Memory Flashcards
Memory
An active system that receives information from the senses, organizes and alters it as it stores it away, and then retrieves the information from storage.
Encoding
The set of mental operations that people perform on sensory information to convert that information into a form that is usable in the brain’s storage system.
Storage
Holding onto information for some period of time
Retrieval
Getting information that is in storage into a form that can be used.
Information processing model
Model of memory that assumes the processing of information for memory storage is similar to the way a computer processes memory in a series of three stages.
Sensory memory
The point at which information enters the nervous system through the sensory system.
Information from the senses is held very briefly, for a second or less.
Information is encoded as neural messages, and last as long as the message is traveling through the system.
Perception occurs if the information is attended to, analyzed, and encoded as a meaningful pattern.
Short-term memory
The memory system in which information is held for brief periods of time while being used.
Stores limited amounts of information for about 18 seconds.
Working memory
The system that allows the manipulation and consideration of the information being held in STM.
Maintenance: holding information in STM
Manipulation: working on that information.
Storage Capacity of STM
Seven plus or minus two items.
This amount refers to the meaningful groupings of information, or chunks.
Learning to group items into bigger chunks of information can noticeably improve STM.
Duration of STM
About eighteen seconds.
Information will persist as long as you keep mentally repeating the information.
Long-term memory
The system of memory into which all the information in placed to be kept more or less permanently.
Storage capacity of LTM
Unknown, may be unlimited.
Elaborative rehearsal
The transferring of information from STM to LTM by making the information meaningful in some way.
Procedural memory
Memory for skills, procedures, habits, and conditioned responses.
Type of long term memory
Declarative memory
The things that people know; facts and information that make up knowledge.
Semantic memory
general knowledge, such as knowledge of language and information learned in formal education.
Memory of generalized knowledge of the world, not necessarily tied to memory of a specific event.
Episodic memory
memories of specific events.
Personal information, such as daily activities and events.
Encoding specificity
The tendency for memory of information to be improved, if related information available when the memory is first formed, is also available when the memory is being retrieved.
Example: Surroundings or physiological state.
State-dependent Learning
Memories formed during a particular physiological or psychological state will be easier to recall while in a similar state.
Recall
The type of memory retrieval in which the information to be retrieved must be “pulled” from memory with very few external cues.
Recognition
The ability to match a piece of information or a stimulus to a stored image or fact.
Curve of forgetting
Illustrates that forgetting happens quickly within the first hour after learning and tapers off gradually.
Encoding failure
The failure to process information into memory.
Decay
Loss of memory due to the passage of time, during which the memory trace is not used.
Interference theory
One piece of information impairs either the encoding or retrieval of another piece of information.
