Flashcards
Psychology - Unit 1 - Memory
Cards in this deck (16)
- 1Short-Term MemoryYour memory for immediate events. Short-term memories last for a very short time and disappear unless they are rehearsed. The short-term memory store has limited duration and limited capacity. This type of memory is sometimes referred to as working memory because it is used in comprehending language, solving problems, and so on.
- 2Long-Term MemoryYour memory for events that have happened in the past. This lasts anywhere from 2 minutes to 100 years. The long-term memory store has potentially unlimited duration and capacity.
- 3DurationA measure of how long a memory lasts before it is no longer available. STM has a very limited duration (a memory in STM doesn't last long), whereas LTM has potentially unlimited duration. A memory in LTM could, theoretically, last for the whole of a person's life.
- 4CapacityThis is a measure of how much can be held in memory. It is measured in term s of bits of information such as number of digits. STM has a very limited capacity (less than 7 'chunks' of information) whereas LTM has potentially unlimited capacity.
- 5EncodingThe way information is changed so that it can be stored in memory. Information enters the brain via the senses (e.g. eyes and ears). It is then stored in various forms, such as visual codes (like a picture), acoustic forms (sounds), or a semantic form (the meaning of the experience). Information in STM is mainly encoded acoustically (i.e. information is represented as sounds), whereas information in LTM tends to be encoded semantically (i.e. information is represented by its meaning).
- 6ChunkingMiller proposed that the capacity of STM can be enhanced by grouping sets of digits or letters into meaningful units or 'chunks'.
- 7Sensory Store/MemoryThis is the information at the senses - information collected by your eyes, ears, nose, fingers and so on. Information is retained for a very brief period by the sensory registers. We are only able to hold accurate images of sensory information momentarily (less than half a second). The capacity of sensory memory is very large. The memory of encoding depends on the sense organ, e.g. visual for the eyes or acoustic for the ears.
- 8Central ExecutiveMonitors and coordinates all other mental functions in working memory.
- 9Phonological LoopEncodes speech sounds in working memory, typically involving maintenance rehearsal (repeating the words over and over again). This is why this component of working memory is referred to as a 'loop'.
- 10Visuo-spatial SketchpadEncodes visual information in terms of separate objects as well as the arrangement of these objects in one's visual field.
- 11Episodic BufferReceives input from many sources, temporarily stores this information and then integrates it in order to construct a mental episode of what is being experienced right now.
- 12Word-length EffectThe observation that people remember lists of short words better than lists of long words.
- 13Eyewitness TestimonyThe evidence provided in court by a person who witnessed a crime, with a view to identifying the perpetrator of the crime. The accuracy of eyewitness recall may be affected during initial encoding, subsequent storage and eventual retrieval.
- 14Misleading InformationA question that, either by its form or content, suggests to the witness what answer is desired or leads him to the desired answer.
- 15AnxietyAn unpleasant emotional state where we fear that something bad is about to happen. People often become anxious when they are in stressful situations, and this anxiety tends to be accompanied by physiological arousal. Because of this, much of the research in this area is focused on the effects of arousal on EWT.
- 16Cognitive InterviewA police technique for interviewing witnesses to a crime, which encourages them to recreate the original context in order to increase the accessibility of stored information. Because our memory is made up of a network of associations rather than of discrete events, memories are accessed using multiple retrieval strategies.
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- Flashcards on Psychology - Unit 1 - Memory, created by izzymarshall on 12/03/2015.
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- izzymarshall · Mar 2015
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- Feb 19, 2016
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