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Memory
the retention of information over time
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The Paradox of Memory
our memories are surprisingly good in some situations, butsurprisingly poor in other situations
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Suggestive memory techniques
procedures that encourage patients to recallmemories that may or may not have taken place
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Memory illusions
a false but subjectively compelling memory
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Observer memory:
a memory in which you see yourself as an outside observer would(e.g. seeing yourself walking down a path)
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Field memory:
a memory in which you see the world through your own eyes (e.g. remembering walking down the path through your own eyes)
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Span
how much information a memory system can retain
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Duration
length of time for which a memory system can retain information
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Sensory memory
brief storage of perceptual information before it is passed to short-term memory
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Iconic memory
visual sensory memory
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Method of partial report
Sperling technique in which twelve letters flashed when paired with a tone that signaled a particular row of letters produced better memory for that row of letters. Shows our iconic memory fades very quickly
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Eidetic imagery
“Photographic memory,” an unusually long persistence of iconic memory
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Echoic memory
auditory sensory memory
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Short term memory
memory system that retains information for limited durations. Aka “working memory”—it’s the memory storage for the information we’re currently thinking about or processing
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Decay:
fading of information from memory
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Interference
loss of information from memory because of competition from additional incoming information. 2 types of interference
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Retroactive inhibition
interference with retention of old information due to acquisition of new information (when learning something new hampers something you previously learned)
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Proactive inhibition
interference with acquisition of new information due to previous learning of information (when something you previously learned gets in the way of new learning)
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Magic number
the capacity of short-term memory—most of us remember seven plus or minus two pieces of information at a time (e.g. digits, numbers, cities, etc)
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Chunking
organizing information into meaningful groupings, allowing us to extend the span of short-term memory
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Rehearsal
repeating information to extend the duration of retention in short-term memory. Two major types of rehearsal:
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Maintenance rehearsal:
repeating the stimuli in their original form (e.g. hearing a phone number and repeating it over and over to remember it)
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Elaborative rehearsal
linking the stimuli in some meaningful way to remember them (e.g. linking pumpkin patch to patched jeans to remember to go buy jeans in October)
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Levels-of-processing
model of memory: the more deeply we transform information, the better we tend to remember it
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Long-term memory
sustained (from minutes to years) retention of information stored regarding our facts, experiences, and skills
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Permastore
type of long-term memory that appears to be permanent
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Primacy effect
the tendency to remember stimuli, like words, at the beginning of a list
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Recency effect
the tendency to remember stimuli at the end of a list
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Von Restorff effect
the tendency to remember stimuli that are distinctive or that stick out
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Serial position curve
graph depicting the effect of both primacy and recency on people’s ability to recall items on a list
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Explicit memory
memories we recall intentionally and are consciously aware of (aka “declarative memory” – you actively, consciously declare what it is)
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Semantic memory
our knowledge of facts about the world
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Episodic memory
recollection of events in our lives
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Implicit memory
memories we don’t deliberately remember or reflect on consciously (aka “nondeclarative memory”—you are not conscious of it and thus do not consciously declare what it is)
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Procedural memory
memory for how to do things, including motor skills
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Priming
our ability to identify a stimulus more easily or more quickly after we’ve encountered similar stimuli
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Encoding
process of getting information into our memory banks
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Next in line effect
When taking turns speaking, information said immediately before your turn often does not get encoded into memory.
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Mnemonics
a learning aid, strategy, or device that enhances recall (e.g.ROYGBIV)
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Pegword method
Associating rhymes or images with words you’re trying to remember
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Method of Loci
Associating imagery of places of locations (e.g. on a route) with words you’re trying to remember
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Keyword Method
When learning a foreign language, associating foreign words with words or images that sound like or remind you of that foreign word
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Storage
process of keeping information in memory
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Schema
organized knowledge structure or mental model that we’ve stored in memory
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Retrieval
reactivation or reconstruction of experiences from our memory stores (when we’re remembering something and fetching it from our long-term memory stores)
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Retrieval cues
hints that make it easier for us to recall information
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Recall
generating previously remembered information on our own (tends to be more difficult than recognition)
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Recognition
selecting previously remembered info from an array of options
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Relearning
reacquiring knowledge that we’d previously learned but largely forgotten over time
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Savings
once you’ve learned something, it takes less time to refresh your memory on it than it took to learn it the first time
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Distributed versus massed practice
studying information in small increments over time (distributed) versus in large increments over a brief amount of time (massed)
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Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon
experience of knowing that we know something but being unable to access it
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Encoding specificity
phenomenon of remembering something better when the conditions under which we retrieve information are similar to the conditions under which we encoded it
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Context-dependent learning
superior retrieval of memories when the external context of the original memories matches the retrieval context (when the external environment of your original memories matches the external environment where you’re trying to retrieve those)
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State-dependent learning
superior retrieval of memories when the organism is in the same physiological or psychological state as it was during encoding (when internal physical or psychological states during encoding match those during retrieval)
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Mood-dependent learning
retrieval is better when mood states during encoding and retrieval are the same. May create retrospective bias: our current psychological state (e.g. currently feeling angry) can distort memories of our past
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Engram
a hypothesized physical place in the brain where each memory is stored
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Long-term potentiation (LTP)
gradual strengthening of the connections among neurons from repetitive stimulation
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Retrograde amnesia
loss of memories from our past
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Anterograde amnesia
inability to encode new memories from our experiences
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Generalized amnesia
exceedingly rare—the loss of all past memories (myth perpetuated in Hollywood that amnesics lose all memories, but this is rarely true)
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