Chapter 4 Flashcards
Short-term memory r
refers to the memory system that is responsible for holding onto a small amount of information that has been recently taken in from the environment.
Long Term Memory
Long-term memory has a large capacity and contains your memory for experiences and information that have accumulated throughout your lifetime.
chunk
is a memory unit that consists of several components that are strongly associated with one another.
Brown/Peter&Peterson technique
Involves presenting participants with some items that they are instructed to remember. Participants then perform a distracting task. After spending some time on the distracting task, participants are subsequently asked to recall the original items.
Rehearsal
means repeating the items silently
serial-position effect
refers to the U-shaped relationship between a word’s position in a list and its probability of accurate recall.
recency effect
better reca;; for items at the end of a list
primacy effect
enhanced recall accuracy for items at the beginning og the list.
semantics
the meaning of words and sentences
Proactive Interference ( PI)
People have trouble learning new material because previously learned material keeps interfering with their new learning
release from proactive interference
A memory phenomenon in which proactive interference is reduced when a person switches from one category of stimuli, to a new category ( e.g. a person may initially see the names of fruits, but then he or she sees the names of occupations ). This release from proactive interference leads to increased recall for the new category
Information-processing approach
is one approach to cognition, arguing that a) our mental processes are similar to the operations of a computer b) information progresses through our cognitive system in a series of stages, one step at a time.
Atkinson-Shrifrin model
proposed that memory involves a sequence of separate steps . In each step, information is transferred from one storage area to another.
Sensory memory
is a storage system that records information from each of the senses with reasonable accuracy.
control processes
intentional strategies - such as rehearsal - that people may use to improve their memory