AP Psychology Modules 33 & 34

Anterograde Amnesia

An inability to form new memories, can recall past but not form new memories

Retrograde Amnesia

An inability to retrieve information from one's past

Bruck and Ceci study

asked children to point out where they had been touched by pediatricians and found 55% of the children who had never had a genital examination claimed they did. 58% of preschoolers believe in their false memories, even making up vivid, descriptive stories.

Source Amnesia

attribution to the wrong source and event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined. (Also called source misattribution.) this along with the misinformation effect, is at the heart of many false memories

Elizabeth Loftus and Palmer

did expirements on eyewitnesses recalling their accounts of crimes, discovering the misinformation effect

Jenkins and Dallenbach study

discovered information presented an hour before sleep is immune to retrograde amneisa bc there is less intereference

divergent thinking

expands on a number of possible solutions using creative thinking (english)

Repression

in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories

Misinformation Effect

incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event.

cognition

mental activities associated with thinking, remembering and communicating.

concepts

mental groupings of similar objects

convergent thinking

narrows available solutions down to one, single solution (math)

Deja vu

that eerie sense that "I've experienced this before." Cues from the current situation may subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience.

forgetting curve

the course of forgetting is initially rapid, but then levels off with time (Ebbinghaus)

Retroactive Interference

the disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information.

Proactive Interference

the disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information.