Myers Psychology Unit 7

memory

the persistence of learning over time through the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 326)

recall

a measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the-blank test. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 327)

recognition

a measure of memory in which the person identifies items previously learned, as on a multiple-choice test. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 327)

relearning

a measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material again. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 327)

encoding

the process of getting information into the memory system— for example, by extracting meaning. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 329)

storage

the process of retaining encoded information over time. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 329)

retrieval

the process of getting information out of memory storage. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 329)

parallel processing

processing many aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain's natural mode of information processing for many functions. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e pp. 126, 183, 329)

sensory memory

the immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 329)

short-term memory

activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as digits of a phone number while calling, before the information is stored or forgotten. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 329)

long-term memory

the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 329)

working memory

a newer understanding of short-term memory that adds conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 329)

explicit memory

retention of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare." (Also called declarative memory.) (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 330)

effortful processing

encoding that requires attention and conscious effort. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 330)

automatic processing

unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 331)

implicit memory

retention of learned skills or classically conditioned associations independent of conscious recollection. (Also called nondeclarative memory.) (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 331)

iconic memory

a momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 332)

echoic memory

a momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 332)

chunking

organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 333)

mnemonics

memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 333)

spacing effect

the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 334)

testing effect

enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information. Also sometimes referred to as a retrieval practice effect or test-enhanced learning. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e pp. 20, 335)

shallow processing

encoding on a basic level, based on the structure or appearance of words. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 335)

deep processing

encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best retention. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 335)

semantic memory

explicit memory of facts and general knowledge; one of our two conscious memory systems (the other is episodic memory). (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 340)

episodic memory

explicit memory of personally experienced events; one of our two conscious memory systems (the other is semantic memory). (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 340)

hippocampus

a neural center located in the limbic system; helps process for storage explicit (conscious) memories of facts and events. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e pp. 106, 340)

memory consolidation

the neural storage of a long-term memory. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 340)

flashbulb memory

a clear, sustained memory of an emotionally significant moment or event. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 342)

long-term potentiation (LTP)

an increase in a cell's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation; a neural basis for learning and memory. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 342)

priming

the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e pp. 165, 345)

encoding specificity principle

the idea that cues and contexts specific to a particular memory will be most effective in helping us recall it. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 345)

mood-congruent memory

the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 346)

serial position effect

our tendency to recall best the last (recency effect) and first (primacy effect) items in a list. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 347)

anterograde amnesia

an inability to form new memories. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 351)

retrograde amnesia

an inability to retrieve information from one's past. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 351)

proactive interference

the forward-acting disruptive effect of older learning on the recall of new information. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 354)

retroactive interference

the backward-acting disruptive effect of newer learning on the recall of old information. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 354)

repression

in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e pp. 355, 581)

reconsolidation

a process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 356)

misinformation effect

occurs when misleading information has distorted one's memory of an event. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 357)

source amnesia

faulty memory for how, when, or where information was learned or imagined. (Also called source misattribution.) Source amnesia, along with the misinformation effect, is at the heart of many false memories. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 358)

déjà vu

that eerie sense that "I've experienced this before." Cues from the current situation may unconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 358)

cognition

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e pp. 365, 498)

concept

a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 365)

prototype

a mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories (as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a robin). (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 365)

creativity

the ability to produce new and valuable ideas. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 366)

convergent thinking

narrowing the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 366)

divergent thinking

expanding the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that diverges in different directions. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 366)

algorithm

a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem. Contrasts with the usually speedier—but also more error-prone—use of heuristics. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 370)

heuristic

a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than an algorithm. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 370)

insight

a sudden realization of a problem's solution; contrasts with strategy-based solutions. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e pp. 304, 370)

confirmation bias

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 371)

fixation

(1) in cognition, the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an obstacle to problem solving. (2) in personality theory, according to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e pp. 371, 581)

mental set

a tendency to approach a problem in one particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 371)

intuition

an effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 372)

representativeness heuristic

estimating the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 372)

availability heuristic

estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 373)

overconfidence

the tendency to be more confident than correct—to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 375)

belief perseverance

clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 376)

framing

the way an issue is posed; how an issue is worded can significantly affect decisions and judgments. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 376)

language

our spoken, written, or signed words and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 381)

phoneme

in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 381)

morpheme

in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix). (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 382)

grammar

in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others. Semantics is the language's set of rules for deriving meaning from sounds, and syntax is its set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 382)

babbling stage

beginning around 4 months, the stage of speech development in which an infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 384)

one-word stage

the stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 384)

two-word stage

beginning about age 2, the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly in two-word statements. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 384)

telegraphic speech

early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram—"go car"—using mostly nouns and verbs. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 384)

aphasia

impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke's area (impairing understanding). (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 387)

Broca's area

helps control language expression—an area of the frontal lobe, usually in the left hemisphere, that directs the muscle movements involved in speech. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 388)

Wernicke's area

a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression; usually in the left temporal lobe. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 388)

linguistic determinism

the strong form of Whorf's hypothesis—that language controls the way we think and interpret the world around us. (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 389)

linguistic influence

the weaker form of "linguistic relativity"—the idea that language affects thought (thus our thinking and world view is "relative to" our cultural language). (Myers Psychology for AP 3e p. 389)

we encode many sensory experiences stimuleasly some automatically because which property of the brain

parallel processing

the famous ebbinghaus forgetting curve indicates that how well we remember information depends on

how long ago we learned the information

the magic number seven plus or minus two refers to the storage capacity of

short term memory

automatic processing occurs without

conscious awareness

the process of getting information out of the memory is called

retrieval

answering practice questions about text material you have studied is a useful strategy for

becoming aware of what you do not know yet

superior memory rap lyrics that include the most rhymes, best illustrate the value of

acoustic encoding

storage is to encoding as ____________ is to ___________

retention; acquisition

by shrinking the hippocampus prolonged stress is most likely to inhibit the process of

long term memory

anika resisted changing her answer to a test question after reminding herself they its awareness to stick with your first answer anikas decision best illustrates the use of

heuristic

logical methodical step by step procedures for solving problems is called

algorithmic

the inability of remember how lincons head appears on a penny is most likely due to

encoding

patients who have experienced brain damage may be unable to form new personal memories but are unable to learn to do jig saw puzzles without awareness if having learned then this suggest that

the system of creating explicit memories has been affected not the implicit memory system

by dividing broad concepts into increasingly smaller and detailed subgrouping we create

category hierarchies

iconic memory refers to

photographic or picture image memory that last for only a few tenths of a second

chucking refers to

the organization of information into meaningful units

the best examples of a category of object, events or people is called

prototype

the ability to learn something without any consciences memory of having learned it suggest the need to distinguish between

explicit memory and implicit memory

mnemonic device is a

memory aid

which test of memory typically provided the fewest retrieval cues

recall

while reading a novel at a rate of nearly 500 words per min mega effortlessly understands almost every word this ability highlights the importance of

implicit memory

explicit memory are best described as

include memory for general knowledge

words events places and emotions that trigger our memory of the past are called

retrieval cues

cognitive psychologist are most directly concerned with the study of

thinking

research shows that a memory trace is most likely to involve

synaptic changes

when people are asked to recall a list of words they had heard earlier memorized they often substitute synonyms for some of the words on the original list this best illustrates the

semantic encoding