Chapter 6
Chunking
A memory strategy that involves grouping or organizing bits or information into larger units, which are easier to remember.
Retrieval Cue
Any stimulus or bits of information that aids in retrieving particular particular information from long-term memory.
Autobiographical Memories
Are recollections that a person includes in an account of the events of his or her own life.
Flashbulb Memories
Are the memories for shocking, emotion-provoking events that include information about the source from which the information was acquired.
Interference
Is a cause of forgetting that occurs when information or associations stored either before or after a given memory hinder the ability to remember it.
Encoding Failure
Is a cause of forgetting that occurs when information was never put into long-term memory.
Information-Processing Theory
Is a framework fro studying memory that uses the computer as a model of human cognitive processes.
Retrograde Amnesia
Is a loss of memory for experiences that occurred shortly before loss of consciousness.
Relearning Method
Is a measure of memory in which retention is expressed as the percentage of time saved when material is relearned.
Elaborative Rehearsal
Is a memory strategy that involves relating new information to something that is already known.
Recall
Is a memory task in which a person must produce required information by searching memory.
Recognition
Is a memory task in which a person must simply identify material as familiar or as having been recounted before.
Hippocampal Region
Is a part of the limbic system which includes the hippocampus itself and the underlying cortical areas, involved in the formation of semantic memories.
Amnesia
Is a partial or complete loss of memory due to loss of consciousness, brain damage, or some other psychological cause.
repression
Is a psychological process in which traumatic memories are buried in the unconscious.
Source Memory
Is a recollection of the circumstances in which you formed a memory.
dementia
Is a state of mental deterioration characterized by impaired memory and intellect and by altered personality and behavior.
Reconstruction
Is an account of an event that has been pieced together from a few highlights.
Expertise
Is an extensive amount of background knowledge that is relevant to a reconstructive memory task.
Long-term potentiation (LTP)
Is an increase in the efficiency of neural transmission at the synpases that lasts for hours or longer.
Alzheimer's Disease
Is an incurable disease (dementia) characterized by progressive deterioration of intellect and personality, resulting from widespread degeneration of brain cell.
Consolidation failure
Is any disruption in the consolidation process that prevents a long-term memory from forming.
Misinformation effect
Is erroneous recollections of witnessed events that result from information learned after the fact.
Motivated Forgetting
Is forgetting through suppression or repression in an effort to protect oneself from material that is painful, frightening, or otherwise unpleasant.
Source Monitoring
Is intentionally keeping track of the sources of incoming information.
Retrieval Failure
Is not remembering something one is certain of knowing.
Maintenance Rehearsal
Is repeating information over and over again until it is no longer needed; may eventually leaf to storage of information in long-term memory.
Eidetic Imagery
Is the ability to maintain the image of a visual stimulus for several minutes after it has been remove from view
Automaticity
Is the ability to recall information from long-term memory without effort.
Rehearsal
Is the act of purposely repeating information to maintain it in short-term memory.
Short-term Memory
Is the component of the memory system that holds about seven (from 5 to 9) items for less than 30 seconds without rehearsal; also called working memory.
Displacement
Is the event that occurs when short-term memory is filled to capacity and each new thing coming in pushes out an existing old item (makes you forget).
Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) Phenomenon
Is the experience of knowing that a particular piece of information has been learned but being unable to retrieve it.
Serial Position Effect
Is the finding that, for information learned in a sequwnce, recall is better for beginning and ending items instead of the middle.
Schemas
Is the framework or knowledge and assumptions that we have about things.
Forgetting
Is the inability to bring to mind information that was previously remembered.
Anterograde Amnesia
Is the inability to form long-term memories of events occurring after a brain injury or brain surgery, although memories formed before the trauma are usually intact.
Levels-of-processing Model
Is the memory model that describes maintenance rehearsal as "shallow" processing and elaborative rehearsal as "deep" processing.
Working Memory
Is the memory subsystem that we use when we try to understand information, remmeber
Sensory Memory
Is the memory system that holds information from the senses for a period ranging from only a fraction of a second to about 2 seconds.
Long-term memory
Is the memory system with virtually unlimited capacity that contains stores of a person's permanent or relatively permanent memories.
Decay Theory
Is the oldest theory of forgetting, which holds that memories, if not used, fade with time and ultimately disappear altogether.
Curve of Forgetting
Is the pattern of forgetting discovered by Ebbinghaus, that shows that forgetting tapers off after a period of rapid information loss that immediately follows learning.
Retrieval
Is the process of bringing to mind information that has been stored in memory.
Memory
Is the process of encoding, storage, and retrieval of information.
Storage
Is the process of keeping or maintaining information in memory.
Encoding
Is the process of transforming information into a form that can be stored in memory.
Infantile Amnesia
Is the relative inability of older children and adults to recall events from the first few years of life.
Declarative Memory
Is the subsystem within long-term memory that stores facts, information, and personal life events that can be brought to mind verbally or in the form of images and then declared or stated; it is also called explicit memory.
Nondeclarative Memory
Is the subsystem within long0term memory that stores motor skills, habits, and simple classically conditioned responses; also called implicit memory.
Positive Bias
Is the tendency for pleasant autobiographical memories to be more easily recalled than unpleasant ones and memories of unpleasant events to become more emotionally positive over time.
Context Effect
Is the tendency to encode elements of the physical setting in which information is learned along with memory of the information itself.
State-dependent Memory Effect
Is the tendency to recall information best if one is in the same pharmacological or psychological state as when the information was encoded.
Primacy Effect
Is the tendency to recall the first items in a sequence more readily than other items.
Recency Effect
Is the tendency to recall the last items in a list than those in the middle.
Episodic Memory
Is the type of declarative memory that records events as they have been subjectively experience.
Semantic Memory
Is the type of declarative memory that stores general knowledge, or objective facts and information.
Prospective Forgetting
Not remembering to carry out some intended action.