COA

Declarative memory:

"knowing what") is the memory of facts and events and refers to those memories that can be consciously recalled. There are two subsets of declarative memory

Procedural memory:

("knowing how") is the unconscious memory of skills and how to do things.

Working memory:

Another term for Short-Term Memory, it is the system that actively holds multiple pieces of transitory information in the mind, where they can be manipulated. Baddeley & Hitch called it working memory because they wanted to differentiate their concept from the "Memory Store Model" which made it appear that STM was simply a temporary, passive store for information.

Dual Process Model:

Argues that there are two systems of decision making - System 1 is an automatic, intuitive and effortless way of thinking. System 2 is a slower, conscious and rational mode of thinking.

Flashbulb memory:

Brown & Kulik's theory that memories created as the result of high levels of emotion - particularly surprise - are like "photographs." The theory argues that a lot of peripheral and irrelevant information is retained.

Displacement:

In the MSM this is what happens to information in STM if it is not rehearsed. It is displaced - or "knocked out" of the STM store by other incoming stimuli.

Primacy effect/recency effect:

Primacy and recency effect are two components of the Serial Positioning Effect. Primacy effect results in a participant recalling information presented earlier in a list of information better than information presented later on. It is believed that covert rehearsal has already moved this information to LTM. Recency effect results in a participant recalling information presented at the end of a list of information better than information presented in the middle of a list. It is believed that this is because the information is still in STM and has not been displaced.

Episodic buffer:

The component of Baddeley & Hitch's Working Memory Model dedicated to linking information across domains to form integrated units of visual, spatial, and verbal information with time sequencing (or chronological ordering), such as the memory of a story or a movie scene.

Phonological loop:

The component of Baddeley & Hitch's Working Memory Model responsible for processing auditory information.

Central Executive:

The part of Baddeley & Hitch's Working Memory Model responsible for the control and regulation of cognitive processes. It binds information from a number of sources into a coherent "episode", coordinates the "slave systems", shifts between tasks and handles selective attention and inhibition.

Reconstructive memory :

The theory that when memories are accessed, they are not retrieved as a single, whole memory, but rather as a collection of independent memories put together. It is in this "reconstructive process" that distortions occur.

Framing effect:

When people react to a particular choice in different ways depending on how it is presented.

Transactive memory:

a mechanism through which groups collectively encode, store, and retrieve knowledge

Confabulation:

a memory error which produces fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world.

Heuristic:

a mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make judgments quickly and efficiently.

Availability heuristic:

a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when making a decision.

Anchoring bias:

an individual to rely too heavily on an initial piece of information offered (known as the "anchor") when making decisions.

Prospect theory:

describes the way people choose between alternatives that involve risk, where the probabilities of outcomes are known. The theory states that people evaluate these losses and gains using heuristics.

Semantic memory:

general knowledge of facts and people, for example, concepts and schemas and it is not linked to time and place.

Schema:

mental representations that are used to organize our knowledge, to assist recall, to guide our behaviour, to predict likely happenings and to help us to make sense of current experiences. Schemas are cognitive structures that are derived from prior experience and knowledge. They simplify reality, setting up expectations about what is probable in relation to particular social and textual contexts.

Peak-end Rule:

people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.

Multi Store Model:

proposed that memory consisted of three stores: a sensory register, short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM).

Somatic marker hypothesis:

suggests that good decision making depends on an ability to access appropriate emotional information linked to the situation in which the decision is being made.

Retrieval:

the ability to access information from memory when you need it.

Encoding:

the initial learning of information by placing information into memory storage.

Episodic memory:

the memory of specific events that have occurred at a given time and in a given place.

Cognitive misers:

the tendency of people to think and solve problems in simpler and less effortful ways rather than in more sophisticated and more effortful ways, regardless of intelligence.

Working memory model:

the theory that short-term memory is not a single store but rather consists of a number of different stores.

Misinformation effect:

when misleading information is incorporated into one's memory after an event.