MEMORY Quiz 4 -Intro

sensory memory

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

The amygdala

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

retroactive

You will experience less _______ (proactive/retroactive)interference if you learn new material in the hour before sleep than you will if you learn it before turning to another subject.

short-term memory

activated memory that holds a few items briefly, such as digits of a phone number while calling, before the information is stored or forgotten.

positive transfer

when old information facilitates the learning of new information Old and new learning do not always compete with each other, of course. Previously learned information (Latin) often facilitates our learning of new information (French)

In 2015, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams recounted a story about traveling in a military helicopter that was hit with a rocket- propelled grenade. But the event never happened as he described. The public branded him as a liar, leading his bosses to fire him. Several memory researchers had a different opinion. "I think a lot of people don't appreciate the extent to which false memories can happen even when we are extremely confident in the memory," noted psychologist Christopher Chabris

"Lyin' Brian"? Or a victim of false memory?

Short term memory capacity

7 +/- 2 items Miller's magical number seven is psychology's contribution to the list of magical sevens—the seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, the seven deadly sins, the seven colors of the rainbow, the seven musical scale notes, the seven days of the week—seven magical sevens.

Flashbulb memory

A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event "Stronger emotional experiences make for stronger, more reliable memories," Dramatic experiences remain clear in our memory in part because we rehearse them We think about them and describe them to others. Memories of personally important experiences also endure

Atkinson and Shiffrin's classic three-step model helps us to think about how memories are processed, but today's researchers recognize other ways long-term memories form. For example, some information slips into long-term memory via a "back door," without our consciously attending to it (automatic processing). And so much active processing occurs in the short-term memory stage that many now prefer the term working memory.

A modified three-stage processing model of memory

Memory serves to predict the future and to alert us to potential dangers. Emotional events produce tunnel vision memory. They focus our attention and recall on high priority information, and reduce our recall of irrelevant details Whatever rivets our attention gets well recalled, at the expense of the surrounding context.

Adaptive benefits of memory

Extreme forgetting

Alzheimer's disease severely damages the brain, and in the process strips away memory

The California sea slug, which neuroscientist Eric Kandel studied for 45 years, has increased our understanding of the neural basis of learning and memory. Aplysia, a simple animal with a mere 20,000 or so unusually large and accessible nerve cells. A sea slug can be classically conditioned (with electric shock) to reflexively withdraw its gills when squirted with water, much as a soldier traumatized by combat might jump at the sound of a firecracker. When learning occurs, Kandel and Schwartz discovered, the slug releases more of the neurotransmitter serotonin into certain neurons. These cells' synapses then become more efficient at transmitting signals. Experience and learning can increase—even double—the number of synapses, even in slugs

Aplysia

Memories are not permanently stored in the hippocampus. Instead, this structure seems to act as a loading dock where the brain registers and temporarily holds the elements of a to-be-remembered episode—its smell, feel, sound, and location. Then, like older files shifted to a basement storeroom, memories migrate for storage elsewhere. This storage process is called memory consolidation.

Are memories permanently stored in the hippocampus ?

Prevents memory consolidation Removing a rat's hippocampus 3 hours after it learns the location of some tasty new food disrupts this process and prevents long-term memory formation; removal 48 hours later does not

Damage to hippocampus?

memory storage

Despite the brain's vast storage capacity, we do not store information as libraries store their books, in single, precise locations. Instead, brain networks encode, store, and retrieve the information that forms our complex memories.

Ebbinghaus found that the more times he practiced a list of nonsense syllables on Day 1, the less time he required to relearn it on Day 2. Speed of relearning is one measure of memory retention.

Ebbinghaus' retention curve

Atkinson and Shiffrin's model focused on how we process our explicit memories— the facts and experiences that we can consciously know and declare (thus, also called declarative memories). We encode explicit memories through conscious effortful processing. But our mind has a second, unconscious track. Behind the scenes, other information skips the conscious encoding track and barges directly into storage. This automatic processing, which happens without our awareness, produces implicit memories (also called nondeclarative memories). Our two-track mind, then, helps us encode, retain, and recall information through both effortful and automatic tracks

Effortful vs automatic processing

Picture yourself being distracted by a text message while you sit in class. If your mildly irked professor tests you by asking, "What did I just say?" you can recover the last few words from your mind's echo chamber. Auditory echoes tend to linger for 3 or 4 seconds.

Example of echoic memory ?

When George Sperling (1960) flashed a group of letters similar to this for one-twentieth of a second, people could recall only about half the letters. But when signaled to recall a particular row immediately after the letters had disappeared, they could do so with near-perfect accuracy.

FIGURE 8.4 Total recall—briefly

Connectionism information-processing model

Focuses on multi-track, parallel processing; views memories as products of interconnected neural networks

making material personally meaningful

If new information is not meaningful or related to our experience, we have trouble processing it. We have especially good recall for information we can meaningfully relate to ourselves. The amount remembered depends both on the time spent learning and on your making it meaningful for deep processing.

Repress

Freud believed that we ___________ unacceptable memories to minimize anxiety.

Misinformation and imagination effects occur partly because visualizing something and actually perceiving it activate similar brain areas Imagined events also later seem more familiar, and familiar things seem more real. The more vividly we can imagine things, the more likely they are to become memories

How does misinformation and imagination affect memories?

The newer idea of a working memory emphasizes the active processing that we now know takes place in Atkinson- Shiffrin's short-term memory stage. While the Atkinson- Shiffrin model viewed short-term memory as a temporary holding space, working memory plays a key role in processing new information and connecting it to previously stored information.

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

Making 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.

If you try to make the material you are learning personally meaningful, are you processing at a shallow or a deep level? Which level leads to greater retention?

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.

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 will be important to remember the key points agreed upon by most researchers and professional associations: Sexual abuse, injustice, forgetting, and memory construction all happen; recovered memories are common; memories from our first four years are unreliable; memories claimed to be recovered through hypnosis are especially unreliable; and memories, whether real or false, can be emotionally upsetting.

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

Automatic Processing and Implicit Memories

Implicit memories include automatic skills and classically conditioned associations. Information is automatically processed about Space Time Frequency

The cerebellum plays a key role in forming and storing the implicit memories created by classical conditioning. With a damaged cerebellum, people cannot develop certain conditioned reflexes, such as associating a tone with an impending puff of air—and thus do not blink in anticipation of the puff

Implicit memory formation and classical conditioning need which brain area?

Long-term potentiation

Increased efficiency at the synapses is evidence of the neural basis of learning and memory. This is called ___________-__________ ____________ .

hypnotically refreshed memories

Memories that are a combination of fact and suggestion that occur during hypnosis. It's possible to accidentally plant false memories in someone during hypnosis due to the fragility of memory. Eg. Memory construction can help us understand why some people have been sent to prison for crimes they never committed. Of 337 people who were later proven not guilty by DNA testing, 71 percent had been convicted because of faulty eyewitness identification. It explains why "hypnotically refreshed" memories of crimes so easily incorporate errors, some of which originate with the hypnotist's leading questions ("Did you hear loud noises?").

In this experiment, people viewed a film clip of a car accident. Those who later were asked a leading question recalled a more serious accident than they had witnessed

Memory construction experiment with car accident

"your memory is only as good as your last memory. The fewer times you use it, the more pristine it is." This means that, to some degree, "all memory is false"

Memory is false

1. We first record to-be-remembered information as a fleeting sensory memory. 2. From there, we process information into short-term memory, where we encode it through rehearsal. 3. Finally, information moves into long-term memory for later retrieval.

Memory-forming process

blow to the head can do the same. Football players and boxers momentarily knocked unconscious typically have no memory of events just before the knockout (Yarnell & Lynch, 1970). Their working memory had no time to consolidate the information into long-term memory before the lights went out.

Memory/ LTP consolidation disrupted by a blow to the head in football would:

recognition; recall.

Multiple-choice questions test our _______. Fill-in-the-blank questions test our ______.

After food rewards are repeatedly associated with some sheep faces, but not with others, sheep remember the food-associated faces for two years (

Other animals also display face smarts

Amygdala Our emotions trigger stress hormones that influence memory formation. When we are excited or stressed, these hormones make more glucose energy available to fuel brain activity, signaling the brain that something important is happening. Moreover, stress hormones focus memory. Stress provokes the amygdala (two limbic system, emotion-processing clusters) to initiate a memory trace that boosts activity in the brain's memory-forming areas. It's as if the amygdala says, "Brain, encode this moment for future reference!" The result? Emotional arousal can sear certain events into the brain, while disrupting memory for irrelevant events

Part of the brain responsible for emotional memory processing ?

Even if Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars had not become famous, their high school classmates would most likely still recognize them in these photos.

Remembering things past

Priming

The activation, often unconsciously of particular associations in memory "wakening of associations." After seeing or hearing the word rabbit, we are later more likely to spell the spoken word hair/hare as h- a-r-e, even if we don't recall seeing or hearing rabbit Priming is often "memoryless memory"—invisible memory, without your conscious awareness.

context dependent memory

The theory that information learned in a particular situation or place is better remembered when in that same situation or place.

Our two-track mind engages in impressively efficient information processing. As one track automatically tucks away routine details, the other track is free to focus on conscious, effortful processing. Mental feats such as vision, thinking, and memory may seem to be single abilities, but they are not. Rather, we split information into different components for separate and simultaneous processing.

Two-track mind

Short term memory decay

Unless rehearsed, verbal information may be quickly forgotten.

serial position effect

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

Sometimes our mind tricks us into misremembering dates, places, and names. This often happens because we misuse familiar information. In one study, many people mistakenly recalled Alexander Hamilton—the subject of a popular Broadway musical whose face also appears on the U.S. $10 bill—as a U.S. president

Was Alexander Hamilton a U.S. president?

First, we index much of our explicit memory with a command of language that young children do not possess. Second, the hippocampus is one of the last brain structures to mature, and as it does, more gets retained

What are Two influences contribute to infantile amnesia?

(1) Encoding failure: Unattended information never entered our memory system. (2) Storage decay: Information fades from our memory. (3) Retrieval failure: We cannot access stored information accurately, sometimes due to interference or motivated forgetting.

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

(1) Active processing of incoming visual and auditory information, and (2) focusing our spotlight of attention.

What are two basic functions of working memory?

Explicit, conscious memories are either semantic (facts and general knowledge) or episodic (experienced events). The network that processes and stores new explicit memories for these facts and episodes includes your frontal lobes and hippocampus

What are two forms of explicit memory and what are the brain areas play a vital role in explicit memory ?

The basal ganglia, deep brain structures involved in motor movement, facilitate formation of our procedural memories for skills The basal ganglia receive input from the cortex but do not return the favor of sending information back to the cortex for conscious awareness of procedural learning. If you have learned how to ride a bike, thank your basal ganglia.

What brain area facilitates procedural memories for skill?

The cerebellum and the basal ganglia

What brain areas are responsible for implicit memory?

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.

What is priming?

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 attention and awareness and happens, for example, when we work hard to learn new material in class, or new lines for a play.

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

Sleep supports memory consolidation. During deep sleep, the hippocampus processes memories for later retrieval. When our learning is distributed over days rather than crammed into a single day, we experience more sleep-induced memory consolidation. And that helps explain the spacing effect.

What supports memory consolidation and how does this help explain spacing effect?

Real experiences would be confused with those we dreamed. When seeing someone we know, we might therefore be unsure whether we were reacting to something they previously did or to something we dreamed they did.

What—given the commonness of source amnesia—might life be like if we remembered all our waking experiences and all our dreams?

Forgetting can occur at any memory stage. When we process information, we filter, alter, or lose much of it.

When do we forget?

Spend more time rehearsing or actively thinking about the material to boost long-term recall. 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 that activate retrieval cues. Use mnemonic devices. Minimize interference. Plan for a complete night's sleep. Test yourself repeatedly—retrieval practice is a proven retention strategy.

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

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

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

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.

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

Effortful Processing and Explicit Memories

With experience and practice, explicit memories become automatic. Ie. Driving, texting, speaking a new language

1. Space. While studying, you often encode the place where certain material appears; later, when you want to retrieve the information, you may visualize its location. 2. Time. While going about your day, you unintentionally note the sequence of its events. Later, realizing you've left your coat somewhere, the event sequence your brain automatically encoded will enable you to retrace your steps. 3. Frequency. You effortlessly keep track of how many times things happen, as when you realize, "This is the third time I've run into her today."

Without conscious effort you also automatically process information about:

Working memory capacity varies, depending on age and other factors. Compared with children and older adults, young adults have a greater working memory capacity. Having a large working memory capacity—the ability to juggle multiple items while processing information—tends to aid information retention after sleeping and creative problem solving. But whatever our age, we do better and more efficient work when focused, without distractions, on one task at a time.

Working memory capacity factors ?

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.

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?

recall

a measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier, as on a fill-in-the-blank test. retrieving information that is not currently in your conscious awareness but that was learned at an earlier time

relearning

a measure of memory that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material again. learning something more quickly when you learn it a second or later time. When you study for a final exam or engage a language used in early childhood, you will relearn the material more easily than you did initially.

echoic memory

a momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds

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. "The save button for explicit memory"

working memory

a newer understanding of short-term memory that focuses on conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial 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

Alzheimer's disease

a progressive and irreversible brain disorder characterized by gradual deterioration of memory, reasoning, language, and, finally, physical functioning

procedural memory

a type of implicit memory that involves motor skills and behavioral habits ie. How to ride a bike

classically conditioned memory

a type of implicit memory which involves an involuntary response, such as fear, to a stimulus which has repeatedly been associated with an emotionally arousing stimulus. Ie If attacked by a dog in childhood, years later you may, without recalling the conditioned association, automatically tense up as a dog approaches.

anterograde amnesia

an inability to form new memories Eg. H.M : Surgeons removed much of his hippocampus in order to stop severe seizures. This resulted "in severe disconnection of the remaining hippocampus" from the rest of the brain * Can learn non-verbal tasks- Shown hard-to-find figures in pictures (in the Where's Waldo? series), they can quickly spot them again later. They can be classically conditioned. However, they do all these things with no awareness of having learned them.

retrograde amnesia

an inability to retrieve information from one's past

Long-term potentiation LTP

an increase in a cell's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation; a neural basis for learning and memory. Drugs that block LTP interfere with learning (Lynch & Staubli, 1991). Drugs that mimic what happens during learning increase LTP (Harward et al., 2016). Rats given a drug that enhanced LTP learned a maze with half the usual number of mistakes (Service, 1994). Glutamate enhances LTP Neurons that fire together wire together

Effortful processing strategies

chunking, mnemonics, hierarchies

Hierarchies

composed of a few broad concepts divided and subdivided into narrower concepts and facts (when people develop an expertise in an area)

shallow processing

encoding on a basic level based on the structure or appearance of words encodes on an elementary level, such as a word's letters or, at a more intermediate level, a word's sound. Thus we may type there when we mean their, write when we mean right, and two when we mean too.

deep processing

encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best retention. The deeper (more meaningful) the processing, the better our retention.

effortful processing

encoding that requires attention and conscious effort

testing effect

enhanced memory after retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information. Also sometimes referred to as a retrieval practice effect or test- enhanced learning. Spaced study and self-assessment beat cramming and rereading. Practice may not make perfect, but smart practice—occasional rehearsal with self-testing—makes for lasting memories.

semantic memory

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 (the other is semantic memory).

encoding failure

failure to process information into memory "We cannot remember what we have not encoded" memories may be inaccessible for many reasons. Some were never acquired (not encoded). Others were discarded (stored memories decay). And others are out of reach because we can't retrieve them.

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. Authors, songwriters, and stand-up comedians sometimes suffer from it. They think an idea came from their own creative imagination, when in fact they are unintentionally plagiarizing something they earlier read or heard.

recognition

identifying items previously learned. A multiple-choice question tests your recognition. Our recognition memory is impressively quick and vast.

Repression

in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories Sigmund Freud might have argued that our memory systems self-censored this information. He proposed that we repress painful or unacceptable memories to protect our self-concept and to minimize anxiety. But the repressed memory lingers, he believed, and can be retrieved by some later cue or during therapy. Repression was central to Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality and remains a popular idea.

likens human memory to computer operations. Thus, to remember any event, we must get information into our brain, a process called encoding. retain that information, a process called storage. later get the information back out, a process called retrieval. Like all analogies, computer models have their limits. Our memories are less literal and more fragile than a computer's. Most computers also process information sequentially, even while alternating between tasks. Our agile brain processes many things simultaneously (some of them unconsciously)

information-processing model

Retrieval cues

memories are held in storage by a web of associations, each piece of information interconnected with others. The best retrieval cues come from associations we form at the time we encode a memory—smells, tastes, and sights that can evoke our memory of the associated person or event. To call up visual cues when trying to recall something, we may mentally place ourselves in the original context.

mnemonics

memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices To help encode lengthy passages and speeches, we are particularly good at remembering mental pictures. We more easily remember concrete, visualizable words than we do abstract words

imagination inflation effect

occurs when a memory is elaborated upon through imagination, leading the person to confuse the imagined event with events that actually happened

misinformation effect

occurs when misleading information has distorted one's memory of an event

Chunking

organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically Eg. Chinese letters contain different strokes

Serial position effect

our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list Immediately after Pope Francis made his way through this receiving line of special guests, he would probably have recalled the names of the last few people best (recency effect). But later he may have been able to recall the first few people best (primacy effect). Middle is often not remembered

explicit memory (declarative memory)

retention of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare."

implicit memory (nondeclarative memory)

retention of learned skills or classically conditioned associations independent of conscious recollection.

Improving memory techniques

study/rehearse repeatedly, make material meaningful, activate retrieval cues, use mnemonic devices, minimize proactive and retroactive interference, sleep more, and test your knowledge

self-reference effect

tendency to better remember information relevant to ourselves is especially strong in members of individualist Western cultures In contrast, members of collectivist Eastern cultures tend to remember self-relevant and family-relevant information equally well Knowing this, you can understand why some people retain information deemed "relevant to me," whereas others also remember information relevant to "my family."

primary effect

tendency to recall the first terms of list

recency effect (serial position effect)

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

déjà vu

that eerie sense that "I've experienced this before." Cues from the current situation may unconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience. Source amnesia also helps explain déjà vu Normally, we experience a feeling of familiarity (thanks to temporal lobe processing) before we consciously remember details (thanks to hippocampus and frontal lobe processing). When these functions (and brain regions) are out of sync, we may experience a feeling of familiarity without conscious recall.

retroactive interference

the backward-acting disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information occurs when new learning disrupts recall of old information. If someone sings new lyrics to the tune of an old song, you may have trouble remembering the original words. It is rather like a second stone tossed in a pond, disrupting the waves rippling out from the first. More forgetting occurred when a person stayed awake and experienced other new material. "forgetting is not so much a matter of the decay of old impressions and associations as it is a matter of interference, inhibition, or obliteration of the old by the new"

Forgetting Curve (Ebbinghaus)

the course of forgetting is initially rapid, then levels off with time After learning lists of nonsense syllables, such as YOX and JIH, Ebbinghaus studied how much he retained up to 30 days later. He found that memory for novel information fades quickly, then levels out.

Levels of processing

the depth of processing applied to information that predicts its ease of retrieval Shallow vs deep processing

proactive interference

the forward-acting disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information occurs when prior learning disrupts your recall of new information. If you buy a new combination lock, your well-rehearsed old combination may interfere with your retrieval of the new one.

encoding specificity principle

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

sensory memory

the immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system.

retrieval failure

the inability to recall long-term memories because of inadequate or missing retrieval cues "tip of the tongue phenomena" Eg. when a name lies poised on the tip of our tongue, just beyond reach. Given retrieval cues ("It begins with an M"), we may easily retrieve the elusive memory. Sometimes even stored information cannot be accessed, which leads to forgetting

memory consolidation

the neural storage of a long-term memory

Memory

the persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrieval of information

state-dependent memory

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 (eg depressed, drunk, happy) Eg. Someone who hides money when drunk may forget the location until drunk again.

Retrieval

the process of getting information out of memory storage

storage

the process of retaining encoded information over time

Encoding

the processing of information into the memory system—for example, by extracting meaning.

parallel processing

the processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain's natural mode of information processing for many functions

long-term memory

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

spacing effect

the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice (cramming)

mood-congruent memory

the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one's current good or bad mood Yet, in a good or bad mood, we persist in attributing to reality our own changing judgments, memories, and interpretations. In a bad mood, we may read someone's look as a glare and feel even worse. In a good mood, we may encode the same look as interest and feel even Better. Moods magnify Mood effects on retrieval help explain why our moods persist. When happy, we recall happy events and therefore see the world as a happy place, which helps prolong our good mood. When depressed, we recall sad events, which darkens our interpretations of current events. For those of us predisposed to depression, this process can help maintain a vicious, dark cycle.

Automaic Processing

unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of well-learned information, such as word meanings.