Psych Chp 8

Based off chapter 8 outline.

Memory

The cognitive process of encoding, storing, and retrieving information over time. Memory allows people to retain knowledge, learn from experience, and use past information to guide present behavior.

Recognition

Identifying information that you have encountered before when it is presented to you.

Recall

Retrieving information from memory without the answer being directly presented.

Encoding

Getting information into memory. The process of transforming incoming information into a form that can be represented in memory. Encoding may involve visual, auditory, semantic, or other forms of processing.

Storage

The process of maintaining encoded information over time so that it can be used later.

Retrieval

Accessing stored information when needed.

Atkinson–Shiffrin Model (Modal Model)

A classic model proposing that information moves through three major memory systems: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.

Sensory Memory

A very brief initial storage system that holds sensory information after the stimulus has disappeared. It preserves a temporary trace of what the senses detect.

Capacity

Very large, because a substantial amount of sensory information can be registered momentarily.

Duration

Extremely brief, generally fractions of a second to a few seconds, depending on the sensory system.

Iconic memory

Brief visual sensory memory, lasting roughly a fraction of a second.

Echoic memory

Brief auditory sensory memory, which can last several seconds.

Short-Term Memory (STM)

A memory system that temporarily holds a limited amount of information for immediate use. Without active maintenance or other support, information generally fades or becomes unavailable relatively quickly.

Working Memory

A limited-capacity system that temporarily holds and actively manipulates information while performing cognitive tasks such as reasoning, comprehension, and problem-solving.

Short-Term Memory and Working Memory: Capacity and Duration

Capacity: Traditional estimates often describe short-term memory as holding around seven items, plus or minus two.

Duration: Without rehearsal, information may remain available for roughly 15–30 seconds, although this varies.

Working memory: Capacity is limited and depends on the task, attention, and the ability to organize information. It is not simply a fixed number of items.

Encoding in Short-Term Memory

Information in short-term memory is often encoded acoustically, meaning according to how it sounds, although visual and semantic encoding can also occur.

Rehearsal

The process of repeating information to maintain it in short-term memory or improve the likelihood that it will be retained in long-term memory.

Maintenance rehearsal

Repeating information without substantially changing its meaning.

Elaborative rehearsal

Connecting information to meaning, prior knowledge, or examples.

Serial Position Effect

The tendency to remember the first and last items in a list better than items in the middle.

Recency Effect

The tendency to remember the last items in a list particularly well, often because they remain active in short-term or working memory.

Primacy Effect

The tendency to remember the first items in a list particularly well, often because they receive more rehearsal and have a greater opportunity to enter long-term memory.

Chunking

Organizing separate pieces of information into meaningful units to increase the amount that can be handled in memory.

Elaborative Encoding

Encoding information by connecting it to existing knowledge, personal experiences, meaningful examples, or relationships among concepts.

Shallow processing

A way of encoding in the brain that only focuses on surface-level physical, visual, or auditory characteristics rather than it’s meaning.

Deep processing

Cognitive learning strategy that involves engaging with the meaning, implications, and underlying connections.

Context-Dependent Learning

The principle that memory retrieval improves when the external environment at retrieval resembles the environment in which learning occurred.

State-Dependent Learning

The principle that memory retrieval may improve when a person's internal physiological or psychological state at retrieval resembles their state during learning.

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

A memory system responsible for retaining information over extended periods, from minutes to a lifetime.

Long-Term Memory: Capacity and Duration

Capacity: Considered extremely large, with no established practical limit for the amount of information people can store.

Duration: Can last from minutes to decades or a lifetime, although memories may become inaccessible, change, or be forgotten over time.

Implicit Memory

Long-term memory that influences behavior without requiring conscious recollection of the original learning experience.

Explicit Memory

Long-term memory that involves the conscious recollection of facts and experiences. It is also called declarative memory because the information can generally be described or stated.

Procedural Memories

A type of implicit memory involving knowledge of how to perform skills and actions. These memories often become automatic with practice.

Declarative Memories

Memories for facts and events that can be consciously recalled and verbally described. Declarative memory is another name for explicit memory.

Episodic Memory

A type of explicit memory involving personally experienced events, including information about where and when they occurred.

Semantic Memory

A type of explicit memory involving general knowledge, concepts, word meanings, and facts that do not necessarily depend on remembering a specific personal experience.

Schemas

Organized mental frameworks that help people interpret, organize, and remember information based on prior knowledge and experience.

Influences on memory and schemas

Organization: They help people organize new information into meaningful categories.

Interpretation: They influence how people understand unfamiliar situations.

Recall: They help people retrieve related information.

Distortion: They can cause people to remember details that fit expectations even if those details were not actually present.

Advantages of Schemas

Schemas reduce the mental effort required to understand familiar situations, allow people to make predictions, and help organize and retrieve information efficiently.

Forgetting

The failure to retrieve information that was previously learned or stored.

Interference

A process in which memories compete with or disrupt one another, making it more difficult to retrieve specific information.

Retroactive Interference

When newly learned information disrupts the ability to remember previously learned information.

Proactive Interference

When previously learned information disrupts the ability to learn or retrieve newer information.

Amnesia

A significant disruption or loss of memory, often associated with brain injury, neurological disease, or other medical causes.

Retrograde Amnesia

The inability to recall some memories formed before the event or condition that caused the amnesia.

Anterograde Amnesia

The inability or significant difficulty in forming new long-term memories after the onset of the condition. Some short-term memory, attention, and skill learning may remain intact, depending on the cause and severity.

Cognition

The mental processes involved in acquiring, processing, storing, and using information. Includes attention, perception, memory, language, reasoning, judgment, and problem-solving.

Algorithms

Systematic, step-by-step procedures that, when correctly applied to a well-defined problem, can produce a solution.

Heuristic

A mental shortcut or rule of thumb used to make judgments or solve problems quickly.

Cognitive Biases

Systematic patterns of deviation from objective or fully rational judgment.

Source Monitoring

The process of determining where a memory or piece of information originated. People may confuse whether information came from personal experience, another person, a book, or their imagination.

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to seek, interpret, favor, and remember information that supports existing beliefs while giving less attention to contradictory evidence.

Misinformation Effect

The distortion of a person's memory of an event by misleading information encountered after the event. Later suggestions can influence what someone believes they originally witnessed.

Overconfidence

The tendency to be more confident in one's judgments, knowledge, or predictions than the available evidence justifies.

Functional Fixedness

A cognitive bias in which a person has difficulty recognizing new or unconventional uses for an object because they are accustomed to using it in a particular way.

Salience

The degree to which a stimulus or piece of information stands out and attracts attention because of its vividness, novelty, emotional significance, or distinctiveness.

Representative Heuristic

A mental shortcut in which people judge the likelihood that something belongs to a category based on how closely it resembles their mental prototype of that category. This can cause people to neglect base rates and statistical information.

Availability Heuristic

A mental shortcut in which people estimate how common or likely an event is based on how easily examples come to mind.

Cognitive Accessibility

The degree to which information, concepts, or memories are readily available for use in thinking and judgment. Information that is recently activated, frequently used, or emotionally significant may be more accessible.

Counterfactual Thinking

The process of imagining alternative outcomes to events that have already occurred by considering what might have happened if something had been different.

Upward counterfactual

Imagining a better outcome than what actually happened.

Downward counterfactual

Imagining a worse outcome than what actually happened.