AP Psychology: Memory, Cognition, and Language

Explicit memory

Memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and "declare"

Retroactive interference

The disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information

Two word stage

beginning about age 2 the stage in speech development during which a child speaks mostly two word statements

Flashbulb memory

A clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event

Recall

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

Priming

An enhanced ability to think of a stimulus, such as a word or object, as a result of a recent exposure to the stimulus

Imagery

Description that appeals to the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste)

Effortful processing

Encoding that requires attention and conscious effort

Encoding

First stage of the memory process; in it information is transformed or coded (a transduction process) into a form that can be processed further and stored

Herman Ebbinghaus

He was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory, and is known for his discovery of the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. He was also the first person to describe the learning curve.

Memory

Hippocampus

Grammar

In a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others

Elizabeth Loftus

"misinformation effect" shown in memory studies

Peter Wason

Confirmation bias shows that "ordinary people will evade facts to defend themselves against new information on issues".

Noam Chompsky

Developed theory of lamguage acquisition

Storage

Maintaining encoded information in memory over time.

Syntax

Sentence structure

Overconfidence

Tendency to overestimate our ability to make correct predictions

Sensory memory

A type of storage that holds sensory information for a few seconds or less.

Wolfgang Kohler

Considered to be the founder of Gestalt Psychology

Availability heuristic

Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind, we presume such events are common

George Miller

Former president of the American Psychological Association, proposed that we can only hold 7(+/-) 2 items in Short Term Memory @ any one time.

Karl Lashley

He was an American psychologist and behaviorist well-remembered for his influential contributions to the study of learning and memory. His failure to find a single biological locus of memory in the rat's brain (or "engram", as he called it) suggested to him that memories were not localized to one part of the brain, but were widely distributed throughout the cerebral cortex.

Bejamin Lee Whorf

Linguistic Determinism

Semantics

Meaning

Implicit memory

Memories we don't deliberately remember or reflect on consciously

Conformation bias

The tendency to look for evidence in support of a belief and to ignore evidence that would disprove a belief

Functional fixedness

The tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions; an impediment to problem solving.

Wallace Lambert

Theorist who proposes a transitional bilingual program: initially instruction is 90% L1, then shifts towards English.

Mental set

a tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, often a way that has been successful in the past

Long term Potentiation

an increase in a synapse's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory

Steven Pinker

argued that grammar is an innate algorithm evolved by NS that requires a few parameters to be set by language experience

George Sperling

demonstrated sensory memory by flashing a grid of 9 letters for 1/20th of a secon

Alan Baddeley

developed a model of working memory; three main components: the phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and the central executive

Telegraphic speech

early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram--'go car'--using mostly nouns and verbs and omitting 'auxiliary' words

Representative heuristic

judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead one to ignore other relevent information

Daniel Kahnerman

studied heuristics, biases and errors

James Schwartz

studied whether electrochemical switches in the brain cause shifts in functions of brain circuits, leading to different behaviors

Endel Tulving

suggested 2 kinds of long-term memory: episodic and semantic

One word Stage

the stage in speech development, from about age 1 to 2, during which a child speaks mostly in single words

Mood Congruent Memory

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

Richard Shiffrin

three stage memory curve, studied LTM

Acoustic encoding

The encoding of sound, especially the sound of words

Phoneme

(linguistics) one of a small set of speech sounds that are distinguished by the speakers of a particular language

Repression

(psychiatry) the classical defense mechanism that protects you from impulses or ideas that would cause anxiety by preventing them from becoming conscious

Rehearsal

(psychology) a form of practice

Chunking

(psychology) the configuration of smaller units of information into large coordinated units

Language

A system of communication through the use of speech, a collection of sounds understood by a group of people to have the same meaning.

BF Skinner

1904-1990; Field: behavioral; Contributions: created techniques to manipulate the consequences of an organism's behavior in order to observe the effects of subsequent behavior; Studies: Skinner box

Robert Sternberg

1949-present; Field: intelligence; Contributions: devised the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence (academic problem-solving, practical, and creative)

Creativity

A feature of thought and problem solving that includes the tendency to generate or recognize ideas considered to be high-quality, original, novel, and appropriate.

Prototype

A full-scale working model used to test a design concept by making actual observations and necessary adjustments.

Amos Tversky

A key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias

Recognition

A measure of memory in which the person need only identify items previously learned, as on a multiple-choice test

Relearning

A memory measure that assesses the amount of time saved when learning material for a second time

Concept

A mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

Algorithm

A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.

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 that helps process explicit memories for storage.

Working memory

A newer understanding of short-term memory that involves conscious, active processing of incoming auditory and visual-spatial information, and of information retrieved from long-term memory.

Amnesia

A significant memory loss that is too extensive to be due to normal forgetting. See also Anterograde amnesia, Retrograde amnesia.

Insight

A sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem

Fixation

According to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved

Short Term Memory

Actived memory that hold a few items briefly. - Duration 20 to 30 seconds - Capacity - 7 items +/1 2 items

Cognition

All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.

Henry Roedinger

American psychologist, re sender in the office human and memory

Intuition

An effortless, immediate, automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning

Fergus Craik

Asserted that learning and recall depend on the depth of processing

Richard Atkinson

Atkinson's most fundamental and far-reaching contribution to cognitive psychology is the Atkinson-Shiffrin model (with Richard M. Shiffrin), one of the most significant advances in the study of human memory. It put a theory of memory on a mathematical basis for the first time.

Source Amnesia

Attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined

Babbling Stage

Beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language

Jeffrey Karpicke

Identified the Testing Effect - tests are not only a means of assessing learning but also improving it.

Morpheme

In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or a part of a word (such as a prefix)

Misinformation effect

Incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event

Mnemonics

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

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks, M.D. is a physician, a best-selling author, and professor of neurology and psychiatry at the Columbia University Medical Center. He is best known for his collections of neurological case histories, including The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (1985), Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007) and The Mind's Eye (2010). Awakenings (1973).

Rajan Mahadevan

On repeated visits to the psychology building at the University of Minnesota this man had trouble recalling the location of the nearest restroom. Yet he once set a world's record by reciting from memory the first 31,811 places of pi He is a numerically gifted memorist, which he discovered at the tender age of 4. Although Rajan is adept at remembering numbers, he nevertheless displays only an average memory when it comes to prose passages or geometric shapes.

Serial position effect

Our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list

Framing

Phatic talk, e.g 'hi, how're you?', 'see you soon'

Heuristic

RELATING TO A SPECULATIVE FORMULATION GUIDING THE INVESTIGATION OR SOLUTION OF A PROBLEM; EDUCATIONAL METHOD IN WHICH STUDENTS LEARN FROM THEIR OWN INVESTIGATIONS

Retrieval

Recovery of stored information

Long term memory

Relatively permanent and limitless storage of memory.

Shelley Taylor

Scientist that argued the "fight or flight" response with the idea that women "tend and befriend." Women will join forces and protect the offspring. Release oxytocin.

Dean Keith Simonton

Studied prominent scientists and inventors and learned that the most eminent among them were mentored, challenged and supported.

Eric Kandel

Studied the sea slug Aplysia and posited that learning and memory are evidenced by changes in synapses and neural pathways.

Déjà vu

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

Proactive Interference

The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information

Semantic encoding

The encoding of meaning, including the meaning of words

Visual encoding

The encoding of picture images

Parallel processing

The processing of several aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain's natural mode of information processing for many functions, including vision. Contrasts with the step-by-step (serial) processing of most computers and of conscious problem solving.

Automatic processing

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

Linguistic Determinism

Whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think

Brief perseverance

clinging to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

H.M (Henry Molaison

experimental bilateral anterior medial temporal lobectomy for epilepsy. Permanent short term memory for names, faces, events. Stuck in past.

Spacing effect

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