Memory Unit - AP Psychology

Memory

Memory

The mental capacity to store and retrieve information (ex. remembering your childhood birthday parties)

Encoding

The process of converting sensory information into a form that can be stored in memory (ex. converting the sight of a red rose into a memory of it’s color and fragrance)

Storage

The retention of encoded information over time (ex. retaining the information you learned in class yesterday)

Retrieval

The process of getting information out of memory storage (ex. recalling the name of your favorite childhood teacher)

Sensory Memory

The brief storage of sensory information (ex. visual or auditory) before it is transferred to short-term memory (ex. briefly seeing a shooting star in the night sky before it disappears)

Short-Term Memory (STM)

The memory system that holds a small amount of information for a limited time, typically around 20-30 seconds (ex. remembering a phone number long enough to dial it)

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

The relatively permanent storage of information with an essentially unlimited capacity (ex. recalling your first day of school from many years ago)

Working Memory

A limited capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information (ex. mentally keeping track of a shopping list as you gather items in a store)

Serial Position Effect

The tendency to recall the first and last items in a list more easily than the middle items (ex. remembering the first and last items on your grocery list, but forgetting the items in the middle)

Chunking

Organizing information into meaningful units to make it easier to remember (ex. remembering a 12-diget credit card number by grouping it into four sets of three digits)

Maintenance Rehearsal

Repeating information over and over to maintain it in short-term memory (ex. repeating a new vocabulary word over and over to remember it for a test)

Elaborative Rehearsal

Relating new information to existing knowledge to help encode and remember it (ex. associating a historical event with a personal story to remember it better)

Semantic Memory

A type of long-term memory that stores general knowledge and facts (ex. knowing that Washington DC is the capital of the United States)

Episodic Memory

A type of long-term memory that stores personal experiences and events (ex. recalling the details of a family vacation to Disney World)

Procedural Memory

A type of long-term memory that stores information about how to do things (ex. riding a bike without consciously thinking about each step)

Declarative Memory

The cognitive information retrieved from explicit memory; knowledge that can be declared (ex. remembering historical facts for a history exam)

Implicit Memory

Unconscious memory, such as skills (procedural memory) and conditioned emotional responses (ex. reacting with fear to a certain sound due to past traumatic experience)

Flashbulb Memory

A vivid and emotional memory of a significant event, often with exceptional clarity (ex. vividly recalling where you were and what you were doing during a major historical even like 9/11)

Retrieval Cues

Stimuli or reminders that aid in the retrieval of stored information (ex. smelling a particular perfume and suddenly remembering a past romantic encounter)

Recall

Retrieving information from memory without any external cues (ex. writing down all the U.S. state capitals from memory)

Recognition

Identifying previously learned information from multiple choices or options (ex. selecting the correct answers from a multiple choice question on an exam)

Context-Dependent Memory

The idea that the context or environment in which something is learned can enhance memory retrieval (ex. remembering a conversation better when you’re in the same room where it took place)

State-Dependent Memory

The phenomenon in which information is better recalled when the person is is the same state of mind or physiological stare as when eh memory was encoded (ex. recalling information more accurately when you’re in the same emotional state as when you learned it)

Encoding Specificity Principal

The concept that memory is most effective when information available at encoding is also available at retrieval (ex. remembering a joke better when you’re in the same social setting where you heard it)

Forgetting Curve

The curve that represents the decline of memory retention over time id information is no rehearsed or remembered (ex. forgetting most of the details of a lecture a few days after the class if you haven’t reviewed the material)

Interference

When information is memory disrupts the recall of other information (ex. mixing up two similar phone numbers because they share common digits)

Proactive Interference

When previously learned information interferes with he retention of new information (ex. having trouble learning a new password because it similar to your old one)

Retroactive Interference

When newly learned information interferes with the retrieval of older information (ex. forgetting your own phone number because you learned a new one)

Anterograde Amnesia

The inability to form new long-term memories after a specific event, often due to a brain injury (ex. a character in a movie can’t form new memories after a car accident)

Retrograde Amnesia

The loss of memory for events that occurred before a brain injury or trauma (ex. a character in a book can’t remember anything about her life before waking up in a hospital)

Retrieval Failure

The inability to recall a memory due to the absence of cues or the wrong cues (ex. trying to remember a childhood friend’s name but failing because you haven’t thought about them in years)

Decay Theory

The idea that memory traces face r erode over time if they are not used or rehearsed (forgetting a phone number you rarely use because you haven’t rehearsed it in a long time)

Repression

A defense mechanism where distressing memories are pushed into the unconscious mind to protect one’s mental health (ex. a person may express traumatic memories of a car accident, making it difficult for them to recall the details)

Source Amnesia

The inability to remember the source of a piece of information while still retaining the information itself (ex. remembering a piece of information but not beings able to recall where you heard or learned it)

Hindsight Bias

The tendency to believe, after an event has occurred, that one would have predicted or expected the outcome (ex. after your favorite sports team wins a game, you might say, “I knew it all along”)

Autobiographical Memory

Memory for events and experiences in one’s own life (ex. recalling your first day of school, your favorite toy, or you high school graduation day)

False Memory

A fabricated or distorted recollection of an event that did not actually happen (believing you once saw a rare animal at the zoo, even though that animal has never been at the zoo)

Constructive Memory

The process of assembling information from stored knowledge when a memory is created or recalled (ex. after watching a grim documentary, you may reconstruct the events differently from what you actually saw)

Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

A graphical representation of how information is forgotten over time if it is not actively rehearsed (ex. forgetting most of the details of a lecture within a day if you don’t review the notes or material)

Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon

A state in which a person cannot quite recall a specific piece of information but feels that it is “on the tip of their tongue” (ex. trying to recall the name of an actor in a movie but only remembering the first letter of their name)

Schema

A mental framework or concept that helps organize and interpret information (ex. you have a men tap framework for what a typical restaurant looks like, so you can quickly recognize one when you see it)

Confabulation

The act of filling in memory gaps with fabricated or misinterpreted information (ex. someone might confabulate a story about their childhood that never actually happened but feels real to them)

Infantile Amnesia

The inability of adults to remember events from early childhood (usually before the age of 2 or 4) (ex. not being able to remember any events from your childhood, such as your first birthday)

Memory Consolidation

The process by which short-term memories are transformed into long-term memories (ex. sleeping after studying helps consolidate the information, making it easier to recall during the exam)

Flashforward

The opposite of a flashback; it’s when a person has a memory of a future event that hasn’t occurred yet (ex. having a vivid mental image of what your college graduation il be like, even though it is in the future)

Transience

The fading of memories over time it’s one of the seven sins of memory identified by Daniel Schacter (ex. forgetting the details of a book you read several years ago because you haven’t revisited the story)

Misattribution

Assigning a memory to the wrong source, leading to the false memories (ex. believing you heard a news story on one channel when it was actually reported on another)

Hippocampus

A region of the brain involved in the formation and retrieval of explicit (declarative) memories (ex. damage to the hippocampus can result in severe memory problems, such as the inability to form new memories)