Cognitive Psychology (Ii)

Front 1

What is the Mystic Writing Pad model (of memory)?

Back 1

A model of memory based on a toy writing tablet that retains fragments of old messages even after they have been "erased". In time, thee fragments accumulate and begin to overlap, so that they become increasingly hard to read.

Front 2

What is the reappearance Hypothesis?

Back 2

The hypothesis that the same memory can reappear, unchanged, again and again.

Front 3

What are Flashbulb Memories?

Back 3

Vivid, detailed memories of significant events.

Front 4

What is the Now Print! theory?

Back 4

The theory that especially significant experiences are immediately photocopied and preserved in long-term memory.

Front 5

What is Consolidation theory?

Back 5

The classic theory that memory traces of an event are not fully formed immediately after that event, but take some time to consolidate.

Front 6

What is Retroactive interference?

Back 6

a decline in the recall of one event as a result of a later event.

Front 7

What is the hippocampus?

Back 7

A site in the brain that plays a crucial role in the consolidation of memory traces.

Front 8

What is reconsolidation?

Back 8

The hypothetical process whereby a memory trace is revised and reconsolidated.

Front 9

What is the method of repeated reproduction?

Back 9

One participant is given multiple opportunities to recall a story over time.

Front 10

What is the method of serial reproduction?

Back 10

One participant, A, writes down what he or she can recall of a previously read story. A's version is given to a second participant, B, who reads it and then tries to reproduce it. B's version in turn is given to C, and so on.

Front 11

What is Rationalization?

Back 11

The attempt to make memory as coherent and sensible as possible.

Front 12

What is a Schema (according to Bartlett)?

Back 12

An active mass of organized past reactions that provides a setting that guides our behavior.

Front 13

What is a body schema or body image?

Back 13

The individual's schematic representation of his or her body.

Front 14

What is a phantom limb?

Back 14

The feeling, following the sudden loss of a body part, that it is still present.

Front 15

What is the Penfield Homunculus?

Back 15

A map of the sensory cortex that shows where the various parts of the body are represented;the size of each part is proportional to the area of the cortex that represents it.

Front 16

What is plasticity (in regards to function)

Back 16

Flexibility

Front 17

What is selection (in schema theory)?

Back 17

The hypothesis that we select information both as we receive it and as we recall it.

Front 18

What abstraction (in schema theory)?

Back 18

The hypothesis that we tend to remember only the gist, not the specifics, of what we experience.

Front 19

What is interpretation (in schema theory)?

Back 19

The hypothesis that we interpret information by making inferences, and then remember the inferences as part of the original information.

Front 20

What integration (in schema theory)?

Back 20

The hypothesis that we abstract the meaning of an event and then put that meaning together with the rest of our knowledge to form a coherent consistent whole.

Front 21

What is the misinformation effect?

Back 21

The hypothesis that misleading post-event information can become integrated with memory for the original event.

Front 22

What is source monitoring framework?

Back 22

A theory of the reason people sometimes fail to distinguish between a real and an imagined event.

Front 23

What is a script?

Back 23

A set of expectations concerning the actions and events that are appropriate in a particular situation.

Front 24

What is a life script?

Back 24

A cultural narrative that guides autobiographical memories and prescribes the age norms for important events in an individuals life.

Front 25

What are levels of processing?

Back 25

A continuum that ranges from registering an event purely in terms of its physical characteristics to analyzing it in terms of its relationship to other things that you know.

Front 26

What is elaboration?

Back 26

Adding to or enriching information by relating it to other information.

Front 27

What is distinctiveness?

Back 27

The precision with which an item is encoded.

Front 28

What are specific and general levels of representation?

Back 28

As people age they tend to forget specific details but remember deeper, more general meanings.

Front 29

What is the lab-based approach to memory research?

Back 29

An approach that emphasizes controlled laboratory (as opposed to real-world) research in the search for general principles.

Front 30

What are nonsense syllables?

Back 30

Nonsense "words" consisting of a consonant followed by a vowel followed by another consonant.

Front 31

What is the forgetting curve?

Back 31

Ebbinghaus' finding that the rate at which information is forgotten is greatest immediately after the information has been acquired, and declines more gradually over time.

Front 32

What is Jost's Law of Forgetting?

Back 32

Of two memory traces of equal strength, the younger trace will decay faster than the older one.

Front 33

What is Ribot's law of retrograde amnesia?

Back 33

Older memories are less likely to be lost as a result of brain damage than newer memories.

Front 34

What is the Law of progressions and pathologies

Back 34

A "last in, first out" principle referring to the possibility that the last system to emerge is the first to show the effects of degeneration.

Front 35

What is the ecological approach to the study of memory?

Back 35

An approach that emphasizes real-world complexities in its investigations to discover general principles.

Front 36

What is Permastore?

Back 36

Bahrick's term for the state of relative permanence in which he found that some kinds of memory can be retained over very long periods of time.

Front 37

What is the principle of encoding specificity?

Back 37

The way an item is retrieved from memory depends on the way it was stored in memory.

Front 38

What is episodic memory?

Back 38

Memory systems concerned with personally experienced events.

Front 39

What is Semantic Memory?

Back 39

The memory system concerned with knowledge of words, concepts, and their relationships.

Front 40

What is recency bias vs primacy bias?

Back 40

The tendency to recall experiences from the recent past versus a tendency to recall experiences from the relatively distant past.

Front 41

What is procedural memory?

Back 41

The memory system concerned with knowing how to do things.

Front 42

What is Tacit knowledge?

Back 42

Knowing how to do something without being able to say exactly what is it that you know.

Front 43

What is explicit knowledge?

Back 43

Knowing that something is the case.

Front 44

What are Anoetic, Noetic, and autonoetic?

Back 44

Three levels of consciousness corresponding to the procedural, semantic, and episodic memory systems.

Front 45

What is a Prefrontal leucotomy?

Back 45

A surgical procedure, now abandoned, in which the connections between the prefrontal lobes and the other parts of the brain were severed; AKA a prefrontal lobotomy.

Front 46

What is Chronesthesia?

Back 46

Our objective sense of time.

Front 47

What is the butcher-on-the-bus phenomena?

Back 47

The feeling or knowing a person without being able to remember the circumstances of any previous meeting or anything else about him or her.

Front 48

What is implicit memory?

Back 48

Memory without episodic awareness; the expression of previous experience without conscious recollection of the prior episode.

Front 49

What is the method of opposition?

Back 49

Pits conscious (explicit) and unconscious (implicit) tendencies against one another.

Front 50

What is a perceptual representation system (PRS)?

Back 50

A memory system containing very specific representations of events that is hypothesized to be responsible for priming effects.

Front 51

What is the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon?

Back 51

Knowing that you know something without quite being able to recall it.

Front 52

What is a Teachable language comprehender?

Back 52

A computer program that is a model of a semantic memory.

Front 53

What is mental chronometry?

Back 53

Measuring how long cognitive processes take.

Front 54

What is the Moses Illusion?

Back 54

The tendency to answer the question "How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark?" with "two", either because you assume that the person who posed the question meant to say Noah rather that Moses, or because you didn't notice the error.

Front 55

What is Spreading activation?

Back 55

The idea that activation of paths that make up a semantic network spreads from the node at which the search begins.

Front 56

What is lexical decision task?

Back 56

A task requiring participants to determine if a presented string of letters if a word or not.

Front 57

What is Involuntary Semantic Memory ("Mind Popping")?

Back 57

A semantic memory that pops into your mind without episodic context.

Front 58

What is Working memory?

Back 58

The system that allows for temporary storage and manipulation of information that is necessary for various cognitive activities.

Front 59

What is the central executive?

Back 59

The component of working memory that coordinates information from among the three subsystems.

Front 60

What is the phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad?

Back 60

Temporary stores of linguistic and non-verbal information respectively.

Front 61

What is the episodic buffer?

Back 61

The mechanism that moves information to and from episodic memory and long-term memory.

Front 62

What is a fluid system?

Back 62

Cognitive processes that manipulate information.

Front 63

What is a crystallized system?

Back 63

Cognitive systems that accumulate long-term knowledge.

Front 64

What are excitatory and inhibitory connections?

Back 64

Connections that either enhance or diminish the associations between the units that make up a neural network.

Front 65

What is the associative deficit hypothesis?

Back 65

the hypothesis that older adults have a deficiency in creating and retrieving links between single units of information.

Front 66

What is Korsakoff's syndrome?

Back 66

A form of amnesia affecting the ability to form new memories, attributed to thiamine deficiency and often (though not exclusively) seen in chronic alcoholics.

Front 67

What is Disconnection syndrome?

Back 67

Amnesic patients may be able to acquire new information and yet not be aware that learning has taken place.

Front 68

What is prospective memory?

Back 68

The intention to remember to do something at some future time.

Front 69

What is errorless learning?

Back 69

subject in a learning situation are taught in such a way that they never have the opportunity to make errors.

Front 70

What is the method of vanishing cues?

Back 70

Amnesic patients learned the meaning of computer commands by being presented with definitions of the commands and fragments of the commands' names. Additional letters were presented until the patient guessed the word. Then letters were progressively removed until the patient was able to give the name of the command when presented with its definition.