Unit 2 Cognition Memory (M) Flashcards
Encoding
The processing of information into the memory system.
Storage
The process of maintaining information in memory over time
Retrieval
The process of getting information out of memory storage.
Automatic vs. effortful processing
Automatic: The unconscious and effortless process of encoding information such as space, time, and frequency.
Effortful: Mental activity that requires deliberation and control and involves intentional work.
Explicit memory vs. implicit memory
Explicit: Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and declare
Implicit: Memory for information that is acquired and expressed unconsciously or automatically via facilitated performance on a related task.
Episodic memory
the ability to remember personally experienced events associated with a particular time and place; in addition to recalling the facts of a past event, an individual has to engage in “mental time travel” and remember that they were the one who lived the event. The hippocampus plays a key role in episodic memory formation and retrieval
Semantic memory
A category of long-term memory that involves the recollection of ideas, concepts, and facts commonly regarded as general knowledge.
Levels of processing (shallow, intermediate, deep)
Shallow: A category of long-term memory that involves the recollection of ideas, concepts, and facts commonly regarded as general knowledge.
intermediate: Mental processing that is the recollection of obscurer facts and knowledge
Deep: Mental activity that requires deliberation and control and involves a sense of effort, or overcoming resistance.
Structural, phonemic, and semantic encoding
Structural: type of shallow processing that focuses on the physical structure of information.
Phonemic: shallow processing that focuses on the auditory aspects of information.
Semantic: Cognitive encoding of new information that focuses on its meaningful aspects as opposed to its perceptual characteristics
Procedural memory
A type of implicit memory that involves motor skills and behavioral habits.
Prospective memory
One’s ability to remember to do something in the future.
Long-term potentiation
Strengthening of a synaptic connection that happens when the synapse of one neuron repeatedly fires and excites another neuron
Working memory and central executive
Working memory: A newer understanding of short-term memory that focuses on information retrieved from long-term memory.
Central executive: in Baddeley’s model of working memory, this is the component that coordinates processes of working memory, including the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad; it focuses attention, switches attention between different tasks, and initiates long-term encoding and retrieval
Phonological loop
a component that holds and manipulates auditory information over short intervals of time. For example, if one tried to remember a telephone number by repeating it over and over in the few moments before dialing, this effort would take place in the phonological loop.
Visuospatial sketchpad
Refers to our ability temporarily to hold visual and spatial information, such as the location of a parked car, or the route from home to a grocery store
Multi-store model
Three stage memory model including sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory
Sensory memory
The immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system.
Iconic and echoic memory
A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more that a few tenths of a second.
Short term memory (STM)
Activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as the seven digits of a phone number while dialing, before the information is stored or forgotten.
Long term memory (LTM)
The relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system, includes knowledge, skills and experiences.
Mnemonic devices
A memory aid, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices.
Method of Loci
A mnemonic technique that involves associating items on a list with a sequence or tour of familiar physical locations.
Chunking
memory strategy that involves grouping individual pieces of information into larger, meaningful units.
Spacing effect
The tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention that is achieved through massed study or practice
Distributed practice vs. massed practice
Distributed: a learning procedure in which practice periods for a particular task are separated by lengthy rest periods or lengthy periods of practicing different activities or studying other material, rather than occurring close together in time. In many learning situations, distributed practice is found to be more effective than massed practice. Also called spaced learning; spaced practice
Massed: Encoding information all at once - less effective that distributed practice
Serial position effect
Our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list
Primacy effect vs. recency effect
Primacy: The tendency for facts, impressions, or items that are presented first to be better learned or remembered than material presented later in the sequence.
recency: a memory phenomenon in which the most recently presented facts, impressions, or items are learned or remembered better than material presented earlier.
Maintenance rehearsal vs. elaborative rehearsal
Maintenance: Repeating items over and over to maintain them in short-term memory, although it does not effectively promote long-term retention because it involves little elaboration of the information to be remembered.
elaborative: A memorization method that involves thinking about how new information relates to information already stored in long-term memory.
Autobiographical memory and highly superior autobiographical memory
Auto: a person’s memory for episodes or experiences that occurred in their own life (may contain episodic and semantic memories that are personally relevant)
superior: able to recall, with considerable accuracy, details of daily experiences that occurred over many previous decades.
Retrograde amnesia
A phenomenon in which a person suffers a brain injury from a stroke or an accident and loses the ability to remember events immediately before the injury is called
Anterograde amnesia
A phenomenon in which a person suffers a brain injury from a stroke or an accident and loses the ability to form new memories since the injury is called
Alzheimer’s disease
A neurocognitive disorder marked by neural plaques, often with an onset after age 80, and entailing a progressive decline in memory and other cognitive abilities
Infantile amnesia
The inability to retrieve memories from much before age 3.
Recall
A measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information without the use of any cues to jog one’s memory.
Recognition
A measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned due to the presence of retrieval cues.
Retrieval cues
stimuli that help people retrieve memories; can be present in the external environment, such as sounds, smells, and sights, and can also be internal to the person retrieving the memory, such as physical states or feelings
Context-dependent memory
memories are more easily retrieved when one is in the same physical location in which those memories were encoded; for example, remembering events from 1st grade more easily when again in one’s elementary school classroom
State-dependent memory
memories are more easily retrieved when one is in the same physical location in which those memories were encoded; for example, remembering events from 1st grade more easily when again in one’s elementary school classroom
Mood-congruent memory
The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one’s current emotional state.
Retrieval practice
the strategy of recalling facts, concepts, or events from memory in order to enhance learning.
Forgetting curve (Ebbinghaus)
A graphic depiction of the amount of forgetting over time after learning has taken place. There is generally a sudden drop in retention shortly after learning, followed by a more gradual decline thereafter.
Encoding failure
Failure to process information into memory.
Proactive interference
The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information.
Retroactive interference
The disruption effect of new information on the recall of old information.
Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
The temporary inability to remember something you know, accompanied by a feeling that it’s just out of reach.
Repression
In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.
Misinformation effect
Incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event
Source amnesia
Attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined.
Constructive memory
The process of bringing up old memories, filling in any missing pieces of information to make our recall more clear.
Memory consolidation
The neural processes through which new information from STM is stabilized to result in the storage of enduring memories within LTM.
Imagination inflation
the increased likelihood that a person will judge an event as having actually occurred (e.g., during childhood) when they imagine the event before making such a judgment.
