Intro to Psychology Week Four Lecture Notes

This set of flashcards covers key terms and concepts related to memory and learning from the psychology lecture, designed to aid in exam preparation.

Memory

The ability to store and retrieve information over time.

Encoding

The process of transforming what we perceive, think, or feel into an enduring memory.

Storage

The process of maintaining information in memory over time.

Retrieval

The process of bringing to mind information that has been previously encoded and stored.

Semantic Encoding

The process of bringing to mind meanings and concepts that have been previously encoded and stored.

Visual Imagery Encoding

The process of storing new information by converting it into mental pictures.

Organizational Encoding

The process of categorizing information according to the relationships among a series of items.

Sensory Memory

A type of storage that holds sensory information for a few seconds or less.

Short-term Memory

Holds non-sensory information for more than a few seconds but less than a minute.

Working Memory

Active maintenance of information in short-term storage for complex cognitive tasks.

Long-term Storage

A type of storage that holds information for hours, days, weeks, or years and has no known capacity limits.

Hippocampus

A brain structure critical for converting short-term memory into long-term memory.

Anterograde Amnesia

Inability to transfer new information from short-term to long-term storage.

Retrograde Amnesia

Inability to retrieve information acquired before a particular date.

Procedural Memory

The gradual acquisition of skills as a result of practice.

Priming

An enhanced ability to think of a stimulus as a result of recent exposure to it.

Semantic Memory

A network of associated facts and concepts that make up our general knowledge of the world.

Episodic Memory

The collection of past personal experiences that occurred at a particular time and place.

Transience

Forgetting that occurs with the passage of time.

Retroactive Interference

When information learned later impairs memory for information acquired earlier.

Proactive Interference

When information learned earlier impairs memory for information acquired later.

Absentmindedness

A lapse in attention that results in memory failure.

Blocking

A failure to retrieve information that is available in memory.

Memory Misattribution

Assigning a recollection or an idea to the wrong source.

Suggestibility

The tendency to incorporate misleading information from external sources into personal recollections.

Bias

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

Persistence

The intrusive recollection of events that we wish we could forget.

Classical Conditioning

When a neutral stimulus produces a response after being paired with a stimulus that naturally produces a response.

Unconditioned Stimulus (US)

Something that reliably produces a naturally occurring reaction in an organism.

Unconditioned Response (UR)

A reflexive reaction that is reliably produced by an unconditioned stimulus.

Conditioned Stimulus (CS)

A previously neutral stimulus that produces a reliable response in an organism after being paired with a US.

Conditioned Response (CR)

A reaction that resembles an unconditioned response but is produced by a conditioned stimulus.

Second Order Conditioning

Conditioning where a CS is paired with a stimulus that became associated with the US in an earlier procedure.

Extinction

The gradual elimination of a learned response that occurs when the CS is repeatedly presented without the US.

Spontaneous Recovery

The tendency of a learned behavior to recover from extinction after a rest period.

Generalization

The CR is observed even though the CS is slightly different from the CS used during acquisition.

Discrimination

The capacity to distinguish between similar but distinct stimuli.

Operant Conditioning

A type of learning in which the consequences of an organism's behavior determine whether it will be repeated in the future.

Reinforcer

Any stimulus or event that functions to increase the likelihood of the behavior that led to it.

Punisher

Any stimulus or event that functions to decrease the likelihood of the behavior that led to it.