Exam 1 Terms and Names To Know Flashcards
the psychological perspective primarily concerned with observable behavior that can be objectively recorded and with the relationships of observable behavior to environmental stimuli.
Behaviorist perspective
improved memory for items at the end of a list.
Recency effect
a self-behavior that is identified through a participant’s own observations and reports.
Self-report measures
in an experimental setting, a variable that the researcher measures to assess the impact of a variation in an independent variable.
Dependent variable
a psychological model in which behavior is explained in terms of past experiences and motivational forces; actions are viewed as stemming from inherited instincts, biological drives, and attempts to resolve conflicts between personal needs and social requirements.
Psychodynamic perspective/view
provided evidence for the four components of working memory: a phonological loop, a visuospatial sketchpad, the central executive, and the episodic buffer (2002, 2003).
Alan Baddeley
the experimenter creates cause, and effect is the participant’s response.
Cause and effect
a theory that suggests that the deeper the level at which information was processed, the more likely it is to be retained in memory.
Levels-of-processing theory
“recite the words in the order you heard them”
Serial recall
a group in an experiment that is exposed to a treatment or experiences a manipulation of the independent variable.
Experimental group
Canadian psychologist who first proposed the distinction between episodic and semantic types of declarative memories (1972).
Endel Tulving
process that requires attention; it is often difficult to carry out more than one controlled process at a time.
Controlled process
the perspective in psychology that strives to understand and treat issues of mental stability/mental illnesses.
Clinical perspective
availability of information through memory processes without conscious effort to encode or recover information.
Implicit uses of memory
the perspective that suggests that memory is best when the type of processing carried out at encoding matches the processes carried out at retrieval.
Transfer-appropriate processing
the form in which memory is stored in working memory (hearing in your head).
Acoustic code
extended the influence of behaviorism by expanding its analyses to the consequences of behaviors (1904-1940). Both Watson and Skinner believed that the basic processes they investigated with nonhuman animals represented general principles that would hold true for humans as well.
B.F. Skinner
a procedure by which participants have an equal likelihood of being assigned to any condition within an experiment.
Random assignment
German psychologist who pioneered the study of forgetting by serving as his own subject in a study involving lists of non-sense syllables—see book (1850-1909).
Hermann Ebbinghaus
people’s vivid and richly detailed memory in response to personal or public events that have great emotional significance.
Flashbulb memories
a characteristic of memory retrieval in which the recall of beginning and end items on a list is often better than recall of items appearing in the middle.
Serial position effect
member of a category that people have encountered.
Exemplar
the perspective on psychology that stresses human thought and the processes of knowing, such as attending, thinking, remembering, expecting, solving problems, fantasizing, and consciousness.
Cognitive perspective
the most common disease that affects memory function. In the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease, people often have difficulty retaining new information. As the disease progresses, the memory loss becomes much more extensive.
Alzheimer’s disease
the scientific study of the behavior of individuals and their mental processes. Critical parts of this definition: scientific, behavior, individual, and mental.
Psychology
the distortion of evidence because of the personal motives and expectations of the viewer.
Observer bias/experimenter bias
“recite as many words as you can”
Free recall
the approach to identifying causes of behavior that focuses on the functioning of genes, the brain, the nervous system, and the endocrine system.
Biological perspective
a memory resource that is used to accomplish tasks such as reasoning and language comprehension; consists of the phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and central executive.
Working memory
when internal states provide the basis for encoding specificity (i.e. drugs).
State-dependent memory
o 1. Eliminate a variable—it does not vary; it is a “constant” (e.g. age, gender, etc.). o 2. Matching—all groups have the same characteristics; variability is still there (e.g. vision, etc.) o 3. Random assignment—best way to control; all participants have an equal chance to be in each group.
Control (3 types)
expanded unit size from STM capacity
Capacity working memory
the subjective sensations that you do have information stored in memory.
Feelings-of-knowing
the most representative example of a category.
Prototype
two or more mental processes that are carried out in order, one after the other.
Serial processes
a memorization technique where you repeat information in a cycle in your head. So far, conclusions have been made that rehearsal will help you keep information from fading out of STM.
Maintenance rehearsal
the process by which a mental representation is formed in memory.
Encoding
a change in behavior in the absence of an experimental manipulation.
Placebo effect
o Variable o Stimulus-response o Cause-effect o Experimenter & participant
Experiment (and limitations)
a group in an experiment that is not exposed to a treatment or does not experience a manipulation of the independent variable.
Control group
a stimulus other than the variable an experimenter explicitly introduces into a research setting that affects a participant’s behavior.
Confounding variable/confound
implicit or explicit knowledge about memory abilities and effective memory strategies; cognition about memory.
Metamemory
in an experimental setting, a factor that varies in amount and kind.
Variable
strategy or device that uses familiar information during the encoding of new information to enhance subsequent access to the information in memory.
Mnemonic
the mental capacity to encode, store and retrieve information.
Memory
a method of retrieval in which an individual is required to identify stimuli as having been experienced before.
Recognition
a subset of a population selected as participants in an experiment.
Sample
primary is acoustic “code, maybe visual code, may even be semantic
Form (code) working memory
founded the first formal laboratory devoted to experimental psychology in Leipzig Germany (1879). He wished to understand basic processes of sensation and perception as well as the speed of simple mental processes.
Wilhelm Wundt
the psychological perspective that focuses on cross-cultural differences in the causes and consequences of behavior.
Sociocultural perspective
circumstances in which past memories make it more difficult to encode and retrieve new information.
Proactive interference
intensive observation of a particular individual or small group of individuals.
Case study
the recovery of stored information from memory.
Retrieval
in an experimental setting, a variable that the researcher manipulates with the expectation of having an impact on values of the dependent variable.
Independent variable
a technique for improving memory by enriching the encoding of information.
Elaborative rehearsal
o Scientific method o Behavior has many causes o Individuals vary (but research focuses on groups) o Multiple theories explain the same behavior o Nature & nurture o Context matters (i.e. city, family, culture, religion, historical time period, etc.)
Themes for the course
not readily accessible to conscious awareness.
Unconscious
emphasized that individuals have a natural tendency toward psychological growth and health—a process that is aided by the positive regard of those who surround them (1902-1987).
Carl Rodgers
process that does not require attention; it can often be performed along with other tasks without interference
Automatic process
an acronym for the six phases suggested for effective study: Preview, Question, Read, Reflect, Recite, and Review.
PQ4R
a change in context affects the success of recall and recognition techniques in various ways—see example in book
Context-dependent memory
an experimental technique in which biased expectations of experimenters are eliminated by keeping both participants and experimental assistants unaware of which participants have received which treatment.
Double-blind control
believed that about 60% of our memories stay with us forever in “permastore”
Permastore
not independent or dependent variable; may or may not vary (could be held constant); don’t want these to affect your result so try to control them; 0,1, or more
Control (extraneous) variable
a school of psychology that maintains that psychological phenomena can be understood only when viewed as organized, structured wholes, not when broken down into primitive perceptual elements.
Gestalt psychology
the process of putting information together based on general types of stored knowledge in the absence of a specific memory representation.
Reconstructive memory
the retention of encoded material over time.
Storage
memory for how things get done; the way perceptual, cognitive, and motor skills are acquired, retained, and used.
Procedural memory
the process of taking single items of information and recoding them on the basis of similarity or some other organizing principle.
Chunking
a psychological model that emphasizes an individual’s phenomenal world and inherent capacity for making rational choices and developing to a maximum potential.
Humanistic perspective
suggested that seven (plus or minus two) was the “magic number” that characterized people’s memory performance on random lists of letters, words, numbers, or almost any kind of meaningful, familiar item (1956).
George Miller
an inability to form explicit memories for events that occur after the time of physical damage to the brain.
Anterograde amnesia
this resource holds and manipulates speech-based information. The phonological loop overlaps most with short-term memory. When you rehearse a telephone number by “listening” to it as you run it through your head, you are making use of the phonological loop.
Phonological loop
in the assessment of implicit memory, the advantage conferred by prior exposure to a word or situation.
Priming
memory processes associated with preservation of recent experiences and with retrieval of information from long-term memory; short-term memory is of limited capacity and stores information for only a short length of time without rehearsal.
Short-term memory (STM)
the study of the structure of mind and behavior; the view that all human mental experience can be understood as a combination of simple elements or events.
Structuralism
comes out of the experience of watching yourself from this privileged “insider” position—a result of being conscious of what you are doing, the fact that you are doing it, and the realization that others are observing, evaluating, and reacting to what you are doing.
Sense of self
result that occurs when a researcher or observer subtly communicates to participants the kind of behavior he or she expects to find, thereby creating that expected reaction.
Expectancy effects/demand characteristics
research methodology that determines to what extent two variables, traits, or attributes are related.
Correlation methods
a tentative and testable explanation of the relationship between two (or more) events or variables; often stated as a prediction that a certain outcome will result from specific conditions. o Best guess, from theory or experience; expectation or prediction of what you think will happen.
Hypothesis/hypothesis testing
a research technique in which unobtrusive observations are made of behaviors that occur in natural environments.
Naturalistic observation
semantic code (meaning), visual, or verbal.
Form (code) LTM
internally or externally generated stimulus available to help with the retrieval of a memory.
Retrieval cues
two or more mental processes that are carried out simultaneously.
Parallel processes
long-term memory for an autobiographical event and the context in which it occurred.
Episodic memory
primary capacity = 7 +/- 2 units of information
Capacity STM
a method of retrieval in which an individual is required to reproduce the information previously presented.
Recall
memory processes associated with the preservation of information for retrieval at any later time.
Long-term memory (LTM)
theoretically unlimited capacity
Capacity LTM
improved memory for items at the start of a list.
Primacy effect
pioneered the behaviorist perspective, he argued that psychological research should seek the laws that govern observable behavior across species (1878-1958).
John Watson
the perspective on mind and behavior that focuses on the examination of their functions in an organism’s interactions with the environment.
Functionalism
memory for information such as facts and events.
Declarative memory
a state of awareness of internal events and the external environment. The term consciousness is used to refer to a general state of mind or to its specific contents: “conscious” in contrast to “unconscious”.
Consciousness/conscious
circumstances in which the formation of new memories makes it more difficult to recover older memories.
Retroactive interference
Viennese physician who most fully developed the psychodynamic principles of motivation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Freud’s ideas grew out of his work with mentally disturbed patients, but he believed that the principles he observed applied to both normal and abnormal behavior. Freud’s psychodynamic theory views a person as pulled and pushed by a complex network of inner and outer forces. Freud’s model was the first to recognize that human nature is not always rational and that actions may be driven by motives that are not in conscious awareness.
Sigmund Freud
conscious effort to encode or recover information through memory processes.
Explicit use of memory
the principle that subsequent retrieval of information is enhanced if cues received at the time of recall are consistent with those present at the time of encoding.
Encoding specificity
o 1. Public (most people can see & observe, or quantifiable) o 2. Specified o 3. Repeatable (can be replicated) o 4. Controlled—want control over any variables that could affect the result.
Observations (4 requirements)
memories competing with each other.
Interference
the approach to psychology that stresses the importance of behavioral and mental adaptiveness based on the assumption that mental capabilities evolved over millions of years to serve particular adaptive purposes.
Evolutionary perspective
general conceptual framework, or cluster of knowledge, regarding objects, people, and situations; knowledge package that encodes generalizations about the structure of the environment.
Schema
the set of procedures used for gathering and interpreting objective information in a way that minimizes error and yields dependable generalizations.
Scientific method
wrote a two-volume work, The Principles of Psychology (1890/1950), which many experts consider to be the most important psychology text ever written.
William James
carried out influential studies on eyewitness memory. The general conclusion from her and her colleagues’ research was that eyewitnesses’ memories for what they had seen were quite vulnerable to distortion from post-event information (1979).
Elizabeth Loftus
individuals’ systematic examination of their own thoughts and feelings.
Introspection
generic, categorical memories, such as the meanings of words and concepts.
Semantic memories
this resource performs the same types of functions as the phonological loop for visual and spatial information. If, for example, someone asked you how many desks there are in your psychology classroom, you might use the resources of the visuospatial sketchpad to form a mental picture of the classroom and then estimate the number of desks.
Visuospatial sketchpad
how information gets into storage in working/short term memory.
Attention
an inability to retrieve memories form the time before physical damage to the brain.
Retrograde amnesia
an organized set of concepts that explains a phenomenon or set of phenomena. o Ties together related data o Explains/predicts behavior o Directs future research o Theories are NOT truth
Theory
