Memory

Forgetting Curve

A graph showing a distinct pattern in which forgetting is very fast within the first hour after learning a list and then tapers off gradually. You forget most of the information you just learned from 1st period after 2nd period.

Elaboration

A method of transferring information from STM to LTM by making the information meaningful; you link the information to other information you already know at the time of encoding. You tie what you learned in math with what you learned in Biology.

Levels-of-processing model

A model that assumes information that is more deeply processed/processed according to meaning rather than just sound or image, will be remembered more efficiently and for a longer time. A person who remembers what a word means will remember it longer than a person who remembers what it sounds like.

Parallel distributed processing model

A model where memory processes are proposed to take place at the same time over a large network of neural connections. When trying to remember something, your brain performs several different processes all at once to retrieve the different aspects.

Long-Term Potentiation

A process in which synapses become stronger the more frequently signals are passed between the two neuron. Increase in the sensitivity of the synapse through repeated stimulation. When you remember your class schedule, there is an increase in long-term potentiation as you recall it everyday. Part of consolidation.

Retrieval Cues

A stimulus for remembering/retrieval. Can be sensory details. The smell of fresh-baked cookies is a cue associated with Grandma.

Imagery

A way of thinking that involves our senses. Vivid images, sounds, etc. in our memories. Ex: Your flashbulb memory has vivid imagery in it, like how something looked, the colors, etc.

Keyword Method

A way to learn vocab, first, convert the sound of the word into one or more concepts that can be visualized. Then, associate those concepts with an image representing the actual meaning of the word. Link the foreign word with an English word that sounds like some part of the foreign word (e.g., the Spanish carta sounds like the English cart). This (cart) is the keyword. Then link the keyword with the English meaning of the foreign word by forming an interactive image (e.g., carta means letter, so you could visualize a letter inside a cart).

Memory

Active system that receives information from the senses, puts that information into a usable from, organizes it as it stores it away, and then retrieves the information from storage. It has three steps: encoding, storing, and retrieving. Persistence of learning over time. Your memory tells you what classes you have everyday.

Mood-Congruent Memory

Also called state-dependent learning, being in the same mood you were in when you formed the memory will help you retrieve it. This can be a particular physiological or psychological state. When you are having a fight with someone, it is easier to remember all the bad things they have done (because they also made you mad then), and it is harder to remember all the good things they have done.

Chunking

An encoding strategy where you remember better when you organize ideas into familiar, manageable units. Fit more information into your head. You memorize phone numbers in two sets of 3 and a set of 4.

Link Method

Associate items on a list with each other to remember it better. If a man wants to remember to buy bread, juice, and carrots at the supermarket, he might imagine himself eating a juice-and-bread mush using carrots as chopsticks.

Source Monitoring

By determining the source of a person's memories, you can see if it was a real memory or imaginary memory. This can help prevent the reweaving of memories by deciding whether you saw an event occur or whether you imagined it. Source monitoring processes use the detail we retrieve from memory to determine where it might have come from. You remember the sound of the TV in your memory (it came from an episode you were watching), and so you know your memory was not something you experienced.

Overlearning

Continued rehearsal of material after one appears to have mastered it. You remember the lyrics of your favorite song even when you haven't listened to it in a long time. You have overlearned it.

Schema

Describes an organized pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them. Generalizations about objects, places, events, and people. One's schema for "library" would include books and bookshelves.

False Positives

Error of recognition in which people think that they recognize some stimulus that is not actually in their memory. An eyewitness misidentifies the criminal because he knows that the criminal was a priest, and the person standing in front of him is a priest (Loftus). He is "certain" it was him, and he "remembers" it.

Déjà vu

Feeling like you've "been" in the same situation before because there are a lot of similar cues. Being in a similar context to one we've been in before can trigger this. This is because our current situation has cues that unconsciously retrieve an earlier, similar experience. You go to a new, unknown place, and you feel like you've been there before because it's similar to one of the places you've been to before.

Context Cues

Figuring out the context under which you formed your memory with help with remembering it. Context cues have to do with what you were doing or where you were at the time you formed the memory. Also called encoding specificity. You leave your desk to go sharpen your pencil, but you forget why you are in you dad's office once you get there. You might need to go back to your desk (the context) to recall what you needed. Being placed back in the context of which you had your thought helps you remember what you needed.

Retrieval

Getting information that is in storage into a form that can be used. You hand in an essay and then remember several other things you could have said. This is a retrieval problem - can't remember it right when you need it.

Storage

Holding onto information for a period of time. You might hold onto a phone number just long enough for you to dial it (STM).

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Iconic Memory Visual sensory memory, lasting only a fraction of a second. You are walking down the hallway, but you do a double-take when you see a ridiculous outfit.

Priming

Increased sensitivity to certain stimuli due to prior experience. Direct retrieval utilizes explicit memory, while priming relies on implicit memory. Implicit memory effect in which exposure to a stimulus influences response to a later stimulus. To set up for learning/encoding; set the base or "prime" your memory.

Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon

Info just a little bit out of reach. You know you know it, but you can't describe it. Remember part of it but hard time retrieving. You know the name of the person sitting next to you, but you just can't say it.

Self-Referent Encoding

Involves deciding how or whether information is personally relevant. You connect the information to something personal to remember it better; an encoding strategy. You remember the meaning of bipolar by connecting it to a friend that you think is bipolar.

Cocktail Party Effect

Listening to another conversation while conversing with someone else. Selective attention while blocking out everything else. The part of you brain involved in selective attention is working without you aware of it, and it is only not working during deep Stage Four sleep. You are walking down the hallway, inattentive to the noise, but you jerk up when you hear your name being used.

Amnesia

Loss of memory because of damage to the brain. You have retrograde amnesia after a car accident in which you hit you head.

Storage Decay/ Decay Theory

Loss of memory due to the passage of time, during which the memory trace is not used. You forget the history you learned in 5th grade because you haven't used it for a long time.

Anterograde Amnesia

Loss of memory from the point of injury or trauma forward; can't form new long-term memories. After a car accident, you are unable to remember anything new after the accident.

Retrograde Amnesia

Loss of memory from the point of some injury or trauma backwards, or loss of memory from the past. Can't remember anything before the accident. After a car accident, you are unable to remember anything before the accident. Can't remember accident intself.

Mnemonics

Memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices. An encoding strategy. You use a mnemonic, ROY G BIV, to remember the colors of the rainbow.

Retroactive Interference

Memory retrieval problem where newer information interferes with the retrieval of old information. Trying to remember old information. You can't remember your old locker combo from last year.

Long-Term Memory

Memory system where all the information to be kept permanently is placed. Unlimited capacity and can hold info over lengthy periods of time. You remember your birthday in your long term memory.

Short-Term Memory (Working Memory)

Memory system where information is held for a brief time period while it is being used. Ex: You remember the phone number you heard just long enough to go and dial it.

Explicit Memory

Memory that is consciously known, such as declarative memory. Ex: You know consciously what you have to do today/what activities you need to go to.

Implicit Memory

Memory that is not easily brought into conscious awareness, such as procedural memory. There is no conscious memory when you walk - you just know how to do it (procedural memory).

Information-processing model

Model of memory that assumes the processing of information for memory storage is similar to the way a computer processes memory in a series of 3 stages (sensory, STM, LTM) You senses take in the scenery outside before you focus on something interesting you see. You remember it (STM) because it is so interesting.

Repression

Motivated forgetting; you purposely forget something because you don't want to remember it. You keep it buried in your unconscious. You forget a term-paper deadline because you don't want to remember it. Help minimize anxiety.

Rehearsal

Practice of saying some information to be remembered over and over in one's head in order to maintain it in short-term memory. Conscious repetition increases retention (encoding strategy). Ex: You repeat the definition of the vocab over and over again to yourself to remember it.

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Proactive Interference Memory retrieval problem where older information interferes with the retrieval of new information. Trying to remember new information. You can't remember your new address, and you keep putting down your old one on applications.

Reality Monitoring

Process of deciding whether memories are based on reality or imagination by seeing if it is rich in sensory details. You remember the feel of shoving the umbrella into your suitcase, so you know you brought it.

Constructive Processing

Referring to the retrieval of memories in which those memories are altered, revised, or influenced by newer information. Every time you retrieve a memory, you alter it. Every time you remember your first birthday party, something different is added or you forget something.

Prospective Memory

Remember what you have to do in the near or far future. Remember that you need to do the laundry.

Retrospective Memory

Remembering things from the past or previously learned information. You remember who won the Super Bowl last year.

Spacing Effect/Distributed Practice

Spacing the study of material to be remembered by including breaks between study periods. Helps with retrieval and will allow you remember it longer. You review your notes from that day 10 mins each night to help you remember it better.

Automatic Processing

Tendency of certain kinds of information to enter long-term memory with little or no effortful encoding. You automatically remember your best friend's name without trying to.

Serial Position Effect (Primacy-Recency Effect)

Tendency to remember information at the beginning and end of a body of information more accurately than information in the middle. You remember the first two number and the last two numbers when you are given a series of numbers to memorize.

Attention

The ability to focus on only one stimulus from among all sensory input. You pay attention to your homework and do it well while blocking out all other distractions around you. Undivided attention.

Recognition

The ability to match a piece of information/stimulus to a stored image or fact. You have outside cues to help you with retrieval. You are able to pick the right answer on a multiple choice test.

Echoic Memory

The brief memory of something a person has just heard. You hear the students around you talking, but you forget it because you don't pay attention to it.

Consolidation

The changes that take place in the structure and functioning of neurons when a memory is formed. Can include changes in receptor sites, sensitivity of the synapse through repeated stimulation, dendrites, and in the proteins withing the neurons. Your memory of your class schedule is easily accessed because there is an increase in neural connections that make it more sensitive to stimulation.

Retention

The endurance of behaviors, which have been learned or acquired, when the behavior is not being utilized; signified by being able to recall, relearn, recognize, or reproduce the behavior. Preservation of a memory within the mind. The the ability to continue doing something after a period of not engaging in the activity. You can ride a bike even after not riding one for a long time.

Infantile Amnesia

The inability to retrieve memories from much before age 3. This is because the hippopotamus is not developed yet. You can't remember your trip to Disney World when you were 2.

Autobiographical Memory

The memory for events and facts related to one's personal life story. Same as episodic memory. You remember the time when you lost your first tooth.

2.Encoding

The set of mental operations that people perform on sensory information to convert that information into a form that is usable in the brain's storage systems. So you form a memory code or put it into your memory. When people hear a sound, their ears turn the vibrations into neural messages, which allows the brain to interpret that sound.

Misinformation Effect

The tendency of misleading information presented after an event to alter the memories of the event itself. You add this false information into your memory. An eyewitness account of what she saw also includes some details from an account from another eyewitness.

Hindsight Bias

The tendency to falsely believe, through revision of older memories to include newer information, that one could have correctly predicted the outcome of an event. You "knew it all along". Issue with retrieval. You discard any incorrect information you had and replace it with more accurate information gained after the fact. This leads you to believe that you would have accurately predicted the outcome, like who was going to win the Super Bowl.

Sensory Memory

The very first stage of memory where information enters the nervous system through the senses. You will forget this unless you pay attention. You are inattentive to the passing view, but you focus when you see a cape-wearing person on the street.

Relearning

This type of memory retrieval involves relearning information that has been previously learned. This often makes it easier to remember and retrieve information in the future and can improve the strength of memories You relearn a lot of math in elementary school to establish a strong foundation.

Clustering

To group things by similarity. Technically a type of chunking. Meaningful chunks instead of just regular chunks. Ex: You remember all the fruits, all the words that rhyme, etc. together.

Flashbulb Memories

Type of automatic encoding that occurs because an event has strong emotional associations for the person remembering it. Unusually vivid and detailed recollections of momentous events. Not always accurate, and less detailed and more inaccurate with time. You remember vividly the first day of high school.

Semantic Memory

Type of declarative memory containing general knowledge, like knowledge of language and information/facts. You know what day of the year is Christmas.

Episodic Memory

Type of declarative memory containing personal information not readily available to others, like daily activities and events. "episodes in your life" You remember what you wore to school yesterday.

Declarative Memory

Type of long-term memory containing information that is conscious and known, like facts. Easy to explain and is also called explicit memory. You know what your address is, and you can give it easily.

Non-declarative Memory (Procedural Memory)

Type of long-term memory that includes memories for skills, procedures, and conditioned responses. These memories are not conscious, and are harder to explain. Also called implicit memory. You remember how to ride a bike, but it is hard to explain to someone else.

Recall

Type of memory retrieval in which the information to be retrieved must be "pulled" from memory with very few external cues. You have to write an essay for a test; you are only given the prompt.

Source Monitoring Error (Source Amnesia/Source Misattribution)

When you attribute to the wrong source an event you have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined. You might think you read about something in the newspaper, but in reality your friend told you that information.

Structural / Visual Encoding

When you remember what something looks like; the images and the physical structure of the info. No meaning. You remember what the word BALL looks like flashing on the screen. Capital or lowercase...

Method of Loci

You can best remember places that you are familiar with, so if you can link something you need to remember with a place that you know very well, the location will serve as a clue that will help you remember. People might picture themselves walking through a familiar place. To remember the things you need to buy, you imagine each item on the list in a particular place as you walk along. Later, when you need to remember the list, you mentally do the walk again, noting the items you imagined along the way.

Effortful Processing

You have to make an effort to remember something. You need to use encoding strategies, and you need to pay attention. You use effortful processing to encode the things you learn in class.

Semantic Encoding

You remember the meaning of something. Think about what the words represent. You remember what the word BALL means, what it is, how it is used, etc. Use it in a sentence, and then think about how it is used.

Phonemic/Acoustic Encoding

You remember what something sounds like. You remember what the word BALL sounds like, and you can pronounce it. What does it rhyme with?...