Memory and Cognition

What is explicit memory?

knowledge or experiences that can be consciously remembered

What is semantic memory?

Knowledge of facts and concepts around the world

What is episodic emmeory?

First-hand experiences we had

How is explicit memory measured?

Memory recognition and recall

Which is harder recall or recongiton?

Recall

What is relearning and how do we use it to measure explict memeory?

Relearning is when you forget something and then you relearn. We see how fast you can learn everything again when compared to your first time learning it to see how well you understood and remembered it.

What is implict memory?

influence of experience on behavior, even if the individual is not aware of those influences.

What is procedural memory?

A form of implict memeory where we know how to do certain skills like ride a bike. We can not explain it that well but we know how to do it.

What is memory through conditonal learning?

When we learn to associate certain stimuli with other stimuli

What is priming?

changes in behavior as a result of experiences that have happened frequently or recently.

What is sensory memory?

The brief storage of sensory information

What is sensory memory?

the brief storage of sensory information

What is iconic memory?

visual sensory memory

What is echoic memeory?

Auditory sensory memory

What is short-term memory?

The place where small bits of information is stored for more than a couple of seconds but usually for less than a minute.

How do we store information in short-term memory?

We do not store information. We modify it, interpret it through a process we call working memory.

How do we prevent short-term memory decay?

We use a process called maintenance rehearsal and using things such as chunking

What is chunking?

A way to remember information much more easier by putting things into groups instead of trying to remember individual things.

What is encoding?

the process by which we place the things that we experience into memory.

Why do we not encode all information?

Because not all information is relvant.

What is elaborative encoding?

When we remember new information by attaching it to information we have already learned.

What does Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve show?

That memory falls off rapidly, but then levels off after time.

What is the spacing effect?

The idea that we learn and remember a lot more if we space out our studying time instead of trying to study all at once.

What is overlearning?

When you keep going over material even after you think you have mastered it

What does overlearning ensure?

That you actually understand the information presented to you

What is retrieval?

The process of recalling information that has already been stored.

What is the tip of tongue phenomenon?

When a person has the information stored in there mind and even if they do have it stored, there are not enough cues for them to recall it.

How can we better remember information?

If we are placed into conditions that are similar to those when we originally encoded the information.

What is context-dependent memory?

An increase in retrieval due to the conditions we learned the information being the same as the conditions we are trying to remember it.

What is state-dependent memory?

When we remember things better because we are in the same psychological or physiological state when we learned them

What is the serial position effect?

When given a list, we are more likely to remember information from the beginning and end.

What is the primacy effect and how does it work?

The primacy effect is that we are more likely to remember information at the beginning of the list. This is because these are the first words we hear, so we rehearse these more and are more likely to move it from short-term to long-term.

What is the recency effect?

When remember things at the end of the list better. This is due to our short memory and maintenance rehearsal

What is retroactive interference?

When we struggle to retrieve information that we encode before after we learned something new.

What is proactive interference?

When information we learned earlier makes it harder for us to encode new information.

What are categories?

Networks of associated information because they are all related to each other

What is spreading activation?

When one element of a category triggers other elements

What are defining features?

Features shared by all members of that category

What is the prototype?

The most average member of that category.

How does memory work biologically?

It works through a process called long-term potentiation. What happens is as we stimulate our mind more and think of something more, the synaptic connections in our brain increase and we get better at communicating information.

What is retrograde amnesia?

a memory disorder that produces an inability to retrieve events that occurred before a given time

What ememories do we struggle to remember more after an incident?

Those that happened right before the incident since our synapses had not developed fully yet.

What part of the brain helps with moving things from short-term to long-term memory?

The hippocampus

What is Anterograde amnesia?

the inability to transfer information from short-term into long-term memory

What part of our brain deals with implict memories?

the cerebellum

What part of the brain deals with emotional memories?

the amygdala

Where is memory located?

All throughout the brain

What homrone is most important when making emmories?

Glutamate

What is cognitive bias?

Sysmatic errors in memory or judgement

What is source confusion?

This an error where we forget the source of a memory.

What is confrmation bias?

When we only look for information that confirms our schemas and memories, not any that really questions them.

What is fucntional fixedness?

When we use things only in traditional ways because our previous knowledge about them in schemas prevent us from using them in a different manner.

What is the misinformation effect?

When new information influences our existing memories. They change when someone asks us things.

What is overconfidence?

e tendency for people to be too certain about their ability to accurately remember events and to make judgments even if there memories are not that accurate.

What is a flashbulb memory?

a vivid and emotional memory of an unusual event that people believe they remember very well even as time passes and they forget the details.

What is representativeness heuristic?

base our judgments on information that seems to represent, or match, what we expect will happen, while ignoring other potentially more relevant statistical information.

What is e availability heuristic

A cognitive bias that involves the tendency to make judgments of the frequency or likelihood that an event occurs on the basis of the ease with which the event can be retrieved from memory..

What is counterfactual thinking

The tendency to think about and experience events according to “what might have been”