Ch. 8: Remembering Complex Events

Autobiographical memory

The aspect of memory that records the episodes and events in a person’s life

Consolidation

The biological process through which new memories are “cemented in place,” acquiring some degree of permanence through the creation fo new (or altered) neural connections

Decay theory of forgetting

The hypothesis that with the passage of time, memories may fade or erode

DRM paradigm

A commonly used experimental design, named after its originators (Deese, Roediger, and McDermott), for eliciting and studying memory errors. In this procedure, a person sees or hears a list of words that are related to a single theme; however, the word that names the theme is not itself included. Nonetheless, people are very likely to remember later that the theme word was presented

Flashbulb memory

A memory of extraordinary clarity, typically for some highly emotional event, that is retained over many years. Despite their remarkable vividness, flashbulb memories sometimes are inaccurate

Interference theory

The hypothesis that materials are lost from memory because of interference from other materials that are also in memory. Interference caused by materials learned prior to the learning episode is called “proactive interference”; interference caused by materials learned after the learning episode is called “retroactive interference.”

Intrusion error

A memory error in which a person recalls elements that were not part of the original episode

Misinformation effect

An effect in which reports about an earlier event are influenced by misinformation that the person received after experiencing the event. In the extreme, misinformation can be used to create false memories concerning an entire event that actually never occurred

Retention interval

The amount of time that passes between the initial learning of some material and the subsequent memory retrieval of that material

Retrieval failure

A mechanism that probably contributes to a great deal of forgetting. Retrieval failure occurs when a memory is, in fact, in long-term storage but the person is unable to locate that memory when trying to retrieve it

Schema

Knowledge describing what is typical or frequent in a paritcular situation

TOT phenomenon

An often-observed effect in which people are unable to remember a particular word, even though they are certain that the word (typically identified via its definition) is in their vocabulary. People in this state often can remember the starting letter for the word and its number of syllables, and they insist that the word is on the “tip of their tongue”