PSY-305 Topics 4 & 5: Memory Models, Research Methods, and Memory Processes

Practice vocabulary flashcards covering memory models, paradigms, research studies, neuroanatomy, and memory processes from PSY-305 Topics 4 & 5.

Memory

The mechanism used to create, maintain, and retrieve information about the past, as defined by Robert J. Sternberg.

Encoding

The core memory process used to transform sensory input into a construct that can be stored in memory.

Storage

The core memory process used to maintain and keep information available in memory over time.

Retrieval

The core memory process used to gain access to stored information and pull it back out of memory.

Free Recall

A memory testing task in which participants recall items from a studied list in any order without cues.

Cued Recall

A memory testing task in which participants are provided specific prompts or cues to facilitate retrieval.

Serial Recall

A memory testing task where participants must recall items in the exact chronological order in which they were presented.

Recognition Task

A memory task where participants select previously studied items from a list containing distractors.

Explicit Memory Tasks

Memory tasks that require conscious recollection, where participants are aware that they are actively attempting to retrieve stored information.

Implicit Memory Tasks

Tasks that indirectly demonstrate memory without requiring conscious recollection, such as completing word puzzles based on prior exposure.

Word Fragment Completion

An implicit memory task where participants complete word puzzles with missing letters, showing increased completion speed via priming from a prior word list.

Word Stem Completion

An implicit memory task where participants are provided the first few letters of a word and asked to finish it with the first term that comes to mind.

Iconic Store

The visual sensory register that holds pre-categorical visual information for approximately $250\,\text{ms}$ before rapidly fading.

Partial Report Procedure

A paradigm developed by Sperling (1960) using a post-display cue tone to show that iconic memory holds approximately $12$ items that decay within milliseconds.

Backward Visual Masking

The erasure of prior sensory register contents caused by a visual stimulus presented immediately after the target.

Echoic Store

The auditory sensory register that holds auditory information for $2\text{ to }3\,\text{seconds}$ to facilitate speech processing.

Chunking

The process of organizing individual items of input into larger, meaningful conceptual units to expand effective short-term memory capacity beyond $7 \pm 2$ items.

Levels of Processing (LOP) Model

A memory framework proposed by Craik & Lockhart (1972) asserting that memory strength depends on the depth of semantic encoding rather than distinct structural stores.

Maintenance Rehearsal

Simple rote repetition that maintains information temporarily in short-term memory without guaranteeing transfer to long-term memory.

Elaborative Rehearsal

A deep processing strategy that attends to the semantic meaning of information and links it to existing long-term memory concepts.

Transfer-Appropriate Processing Effect

The principle demonstrated by Morris, Bransford, and Franks (1977) showing that memory performance depends on the degree of match between the encoding task and retrieval test requirements.

Central Executive

The supervisory component of Baddeley's Working Memory Model that directs attention, inhibits irrelevant stimuli, plans sequences, switches tasks, and updates mental content.

Phonological Loop

The working memory component that maintains acoustic information, composed of the articulatory loop and phonological store.

Visuospatial Sketchpad

The component of Baddeley's working memory model responsible for processing and maintaining visual and spatial information.

Episodic Buffer

A multimodal storage system in Baddeley's working memory model that integrates and binds episodes across sub-systems operating on different codes.

Semantic Memory

A long-term declarative memory store dedicated to general world knowledge, facts, concepts, definitions, and rules.

Episodic Memory

A long-term declarative memory store for personally experienced events tied to specific temporal and spatial contexts.

Procedural Memory

A non-declarative long-term memory store responsible for motor skills, cognitive habits, and 'knowing how'.

Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) Perspective

A connectionist perspective proposed by McClelland & Rumelhart where memory is represented as an interconnected network of nodes with meaning arising from distributed activation patterns.

Correspondence Metaphor

A memory framework proposed by Koriat & Goldsmith (1996) that emphasizes memory function, holistic accuracy, and real-world applicability over storage capacity.

Retrograde Amnesia

The loss of memory for events, facts, and information that occurred prior to brain trauma.

Anterograde Amnesia

The inability to form new long-term declarative memories for events occurring after brain trauma.

Infantile Amnesia

The developmental inability of adults to recall events from very early childhood, typically occurring under age $3\text{ to }4$.

Hippocampus

A critical neuroanatomical structure required for the integration, consolidation, and explicit formation of long-term declarative memories.

Neurofibrillary Tangles and Senile Plaques

The two primary neuropathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease composed of abnormal fibers and patches of degenerative nerve endings that disrupt neuronal impulses.

Consolidation

The neurobiological process of integrating newly encoded information into permanent long-term storage.

Spacing Effect

The cognitive phenomenon demonstrating that distributed practice spaced over time produces superior long-term memory retention compared to massed practice (cramming).

Method of Loci

A mnemonic device in which items to be remembered are mentally placed at specific landmarks along a familiar route or building.

Pegword System

A mnemonic technique where items are associated with a pre-memorized rhyming list of peg words (e.g., 'One is a bun, Two is a shoe').

Prospective Memory

Memory dedicated to remembering to carry out a planned intention or action in the future.

Retrospective Memory

Memory directed toward retrieving previously learned information or past events.

Serial Exhaustive Search

A short-term memory retrieval search process described by Sternberg (1967) where all items in a set are evaluated one by one to completion, even after the target is found.

Availability

The property describing whether a specific memory trace physically exists within long-term memory storage.

Accessibility

The property describing whether an existing, stored memory trace can be successfully retrieved at a given moment.

Decay Theory

A forgetting theory that posits memory traces weaken and fade simply due to disuse and the passage of time.

Interference Theory

A forgetting theory proposing that memory retrieval failure occurs because competing memories disrupt access to target traces.

Proactive Interference (PI)

Forgetting that occurs when previously learned information disrupts the retrieval of newly learned information (old disrupts new).

Retroactive Interference (RI)

Forgetting that occurs when newly learned information disrupts the retrieval of previously stored information (new disrupts old).