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2. Storage

The retention of encoded material over time.

Context Dependent Memory

When you experience something traumatic and go back to the scene of the crime, you go back to the scene to experience/remember it again.

State Dependent Memory

A phenomenon where people are more likely to retrieve memories that were created in similar states of consciousness.
i.e. If you learn something while drunk, you will have a higher chance of remembering it if you are also drunk.

Semantic Encoding

Understanding the meaning of the words in constant (remember 90%).

Acoustic Encoding

Songs, rhymes (remember 60%).

Visual Encoding

Writing in word in capital letters, picture and images (remember 15%).

Imagery

Mental pictures, combined with semantic encoding.

Mnemonics

Stategies to help memorize better like having images.

Chunking

Organizing items into familiar, manageable units.

Hierachies

Complex information broken down into broad concepts and further subdivided into categories and subcategories.

Peg Words

Number word association
i.e. 1=Gun, 2=Shoe, 3=Tree

Memory

The persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information.

1. Encoding

The process of information into the memory system (STM to LTM).

3. Retrieval

The process of getting the information out of memory storage.

Sensory Memory

.5 seconds - 2 seconds for visuals
- Stored for a few seconds at most.
- Information lost if not encoded.

Short Term Memory

7 +/- 2
Holds material for about 15-30 seconds but expands with practice.
Information lost if not encoded.

Mood Congruent Memory

The tendency to more easily remember events that have a congruence with one's current mood.
i.e. Being sad when make you remember all the sad events, vice versa w/ happiness

Serial Position Effect

The tendency to remember the first and last item on the list (recent info).

Primacy Effect

The tendency to remember the beginning of the list.

Recency Effect

The tendency to remember the last items of the list.

Method of Loci

If we visualize it in a story/setting makes it easier to memorize

First Letter Technique

Like PEMDAS

Recall

Retrieve the information from your memory
i.e. Fill in blank, FrQ

Recognition

Identify the target from possible targets
i.e. McQ

Emotional intensity

Strong + and - feelings
i.e. 9/11

Vividness

Intense and clear.
i.e. A very clear and detailed memory of an event such as 9/11.

Repitition

Recur 1x per week to 1x per month.

Connections to similar memories

Same neurons, making them formally linked.

Lasting goals and unresolved conflicts

What matters most in life.

Encoding Failure (Absent-Mindedness)

Never enters long term memory.
i.e. Failing to pay proper attention to something

Storage Decay (Transcience...info fades)

Memory of new info fades quickly, then levels out.

Blocking

Temporary inaccessibility (Tip-of-the-Tongue)

Misattribution

Confusing source of info
i.e. Remember dream as actual happening

Proactive Interference

When something you learned before gets in the way of new info.

Retroactive Interference

When new info gets in the way of something you once knew.

Repression (Sigmund Freud)

Self censor painful info to protect our self concept and to minimize anxiety
i.e. Someone who does not recall abuse in their early childhood, but still has problems with connection, aggression and anxiety resulting from the unremembered trauma.

Elizabeth Loftus' Memory

The idea that facts, ideas, and suggestions and other info can modify our memories.

Automatic Processing

Unconscious encoding of incidental information.
i.e. Time, space, frequency, well-learned information.

Effortful Processing

Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.
i.e. Meaning, imagery, organization.

Iconic Memory

A photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second; type of Sensory Memory
i.e. when you see a car passing by on the highway, and for a brief moment you can picture the car after it is gone.

Echoic Memory

Momentary Sensory Memory of sounds and words that can be recalled with 3-4 seconds.

Anterograde Amnesia

The memory loss where you can't form new memories.

Retrograde Amnesia

The memory loss where you can't remember your past.

Explicit Memory

(Declarative) Memories of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare."
- Processed in hippocampus
i.e. Personally experienced events, facts such as general knowledge

Implicit Memory

(Nondeclarative) Retention independent without conscious recalls.
- Processed in cerebellum
i.e. Classical conditioning, skills that are motor and cognitive.

Left Hippocampus Damage

Trouble to remember verbal information, but no trouble to recall visual designs and locations.

Right Hippocampus Damage

Trouble to recall visual designs and locations, but no trouble to remember verbal information.

Hippocampus

Temporary process site for explicit memories.

Cerebellum

Role of forming and storing the implicit memories.

Misinformation Effect

incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event.

Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

Shows how learning info slips out of our memory overtime--unless taking action to keep it there.

Source Amnesia

The inability to remember where, when or how previously learned information has been acquired, while retaining the factual knowledge

Infantile Amnesia

Inability to recall first 3 years of life
--> Makes childhood memories unlikely.

Concepts

Mental grouping of similar objects, events, and people.

Cognition

Mental activities including thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Prototypes

A mental image or best example of a category.

Algorithms

A methodical, logical rule of procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.
i.e. the way we do division

Heuristics

A rule-of-thumb strategy that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently.
i.e. different brands of food items

Insight

A sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem.

Confirmation Bias

A tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions and ignore contradictory evidence.

Fixation

The inability to see a problem from a fresh perspective.

Overconfidence

The tendency to be more confident than correct.

Mental Set

The tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, especially if it has a worked in the past.

Functional Fixedness

The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual function.
i.e. Going around to find a screwdriver when a coin can be used as a screw

Representativeness Heuristic

A rule of thumb for judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they match our prototype.
i.e. Person wearing tie and suitcase and people think they're lawyers

Availability Heuristic

Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in our memory.
i.e. When you need to buy laundry detergent and Tide comes first in mind

Framing

A type of cognitive bias or error in thinking.
i.e. Refers to whether an option is presented as a loss (negative) or a gain (positive).

Belief Perseverance

Believing in one's opinion and judgement even after knowing there is evidence contradicting it.
i.e. A whole "flat earth" movement existing.

Belief Bias

The tendency to judge the strength of arguments based on the plausbility of their conclusion rather than how strong they support that conclusion.

Intuition

A feeling that guides a person to act a certain way without fully understanding why.
i.e. Gut feelings

Aphasia

A disorder that can impair all aspects of communication. Affects a person's ability to express and understand written and spoken language.

Fluent Aphasia (Receptive)

Poor comprehension, words may lack meaning
i.e. A patient can speak in sentences that sound like normal speech, but some of the words are made-up words or have some sounds that are not correct

Non-Fluent Aphasia (Expressive)

Good comprehension, difficulty finding words
i.e. Limited vocabulary, clumsy formation of sounds, difficulty writing but understand speech

Broca's area

Believed to be responsible in part of naming objects and the ability to speak.
- Located in the frontal lobe

Wernicke's area

Controls language reception - a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression
- Usually in the left temporal lobe.

Angular Gyrus

Associated with complex language functions; semantic encoding
- Damages causes agnosia, agraphasia, dyscalculia

Damage to Wernicke's Area

Weakens the brain's ability to comprehend language and speak nonsense.

Damage to Broca's Area

Can't speak.

Primary Progressive Aphasia

A form of dementia; a condition that slowly damages the parts of the brain that control speech and language.
i.e. People with PPA usually have difficulty speaking, naming objects or understanding conversations.

Brain Plasticity

The brain's ability to change through growth and reorganization.

Language

our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

Phonemes

In a spoken language, the smallest distinctive sound unit
i.e. Chug = ch, u, g --> 3

Morphemes

In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning.
i.e. Unthinkable = un/think/able (prefix = un, root word = think, suffix = able)

Grammar

A system of rules in a language that enables us to communicate and understand others.
i.e. I enjoy my psychology class vs. I my class psychology enjoy.

Semantics

The set of rules by which we derive meaning in a language.
i.e. "How are you?" , "I'm fine"

Syntax

The rules of combining words into grammatically sensible sentences
i.e. I am happy vs. Happy am I

Receptive Language

Children's language development moves from simplicity to complexity.
i.e. By 4 months, babies discriminate speech sounds, marking the period of receptive language.

Productive Language

Babies' ability to produce words
- Babbling, one-word, two-word stage

Babbling Stage

Starting at 3-4 months, the infant makes spontaneous sounds. Not limited to the phonemes of the infant's household language.

One-Word Stage

1-2 years old, uses one word to communicate big meanings

Two-Word Stage

At age 2, uses two words to communicate meanings- called telegraphic speech

Telegraph Speech

early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram—"go car"—using mostly nouns and verbs.

Skinner: Operant Learning

Believed we can explain language development with familiar learning principles, such as association, imitation and reinforcement.

Chomsky: Inborn Universal Grammar

We acquire language too quickly for it to be learned.
We have this "learning box" inside our heads that enable us to learn any human language.

Operant Conditioning

A method of learning that uses rewards and punishment to modify behavior

Association (Operant Conditioning)

Connecting the sight of things with sounds of words.

Imitation (Operant Conditioning)

Copy what is modeled by others.
i.e. A 3-year-old watches as her mother pretends to take a bite out of a piece of play pizza

Reinforcement (Operant Conditioning)

Smiles, hugs, repeating, reinforces the child when she/he says something right

Critical Period

A period during someone's development in which a particular skill or characteristic is believed to be most readily acquired.

Whorf's Linguistic Relativity

The idea that language determines the way we think.
i.e. The Hopi tribe has no past tense in their language, so Whorf says they rarely think of the past