Chapter 6 psych

• Decay Theory

Memory deteriorates over time if it is not used or rehearsed, causing the original information to fade or weaken.

• Interference Theory

Forgetting happens because other memories compete or conflict with the target memory — either proactive (old memories interfere with new ones) or retroactive (new memories interfere with old ones).

• Motivated Forgetting Theory

A defense mechanism (often unconscious) where painful, traumatic, or highly distressing memories are blocked or pushed out of conscious awareness.

• Encoding Failure Theory

The information was never successfully transferred from short-term memory (STM) to long-term memory (LTM), typically due to a lack of attention.

• Retrieval Failure Theory

The information is stored in long-term memory but cannot be accessed at the moment due to a lack of proper cues or hints (such as the "tip-of-the-tongue" phenomenon).

Autobiographical memory

Memory for the events of one’s life.

Consolidation

The process occurring after encoding that is believed to stabilize memory traces.

Cue overload principle

The principle stating that the more memories that are associated to a particular retrieval cue, the less effective the cue will be in prompting retrieval of any one memory.

Distinctiveness

The principle that unusual events (in a context of similar events) will be recalled and recognized better than uniform (nondistinctive) events.

Encoding

The initial experience of perceiving and learning events.

Encoding specificity principle

The hypothesis that a retrieval cue will be effective to the extent that information encoded from the cue overlaps or matches information in the engram or memory trace.

Engrams

A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event; also, memory trace.

Flashbulb memory

Vivid personal memories of receiving the news of some momentous (and usually emotional) event.

Memory traces

A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event.

Mnemonic devices

A strategy for remembering large amounts of information, usually involving imaging events occurring on a journey or with some other set of memorized cues.

Recoding

The ubiquitous process during learning of taking information in one form and converting it to another form, usually one more easily remembered.

Retrieval

The process of accessing stored information.

Available – All information stored in memory. 

Accessible – The information we are able to retrieve.

Retroactive interference

The phenomenon whereby events that occur after some particular event of interest will usually cause forgetting of the original event.

Storage

The stage in the learning/memory process that bridges encoding and retrieval; the persistence of memory over time.

Anterograde Amnesia

– Inability to form new memories for facts and
events after the onset of amnesia.

Retrograde Amnesia –

Inability to retrieve memories for facts and
events acquired before the onset of amnesia

Temporarily graded retrograde amnesia –

Inability to retrieve memories
from just prior to the onset of amnesia with intact memory for more remote
events.

Dissociative Amnesia –

Inability to retrieve memories for facts and events
acquired before the onset of amnesia.

Misinformation effect

Occurs when incorrect information obtained after an event contaminates our memory of that event.

Schemata

Our memory uses templates of real life and adds them to memories to avoid having to process them again. We have an idea of what a library looks like, so our memories might imitate that idea into our memories, even if the real library looked different than what is expected

Working Memory

The ability to hold information in mind for a brief time and work with it.

Semantic Memory –

Your storehouse of more or less permanent knowledge.   

Episodic Memory -

The ability to remember the episodes of your life.

Collective Memory

The kind of memory that people in a group share (whether family, community, schoolmates, citizens of a state or a country).