AP Psychology - Memory

Implicit Memory

A type of long-term memory that occurs without conscious awareness, allowing individuals to perform tasks or recall information without actively trying to remember it. It includes skills and conditioned responses.

Episodic Memory

A type of explicit memory that involves the recollection of specific events, experiences, or episodes in one's life, including contextual details such as time and place.

Sematic Encoding

The process of converting information into a format that can be stored in memory, focusing on the meaning of the information rather than its surface details.

Prospective Memory

Remember to perform actions in the future, ex: going to an appointment.

Retrospective Memory

Remembering events from the past/previously learned info.

Long Term Potentiation

Strengthening synapses based on recent patterns of activity.

Serial Position Effect

Remebering the beginning and end of a list better than the middle.

Receny

The tendency to better remember the last items in a list.

Primacy

The tendency to better remember the first items in a list.

Chunking

Memory strategy that groups info into larger groups to remember easier.

Amnesia

A memory loss condition caused by injury, disease, or psychological trauma. Short-term memory is still good.

Anterograde Amnesia

Inability to learn new info.

Retrograde Amnesia

Loss of info of the past.

Rehersal

Repeating information to improve memory retention.

Superior Autobiographical Memory

Condition of the ability to not forget.

Recognition

The ability to identify previously encountered information or stimuli, often through cues or prompts.

Retrieval Cues

Stimuli that help access stored memories.

Metacognition

Awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes, including the ability to monitor and control cognitive activities.

Proactive Interference

Disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information. (P-Old interrupts)

Retroactive Interference

Disruptive effect of new learning on the recall old info. (R-New interrupts)

Encoding Failure

The inability to transfer information from short-term to long-term memory, often due to lack of attention or insufficient processing.

Ebinghaus Forgetting Curve

A graphical representation showing the rate at which information is forgotten over time, illustrating that memory retention declines rapidly after learning.

Misinformation Effect

Recall of episodic memories becomes less accurate due to the introduction of misleading information after the event.

Tip of the Tongue

A phenomenon where a person is unable to retrieve a word or phrase from memory, but has a strong feeling that retrieval is imminent.