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Chapter Five
Psychology
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Memory | retention of information or experience over time |
Encoding | process by which information gets into memory storage |
Divided attention | concentrating on more than one activity at the same time |
Sustained attention | the ability to maintain attention to a selected stimulus for a prolonged period of time |
Levels of processing | refers to a continuum from shallow to intermediate to deep, with deeper processing producing better memory. |
Elaboration | refers to the formation of a number of different connections around a stimulus at any given level of memory encoding. |
Storage | encompasses how information is retained over time and how it is represented in memory |
Atkinson-Shiffrin theory | states that memory storage involves three separate systems |
Sensory memory | holds information from the world in its original sensory form for only an instant |
Short-term memory | is a limited capacity memory system in which information is usually retained for only as long as 30 seconds unless we use strategies to retain it longer |
Working memory | refers to a combination of components, including short-term memory and attention, that allow us to hold information temporarily as we perform cognitive tasks |
Long-term memory | A relatively permanent type of memory that stores huge amounts of information for a long time |
Explicit memory | conscious recollection of information, such as specific facts and events and, at least in humans, information that can be verbally communicated. |
Episodic memory | retention of information about the where, when, and what of life's happenings |
semantic memory | persons knowledge about the world |
Implicit memory | memory in which behavior is affected by prior experience without a conscious recollection of that experience |
Procedural memory | type of implicit memory process that involves memory for skills |
Priming | the activation of information that people already have in storage to help them remember new information better and faster. |
Schema | preexisting mental concept or framework that helps people to organize and interpret information |
Script | schema for an event |
Connection | the theory that memory is stored throughout the brain in connections among neurons, several of which may work together to process a single memory. |
Retrieval | takes place when information that was retained in memory comes out of storage |
Serial position effect | the tendency to recall the items at the beginning and end of a list more readily than those in the middle |
Autobiographical memory | A special form of episodic memory, is a person's recollections of his or her life experiences. |
Flashbulb memory | the memory of emotionally significant events that people often recall with more accuracy and vivid imagery than everyday events. |
Motivated forgetting | which occurs when individuals forget something because it is so painful or anxiety laden that remembering is intolerable. |
interference theory | people forget not because memories are lost from storage but because other information gets in the way of what they want to remember. |
Proactive interference | Occurs when material that was learned earlier disrupts the recall of material learned later. |
Retroactive interference | Occurs when material learned later disrupts the retrieval of information learned earlier. |
Decay theory | when we learn something new, a neurochemical memory trace forms, but over time this trace disintegrates. |
Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon | type of effortful retrieval that occurs when we are confident that we know something but cannot quite pull it out of memory. |
Retrospective memory | remembering the past |
Prospective memory | involves remembering information about doing something in the future. |
Amnesia | the loss of memory. |
Anterograde amnesia | memory disorder that affects the retention of new information and events |
Retrograde amnesia | involves memory loss for a segment of the past but not for new events. |