Psychology: from Inquiry to Understanding: Chapter 7

Memory

Retention of information over time.

Memory Illusion

False but subjectively compelling memory.

Sensory Memory

Brief storage of perceptual information before it is passed to short-term memory.

Iconic Memory

Visual sensory memory

Echoic memory

Auditory sensory memory

Short-Term Memory

Memory system that retains information for limited durations

Decay

Fading of information from memory over time.

Interference

Loss of information from memory because of completion from additional incoming information.

Retroactive Interference

Interference with retention of old information due to acquisition of new information.

Proactive Interference

Interference with acquisition of new information due to previous learning of information.

Magic Number

The span of short-term memory, according to George Miller: seven plus or minus two pieces of information.

Chunking

Organizing information into meaningful groupings, allowing us to extend the span of short-term memory.

Rehearsal

Repeating information to extend the duration of retention in short-term memory.

Maintenance Rehearsal

Repeating stimuli in their original form to retain them in short-term memory.

Elaborative Rehearsal

Linking stimuli to each other in meaningful way to improve retention of information in short-term memory.

Levels of Processing

Depth of transforming information, which influences how easily we remember it.

Long-Term Memory

Relatively enduring (from minutes to years) retention of information stored regarding our facts, experiences, and skills.

Permastore

Type of long-term memory that appears to be permanent.

Primacy Effect

Tendency to remember words at the beginning of a list especially well.

Recency Effect

Tendency to remember words at the end of a list especially well.

Serial Position Curve

Graph depicting both primacy and recency effects on people's ability to recall items on a list.

Semantic Memory

Our knowledge of facts about the world.

Episodic Memory

Recollection of events in our lives.

Explicit Memory

Memories we recall intentionally and of which we have conscious awareness.

Implicit Memory

Memories we don't deliberately remember or reflect on consciously

Procedural Memory

Memory for how to do things, including motor skills and habits.

Priming

Our ability to identify a stimulus more easily or more quickly after we've encountered similar stimuli.

Encoding

Process of getting information into our memory banks.

Mnemonics

A learning aid, strategy, or device that enhances recall.

Storage

Process of keeping information in memory

Schema

Organized knowledge structure or mental model that we've stored in memory.

Retrieval

Reactivation or reconstruction of experiences from our memory stores.

Retrieval cue

Hint that makes it easier for us to recall information.

Recall

Generating previously remembered information.

Recognition

Selecting previously remembered information from an array of options.

Relearning

Reacquiring knowledge that we'd previously learned but largely forgotten over time.

Distributed versus massed practice

Studying information in small increments over time (distributed) versus in large increments over a brief amount of time (massed).

Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon

Experience of knowing that we know something but being unable to access it.

Encoding Specificity

Phenomenon of remembering something better, when the conditions under which we retrieve information are similar to the conditions under which we encode them.

Context-Dependent Learning

Superior retrieval of mnemonics when the external context of the original memories matches the retrieval context.

State-Dependent Learning

Superior retrieval of memories when the organism is in the same physiological or psychological state as it was during encoding.

Long-Term Potentiation

Gradual strengthening of the connections among neurons from repetitive stimulation.

Retrograde Amnesia

Loss of memories from our past.

Anterograde Amnesia

Inability to encode new memories from our experiences.

Meta-memory

Knowledge about our own memory abilities and limitations.

Infantile amnesia

Inability of adults to remember personal experiences that took place before an early age.

Flashbulb memory

Emotional memory that is extraordinary vivid and detailed.

Source monitoring confusion

Lack of clarity about the origin of a memory.

Cryptomnesia

Failure to recognize that our ideas originated with someone else.

Suggestive Memory Technique

Procedure that encourages patients to recall memories that may or may not have taken place.

Misinformation Effect

Creation of fictitious memories by providing misleading information about an event after it takes place.