Brain Vocabulary Flashcards
Inattentional Blindness
Not seeing the Gorilla because your concentration is on a Cell phone conversation.
Or your concentration is on a conversation with a passenger in the car.
Confirmation Bias
In a word, Brain washing.
Confirmation Bias gravitates us toward arguments which support our beliefs while we ignore mountains of evidence all around us.
Confirmation Bias is a key ingredient in religion because the person is raised to believe in his religion from the crib. He is totally surrounded by friends and family as he grows up, and is so convinced everything is true that it will never occur to him to do a background check of claimed facts.
He never realizes he is thinking with emotion rather than in the reality of facts and evidence.
Confabulation
The scary weakness we all have for remembering things incorrectly.
Yet we are convinced our memory is accurate and correct.
What is a Conditioned Emotional Response?
Conditioned emotional response is a type of implicit memory that is involved with the conditioned connection between a memory and an emotional reflex.
Conditioned emotional responses are recalled without the need for conscious effort or attention.
Examples: seeing a dog and feeling scared, hearing the lunch bell and getting hungry, or seeing a rollercoaster and feeling sick. Also seeing blood and fainting. Fear of a spider, a dog, water.
What is encoding?
Encoding refers to the process of assigning a meaning to a short-term memory and converting it to a construct that can be stored in the brain.
Encoding includes both memorizing the information, as well as giving the memory an emotional, cognitive, and environmental context.
What is Retrieval?
Retrieval is the recollection of memories that have been encoded and stored in our long-term memories.
The retrieval process involves copying information from long-term memory and adding it to working memory where it can actively be used.
The more a memory has been encoded, elaborated, structured, and organized, the easier it can be retrieved.
What are the two methods of memory Retrieval?
The two methods of retrieval are:
- Recognition: deciding whether one thing, among others, has been previously encountered.
- Recall: actively reconstructing the information of the memory.
Recall is more difficult because it requires direct activation of all components of a memory, whereas recognition provides an initial activation of part of the memory, triggering the activation of additional components.
What are the two types of long term memory?
The two types of long-term memory are:
- Explicit memory (declarative)
- Implicit memory (non-declarative)
- Explicit (declarative) memory is the sub-category of long-term memory that involves the conscious recollection of things and facts.
- Explicit memory includes all those things that are described in words and you are aware of remembering.
- Examples: reciting a phone number, remembering a birthday, and recalling what you ate for breakfast.
What is Implicit Memory?
Implicit (non-declarative) memory is the sub-category of long-term memory that involves the automatic recall of a memory.
Implicit memory includes those memories that are not expressed in words and do not require conscious effort to recall.
Examples: driving a car, riding a bike, and tying your shoes.
The two types of implicit memory are:
- Procedural memory
- Conditioned emotional response
What is procedural memory?
Procedural memory is the type of implicit memory that enables people to recall and improve on cognitive and motor skills.
Procedural memories are accessed and utilized without the need for conscious control or attention.
Examples: reading a book, proper swinging a golf club, throwing a baseball, or flying a plane.
What is Reconstructive memory?
Reconstructive refers to the understanding that memories are scattered throughout the brain in various areas and are reconstructed whenever something must be remembered.
Memories are often altered due to the reconstructive nature of memory.
Reconstructive memory means to build out of blender splatters the original memory you are trying to recall. A splatter here and there are missed or mis-read. Therefore the recalled story always changes a little as time goes by.
What are the two types of Explicit Memory?
The two types of explicit memory are:
- Episodic memory
- Semantic memory
Define Episodic Memory.
Episodic memory is a type of explicit memory that is involved with the recollection of personally experienced events specific of a time, place, and the context surrounding the event.
Episodic memory requires conscious recall in which a person views themselves as an actor in the events.
Examples: remembering what you ate for dinner, what you did on your birthday, or where you went on a family vacation.
Define Semantic Memory.
Semantic memory is the type of explicit memory that involves retaining and recalling worldly knowledge.
Although semantic memory requires conscious effort to remember, the recall occurs quickly and easily, and aids in constructing a mental representation of the world.
Examples: the meaning of words, social customs, the function of objects.
Define Decline Theory.
According to the Decline Theory, forgetting occurs when the memory is not exercised, or the information in question is not retrieved often enough.
