Psychology Chapter 8 - Memory

Imagination effect

Repeatedly imagining fake actions and events can create false memories

Freud believed (though many researchers doubt) that we ____ unacceptable memories to minimize anxiety.

Repress

Explicit memories

Retention of facts and experiences that we can consciously know and "declare". (Also called declarative memory.)

Implicit memories

Retention of learned skills or classically conditioned associations independent of conscious recollection. (Also called nondeclarative memory.)

Testing effect

Retrieval practice effect or test-enhanced effect, Testing improves learning and memory

At which of Atkinson-Shiffrin's three memory stages would iconic and echoic memory occur?

Sensory memory

When tested immediately after viewing a list of words, we tend to recall the first and last items best, which is known as the ___ ___ effect.

Serial position

Echoic memory

Sound memory

Which memory strategies can help you study smarter and retain more information?

Spend more time rehearsing or actively thinking about the material to boost long-term recall. Consider a study group so you can verbalize your learning. Schedule spaced (not crammed) study times. Make the material personally meaningful, with well-organized and vivid associations. Refresh your memory by returning to contexts and moods to activate retrieval cues. Use mnemonic devices. Minimize proactive and retroactive interference. Plan ahead to ensure a complete night's sleep. Test yourself repeatedly-retrieval practice is a proven retention strategy.

Which parts of the brain are important for implicit memory processing, and which parts play a key role in explicit memory processing?

The cerebellum and basal ganglia are important for implicit memory processing, and the frontal lobes and hippocampus are key to explicit memory formation.

Proactive interference

The forward-acting disruptive effect of older learning on the recall of new information.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)

A biomedical treatment in which electric shock is used to produce a cortical seizure accompanied by convulsions

Flashbulb memories

A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event.

Memory trace

A lasting physical change as the memory forms—that boosts activity in the brain's memory-forming areas

Recognition

A measure of memory in which the person identifies items previously learned, as on a multiple-choice test.

Recall

A measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the-blank test.

Relearning

A measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material again.

Iconic memory

A momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second.

Hippocampus

A neural center located in the limbic system; helps process explicit (conscious) memories-of facts and events-for storage.

Working memory

A newer understanding of short-term memory that adds conscious, active processing of both incoming sensory information and of information retrieved from long-term memory.

Reconsolidation

A process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again.

Reminiscence therapy

A treatment procedure for older adults with depression involving a systematic review of one's life and resolution of regrets.

Which strategies are better for long-term retention; cramming and rereading material, or spreading out learning over time and repeatedly testing yourself?

Although cramming and rereading may lead to short-term gains in knowledge, distributed practice and repeated self-testing will result in the greatest long-term retention.

Anterograde amnesia

An inability to form new memories.

Retrograde amnesia

An inability to remember information from one's past.

Long-term potentiation (LTP)

An increase in a nerve cell's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation; a neural basis for learning and memory.

Wechsler Memory Scale

Assess memory impairment- Yields a memory quotient Subcomponents: recall of current and past information orientation attention concentration memory for story details memory designs and learning

Encoding specificity principle

The idea that cues and context specific to a particular memory will be most effective in helping us recall it.

Memory consolidation

The neural storage of a long-term memory.

Infantile amnesia

Conscious memory of the first three years is blank. Command of language and well-developed hippocampus are needed to form memories

Storage decay

Course of forgetting is initially rapid but then levels off with time.

Shallow processing

Encoding on a basic level, based on the structure or appearance of words. Thus, we may type there when we mean their, write when we mean right, and two when we mean too.

Effortful processing

Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.

What are two basic functions of working memory?

Working memory's two basic functions are active integration of new information with existing long-term memories and focusing of our spotlight of attention.

Semantic memory

Explicit memory of facts and general knowledge; one of our two conscious memory systems

Semantic

Explicit memory of facts and general knowledge; one of our two conscious memory systems (the other is episodic memory).

Episodic memory

Explicit memory of personally experienced events; one of our two conscious memory systems

Episodic

Explicit memory of personally experienced events; one of our two conscious memory systems (the other is semantic memory).

Attention

Failure to notice or encode contributes to memory failure

Source amnesia

Faulty memory for how, when, or where information was learned or imagined. (Also called source misattribution.) Source amnesia, along with the misinformation effect, is at the heart of many false memories.

What are three ways we forget, and how does each of these happen?

First, through encoding failure: Unattended information never entered our memory system. Second, through storage decay: Information fades from our memory. Third, through retrieval failure: We cannot access stored information accurately, sometimes due to interference or motivated forgetting.

Magical number 7

George Miller experiment; our short term memory has a very small recall capacity = 7 things

Repress

In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defence mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.

Multiple-choice questions test our ___ Fill-in-the-blank questions test our ___.

Recognition; recall

What is the difference between automatic and effortful processing, and what are some examples of each?

Automatic processing occurs unconsciously (automatically) for such things as the sequence and frequency of a day's events, and reading and comprehending words in our own language(s). Effortful processing requires attentive awareness and happens, for example, when we work hard to learn new material in class, or new lines for a play.

Alzheimer's disease

Begins as difficulty remembering new information, progressing to an inability to do everyday tasks. Complex speech becomes simple sentences; family members and close friends become strangers; the brain's memory centers, once strong, become weak and wither away (Desikan et al., 2009). Over several years, those with this may become unknowing and unknowable. Their sense of self weakens, leaving them wondering, "Who am I?" (Ben Malek et al., 2019). Lost memory strikes at the core of their humanity, robbing them of their joy, meaning, and companionship.

Short-term memory

Briefly activated memory of a few items (such as digits of a phone number while calling) that is later stored or forgotten.

Massed practice (cramming)

Can produce speedy short-term learning and an inflated feeling of confidence. But to paraphrase early memory researcher Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885), those who learn quickly also forget quickly.

If you try to make the material personally meaningful involves processing at a deep level, because you are processing semantically-based on the meaning of the words.

Deep processing leads to greater retention.

Deep processing

Encodes information semantically based on word meaning

Imagine being a jury member in a trail for parent accused of sexual abuse based on a recovered memory. What insights from memory research should you share with the rest of the jury?

It will be important to remember the key points agreed upon by most researchers and professional association: Sexual abuse, injustice, forgetting, and memory construction all happen; recovered memories are common; memories from before age 4 are unreliable; memories claimed to be recovered through hypnosis are especially unreliable; and memories, whether real or fake, can be emotionally upsetting.

If you want to be sure to remember what you're learning for an upcoming test, would it be better to use recall or recognition to check your memory? Why?

It would be better to test your memory with recall (such as with short-answer or fill-in-the-blank self-test questions) rather than recognition (such as with multiple-choice questions). Recalling information is harder than recognizing it. So if you can recall it, that means your retention of the material is better than if you could only recognize it. Your chances of test success are therefore greater.

State-dependent memory

Long-term memory retrieval is best when a person's physiological state at the time of encoding and retrieval of the information is the same.

Increased efficiency at the synapses is evidence of the neutral basis of learning and memory. This is called ____-_____ ______

Long-term potentiation

Mnemonics

Memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices.

Retroactive

New learning disrupts memory for older information.

Misinformation effect

Occurs when a memory has been corrupted by misleading information.

Hierarchies

Organization of items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically.

Chunking

Organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically.

Automatic processing

Unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of familiar or well-learned information, such as sounds, smells, and word meanings.

Your friend has experienced brain damage in an accident. He can remember how to tie his shoes but has a hard time remembering anything you tell him during a conversation. How can implicit versus explicit information processing explain what's going on here?

Our explicit conscious memories of facts and episodes differ from our implicit memories of skills (such as tying shoelaces) and classically conditioned responses. The parts of the brain involved in explicit memory processing (the frontal lobes and hippocampus) may have sustained damage in the accident, while the parts involved in implicit memory processing (the cerebellum and basal ganglia) appear to have escaped harm.

Serial position effect

Our tendency to recall best the last (recency effect) and first (primacy effect) items in a list.

What is priming?

Priming is the activation (often without our awareness) of associations. Seeing a gun, for example, might temporarily predispose someone to interpret an ambiguous face as threatening or to recall a boss as nasty.

Interference

Proactive: older memories make it more difficult to remember new information

Parallel processing

Processing many aspects of a stimulus or problem simultaneously.

Distribution practice

Produces better long-term recall

Distributed practice

Produces better long-term recall. After you've studied long enough to master the material, further study at that time becomes inefficient.

Massed practice

Produces speedy short-term learning and feelings of confidence.

Retrieval cues

Stimuli that are used to bring a memory to consciousness or into behavior

Déjà vu

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

How does the working memory concept update the classic Atkinson-Shiffrin three stage information-processing model?

The Atkinson-Shiffrin model viewed short-term memory as a temporary holding space for briefly storing recent thoughts and experiences. The newer idea of working memory expands our understanding of Atkinson-Shiffrin's short-term memory stage, emphasizing the conscious, active processing that takes place as the brain makes sense of new experiences and links them with our long-term memories.

Priming

The activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response.

Which brain area responds to stress hormones by helping to create stronger memories?

The amygdala

Retroactive interference

The backward-acting disruptive effect of newer learning on the recall of old information.

Memory

The persistence of learning over time through the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information.

Encode

The process of getting information into the memory system- for example, by extracting meaning.

Retrieve

The process of getting information out of memory storage.

Store

The process of retaining encoded information over time.

Long-term memory

The relatively permanent and limitless archive of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.

Spacing effect

The tendency for distributed study of practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice.

Mood congruent

The tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood.