Ch 8- Textbook

Question 0

What is encoding?

Answer 0

• The process of getting information into our brain’s memory system

Question 1

What are the 3 forms that memory takes?

Answer 1

1. Recall (ex: a fill-in-the-blank test question)
2. Recognition (ex: a multiple choice test q)
3. Relearning (ex: learning something more quickly when you learn it a second time).

Question 2

What is storage?

Answer 2

• Retaining the brain’s encoded information

Question 3

What is retrieval?

Answer 3

• Later getting encoded information back out

Question 4

What does dual- track processing mean?

Answer 4

• Our brain processes many things simultaneously by means of parallel processing (some things are processes unconsciously)

Question 5

What’s connectionism’s view on memories?

Answer 5

• Views memories as products of interconnected neural networks- specific memories arise from activation patterns within these networks- every time you learn something new, your brain’s neural connections change, forming and strengthening pathways that allow you to interact with and learn from your constantly changing environment

Question 6

What is working memory?

Answer 6

• A newer understanding of short- term memory that focuses on conscious, active processing of incoming information and of information retrieved from long- term memory

Question 7

What is explicit memory?

Answer 7

• Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and ‘declare’

Question 8

What is automatic processing?

Answer 8

• Unconscious encoding of incidental information such as space, time and frequency of well learned information

Question 9

What are implicit memories?

Answer 9

• Non Declarative memories

- Retention independent of conscious recollection

Question 10

What does the brain automatically process information about??

Answer 10

• Space
• Time
• Frequency

Question 11

What is sensory memory?

Answer 11

• Memory that feeds into our active working memory
• Records a momentary image of a scene or an echo of a sound
  Ex: Sperling’s experiments

Question 12

What is iconic memory?

Answer 12

• A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli - a photograph or picture - image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second

Question 13

What is echoic memory?

Answer 13

• A momentary sensory stimuli or auditory stimuli- sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds, even if attention is elsewhere

Question 14

What is priming?

Answer 14

• the activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory
• “memory less memory”- invisible memory, without conscious awareness

Ex: If you see a poster of a missing child, you will unconsciously be primed to interpret ambiguous adult- child associations as a possible abduction

Question 15

What is the serial position effect?

Answer 15

• Our tendency to recall the last and first items in a list

- –> recent vs. Primacy

Question 16

What is retrograde amnesia?

Answer 16

• The inability to retrieve information about on’es past

Question 17

What is anterograde amnesia?

Answer 17

• The inability to form new memories

Question 18

What is storage decay?

Answer 18

• The course of forgetting

- Memories become inaccessible due to a gradual decay of the physical memory trace

Question 19

What is proactive interference?

Answer 19

• The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information

Question 20

What is retroactive interference?

Answer 20

• The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information

Question 21

What is positive transfer?

Answer 21

• Previously learned information (I.e Latin) often facilitates out leaning of new information (I.e french)

Question 22

What is source amnesia?

Answer 22

• Attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, read about, or imagined
• At the heart of many false memories

Question 23

What is déjà vu?

Answer 23

• The eerie sense that “I have experienced this before”- cues from the current situation may subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier response

Question 24

What is long-term potentiation (LTP)?

Answer 24

• An increase in a cell’s firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation
• Believed to be neural basis for learning and memory