Cognitive Psychology: Long-Term Memory Retrieval

Vocabulary flashcards generated from Chapter 6 of Cognitive Psychology covering retrieval tasks, forgetting mechanisms, encoding effects, and mnemonics.

Recall tasks

Intentional retrieval tasks that either provide specific cues to aid retrieval (cued-recall tasks) or do not provide specific cues (free-recall tasks).

Free-recall tasks

Memory tasks where an individual is asked to retrieve information without any additional context or specific cues.

Cued-recall tasks

Memory tasks where specific cues, such as starting letters or category names, are provided to help guide retrieval.

Recognition tasks

Memory tasks that do not require generating information, but instead require verifying whether presented information has been encoded or experienced in the past.

Yes-no recognition test

A recognition test variant where participants judge each item one at a time as either 'old' (on the study list) or 'new' (not on the list).

Two-alternative forced-choice test

A recognition test variant where participants are presented with two items at a time (one old and one new) and must choose the old item.

Incidental learning task

A study condition in which participants perform a task on list items without being informed about a later memory test.

Intentional learning task

A study condition in which participants are explicitly told in advance that they need to remember the studied items for an upcoming memory test.

Implicit memory tasks

Memory tasks designed to measure memory without intentional retrieval or explicit instruction to recall past episodes, typically measuring procedural memory.

Stem completion task

An implicit memory task where participants complete word stems (e.g., app-) with the first word that comes to mind.

Perceptual identification task

An implicit memory task where participants identify words or pictures flashed very briefly on a computer screen.

Prospective memory

The memory process involved in remembering to perform an intended task at some specific point in the future.

Event-based prospective memory task

A prospective memory task where an environmental event or stimulus (such as seeing a store) cues the retrieval of an intended action.

Time-based prospective memory task

A prospective memory task reliant on time cues and time monitoring (such as taking medication at 9:00 p.m.) to perform an intended action.

Forgetting

A natural process that occurs when stored information is unable to be retrieved from memory.

Interference

A cause of forgetting occurring when other learned or encountered information prevents the retrieval of target information.

Consolidation

A neural process by which memories are strengthened and more permanently stored in the brain.

Systems consolidation

A long-term consolidation process taking days, weeks, or months that shifts memory storage from the hippocampus to cortical areas of the brain.

Synaptic consolidation

A rapid consolidation process occurring on a shorter time scale within and across individual neurons.

Superior autobiographical memory

An untrained, exceptional memory ability characterized by near-perfect recall of personal daily experiences and historical events for specific dates.

Level-of-processing effect

The memory phenomenon where encoding information according to its meaning (deep processing) leads to better long-term memory performance than shallow processing.

Elaborative encoding

Processing the semantic meaning of information during encoding to connect it with existing long-term memory structures.

Spacing effect

The phenomenon where spacing out study repetitions over time produces superior memory performance compared to massed study (cramming) for equal total study time.

Primacy effect

The memory advantage for information encoded first in a sequence, primarily due to greater long-term memory storage.

Recency effect

The memory advantage for information encoded last in a sequence, driven largely by short-term memory when tested without long delay.

Serial position curve

A pattern showing superior memory retrieval for items presented at the beginning (primacy effect) and end (recency effect) of a list compared to the middle.

Mnemonics

Trained memory techniques that leverage mechanisms of long-term memory to encode information in highly retrievable ways.

Bizarreness effect

The memory phenomenon where unusual, strange, or bizarre images or sentences are remembered better than ordinary ones.

Method of loci

A mnemonic technique in which items to be remembered are mentalized as odd images placed along specific locations within a familiar route or 'memory palace'.