2.3-2.7 ap psych

Encoding

The process of getting information into your brain (if you do not pay attention, it never gets saved). Example: Reading a line in your textbook and your brain transforming those printed letters into meaningful mental thoughts.

Storage

Holding onto information over time so you can access it later. Example: Your brain saving the rules of how to solve a math equation on its internal "hard drive" for weeks.

Retrieval

Pulling a stored memory out of your head when you need it. Example: Remembering your best friend's name instantly when you see them walk into a room.

Sensory Memory

The very first stage of memory that briefly registers a massive amount of environmental data, but only for a blink of an eye. Example: Driving past a row of billboards; your eyes register all the images for a split second before they fade.

Iconic Memory

A momentary, fleeting visual sensory memory that lasts less than half a second. Example: Staring at a bright lamp, closing your eyes, and seeing a perfect visual "ghost image" of the light bulb for a tiny fraction of a second.

Echoic Memory

A momentary, fleeting auditory sensory memory that lasts up to 3 to 4 seconds. Example: Zoning out on your phone while your teacher is talking. When they ask, "What did I just say?" your brain replays the last 3 seconds of their voice like an echo tape so you can repeat it.

Short-Term Memory (STM)

A temporary storage room that holds a few items briefly (about 20 seconds) before they are stored or forgotten. Example: Keeping a verification code in your head just long enough to type it into a login box.

George Miller’s Magic Number ($7 \pm 2$)

The standard capacity limit of short-term memory, which can only hold between 5 and 9 pieces of information at once. Example: Why phone numbers were originally designed to be exactly 7 digits long—it fits perfectly in our short-term limit.

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

The permanent, limitless storehouse of your memory system that can keep information for a lifetime. Example: Remembering your childhood home address or your first pet's name decades later.

Working Memory

The modern understanding of short-term memory—an active mental desktop where you intentionally manipulate words and images. Example: Mentally calculating how much a 15% tip is on a restaurant bill in your head.

Central Executive

The "boss" or manager of working memory that decides what to focus on and shifts your attention. Example: Choosing to focus entirely on reading your test questions while completely filtering out a loud conversation nearby.

Phonological Loop

The inner voice in your working memory that processes spoken and written words. Example: Silently repeating a grocery list over and over in your head ("milk, bread, eggs…") while walking through the store aisle.

Visuospatial Sketchpad

The inner canvas in your working memory that processes visual shapes and spatial layouts. Example: Closing your eyes and mentally picturing your bedroom layout to figure out if a new desk will fit against the wall.

Episodic Buffer

The notebook component of working memory that glues words, pictures, and timelines together into one coherent story. Example: Recalling a conversation from yesterday by mentally matching the exact words spoken with where the person was standing.

Recall

Pulling a memory completely out of thin air with absolutely zero external hints or clues. Example: Taking a short-answer or essay test where you have to generate the entire answer by yourself.

Recognition

Identifying items you previously learned from a list of options right in front of you. Example: Taking a multiple-choice test where the correct answer is sitting right there, acting as a clue.

Relearning

Measuring how much time or effort you save when learning material for a second time, proving a hidden memory trace exists. Example: Reviewing a history chapter for a final exam and mastering it in 10 minutes when it originally took you 2 hours to learn it.

Effortful Processing

Memory encoding that requires active attention, focus, and deliberate mental work. Example: Sitting down with flashcards to study key vocabulary words for your AP test.

Explicit (Declarative) Memory

Conscious memories of facts and events that you can actively declare or talk about. Example: Remembering that Paris is the capital of France or stating your birthdate.

Automatic Processing

The unconscious encoding of day-to-day details like timing, spacing, and how often things happen. Example: Knowing exactly where a definition is located on a textbook page without trying to memorize its position.

Implicit (Nondeclarative) Memory

Unconscious retention of skills or classical conditioning that your body does automatically without thinking. Example: Your hand automatically scrolling down on your phone screen without your brain explaining how to move your thumb.

Shallow Processing

Encoding information on a basic, superficial level based on the visual font, appearance, or basic sound of a word. Example: Noting that a term on your review sheet is written in bold, uppercase, blue letters.

Deep (Semantic) Processing

Encoding information meaningfully based on the actual conceptual definition of a word; leads to the best long-term retention. Example: Studying a psychology definition by connecting it to a real-life human behavior scenario.

Self-Reference Effect

The tendency to remember things incredibly well if you can relate the definition to your own personal life. Example: Remembering the definition of a phobia because you associate it directly with your own extreme fear of spiders.

Chunking

Organizing large, scattered pieces of data into smaller, manageable, and meaningful familiar units. Example: Remembering a massive string of numbers like 1-7-7-6-2-0-2-6 by breaking it into two distinct calendar years: 1776 and 2026.

Mnemonic Device

Any memory trick or aid that uses vivid imagery or organizational shortcuts to speed up learning. Example: Using the acronym HOMES to quickly recall the five Great Lakes (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior).

Method of Loci

A mnemonic strategy where you visualize placing items you want to remember at specific physical landmarks along a familiar daily route. Example: An actor memorizing lines by mentally placing the first stanza at their front door, the second at the kitchen sink, and the third on their couch.

Distributed Practice (The Spacing Effect)

Spreading study sessions out over a long period of time rather than doing it all at once; leads to better retention. Example: Studying for 20 minutes every night for two weeks instead of waiting until the night before the exam.

Massed Practice

Cramming all study material into one single, massive study session; highly ineffective for long-term memory. Example: Staying up until 4:00 AM right before a major test to read five chapters of content for the very first time.

The Testing Effect

Enhanced long-term memory performance created by actively quizzing yourself rather than passively re-reading notes. Example: Scoring much higher on an exam because you took practice tests instead of just re-highlighting your textbook.

Hippocampus

A brain structure in the limbic system that acts as a temporary loading dock for processing conscious, explicit memories before saving them long-term. Example: The specific brain center that fires up to help you save and organize the facts you need for a history quiz.

Frontal Lobes

The brain region that works hand-in-hand with the hippocampus to recall and mentally process explicit facts and events. Example: Your left frontal lobe actively working to bring up a specific word definition during a vocabulary test.

Semantic Memory

A category of explicit memory dedicated to general facts, concepts, meanings, and world knowledge. Example: Knowing that a spider has eight legs or that water freezes at $32^\text{o}\text{F}$.

Episodic Memory

A category of explicit memory dedicated to your own personal experiences and specific life events. Example: Remembering exactly what you wore, who you sat with, and what you ate on your very first day of high school.

Cerebellum

The brain structure responsible for processing and storing implicit, procedural muscle memories and physical balance. Example: The brain region that lets you smoothly play a song on the piano without having to consciously think about moving each individual finger.

Basal Ganglia

Deep brain structures involved in motor movement that help form your long-term physical habits. Example: The brain network that coordinates the muscle memory needed to tie your shoes automatically without looking down.

Procedural Memory

A type of implicit memory that tracks how to execute automatic motor actions and physical habits. Example: Typing a text message on a keyboard smoothly without having to think about where each letter is located.

Amygdala

Emotional brain centers triggered by stress hormones to permanently lock down highly emotional details into your memory tracks. Example: The brain structure that fires up during a high-stress car skid to lock the fear details into your memory.

Flashbulb Memory

An exceptionally clear, vivid snapshot memory of the exact moment you learned of a shocking or emotionally significant event. Example: Remembering exactly where you were standing, what room smelled like, and who told you when you first heard news of a major national crisis.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)

An increase in a synapse's firing efficiency after brief, rapid stimulation; the primary biological basis for learning. Example: As you practice a new language vocabulary word, the neurons tracking that word fire faster and more efficiently, making the connection strong.

Neurogenesis

The physical growth and birth of brand-new neurons inside the brain. Example: Your brain growing fresh neural cells in the hippocampus while you learn a complex new sport or physical skill.

Memory Consolidation

The neural stabilization process where temporary memories are moved out of the hippocampus and stored permanently across the cerebral cortex. Example: Getting a good night's sleep after studying, which allows your brain to physically secure what you learned into long-term storage.

Priming

The unconscious activation of specific associations in your memory web, which influences your thoughts right after. Example: If you see a poster of an ocean, and someone asks you to spell the spoken word "creek," you are primed to spell it as a stream of water rather than a noisy door "creak."

Encoding Specificity Principle

The rule that cues, settings, and contexts present when you first learn something will always be the best clues to help you pull it out later. Example: Studying with a specific background noise or candle scent, and performing better on the test when that exact noise or scent is present in the room.

Context-Dependent Memory

Pulling a memory out of storage much easier when you are back in the exact same physical environment where you first learned it. Example: Walking into your bedroom to grab a pencil, forgetting why you went in there, and instantly remembering the second you walk back to the desk where you had the thought.

State-Dependent Memory

Recalling information significantly better when your internal biological or psychological state matches your state during learning. Example: If you study while drinking a highly caffeinated energy drink, your brain will retrieve the information better if you are also caffeinated during the actual exam.

Mood-Congruent Memory

The tendency to recall past experiences or memories that perfectly match your current emotional mood. Example: If you get into an argument and feel furious, your brain suddenly floods you with memories of every other time that person made you mad in the past.

Serial Position Effect

The tendency to remember the items at the very beginning and the very end of a long list much better than the items in the middle. Example: Hearing a $10$-item grocery list over the phone and only remembering the first two items and the absolute last item when you get to the store.

Primacy Effect

Enhanced recall of items at the very beginning of a list because you had time to rehearse them into long-term memory tracks. Example: Easily remembering "Apples" and "Milk" because they were the first words read out loud on a vocabulary list.

Recency Effect

Enhanced recall of items at the very end of a list because they are still actively ringing in your short-term working memory. Example: Repeating the absolute last word of a sentence perfectly during a surprise comprehension check.

Anterograde Amnesia

An inability to form any new long-term memories after a brain injury or trauma. Example: A patient who can talk about their childhood perfectly, but forgets a person they just met two minutes ago as soon as that person leaves the room.

Retrograde Amnesia

An inability to recall memories, facts, or personal details from your past before a brain injury. Example: Waking up in a hospital after a concussion and completely blanking on your name, address, or where you go to school.

Proactive Interference

When older, previously learned information acts as a forward barrier that blocks your ability to remember fresh, new data. Example: It is a new year, and you keep accidentally writing the old year on your papers because your habit from last year is blocking the new calendar year.

Retroactive Interference

When newly acquired information acts as a backward barrier that completely erases or blocks your ability to recall old memories. Example: You memorize your brand-new smartphone passcode perfectly, but a month later, you realize you completely forgot your old iPad passcode because the new one overrode it.

Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve

A graphic model proving that forgetting happens incredibly fast within the first few hours of learning, but eventually levels off and flattens over time. Example: Forgetting nearly $60\%$ of a morning classroom lecture by lunchtime, but successfully keeping the remaining $40\%$ in your head for the next three weeks.

Reconsolidation

A process where a stored memory is retrieved, slightly altered or updated by current thoughts or suggestions, and then saved back into long-term storage in its edited form. Example: Every time you retell an old childhood story, you unintentionally exaggerate a detail, and your brain permanently stores that new, exaggerated version as the truth.

Misinformation Effect

Incorporating misleading or suggestive post-event information into your recall, which corrupts your memory of an event. Example: Eyewitnesses who are asked how fast cars were going when they "smashed" into each other falsely remembering broken glass on the street, while witnesses who heard the word "hit" do not.

Source Amnesia (Source Monitoring Error)

Retaining the core facts of a memory but completely forgetting or misattributing the wrong origin or source of where you learned it. Example: Telling a friend a joke and insisting you read it in a book, when in reality, that same friend was the one who told you the joke last week.

Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon (Retrieval Failure)

A temporary retrieval block where you are confident you know a word or name, but cannot physically pull it out of storage without a cue. Example: Knowing an actor's name starts with a "D" and has two syllables, but failing to say it until a friend suggests, "Danny."

Encoding Failure

A memory failure that happens because the information was never actually processed into long-term memory in the first place due to a lack of attention. Example: Looking down at your phone to check the time, locking it, and instantly realizing you still do not know what time it is because you did not actually process it.

Independent Variable (IV)

The factor that the researcher actively manipulates to see its effects. Example: Studying with music vs. studying in silence.

Dependent Variable (DV)

The outcome factor that is measured to see how it changes in an experiment. Example: The score achieved on a spelling quiz.

Statistical Significance

A statement of how likely it is that an obtained study result occurred by chance, indicating that findings are highly unlikely to be a random coincidence.

Convenience Sample

A selection method choosing participants who are readily available and easy to reach, rather than choosing a representative cross-section of the population.

Experimental Design

A research method where an investigator manipulates one or more variables to establish a clear cause-and-effect relationship.

Random Assignment

Sorting participants into experimental or control groups by pure chance, which ensures baseline differences between people do not skew the results.

Operational Definition

A precise statement of the exact procedures or measurements used to define a research variable. Example: Specifying working memory performance as the number of digits correctly recalled in reverse order on a test.

Negative Correlation

A statistical relationship where two factors move in opposite directions—as one factor increases, the other factor decreases. Example: As phone screen time increases, exam scores consistently decrease.

Case Study

An in-depth, long-term investigation of a single unique individual or small group to reveal universal psychological truths.