AP Psychology Chp 7 Vocab

disuse

A definition of the term "principle of disuse" is presented. The principle was proposed by American psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike. It states that responses and learned associations will weaken and disappear with disuse.

flashbulb memory

A flashbulb memory is a highly detailed, exceptionally vivid 'snapshot' of the moment and circumstances in which a piece of surprising and consequential (or emotionally arousing) news was heard.

positive transfer

Abstracting in the transfer context features of a previous situation where new skills and knowledge were learned. Positive Transfer: Transfer of learning or training is said to be positive when the learning or training carried out in one situation proves helpful to learning in another situation.

accessibility

Accessibility refers to the availability of something or ease of 'access' to it. In psychology it is typically used to describe the accessibility of memories and how easily (or if at all) a memory can be received by an individual.

availability

An availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind. When you are trying to make a decision, a number of related events or situations might immediately spring to the forefront of your thoughts.

eidetic imagery

An eidetic image is a type of vivid mental image, not necessarily derived from an actual external event or memory. It was identified in the early twentieth century as a distinct phenomenon by psychologists including E.R. Jaensch, Heinrich Klüver, Gordon Allport and Frederic Bartlett.

information chunks

Chunking refers to an approach for making more efficient use of short-term memory by grouping information. Chunking breaks up long strings of information into units or chunks. The resulting chunks are easier to commit to memory than a longer uninterrupted string of information.

consolidation

Consolidation is a neurological process that involves gradually converting information from short-term memory into long-term memory. Remember, short-term memories are only stored for about 20 to 30 seconds.

memory decay

Decay theory proposes that memory fades due to the mere passage of time. Information is therefore less available for later retrieval as time passes and memory, as well as memory strength, wears away. When we learn something new, a neurochemical "memory trace" is created.

declarative memory

Declarative memory ("knowing what") is memory of facts and events, and refers to those memories that can be consciously recalled (or "declared"). It is sometimes called explicit memory, since it consists of information that is explicitly stored and retrieved, although it is more properly a subset of explicit memory.

elaborative processing

Deep processing involves elaboration rehearsal which involves a more meaningful analysis (e.g. images, thinking, associations etc.) of information and leads to better recall. For example, giving words a meaning or linking them with previous knowledge.

echoic memory

Echoic memory is a form of sensory memory that allows the mind to temporarily perceive and store auditory information or sound. Sensory memories are so brief that they can last less than a second after being perceived.

encoding failure

Encoding Failure refers to the brain's occasional failure to create a memory link. Encoding refers to the brain's ability to store and recall events and information, either short or long-term. This faculty can fail for a number of reasons; trauma or substance use being the most common.

storage

Encoding this information makes the process of retrieval easier for the brain where it can be recalled and brought into conscious thinking. Modern memory psychology differentiates between the two distinct types of memory storage: short-term memory and long-term memory.

episodic memory

Episodic memory is the memory of autobiographical events (times, places, associated emotions, and other contextual who, what, when, where, why knowledge) that can be explicitly stated or conjured. It is the collection of past personal experiences that occurred at a particular time and place.

explicit memory

Explicit memory (also called "declarative memory") is one of the two major subdivisions of long-term memory. (The other is implicit memory.) Explicit memory requires conscious thought—such as recalling who came to dinner last night or naming animals that live in the rainforest.

iconic memory

Iconic memory is the visual sensory memory (SM) register pertaining to the visual domain and a fast-decaying store of visual information. It is a component of the visual memory system which also includes visual short-term memory (VSTM) and long-term memory (LTM).

implicit memory

Implicit memory is sometimes referred to as unconscious memory or automatic memory. Implicit memory uses past experiences to remember things without thinking about them. The performance of implicit memory is enabled by previous experiences, no matter how long ago those experiences occurred.

long term potentiation

In neuroscience, long-term potentiation (LTP) is a persistent strengthening of synapses based on recent patterns of activity. These are patterns of synaptic activity that produce a long-lasting increase in signal transmission between two neurons.

recognition

In psychology and cognitive neuroscience, pattern recognition describes a cognitive process that matches information from a stimulus with information retrieved from memory.

interference

Interference theory is theory regarding human memory. Interference occurs in learning when there is an interaction between the new material and transfer effects of past learned behavior, memories or thoughts that have a negative influence in comprehending the new material.

anterograde amnesia

It is not to be confused with anterograde amnesia, which deals with the inability to form new memories following the onset of an injury or disease.

long term memory

Long-term memory (LTM) is the stage of the dual memory model proposed by the Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model, and informative knowledge can be stored for long periods of time. While short-term and working memory persist for only about 18 to 30 seconds, informative knowledge can remain as long-term memory indefinitely.

maintenance rehearsal

Maintenance Rehearsal is the process of repeatedly verbalizing or thinking about a piece of information. Your short term memory is able to hold information about about 20 seconds. However, this time can be increased to about 30 seconds by using Maintenance Rehearsal.

negative transfer

Negative transfer is a behavioral psychology term that refers to the interference of the previous knowledge with new learning. It relates to the experience with one set of events could hurt performance on related tasks.

priming

Priming (psychology) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Jump to: navigation, search. Priming is an implicit memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus (i.e., perceptual pattern) influences the response to another stimulus.

procedural memory

Procedural memory is a part of the long-term memory that is responsible for knowing how to do things, also known as motor skills. As the name implies, procedural memory stores information on how to perform certain procedures, such as walking, talking and riding a bike.

encoding

Psychologists distinguish between three necessary stages in the learning and memory process: encoding, storage, and retrieval (Melton, 1963). Encoding is defined as the initial learning of information; storage refers to maintaining information over time; retrieval is the ability to access information when you need it.

recall

Recall in memory refers to the mental process of retrieval of information from the past. ... There are three main types of recall: free recall, cued recall and serial recall. Psychologists test these forms of recall as a way to study the memory processes of humans and animals.

redintegration

Redintegration refers to the restoration of the whole of something from a part of it. In cognitive psychology the word is used in reference to phenomena in the field of memory. The everyday phenomenon is that a small part of a memory can remind a person of the entire memory.

relearning

Relearning, also known as the Savings Method, is a way of measuring retention by measuring how much faster one relearns material that has been previously learned and then forgotten.

retrieval cue

Retrieval cues are stimuli that help you retrieve a certain memory. Learn more about retrieval cues and retrieval failure from examples, and test your knowledge with a quiz.

retrograde amnesia

Retrograde amnesia (RA) is a loss of memory-access to events that occurred, or information that was learned, before an injury or the onset of a disease

semantic memory

Semantic memory refers to a portion of long-term memory that processes ideas and concepts that are not drawn from personal experience. Semantic memory includes things that are common knowledge, such as the names of colors, the sounds of letters, the capitals of countries and other basic facts acquired over a lifetime.

sensory memory

Sensory memory is the shortest-term element of memory. It is the ability to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimuli have ended.

serial position effect

Serial position effect is the tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst. ... Among earlier list items, the first few items are recalled more frequently than the middle items (the primacy effect).

rote rehearsal

Simply saying something to oneself over and over again, a technique called "rote rehearsal," helps to retain the information in short-term memory but does little to build a long-term memory of the event.

source confusion

Source confusion is an additional noise factor closely related to the astronomical background, described in Section 4.1, "Background radiation". The sensitivity limit due to confusion is determined by the telescope aperture, observation wavelength and the position on the sky.

state dependent learning

State-dependent memory or state-dependent learning is the phenomenon through which memory retrieval is most efficient when an individual is in the same state of consciousness as they were when the memory was formed.

short term memory

The average span for letters was 7.3 and for numbers it was 9.3. The duration of short term memory seems to be between 15 and 30 seconds, according to Atkinson and Shiffrin (1971). Items can be kept in short term memory by repeating them verbally (acoustic encoding), a process known as rehearsal.

cognitive interview

The cognitive interview (CI) is a method of interviewing eyewitnesses and victims about what they remember from a crime scene. Using four retrievals, the primary focus of the cognitive interview is to make witnesses and victims of a situation aware of all the events that transpired.

network model

The network model is a database model conceived as a flexible way of representing objects and their relationships. Its distinguishing feature is that the schema, viewed as a graph in which object types are nodes and relationship types are arcs, is not restricted to being a hierarchy or lattice.

tip of the tongue state

The tip-of-the-tongue experience (TOT) is characterized by being able to retrieve quite a lot of information about the target word without being able to retrieve the word itself. You know the meaning of the word. You may know how many syllables the word has, or its initial sound or letter.

memory traces

a hypothetical permanent change in the nervous system brought about by memorizing something; an engram.

false memory

an apparent recollection of an event that did not actually occur, especially one of childhood sexual abuse arising from suggestion during psychotherapy.

retrieval

retrieval is the ability to access information when you need it.

repression

the action or process of suppressing a thought or desire in oneself so that it remains unconscious.

suppression

the conscious inhibition of unacceptable memories, impulses, or desires.

hippocampus

the elongated ridges on the floor of each lateral ventricle of the brain, thought to be the center of emotion, memory, and the autonomic nervous system.

memory

the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information.

working memory

the part of short-term memory that is concerned with immediate conscious perceptual and linguistic processing.

retroactive interference

the tendency of later learning to hinder the memory of previously learned material.

proactive interference

the tendency of previously learned material to hinder subsequent learning.