Chapter 7: LTM: Encoding, Retrieval, and Consolidation Flashcards
The process of acquiring information and transferring it to LTM.
Encoding
Bringing information into consciousness by transferring it from LTM to working memory.
Retrieval
Typically, this type of rehearsal results in little or no encoding and therefore poor memory, so you don’t remember the number when you want to call it again later. Associated with shallow processing which involves repetition with little attention to meaning.
Maintenance rehearsal
Rehearsal that involves thinking about the meaning of an item to be remembered or making connections between that item and prior knowledge. Associated with deep processing which involves attention to meaning.
Elaborative rehearsal
The idea that memory depends on how information is encoded, with better memory being achieved when processing is deep than when processing is shallow. Deep processing involves attention to meaning and is associated with elaborative rehearsal. Shallow processing involves repetition with little attention to meaning and is associated with maintenance rehearsal.
Levels of processing theory
Processing that involves repetition with little attention to meaning. Associated with maintenance rehearsal.
Shallow processing
Processing that involves attention to meaning and relating an item to something else. Associated with elaborative rehearsal.
Deep processing
Participants were given a fill-in-the-blanks assignment. For example, participants see the word car and are asked if it fits into the sentence “He saw a ______ on the street.” What level of processing is involved.
Deep processing
A learning task in which participants are first presented with pairs of words, then one word of each pair is presented and the task is to recall the other word. Participants that formed a mental picture of the words vs. simply repeating the pairs to themselves remembered more than twice the words. Like the pair: boat-tree.
Paired-associate learning
Memory for a word is improved by relating the word to the self.
Self-reference effect
Memory for material is better when a person generates the material him- or herself, rather than passively receiving it.
Generation effect
A word or other stimulus that helps a person remember information stored in memory. For example, the word “apple” is a _____ for other fruits, such as “grape” or “plum.”
Retrieval cue
Enhanced performance on a memory test caused by being tested on the material to be remembered. This effect is important because studies have shown that it results in better performance than rereading material.
Testing effect
The advantage in performance caused by short study sessions separated by breaks from studying.
Spacing effect
The principle that we learn information together with its context. This means that presence of the context can lead to enhanced memory for the information.
Encoding specificity
The principle that memory is best when a person is in the same state for encoding and retrieval. This principle is related to encoding specificity.
For example, Eric Eich and Janet Metcalfe (1989) demonstrated that memory is better when a person’s mood during retrieval matches his or her mood during encoding.
State-dependent learning
The process that transforms new memories from a fragile state, in which they can be disrupted, to a more permanent state, in which they are resistant to disruption.
Consolidation
A process of consolidation that involves structural changes at synapses that happen rapidly, over a period of minutes or hours.
Synaptic consolidation
A consolidation process that involves the gradual reorganization of circuits within brain regions and takes place on a long timescale, lasting weeks, months, or even years.
Systems consolidation
The increased firing that occurs in a neuron due to prior activity at the synapse.
Long-term potentiation
Proposes that memory retrieval depends on the hippocampus during consolidation, but that once consolidation is complete, retrieval no longer depends on the hippocampus.
Standard model of consolidation
A process that occurs during memory consolidation, in which the hippocampus replays the neural activity associated with a memory. During this process, activity occurs in the network connecting the hippocampus and the cortex. This activity results in the formation of connections between the cortical areas.
Reactivation
Loss of memory for something that happened prior to an injury or traumatic event such as a concussion (the inability to remember information from the past).
Retrograde amnesia
When amnesia is most severe for events that occurred just prior to an injury and becomes less severe for earlier, more remote events.
Graded amnesia
Amnesia for events that occur after an injury (the inability to form new memories).
Anterograde amnesia
The idea that the hippocampus is involved in the retrieval of remote memories, especially episodic memories. This contrasts with the standard model of memory, which proposes that the hippocampus is involved only in the retrieval of recent memories.
Multiple trace model of consolidation
A process proposed by Nader and others that occurs when a memory is retrieved and so becomes reactivated. Once this occurs, the memory must be consolidated again, as it was during the initial learning.
Reconsolidation
States that memory performance is enhanced when the type of coding that occurs during acquisition (task) matches the type of retrieval that occurs during a memory test.
The results of an experiment by Morris showed that retrieval is better if the same cognitive tasks are involved during both encoding and retrieval. Participants who had focused on the word’s sound (rhyming) during the first part of the experiment did better when the test involved focusing on sound.
Matching type of processing (transfer-appropriate processing)
