Chapter 8 Terms + Defs (Everyday Memory and Memory Errors)

Autobiographical memory

Memory for specific events from a person’s life, including episodic and semantic components.

Reminiscence bump

people over 40 years old have enhanced memory for events from adolescence and early adulthood, compared to other periods of their lives.

Self-image hypothesis

• memory is enhanced for events that occur as a person’s self-image or life identity is being formed.

Cognitive hypothesis

memories are better for adolescence and early adulthood because encoding is better during periods of rapid change followed by stability.

Cultural life script hypothesis

events in a person’s life story become easier to recall when they fit the cultural life script for that person’s culture.

Youth bias

Tendency for the most notable public events in a person’s life to be perceived to occur when the person is young.

Amygdala

A subcortical structure that is involved in processing emotional aspects of experience, including memory for emotional events.

Flashbulb memory

Memory for the circumstances that surround hearing about shocking, highly charged events

Repeated recall

comparing later memories to memories collected immediately after the event

Narrative rehearsal hypothesis

we remember some life events better because we rehearse them.

Nostalgia

A memory that involves a sentimental affection for the past.

Music-enhanced autobiographical memories (MEAMS)

Autobiographical memories elicited by hearing music

Proust effect

A phenomenon in which olfactory (smell) stimuli trigger vivid and emotional memories.

Constructive nature of memory

what people report as memories are constructed based on what actually happened plus additional factors

Source monitoring

The process by which people determine the origins of memories, knowledge, or beliefs

Source monitoring error

Misidentifying the source of a memory.

Source misattribution

Occurs when the source of a memory is misidentified.

Cryptomnesia

Unconscious plagiarism of the work of others.

Illusory truth effect

Enhanced probability of evaluating a statement as being true upon repeated presentation.

Fluency

The ease with which a statement can be remembered.

Repeated reproduction

a person is asked to reproduce a stimulus on repeated occasions at longer and longer intervals after the original presentation of the material to be remembered.

Pragmatic inference

ccurs when reading or hearing a statement leads a person to expect something that is not explicitly stated or necessarily implied by the statement.

 

Schema

A person’s knowledge about what is involved in a particular experience

Script

A type of schema. Our conception of the sequence of actions that usually occurs during a particular experience

Misinformation effect

Misleading information presented after a person witnesses an event that changes how the person describes that event later

Misleading postevent information (MPI)

misleading information that causes the misinformation effect.

Infantile amnesia

An inability to recall memories from infancy and early childhood

Repressed childhood memory

Memories that have been pushed out of a person’s consciousness

Eyewitness testimony

Testimony by eyewitnesses to a crime about what they saw during commission of the crime

Weapons focus

The tendency for eyewitnesses to a crime to focus attention on a weapon, causing poorer memory for other details.

Post-identification feedback effect

An increase in confidence of memory recall due to confirming feedback after making an identification, as in a police lineup.

Cognitive interview

letting witnesses talk with a minimum of interruption, while using techniques that help witnesses recreate the situation by having them place themselves back in the scene and recreate emotions they were feeling, where they were looking, and how the scene may have appeared when viewed from different perspectives

Retrograde amnesia

Loss of memory for something that happened prior to an injury or traumatic event such as a concussion.

Graded amnesia

When amnesia is most severe for events that occurred just prior to an injury and becomes less severe for earlier, more remote events.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)

A progressive neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated head injuries characterized by memory loss, behavioral changes, and cognitive decline.

Anterograde amnesia

new memories are unable to be created or stored.

Dementia

A broad term used to describe a group of cognitive disorders characterized by a decline in memory, thinking, and reasoning abilities severe enough to interfere with daily life and activities.

Alzheimer’s disease

the accumulation of abnormal proteins in the brain (70% of all diagnoses)

Vascular dementia

reduced blood flow to the brain (20% of diagnoses)

Lewy body dementia

the presence of abnormal protein deposits called Lewy bodies in the brain (7% of diagnoses)

Frontotemporal dementia

affects the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, leading to changes in personality, behavior, and language (3% of diagnoses)

Highly superior autobiographical memory/hyperthymesia

Autobiographical memory capacity possessed by some people who can remember personal experiences that occurred on any specific day from their past.