Memory and Knowledge exam 1

Philosophical approach to memory

An approach that relies primarily on introspection, reasoning, speculation, and personal reflection rather than controlled measurement.

Exam distinction: Its limitation is that subjective reports can be biased, difficult to replicate, and unable to establish causal explanations

Scientific approach to memory

The systematic study of memory using operational definitions, controlled experiments, measurement, replication, and testable hypotheses.

Exam distinction: Scientific approaches seek observable evidence and explanations that can be independently evaluated.

Method of Savings

Ebbinghaus’s method for measuring memory by comparing the time or number of repetitions needed to relearn material with the amount originally required to learn it.

Exam distinction: Savings can reveal memory that is not obvious through free recall.

Forgetting function

A description of how retention decreases as a function of time since learning.

Exam distinction: Ebbinghaus found rapid initial forgetting followed by a slower rate of loss.

Behaviorism

An approach that emphasized observable behavior and generally avoided treating unobservable mental processes as the primary subject of scientific psychology.

Exam distinction: Behaviorists favored measurable stimulus-response relationships.

Cognitive psychology

The scientific study of internal mental processes such as attention, memory, perception, language, and reasoning.

Exam distinction: Cognitive psychology often uses the mind-as-information-processor metaphor.

Sensory memory

A very brief memory system that retains information in a relatively unprocessed sensory form immediately after stimulation.

Exam distinction: It has high initial capacity but very short duration.

Rods

Retinal photoreceptors specialized for low-light vision and peripheral vision; they do not provide normal color vision.

Exam distinction: Rods are more sensitive to light; cones support color and high-acuity vision.

Cones

Retinal photoreceptors that support color vision and detailed visual perception, especially in brighter light.

Exam distinction: Cones are concentrated in the fovea.

Saccadic eye movements

Rapid movements of the eyes that reposition the fovea onto different parts of the visual scene.

Exam distinction: They support sampling of information rather than smooth tracking of a single moving object.

Iconic memory

A visual sensory-memory store that briefly preserves a relatively rich representation of a visual display, generally for a fraction of a second.

Exam distinction: It is brief and high-capacity, but much of its information becomes inaccessible quickly.

Whole-report procedure

A procedure in which participants report as many items as possible from an entire briefly presented display.

Exam distinction: Performance typically underestimates the amount of information initially available because the representation fades quickly

Partial-report procedure

A procedure in which a cue presented after a display indicates which subset or row of items should be reported.

Exam distinction: Sperling’s partial-report results suggested that more information was briefly available than could be reported in whole report.

Information persistence

The continued availability of information about a stimulus after the physical stimulus has disappeared.

Exam distinction: It concerns the persistence of usable information, not necessarily the continued physical presence of the stimulus.

Stimulus persistence

The continued physical presence or sensory effects of the stimulus itself.

Exam distinction: Stimulus persistence and information persistence are conceptually distinct.

Cerebrum

The largest, outer portion of the forebrain, consisting of two cerebral hemispheres.

Exam distinction: The hemispheres communicate primarily through the corpus callosum.

Corpus callosum

A large bundle of nerve fibers connecting the left and right cerebral hemispheres.

Exam distinction: It permits communication and information transfer between hemispheres.

Neuron

A specialized nervous-system cell that receives, processes, and transmits information through electrical and chemical signaling.

Exam distinction: Neurons differ from glial cells primarily in their role in rapid information communication.

Glial Cell

A nervous-system cell that supports, nourishes, insulates, protects, and regulates neurons.

Exam distinction: Glia are not simply passive support cells; many actively influence neural function.

Dendrites

Branching neuronal structures that receive incoming signals from other cells.

Exam distinction: They commonly convey information toward the cell body.

Soma/cell body

The part of the neuron containing the nucleus and supporting cellular maintenance and integration.

Exam distinction: It helps integrate incoming signals and sustain the cell.

Axon

A neuronal projection that carries electrical signals away from the cell body toward target cells.

Exam distinction: Some axons are insulated by myelin.

Myelin

An insulating material surrounding many axons that increases the speed and efficiency of neural conduction.

Exam distinction: Gaps in myelin are called nodes of Ranvier.

Action potential

A rapid, all-or-none electrical impulse that travels along an axon when threshold is reached.

Exam distinction: Information can be represented through firing rate, timing, and patterns of activity.

Synapse

The junction where a neuron communicates with another neuron, muscle cell, or gland cell.

Exam distinction: Communication is often chemical, involving neurotransmitter release.

Neurotransmitter

A chemical messenger released by a neuron that influences a receiving cell across a synapse.

Exam distinction: Its effect depends on the receptor and the receiving cell’s state.

Hebbian learning

The proposal that connections between neurons strengthen when their activity is repeatedly correlated; often summarized as ‘cells that fire together wire together.’

Exam distinction: It is commonly used to explain long-term changes in synaptic connectivity.

Long-term potentiation (LTP)

A long-lasting increase in synaptic strength following appropriate patterns of neural activity.

Exam distinction: LTP is a candidate physiological mechanism supporting learning and long-term memory.

Active maintenance

The continued maintenance of information through sustained or reactivated neural activity during short-term or working-memory tasks.

Exam distinction: This differs from long-term storage, which may depend on relatively enduring changes in synaptic connections.

Neuropsychological approach

The study of cognition by relating patterns of brain damage or neurological dysfunction to changes in behavior.

Exam distinction: It can reveal links between brain regions and functions but often cannot establish precise mechanisms.

Henry Molaison (H.M.)

A well-known neuropsychological case whose medial temporal-lobe damage produced severe anterograde amnesia while leaving some abilities relatively preserved.

Exam distinction: The case supported the idea that memory is not a single unitary system.

Clive Wearing

A case involving severe memory impairment associated with brain damage, with relative preservation of some skills and musical abilities.

Exam distinction: The case illustrates distinctions among episodic, semantic, procedural, and other memory functions.

Double dissociation

A pattern in which damage or disruption to system A impairs function X more than Y, while damage or disruption to system B impairs Y more than X.

Exam distinction: It provides stronger evidence for functionally distinct systems than a single dissociation.

Single-unit recording

An invasive method that measures electrical activity from individual neurons.

Exam distinction: It provides high temporal and cellular precision but is invasive and usually limited in human research.

Neural stimulation

A method that directly alters neural activity to test causal contributions to behavior.

Exam distinction: It can provide causal evidence, but effects depend on stimulation location, timing, and spread.

EEG

Electroencephalography, which records electrical activity from electrodes placed on the scalp.

Exam distinction: It has excellent temporal resolution but relatively limited spatial localization.

fMRI

Functional magnetic resonance imaging, which estimates changes in brain activity through blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signals.

Exam distinction: It offers relatively strong spatial resolution but poorer temporal resolution and is correlational unless combined with other causal methods.

TMS

Transcranial magnetic stimulation, a noninvasive method that uses magnetic pulses to temporarily alter activity in targeted cortical regions.

Exam distinction: It can support causal inference but is limited by cortical accessibility and variable effects.

Short-term memory (STM)

A limited-capacity system that temporarily maintains information over a short period, often seconds, unless refreshed or otherwise supported.

Exam distinction: STM is usually described as emphasizing temporary storage.

Working memory (WM)

A system for temporarily maintaining and manipulating information during ongoing cognitive activity.

Exam distinction: Working memory includes storage but also processing and control functions.

Modal model

A classic memory framework distinguishing sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory, with transfer often described through attention and rehearsal.

Exam distinction: Later models challenged the idea of a single short-term store.

Serial recall

A task requiring participants to reproduce a sequence in the order presented.

Exam distinction: It has been widely used to study verbal short-term memory.

Phonological loop

A working-memory subsystem for temporarily maintaining speech-based or verbally coded information.

Exam distinction: It is commonly divided into a phonological store and an articulatory rehearsal process.

Phonological store

A temporary store that maintains speech-based representations for a brief period.

Exam distinction: Without rehearsal, representations are vulnerable to rapid loss.

Articulatory rehearsal process

A process that refreshes verbal information through subvocal rehearsal and can recode visually presented material into a phonological form.

Exam distinction: Articulatory suppression interferes with this process.

Articulatory suppression

Repeating an irrelevant verbal sound or word while attempting to remember material.

Exam distinction: It reduces or prevents subvocal rehearsal and often impairs verbal memory.

Phonological similarity effect

The tendency for lists of items that sound alike to be recalled less accurately than dissimilar lists.

Exam distinction: It supports the idea that verbal information is represented phonologically in STM.

Word-length effect

The tendency for lists of longer words to be recalled less well than lists of shorter words, under many conditions.

Exam distinction: It is consistent with a rehearsal process constrained by articulation time, though the effect depends on task and language.

Memory span

The longest sequence of items a person can reproduce correctly in the required order under specified conditions.

Exam distinction: Digit span is a common version of the memory-span task.

Miller’s 7±2 estimate

Miller’s proposal that immediate memory span often falls around seven meaningful units, plus or minus two, under certain task conditions.

Exam distinction: Later work suggests capacity estimates depend strongly on chunking, materials, and measurement method.

Chunking

Combining individual items into larger meaningful units that function as single units during encoding or recall.

Exam distinction: Chunking can increase effective performance without increasing the number of basic items stored.

Cowan’s capacity estimate

Cowan’s review suggested that the focus of attention often holds around four meaningful chunks, depending on task and assumptions.

Exam distinction: This estimate can be lower than Miller’s because it emphasizes controlled, unchunked units and stricter measurement.

Brown–Peterson paradigm

A procedure in which participants learn a short consonant trigram and then perform a distracting task, such as counting backward, before recall.

Exam distinction: It was used to study forgetting when rehearsal is prevented.

Decay

The loss of information over time due to weakening or loss of the memory representation.

Exam distinction: Decay is one proposed contributor to forgetting, not the only possible explanation.

Interference

Forgetting or impaired retrieval caused by competition from other information or processes.

Exam distinction: Waugh and Norman’s work supported an important role for interference in STM forgetting.

Change-detection paradigm

A visual-memory task in which participants compare two displays separated by a delay and judge whether an item or feature changed.

Exam distinction: It measures visual short-term memory capacity and precision.

Integrated object representation

A representation in which multiple features of an object, such as color and shape, are stored as a bound object rather than as entirely separate features.

Exam distinction: Luck and Vogel’s findings were interpreted as evidence for object-based storage under some conditions.

Discrete-slots model

A model proposing that visual working memory has a limited number of discrete storage slots, each capable of holding an object or representation.

Exam distinction: Performance declines when the number of objects exceeds available slots.

Flexible-resource model

A model proposing that a limited pool of representational resources can be distributed flexibly across items.

Exam distinction: More items can be represented, but precision decreases as resources are divided.

Cued recall paradigm

A task in which a participant reports a remembered feature of an item indicated by a cue, often allowing measurement of both capacity and precision.

Exam distinction: Error distributions can reveal guesses, noisy memory, and confusions between items.

Memory precision

The degree of accuracy or resolution with which a remembered feature is represented.

Exam distinction: Flexible-resource accounts emphasize graded differences in precision.

Baddeley and Hitch multi-component model

A working-memory model consisting of multiple interacting components rather than one unitary short-term store.

Exam distinction: It distinguishes specialized storage systems from a control system.

Central executive

A control system that allocates attention, coordinates processing, switches tasks, and manages working-memory activity.

Exam distinction: A major concern is that it can become a vague label for unexplained executive functions.

Visuospatial sketchpad

A working-memory component proposed to temporarily maintain and manipulate visual and spatial information.

Exam distinction: Evidence includes selective interference between visual-spatial tasks.

Episodic buffer

A limited-capacity system proposed to integrate information from different modalities and connect working memory with long-term memory.

Exam distinction: It helps explain binding and multimodal integration not easily accounted for by separate stores.

Phonological store

The verbal storage component of the phonological loop.

Exam distinction: It temporarily holds speech-based information.

Articulatory control process

The rehearsal and recoding component of the phonological loop.

Exam distinction: It supports refreshing and phonological encoding.

Storage capacity in Baddeley’s model

Capacity is constrained by the properties of the component involved, the duration of unrehearsed information, interference, and available control processes.

Exam distinction: Capacity is not necessarily one fixed number for all kinds of information.

Sensory recruitment account

The proposal that working-memory representations rely on activity in sensory cortical systems that originally process the represented information.

Exam distinction: This challenges the claim that WM requires anatomically separate, specialized storage buffers.

Cowan’s embedded processes model

A model in which working memory consists of activated portions of long-term memory, with a smaller subset in the focus of attention.

Exam distinction: It emphasizes attentional state and activation rather than a set of completely separate storage boxes.

Activated memory

Long-term memory representations that have been temporarily activated and made more accessible for current processing.

Exam distinction: Activation can exceed the smaller focus of attention.

Focus of attention

The limited subset of currently activated information that is in the center of conscious or controlled attention.

Exam distinction: Cowan often describes it as holding only a few chunks under typical conditions.

State-based model

A model that explains working memory partly in terms of temporary patterns or states of neural activation rather than only dedicated storage locations.

Exam distinction: Neural recordings can test whether information is represented through sustained activity, reactivation, or changing activity patterns.

Working-memory capacity approach

An approach that focuses on individual differences in the ability to maintain information while simultaneously processing or controlling attention.

Exam distinction: It is more concerned with performance variation and cognitive outcomes than with specifying only the architecture of storage.

Operation span task

A complex-span task requiring participants to solve processing operations while remembering a series of items.

Exam distinction: Performance is used as an index of working-memory capacity and attentional control.

Dual-task interference

A method in which participants perform two tasks concurrently to determine whether they compete for shared processing or storage resources.

Exam distinction: Selective interference can provide evidence for partially distinct systems.

Phonological similarity effect

Reduced verbal recall when items sound similar.

Exam distinction: It is commonly used as evidence for phonological coding.

Word-length effect

Reduced recall for longer words compared with shorter words under appropriate conditions.

Exam distinction: It is associated with rehearsal and articulatory duration.

Irrelevant speech effect

Impaired verbal serial recall caused by hearing task-irrelevant speech or changing auditory material.

Exam distinction: It suggests that unattended auditory-verbal information can interfere with verbal working memory.