Cognitive Psychology: Memory Models, Retrieval Dynamics, and Working Memory

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering memory retrieval dynamics, the classical modal model of memory, interference theory, and the multi-component working memory framework.

Recall Initiation Tendency

The tendency in free recall where participants begin recall with end-list (recency) items .a tendency that is significantly reduced in delayed free recall (Howard & Kahana, 1999).

Cue-Dependent Retrieval Process

A search process where an individual self-generates or receives a cue to narrow the memory search, which produces a retrieved item that subsequently serves as a cue for the next item.

Search Monitoring

The verification process carried out after an item is sampled from memory to determine whether the item is from the target list and has not already been recalled, preventing intrusions and repetitions.

Previous-List Intrusion (PLI)

A recall error occurring when a participant incorrectly outputs an item that was studied on an earlier list rather than the currently tested list.

Extra-List Intrusion (ELI)

A recall error where a participant erroneously generates a word that was never presented in any list in the task context.

Recall Lag

Lag measures how many steps forward (positive) or backward (negative) you jump in the original study list when recalling two words in a row—for example, recalling item 1 then item 3 is a +2 lag, while recalling item 4 then item 2 is a -2 lag.

Lag-Conditional Response Probability (Lag-CRP)

A curve estimating the probability of transitioning between items in recall at each lag, characterized by higher transition rates between near neighbors (low absolute lags) and an asymmetry favoring forward transitions over backward transitions.Lag-CRP is a graph showing that when you recall a word, you are most likely to recall a word that was studied right next to it, with a strong preference for moving forward in the list.

Lag-Conditional Response Latency (Lag-CRL)

(Kahana, 1996) estimating how quickly someone transitions between items in recall across lags, showing faster retrieval for shorter absolute lags and faster forward transitions than backward transitions.

Temporal Clustering

the tendency to recall items that were learned next to each other (+1 or -1 lag), which predicts higher overall recall performance.(Sederberg et al., 2010).

Semantic Clustering

The grouping of recalled items based on meaning, category, or conceptual similarity; although common, it does not improve overall recall accuracy and can increase intrusions.

Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) Paradigm

A false-memory paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) where studying lists of semantically related words induces high false recall ($40\%$) and false recognition ($84\%$) of an unstudied critical lure with high confidence.

Critical Lure

An unstudied word in the DRM paradigm that is highly semantically related to all studied list items and is falsely recalled or recognized by participants as having been presented.

Inter-Response Time (IRT)

The duration between consecutively retrieved words during recall, which lengthens as the search proceeds and often signals search termination when an ineffective cue or error occurs.

Verbal Fluency Task

A memory retrieval paradigm without prior list presentation requiring participants to recall as many category exemplars as possible (e.g., naming animals or friends) within a limited time.

Clustering and Switching

observed in verbal fluency where retrieval proceeds through clusters of related items until a cluster is exhausted, followed by a switch to a new cluster.

Semantic Memory

The long-term memory system responsible for recalling the meanings of words, concepts, and factual knowledge independent of personal experience.

Associative Memory

The capacity to encode, store, and recall the relations and links among events, concepts, or words.

Procedural Memory

The non-declarative memory system supporting the acquisition and execution of motor, perceptual, and cognitive skills.

Declarative Memory

The memory system involved in the conscious recollection of facts, definitions, and explicit information.

Episodic Memory

The recollection of personally experienced events, including both the specific factual content and the spatial-temporal contextual details.

Autobiographical Memory

A specialized form of episodic memory comprising personal recollections of events, experiences, and history from one's own life.

Herman Ebbinghaus's Memory Research

Pioneering empirical research (1885) comprising over $800$ hours of self-testing on consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) strings, documenting learning and forgetting curves, working memory span of around $7$ items, and temporal contiguity effects.

Memory Drum

A mechanical device invented by George Elias Müller designed to display stimulus items to subjects one at a time at a consistent, standardized presentation rate.

Paired-Associate Learning Task

A testing paradigm utilized by Müller and Pizlecker (1900) where participants study word pairs (e.g., horse - cabin) and are subsequently tested on the second word when cued with the first (horse - ???).

Nachklingen

The perseveration or reverberation of freshly experienced associations in the mind identified by Müller and Pizlecker, conceptually similar to working or short-term memory.

Free Recall vs. Serial Recall

Free recall is a testing paradigm where participants recall items in any order without hints, whereas serial recall mandates reproducing items in their exact presentation order.

Implicit Memory Test

assesses memory indirectly by having participants perform an initial task without expecting a test, followed by a surprise assessment that measures how prior exposure unconsciously affects performance.

Spacing Effect

The memory principle establishing that repeating information across spaced intervals produces significantly stronger long-term retention than massing repetitions in close succession.

Retention Interval

The precise amount of time elapsed between the initial exposure or encoding of information and the subsequent recall attempt.

Serial Position Effect

The phenomenon demonstrated by Murdock (1962) where items presented at the beginning and end of a list are recalled with the highest probability relative to items in the middle.

Primacy Effect

The heightened recall probability observed for early-list items, attributed in the modal model to greater opportunities for overt or covert rehearsal.

Recency Effect

The superior recall observed for the final items of a list, attributed in the modal model to direct retrieval from the short-term buffer.

Modal Model of Memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968)

a framework that describes memory as information moving from sensory stores to a capacity-limited short-term store (guided by processes like rehearsal), and ultimately into an unlimited long-term store.

Control Processes (Modal Model)

Flexible, task-dependent cognitive strategies operated within short-term memory, primarily including rehearsal, coding, decision-making, and retrieval strategies.

Chunking

The process of recoding and organizing individual pieces of information into larger, meaningful familiar units to circumvent the capacity limitations of short-term memory.

Brown-Peterson Task

A short-term memory decay paradigm (Brown, 1958; Peterson & Peterson, 1959) where participants recall consonant trigrams (e.g., XJR, KNF, BMT after variable delays ($3, 5, 9, 12, 15,$ or $18\text{ seconds}$) filled with backward counting to prevent rehearsal.

Rundus (1971) Overt Rehearsal Experiment

The Rundus (1971) experiment showed that the primacy effect is driven by how frequently early items are rehearsed, whereas the recency effect keeps late-list items highly recallable despite minimal rehearsal

Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) Experiment

A study demonstrating that inserting a $10$- or $30$-second counting delay after list presentation eliminates the recency effect while preserving the primacy effect, supporting the distinction between STS and LTS.

Continuous-Distractor Free Recall

A paradigm developed by Bjork and Whitten (1974) where a distractor task is performed before and after every single item; persistent primacy and recency effects are observed, challenging the modal model account of recency.

Long-Term Recency Effect

The observation of recency effects for information stored entirely in long-term memory (such as recalling the order of US presidents; Roediger & Crowder, 1976), which cannot be explained by short-term store unloading.

Proactive Interference (PI)

The forgetting process where previously learned or older information impairs the ability to learn, maintain, or retrieve newer information.

Retroactive Interference (RI)

The forgetting process where newly acquired information disrupts or impairs the retrieval of previously learned older information.

Serial List Interference Dynamics

The structural interference pattern across a study list where beginning items suffer only from retroactive interference, ending items suffer only from proactive interference, and middle items suffer from both.

Working Memory (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974)

A multi-component cognitive system responsible for the temporary maintenance and manipulation of information necessary for complex tasks such as learning, comprehension, and reasoning. It relies on a Central Executive to direct attention while two primary "slave systems"—the Phonological Loop (auditory/verbal) and the Visuospatial Sketchpad (visual/spatial)—process distinct types of information. Later, the Episodic Buffer was added to integrate these streams of sensory data with long-term memory into coherent, timeline-based experiences.

Central Executive

The supervisory component of working memory associated with the frontal lobes, responsible for coordinating the slave systems, managing selective attention, activating long-term memory, and suppressing habitual responses.

Phonological Store

The passive storage subcomponent of the phonological loop that temporarily holds speech-based and acoustic information subject to rapid decay.

Articulatory Control Process (ACP)

The active subcomponent of the phonological loop based on inner speech that covertly rehearses verbal representations and translates visually presented materials into phonological codes.

Phonological Similarity Effect

The impairment in immediate serial recall observed when letters or words sound alike (e.g., bat, cat, hat or PVCGE vs. XRFYZ) due to interference between similar phonological representations in the phonological store.

Irrelevant Speech Effect

The finding that performance on verbal working memory tasks is disrupted by the simultaneous presence of unattended background speech or phonemes, which gain involuntary access to the phonological store.

Word Length Effect

The empirical finding that lists of shorter words are recalled significantly better than lists of longer words because the phonological loop has a finite time-based capacity that fits fewer long-duration items.

Articulatory Suppression

The experimental technique of requiring participants to continuously utter an irrelevant sound (e.g., saying 'the the the the') during stimulus presentation, which ties up the ACP and abolishes the word length effect.

Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad

The working memory slave system specialized for the temporary retention and spatial-visual manipulation of visual information and imagery (e.g., mental rotation).

Brooks' Diagram Task (1968)

A spatial imagery experiment requiring subjects to mentally navigate the outline of a block letter 'F' and categorize each vertex, showing slower output when pointing than when responding vocally due to intra-modal visual-spatial interference.

Episodic Buffer (Baddeley, 2000/2002)

A limited-capacity, multidimensional temporary storage system controlled by the Central Executive that integrates information from the phonological store, visuo-spatial sketchpad, and long-term memory into coherent episodic representations.

Simple Span Task

A basic short-term memory test (e.g., digit span) requiring immediate forward serial recall of digit or word lists; it features strict all-or-none scoring and weak predictive correlation with broader reasoning abilities.

Complex Span Task

A working memory measurement (e.g., Operation Span; Daneman & Carpenter, 1980) requiring participants to maintain items in memory while actively performing an interleaved processing task, strongly predicting fluid intelligence and reading comprehension.

Visual Change-Detection Task (Luck & Vogel, 1997)

A visual working memory paradigm presenting a multi-item display for $100\text{--}250\text{ ms}$, followed by a $1{,}000\text{-ms}$ delay, to test whether an item's identity or conjunction of features (color, orientation, size, gap) has changed.

Working Memory Capacity Estimates (Miller vs. Cowan)

The theoretical boundaries established for working memory capacity, originally formulated by Miller (1956) as $7 \pm 2$ chunks and later revised by Cowan (2001) to $4 \pm 1$ items based on contemporary complex span and visual array data.

DRM paradigm

a classic psychological test used to induce false memories by presenting participants with a list of words that are all semantically related to a single, unlisted word called a blank During testing, participants frequently and confidently report remembering the critical lure (such as falsely recalling "sleep" after studying "bed, tired, dream"), demonstrating how semantic networks can distort memory retrieval.

phonological loop

a component of Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch’s Working Memory Model. It acts as the brain’s "inner voice" and "inner ear," specialized for holding and processing verbal and auditory information (such as words, numbers, and spoken sentences)