Chapter 7 - Key Terms Flashcards
The ability to store and retrieve information
Memory
A deficit in long-term memory - resulting from disease, brain injury, or psychological trauma - in which the individual loses the ability to retrieve vast quantities of information
amnesia
A condition in which people lose the ability to form new memories
Anterograde amnesia
A facilitation in the response to a stimulus due to a recent experience with that stimulus or a related stimulus
priming
a condition in which people lose past memories, such as memories for events, facts, people, or even personal information
Retrograde amnesia
Memory that is expressed through responses, actions, or reactions
Implicit Memory
Memory that is consciously retrieved
Explicit Memory
A type of implicit memory that involves skills and habits
Procedural Memory
memory for one’s past experiences that are identified by a time and place
Episodic memory
memory for knowledge of facts independent of personal experience
Semantic memory
involved in formation of both episodic and semantic memories
Medial temporal lobes
necessary for forming new episodic memories
but not for retrieving older episodic memories
Hippocampus
The 3 stages of memory
Encoding —> Storage –> Retrieval
The process by which the perception of a stimulus or event gets transformed into memory
Encoding
Information that can be coded verbally and visually will be remembered more easily than information that can be coded only verbally
Dual-coding hypothesis
The more deeply an item is encoded and the more meaning it has, the better it is remembered
Levels of processing model
Repeating the item over and over
Maintenance rehearsal
Encoding the information in more meaningful ways (e.g. thinking about the item conceptually)
Elaborative rehearsal
Cognitive structures in long-term memory that
help us perceive, organize, process, and
understand information
schemas
Organizing information into meaningful units to
make it easier to remember
Chunking
Learning aids or strategies that improve recall
through the use of retrieval cues
Mnemonics
The mnemonic strategy of associating items you want to remember with physical locations
Method of loci
Memory system that very briefly stores sensory
information in close to its original sensory form
Sensory memory
When you look at something and quickly glance away, you can briefly picture the image and recall some of its details
Iconic memory
Being able to repeat back the last few words someone said, even if you weren’t paying attention
Echoic memory
Memory storage system that briefly holds a limited amount of information in awareness
Short-term memory
An active processing system that keeps different types of information available for current use
working memory
Refers to the amount of information held in working memory
memory span
The storage of information that lasts from
minutes to forever
long-term memory
The finding that the ability to recall items from a list depends on the order of presentation, such that items presented early or late in the list are remembered better than those in the middle
Serial position effect
Refers to the better memory that people have for items presented at the beginning of the list
The primacy effect
Refers to the better memory that people have for the most recent items, the ones at the end of the list
The recency effect
The gradual process of memory storage in the brain
Consolidation
Strengthening of a synaptic connection, making
the postsynaptic neurons more easily activated
by presynaptic neurons
Long-term potentiation (LTP)
Vivid episodic memories for circumstances in
which people first learned of a surprising and
consequential or emotionally arousing event
Flashbulb memories
The re-storage of memory after retrieval
Reconsolidation
The strategy of bringing information to mind by deliberately trying to recall it
Retrieval practice
Anything that helps a person (or a nonhuman
animal) recall a memory
Retrieval cue
the idea that any stimulus that is encoded along
with an experience can later trigger a memory
of the experience
Encoding specificity principle
Type of memory enhancement in which the recall situation is similar to the encoding situation
Context-dependent memory
Type of memory enhancement in which a person’s internal states (emotions) match during encoding and recall
State-dependent memory
Remembering to do something at some future time
Prospective memory
Impairment of the ability to recall an item in the future after retrieving a related item from long-term memory
Retrieval-induced forgetting
Interference that occurs when prior information inhibits the ability to remember new information
Proactive interference
Interference that occurs when new information inhibits the ability to remember old information
Retroactive interference
The temporary inability to remember something
Blocking
The inattentive or shallow encoding of events
Absentmindedness
The continual reoccurrence of unwanted memories
Persistence
The changing of memories over time so that they become consistent with current beliefs or attitudes
Memory bias
Memory distortion occurs when people misremember the time, place, person, or circumstance involved with a memory
Source misattribution
A type of misattribution that occurs when people have a memory for an event but cannot remember where they encountered the information
Source amnesia
A type of misattribution that occurs when people think they have come up with a new idea yet have retrieved a stored idea and failed to attribute the idea to its proper source
Cryptomnesia
The development of biased memories from misleading information
Suggestibility
