Chapter 8 (Everyday Memory and Memory Errors) Flashcards
Amygdala
A subcortical structure that is involved in processing emotional aspects of experience, including memory for emotional events.
Anterior temporal lobe (ATL)
Area in the temporal lobe. Damage to the ATL has been connected with semantic deficits in dementia patients and with the syndrome.
Back propagation
A process by which learning can occur in a connectionist network, in which an error signal is transmitted backward through the network. This backward-transmitted error signal provides the information needed to adjust the weights in the network to achieve the correct output signal for a stimulus.
Basic level
In Rosch’s categorisation scheme, the level below the global (superordinate) level (e.g table or chair for the superordinate category furniture). According to Rosch, the basic level is psychologically special because it is the level above which much information is lost and below which little is gained. See also Global level; Specific level.
Categorisation
The process by which objects are placed in categories.
Category
Groups of objects that belong together because they belong to the same class of objects, such as furniture or schools.
Category-specific memory impairment
A result of brain damage in which the patient has trouble recognising objects in a specific category.
Cognitive economy
A feature of some semantic network models in which properties of a category that are shared by many members of a category are stored at a higher-level node in the network. E.g. the property ‘can fly’ would be stored at the node for ‘bird’ rather than at the node for canary.
Cognitive hypothesis
An explanation for the reminiscence bump, which states that memories are better for adolescence and early adulthood because encoding is better during periods of rapid change that are followed by stability.
Cognitive interview
A procedure used for interviewing crime scene witness that involves letting witnesses talk with a minimum of interruption. It also uses techniques that help witness recreate the situation present at the crime scene by having them place themselves back in the scene and recreate emotions they were feeling, where they were looking, and how the scene may have appeared when viewed from different perspectives.
Concept
A mental representation of a class or individual. An example of a concept would be the way a person mentally represents cat or house.
Concept knowledge
Knowledge that enables people to recognise objects and events and to make inferences about their properties.
Connection weight
In connectionist models, a connection weight determines the degree to which signals sent from one unit either increase or decrease the activity of the next unit.
Connectionism
A network model of mental operation that proposes that concepts are represented in networks that are modelled after neural networks. This approach to describing the representation of concepts is also called the parallel distributed processing (PDP) approach. See also connectionist network.
Connectionist network
The type of network proposed by the connectionists approach to the representation of concepts. Connectionist networks are based on neural networks but are not necessarily identical to them. One of the key properties of a connectionist network is that a specific category is represented by activity that is distributed over many units in the network. This contrasts with semantic networks, in which specific categories are represented at individual nodes.
Constructive nature of memory
The idea that what people report as memories are constructed based on what actually happened plus additional factors, such as expectations, other knowledge, and other life experiences.
Crowding
Animals tend to share many properties, such as eyes, legs, and the ability to move. This is relevant to the multiple-factor approach to the representation of concepts in the brain.
Cryptoamnesia
Unconscious plagiarism of the work of others. This has been associated with errors in source monitoring.
Cultural life script
Life events that commonly occur in a particular culture.
Cultural life script hypothesis
The idea that events in a person’s life story become easier to recall when they fit the cultural life script for that person’s culture. This has been cited to explain the reminiscence bump.
Definitional approach to categorisation
The idea that we can decide whether something is a member of a category by determining whether the object meets the definition of the category. See also family resemblance.
Embodied approach
Proposal that our knowledge concepts is based on reactivation of sensory and motor processes that occur when we interact with an object.
Error signal
During learning in a connectionist network, the difference between the output signal generated by a particular stimulus and the output that actually represents that stimulus.
Exemplar
In categorisation, members of a category that a person has experienced in the past.
Exemplar approach to categorisation
The approach to categorisation in which members of a category are judged against exemplars – examples of members of the category that the person has encountered in the past.
Eyewitness testimony
Testimony by eyewitnesses to a crime about what they saw during commission of a crime.
Family resemblance
In considering the process of categorisation, the idea that things in a particular category resemble each other in a number of ways. This approach can be contrasted with the definitional approach, which states that an object belongs to a category only when it meets a definite set of criteria.
Flashbulb memory
Memory for the circumstances surrounding hearing about shocking, highly charged events. It has been claimed that such memories are particularly vivid and accurate. See Narrative rehearsal hypothesis for another viewpoint.
