Accessibility/availability distinction:
Accessibility refers to the ease with which a stored memory can be retrieved at a given point in time. Availability refers to the binary distinction indicating whether a trace is or is not stored in memory.
Activation level:
The variable internal state of a memory trace that contributes to its accessibility at a given point.
Alcoholic Korsakoff syndrome:
Patients have difficulty learning new information, although events from the past are recalled. There is a tendency to invent material to fill memory blanks. Most common cause is alcoholism, especially when this has resulted in a deficiency of vitamin B1.
Amygdala:
An area of the brain close to the hippocampus that is involved in emotional processing.
Anterograde amnesia:
A problem in encoding, storing, or retrieving information that can be used in the future.
Articulatory suppression:
A technique for disrupting verbal rehearsal by requiring participants to continuously repeat a spoken item.
Associative blocking:
A theoretical process hypothesized to explain interference effects during retrieval, according to which a cue fails to elicit a target trace because it repeatedly elicits a stronger competitor, leading people to abandon efforts to retrieve the target.
Associative deficit hypothesis:
Proposal that the age deficit in memory comes from an impaired capacity to form associations between previously unrelated stimuli.
Autobiographical knowledge base:
Facts about ourselves and our past that form the basis for autobiographical memory.
Autobiographical memory:
Memory across the lifespan for both specific events and self-related information.
Automaticity:
When a skill is practiced to the extent that it no longer requires significant attentional monitoring to be performed and is less effortful.
Autonoetic consciousness:
A term proposed by Tulving for self-awareness, allowing the rememberer to reflect on the contents of episodic memory.
Binding:
Term used to refer to the linking of features into objects (e.g. color red, shape square, into a red square), or of events into coherent episodes.
Category-specific deficits:
Disorders caused by brain damage in which semantic memory is disrupted for certain semantic categories.
Cell assemblies:
A concept proposed by Hebb to account for the physiological basis of long-term learning, which is assumed to involve the establishment of links between the cells forming the assembly.
Change blindness:
The failure to detect that a visual object has moved, changed, or been replaced by another object.
Change blindness blindness:
Individuals' exaggerated belief that they can detect visual changes and so avoid change blindness.
Chunking:
The process of combining a number of items into a single chunk typically on the basis of long-term memory.
Classical conditioning:
A learning procedure whereby a neutral stimulus (e.g. a bell) that is paired repeatedly with a response-evoking stimulus (e.g. meat powder), will come to evoke that response (salivation).
Cognitive control:
The ability to flexibly control thoughts in accordance with our goals, including our ability to stop unwanted thoughts from rising to consciousness.
Cohort effect:
The tendency for people born at different time periods to differ as a result of historic changes in diet, education and other social factors.
Collaborative inhibition:
A phenomenon in which a group of individuals remembers significantly less material collectively than does the combined performance of each group member individually when recalling alone.
Competition assumption:
The theoretical proposition that the memories associated to a shared retrieval cue automatically impede one another's retrieval when the cue is presented.
Concept map:
A diagram in which the links among general concepts (at the top of the diagram) and specific concepts (lower down) are shown.
Confabulation:
Recollection of something that did not happen.
Confirmation bias:
Distortions of memory caused by the influence of expectations concerning what is likely to have happened.
Consolidation:
The time-dependent process by which a new trace is gradually woven into the fabric of memory and by which its components and their interconnections are cemented together.
Consolidation of memory:
A process whereby the memory becomes more firmly established.
It is commonly now divided into two processes, synaptic consolidation a process that is assumed to involve the hippocampus and operate over a 24 hour timescale, and systems consolidation. This is assumed to operate over a much longer period, and to involve the transfer of information from the hippocampus to other parts of the neocortex (see Chapter 5, p. 127 for further discussion).
Context cues:
Retrieval cues that specify aspects of the conditions under which a desired target was encoded, including (for example) the location and time of the event.
Context shift hypothesis:
An alternative explanation for list-method directed forgetting, positing that forget instructions separate firstlist items into a distinct context, which unless reinstated during the final test will make the later context a relatively ineffectual retrieval cue.
Context-dependent memory:
The finding that memory benefits when the spatio-temporal, mood, physiological, or cognitive context at retrieval matches that present at encoding.
Contextual fluctuation:
The gradual and persistent drift in incidental context over time, such that distant memories deviate from the current context more so than newer memories, thereby diminishing the former's potency as a retrieval cue for older memories.
Cortical reinstatement:
The reactivation of sensory memory traces stored by neurons within individual cortical modulates, by virtue of back- projections from the hippocampus that activate the constituent parts of a memory, reinstating the original experience.
Corsi block tapping:
Visuo-spatial counterpart to digit span involving an array of blocks that the tester taps in a sequence and the patient attempts to copy.
Cue- maintenance:
When intentionally retrieving a target memory, the process of sustaining cues in working memory to guide search.
Cue-overload principle:
The observed tendency for recall success to decrease as the number of to- be-remembered items associated to a cue increases.
Cue- specification:
When intentionally retrieving a target memory, the control processes by which one specifies the nature of the target and any contextual features that may constrain retrieval, and establishes these as cues to guide search.
Deliberate practice:
The engagement (with full concentration) in a training activity that is designed to improve a particular aspect of performance, including immediate feedback, opportunities for graduate refinement over repetitions, and problem solving.
Depth of processing:
The proposal by Craik and Lockhart that, the more deeply an item is processed, the better will be its retention.
Digit span:
Maximum number of sequentially presented digits that can reliably be recalled in the correct order.
Direct/explicit memory tests:
Any of a variety of memory assessments that overtly prompt participants to retrieve past events.
Directed forgetting:
The tendency for an instruction to forget recently experienced items to induce memory impairment for those items.
Distributed practice:
Breaking practice up into a number of shorter sessions; in contrast to massed practice, which comprises fewer, long, learning sessions.
Double dissociation:
A term particularly used in neuropsychology when two patient groups show opposite patterns of deficit, e.g. normal STM and impaired LTM, versus normal LTM and impaired STM.
Dual-coding hypothesis:
Highly imageable words are easy to learn because they can be encoded both visually and verbally.
Dual-process theories of recognition:
A class of recognition models that assumes that recognition memory judgments can be based on two independent forms of retrieval process:
recollection and familiarity.
Dud effect:
An eyewitness's increased confidence in his/her mistaken when the lineup includes individuals very dissimilar to the culprit.
Echoic memory:
A term sometimes applied to auditory sensory memory.
Ecological validity:
The extent to which research findings (especially laboratory ones) can be generalized to everyday life.
Elaborative rehearsal:
Process whereby items are not simply kept in mind, but are processed either more deeply or more elaborately.
Electro- encephalography (EEG):
A system for recording the electrical potentials of the brain through a series of electrodes placed on the scalp.
Emotion regulation:
Goal-driven monitoring, evaluating, altering, and gating one's emotional reactions and memories about emotional experiences.
Encoding specificity principle:
The more similar the cues available at retrieval are to the conditions present at encoding, the more effective the cues will be.
Environmental support:
Characteristics of a retention test that support retrieval.
Episodic buffer:
A component of the Baddeley and Hitch model of working memory model that assumes a multidimensional code, allowing the various subcomponents of working memory to interact with long-term memory.
Episodic memory:
A system that is assumed to underpin the capacity to remember specific events.
Episodic sequence learning:
The ability to represent the temporal sequence of occurrences within a larger event.
Evaluative conditioning:
The tendency to one’s liking of a stimulus to be influenced by how frequently it is followed by pleasant or unpleasant stimuli unrelated to it, with positive stimuli enhancing liking, and negative stimulus decreasing liking.
Event- based prospective memory:
A form of prospective memory in which some event provides the cue to perform a given action.
Event-related potentials (ERPs):
The pattern of electroencephalograph (EEG) activity obtained by averaging the brain responses to the same stimulus (or similar stimuli) presented repeatedly.
Everyday memory:
Term applied to a movement within memory to extend the study of memory from the confines of the laboratory to the world outside.
Explicit/declarative memory:
Memory that is open to intentional retrieval, whether based on recollecting personal events (episodic memory) or facts (semantic memory).
Fading affect bias:
The consistent tendency for negative memories, over time, to lose affective intensity at a higher rate than positive memories.
Features:
Elementary components from which a complex memory can be assembled, including perceptual aspects such as color and object shapes, as well as higher level conceptual elements.
Flashbulb memory:
Term applied to the detailed and apparently highly accurate memory of a dramatic experience.
Focal retrograde amnesia (FRA):
A distinct form of psychogenic amnesia without fugue or significant loss of identity, but with an abrupt loss of autobiographical memories that can be extensive and persisting.
Focal task:
An ongoing task that involves similar processing to that involved in encoding the target on a prospective- memory task performed at the same time.
Forgetting curve/retention function:
The logarithmic decline in memory retention as a function of time elapsed, first described by Ebbinghaus.
Frames:
A type of schema in which information about objects and their properties is stored.
Free recall:
A method whereby participants are presented with a sequence of items which they are subsequently required to recall in any order they wish.
Fugue state:
A form of psychogenic amnesia in which a person abruptly loses access to all autobiographical memories from their life, and their personal identity, often resulting in a period of wandering without knowledge of how they got to a location or why. This condition often resolves quickly (within days or weeks).
Fugue- to-FRA:
A distinct form of psychogenic amnesia which starts with fugue, but is followed by recovery or relearning of identity, but with persistent and long- lasting deficits in autobiographical memories, especially older ones.
Gaps in memory:
A distinct form of psychogenic amnesia without fugue or significant loss of personal identity, but with an abrupt loss of discrete periods of time, ranging from hours to months. Multiple gaps may be present.
Gestalt psychology:
An approach to psychology that was strong in Germany in the 1930s and that attempted to use perceptual principles to understand memory and reasoning.
Habit learning:
Gradually learning a tendency to perform certain actions, given a particular stimulus or context, based on a history of reward. Instrumental conditioning is a form of habit learning.
Highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM):
A newer term for hyperthymestic syndrome, which refers to individuals who have exceptional memory for life events, often showing little apparent forgetting of even trivial occurrences many years later, and an uncanny ability to retrieve memories by their precise date.
Hippocampus:
Brain structure in the medial temporal lobe that is important for long-term memory formation.
HSAM:
An acronym for highly superior autobiographical memory cases in which people
exhibit extraordinary memory for everyday autobiographical events over many years.
Hypermnesia:
The improvement in recall performance arising from repeated testing sessions on the same material.
Iconic memory:
A term applied to the brief storage of visual information.
Immersion method:
A strategy for foreign language teaching whereby the learner is placed in an environment where only the foreign language is used.
Implementation intentions:
Plans spelling out in detail how individuals are going to achieve the goals they have set themselves.
Implicit/nondeclarative memory:
Retrieval of information from long-term memory through performance rather than explicit conscious recall or recognition.
Inattentional blindness:
The failure to perceive the appearance of an unexpected object in the visual environment.
Incidental forgetting:
Memory failures occurring without the intention to forget.
Incidental learning:
Learning situation in which the learner is unaware that a test will occur.
Infantile amnesia:
Tendency for people to have few autobiographical memories from below the age of five.
Inhibition:
A general term applied to mechanisms that suppress other activities. The term can be applied to a precise physiological mechanism or to a more general phenomenon, as in proactive and retroactive interference. The level of activation associated with a trace is actively reduced to diminish its accessibility.
Integration:
The process of linking new information to pre- existing knowledge structures, such as prior schemas, concepts, and events.
Intentional learning:
Learning when the learner knows that there will be a test of retention.
Interference:
The phenomenon in which the retrieval of a memory can be disrupted by the presence of related traces in memory.
Interference resolution processes:
When trying to recall a particular target memory, control processes that help to resolve interference from competing memories coactivated by the cues guiding retrieval.
Irrelevant sound effect:
A tendency for verbal STM to be disrupted by concurrent fluctuating sounds, including both speech and music.
Latent inhibition:
Classical conditioning phenomenon whereby multiple prior presentations of a neutral stimulus will interfere with its involvement in subsequent conditioning.
Levels of processing:
The theory proposed by Craik and Lockhart that asserts that items that are more deeply processed will be better remembered.
Lexical decision task:
Participants presented with a string of letters must decide rapidly whether the string forms a word.
Life narrative:
A coherent and integrated account of one's life that is claimed to form the basis of autobiographical memory.
Longitudinal design:
Method of studying development or aging whereby the same participants are successively tested at different ages.
Long-term memory:
A system or systems assumed to underpin the capacity to store information over long periods of time.
Long-term potentiation (LTP):
A process whereby synaptic transmission becomes more effective following a cell's recent activation.
Long-term recency:
A tendency for the last few items to be well recalled under conditions of long-term memory.
Long-term working memory:
Concept proposed by Ericsson and Kintsch to account for the way in which long-term memory can be used as a working memory to maintain complex cognitive activity.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI):
A method of brain imaging that relies on detecting changes induced by a powerful magnetic field.
Magnetoencephalography (MEG):
A system whereby the activity of neurons within the brain is detected through the tiny magnetic fields that their activity generates.
Maintenance rehearsal:
A process of rehearsal whereby items are “kept in mind” but not processed more deeply.
Masking:
A process by which the perception and/or storage of a stimulus is influenced by events occurring immediately before presentation (forward masking) or more commonly after (backward masking).
Mental time travel:
A term coined by Tulving to emphasize the way in which episodic memory allows us to relive the past and use this information to imagine the future.
Meta-analysis:
A form of statistical analysis based on combining the findings from numerous studies on a given research topic.
Metamemory:
Knowledge about one's own memory and an ability to regulate its functioning.
Method of loci:
A memory technique in which to-be-remembered items are associated with various locations well known to the learner.
Misinformation effect:
The distorting effect on eyewitness memory of misleading information presented after a crime or other event.
Modal model:
A term applied to the model of memory developed by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968).
Model:
A method of expressing a theory more precisely, allowing predictions to made and tested.
Mood-congruent memory:
Bias in the recall of memories such that negative mood makes negative memories more readily available than positive, and vice versa. Unlike mood dependency, it does not affect the recall of neutral memories.
Mood-dependent memory:
A form of context dependent effect whereby what is learnt in a given mood, whether positive, negative or neutral, is best recalled in that mood.
Motivated forgetting:
A broad term encompassing intentional forgetting as well as forgetting triggered by motivations, but lacking conscious intention.
Multimodal representation:
A representation that draws together inputs from many different sensory modalities, such as vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. A multimodal representation can also include conceptual and emotional features.
Nonfocal task:
An ongoing task that involves different processes to those required when encoding the target on a prospective- memory task performed at the same time.
Nonsense syllables:
Pronounceable but meaningless consonant-vowel-consonant items designed to study learning without the complicating factor of meaning.
Nonword repetition test:
A test whereby participants hear and attempt to repeat back nonwords that gradually increase in length.
Object memory:
System that temporarily retains information concerning visual features such as color and shape.
Obsessive- compulsive disorder:
An anxiety disorder characterized by obsessional thoughts and by excessive checking behavior.
Offline processing:
A process whereby the hippocampus, either during sleep, or in periods of quiet rest, periodically reinstates recent memories and knowledge in cortex, putatively by a process of hippocampal replay that drives neocortical activation of the elements of an event. Offline processing is assumed to be incidental and not goal directed.
Ongoing task:
A task performed at the same time as a prospective memory task in studies on prospective memory.
Other-race effect:
The finding that recognition memory for same- race faces is generally more accurate than for other-race faces.
Own-age bias:
The tendency for eyewitnesses to identify individuals of the same age as themselves for accurately than those much older or younger.
Part-set cuing impairment:
When presenting part of a set of items (e.g. a category, a mental list of movies you want to rent) hinders your ability to recall the remaining items in the set.
Pattern completion:
The process whereby presenting a subset of features that represent a memory spreads activation to the remaining feature units representing that memory, completing the pattern of activity necessary to retrieve it.
Pegword method:
A memory technique in which to- be-remembered items are associated with pegwords, each of which rhymes with a different number between one and ten.
Personal semantic memory:
Factual knowledge about one's own past.
Personal semantics:
Aspects of one’s own personal or autobiographical memory combining elements of episodic memory and semantic memory.
Phonological loop:
Term applied by Baddeley and Hitch to the component of their model responsible for the temporary storage of speech-like information.
Phonological similarity effect:
A tendency for immediate serial recall of verbal material to be reduced, when the items are similar in sound.
Place cells:
Neurons in the hippocampus that respond whenever an animal or person is in a particular location in a particular environment, the collective activity of which is believed to be a critical ingredient in representing particular spatial environments, either perceived or remembered.
Positivity bias:
The tendency, increasing over the lifespan, to recall more pleasant memories than either neutral or unpleasant ones.
Positron emission tomography (PET):
A method whereby radioactively labeled substances are introduced into the bloodstream and subsequently monitored to measure physiological activation.
Posterior midline cortex:
An area adjacent to and including the posterior cingulate cortex, often including the precuneus and retrosplenial cortex, which appears to be critical for autobiographical memory retrieval, especially for the reinstatement of vivid visuo- spatial details.
Post- retrieval monitoring:
During intentional retrieval, the processes by which one evaluates the products of memory search, to determine whether the retrieved trace is what we seek.
Post-traumatic amnesia (PTA):
Patients have difficulty forming new memories. Often follows a severe concussive head injury and tends to improve with time.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD):
Emotional disorder whereby a dramatic and stressful event such as rape results in persistent anxiety, often accompanied by vivid flashback memories of the event.
Primacy effect:
A tendency for the first few items in a sequence to be better recalled than most of the following items.
Priming:
The process whereby presentation of an item influences the processing of a subsequent item, either making it easier to process (positive priming) or more difficult (negative priming).
Proactive interference:
The tendency for earlier memories to disrupt the retrievability of more recent memories.
Process dissociation procedure (PDP):
A technique for parceling out the contributions of recollection and familiarity within a recognition task.
Prospective memory:
Remembering to carry out some intended action in the absence of any explicit reminder to do so; see retrospective memory.
Psychogenic amnesia:
Profound and surprising episodes of forgetting the events of one's life, arising from psychological factors, rather than biological damage or dysfunction.
Psychogenic fugue:
A form of psychogenic amnesia typically lasting a few hours or days following a severe trauma, in which afflicted individuals forget their entire life history, including who they are.
Rationalization:
A term introduced by Bartlett to refer to the tendency in story recall to produce errors conforming to the rememberer's cultural expectations.
Reality monitoring:
Using source monitoring processes to decide whether a piece of information in memory referred to a real event or instead to something imagined.
Reality orientation training (ROT):
A method of treating patients in the latter stages of dementia who have lost their orientation in time and place.
Recency effect:
A tendency for the last few items in a list to be well recalled.
Recognition memory:
A person's ability to correctly decide whether he/she has encountered a stimulus previously in a particular context.
Recollection:
The slower, more attention-demanding component of recognition memory in dual process models, which involves retrieval of contextual information about the memory.
Reconsolidation:
The process by which a consolidated memory restabilizes again after being reactivated by reminders. During the reconsolidation window, a memory is vulnerable to disruption.
Reconstructive memory:
An active and inferential process of retrieval whereby gaps in memory are filled-in based on prior experience, logic, and goals.
Reductionism:
The view that all scientific explanations should aim to be based on a lower level of analysis:
psychology in terms of physiology, physiology in terms of chemistry, and chemistry in terms of physics.
Remember/know procedure:
A procedure used on recognition memory tests to separate the influences of familiarity and recollection on recognition performance. For each test item, participants report whether it is recognized because the person can recollect contextual details of seeing the item (classified as a “remember” response) or because the item seems familiar, in the absence of specific recollections (classified as “know” response).
Reminiscence:
The remembering again of the forgotten, without learning or a gradual process of improvement in the capacity to revive past experiences.
Reminiscence bump:
A tendency in participants over 40 to show a high rate of recollecting personal experiences from their late teens and twenties.
Reminiscence therapy:
A method of helping dementia patients cope with their growing amnesia by using photographs and other reminders of their past life.
Repetition priming:
Enhanced processing of a stimulus arising from recent encounters with that stimulus, a form of implicit memory.
Repetition suppression:
Reduced activity in a brain area responsible for processing a stimulus when that stimulus is repeated, compared to when it is encountered for the first time.
Repression:
In psychoanalytic theory, a psychological defense mechanism that banishes unwanted memories, ideas, and feelings into the unconscious in an effort to reduce conflict and psychic pain. Theoretically, repression can either be conscious or nonconscious.
Resource sharing:
Use of limited attentional capacity to maintain two or more simultaneous activities.
Retrieval:
The process of recovering a target memory based on one or more cues, subsequently bringing that target into awareness.
Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF):
The tendency for the retrieval of some target items from long-term memory to impair the later ability to recall other items related to those targets.
Retrieval inhibition hypothesis:
A proposed mechanism underlying list-method directed forgetting suggesting that first-list items are temporarily inhibited in response to the instruction to forget and can be reactivated by subsequent presentations of the to-be-forgotten items.
Retrieval mode:
The cognitive set, or frame of mind, that orients a person towards the act of retrieval, ensuring that stimuli are interpreted as retrieval cues.
Retrieval practice paradigm:
A procedure used to study retrieval-induced forgetting.
Retroactive interference:
The tendency for more recently acquired information to impede retrieval of similar older memories.
Retrograde amnesia:
A problem accessing events that happened in the past.
Retrospective memory:
Memory for people, words, and events experienced in the past.
Reverse temporal gradient:
The tendency, in focal retrograde amnesia, for the oldest autobiographical memories to be forgotten more than more recent ones, the opposite to what is shown in organic amnesia (see Chapter 16 on memory disorders).
Reward-based enhancement of memory encoding:
The tendency for offering rewards for successful memory to improve long- term retention of studied material.
Schema:
Proposed by Bartlett to explain how our knowledge of the world is structured and influences the way in which new information is stored and subsequently recalled.
Scripts:
A type of schema relating to the typical sequences of events in various common situations (e.g. having a meal in a restaurant).
SDAM:
An acronym for severely deficient autobiographical memory, referring to a neuropsychological condition in which otherwise high functioning individuals nevertheless are largely unable to remember autobiographical experiences or re-experience them.
Semantic coding:
Processing an item in terms of its meaning, hence relating it to other information in long-term memory.
Semantic dementia:
A progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by gradual deterioration of semantic memory.
Semantic memory:
A system that is assumed to store accumulative knowledge of the world.
Semantic priming:
The finding that word processing is facilitated by the prior presentation of a semantically related word.
Semanticization:
The phenomenon of episodic memories changing into semantic memories over time.
Sensory memory:
A term applied to the brief storage of information within a specific modality.
Short-term memory (STM):
A term applied to the retention of small amounts of material over periods of a few seconds.
Signal detection theory:
A model of recognition memory that posits that memory targets (signals) and lures (noise) on a recognition test possess an attribute known as strength or familiarity, which occurs in a graded fashion, with previously encountered items generally possessing more strength that novel items. The process of recognition involves ascertaining a given test item's strength and then deciding whether it exceeds a criterion level of strength, above which items are considered to be previously encountered. Signal detection theory provides analytic tools that separate true memory from judgment biases in recognition.
Skill learning:
A practiced induced change on a task that allows a person to perform it better faster and or accurately than before. Skill learning encompasses both cognitive and motor skills. Sleep- dependent replay:
The observation that during sleep, material learned prior to sleep is often reactivated or “replayed” in the hippocampus, which is thought to facilitate the consolidation of that content into long- term memory.
Sleep dependent triage:
The finding that sleep improves memory for content learned before sleep in a selective way, favoring salient material (due to emotion or perceived importance) and facilitating the forgetting of less important material.
Source misattribution error:
When deciding the source of information in memory, sometimes people make errors and misattribute their recollection from one source to another.
Source monitoring:
The process of examining the contextual origins of a memory in order to determine whether it was encoded from a particular source.
Spatial working memory:
System involved in temporarily retaining information regarding spatial location.
Spatio-temporal context:
The particular place and time of an event, with spatial information about an environment contributing to specifying where something happened, and temporal information contributing to encoding when it happened.
Spontaneous recovery:
The term arising from the classical conditioning literature given to the reemergence of a previously extinguished conditioned response after a delay; similarly; forgotten declarative memories have been observed to recover over time.
Stem completion:
A task whereby retention of a word is tested by presenting the first few letters. Stereotypes:
Schemas incorporating oversimplified generalizations (often negative) about certain groups.
Story mnemonic:
A memory technique that involves constructing a story linking unrelated words together in the correct order.
Subjective organization:
A strategy whereby a learner attempts to organize unstructured material so as to enhance learning.
Super- recognizers:
Individuals having an outstanding ability to recognize human faces.
Supervisory attentional system (SAS):
A component of the model proposed by Norman and Shallice to account for the attentional control of action.
Suppression-induced forgetting:
The impaired memory for a target item that often results when a person intentionally stops or suppresses the episodic retrieval of that target item triggered by a reminder cue.
Synesthesia:
The tendency for one sense modality to evoke another.
Systems consolidation:
Process of gradual reorganization of the regions of the brain that support memory. Information is consolidated within the brain by a process of transfer from one anatomically based system to another.
Task switching:
A process whereby a limited capacity system maintains activity on two or more tasks by switching between them.
Test-enhanced learning:
The tendency for a period of study to promote much greater learning when that study follows a retrieval test of the studied material.
Testing effect:
The finding that long-term memory is enhanced when much of the learning period is devoted to retrieving the to-be-remembered information.
Think/no-think (TNT) paradigm:
A procedure designed to study the ability to volitionally suppress retrieval of a memory when confronted with reminders.
Time-based prospective memory:
A form of prospective memory in which time is the cue indicating that a given action needs to be performed.
Time cells:
Neurons in the hippocampus that code for particular moments in time in a temporal sequence, independent of any particular external stimuli, the activity of which may contribute to representing time in episodic memories.
Total time hypothesis:
The proposal that amount learned is a simple function of the amount of time spent on the learning task.
Trace decay:
The gradual weakening of memories resulting from the mere passage of time.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS):
A technique in which magnetic pulses briefly disrupt the functioning of a given brain area; administration of several pulses in rapid succession is known as repetitive transcranial stimulation (rTMS).
Transfer-appropriate processing (TAP):
Proposal that retention is best when the mode of encoding and mode of retrieval are the same.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI):
Caused by a blow or jolt to the head, or by a penetrating head injury. Normal brain function is disrupted. Severity ranges from “mild” (brief change in mental status or consciousness) to “severe” (extended period of unconsciousness or amnesia after the injury).
Typicality effect:
The finding that the time taken to decide a category member belongs to a category is less for typical than atypical members.
Unconscious transference:
The tendency of eyewitnesses to misidentify a familiar (but innocent) face as belonging to the culprit.
Unlearning:
The proposition that the associative bond linking a stimulus to a memory trace will be weakened when the trace is retrieved in error when a different trace is sought.
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex:
A portion of the prefrontal cortex located along the midline of the brain (i.e., in the middle), lower in the prefrontal cortex, thought to play an instrumental role in the integration of recent episodic experiences with well- consolidated background knowledge and schemas. The vmPFC (also referred to as medial prefrontal cortex in rodents) also plays a role in hastening the consolidation of schematically related episodic memories.
Verbal learning:
A term applied to an approach to memory that relies principally on the learning of lists of words and nonsense syllables.
Verbal overshadowing:
The reduction in recognition memory for faces that often occurs when eyewitnesses provide verbal descriptions of those faces before the recognition-memory test.
Visuo-spatial sketchpad:
A component of the Baddeley and Hitch model that is assumed to be responsible for the temporary maintenance of visual and spatial information.
Visuo-spatial STM:
Retention of visual and/or spatial information over brief periods of time.
von Restorff effect:
The finding that a to-be- remembered item that is distinctively different from other items is especially likely to be remembered.
Weapon focus:
The finding that eyewitnesses have poor memory for details of a crime event because they focus their attention on the culprit's weapon.
Word fragment completion test:
A technique whereby memory for a word is tested by deleting alternate letters and asking participants to produce the word.
Word length effect:
A tendency for verbal memory span to decrease when longer words are used.
Working memory:
A memory system that underpins our capacity to “keep things in mind” when performing complex tasks.
Working memory capacity:
An assessment of the how much information can be processed and stored at the same time.
Working memory span:
Term applied to a range of complex memory span tasks in which simultaneous storage and processing is required.
Working self:
A concept proposed by Conway to account for the way in which autobiographical knowledge is accumulated and used.