Intro to Psych: Memory Terms

Sensory Memory

Very short-lasting memory from the senses.

• Iconic memory = visual (lasts ~0.5 seconds).

• Echoic memory = auditory (lasts ~3–4 seconds).

Iconic Memory

A type of sensory memory that uses vision

Echoic Memoy

A type of sensory memory that uses hearing.

Working Memory

Short-Term Memory

• Temporarily holds and processes information.

• Capacity: ~7 items for ~20 seconds.

• Example: Remembering a phone number just long enough to dial it.

Long-Term Memory

Stores information for minutes, years, or a lifetime

• Explicit Memory

  • Semantic

  • Episodic

• Implicit Memory

  • Prodedural

  • Priming

Explicit Memory

Declarative

• Requires conscious effort to recall

Semantic Memory

Facts & Knowledge

Ex: Paris is the capital of France

Episodic Memory

Personal experiences

Ex: your last birthday party

Implicit Memory

Non-Declarative

• Unconscious memory — doesn't require effort to recall

Procedural Memory

Skills & habits

Ex: riding a bike, dancing, cooking…

Priming Memory

When exposure to one thing influences your response to another

Ex: seeing the word "yellow" makes you faster to recognize the word "banana"

Distributed Representation

Explicit & Semantic

• A single idea, memory, or concept is represented by a pattern of activity across many neurons—not just one.

Lexical Decision

Explicit & Semantic

• Measure how quickly and accurately people recognize words, often to study how closely related ideas are in the brain.

Encoding

Explicit & Episodic

• The process by which we transform what we perceive, think, or feel and turn it into a memory that can be stored in the brain

Elaborate Encoding

Explicit & Episodic

• The process of actively connecting new information to things you already know to help remember it better.

Visual Imagery Encoding

Explicit & Episodic

• Storing new information by converting it into mental pictures 

Retrieval

Explicit & Episodic

• The Process of bringing back information that has been previously encoded and stored. 

Retrieval Cue

Explicit & Episodic

• Can serve as a “seed” for such recreation

Spreading Activation

Explicit & Episodic

• Activation of one memory leads to the activation of related or associated memories

Anterograde Amnesia

The inability to form new memories for events you experience and facts you encounter

Retrograde Amnesia

The inability to remember past event

Clive Wearing

Is a famous case study in memory research. He is a man who suffered severe brain damage to his hippocampus due to a viral infection, resulting in a type of anterograde amnesia.

Transience

• Definition: Forgetting what happens over time.

• Pattern: Memory fades quickly at first, then the rate of forgetting slows down.

• Over time, memories tend to lose detail and become more general or gist-like.

• is often made worse by interference from other memories.

Proactive Interference

• Old memories interfere with remembering new information.

• Example: You keep typing your old password instead of the new one.

Retroactive Interference

• New information interferes with recalling old memories.

• Example: After learning a new dance, you forget parts of a routine you knew before.

Misattribution

Assigning a recollection of an idea to the wrong source

• Source memory: ability to recall when, where, and how information was acquired.

• Source amnesia: a memory for an event, but without the memory of how the information was encountered

• Cryptomnesia: a type of source amnesia in which ideas are incorrectly thought to be novel

Memory Bias

The distorting influences of present knowledge, beliefs, and feelings on recollection of previous experiences

• Consistency bias: reconstruct the past to fit the present

• Egocentric bias: remember events from one’s point of view, often distorting or misremembering detail

Suggestibility

The tendency to incorporate misleading information from external sources into personal recollection