Memory Flashcards

Encoding (getting information in), storage (keeping it) and retrieval (getting it back out).

Information passes through three stages: sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory.

An active workspace that replaces the idea of passive short-term memory, made up of a central executive, a phonological loop and a visuospatial sketchpad (plus an episodic buffer).

Explicit (declarative) memories are facts and experiences you consciously recall. Implicit (nondeclarative) memories are retained without conscious recall, such as skills and conditioned responses.

Episodic memory stores events you personally experienced. Semantic memory stores general facts and knowledge.

Implicit memory for skills and how to do things, such as riding a bike or typing.

Automatic processing encodes information such as time, place and frequency with little effort. Effortful processing needs attention and deliberate work, like studying vocabulary.

Processing information deeply, for meaning, produces longer-lasting memories than shallow processing of how it looks or sounds (Craik and Lockhart).

Information you relate to yourself is processed more deeply and remembered better.

Grouping items into familiar, meaningful units so more fits in short-term memory (e.g., remembering a phone number as three groups).

That it holds about seven items, plus or minus two.

A fleeting sensory memory of a visual scene that lasts less than a second.

A lasting increase in a synapse's firing efficiency after repeated stimulation, believed to be a neural basis of learning and memory.

Distributed practice, spreading study sessions out over time, produces better long-term retention than massed practice (cramming).

The tendency to recall the first items (primacy effect) and the last items (recency effect) of a list better than those in the middle.

Recall means retrieving information that is not in view, as on a short-answer test. Recognition means identifying previously learned information, as on a multiple-choice test.

Retrieval is easier in the same environment where the information was encoded.

Retrieval is easier when you are in the same internal state, such as the same mood or level of alertness, as when you encoded the information.

Memory is stronger after retrieving information, for example by self-quizzing, than after rereading it. It is also called retrieval practice.

Most forgetting of new information happens soon after learning, and then the rate of forgetting levels off.

Old information disrupting the recall of new information (e.g., your old locker combination getting in the way of your new one).

New information disrupting the recall of old information (e.g., learning Spanish vocabulary making French words harder to recall).

Anterograde amnesia is the inability to form new memories after an injury. Retrograde amnesia is the inability to retrieve memories from before it.

Misleading information given after an event can distort memory of it. Witnesses asked how fast cars smashed into each other estimated higher speeds than those asked how fast they hit.

Remembering information but forgetting or misattributing where you learned it, one cause of false memories.