Cognition, Memory, and Language Lecture Notes

Vocabulary flashcards covering cognition, memory stages, encoding/retrieval models, biological bases of memory, forgetting theories, and language development stages.

Cognition

All the mental processes involved with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Memory

The persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information.

Encoding

The processing of information into the memory system. How info is encoded directly determines how effectively it can be stored and retrieved later.

Storage

The retention of encoded material over time.

Retrieval

The process of getting information out of memory storage.

Retrieval Cues

Stimuli (such as sights, sounds, or smells) that help you access a target memory.

Sensory Memory

Immediate, initial storage for sensory information. It has a large capacity but a very limited duration ($0.5$ to $2$ seconds).

Iconic Memory

A fleeting sensory memory of visual stimuli; photographic or picture-image memories lasting no more than a half-second.

Echoic Memory

A fleeting sensory memory of auditory stimuli; sounds or words can still be recalled within $3$ or $4$ seconds.

Multi Store Model of Memory

Theory proposing that information must pass through sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory to be remembered. Emphasizes automatic vs effortful processing.

Short Term Memory (STM)

Aka Working Memory. A limited-capacity memory system that holds about $5$ to $9$ items for roughly $20$ to $30$ seconds unless the information is rehearsed.

Working Memory

Aka Short Term Memory. Emphasizes the active, dynamic, and conscious processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, as well as information retrieved from long-term memory.

Visuospatial Sketchpad

A component of working memory responsible for temporarily holding and manipulating visual and spatial information (ex: picturing a route to your house).

Maintenance Rehearsal

The process of repeatedly saying or thinking about information over and over to prolong its duration in short-term/working memory without changing its meaning.

Elaborative Rehearsal

A memory technique that involves thinking about the meaning of a new term and actively associating it with information you already know to successfully encode it into long-term memory.

Phonological Loop

A component of working memory that stores and processes verbal, written, and auditory information (ex: repeating a phone number in your head).

Central Executive

The "manager" of working memory that directs attention, coordinates information between the visuospatial sketchpad and the phonological loop, and controls the flow of information to long-term memory.

Attention

The cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring others; the crucial gateway for moving information from sensory memory into working memory.

Long Term Memory (LTM)

The relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system where knowledge, skills, and experiences are stored.

Explicit Memory

A.k.a. declarative. Retention of facts and experiences that one can consciously know, declare, and easily describe to others.

Effortful Processing

Conscious, active encoding that requires attention and deliberate work to get information into long-term memory.

Method of Loci

A classic mnemonic device where a person associates items they need to remember with a series of familiar, sequential physical locations along a mental pathway.

Automatic Processing

Unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, without active effort.

Implicit Memory

A.k.a. procedural. Retention of learned skills or classically conditioned associations independent of conscious recollection; it is highly challenging to describe or explain to others.

Chunking

Organizing or grouping individual items into familiar, manageable, and meaningful units to increase the capacity of short-term/working memory.

Categories

Mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas, or people used to structure and simplify information storage.

Hierarchies

An encoding strategy where information is organized into a system of nested levels, moving from broad, general concepts down to specific, narrower subdivisions.

Mnemonics

Memory aids or structured processes that use vivid imagery and organizational devices like rhymes, acronyms, or the method of loci to aid in encoding information into working and long-term memory.

Spacing Effect

The phenomenon whereby distributed study or practice yields better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice.

Distributed Practice

Spreading out study or practice sessions over a longer period of time with breaks in between, leading to stronger memory consolidation.

Massed Practice

Cramming study materials all at once in a single, continuous block of time; it produces speedy short-term learning but poor long-term retention.

Testing Effect

Enhanced memory performance following the active retrieval (quizzing yourself) rather than simply rereading or reviewing information.

Metacognition

Thinking about your own thinking; the awareness and understanding of your own cognitive processes, which enhances retrieval success when you monitor what you truly know versus what you need to study more.

The levels of processing model

A model proposing that memory encoding occurs on a continuum from shallowest to deepest, and that the depth of mental processing directly predicts how well an item will be remembered.

Structural Processing

The shallowest level of processing, focusing exclusively on the physical, structural appearance or visual characteristics of a stimulus (ex: whether a word is printed in capital letters).

Phonemic Processing

A mid-level, shallow depth of processing that focuses on the sound of a stimulus (ex: checking if a word rhymes with another word).

Semantic Processing

The deepest level of processing, which focuses on the meaning of words, context, and conceptual relationships. Best for long-term retention.

Autobiographical Memory

A blended type of memory that includes personally relevant events, experiences, and facts from an individual's own life history.

Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM)

Rare biological condition where someone can accurately recall almost every detail of their life experiences from any given date in their past. Serves as evidence that there are biological processes dictating superior memory storage.

Self Reference Effect

The tendency to process and recall information more efficiently and deeply when we can relate the material to ourselves or our own lives.

Hippocampus

The limbic system structure that acts as a temporary processing center or loading dock for explicit (declarative) memories before they are sent to long-term storage.

Cerebellum

The brain structure responsible for processing and storing implicit (procedural) memories, such as motor skills and classical conditioning.

Infantile amnesia

The inability of most adults to retrieve episodic/explicit memories from before roughly age $3$, largely because the hippocampus is not yet fully developed.

Memory consolidation

The biological process by which temporary, newly encoded experiences are gradually transformed and stabilized into stable, permanent long-term memory storage, a process highly dependent on sleep.

Flashbulb Memory

A remarkably vivid, clear, and emotionally significant episodic memory of the exact moment one learned of a shocking or monumental event.

Episodic Memory

A category of explicit memory that stores personally experienced events, episodes, and occurrences tied to a specific time and place.

Semantic Memory

A category of explicit memory that stores general knowledge, objective facts, ideas, and concepts independent of personal experience.

Prospective Memory

A specific type of memory focused on the future; remembering to perform a planned action or intention at an appropriate time later on.

Long Term Potentiation (LTP)

A biological process for memory where synaptic connections between neurons become stronger and fire more efficiently following frequent, repeated activation.

Recall

A measure of memory retrieval in which a person must reproduce or pull information directly out of long-term storage without the assistance of any external options or retrieval cues (ex: an essay or short-answer question).

Recognition

A measure of memory retrieval in which a person needs only to identify previously learned items when presented with options (ex: a multiple-choice question).

Encoding Specificity Principle

The rule that a retrieval cue will be most effective if it matches or recreates the exact specific environmental conditions or internal states present during the initial encoding of the information.

Context dependent memory

The phenomenon where memory retrieval is enhanced when an individual is in the exact same physical or environmental space as they were when the information was first encoded.

State dependent memory

The phenomenon where memory retrieval is enhanced when an individual is in the same internal physical or physiological state of consciousness (ex: highly caffeinated) as they were when the information was encoded.

Mood congruent memory

A specific type of state-dependent memory where the tendency to recall experiences is strongest when our current emotional mood matches the emotional mood we were in when the memory was recorded.

Serial Position Effect

The predictable tendency to recall the items at the very beginning and the very end of a consecutive list better than the items trapped in the middle.

Primacy Effect

Enhanced recall of items at the beginning of a list because they received more attention and have already been processed into long-term memory via maintenance rehearsal.

Recency Effect

Enhanced recall of items at the end of a list because they are still lingering and active in our immediate short-term/working memory.

Interleaving

A study strategy that involves mixing or alternating different subjects, topics, or problem types within a single study session, which forces the brain to constantly retrieve information and improves long-term retention compared to block practicing one concept at a time.

Amnesia

The partial or total loss of memories or memory abilities due to brain injury, trauma, or disease.

Anterograde Amnesia

A memory impairment where a person is unable to form or encode new memories after the point of brain trauma, though they can usually remember their past before the accident.

Retrograde Amnesia

A memory impairment where a person is unable to retrieve old memories or information from their past before the point of brain trauma, though they can still successfully form new memories.

Encoding failure

A cause of forgetting where information never actually entered the memory system in the first place, usually due to a lack of attention.

Storage decay

The theory that physical memory traces gradually fade, erode, and weaken over time if they are not periodically accessed or used.

Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve

A graphic model showing that the course of forgetting is initially incredibly rapid immediately after learning, but eventually levels off and stabilizes over the long term.

Retrieval failure

An inability to access or locate information that is successfully stored in long-term memory (the information is there, you just lack the right cue to pull it out).

Proactive Interference

A retrieval hurdle that occurs when older, previously learned information steps forward to disrupt and block your ability to recall newer information.

Retroactive interference

A retrieval hurdle that occurs when newly learned information steps backward to disrupt and block your ability to recall older information.

Misinformation Effect

A memory distortion phenomenon that occurs when misleading or subtly altered information presented after an event alters, warps, or corrupts a person's memory of what actually happened.

Source Amnesia

Faulty memory for how, when, or where information was originally learned, acquired, or imagined; you remember the fact correctly, but attribute it to the wrong origin.

Déjà vu

The eerie, false sense that you are experiencing a current situation for the second time, caused when a current context triggers a subliminal, poorly stored memory that feels familiar but cannot be explicitly retrieved.

Constructive Memory

The psychological reality that memories are not literal, objective video recordings; instead, they are actively built, filled-in, and reconstructed using schemas, assumptions, and new expectations every single time they are retrieved.

Reconsolidation

A process where a previously stored memory, when retrieved into working memory, temporarily enters an unstable, fragile state where it is highly susceptible to modification before being stored away in long-term memory again.

Imagination Inflation

A memory distortion phenomenon where simply visualizing or imagining an unexperienced event repeatedly can trick a person into believing the event actually occurred in their real life.

Visual Encoding

The processing and encoding of picture images and structural layouts.

Acoustic Encoding

The processing and encoding of sounds, particularly the vocal auditory quality of words.

Semantic Encoding

The processing and encoding of meaning, values, definitions, and conceptual contexts; the most effective strategy for long-term retention.

Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon

A frustrating type of temporary retrieval failure where you are consciously aware that an item exists in your long-term storage but are temporarily blocked from pulling it out due to a lack of strong retrieval cues.

Alzheimer's Disease

A progressive, irreversible degenerative neurological brain disorder characterized by a gradual decline in memory, cognitive reasoning, and executive functioning, physically marked by the buildup of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles.

Generative

A defining characteristic of human language indicating our ability to combine a finite, limited set of symbols and rules to produce an infinite variety of novel phrases, sentences, and ideas.

Nonverbal Manual Gestures

Physical, intentional bodily movements used by developing infants to communicate meaning before they have acquired the capacity for formal, spoken language; an initial scaffold for formal language.

Phoneme

The smallest, most basic distinctive units of sound within a given language (ex: the "ch" sound or the short "a" sound).

Morpheme

The smallest structural units of language that carry distinct meaning; this includes base words, prefixes, and suffixes (ex: the word "bat", or the prefix "pre-").

Grammar

The comprehensive, rule-governed system of structural constraints that dictates how symbols and sounds can be organized and combined to communicate with others.

Semantics

The rule-governed system within language used to derive and analyze the actual meaning of morphemes, words, and sentences.

Syntax

The specific, structural rules governing the exact correct order and arrangement of words into grammatically correct sentences.

Deep vs Shallow Structures

Noam Chomsky's distinction between the abstract, underlying meaning of a spoken sentence (Deep Structure) versus the literal, linear arrangement of words used to express that meaning (Shallow/Surface Structure).

Cooing stage

The earliest infant vocal developmental stage, starting around $2$ months old, consisting entirely of spontaneous, repetition-based vowel sounds (ex: "oooh", "aaah").

Babbling stage

Beginning around $4$ months old, the language stage where an infant spontaneously utters various sounds unrelated to the household language; by $10$ months, it narrows to the native linguistic environment.

One word stage

The developmental language stage spanning from roughly age $1$ to $2$, during which an infant speaks mostly in single, isolated words to communicate entire thoughts.

Two Word stage

Beginning around age $2$, the developmental language stage where an infant speaks mostly in two-word statements.

Telegraphic speech

The descriptive name for the two-word stage where an infant speaks like a telegram using mostly nouns and verbs (ex: "Want juice", "Big doggo"), omitting auxiliary words.

Universal grammar

Noam Chomsky's theory that all human languages share a structural underlying framework, and that human children are born with an innate, biological predisposition to learn language rules.

Overgeneralization or overregularization

A language error where children over-apply standard grammatical rules for past tense and plurals to irregular nouns and verbs (ex: "I goed to the park").

Critical period

A fixed, biologically determined window of time early in development during which a human must be exposed to language to master it; otherwise acquisition becomes nearly impossible.

Linguistic determinism

Benjamin Whorf's extreme, radical hypothesis that the specific language a person speaks strictly determines and limits the boundary lines of what they can think or perceive.

Linguistic relativity

A modern, tempered version of Whorf's hypothesis suggesting that language shapes, influences, and biases our cognitive thinking styles and perceptions rather than entirely determining them.