Unit 7

Memory: An indication that learning has persisted over time. It is our ability to store and retrieve information.

Encoding (visual/acoustic/semantic): Incoming sensory information is converted for storage.

Storage: Info is retained in memory.

Retrieval: Information is recovered from memory when it is needed.

Parallel Processing: A person’s ability to take in lots of information all at once.

Richard Atkinson: Developed the field of mathematical modeling.

Richard Shiffirin: Contributed a number of theories of attention and memory.

Sensory Memory: The duration of sensory memory varies for the different senses.

Short-Term Memory: The nature of short-term memory is more complex.

Long-Term Memory: Unlimited capacity (aka implicit memory).

Working Memory: Alan Baddeley (2002) proposes that working memory contains auditory and visual processing controlled by the central executive through an episodic buffer.

Explicit Memory: Facts and experiences that one can consciously know and declare.

Effortful Processing: Encoding information through conscious attention and effort.

Automatic Processing: A type of thinking or cognition that does not involve any effort or deliberation.

Implicit Memory: Involves learning an action while the individual does not know or declare what she knows.

Iconic Memory: The storage for visual memory that allows people to visualize an image after the physical stimulus is no longer present.

Echoic Memory: The ultra-short-term memory for things you hear.

George A. Miller: Capacity: 7 ± 2 (George Miller, 1956).

Chunking: Can increase the capacity of working memory, organizing items into a familiar, manageable unit.

Mnemonics: Memory devices that help learners recall larger pieces of information.

Spacing Effect: We retain information better when we rehearse over time - distributing rehearsal is better than practicing all at once.

Hermann Ebbinghaus: Studied rehearsal by using nonsense syllables.

Testing Effect: Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke (2006) - repeated self-testing is an effective way to distribute practice.

Shallow Processing: The cognitive processing of a stimulus that focuses on its superficial, perceptual characteristics rather than its meaning.

Deep Processing: The encoding and processing of information in a meaningful and elaborate manner, which facilitates long-term retention and retrieval.

Hippocampus: A neural center in the limbic system that processes explicit memories.

Flashbulb Memory: A unique, emotional moment that creates a clear, strong, persistent memory. Though vivid and detailed, they are not free from errors.

Eric Kandel: Identified the physiological changes that occur in the brain during the formation and storage of memories.

Long Term Potentiation: Aplysia studies (Kandel and Schwartz 1982) showed that serotonin released from neurons increased after conditioning, which increased neural efficiency (increased sensitivity).

Recall: Information is retrieved without external cues. Requires greater effort.

Recognition: Being able to identify an item amongst other choices.

Relearning: Learning information that has previously been learned requires less time and/or effort.

Priming: To retrieve a specific memory from the web of associations, you must first activate one of the strands that leads to it. This process is called priming.

Mood-Congruent Memory: We usually recall experiences that are consistent with our current mood. Emotions or moods serve as retrieval cues.

Serial Position: When your recall is better for first and last items on a list, but poor for middle items.

Anterograde Amnesia: After losing his hippocampus in surgery, patient Henry M. (HM) remembered everything before the operation but cannot make new memories.

Retrograde Amnesia: Inability to retrieve information from one's past.

Proactive Interference: Interferes with the information that follows.

Retroactive Interference: Interferes with the learning that preceded it.

Repression: A defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.

Elizabeth Loftus: Memories are reconstructed, not replayed. Her experiments reveal how memories can be changed by things that we are told. Facts, ideas, suggestions, and other post-event information can modify our memories.

Misinformation Effect: Incorporating misleading information into one’s memory of an event.

Source Amnesia: Attributing an event to the wrong source that we experienced, heard, read, or imagined (misattribution).

Déjà Vu: The feeling you have experienced something before. Cues from the current situation may unconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier, similar experience.

Cognition: The mental activity that occurs in the brain when we process information. It involves knowing, understanding, remembering, and communicating.

Concept: The mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.

Prototype: Mental images and typical examples.

Convergent Thinking: Narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution.

Divergent Thinking: Expands the number of possible problem solutions (creative thinking that diverges in different directions).

Robert Sternberg: Identified five components of creativity:

Algorithm: Methodical, logical rules or procedures that guarantee solving a particular problem.

Heuristic: Problem solving strategies that are a product of experience. They allow us to make judgements and solve problems more efficiently. More error-prone than algorithms.

Insight: Involves a sudden novel realization of a solution to a problem. Wolfgang Kohler demonstrated that animals also have insight in his famous chimpanzee studies.

Wolfgang Kohler: Conducted experiments on problem-solving by chimpanzees, revealing their ability to devise and use simple tools and build simple structures.

Confirmation Bias: We have a tendency to search for information that confirms a personal bias.

Fixation: An inability to see a problem from a fresh perspective, impeding problem solving.

Mental Set: A tendency to approach a problem in a particular, similar way, especially if it was successful previously.

Functional Fixedness: The tendency to think only of the familiar functions of an object.

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

Representativeness Heuristic: Judging the likelihood of things or objects in terms of how well they seem to represent or match a particular prototype.

Availability Heuristic: Relying on immediately available information, examples, or knowledge in making a decision.

Overconfidence: Our tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgements.

Belief Perseverance: We cling to our beliefs regardless of the evidence.

Framing: Decisions and judgements may be significantly affected depending upon how an issue is framed.

Language: Our spoken, written, or gestured work, is the way we communicate meaning to ourselves and others.

Phonemes: The smallest distinct unit of sounds.

Morpheme: The smallest unit that carries a meaning. Could be a whole word or a part (prefix, suffix, etc.).

Grammar: The system of rules in a language that enables us to communicate with and understand others.

Semantics: The set of rules by which we derive meaning from morphemes, words, and sentences.

Syntax: Rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences.

Developmental Stages of Language:
a. Babbling Stage: Nonsense syllables and sounds (4 months).
b. One-word Stage: Child begins speaking one word at a time (12 months).
c. Two-word Stage: Child speaks in two-word sentences (18-24 months).
d. Telegraphic Speech: Longer phrases with syntactical sense (2+ years).

Noam Chomsky: Believed that language is innate, or in other words, we are born with a capacity for language.

Critical Period: The time during which behavior is especially susceptible to, and requires, specific environmental influences to develop normally.

Aphasia: A language disorder caused by damage in a specific area of the brain that controls language expression and comprehension.

Broca’s Area & Aphasia: Non-fluent aphasia with diminished spontaneous speech and loss of grammatical structure.

Wernicke’s Area & Aphasia: Characterized by impaired language comprehension.

Linguistic Determinism: The concept that language and its structures limit and determine human knowledge or thought, as well as processes like categorization, memory, and perception.

Benjamin Lee Whorf: Believed that the structures of different languages shape how their speakers perceive and conceptualize the world.