Memory, Language, and Intelligence

A comprehensive set of flashcards covering key concepts from the lecture on memory, language, intelligence, and conditioning.

Memory

Learning that persists over time; information that has been acquired and stored and can be retrieved.

Recall

Retrieving information that is not currently in your conscious awareness but that was learned at an earlier time.

Recognition

Identifying items previously learned.

Relearning

Learning something more quickly when you learn it a second or later time.

Encoding

Getting information into our brain.

Storage

Retaining that encoded information.

Retrieval

Getting the information back out of memory.

Sensory memory

The fleeting recording of momentary images, sounds, and strong scents.

Short-term memory

A stage for briefly storing recent thoughts and experiences for just a few seconds.

Long-term memory

The stage where information is moved for later retrieval; our capacity for storing these memories is essentially limitless.

Working memory

An active 'scratch pad' where our brain makes sense of new experiences and links them with our long-term memories.

Explicit (declarative) memories

Facts and experiences that we can consciously know and 'declare'.

Implicit (nondeclarative) memories

Memories produced without our awareness, including procedural memory for automatic skills and classically conditioned associations.

Effortful processing

Conscious processing track required to form explicit memories.

Automatic processing

An unconscious track where information skips the conscious encoding track and barges directly into storage without our awareness.

Iconic memory

A fleeting sensory memory of visual stimuli.

Echoic memory

An impeccable, though fleeting, sensory memory for auditory stimuli.

Chunking

Organizing information into familiar segments or meaningful arrangements to enable easier recall.

Mnemonics

Memory aids that frequently use vivid imagery or organizational devices.

Spacing effect

The phenomenon where retaining information is better when encoding/practice is distributed over time rather than massed (cramming).

Testing effect

The phenomenon where repeated self-testing improves learning and memory.

Shallow processing

Encoding on an elementary level, such as a word's letters or sound.

Deep processing

Encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words.

Self-reference effect

The strong tendency to remember self-relevant information.

Memory consolidation

The storage process where memories migrate to the cortex for long-term storage.

Flashbulb memories

Mental snapshots of exciting or shocking events.

Long-term potentiation (LTP)

The increased efficiency of potential neural firing, providing a physical/neural basis for learning and remembering associations.

Retrieval cues

Bits of associated information that serve as passwords that open memories.

Priming

The 'wakening of associations' where our associations are activated without our awareness.

Serial position effect

Our tendency to recall the last items (recency effect) and first items (primacy effect) in a series especially quickly and well.

Anterograde amnesia

A condition where a person can remember their past, but cannot form new explicit memories.

Retrograde amnesia

A condition where a person cannot remember their past—the old information stored in long-term memory.

Proactive interference

When prior learning disrupts your recall of new information.

Retroactive interference

When new learning disrupts your recall of old information.

Positive transfer

When previously learned information facilitates our learning of new information.

Reconsolidation

A process where we often replace the original memory with a slightly modified version when we replay it.

Misinformation effect

A memory construction error where exposure to misleading information leads to misremembering.

Source amnesia (source misattribution)

Attributing a memory or idea to your own experiences or imagination rather than the actual source.

Déjà vu

The fleeting sense that 'I've been in this exact situation before,' caused by familiarity with a stimulus coupled with uncertainty about where we encountered it.

Language

Our spoken, written, or signed words, and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning.

Phonemes

The smallest distinctive sound units in a language.

Morphemes

The smallest language units that carry meaning.

Grammar

A language's set of rules that enable people to communicate.

Semantics

Grammatical rules for deriving meaning from sounds.

Syntax

Grammatical rules for ordering words into sentences.

Receptive language

Babies' ability to understand what is said to and about them.

Productive language

Babies' ability to produce words.

Babbling stage

Beginning around 4 months, a stage where babies sample a wide range of sounds they can make.

One-word stage

Around a child's first birthday, where they begin to use usually only one barely recognizable syllable to communicate meaning.

Two-word stage

By their second birthday, the stage where children start uttering two-word sentences.

Telegraphic speech

Speech used by a 2-year-old containing mostly nouns and verbs, arranging words in a sensible order.

Aphasia

Impairment of language, which can be produced by damage to several cortical areas.

Linguistic determinism

The theory that language dictates how we think.

Linguistic relativism

The idea recognizing that our words influence our thinking.

Cognition

The mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating information.

Metacognition

Cognition about cognition, or thinking about our thinking.

Concepts

Mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas, or people that simplify our thinking.

Prototype

A mental image or best example of a category.

Algorithms

Step-by-step procedures that guarantee a solution.

Heuristics

Simpler, fast, and frugal thinking strategies or shortcuts.

Insight

An abrupt, true-seeming, and often satisfying solution.

Confirmation bias

The tendency to seek evidence for our ideas more eagerly than we seek evidence against them.

Fixation

An inability to come to a fresh perspective when approaching a problem.

Mental set

Our tendency to approach a problem with the mindset of what has worked for us previously.

Intuition

Our fast, automatic, unreasoned feelings and thoughts.

Representativeness heuristic

Judging the likelihood of something by intuitively comparing it to particular prototypes.

Availability heuristic

Evaluating the commonality of an event based on its mental availability.

Overconfidence

The tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our knowledge and judgments.

Belief perseverance

Our tendency to stick to our beliefs, even when faced with evidence that disproves them.

Framing

The way we present an issue, which can powerfully nudge our attitudes and decisions.

Creativity

The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.

Convergent thinking

An ability to provide a single correct answer.

Divergent thinking

The ability to consider many different options and to think in novel ways.

Intelligence

The qualities that enable people to achieve success in their own time and place.

General intelligence (g)

A general mental capacity that is at the heart of all our intelligent behavior.

Fluid intelligence (Gf)

Our ability to reason speedily and abstractly.

Crystallized intelligence (Gc)

Our accumulated knowledge as reflected in vocabulary and applied skills.

Existential intelligence

The ability to ponder large questions about life, death, and existence.

Analytical intelligence

Academic problem-solving assessed by tests with a single right answer.

Creative intelligence

Demonstrated in innovative smarts; the ability to adapt to new situations.

Practical intelligence

Required for everyday tasks that may be poorly defined and may have multiple solutions.

Social intelligence

The know-how involved in understanding social situations.

Emotional intelligence

A critical part of social intelligence consisting of perceiving, understanding, managing, and using emotions.

Achievement tests

Tests intended to reflect what you have learned.

Aptitude tests

Tests intended to predict what you will be able to learn.

Mental age

The level of performance typically associated with a certain chronological age.

Intelligence quotient (IQ)

Originally defined as a person's mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100.

Standardization

The process of giving new tests to a representative sample of people.

Normal curve (bell curve)

A bell-shaped pattern representing people's scores for many attributes.

Reliability

The extent to which a test gives consistent scores when retaken.

Validity

The extent to which the test actually measures or predicts what it promises.

Predictive validity

When tests predict the criterion of future performance.

Intellectual developmental disorder

A neurodevelopmental disorder apparent before age 18 with a test score of 70 or below.

Cohort

The same group of people tested over many years.

Cross-sectional studies

Testing that compares the performance of people of different ages.

Longitudinal studies

Retesting the exact same cohorts over a period of years.

Associative learning

Linking two events that occur close together to anticipate the immediate future.

Classical conditioning

Learning to associate two stimuli and thus to anticipate events.

Stimulus

Any event or situation that evokes a response.

Respondent behavior

Automatic responses to a stimulus.