6.9-6.11 Flashcards
memories are literally “built,” or reconstructed, from the information stored away during encoding.
Constructive processing
tendency of people to falsely believe that they would have accurately predicted an outcome without having been told about it in advance
Hindsight bias
the tendency of misleading information presented after an event to alter the memories of the event itself.
The Misinformation Effect
creation of inaccurate or false memories through the suggestion of others, often while the person is under hypnosis
False-memory syndrome
cannot be created for just any kind of memory content, and that false memories are harder to construct than real ones. The memories must at least be plausible.
false memories
astonishing and rare ability to recall specific events from his or her personal past but also spends an unusually large amount of time thinking about that personal past
also have the inability to forget
hyperthymesia
being able to suppress information that we no longer need makes it easier to remember what we do need
Adaptive forgetting
one of the first researchers to study forgetting.
He memorized a list, waited a specific amount of time, and then tried to retrieve the list, graphing his results each time.
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1913)
.
The result has become a familiar graph:
the curve of forgetting.
happens quickly within the first hour after learning the lists and then tapers off gradually.
forgetting
failure to process information into memory
One of the simplest theories is that some things never get encoded in the first place
Encoding Failure
some physical change in the brain, perhaps in a neuron or in the activity between neurons, which occurs when a memory is formed
Memory Trace
some physical change in the brain, perhaps in a neuron or in the activity between neurons, which occurs when a memory is formed
When these traces are not used over time, they
decay (Memory Trace Decay)
Information that is not brought to attention in sensory memory or continuously rehearsed in STM will fade away.
On the other hand, when referring to LTM, decay theory is usually called
disuse
A possible explanation of LTM forgetting is that although most long-term memories may be stored more or less permanently in the brain, those memories may not always be accessible to attempted retrieval because
other information interferes