Chapter 6

Chunking

A memory strategy that involves grouping or organizing bits or information into larger units, which are easier to remember.

Retrieval Cue

Any stimulus or bits of information that aids in retrieving particular particular information from long-term memory.

Autobiographical Memories

Are recollections that a person includes in an account of the events of his or her own life.

Flashbulb Memories

Are the memories for shocking, emotion-provoking events that include information about the source from which the information was acquired.

Interference

Is a cause of forgetting that occurs when information or associations stored either before or after a given memory hinder the ability to remember it.

Encoding Failure

Is a cause of forgetting that occurs when information was never put into long-term memory.

Information-Processing Theory

Is a framework fro studying memory that uses the computer as a model of human cognitive processes.

Retrograde Amnesia

Is a loss of memory for experiences that occurred shortly before loss of consciousness.

Relearning Method

Is a measure of memory in which retention is expressed as the percentage of time saved when material is relearned.

Elaborative Rehearsal

Is a memory strategy that involves relating new information to something that is already known.

Recall

Is a memory task in which a person must produce required information by searching memory.

Recognition

Is a memory task in which a person must simply identify material as familiar or as having been recounted before.

Hippocampal Region

Is a part of the limbic system which includes the hippocampus itself and the underlying cortical areas, involved in the formation of semantic memories.

Amnesia

Is a partial or complete loss of memory due to loss of consciousness, brain damage, or some other psychological cause.

repression

Is a psychological process in which traumatic memories are buried in the unconscious.

Source Memory

Is a recollection of the circumstances in which you formed a memory.

dementia

Is a state of mental deterioration characterized by impaired memory and intellect and by altered personality and behavior.

Reconstruction

Is an account of an event that has been pieced together from a few highlights.

Expertise

Is an extensive amount of background knowledge that is relevant to a reconstructive memory task.

Long-term potentiation (LTP)

Is an increase in the efficiency of neural transmission at the synpases that lasts for hours or longer.

Alzheimer's Disease

Is an incurable disease (dementia) characterized by progressive deterioration of intellect and personality, resulting from widespread degeneration of brain cell.

Consolidation failure

Is any disruption in the consolidation process that prevents a long-term memory from forming.

Misinformation effect

Is erroneous recollections of witnessed events that result from information learned after the fact.

Motivated Forgetting

Is forgetting through suppression or repression in an effort to protect oneself from material that is painful, frightening, or otherwise unpleasant.

Source Monitoring

Is intentionally keeping track of the sources of incoming information.

Retrieval Failure

Is not remembering something one is certain of knowing.

Maintenance Rehearsal

Is repeating information over and over again until it is no longer needed; may eventually leaf to storage of information in long-term memory.

Eidetic Imagery

Is the ability to maintain the image of a visual stimulus for several minutes after it has been remove from view

Automaticity

Is the ability to recall information from long-term memory without effort.

Rehearsal

Is the act of purposely repeating information to maintain it in short-term memory.

Short-term Memory

Is the component of the memory system that holds about seven (from 5 to 9) items for less than 30 seconds without rehearsal; also called working memory.

Displacement

Is the event that occurs when short-term memory is filled to capacity and each new thing coming in pushes out an existing old item (makes you forget).

Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) Phenomenon

Is the experience of knowing that a particular piece of information has been learned but being unable to retrieve it.

Serial Position Effect

Is the finding that, for information learned in a sequwnce, recall is better for beginning and ending items instead of the middle.

Schemas

Is the framework or knowledge and assumptions that we have about things.

Forgetting

Is the inability to bring to mind information that was previously remembered.

Anterograde Amnesia

Is the inability to form long-term memories of events occurring after a brain injury or brain surgery, although memories formed before the trauma are usually intact.

Levels-of-processing Model

Is the memory model that describes maintenance rehearsal as "shallow" processing and elaborative rehearsal as "deep" processing.

Working Memory

Is the memory subsystem that we use when we try to understand information, remmeber

Sensory Memory

Is the memory system that holds information from the senses for a period ranging from only a fraction of a second to about 2 seconds.

Long-term memory

Is the memory system with virtually unlimited capacity that contains stores of a person's permanent or relatively permanent memories.

Decay Theory

Is the oldest theory of forgetting, which holds that memories, if not used, fade with time and ultimately disappear altogether.

Curve of Forgetting

Is the pattern of forgetting discovered by Ebbinghaus, that shows that forgetting tapers off after a period of rapid information loss that immediately follows learning.

Retrieval

Is the process of bringing to mind information that has been stored in memory.

Memory

Is the process of encoding, storage, and retrieval of information.

Storage

Is the process of keeping or maintaining information in memory.

Encoding

Is the process of transforming information into a form that can be stored in memory.

Infantile Amnesia

Is the relative inability of older children and adults to recall events from the first few years of life.

Declarative Memory

Is the subsystem within long-term memory that stores facts, information, and personal life events that can be brought to mind verbally or in the form of images and then declared or stated; it is also called explicit memory.

Nondeclarative Memory

Is the subsystem within long0term memory that stores motor skills, habits, and simple classically conditioned responses; also called implicit memory.

Positive Bias

Is the tendency for pleasant autobiographical memories to be more easily recalled than unpleasant ones and memories of unpleasant events to become more emotionally positive over time.

Context Effect

Is the tendency to encode elements of the physical setting in which information is learned along with memory of the information itself.

State-dependent Memory Effect

Is the tendency to recall information best if one is in the same pharmacological or psychological state as when the information was encoded.

Primacy Effect

Is the tendency to recall the first items in a sequence more readily than other items.

Recency Effect

Is the tendency to recall the last items in a list than those in the middle.

Episodic Memory

Is the type of declarative memory that records events as they have been subjectively experience.

Semantic Memory

Is the type of declarative memory that stores general knowledge, or objective facts and information.

Prospective Forgetting

Not remembering to carry out some intended action.