Memory and Cognitive Psychology Flashcards

Comprehensive flashcards covering memory systems, landmark cases, experimental psychology, eyewitness testimony, memory errors, clinical disorders, and social/embodied memory based on the lecture transcript.

Memory

The process of transforming sensory information into a form that can be stored, maintaining it, and later accessing it from the past.

Declarative Memory

A type of long-term memory also known as explicit memory that involves 'what' information, categorized into episodic, semantic, and autobiographical memory.

Non-declarative Memory

A type of long-term memory also known as implicit memory that involves 'how' information, such as priming, perceptual, procedural, reflexes, and conditioning.

Autobiographical Memory

A specific type of explicit memory relating to significant and personal events and experiences in one's own life.

Short-term Memory

A temporary storage unit for information.

Working Memory

A memory system that holds and manipulates information for active use.

Hyperthymesia (HSAM)

Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory; an extraordinary ability to remember personal events, dates, and news with vivid, detailed 'replay' and often chronological organization.

Susie McKinnon

The first person identified with Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM), who can remember facts about her life but cannot mentally relive or re-experience personal events.

Semantic Memory

Memory for facts, knowledge, and concepts without the sensory detail or time context of original experiences.

Episodic Memory

Memory for lived experiences with sensory detail and time context, requiring autonoetic consciousness.

Autonoetic Consciousness

The ability to mentally time travel and re-experience events from a first-person perspective.

H.M.

A landmark case study of a patient who lost the ability to form new memories after his hippocampus was removed, proving that memory systems are neurologically distinct.

K.C.

A landmark case study of a patient who lost episodic memory after brain damage but retained facts, helping prove the distinction between episodic and semantic memory.

Tetrahedral Model of Memory

A framework for memory experiments involving four factors: Participants, Critical tasks (retrieval), Materials, and Orienting tasks (encoding).

Recognition

A memory test that only requires familiarity with the material provided.

Cued Recall

A memory test involving reminders or prompts where the participant generates the content themselves.

Free Recall

A memory test with no cues or prompts, requiring the participant to generate all content.

Availability

Refers to information that has been successfully stored in the brain.

Accessibility

Refers to whether stored information can be currently retrieved or accessed.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Researcher who used nonsense syllables to study the learning and forgetting curves, discovering that memory drops steeply about $20$ minutes after an event.

Primacy and Recency Effect

The tendency to remember the first items presented due to novelty and the last items presented due to recency.

Maintenance Rehearsal

A level of processing involving simple repetition of information.

Elaborative Rehearsal

A level of processing involving deeper semantic analysis and connecting experiences to existing knowledge structures.

Levels of Processing (Craik and Lockhart)

The theory that memory is a by-product of cognitive processes at encoding, where structural analysis leads to the lowest recall and semantic analysis leads to the highest recall.

Subsequent Memory Paradigm

A neuroimaging technique used to identify brain activity during encoding that predicts whether an item will be remembered or forgotten later.

Generation Effect

The finding that information is remembered better when it is generated by the individual rather than simply read.

Directed Forgetting

An experimental procedure where participants are intentionally instructed to forget specific info, demonstrating voluntary control over retrieval.

Retrieval Inhibition Hypothesis

The theory that forget-instructions inhibit list items due to active competition, making them inaccessible but still available.

Context Shift Hypothesis

The theory that forget-instructions create separate mental contexts, making the new context a poor retrieval cue for the original information.

Retrieval-Induced Forgetting

The phenomenon where retrieving certain items causes the loss or forgetting of other related items.

Self-Memory System (SMS)

Martin Conway's hierarchical model where autobiographical memory is a dynamic mental construction involving lifetime periods, general events, and event-specific knowledge.

Transition Theory

Norman Brown's theory that memory organization mirrors the structure of experience and is cataloged based on transitions or changes in the fabric of daily life.

Involuntary Memories

Memories that spontaneously pop into the mind without effort or intention, appearing directly in response to a cue.

Field Perspective

Remembering a memory from your own original perspective.

Observer Perspective

A 'third-eye' view where you look at yourself within the memory, often associated with more generative retrieval.

Fading Affect Bias

The tendency for negative emotions associated with memories to disappear over time faster than positive emotions.

Reminiscence Bump

A bias for remembering events from adolescence and early adulthood, specifically between ages $15$ and $30$.

Flashbulb Memories

Exceptionally vivid and long-lasting memories of important public events with significant emotional impact, such as $$9/11$.

Estimator Variables

Factors in eyewitness memory that cannot be changed, such as lighting, distance, or the presence of a weapon.

System Variables

Factors in eyewitness memory controlled by the legal system, such as police procedures and lineup construction.

Inattentional Blindness

Failure to notice unexpected events in direct sight because attention is focused elsewhere.

Own-race Bias

The tendency to be better at identifying people of one's own race compared to other races.

Weapon Focus Effect

The impairment of memory for a perpetrator's features because a weapon captures the witness's attention.

Fuzzy Trace Theory

A theory suggesting events contain both 'gist' (general meaning) and 'verbatim' (exact detail) traces.

Transience

One of Schacter's seven sins; the idea that memory fades or is omitted over time.

Blocking

The dissociation between familiarity and recollection, often manifested as the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.

DRM Paradigm

A procedure where participants read a list of words converging on a 'critical lure' (e.g., 'sleep') and later falsely recall that lure as being present.

Imagination Inflation

The finding that repeatedly imagining an event happened increases confidence that it actually occurred.

Misinformation Effect

The distortion of memory for an initial event caused by encountering incorrect information from external sources afterward.

Episodic Future Thinking

The ability to project oneself into the future to pre-experience an event, involving the same cognitive processes as episodic memory.

Constructive Episodic Simulation Hypothesis

The theory that memories are built from stored fragments that can be flexibly recombined to simulate new future events.

Default Mode Network

The main brain system involved in mental simulation, including the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex.

Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD)

A group of neurodegenerative disorders affecting the anterior brain, typically characterized by changes in social conduct, empathy, or language rather than rapid forgetting.

Korsakoff's Syndrome

A type of severe, irreversible anterograde amnesia caused by a lack of thiamine, usually associated with chronic alcohol misuse.

Transactive Memory Theory

The idea that groups develop a shared system for encoding, storing, and retrieving information through communication and metaknowledge of what others know.

Collaborative Inhibition

The reduction in memory performance when working in a group compared to the pooled output of the same number of individuals working alone.

Collective Memory

Shared remembering by a community that bears on its collective identity, involving publicly available symbols and stories.

Google Effect (Digital Amnesia)

The tendency to forget information that we know can be easily found online, while remembering where to find it.

Truthiness Effect

The phenomenon where images accompanying headlines make the information seem truer, even if the image has no evidentiary value.

Embodied Memory

Implicit memory where the body 'remembers' through re-enacting skills or habits without needing conscious representation of the past.