AP Psychology Unit 7-:Memory, Thinking, and Language

Memory

is the mental function of recalling and recognizing something that has been previously learned or experienced.

Sensory memory

is the first stop for external events. A split-second holding tank for incoming sensory information.

Short-Term memory

occurs around 30 seconds or less. Everything you are thinking at the current moment is held here. (ex, seven digits of a phone number).

Long Term memory

is regarded as the unlimited permanent storage unit of the brain

Iconic Memory

A photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second. Our eyes register a scene and we can recall any part of it in amazing detail.

Echoic Memory

is when attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 to 4 seconds.

Working memory

is like your brain’s task list or sticky notes. As information is coming into your brain, you are both processing it and simultaneously, storing it. Its necessary to learn, reason, and remember. (ex, imagine doing a math problem. You need to store the numbers temporarily you work with them to solve the problem. Keeping in information temporarily and processing it at the same time).

Haptic Memory

is information that can be recalled that was originally collected by the sense of touch. A type of sensory memory that is collected through feeling or touching something.

Cognitive Load

the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory. With increased distractions, particularly from cell phone use, students are more prone to experiencing high cognitive load which can reduce academic success.

Automatic processing

memory that happens without effort such as word meanings, space, and time

effortful processing

putting in effort (requiring attention and conscious effort towards learning)

Space

while reading a textbook, you automatically encode the place of a picture on a page

Time

refers to unintentionally noting the events that take place in a day

frequency

involves effortlessly processing and keeping track of things that happen to you. Typically remember is better when it is relevant to you.

Mnemonics

techniques use vivid imagery in aiding memory. (PEMDAS ect.)

Method of Loci

is a technique in which a person visualizes the items they’re trying to learn in different spatial locations. To do this, the person associates the items with landmarks in some familiar place, which helps them recall the items later. (remembering a shopping list) Using techniques.

Link method

is a type of recall method used to remember multiple items. You associate or link items together in order to recall them. A common usage of the link method is making up a story or scenario that links items together and the imagery makes it easier to recall. Such as remembering chronological events in history.

Chunking

a way of organizing information into familiar groupings. This is done with all sorts of information including numbers, single words, and multiple-word phrases which are collapsed into a single word, to create acronyms.

Shallow Processing

involves encoding on a basic level (elementary) based on the structure or appearance of words. (short term memory)

Deep Processing

involves encoding semantically, based on meanings of words; tends to yield the best retention. (long term memory)

first letter technique

involves taking the first letter of each word and forming a new word or sentence from these letters.

Semantic Memory

our knowledge of language, including its rules, words, and meanings

procedural memory

our memory on how to complete tasks. Ex-tying your shoes or riding a bike

Episodic memory

our memory of our own life such as when you woke up this morning or what time you went to bed last night

Next-in-line-effect

involves a person in a group having diminished recall for the words of others spoke immediately before or after this person (telephone game)

Spacing effect (distributed practice)

states that information is better recalled if exposure to it is repeated over a longer span of time.

testing effect

enhanced memory after retrieving rather than re-reading information.

Serial Position effect

our tendency to recall best the last and first item in a list

primary effect

we are more likely to recall items presented at the beginning of a list

recency effect

more likely to recall items at the end of a list

Encoding

the initial experience of perceiving and learning information. Processing information into a memory.

Recognition

a form of remembering characterized by a feeling of familiarity when something previously experiences is encountered again.

Semantic Encoding

a specific type of encoding which the meaning of something)a word, phrase, picture, event) is encoded as opposed to the sound or vision of it. (cognitive encoding of material such as the meaning of words). remembering a phone number based on some attribute of the person you got it from, like their name. In other words, specific associations are made between the sensory input (the phone number) and the context of the meaning (the person's name).

Visual Encoding

refers to the process by which we remember visual images. For example, if you are presented a list words, each shown for one second you would be able to remember if there was a word that was written in all capital letters.

Acoustic Encoding

is the process of remembering and comprehending something that you hear. Repetition of words or putting information into a song or rhythm.

Self-reference effect

is the tendency for individuals to have better memory for information that relates to oneself in comparison to materiel that has less personal relevance.

Flashbulb Memory

is the sudden onset of a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event. When you are trying to remember something and then it “all of a sudden comes to you”, you have experienced a flash bulb memory. It is like turning on a light.

Prospective memory

is when you remember to preform an action at the appropriate time that you previously intended to accomplish. Examples: remembering to take medicine at a certain time. Setting your alarm for an important meeting. Getting milk after work because you noticed that you were out this morning.

Declarative memory(explicit memory)

is a part of long-term memory where factual information is stored. Ex. formulas, vocabulary

Memory Hierarchies

A basic theory of the organization of long-term memory is hierarchies. The hierarchies' theory contends that long-term memory is organized through a hierarchical arrangements of concepts. Concepts may represent physical objects, events, attributes, or abstractions.

Storage Decay

A type of forgetting that occurs when memories fade over time. 

This occurs in __sensory and/or short term memory__ is that we don't need to process and store all the information that we encounter in the world, so __we simply don't attend to, recognize, or rehearse all the information,__ and this information just fades away not to be stored in our long term memories.

Priming

The activation of information that people already have in storage to help them remember new information better and faster. Ex. An individual who has just purchased a new car may now start to notice with more frequency other people driving her same make and model. This person has been primed to recognize more readily a car like hers because of the experience she has driving and owning one.

A person who sees the word "yellow" will be slightly faster to recognize the word "banana." This happens because yellow and banana are closely associated in memory.

Long-term potentiation

An increase in synaptic firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation between neurons, and particularly to the release of neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Believed to be the neural basis for learning and memory.

Stress and Memory

due to the production of extra glucose, stress hormones alert the brain to important events. Amygdala: the emotion processing center of the brain. Emotional hormone changes produce memories.

Explicit memory

memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and declare.

Implicit memory

retention of learning an action while the individual does not known or declare what she or he knows is known.

Hippocampus and memory

is a part of the brain located inside the temporal lobe. It forms a part of the limbic system and plays a part in the transfer of short-term to long-term memory. Also active when pepole try to associate names with faces. Processing EXPLICIT memories and responsible for the process and storage of short term memories.

Cerebellum (also basal ganglia) and memory

is the brain region that extends out from the rear of the brain stem and plays a key role in forming and storing the implicit memories created by classical conditioning. Disruption of this part of the brain causes failure to learn conditioned response that are associated with conditioned stimulus.

Anterograde Amnesia

brain injury, in which an individual is severely impaired in learning new information. Memories for events that occurred before the injury may be largely spared, but events that occurred since the injury may be lost.

Retrograde amnesia

is a loss of memory for events that occured before the onset of amnesia. Ex.A soldier forgetting events immediately before a shell burst nearby, injuring him.

Eidetic memory

is the ability to retain images in memory that are almost perfect photographic quality. Can be maintained in memory for minutes.

recall

the person must retrieve information using effort(a fill in the blank test requires this)

retrieval

refers to getting information out of the memory store

retrieval cues

are a web of associations that help you recall things from your memory. Associations are like anchors that help retrieve memories. For instance the smell of baked bread may help you remember your childhood.

Priming

Is an implicit memory effect in which exposure to a stimulus influences a response to a later stimulus. The activation of information that people already have in storage to help them remember information better and faster. For example, if you just bought a new car you are more likely to notice that type of car when you are driving.

Context effect

states that environmental factors that surrounds an event affects how an event is perceived and remembered. Enhanced ability to retrieve information when you are in an environment similar to that one where you encoded the info. For example, iof you walk downstairs to sharpen you pencil, you may forget because now the context of the situation has changed.

Deja Vu

is French and means literally, “already seen”. Those who have experienced the feeling describe it as an overwhelming sense of familiarity with something that shouldn’t be familiar at all. For example, it is your first time visiting Europe. While you are in a church it feels like you have been in that very spot before.

Tip of the Tongue Phenomenon

is the failure to retrieve a word from memory even though a person believes they know the word. Sometimes a person can recall a letter or concepts similar to the word they can’t retrieve.

Semantic network theory

states that our brain might form new memories by connecting their meaning and context with meanings already in memory. By listing traits, you gradually get closer and closer to the name and retrieve it. Ex. remembering a particular phone number based on a person’s name or particular food by culture.

Mood-congruent theory

the tendency to recall experinces that are consistent with one’s current good or bad mood. Ex. a bad evening may lead to recalling bad times.

context dependent memory

refers to the phenomenon of how much easier it is to retrieve certain memories when the circumstances around the memory are same for both the original and encoding retrieval. For example, you may retrace your steps in order to figure out where you lost something.

State dependent memory

refers to the phenomenon of recalling events encoded while in a particular state of consciousness. If you suddenly remember an appointment while you are drowsy and about to go to sleep, you need to write it down. You may not remember it again until you are drowsy and in the same state again.

Repression

a defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.

Elizabeth Loftus

is an American psychologist who is best known in relation to the misinformation effect, false memory and criticism of recovered memory therapies. Created the idea of repression.

encoding specificity

a principle that states that human memories are more easily retrieved if external conditions (emotional cues) at the time of retrieval are similar to those in existence at the time the memory was stored.

constructive/recovered memory

individuals claim to suddenly remember events that they have repressed for years, often during therapy. Many of these memories are false recollections of events. To distinguish between a false and real memory is through physical evidence or validated reports of an event.

Motivated forgetting

involves people unknowingly revising their memories. Freud referred to as repressing memories. According to Freud, there are times when an event or action is so painful that we can’t deal with the memory of it, so we repress the memory completely. The idea that people can block out or forget upsetting or traumatic memories.

Reconsolidation

a process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved are altered before being stored again. People recall a traumatic or negative experience and then had the memory disrupted with a drug or brief, painless electroconvulsive shock. The action of reactivating existing memories from the past.

Forgetting curve

according to the theory, a memory trace is created every time a new memory is formed. Decay theory suggests that over time, these memory traces begin to fade and disappear. If information is not retrieved and rehearsed, it will eventually be lost.

Herman Ebbinghaus

was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory, and is known for his discovery of the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. He was also the first person to describe the learning curve

Misinformation effect

while forming memories we tend to misconstruct missing pieces of information. This is when you incorporate those misleading pieces of information into the memory.

retroactive (backward-acting)

involves learning new information interferes with the recall of older info. If you study your psychology at 3 and then your sociology at 6 you might not recall the psychology as well on a test the next day.

proactive (forward-acting)

involves older information learned previously interferes with the recall of information learned more recently.

Source Amnesia

refers to an inability to remember from where existing knowledge was acquired. For a basic example, most of us remember learning how to read and write but we don’t remember learning how to walk.

confabulation

a memory disorder that causes people to have inaccurate memories. Caused by brain damage. An aneurysm or dementia from Alzheimers.

Cognitive psychologist

study how we create concepts, solve problems, make decision, and form judgements.

tips to improve memory

eat rights, exercise, stop multitasking, good sleep, play brain games, master a new skill, try mnemonic devices.

Concept

the mental categories used to organize events and objects, are often arranged in hierarchical order from general to more specific-for example, organism, animal, vertebrate, dog, collie.

Prototype

a model of a concept, to typify member of a particular category. (a stereotype)

Convergent (directed) thinking

logical attempt to reach a goal, such as a solution to a problem. Narrowing the available problem solutions and determining the best one.

Divergent (non-directed) thinking

free flow of thoughts with no plan and depends more on images. Critical thinking that involves the expansion of possible problem solutions to generate creative responses.

Metacognition

the awareness of one’s own cognitive processes. When you tackle an algebra problem and cannot solve it, you explore another strategy. The ability to control your thoughts.

Algorithm

a set of step-by-step procedures that provides the correct answer to a particular problem.

Heuristics

thinking stategies that allow us to make judgements and solve problems. The way humans use mental short cuts to arrive at decisions.

Representative heuristics

judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match particular prototypes or categories. (you match a prototype to a person)

Availability Heuristics

a rule-of-thumb that judges the likelihoods of things in terms of their availability in memory or easily recalled. If instances of something come readily to mind, we presume it to be common place. For example, if you hear about 7 news reports about car thefts, you might think that a vehicle is much more common to be stolen in your area.

insight

involves a sudden novel realization of a solution to a problem

Aha phenomenon

when insight strikes and this occurs it activates the right temporal lobe. The time between not knowing and knowing a solution is .3 seconds.

confirmation bias

is the tendency for a person to search for information that confirms ones perceptions.

fixation

is an inability to see a problem from a fresh perspective.

Mental set

a tendency to approach situations the same way because that way worked in the past

Functional Fixedness

the tendency to view objects as functioning only in the usual or customary way; an impediment to problem solving. It prevents people from fully seeing all of the different options that might be available to find a solution.

Belief Perseverance

the tendency for people to hold their beliefs as true even when there is ample evidence to discredit the belief. For instance, a cult may beleve in mass sucicide as a sacrifice to god even if it was disproved that they were being manipulated they still went through with it(mr. belans example not mine)

Belief Bias

if people agree with a view point, they are inclined to believe that the process used to obtain the results must also be correct. For example, an open minded researcher would make conclusions based strictly on data, but a researcher with religious beliefs would possible contribute the good results to religious prayer.

Framing

is the way an issue is proposed and how it affects decisions and judgement. For example, merchants push up the regular sales price to make it look like there is a huge sale on something.

Language

our spoken, written, or gestured work, is the way we communicate meaning to ourselves and others. 

Grammar

is the system of rules in a language that enable us to communicate with and understand others.

Phenomes

smallest units of sound in the human 

language, such as consonants and vowels.

Morphemes

the smallest unit of meaning in a 

given language.

Semantics

is the set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences. For example: adding *–ed* to the word *laugh* means that it happened in the past.