Cognitive Psych Vocab 3

Front 1

accessibility

Back 1

the degree to which we can gain access to the available information

Front 2

autobiographical memory

Back 2

refers to memory of an individual's history

Front 3

availability

Back 3

the presence of information stored in long-term memory

Front 4

consolidation

Back 4

the process of integrating new information into stored information

Front 5

constructive

Back 5

prior experience affects how we recall things and what we actually recall from memory

Front 6

decay

Back 6

occurs when simply the passage of time causes an individual to forget

Front 7

decay theory

Back 7

asserts that information is forgotten because of the gradual disappearance,rather than displacement, of the memory trace.

Front 8

distributed practice

Back 8

learning in which various sessions are spaced over time

Front 9

encoding

Back 9

refers to how you transform a physical, sensory input into a kind of representation that can be placed into memory

Front 10

encoding specificity

Back 10

what is recalled depends on what is encoded

Front 11

flashbulb memory

Back 11

a memory of an event so powerful that he person remembers the event as vividly as if it were indelibly preserved on film

Front 12

interference

Back 12

occurs when competing information causes an individual to forget something

Front 13

interference theory

Back 13

refers to theview that forgetting occurs because recall of certain words interferes with recall of other words

Front 14

massed practice

Back 14

learning in which session are crammed together in a very short space of time

Front 15

metacognition

Back 15

our understanding and control of our cognition; our ability to think about and control our own processes of thought and ways of enhancing our thinking.

Front 16

metamemory

Back 16

strategies that involve reflecting on our own memory processes with a view to improving our memory

Front 17

mnemonic devices

Back 17

specific techniques to help you memorize lists of words

Front 18

primary effect

Back 18

refers to superior recall of words at and near the beginning of a list

Front 19

proactive interference

Back 19

occurs when the interfering material occurs before, rather than after, learning of the to-be-remembered material

Front 20

recency effect

Back 20

refers to superior recall of words at and near the end of a list

Front 21

reconstructive

Back 21

involving the use of various strategies (i.e. searching for cues, drawing inferences) for retrieving the orginial memory traces of our experiences and then rebuilding the original experiences as a basis for retrieval.

Front 22

rehearsal

Back 22

the repeated recitation of an item

Front 23

retrieval

Back 23

refers to how you gain access to information stored in memory

Front 24

retroactive interference

Back 24

caused by activity occurring after we learn something but before we are asked to recall that thing; also called retroactive inhibition

Front 25

storage

Back 25

refers to how you retain encoded information in memory

Front 26

analogue codes

Back 26

a form of knowledge representation that preserves the main perceptual features of whatever is being represented forthe physical stimuli we observe in our environment

Front 27

cognitive maps

Back 27

internal representations of our physical environment, particularly centering on spatial relationships.

Front 28

declarative knowledge

Back 28

knowledge of facts that can be stated

Front 29

dual-code theory

Back 29

belief suggesting that knowledge is represented both in images and in symbols

Front 30

functional-equivalence hypothesis

Back 30

belief that although visual imagery is not identical to visual perception, it is functionally equivalent to it

Front 31

imagery

Back 31

the mental representation of things that are not currently being sensed by the sense organs

Front 32

knowledge representation

Back 32

the form of what you know in your mind about things, ideas, events, and so on that exist outside of your mind

Front 33

mental models

Back 33

knowledge structures that individuals construct to understand and explain their experiences; an internal representation of information that corresponds analogously with whatever is being represented

Front 34

mental rotation

Back 34

involves rotationally transforming an object's visual mental image

Front 35

procedural knowledge

Back 35

knowledge of procedures that can be implemented

Front 36

propositional theory

Back 36

belief suggesting that knowledge is represented only in underlying propositions, not in the form of images or of words and other symbols

Front 37

symbolic representation

Back 37

meaning that the relationship between the word and what it represents is simply arbitrary.