Attention And Memory Flashcards
The experience of being at a party and talking to someone in one part of the room, when you suddenly hear your name being mentioned by someone in another part of the room
Cocktail party phenomenon
Built into and linked with our cognition
Embodied
Occur when the perceptual processes that normally help us correctly perceive the world around us are fooled by a particular situation so that we see something that does not exist or is incorrect
Illusions
The fact that the moon is perceived to be about 50% larger when it is near the horizon than when it is seen overhead, despite the fact that in both cases the moon is the same size and casts the same retinal image
Moon illusion
The line segment in the bottom arrow looks longer to us than the one on the top, even though they are both the same length
Mueller-lyer illusion
The ability to perceive a stimulus as constant despite changes in sensation
Perceptual constancy
Quick, simultaneous movements of the eyes
Saccades
The ability to select certain stimuli in the environment to process, while ignoring distracting information
Selective attention
Decrease in sensitivity of a receptor to a stimulus after constant stimulation
Sensory adaptation
The working together of different senses to create experience
Sensory interaction
An experience in which one sensation (eg hearing a sound) creates experiences in another (eg vision)
Synesthesia
An experimental task in which two messages are presented in different ears
Dichotic listening
The ability to flexibly allocate attentional resources between two or more concurrent tasks
Divided attention
The failure to notice a fully visible object when attention is devoted to something else
Inattentional blindness
The notion that humans have limited mental resources that can be used at a given time
Limited capacity
The ability to select certain stimuli in the environment to process, while ignoring distracting information
Selective attention
A task in which the individual is asked to repeat an auditory message as its presented
Shadowing
The ability to process information for meaning when the individual is not consciously aware
Subliminal perception
The auditory analog of inattentional blindness. People fail to notice an unexpected sound or voice when attention is devoted to other aspects of a scene
Inattentional deafness
A method for studying selective attention in which people focus attention on one auditory stream of information while deliberately ignoring other auditory information
Selective listening
The part of working memory that directs attention and processing
Central executive
Process of organizing information into smaller groups thereby increasing the number of items that can be held in short term memory
Chunking
We learn, often without effort or awareness, to associate neutral stimuli (such as a sound or light) with another stimulus (such as food), which creates a naturally occurring response such as enjoyment
Classical conditioning effects
Auditory sensory memory
Echoic memory
When people can report details of an image over long periods of time (aka photographic memory)
Eidetic imagery
The ability to learn and retrieve new information or episodes in one’s life
Episodic memory
Knowledge or experiences that can be consciously remembered
Explicit memory
Visual sense memory
Iconic memory
A type of long term memory that does not require conscious thought to encode. It’s made without intent
Implicit memory
Storage of information over an extended period of time
Long term memory
Process of repeating information mentally or out loud with the goal of keeping it in memory
Maintenance rehearsal
Name the three memory stages
Sensory, short term, long term
The activation of certain thoughts or feelings that make them easier to think of and act upon
Priming
Our often unexplainable knowledge of how to do things
Procedural memory
Measure of explicit memory that involves bringing from memory information that has been previously remembered
Recall memory
Measure of explicit memory that involves determining whether information has been seen or learned before
Recognition memory test
Assess how much more quickly information is processed or learned when it is studied again after it has already been learned and forgotten
Relearning
The more or less permanent store of knowledge that people have (facts and concepts)
Semantic memory
Brief storage of sensory information
Sensory information
The place where small amounts of information can be temporarily stored for more than a few seconds but usually less than one minute
Short term memory
Two main types of memory
Explicit and implicit
The form of memory we use to hold onto information temporarily, usually for the purpose of manipulation (to process into long term)
Working memory
Memory for events of one’s life
Autobiographical memory
The process occurring after encoding that is believed to stabilize memory traces
Consolidation
The principle stating that the more memories are associated to a particular retrieval cue, the less effective the cue will be in prompting retrieval of any one memory
Cue overload principle
The principle that unusual events (in a context of similar events) will be recalled and recognized better than uniform (non distinctive) events
Distinctiveness
The initial experience of perceiving and learning events
Encoding
The hypothesis that a retrieval cue will be effective to the extent that information encoded from the cue overlaps or matches information in the engram or memory traced
Encoding specificity principle
A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event; also, memory trace
Engrams
Memory for events in a particular time and place
Episodic memory
Vivid personal memories of receiving the news of some momentous and emotional event
Flashbulb memory
Term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event
Memory traces
When erroneous information occurring after an event is remembered as having been part of the original event
Misinformation effect
Strategy for remembering large amounts of information usually involving imaging events occurring in a journey or with some other set of memories cues
Mnemonic devices
Process during learning of taking information in one form and converting it to another form, usually one more easily remembered
Recoding
The process of accessing stored information
Retrieval
The phenomenon whereby events that occur after some particular event of interest will usually cause forgetting of the original event
Retroactive interference
The more or less permanent store of knowledge that people have
Semantic memory
The stage in the learning/memory process that bridges encoding and retrieval; the persistence of memory over time
Storage
Inability to form new memories for facts and events after the onset of amnesia
Anterograde amnesia
Process by which a memory trace is stabilized and transformed into a more durable form
Consolidation
The fading of memories with the passage of time
Decay
Conscious memories for facts and events
Declarative memory
Loss of autobiographical memories from a period in the past in the absence of brain injury or disease
Dissociative amnesia
Process by which information gets into memory
Encoding
Other memories get in the way of retrieving a desired memory
Interference
Inner region of the temporal lobes that includes the hippocampus
Medial temporal lobes
Process by which information is accessed from memory and utilized
Retrieval
Inability to retrieve memories for facts and events acquired before onset of amnesia
Retrograde amnesia
Inability to retrieve memories from just prior to the onset of amnesia with intact memory for more remote events
Temporally graded retrograde amnesia
Five reasons we forget
Information was not encoded in the first place Decay Interference Inadequate retrieval cues Trying not to remember
Memory for an event that never actually occurred, implanted by experimental manipulation or other means.
False memories
Any member of a lineup other than the suspect
Foils
A memory error caused by exposure to incorrect information between the event and later memory test (interview, lineup, court etc)
Misinformation effect
A research subject who plays the part of a witness in a study
Mock witnesses
A selection of normally small photographs of faces given to a witness for the purpose of identifying a perpetrator
Photo spread
A memory template, created through repeated exposure to a particular class of objects or events
Schema (plural: schemata)
