Psychology: Memory, Storage, Retrieval, and Biological Processes

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering memory concepts, encoding, storage, retrieval cues, forgetting and memory errors, mnemonic strategies, and underlying biological brain structures from the lecture notes.

Retrieval cue

A stimulus for remembering.

Encoding specificity

The tendency for information to be improved if related information (such as surroundings or physiological state) available when the memory is first formed is also available when the memory is being retrieved.

Context-dependent learning

The physical surroundings a person is in when they are learning specific information will be easier to remember in similar surroundings.

State-dependent learning

The physiological or psychological state a person is in when they are learning specific information will be easier to remember in a similar state.

Proactive interference

Memory problem that occurs when older information prevents or interferes with the learning or retrieval of newer information.

Retroactive interference

Memory problem that occurs when newer information prevents or interferes with the learning or retrieval of older information.

Recall

Type of memory retrieval in which the information to be retrieved must be "pulled" from memory with very few external cues.

Serial position effect

Tendency of information at the beginning and end of a body of information to be remembered more accurately than information in middle of the body of information.

Primacy effect

Tendency to remember information at the beginning of a body of information better than the information that follows.

Recency effect

Tendency to remember information at the end of a body of information better than the information that comes before.

Recognition

The ability to match a piece of information or stimulus to a stored image or fact.

Forgetting

Loss of information from long-term memory.

Transience

The tendency for memories to fade over time.

Curve of forgetting

A graph showing a distinct pattern in which forgetting is very fast within the first hour after learning a list and then tapers off gradually.

Absentmindedness

Lapses in memory caused by breaks in attention or our focus being somewhere else.

Encoding failure

Failure to process information into memory.

Explicit memory

Type of long-term memory containing information that is conscious and known.

Semantic memory

Type of explicit memory containing general knowledge, such as knowledge of language and information learned in formal education.

Episodic memory

Type of explicit memory containing personal information not readily available to others, such as daily activities and events.

Implicit memory

Type of long-term memory for skills, procedures, habits, and conditioned responses.

Procedural memory

Type of implicit memory that stores information about the way to do something, and it is the memory for skilled actions.

Priming

Exposure to a stimulus affects the response to a later stimulus.

Amnesia

The loss of long-term memory that occurs as the result of disease, physical trauma, or psychological trauma.

Retrograde amnesia

Loss of memory from the point of some injury or trauma backward, or loss of memory for the past.

Anterograde amnesia

Loss of memory from the point of some injury or trauma forward, or the inability to form new long-term memories.

Alzheimer's disease

The most common cause of dementia, a continuous decline in thinking, behavioral and social skills that affects a person's ability to function independently.

Mnemonic devices

Strategies and memory "tricks" to help us remember information more effectively.

Acronyms

Easy-to-remember words that abbreviate a longer term or phrase.

Acrostics

Sentences used to remember something.

Rhythmic devices

Organizing information in a rhyming or rhythmic song or pattern.

Linking

Creating a story to remember items by linking them together; also called the story method.

Semantic network model

Model of memory organization that assumes information is stored in the brain in a connected fashion, with concepts that are related stored physically closer to each other than concepts that are not highly related.

Blocking

The inability to access stored information.

Constructive processing

Referring to the retrieval of memories in which those memories are altered, revised, or influenced by newer information.

Misattribution

Source of information is confused.

Suggestibility

The effects of misinformation from external sources that leads to the creation of false memories.

Misinformation effect

The tendency of misleading information presented after an event to alter the memories of the event itself.

Bias

The person's feelings and view of the world distort their memory of past events.

Hindsight bias

The tendency to falsely believe, through revision of older memories to include newer information, that one could have correctly predicted the outcome of an event.

Persistence

Involuntarily recalling unwanted memories, particularly unpleasant ones.

Distributed spacing practice

The study of material to be remembered by including breaks between study periods.

Relearning

A way to retrieve information that involves learning information that was previously learned.

Memory

An active system that receives information from the senses, puts that information into a usable form, organizes it as it stores it away, and then retrieves the information from storage.

Information-processing model

Model of memory that assumes the processing of information for memory storage is similar to the way a computer processes memory in a series of three stages.

Encoding

The set of mental operations that people perform on sensory information to process that information into a form that is usable in the brain's storage systems.

Storage

Holding onto information for some period of time.

Retrieval

Getting information that is in storage into a form that can be used.

Automatic processing

The encoding of details like time, space, frequency, and the meaning of words, usually done without any conscious awareness.

Effortful processing

Encoding that requires effortful work and attention.

Semantic encoding

Encoding of words and their meaning.

Visual encoding

Encoding of images.

Acoustic encoding

Encoding of sounds, words in particular.

Arousal theory

Strong emotions trigger the formation of strong memories, and weaker emotional experiences form weaker memories.

Flashbulb memory

An exceptionally clear recollection of an important event.

Levels-of-processing model

Model of memory that assumes information that is more "deeply processed," or processed according to its meaning rather than just the sound or physical characteristics of the word(s), will be remembered more efficiently and for a longer period of time.

Maintenance rehearsal

Practice of saying information to be remembered over and over in one's head in order to maintain it in short-term memory.

Elaborative rehearsal

A method of transferring information from STM to LTM by making that information meaningful in some way.

Chunking

Process of recoding, or reorganizing, information into meaningful groups.

Self-reference effect

Tendency for an individual to have better memory for information that relates to oneself in comparison to material that has less personal relevance.

Sensory memory

The first stage of memory; the point at which information enters the nervous system through the sensory systems.

Iconic memory

Visual sensory memory, lasting only a fraction of a second.

Echoic memory

The brief memory of something a person just heard.

Selective attention

The ability to focus on only one stimulus from among all sensory input.

Cocktail party effect

When an important bit of information is detected, it is filtered into your conscious awareness even though you weren't paying attention to it.

Short-term memory

The memory system in which information is held for brief periods of time while being used.

Working memory

An active system that processes the information in short-term memory.

Long-term memory

The system of memory into which all the information is placed to be kept more or less permanently.

Equipotentiality hypothesis

If part of one area of the brain involved in memory is damaged, another part of the same area can take over that memory function.

Amygdala

Structure responsible for fear responses and memory of fear.

Hippocampus

Curved structure responsible for the formation of long-term memories and the storage of memory for location of objects.

Cerebellum

Part of the lower brain that controls and coordinates involuntary, rapid, fine motor movement.

Prefrontal cortex

Part of the frontal lobe involved in planning complex cognitive behavior, personality expression, and decision making.

Memory trace

Physical change in the brain that occurs when a memory is formed.

Decay

Loss of memory due to the passage of time, during which the memory trace is not used.