chapter 7 Memory Types and Processes: Short-Term, Long-Term, and Encoding Strategies

Holding onto the details of a phone number long enough to dial it before it disappears from your mind.

Short-Term Memory/Temporarily maintains and processes limited information for longer periods (about 30 seconds, if there are no distractions).

Looking at a rapidly flashed set of letters and being able to report only the row associated with a tone, showing that the rest dissolved quickly.

Iconic Memory/Visual impressions that are photograph-like in their accuracy but dissolve in less than a second.

Repeating a new acquaintance's name over and over until you can write it down, although you'll likely forget it if you get distracted.

Maintenance Rehearsal/Technique of repeating information to be remembered, increasing the length of time it can be held in short-term memory.

Remembering the numbers 747 as a single airplane model instead of three separate digits.

Chunking/Grouping numbers, letters, or other items into meaningful subsets as a strategy for increasing the quantity of information that can be maintained in short-term memory.

Mentally reviewing your grocery list (verbal info) while simultaneously visualizing the store layout (spatial info) to plan your route.

Working Memory/The active processing of information in short-term memory, including maintenance and manipulation of information.

The component of working memory that helps you bring together visual, spatial, and verbal information to solve a problem, such as deciding if you need milk.

Episodic Buffer/Forms the bridge between memory and conscious awareness and brings information together, allowing us to solve problems

recalling the name of the capital of France.

Semantic Memory/The memory of information theoretically available to anyone, which pertains to general facts about the world.

Recalling your first day of college, including where you were sitting and who you spoke to.

Episodic Memory/The record of memorable experiences or "episodes" including when and where an experience occurred.

The detailed memory of exactly where you were when you heard the news of a shocking historic event.

Flashbulb Memory/Detailed account of circumstances surrounding an emotionally significant or shocking, sometimes historic, event.

Tying your shoes or riding a bicycle without consciously thinking about the steps.

Procedural Memory/The unconscious memory of how to carry out a variety of skills and activities.

Knowing how to perform an action, but it's difficult to consciously express or bring to awareness.

Implicit Memory/A memory of something you know or know how to do, which may be automatic, unconscious, and difficult to bring to awareness and express

able to memorize the first words given to you and not the last words

Priming/The stimulation of memories as a result of retrieval cues in the environment.

Answering a short-answer test question by generating the information from past

Recall/Retrieving information held in long-term memory without explicit retrieval cues.

Answering a multiple-choice test question by selecting the correct option from a list.

Recognition/Matching incoming data to information stored in long-term memory; have to identify information, rather than come up with information.

The high probability of recalling the first few items on a list.

Primacy Effect/Part of the Serial Position Effect, which is the ability to recall items in a list depending on where they are in the series.

Scuba divers who learned words underwater recalled them better when tested underwater than on land.

Encoding Specificity Principle/Memories are more easily recalled when the context and cues at the time of encoding are similar to those at the time of retrieval.

Having a hard time remembering your new Italian vocabulary because your old Spanish vocabulary keeps coming to mind.

Proactive Interference/The tendency for information learned in the past to interfere with the retrieval of new material.

After learning Italian, you struggle to recall your old Spanish vocabulary on a Spanish test.

Retroactive Interference/The tendency for recently learned information to interfere with the retrieval of things learned in the past.

Looking at doctored photos of yourself as a child and later "remembering" an event, like a hot air balloon ride, that never happened.

False Memories/People sometimes create false memories of experiences they never had.

Using the acronym ROY G BIV to remember the order of colors in the rainbow.

First-letter technique/A mnemonic device that uses acronyms.

Studying for 30 minutes every day for a week instead of cramming for 3.5 hours the night before a test.

Distributed practice/A memory improvement strategy that contrasts with massed practice.

When you try to relearn a language you were exposed to as a child, you acquire it more quickly than a brand new language.

Relearning/Material learned previously is acquired more quickly in subsequent exposures (a "memory savings").

After an injury, a person can remember their life before the incident but cannot form any new long-term memories.

Anterograde Amnesia/The inability to form memories for events that occur after an injury

The surgical removal of the temporal lobes, including this structure, resulted in H.M.'s inability to form new explicit memories.

Hippocampus/Essential for creating new explicit memories.

The increased efficiency of neural communication over time, resulting in learning and memory formation, which may be the biological basis for learning.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)/The increased efficiency of neural communication over time, resulting in learning and the formation of memories.

Memory

The processes involved in the encoding (collection), storage, and retrieval of information

Encoding

The process through which information enters our memory system, occurring when stimuli are converted to neural activity

Storage

Preserving information for possible recollection in the future

Retrieval

Accessing information encoded and stored in memory

Levels of Processing Framework

A model suggesting that the processing of information can occur along a continuum from shallow to deep

Deep Thinking

Processing information by thinking about meaning, which helps create stronger memories