AP Psych: Unit 5 Vocabulary

• Alzheimer's disease


  the most common form of dementia in elderly people, leads to severe cognitive loss due to the deterioration of brain tissue
• amnesia


  disorder characterized by severe memory loss
• anterograde amnesia


  loss of memory from the point of injury or trauma forward, or the inability to form new long-term memories
• automatic encoding


  tendency of certain kinds of information to enter long-term memory with little or no effortful encoding
• chunking


  the process of regrouping material in memory in order to combine smaller pieces into one larger unit

  ex. credit card numbers or phone numbers divided into chunks
• cocktail party effect


  the ability to focus our listening attention on a single conversation among a large amount of background noise
• consolidation


  the changes that take place in the structure and functioning of neurons wen an engram is formed
• constructive processing


  referring to the retrieval of memories in which those memories are altered, revised, or influenced by newer information
• curve of forgetting


  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

  
• declarative memory


  type of long-term memory containing information that is conscious and known

  ex. information you learn at schools/facts
• distributed practice

  spacing the study of material to be remembered by including breaks between study periods

  ex. when studying for a big test, take a break every 45 minutes
• disuse


  another term to describe memory decay which suggests that memories that are not used will eventually decay and disappear
• echoic memory


  the brief memory of something a person has just heard

  CUE: echo = a sound
• eidetic imagery


  the ability to access a visual memory for 30 seconds or more

  CUE: memory playing like a movie on your brain
• elaborative rehearsal


  a method of transferring information from STM into LTM by making that information meaning in some way

  CUE: the cue parts of your KBATs, attaching pictures on your quizlet set
• 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

  CUE: like the computer encodes information, your brain encodes sensory inputs into memories
• encoding failure


  failure to process information into memory

  CUE: daydreaming while the teacher is talking to you & asks you to repeat what they said
• encoding specificity


  the tendency for memory of information to be improved if related information (such as surroundings or physiological state) available when the memory is first formed is also available when the memory is being retrieved

  CUE: your AP exam is in the room you learned the content to score better
• episodic memory


  type of declarative memory containing personal information not readily available to others, such as daily activities and events

  CUE: your first kiss, first day of school, holidays, big games, etc. (your life is like a TV episode)
• explicit memory


  memory that is consciously known, such as declarative memory
• memory


  the ability to store and retrieve information over time; is a place AND an action
• storage


  the process of retaining encoded information over time; placing & keeping memories in LTM until retrieval is necessary
• retrieval


  the process of getting information out of memory storage

  --> made easier with recognition tools (retrieval cue, encoding specificity, etc.)
• 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 three stages (1. sensory memory, 2. short term memory, 3. long term memory)
• Parallel Distributed Processing Model (PDP)


  a model of memory in which memory processes are proposed to take place at the same time over a large network of neural connections (encoding & storage happen at the same time)
• Sensory memory


  the immediate, very brief recording of sensory information in the memory system

  >first step in Information Processing Model of Memory

  >in iconic & echoic form
• Iconic memory


  a momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a quarter of a second
• Short-term memory


  activated memory that holds a few items briefly for immediate use

  >known as working memory

  >holds 5-9 pieces of information at a time

  >commonly in sound form

  >tools to help are maintenance rehearsal and chunking
• Selective attention


  the ability to focus on only one stimulus from among all sensory input

  >allows you to better store memory

  >cocktail party effect

  >don't study for two classes in one night; you wont remember as well
• Working memory


  nick-name for short-term memory because this is the current information that you are interacting with (like your desk)
• Maintenance rehearsal


  repeating stimuli in their original form to retain them in short-term memory

  >typically sound/saying the information in your memory

  >impractical because you must remember information in the exact order/way you memorized
• Long-term memory

  the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.

  >two types: procedural & declarative
• Procedural (non declarative) memory


  type of long-term memory including memory for skills, procedures, habits, and conditioned responses

  >things you can DO

  >these memories are not conscious but are implied to exist because they affect conscious behavior (implicit memory)
• Implicit memory


  Memories we don't deliberately remember or reflect on consciously

  >it's assumed we have memories of skills because we just do them without thinking

  >other name for procedural memories
• Semantic memory


  memories of general knowledge and facts that you know

  >form of declarative memory (things you KNOW)

  >aka: school knowledge
• Semantic network model


  model of memory organization that assumes information is stored in the brain in a connected fashion, with concepts that are related stored physically closer to each other than concepts that are not highly related

  >ex. dresser drawers are organized by clothing type; school binders organized by tabs

  >in your brain, your history knowledge is together, science knowledge together, etc.
• Retrieval cue

  external information that is associated with stored information and helps bring it to mind

  >aka a stimulus to pull memories

  >the more cues, the more able you are to retrieve a memory

  >ex. cues/examples in KBATs
• Recall


  A measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learned earlier with no stimuli

  >ex. fill-in-the-blank test, essay tests
• Recognition


  a measure of memory in which the person need only identify items through clues/hints associated with the information

  >ex. AP MCQs
• Serial position effect


  our tendency to best remember the first and last pieces of information

  >lists, paragraphs, books/chapters, notes, KBATs = you better remember the first and last

  >primacy & recency effect

  >study the MIDDLE of information because you're most likely to forget it