Psych Unit 7

Echoic Memory

Auditory sensory memory, lasts longer than Iconic

During which time interval does the most forgetting occur?

Between when you first learned it and one day after.

Episodic Memory

Explicit memory, the firsthand experiences, or episodes, that we have on a daily basis (e.g., recollections of our high school graduation day or of the fantastic show we saw in New York last summer).

Source Monitering

The ability to accurately identify the source of a memory. If the source is forgotten, someone may be unable to correctly say whether or not it is viable information or may think they came up with the information themselves

Sensory Memory

The brief storage of sensory information

Period of Consolidation

The period of time in which LTP occurs and in which memories are stored. the strengthening of recently laid neuron paths for easier access later on.

Amygdala

The storage of many of our most important emotional memories, and particularly those related to fear, is initiated and controlled by the amygdala.

Selective Memory

The tendency of people to remember unusual or anomalous events instead of mundane ones

Counterfactual Thinking

The tendency to think about and experience events according to "what might have been"

Overlearning

continuing to practice and study even when we think that we have mastered the material. helps with encoding

Proactive interference

earlier learning impairs our ability to encode information that we try to learn later.

Cognitive Biases

errors in memory or judgment that are caused by the inappropriate use of cognitive processes

Misinformation effect

errors in memory that occur when new information influences existing memories.

Semantic Memory

explicit memory, our knowledge of facts and concepts about the world (e.g., that the absolute value of −90 is greater than the absolute value of 9 and that one definition of the word affect is "the experience of feeling or emotion").

Implicit Memory

the influence of experience on behavior, even if the individual is not aware of those influences. Implicit memory refers to knowledge that we cannot consciously access.

Prototype

the member of the category that is most average or typical of the category.

Central Executive

the part of working memory that directs attention and processing. The central executive will make use of whatever strategies seem to be best for the given task. For instance, the central executive will direct the rehearsal process and at the same time direct the visual cortex to form an image of the list of letters in memory.

Short term memory

the place where small amounts of information can be temporarily kept for more than a few seconds but usually for less than one minute. (7+/-2)

Encoding

the process by which we place our experiences into memory

Chunking

the process of organizing information into smaller groupings (chunks), thereby increasing the number of items that can be held in STM

Retrieval

the process of reactivating information that has been stored in memory.

Maintenance Memory

the process of repeating information mentally or out loud with the goal of keeping it in memory.

Working Memory

the processes that we use to make sense of, modify, interpret, and store information in STM

Long term potentiation

the strengthening of the synaptic connections between neurons as result of frequent stimulation

Overconfidence

the tendency for people to be too certain about their ability to accurately remember events and to make judgments.

Recency effect

the tendency to better remember stimuli that are presented later in a list.

Availability heuristics

the tendency to make judgments of the frequency or likelihood that an event occurs on the basis of the ease with which it can be retrieved from memory

Confirmation Bias

the tendency to verify and confirm our existing memories rather than to challenge and disconfirm them.

Salient

they attract our attention. Things that are unique, colorful, bright, moving, and unexpected are more salient`

Psi-Gamma

those phenomena that involve anomalous information transfer, like ESP, clairvoyance, and remote viewing

Psi-Kappa

those phenomena that involve anomalous transfer of matter, such as psychokinesis or telekinesis (the ability to move things with one's mind), or even anomalous transfer of energy, such as pyrokinsesis (the ability to set things aflame with one's mind).

Classical Conditioning effects

Type of implicit memory in which we learn, often without effort or awareness, to associate neutral stimuli (such as a sound or a light) with another stimulus (such as food), which creates a naturally occurring response, such as enjoyment or salivation.

Iconic memory

Visual sensory memory

Relearning process

assess how much more quickly information is processed or learned when it is studied again after it has already been learned but then forgotten

eidetic imagery (or "photographic memory")

Iconic memory lasts for much longer than normal

Hippocampous

Handles explicit memory, a preprocessor and elaborator of information. The hippocampus helps us encode information about spatial relationships, the context in which events were experienced, and the associations among memories

Cerebellum

Handles implicit memory, active when we are learning associations and in priming tasks, and animals and humans with damage to the cerebellum have more difficulty in classical conditioning studies

Procedural Memory

Implicit memory, Our often unexplainable knowledge of how to do things. When we walk from one place to another, speak to another person in English, dial a cell phone, or play a video game, we are using procedural memory

Priming

Implicit memory, changes in behavior as a result of experiences that have happened frequently or recently. Priming refers both to the activation of knowledge (e.g., we can prime the concept of "kindness" by presenting people with words related to kindness) and to the influence of that activation on behavior (people who are primed with the concept of kindness may act more kindly).

Recall test

a measure of explicit memory that involves retrieving information that has been previously learned

Recognition Memory test

a measure of memory that involves determining whether information has been seen or learned before.

Memory at the neural level

a series of neural pathways that have strengthened over time due to your thoughts and experiences

Primary effect

a tendency to better remember stimuli that are presented early in a list.

Flashbulb memory

a vivid and emotional memory of an unusual event that people believe they remember very well.

Sleeper effect

an attitude change about an event or fact that occurs over time when we forget the source of information.

Context dependent Learning

an increase in retrieval when the external situation in which information is learned matches the situation in which it is remembered.

How much of a list do you expect to remember 3 months after you memorized it?

around 20% is where the forgetting curve levels off

Heuristics

information-processing strategies that are useful in many cases but may lead to errors when misapplied

Accomidation

involves altering one's existing schemas, or ideas, due to new information and experiences. New schemas are also sometimes created

Explicit Memory

knowledge or experiences that can be consciously and intentionally remembered

Retroactive Interference

learning something new impairs our ability to retrieve information that was learned earlier

Long Term Memory

memory storage that can hold information for days, months, and years.

Schemata

mental representations of the world that are formed and adjusted using the processes of assimilation and accommodation as a person experiences life

categories

networks of associated memories that have features in common with each other

Memory

our capacity to acquire, store, and retrieve the information and habits that guide our behavior.

Schemas

patterns of knowledge in long-term memory that help us organize information

Gambler's Fallacy

people who see a flipped coin come up "heads" five times in a row will frequently predict, and perhaps even wager money, that "tails" will be next

Cognitive Accessibility

people's first person perspective leads them to overestimate the degree to which they played a role in an event or project

Algorithms

recipe-style information-processing strategies that guarantee a correct answer at all times.

State dependent learning

superior retrieval of memories when the individual is in the same physiological or psychological state as during encoding.

Assimilation

taking in new information and experiences and incorporating them into our existing schemas.

Spacing

the fact that learning is better when the same amount of study is spread out over periods of time than it is when it occurs closer together or at the same time.

Tip-of-the-Tounge Phenonmenom

we are certain that we know something that we are trying to recall but cannot quite come up with it.

representativeness heuristic

we base our judgments on information that seems to represent, or match, what we expect will happen, while ignoring other potentially more relevant statistical information.

Elaborative Encoding

we process new information in ways that make it more relevant or meaningful. Connecting information to something about yourself to help you remember. this helps increase LTM

Functional fixedness

when people's schemas prevent them from using an object in new and nontraditional ways. Prevents "outside the box" thinking