Cognitive Psych Flashcards
reacting time
elapsed time between stimulus presentation and subject’s response to it
eye movements
an “on-line” measure of information processing
brain imaging
used to associate various cognitive processes with various parts of the brain
forgetting curve
without practice, we forget rapidly, then at a certain point, forgetting occurs at a much lesser rate
(this is if you don’t practice)
encoding
putting information into memory
storage
retaining information in memory
retrieval
recovering the information in memory
recall
method of retrieval; independently reproducing information that you have been previously exposed to
recognition
method of retrieval; realizing that a certain stimulus event is one you’ve seen or heard before
generation-recognition
why you can usually recognize more than you can recall: model suggests that recall involves the same mental process involved in recognition plus another process not required for recognition
recency effect
words presented at end of list are remembered best
primacy effect
words presented at beginning of list are remembered second best
clustering
when asked to recall list of words, people tend to recall words belonging to same category
stage theory of memory
there are several different memory systems, and each system has a different function
3 memory systems
- sensory memory
- short-term memory
- long-term memory
sensory memory
contains fleeting impressions of sensory stimuli
whole-report procedure
showed subjects grid of 9, told them to say what they remembered, could only remember about 4
partial-report procedure
used grid of 9, told them which row to repeat, they said basically perfectly
sensory memory capacity: 9
short-term memory
link between our rapidly changing sensory memory & more lasting long-term memory
maintenance rehearsal
repeating information in STM to keep it there longer than 20 seconds
long-term memory
permanent storehouse of your experiences, knowledge, & skills
elaborative rehearsal
involves organizing material & associating it w/ info you already have in your long-term memory to put it in your LTM
procedural memory
remembering how to do things
declarative memory
remembering explicit information
semantic memory
remembering general knowledge
episodic memory
remembering particular events you have personally experienced
in STM, encoding of verbal material likely to be based on
phonology
in LTM, encoding of verbal material likely to be based on
meaning
semantic verification task
method used to investigate organization of semantic memory
spreading activation model
semantic memory organized into map of interconnected concepts; key is the distance between concepts
