Memory (6)

Question 1

absentmindedness

Answer 1

The inattentive or shallow encoding of events.

Question 2

amnesia

Answer 2

A deficit in long-term memory—resulting from disease, brain injury, or psychological trauma—in which the individual loses the ability to retrieve vast quantities of information.

Question 3

anterograde amnesia

Answer 3

A condition in which people lose the ability to form new memories.

Question 4

blocking

Answer 4

The temporary inability to remember something.

Question 5

chunking

Answer 5

Organizing information into meaningful units to make it easier to remember.

Question 6

consolidation

Answer 6

The gradual process of memory storage in the brain.

Question 7

cryptomnesia

Answer 7

A type of misattribution that occurs when people think they have come up with a new idea yet have retrieved a stored idea and failed to attribute the idea to its proper source.

Question 8

encoding

Answer 8

The process by which the perception of a stimulus or event gets transformed into a memory.

Question 9

encoding specificity principle

Answer 9

The idea that any stimulus that is encoded along with an experience can later trigger a memory of the experience.

Question 10

episodic memory

Answer 10

Memory for one’s past experiences that are identified by a time and place.

Question 11

explicit memory

Answer 11

Memory that is consciously retrieved.

Question 12

flashbulb memories

Answer 12

Vivid episodic memories for the circumstances in which people first learned of a surprising and consequential or emotionally arousing event.

Question 13

implicit memory

Answer 13

Memory that is expressed through responses, actions, or reactions.

Question 14

long-term memory

Answer 14

The storage of information that lasts from minutes to forever.

Question 15

long-term potentiation (LTP)

Answer 15

Strengthening of a synaptic connection, making the postsynaptic neurons more easily activated by presynaptic neurons.

Question 16

memory

Answer 16

The ability to store and retrieve information.

Question 17

memory bias

Answer 17

The changing of memories over time so that they become consistent with current beliefs or attitudes.

Question 18

mnemonics

Answer 18

Learning aids or strategies that improve recall through the use of retrieval cues.

Question 19

persistence

Answer 19

The continual recurrence of unwanted memories.

Question 20

priming

Answer 20

A facilitation in the response to a stimulus due to recent experience with that stimulus or a related stimulus.

Question 21

proactive interference

Answer 21

Interference that occurs when prior information inhibits the ability to remember new information.

Question 22

procedural memory

Answer 22

A type of implicit memory that involves skills and habits.

Question 23

prospective memory

Answer 23

Remembering to do something at some future time.

Question 24

reconsolidation

Answer 24

The re-storage of memory after retrieval.

Question 25

retrieval cue

Answer 25

Any stimulus that promotes memory recall.

Question 26

retrieval-induced forgetting

Answer 26

Impairment of the ability to recall an item in the future after retrieving a related item from long-term memory.

Question 27

retroactive interference

Answer 27

Interference that occurs when new information inhibits the ability to remember old information.

Question 28

retrograde amnesia

Answer 28

A condition in which people lose past memories, such as memories for events, facts, people, or even personal information.

Question 29

schemas

Answer 29

Cognitive structures in long-term memory that help us perceive, organize, and understand information.

Question 30

semantic memory

Answer 30

Memory for facts independent of personal experience.

Question 31

sensory memory

Answer 31

A memory system that very briefly stores sensory information in close to its original sensory form.

Question 32

serial position effect

Answer 32

The finding that the ability to recall items from a list depends on the order of presentation, such that items presented early or late in the list are remembered better than those in the middle.

Question 33

source amnesia

Answer 33

A type of misattribution that occurs when people have a memory for an event but cannot remember where they encountered the information.

Question 34

source misattribution

Answer 34

Memory distortion that occurs when people misremember the time, place, person, or circumstances involved with a memory.

Question 35

suggestibility

Answer 35

The development of biased memories from misleading information.

Question 36

working memory

Answer 36

A limited-capacity cognitive system that temporarily stores and manipulates information for current use.