Chapter 7: Memory: Constructing and Reconstructing Our Pasts

Schema

Organized knowledge structure or mental model that we've stored in memory

Chunking

Organizing info into meaningful groupings, allowing us to extend the span of short-term memory

Priming

Our ability to identify a stimulus more easily or more quickly after we've encountered similar stimuli

Semantic Memory

Our knowledge of facts about the world

Procedural Memory

Our memory for how to do things is called?

Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) Phenomenon

Experience of knowing that we know something but being unable to access it

Decay

Fading of info from memory over time

Cryptomnesia

Failure to recognize that our ideas originated with someone else

Memory Illusion

False but subjectively compelling memory

Recall

Generating previously remembered info

Sensory Memory

George Sperling's partial report method studies from 1960's demonstrated that when a display of 12 letters was viewed, participants retained all of the letters in____________ but not all of them could be transferred to short-term memory.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)

Gradual strengthening of the connections among neurons from repetitive stimulation

Serial Position Curve

Graph depicting both primacy and recency effects on people's ability to recalls items on a list

Retrieval Cue

Hint that makes it easier for us to recall info

25%

In Elizabeth Loftus's"lost in the mall" study approximately what percentage of people distinctly remembered being lost in a shopping mall after being told that this had happened to them, even though it didn't really happen?

Infantile Amnesia

Inability of adults to remember personal experiences that took place before an early age

Anterograde Amnesia

Inability to encode new memories from our experience

Mnemonic

A learning aid, strategy, or device that enhances recall

Echoic Memory

Allows you to remember auditory stimuli for up to 5 to 10 seconds

Semantic; episodic

Ally remembers that St. Paul is the capital of Minnesota. Alina remembers that she lived in St. Paul when she was 12 years old. Ally is demonstrating ____________ memory while Alina is demonstrating _______________ memory.

Generalized amnesia

Although it is presented as the most common kind of memory loss in the popular media, with depictions of someone losing all memory of his or her past, _______________ is not actually the most common kind of amnesia.

Schemas

Although using___________ can sometimes lead to mistakes, they provide us with a frame of reference for interpreting new situations.

Echoic Memory

Auditory sensory memory

Sensory Memory

Brief storage of perceptual info before it is passed to short-term memory

Misinformation Effect

Creation of fictitious memories by providing misleading info about an event after it takes place

eyewitnesses

More than 300 convicted prisoners to date have been released bc DNA evidence showed they were innocent, despite confident testimony from?

Method of Loci

Dee Dee has to remember 4 items that he needs at the market, so her visualizes the path he will take to get there. He imagines a bar of soap hanging from a large tree, envisions a roll of paper towels next to a stoplight, "sees" a packet of gum on the newspaper rack, and imagines the fire hydrant spurting out soda. which memory strategy is Dee Dee relying on?

Levels of Processing

Depth of transforming info, which influences how easily we remember it

Flashbulb Memory

Emotional memory that is extraordinarily vivid and detailed

Proactive Interference

Interference with acquisition of new info due to previous learning of info

Retroactive Interference

Interference with retention of old info due to acquisition of new info

Meta-Memory

Knowledge about our own memory abilities and limitations

Source Monitoring Confusion

Lack of clarity about the origin of a memory

Elaborative Rehearsal

Linking stimuli to each other in a meaningful way to improve retention of info in short-term memory

Interference

Loss of info from memory bc of competition rom additional incoming info

Retrograde amnesia

Loss of memories from our past

Implicit Memory

Memories we don't deliberately remember or reflect or consciously

Explicit Memory

Memories we recall intentionally and of which we have conscious awareness

Procedural Memory

Memory for how to do things, including motor skills and habits

Short-Term Memory

Memory system that retains info for limited durations

Encoding Specificity

Phenomenon of remembering something better when the conditions under which we retrieve information are similar to the conditions under which we encoded it

Suggestive Memory Technique

Procedure that encourages patients to recall memories that may or may not have taken place

Encoding

Process of getting info into our memory banks

Storage

Process of keeping info in memory

Recall, recognition, and relearning

Psychologists measure people's memory abilities by assessing three capacities:______________.

Relearning

Reacquiring knowledge that we'd previously learned but largely forgotten over time

Retrieval

Reactivation or reconstruction of experiences from our memory stores

Episodic Memory

Recollection of events in our lives

Long-term Memory

Relatively enduring (from minutes to years) retention of information stored regarding our facts, experiences, and skills

Rehearsal

Repeating info to extend the duration of retention in short-term memory

Maintenance Rehearsal

Repeating stimuli in their original form to retain them in short-term memory

Memory

Retention of info over time

Recognition

Selecting previously remembered info from an array of options

Distributed versus Massed Practice

Studying info in small increments over time (distributed) versus in large increments over a brief amount of time (massed)

Context-Dependent Learning

Superior retrieval of memories when the external context of the original memories matches the retrieval context

State-Dependent Learning

Superior retrieval of memories when the organism is in the same physiological or psychological state as it was during encoding

Primacy Effect

Tendency to remember words at the beginning of a list especially well

Recency Effect

Tendency to remember words at the end of a list especially well

Decay; interference

The 2 primary reasons why short-term memories fade are?

Magic Number

The span for short-term memory, according to George Miller: seven pus or minus two pieces of info

Permastore

Type of long-term memory that appears to be permanent

Cryptomnesia

Unintentional plagiarism has been attributed to _________, which occurs when someone says they forgot having been exposed to the plagiarized material earlier and thought they had created it themselves.

Iconic Memory

Visual sensory memory

Memory for recent events fades first, with distant memories usually being the last to go

What is the general progression of memory loss for patients with Alzheimer's disease?

Source monitoring

When we are not sure where a memory really came from ("Did it actually happen? Or was it all a dream?") we can use cues such as how vivid and detailed the memory is to determine the answer. This process is called?

It is easier to implant a false memory that is plausible than one that is implausible

Which of the following statements is true?

Chunking

Without even noticing that you are doing it, what memory technique do you use to remember larger quantities of info, even though your short-term memory capacity only holds about nine bits of info?

Hermann Ebbinghaus

ZAK, BOL, GID, YAF, and other nonsense syllables were used in some of the earliest studies of memory, conducted by?