Psych 1 Midterm 2

Memory

The storage of information in the brain for later access, which allows us to learn from our experiences and create knowledge that can guide our future behavior.

Encoding

The process of taking information from the world, including our internal thoughts and feelings, and converting it to memories.

Storage

The maintance of the encoded information in our brains for later access. The duration of this storage can last a blink of an eye, or for a lifetime.

Retrieval

The process of bringing to mind previously encoded and stored information.

Multistore model of memory

A model proposing that information flows from our senses through three storage levels in memory: sensory, short term, and long term.

Sensory memory

A storage level of memory that holds sensory information on the order of milliseconds to seconds.

Short-term memory

Information from all senses can be held from seconds to less than a minute before it is either stored more permanently or forgotten.

Long-term memory

Information can be held for hours to many years, and potentially for a lifetime.

Iconic memory

This is sensory memory in vision.

Echoic memory

This is sensory memory in hearing.

Chunking

The process of grouping stimuli together in chunks in working memory to increase the amount of information stored in short-term memory.

Working memory

A component of memory that allows for both the short-term storage and manipulation of information in real time.

Rehersal

The holding of information in the brain through mental repetition.

Anterograde amnesia

The incapacity to form new long-term memories.

Retrograde amnesia

This impairs access to memories prior to the date of brain damage but sitll permits the individual to place new experiences into long-term memory.

Levels of processing

The multiple levels at which encoding can occur, ranging from shallow to deep.

Shallow encoding

Uses apperances, such as how something looks or sounds.

Deep encoding

Relies on processing information in a manner that goes beyond appearance to involve its significance and meaning.

Self-referential encoding

Encoding based on an event’s relation to our self-concept, which leads to enhanced memory for the event.

Explicity memory

A form of memory that involves intentional and conscious remembering.

Implicit memory

A form of memory that occurs without intentional recollection or awareness and can be measured indirectly through the influence of prior learning on behavior.

Procedural memory

A type of implicit memory related to the acquisition of skills.

Priming

The increased ability to process a stimulus because of previous exposure.

Affective conditioning

A form of conditioning in which a previously neutral stimulus acquires positive or negative value.

Episodic memory

The explicit recollection of personal experience that requires piecing together the elements of that time and place.

Semantic memory

Explicit memory supporting knowledge about the world, including concepts and facts.

Retrospective memory

Memory for things we have done in the past.

Prospective memory

Involves remembering things we need to do in the future.

Consolidation

The neurobiological process whereby memory storage is stabilized and strengthened.

Reconsolidation

Reactivation of consolidation by retrieving a memory, making the memory susceptible to change

Long-term potentiation (LTP)

A mechanism that creates enduring synaptic connections, which results in increased transmission between neurons.

Flashbulb memories

A vivid memory for an emotionally significant event, thought to be permanent and detailed, as if frozen in time like a photograph.

Amgydala

The brain region that is critical for processing and experiencing the emotional component of memories.

Free recall

Accessing information from memory without any cues to aid your retrieval.

Retrieval cues

Information related to stored memories that helps bring the memories back to mind.

Cued recall

A form of retrieval that is facilitated by providing information related to the stored memory, has better results than free recall.

Recognition

A form of retrieval that relies on identifying infromation that you have previously seen on experienced.

Encoding specificity principle

The idea that retrieval is best when the present context recreates the context in which information was initially encoded.

State-dependent retrieval

The increased likelihood of remembering when a person is in the same state during both encoding and retrieval.

Mood-dependent retrieval

The increased likelihood of remembering when a person is in the same mood during both encoding and retrieval.

Forgetting curve

The retention of information over various delay times, it is initially rapid and then levels off, it is a curve.

Trace decay theory

States that if a person does not access and use a memory, the memory trace will weaken or decay over time and will be less available for later retrieval.

Interference theory of forgetting

Forgetting in long-term memory is related not to the passage of time but to interference created by integrating new and old information in the brain as time passes.

Retroactive interference

The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information.

Proactive interference

The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information.

Negative transfer

The detrimental effect of your past memories on how well you can learn and perform today.

Positive transfer

Old information can facilitate the learning of new information.

Hyperthymesia

This is when you possess an extremely detailed autobiographical memory.

Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon

A failure to retrieve information despite confidence that it is stored in memory.

Motivated forgetting

Willful forgetting of information so that it is less likely to be retrieved later.

Encoding failure

This occurs when information never makes it into long-term memory, our sensory memories fade quickly.

Weapon focus

The central important details are encoded and remembered but surrounding peripheral information are not.

False memory

Retrieval of an event that never occured.

Misinformation effect

The decreased accuracy of episodic memories because of information provided after the event.

Infantile amnesia

The inability of adults to retrieve episodic memories from the first few years of life.

Reminiscence bump

A time of prominent memory making between adolescence and early adulthood.

Spacing effect

Demonstrates that information is better remembered when encoding is spaced over time.

Motives

An internal force that leads an individual to behave in a particular way.

Instinct

A genetically endowed tendency to behave in a particular way.

Homeostatsis

The body’s tendency to maintain internal equilibrium through various forms of self-regulation

Drive

A state of internal bodily tension, such as hunger or thirst or the need for sleep.

Pain matrix

A distributed network of brain regions, including the amygdala, that respond to many types of pain.

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI)

These are self-harm behaviors, the behaviors are intentional, self-inflicted, and not for a socially sanctioned purpose.

Escape-from-self hypothesis

The idea that the experience of physical pain focuses a person’s attention concretely on the injury they are doing to themselves at the present moment and to the pain they feel as a consequence of this self-injury.

Intrinsically rewarding

Being pursued for its own sake.

Extrinsically rewarding

Being pursued because of rewards that are not an inherent part of the activity or object.

Glucostatic hypothesis

The hypothesis that hunger and eating are regulated by the body’s monitoring and adjustment of blood glucose levels.

Lipostatic hypothesis

The hypothesis that adipose tissue plays an important role in governing hunger and regulating longer-term energy balance.

Body weight set point

The weight an organism will seek to maintain despite alterations in dietary intake.

Dual-center theory

It says that two centers of the hypothalamus regulate our feelings of hunger and fullness; the lateral hypothalamus acts as the “go” center for eating, while the ventromedial hypothalamus acts as the “stop” center.

Unit bias

The size of what counts as a single portion.

Anorexia nervosa

An eating disorder characterized by an extreme concern with being overweight and by compulsive dieting, sometimes to the point of self-starvation.

Bulimia nervosa

An eating disorder characterized by repeated binge-and-purge bouts.

Binge-eating disorder

An eating disorder characterized by repeated episodes of binge eating without inappropriate compensatory behavior.

Body mass index

A measure of whether someone is at a healthy weight or not; BMI is calculated as one’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of one’s height in meters.

Thirty gene hypothesis

The evolutionary hypothesis that natural selection has favored individuals with efficient metabolisms that maximize fat storage.

Erstus

A female mammal’s period of sexual receptivity

Neurodevelopmental perspective

This perspective holds that sexual orientation is built into the circuitry of the brain early in fetal development.

Performance orientation

A motivational stance that focuses on performing well and looking smart.

Mastery orientation

A motivational stance that focuses on learning and improving.

Hierarchy of motives

The order in which needs are thought to become dominant. People will strive to meet their higher-order needs, such as self-actualization and self-transcendence, only when their lower, more basic needs like food and safety have been met.

Self-actualization

The desire to realize one’s potential to the fullest.

Self-transcendense

The desire to further a cause that goes beyond the self, such as truth, social justice, or religious faith.

Emotion

The coordinated behaviors, feelings, and physiological changes that occur when a situation becomes relevant to our personal goals.

Display rules

Cultural rules that govern the expression of emotion

Discrete emotions approach

An approach to analyzing emotions that focuses on specific emotions such as anger, fear, and pride.

Dimensional approach

An approach to analyzing emotions that focuses on dimensions such as pleasantness and activation.

Alexithymia

An extreme difficulty in identifying and labeling one’s emotions.

Happiness set point

This is substantially genetically determined and it is the level of happiness that is characteristic of a given individual.

Cognition

All of the mental activities associated with thinking, including knowing, remembering, solving problems, making judgments and decisions, and communicating.

Mental representations

Internal mental symbols that stand for some object, even, or state of affairs in the world and allow a person to think about things in their absence.

Concepts

A mental category that groups similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

Protype

A best example or average member of a concept that incorporates most of the features most commonly associated with it. Like the most stereotypical version of something.

Mental set

A mental framework for how to solve a problem based on prior experience with similar problems.

Functional fixedness

An obstacle to problem solving that involves focusing on an object’s typical functions, thus failing to recognize atypical functions that could help solve a problem.

Bounded rationality

The idea that rational decision making is constrained by limitations in people’s cognitive abilities, available information, and time.

Controlled system

It is a system of thinking, it is more slower and more effortful and leads to more thoughtful and rational outcomes.

Automatic system

This is fast and fairly effortless and leads to decent outcomes most of the time. It allows for intutive reactions and responses.

Heuristics

A mental shortcut that allows people to efficiently solve problems and make judgments and decisions

Representativeness heuristic

A shortcut for judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent or be prototypical of some category.