General Psych Ch. 7

Memory

The ability to store and retrieve information. Psychologists divide memory into distinct systems that involve different brain regions. Our understanding of memory has come largely from case studies of individuals with brain damage (e.g., H.M.).

Memory Systems

Different parts of the brain manage different memory functions. For example, some systems handle facts and life events, while others handle skills or unconscious habits.

H.M. (Case Study)

A patient who had brain surgery to reduce seizures (removal of hippocampus and surrounding tissue). He developed anterograde amnesia—he could remember old memories and short-term information but could not form new explicit long-term memories. However, his implicit memory (skills like motor learning) remained intact, showing that memory systems are distinct.

Implicit Memories

Unconscious, automatic memories that cannot be verbalized. They influence our daily behavior without conscious awareness. Examples: your daily routine, riding a bike, tying shoes.

Procedural Memory (Implicit)

“Knowing how” to do things—skills and habits like walking, reading, playing an instrument. Very resistant to forgetting or decay.

Priming (Implicit)

Exposure to one stimulus unconsciously influences response to another. Example: reading the word “table” increases the likelihood of thinking of “chair,” “sit,” “eat,” or even words like “cable” and “stable.” Works like a spreading activation network.

Explicit Memories

Memories you can consciously recall and state aloud. They include facts and personal events. Examples: what you had for breakfast, when you learned to ride a bike, or knowing state capitals.

Episodic Memory (Explicit)

Your “mental autobiography.” Memories of personal life events, experienced as a story—rich with details like emotions, sensations, and context. Example: remembering your high school graduation, including how you felt and what you smelled.

Semantic Memory (Explicit)

Your knowledge of facts, rules, and concepts. Example: knowing what a strike means in baseball, or distinguishing fruits from vegetables.

Encoding

The process by which sensory input is transformed into a memory trace. Effective encoding requires attention and mental engagement.

Absentmindedness (Encoding Failure)

When attention is not directed to a stimulus, it fails to be encoded into memory. Example: forgetting where you left your keys because you weren’t paying attention when you set them down.

Dual Coding

Encoding improves when information is represented both visually (as an image) and verbally (as a word). Example: studying with pictures and words together is better than either alone.

Depth of Processing (Craik & Tulving, 1975)

The level at which information is processed affects how well it’s remembered.

• Shallow processing: noticing surface features (e.g., font or sound).

• Deep processing: considering meaning, making connections with prior knowledge.
  Experiment: Participants recalled words better after semantic judgments (meaning-based) than visual or sound-based judgments.

Schemas

Mental frameworks that organize knowledge about objects, people, events, or ourselves. They guide perception, understanding, and recall—but can also distort memories by shaping them to fit expectations.

Suggestibility

Memory errors are caused by misleading information. Example: Loftus & Palmer (1974) showed participants a car crash video and asked about cars “hitting” vs. “smashing” each other. The word choice altered participants’ speed estimates and memory of the crash.

Chunking

Grouping information into meaningful units so that working memory can handle more information. Example: remembering phone numbers as “555-1234” instead of 7 separate digits.

Mnemonics

Memory aids that connect new information with existing knowledge.

• Acronyms (using first letters to form words).

• Memory Palace (linking items to locations in a mental map).

• Rhymes or associations (e.g., “i before e except after c”).

Sensory Memory

The initial, brief trace of sensory input (visual, auditory, etc.) before it fades. Provides a short window of opportunity to attend to and encode information.

Working Memory (WM)

A “mental workspace” where information is temporarily held and manipulated to form a cohesive whole. Capacity is limited to about 4 items, but chunking increases efficiency. Example: solving a math problem while holding the numbers in mind.

Maintenance Rehearsal

Repeating information in working memory over and over to keep it active, without necessarily encoding it deeply.

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

The “library” of stored knowledge. Holds information indefinitely once encoded, but retrieval depends on cues and context.

Proactive Interference

Old memories interfere with learning or recalling new ones. Example: learning a new phone number but accidentally remembering your old one instead.

Retroactive Interference

New learning disrupts recall of old memories. Example: learning Spanish vocabulary may interfere with your recall of French words.

Blocking

Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon—when you know you know something, but can’t retrieve it in the moment.

Consolidation

The process of stabilizing memories in long-term storage. Takes time and involves evaluating which information to keep or discard.

Reconsolidation

When a memory is retrieved, it becomes malleable again and must be re-stored. This can strengthen the memory (through retrieval practice) or alter it (by inserting new information).

Memory Bias

The tendency to reshape past memories to fit current attitudes or beliefs often happens during reconsolidation.

Retrieval

The process of accessing stored memories when needed. Retrieval cues (like sights, smells, or sounds) can trigger recall. Example: smelling your dad’s cologne makes you remember him.

Encoding Specificity Principle

Recall improves when the retrieval situation matches the conditions present during encoding.

Context-Dependent Memory

Environmental context at encoding influences retrieval. Example: studying in a quiet room helps recall if the test is also taken in a quiet room.

State-Dependent Memory

Internal state at encoding influences retrieval. Example: if you study while drinking coffee, you may recall better if you drink coffee during the test.

Serial Position Effect

People tend to remember the first items (primacy effect) and last items (recency effect) in a list better than items in the middle.