AAMC FL Practice Exam 2025 – 400 Free Practice Questions to Pass the Exam

The concept being described is priming. Priming refers to an implicit memory effect where previous exposure to a stimulus influences how an individual responds to a subsequent, related stimulus. This can involve activating certain associations in memory before the person is exposed to the new stimulus, which can enhance recognition or influence decisions and interpretations.

For example, if someone is shown the word "yellow," they may be quicker to recognize the word "banana" later on, due to the association between the two. This effect showcases how the brain organizes and retrieves information based on previous experiences, allowing earlier information to impact later processing without conscious awareness.

Other concepts like hindsight bias, confirmation bias, and self-serving bias focus on different cognitive processes. Hindsight bias involves believing that past events were more predictable after they’ve occurred. Confirmation bias refers to the tendency to search for, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs. Self-serving bias is the tendency to attribute positive events to one's own character but attribute negative events to external factors. Each of these biases relates more to cognitive distortion or interpretation rather than the influence of prior exposure on cognitive processing as seen in priming.