Chapter 7-Psychology
What is priming?
The activation of specific associations in memory, often as a result of repetition and without making a conscious effort to access the memory. An example is the alphabet.
What is savings?
The difference between the number of repetitions originally required to learn a list and the number of repetitions required to relearn the list after a certain amount of time has elapsed.
What is the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon?
The feeling that information is stored in memory although it cannot be readily retrieved; also called the feeling-of-knowing experience.
What is retroactive interference?
The interference of new learning with the ability to retrieve material learned previously.
What is proactive interference?
The interference of old learning with the ability to retrieve material learned recently.
What is elaborative rehearsal?
The kind of coding in which new information is related to information that is already known.
What is retrieval?
The location of stored information and its return to consciousness; the third stage of information processing.
What is eidetic imagery?
The maintenance of detailed visual memories over several minutes.
What is storage?
The maintenance of information over time; the second stage of information processing.
What is memory?
The process by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved.
What is saccadic eye movement?
The rapid jumps made by a person's eyes as they fixate on different points.
What is echoic memory?
The sensory register that briefly holds mental representations of auditory stimuli.
What is iconic memory?
The sensory register that briefly holds mental representations of visual stimuli.
What is serial-position effect?
The tendency to recall more accurately the first and last items in a series.
What is the primacy effect?
The tendency to recall the initial items in a series of items.
What is the recency effect?
The tendency to recall the last items in a series of items.
What is long-term memory?
The type or stage of memory capable of relatively permanent storage.
What is sensory memory?
The type or stage of memory first encountered by a stimulus. Sensory memory holds impressions briefly, but long enough so that series of perceptions are psychologically continuous.
What is short-term memory?
The type or stage of memory that can hold information for up to a minute or so after the trace of the stimulus decays; also called working memory.
What is interference theory?
The view that we may forget stored material because other learning interferes with it.
What is the Atkinson-Shiffrin model?
Three stages of memory:sensory, short-term, and long-term.
What does the limbic system do in memory?
Enhances procedural memory.
What does the prefrontal cortex do in memory?
Executive center in memory.
What is anterograde amnesia?
Failure to remember events that occurred after physical trauma because of the effects of the trauma.
What is retrograde amnesia?
Failure to remember events that occurred prior to physical trauma because of the effects of the trauma.
What is semantic memory?
General knowledge, as opposed to episodic memory. An example is knowing who wrote Hamlet.
What is repression?
In Freud's psychodynamic theory, the ejection of anxiety-evoking ideas from conscious awareness.
What is recognition?
In information processing the easiest memory task, involving identification of objects or events encountered before.
What does it mean to displace?
In memory theory, to cause information to be lost from short-term memory by adding new information.
What is infantile amnesia?
Inability to recall events that occurred prior to the age of 3 or so; also termed childhood amnesia.
What is a retrieval cue?
A clue or prompt that can be used to enable or trigger the recovery of a memory in storage.
What is relearning?
A measure of retention. Material is usually relearned more quickly than it is learned initially.
What is a flashbulb memory?
A memory that is highly detailed and strongly emotionally elaborated because of its great and unusual significance.
What is an icon?
A mental representation of a visual stimulus that is held briefly in sensory memory.
What is an echo?
A mental representation of an auditory stimulus (sound) that is held briefly in sensory memory.
What is a chunk?
A stimulus or group of stimuli that is perceived as a discrete piece of information.
What does the hippocampus do in memory?
A structure in the limbic system that plays an important role in the formation of new memories. Also involved in the where and when of things.
What is a sensory register?
A system of memory that holds info briefly, but long enough so that it can be processed further. There may be a sensory register for every sense.
What is a schema?
A way of mentally representing the world, such as belief or an expectation, that can influence perception of persons, objects, and situations.
What is dissociative amnesia?
Amnesia thought to stem from psychological conflict or trauma.
What is a memory trace?
An assumed change in the nervous system that reflects the impression made by a stimulus. Memory traces are said to be "held" in sensory registers.
What are memories distorted by?
Biases and needs.
What are the levels of remembering in terms of a word?
Deep (semantically), shallower (sound of the word), most shallow (structural).
What is the method of savings?
Devised by Ebbinghaus. A measure of retention in which the difference between the number of repetitions originally required to relearn the list after a certain amount of time has elapsed is calculated.
What do leading questions do to memory?
Distort memory.
What is context-dependent memory?
Information that is better retrieved in the context in which it was encoded and stored, or learned.
What is a state-dependent memory?
Information that is better retrieved in the physiological or emotional state in which it was encoded and stored, or learned.
What does the thalamus do in memory?
Involved in the formation of verbal memories.
What does the amygdala do in memory?
Processes emotional/ intense memories.
What is recall?
Retrieval or reconstruction of learned material.
How much room is in long-term memory?
Seemingly limitless.
What is metamemory?
Self-awareness of the ways memory functions, allowing the person to encode, store, and retrieve information effectively.
What do the frontal lobes do in memory?
Store information about where and when events occur.
What are nonsense syllables?
Meaningless sets of two consonants, with a vowel sandwiched between, that are used to study memory.
What is a rote?
Mechanical associative learning that is based on repetition.
What is episodic memory?
Memories of events experienced by a person or that take place in the person's presence. An example is the memory of what a professor said in class.
What is retrospective memory?
Memory for past events, activities, and learning experiences, as shown by explicit (episodic and semantic) and implicit memories.
What is explicit memory?
Memory that clearly and distinctly expresses (explicates) specific information; also referred to as declarative memory.
What is implicit memory?
Memory that is suggested (implied) but not plainly expressed, as illustrated in the things that people do but do not state clearly; also referred to as non declarative memory. An example is riding a bike.
What is prospective memory?
Memory to perform an act in the future, as at a certain time or when a certain event occurs. Includes habitual tasks, event-based tasks, and time-based tasks.
What is maintenance rehearsal?
Mental repetition of information to keep it in memory.
What is semantic code?
Mental representation of information according to its meaning.
What is a visual code?
Mental representation of information as a picture.
What is an acoustic code?
Mental representation of information as a sequence of sounds.
What is encoding?
Modifying information so that it can be placed in memory; the first stage of information processing.
What are paired associates?
Nonsense syllables presented in pairs in experiments that measure recall.