Interactive Psychology: Memory, Learning, and Sensation & Perception

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the core concepts of memory, learning, sensation, and perception from Interactive Psychology: People in Perspective.

Memory

An evolutionarily older function that allows organisms to record where they have been, where they are, and where they are going, consisting of the processes of encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Encoding

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

Storage

The maintenance of encoded information in the brain over a period of time for later access.

Retrieval

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

Multistore Model of Memory

A model proposing that information flows sequentially through three distinct storage levels: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

Sensory Memory

A storage level of memory characterized by high capacity but an extremely fragile duration on the order of milliseconds to seconds ($< 1\text{ second}$).

Echoic Memory

Auditory sensory memory, which lasts slightly longer than visual sensory memory (iconic memory) but remains under one second.

Short-Term Memory

A temporary storage level where information from all senses can be held briefly for less than $30\text{ seconds}$ (or under a minute) before being forgotten or transferred to long-term memory.

Long-Term Memory

A permanent storage level of memory where information can be maintained from hours to many years, potentially lasting a lifetime without clearly defined limits in capacity or duration.

Chunking

The process of grouping individual stimuli into meaningful collections or chunks within working memory to expand short-term memory holding capacity.

Working Memory

An active system that manipulates and juggles incoming sensory information alongside retrieved long-term knowledge, replacing the passive concept of short-term memory.

Phonological Loop

The component of working memory that holds words and numbers through subvocal rehearsal, overlapping anatomically with language processing regions.

Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad

The component of working memory responsible for holding and manipulating visual images and spatial locations, functioning as an internal eye.

Central Executive

The supervisory component of working memory that directs attention, assigns cognitive tasks to subordinate helper systems, and engages regions of the frontal cortex.

Serial Position Curve

A U-shaped curve demonstrating that recall accuracy for items on a list varies systematically according to their serial presentation order.

Primacy Effect

Enhanced memory for items at the beginning of a list, resulting from additional rehearsal and elaboration that facilitates storage into long-term memory.

Recency Effect

Enhanced recall for items appearing at the end of a list because they remain active within short-term and working memory.

Anterograde Amnesia

The inability to transfer new information from short-term to long-term memory, preventing the formation of new long-term memories following brain trauma.

Retrograde Amnesia

The impairment of access to memories that were formed prior to brain injury or damage, while retaining the ability to form new long-term memories.

Semantic Encoding

A form of deep processing that evaluates the meaning of events and words, generating superior memory retention relative to shallow visual or acoustic encoding.

Self-Referential Encoding

The process of linking new information to one's self-concept and personal experiences, which engages self-reflection brain regions and produces high recall rates.

Method of Loci

A mnemonic technique involving the visualization of items within familiar spatial layouts to dramatically improve recall, common in Indigenous oral traditions.

Explicit Memory

Declarative, intentional, and conscious remembering of facts and experiences, mediated primarily by the hippocampus.

Implicit Memory

Nondeclarative, unconscious, and unintentional recollection demonstrated indirectly through the influence of prior learning on ongoing behaviour.

Procedural Memory

An implicit memory system supporting the acquisition of motor and cognitive skills through practice, mediated by the basal ganglia and cerebellum rather than the hippocampus.

Priming

An enhanced ability to identify or process a stimulus due to recent prior exposure, occurring independently of depth of processing and visible as reduced neural activation in sensory cortices.

Affective Conditioning

A form of conditioning in which a previously neutral stimulus acquires an emotional or motivational valence (positive or negative), as demonstrated by Dr. Claparède's pin-prick experiment.

Episodic Memory

The conscious recollection of personal, autobiographical experiences linked to specific times and places, mediated by the hippocampus.

Semantic Memory

Explicit knowledge regarding general world facts, language, and concepts, supported anatomically by the lateral and anterior temporal lobes.

Prospective Memory

The memory system responsible for remembering to carry out intended actions or duties in the future.

Consolidation

The neurobiological process occurring after learning whereby fragile memory traces stabilize and integrate into durable long-term brain networks, heavily supported by sleep.

Reconsolidation

The temporary destabilization and re-stabilization process that occurs whenever a consolidated memory is reactivated during retrieval, making it temporarily vulnerable to disruption.

Hebbian Learning Hypothesis

The principle formulated by Donald O. Hebb stating that 'cells that fire together, wire together,' where repeated stimulation of cell B by axon A leads to increased synaptic efficiency.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)

A persistent strengthening of synaptic connections following high-frequency stimulation, resulting in increased postsynaptic receptor sensitivity and density.

Flashbulb Memory

An exceptionally vivid memory formed during an emotionally significant event, characterized by high subjective confidence despite demonstrating low objective accuracy over time.

Free Recall

The process of retrieving stored information from memory without the assistance of any external retrieval cues.

Cued Recall

A memory retrieval process assisted by specific cues or prompts related to the encoded material, such as fill-in-the-blank questions.

Recognition

A form of retrieval that relies on correctly identifying previously encountered stimuli from an array of alternatives, as in multiple-choice questions.

Encoding Specificity Principle

The framework asserting that memory retrieval is maximized when the environmental, internal, or situational context during retrieval matches that present during encoding.

State-Dependent Retrieval

The increased likelihood of successfully recalling information when an individual is in the same physiological or pharmacological state during both encoding and retrieval.

Mood-Dependent Retrieval

The enhanced ability to recall memories when an individual's emotional or affective state during retrieval corresponds to the mood experienced during encoding.

Forgetting Curve

A mathematical graph formulated by Hermann Ebbinghaus illustrating that memory loss is initially rapid immediately following encoding and subsequently levels off across time.

Trace Decay Theory of Forgetting

The hypothesis proposing that physical memory traces in the brain naturally erode and weaken over time if they are not periodically accessed and practiced.

Retroactive Interference

The disruptive effect occurring when newly learned information hinders the retrieval of older, previously stored information.

Proactive Interference

The disruptive phenomenon wherein previously learned information prevents or impairs the acquisition and recall of newly presented information.

Positive Transfer

The process whereby previously acquired knowledge, skills, or associations facilitate and improve the learning of new related information.

Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon

A transient retrieval failure wherein an individual feels confident that an item is stored in memory but cannot immediately bring it to conscious awareness.

Motivated Forgetting

A psychological mechanism whereby people willfully suppress or inhibit unwanted memories to decrease the probability of future retrieval.

Weapon Focus

An attentional phenomenon occurring during high-threat events where attention narrows onto central threatening details, leaving peripheral aspects unencoded.

Misinformation Effect

The distortion or impairment of an episodic memory caused by exposure to misleading post-event information.

Imagination Inflation

An unwarranted boost in subjective confidence and creation of false memories resulting simply from vividly imagining unexperienced events.

Infantile Amnesia

The inability of mature adults to consciously retrieve episodic memories from their first few years of life, largely attributed to ongoing brain and language development.

Reminiscence Bump

The heightened disproportionate recall of autobiographical events originating from adolescence and young adulthood ($\approx 15\text{--}25\text{ years}$ of age).

Retrieval Practice (Testing Effect)

The finding that actively retrieving information from memory through self-testing dramatically enhances long-term retention compared to repeated passive studying.

Spacing Effect

The enhanced retention of material achieved when learning sessions are distributed across intervals of time rather than massed into a single study session.

Yerkes-Dodson Law

An empirical relationship dictating that cognitive and behavioral performance follows an inverted U-curve, peaking at intermediate levels of physiological arousal.

Nonassociative Learning

A basic form of learning involving a modification in the magnitude of an innate, elicited response following repeated exposure to a single eliciting stimulus.

Associative Learning

A category of learning characterized by making predictive connections between distinct environmental stimuli or between behavioral actions and environmental responses.

Habituation

A nonassociative decrease in the strength of an elicited behavioral response that occurs when a harmless stimulus is presented repeatedly.

Sensitization

A nonassociative increase in responsiveness to an environmental stimulus following repeated presentation, typically occurring under conditions of heightened arousal.

Dishabituation

The immediate recovery of a habituated response to its baseline strength triggered by the presentation of an unfamiliar or novel stimulus.

Classical Conditioning

A passive associative learning paradigm where a reflex-eliciting stimulus is paired with a neutral cue until the neutral cue reliably triggers the involuntary reflexive response.

Unconditioned Stimulus (US)

A stimulus that naturally and automatically evokes a reflexive, biological response without any prior training or conditioning (e.g., food presented to a dog).

Unconditioned Response (UR)

An unlearned, automatic, and reflexive physiological response triggered directly by an unconditioned stimulus (e.g., salivation upon tasting food).

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

An originally neutral environmental stimulus that, through contingent pairing with an unconditioned stimulus, acquires the ability to elicit a learned response.

Conditioned Response (CR)

The learned behavioral response produced by the conditioned stimulus after associative training has taken place.

Acquisition (Conditioning)

The initial learning period during classical conditioning in which the pairing between the neutral stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus establishes a conditioned response.

Stimulus Generalization

The adaptive tendency for an organism to display a conditioned response to stimuli that physically resemble the conditioned stimulus used during training.

Stimulus Discrimination

The learned capacity to differentiate between the conditioned stimulus and similar stimuli, responding exclusively to the trained stimulus.

Extinction (Classical Conditioning)

The active reduction and eventual elimination of a conditioned response when the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly presented alone without the unconditioned stimulus.

Spontaneous Recovery

The reappearance of an extinguished conditioned response following a period of rest or delay without any additional conditioning trials.

Residual Plasticity Hypothesis

The hypothesis proposing that neural networks formed during initial learning persist despite behavioral extinction, accounting for rapid relearning and savings.

Prediction Error

A neural discrepancy signal triggered when an anticipated outcome differs from actual environmental feedback, serving as the biological driver for updating associations.

Blocking (Conditioning)

A classical conditioning phenomenon wherein prior conditioning to one stimulus prevents the acquisition of conditioning to a second, redundant stimulus paired simultaneously.

Counterconditioning

A therapeutic conditioning process designed to eliminate an unwanted conditioned response by systematically pairing the conditioned stimulus with an incompatible, positive outcome.

Preparedness

An organism's species-specific, evolutionary predisposition to learn specific associations (such as phobias of snakes or heights) more rapidly than neutral associations.

Conditioned Taste Aversion

A biologically powerful form of classical conditioning where an animal develops an avoidance of a specific food ingested prior to experiencing nausea, even across long delays.

Operant Conditioning

An active form of associative learning wherein voluntary behavioral actions become associated with their subsequent consequences in the environment.

Law of Effect

Edward Thorndike's behavioral principle stating that behaviors accompanied by satisfying consequences are reinforced, whereas behaviors followed by discomfort are weakened.

Positive Reinforcement

An operant procedure where a rewarding or pleasant stimulus is added following a behavior, thereby increasing the future frequency of that behavior.

Negative Reinforcement

An operant procedure in which an aversive or unpleasant stimulus is removed or avoided following a behavior, thereby increasing the probability of that behavior.

Positive Punishment

An operant procedure where an aversive stimulus is introduced or administered contingent upon a behavior, resulting in a decreased probability of that behavior.

Negative Punishment

An operant procedure wherein a desirable stimulus or privilege is removed contingent on a response, decreasing the likelihood that the behavior will reoccur.

Primary Reinforcer

An unlearned reinforcer that inherently satisfies an innate biological need, such as food, water, or warmth.

Secondary Reinforcer

A conditioned stimulus that acquires reinforcing efficacy through learned associations with primary reinforcers, such as money, grades, or tokens.

Premack Principle

The operant principle asserting that engaging in a high-probability or preferred activity can serve as an effective reinforcer for performing a low-probability activity.

Delay Discounting

The behavioral tendency to devalue rewards that will occur in the distant future compared to rewards delivered immediately, often driving impulsive decision-making.

Shaping

An operant conditioning procedure that involves systematically reinforcing successive approximations toward a complex target behavior.

Instinctive Drift

The tendency of trained animals to revert from newly learned operant behaviors back toward biologically hardwired, evolutionary instinctive behaviors.

Fixed-Interval Schedule (FI)

A reinforcement schedule providing rewards for the first response made after a constant, set duration of time has elapsed, producing a distinct scalloped response curve.

Fixed-Ratio Schedule (FR)

A schedule requiring a fixed, unchanging number of responses to earn a single reinforcer, characterized by a brief post-reinforcement pause followed by rapid responding.

Variable-Ratio Schedule (VR)

A schedule delivering reinforcement after an unpredictable, varying number of responses around a set average, generating extremely high and steady response rates (e.g., slot machines).

Variable-Interval Schedule (VI)

A reinforcement schedule where the first correct response is rewarded after variable, unpredictable time intervals, producing moderate and consistent response rates.

Schedules of Reinforcement

Rules establishing whether reinforcement will occur based on elapsed time (interval) or response counts (ratio), delivered predictably (fixed) or randomly (variable).

Superstitious Conditioning

The acquisition of accidental operant behaviors caused by noncontingent reinforcement, where a subject falsely connects an incidental action to an arbitrary reward.

Latent Learning

Learning that occurs in the absence of explicit reinforcement or incentives and remains unexpressed until a suitable reward structure is introduced.

Cognitive Map

An internal, spatial mental representation of the external physical environment, as demonstrated in Edward Tolman's maze experiments with unreinforced rats.

Insight Learning

A sudden mental realization or restructuring of a problem leading directly to its solution without engaging in gradual trial-and-error behavior.

Sensation

The physical process in which peripheral sensory organs receive stimulus energies from the external world and transduce them into neural electrical signals.

Perception

The cognitive and neurological processing of sensory electrical signals to build an internal mental representation of the external world based on sensory data and past experience.