Exam 3 Flashcards
Ebbinghaus
studied the impact of rehearsal by teaching himself nonsense syllables and discovered that the more time we spend learning novel information, the better we learn it.
Spacing effect
a phenomenon in which we retain information better if our rehearsal is distributed across time.
Deep processing
encoding information in terms of its meaning, leads to better memory. Ex. What type?
Shallow processing
encoding information in terms of a superficial characteristic. Ex. Does this rhyme?
Structural processing
most shallow form of encoding information. Ex. Are these letters capital?
Mnemonic
a strategy for improving memory for some material.
Chunking
organizing items into familiar, manageable units.
Iconic memory
sensory memory for visual information, lasts about 200ms.
Echoic memory
sensory memory for auditory information, lasts about 3 seconds.
Working memory
the memory responsible for holding information in an active, conscious state. Has a limited capacity of about 7 items and a limited duration of about 20 seconds.
Flashbulb memories
extremely vivid recollections of surprising events, may be inaccurate.
Long-term potentiation
the prolonged strengthening of potential neuronal firing which provides a basis for learning and remembering associations.
Implicit memories
without conscious recall.
Explicit memories
with conscious recall.
Where are implicit memories processed?
cerebellum and basal ganglia.
Where are explicit memories processed?
hippocampus and frontal lobes.
Proactive interference
(forward-acting), occurs when something you learned earlier disrupts your recall of something you experience later.
Retroactive interference
(backward-acting), occurs when new information makes it harder to recall something you learned earlier.
Loftus & Palmer
car accident experiment using different words and had varied results.
Misinformation effect
after exposure to misinformation, many people misremember.
Gary Wells
discovered that sequential lineups are most effective for reducing chances of misidentification because people make absolute judgments.
Sigmund Freud on repressed memory
proposed that we repress painful memories to protect our self-concept and minimize anxiety.
Algorithms
methodical, step-by-step procedures that guarantee a solution.
Heuristics
simple thinking strategies that allow us to solve problems efficiently. Speedier, but more error prone.
Confirmation bias
the tendency to seek out information that confirms our theory, and not seeking out (or ignoring) information that might falsify our theory.
Fixation
the inability to see a problem from a different perspective, employing a different mental set.
Functional fixedness
our tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions.