at any given time.
Cognitive AbilitiesExecutive Function
A set of higher-order cognitive processes that control and coordinate other cognitive abilities, including planning, flexible thinking, and self-control.
Cognitive AbilitiesFluid Intelligence
The capacity to reason and solve novel problems independent of previously acquired knowledge.
Cognitive AbilitiesCrystallized Intelligence
The ability to use learned knowledge, skills, and experience accumulated over a lifetime.
Cognitive AbilitiesProcessing Speed
The rate at which you take in information, make sense of it, and respond — a fundamental measure of cognitive efficiency.
Cognitive AbilitiesAttention Span
The length of time you can concentrate on a task or stimulus without becoming distracted.
Cognitive AbilitiesPattern Recognition
The cognitive ability to identify regularities, trends, and meaningful structures within data, images, or sequences.
Cognitive AbilitiesSpatial Reasoning
The ability to understand, reason about, and manipulate objects and spaces mentally, including visualizing rotations and transformations.
Cognitive AbilitiesCognitive Flexibility
The mental ability to switch between thinking about different concepts or to think about multiple concepts simultaneously.
Cognitive AbilitiesInhibitory Control
The ability to suppress automatic or prepotent responses when they are inappropriate, enabling deliberate and goal-directed behavior.
Cognitive AbilitiesSelective Attention
The ability to focus on relevant information while ignoring distractions — your brain's noise-canceling filter.
Cognitive AbilitiesSustained Attention
The ability to maintain focus on a task or stimulus over an extended period without losing concentration.
Cognitive AbilitiesDivided Attention
The ability to process and respond to multiple sources of information or tasks at the same time.
Cognitive AbilitiesTask Switching
The cognitive process of shifting attention and mental set from one task to another, involving a measurable performance cost.
Cognitive AbilitiesMental Rotation
The ability to rotate two- or three-dimensional objects in your mind to determine if they are the same shape viewed from different angles.
Cognitive AbilitiesVisual Perception
Your brain's ability to interpret and make sense of visual information from the eyes, including recognizing shapes, colors, depth, and motion.
PsychologyMetacognition
Awareness and understanding of your own thought processes — thinking about thinking.
AssessmentReaction Time
The interval between the presentation of a stimulus and the initiation of a response — a key measure of processing speed.
Cognitive AbilitiesShort-Term Memory
A temporary storage system that holds a limited amount of information for a brief period, typically 15-30 seconds without rehearsal.
Cognitive AbilitiesLong-Term Memory
Your brain's system for storing information over extended periods, from hours to an entire lifetime, with virtually unlimited capacity.
PsychologyDivergent Thinking
A thought process used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions, often associated with creativity and brainstorming.
PsychologyConvergent Thinking
The ability to find a single, correct solution to a well-defined problem by analyzing and synthesizing information.
PsychologyCognitive Bias
Systematic patterns of deviation from rationality in judgment, where inferences about people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion.
Cognitive AbilitiesDecision Making
The cognitive process of selecting a course of action from multiple alternatives, involving both rational analysis and intuitive judgment.
NeuroscienceNeuroplasticity
Your brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life, enabling learning, adaptation, and recovery from injury.
NeuroscienceSynaptic Plasticity
The ability of synapses (connections between neurons) to strengthen or weaken over time in response to increases or decreases in their activity.
NeuroscienceNeural Pathway
A connected series of neurons that transmit signals from one brain region to another, forming the physical basis of habits, skills, and thought patterns.
NeuroscienceMyelination
The process by which nerve fibers are coated with myelin, a fatty insulating sheath that dramatically increases the speed and efficiency of neural signal transmission.
NeurosciencePrefrontal Cortex
The front part of the brain's frontal lobe, responsible for executive functions including planning, decision-making, personality expression, and moderating social behavior.
NeuroscienceHippocampus
A seahorse-shaped brain structure essential for forming new memories, spatial navigation, and converting short-term memories into long-term ones.
NeuroscienceBDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor)
A protein that supports the survival of existing neurons, encourages the growth of new neurons and synapses, and is essential for long-term memory.
NeuroscienceDopamine
A neurotransmitter that plays major roles in reward, motivation, learning, and motor control — your brain's signal that something is worth pursuing.
NeuroscienceCognitive Reserve
Your brain's resilience to neuropathological damage, built up through lifetime intellectual engagement, education, and cognitive stimulation.
Training MethodsBrain Training
Structured cognitive puzzles designed to maintain or sharpen specific mental abilities such as memory, attention, processing speed, and reasoning.
Training MethodsSpaced Repetition
A learning technique where review sessions are spaced out at increasing intervals to exploit the psychological spacing effect for long-term retention.
Training MethodsChunking
A memory strategy that groups individual pieces of information into larger, meaningful units (chunks) to increase the amount that can be held in working memory.
Training MethodsMnemonics
Memory aids that use vivid imagery, patterns, associations, or organizational techniques to encode information in a more memorable way.
Training MethodsDual N-Back
A cognitive task where you simultaneously track two sequences (typically visual position and auditory stimulus) and identify matches from N steps ago.
PsychologyFlow State
A mental state of complete absorption in an activity, characterized by energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process.
AssessmentBrain Age
An estimated measure of cognitive performance relative to population norms by age, indicating whether your brain functions younger or older than your chronological age.
AssessmentIQ (Intelligence Quotient)
A standardized score derived from cognitive tests designed to measure general intellectual ability, with 100 as the population average.
AssessmentStroop Effect
The delay in reaction time when the name of a color is printed in a different ink color, demonstrating the interference between automatic and controlled processing.
NeuroscienceCognitive Decline
The gradual deterioration of cognitive functions such as memory, processing speed, and reasoning that occurs with aging or neurological conditions.
Cognitive AbilitiesMental Fatigue
A state of reduced cognitive performance and increased subjective effort resulting from sustained mental activity.
PsychologyGrowth Mindset
The belief that cognitive abilities and intelligence can be developed through dedication, hard work, and effective strategies — as opposed to being fixed traits.
PsychologyTransfer of Training
The degree to which skills or knowledge learned in one context carry over to performance in a different, untrained context.
PsychologyDeliberate Practice
A structured form of practice that involves focused effort on improving specific aspects of performance, guided by feedback and progressive difficulty.