Bernstein et al., Psychology, 6/e Keyterms

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Psychology, Sixth Edition
Douglas A. Bernstein - University of South Florida and University of Southampton
Louis A. Penner - University of South Florida
Alison Clarke-Stewart - University of California, Irvine
Edward J. Roy - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Keyterms
Chapter 7: Memory

Encoding is the process of coding information so that it can be placed in sensory, short-term, or long-term memory. There are three types of encoding: visual, acoustic, and semantic. (see Basic Memory Processes)
Acoustic encoding represents the sounds we hear in memory. (see Basic Memory Processes)
Example: Think of your favorite song and hum it to yourself. The memory of how the melody sounds is an acoustic code in long-term memory.
Visual encoding represents the images we see in memory. (see Basic Memory Processes)
Example: If you think of a Christmas tree or the car you would buy if you had enough money, you will most likely see images of these things in your mind. You do so because you have visual codes for them.
Semantic encoding represents the meaning of experiences or factual information in memory. (see Basic Memory Processes)
Example: If you visit Israel, you may notice that the children can sing the top rock songs from the United States but that they do not know what the words mean. This is because they are using an acoustic code to remember a song and sing it, but they do not have a semantic code for the meaning of the words.
Storage is the process of maintaining or keeping a memory. (see Basic Memory Processes)
Example: Memories of your kindergarten class, your second-grade teacher, or the first home you lived in are old memories. They have been stored for quite some time.
Retrieval is the process of transferring memories from storage to consciousness. (see Basic Memory Processes)
Example: Whenever you remember anything, you are retrieving that memory from storage. Some memories are retrieved so quickly that you are unaware of the process. Answer the following questions: How old are you? How many people have been president of the United States? Both questions require you to retrieve information, but the retrieval process is much easier for the first question than for the second.
Episodic memory is any memory of a specific event that happened while you were present. (see Types of Memory)
Example: The memory of your first pony ride, a surprise birthday party that you held for a friend, or your first day of college is an episodic memory.
REMEMBER: Episodic memories are episodes that involved you.
Semantic memory contains factual knowledge. This memory differs from episodic memory in that its contents are not associated with a specific event. (see Types of Memory)
Example: Knowing that the freezing point is 32 degrees Fahrenheit, that red lights mean stop, and that the capital of the United States is Washington, D.C., are all examples of semantic memory. You probably cannot remember the specific time or episode during which you learned these facts.
Procedural memory (skill memory) holds "how-to" methods or processes that usually require some motor movement. (see Types of Memory)
Example: Knowing how to waltz, do a somersault, tie a tie, and drive a car are all procedural memories.
Explicit memory is the process of purposely trying to remember something. (see Explicit and Implicit Memory)
Example: While you are taking an exam, you are using explicit memory to retrieve information regarding the questions.
Implicit memory is the subconscious recall or influence of past experiences. (see Explicit and Implicit Memory)
Example: Although you don't understand why, you are nervous whenever you wait for a bus on a specific corner. Stored subconsciously is the memory of a frightening event from your childhood in which a stranger approached you at that corner and you ran away.
The levels-of-processing model holds that differences in how well something is remembered reflect the degree or depth to which incoming information is mentally processed. (see Levels of Processing)
REMEMBER: Maintenance rehearsal does not require much processing and is effective for encoding information into short-term memory. Elaborative rehearsal requires a great deal of processing and is effective for encoding into long-term memory.
Maintenance rehearsal, repeating information over and over, keeps information in short-term memory. (see Levels of Processing)
Example: Kan arrives in New York to visit his cousin Zhou but loses Zhou's phone number. Kan calls directory assistance and the operator tells him the number. Kan repeats it over and over to himself while he inserts coins for the call.
REMEMBER: Maintenance rehearsal maintains information in short-term memory.
Elaborative rehearsal involves thinking about how new material is linked or related in some way to information already stored in long-term memory. It is an effective method of encoding information into long-term memory. (see Levels of Processing)
Example: Ursula is a world-class shopper. She has a mental image of all the major cities she has shopped in and images of the locations of all her favorite stores on each street. When Ursula wants to store information about a new store, she uses her mental image and places the new store on its street. She thinks about the new store in relationship to the stores surrounding it. Ursula is not just repeating the address of the new store but is also relating it to the addresses of all the other stores that she knows.
REMEMBER: New information is elaborated with information already in long-term memory. The new address is elaborated by relating its location to all the old addresses of stores already in long-term memory.
The transfer-appropriate processing model suggests that memory retrieval will be improved if the encoding method matches the retrieval method. (see Transfer-Appropriate Processing)
Example: Samantha studied for an auto mechanics test by spending many weekends with her head under the hood of a car. However, much to her surprise, when it came time to take the test, the professor handed out a multiple-choice exam. Samantha, who felt that she had really learned the material, scored poorly. According to the transfer-appropriate processing model, Samantha did not do well because she encoded the material by applying what she had learned from the text, but the exam asked her only to retrieve specific facts. Samantha's encoding process wasn't appropriate for the retrieval process required by the exam.
REMEMBER: Think of this model as stating that the encoding process that transfers information into long-term memory must be appropriate for (match) the retrieval cues.
Parallel distributed processing (or PDP) models of memory suggest that the connections between units of knowledge are strengthened with experience. Tapping into any connection (via a memory process) provides us with access to all the other connections in the network. (see Parallel Distributed Processing)
Example: Zoë's knowledge that the term neonate means "newborn" is linked to her memory of seeing a premature infant taken to a neonatal unit. Both neonate and neonatal are connected to her memory that neo means "new." When Zoë thinks of neonate, an image of her nephew as a newborn is also readily accessible. This background made it easier for her to understand that a neofreudian is a person who developed a new version of Freud's theory.
The information-processing model of memory has three stages: sensory memory; short-term, or working, memory; and long-term memory. (see Information Processing)
Sensory memory holds sensory information for a fraction of a second in sensory registers. If the information is attended to and recognized, perception takes place, and the information can enter short-term memory. (see Sensory Memory)
Sensory registers hold incoming sensory information until it is processed, recognized, and remembered. There is a sensory register for each sense. (see Sensory Memory)
Selective attention determines what information is held in sensory registers. Information that is not attended to decays and cannot be processed any further. (see Sensory Memory)
Example: Imagine going to New York's Times Square for New Year's Eve. The crowd is immense. Suddenly, you see someone waving a sparkler in front of you. Even though your eyes and ears are being hit with a variety of stimuli, your sensory registers will retain information about the person with the sparkler because you "selected" that particular set of stimuli to "attend" to.
Short-term memory receives information that was perceived in sensory memory. Information in short-term memory is conscious but quite fragile and will be lost within seconds if not further processed. (see Short-Term Memory and Working Memory)
Example: If you look up a phone number and repeat it to yourself until you finish dialing, you will have kept it active in your short-term memory. However, it is likely that you will have forgotten it by the time you get off the phone, because you were using your working memory to process the new information coming in during the conversation.
Working memory is the part of the memory system that allows us to mentally manipulate information being held in short-term memory. (see Short-Term Memory and Working Memory)
Example: When you have a conversation with someone, you think about what they are saying and use that information to frame a response. You are using your working memory to do this.
An immediate memory span is the largest number of items or chunks of information that you can recall perfectly from short-term memory after one presentation of the stimuli. Most people have an immediate memory span of five to nine items. (see Storage Capacity of Short-Term Memory)
Example: Use a telephone book to help you test your own immediate memory span. Read the first two names at the top of the page, look away, and then try to recall them. Then read the next three names, look away, and try to recall them. Continue this process, using a longer list each time, until you cannot repeat the entire list of names. The number of names that you can repeat perfectly is your immediate memory span.
Chunks are meaningful groupings of information that you place in short-term memory. The immediate memory span of short-term memory is probably between five and nine chunks of information. Each chunk contains bits of information grouped into a single unit. (see Storage Capacity of Short-Term Memory)
Example: During her first night as a waitress, Bridget needed all five to nine chunks in short-term memory to remember one order for one person. For example, a drink before dinner, a drink with dinner, a main dish, a type of salad dressing, a type of potato, and whether the customer wanted cream, sugar, or both with coffee made up five to nine chunks of information. After two years of waitressing, Bridget can easily hold in memory four to eight people's complete food and drink orders. Each person's order had become one chunk of information.
REMEMBER: Chunks can be anything--letters, numbers, words, names, or locations--just to list a few. The more information you can condense or group into one chunk, the more information you can hold in short-term memory.
The Brown-Peterson procedure is a research method that prevents rehearsal. A person is presented with a group of three letters and then counts backward by threes from an arbitrarily selected number until a signal is given. The counting prevents the person from rehearsing the information. (see Duration of Short-Term Memory)
Long-term memory is the stage of memory in which the capacity to store new information is believed to be unlimited. (see Long-Term Memory)
The primacy effect occurs when we remember words at the beginning of a list better than those in the middle of the list. (see Distinguishing Between Short-Term and Long-Term Memory)
REMEMBER:Primacy means "being first." The primacy effect is the remembering of the first words in a list better than other words in the list.
The recency effect occurs when we remember the last few words on a list better than others on the list. The list's final items are in short-term memory at the time of recall. (see Distinguishing Between Short-Term and Long-Term Memory)
Example: After hearing all her students' names once, Leslie tries to recite them one by one. She remembers the names of students in the first two rows (primacy effect) and the names of the students in the last two rows (recency effect), but she has difficulty recalling the names of students in the middle two rows.
REMEMBER:Recency means "that which occurred most recently." The last items of a list are presented most recently.
Retrieval cues help us recognize information in long-term memory. In other words, they help you "jog" your memory. (see Retrieval Cues and Encoding Specificity)
Example: On a multiple-choice exam, the answer appears somewhere in the question. Some of the words in the correct answer should jog your memory and allow you to answer the question correctly.
The encoding specificity principle maintains that if the way information is encoded and the way it is retrieved are similar, remembering the information will be easier. (see Retrieval Cues and Encoding Specificity)
In context-dependent memory, the environment acts as a retrieval cue. This means that it is easier to remember information when you are in the location (context) where you originally learned that information. (see Context and State Dependence)
Example: When taking his exam in his regular classroom, Leon's memory for lecture information is improved by glancing around at the chalkboard, peeling paint, and lecturer's desk. Although he doesn't realize it, he recalls the discussion of the opponent-process theory of color vision better because he is among familiar classmates and surroundings. Unfortunately, he does not remember as much of the information he studied in his room with the stereo blaring because few of the retrieval cues associated with that learning exist in the quiet classroom environment where he is taking the exam.
In state-dependent memory, your psychological state acts as a retrieval cue. When you are trying to remember, if you are in the same psychological state you were in at the time of learning, you will retrieve more material. (see Context and State Dependence)
Example: In the evening when she studied psychology, Lydia had several cups of coffee to keep her alert. The next morning, she did not do well on the quiz. Later, when drinking coffee with some friends, she was in the same state as when she studied for the quiz, and, to her amazement, she remembered some of the material that had escaped her during the quiz.
Spreading activation describes the way in which information is retrieved from long-term memory according to semantic network theories. Whenever a question is asked, neural activation spreads from those concepts contained in the question down all paths related to them. (see Semantic Networks)
Example: When Jane thinks about pizza, this activates other concepts such as food, delivery, cost, etc.
Schemas are summaries of knowledge about categories. We tend to automatically place people, objects, and events into classes. (see Schemas)
Example: If your schema for a classroom is a square room filled with desks, upon seeing people seated on pillows in a round room you might be likely to classify it as a lounge.
The method of savings is a term introduced by Ebbinghaus to refer to the difference in the amount of time required to relearn material that has been forgotten and the amount of time it took to learn the material initially. (see How Do We Forget?)
Example: If it took a subject twenty repetitions to learn a list of items but only five repetitions to relearn the list a semester later, there would be a savings of 75 percent.
Decay is a mechanism whereby information not used in long-term memory gradually fades until lost completely. (see Why Do We Forget?: The Roles of Decay and Interference)
Example: Marissa learned Spanish, but has not tried to speak it in years. When Marissa tries to say, "Hello; how was your day?" to her roommate, she cannot remember the vocabulary necessary.
Interference is a mechanism whereby the retrieval or storage of information in long-term memory is impaired by other learning (retroactive and proactive interference). (see Why Do We Forget?: The Roles of Decay and Interference)
Retroactive interference occurs when information in memory is displaced by new information. (see Why Do We Forget?: The Roles of Decay and Interference)
REMEMBER:Retro means "back." New information goes back and interferes with old information.
Proactive interference occurs when old information in long-term memory interferes with the remembering of new information. (see Why Do We Forget?: The Roles of Decay and Interference)
Example: If you have ever learned something incorrectly and then tried to correct it, you may have experienced proactive interference. Young children who take music lessons once a week experience this. They learn an incorrect note, and at their lesson the next week, their teacher points out the mistake. However, it is very difficult to play the correct note because the old memory of the wrong note interferes with the new memory of the correct note.
REMEMBER:Pro means "forward." Old information goes forward and interferes with new information.
Anterograde amnesia is a loss of memory for events that occur after a brain injury. Memory for experiences prior to the trauma remains intact. (see The Impact of Brain Damage)
Example: People with anterograde amnesia will not be able to remember the new people they meet, because they are unable to form new memories.
REMEMBER: Anterograde amnesia is a loss of memory for the future, or after some point in time.
Retrograde amnesia is a loss of memory of events prior to a brain injury. Memories encoded days or years before the injury or trauma can be lost. Usually most memories return. (see The Impact of Brain Damage)
REMEMBER:Retro means "backward." The memory loss goes back in time.
Mnemonics are encoding methods that increase the efficiency of your memory. (see Improving Your Memory)
Example: To remember the name "Hathaway," you might picture the person coming "half the way" to you.





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