The first step of memory, in which information is labeled, organized and brought into the memory system, is encoding.
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encoding
Encoding is the input of information into memory. How well information is encoded, for example by meaning rather than appearance, strongly affects how well it is remembered.
Category: Encoding
Question 2
German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus memorized lists of nonsense syllables and tested himself over time to chart how quickly information is forgotten.
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Ebbinghaus
Hermann Ebbinghaus pioneered the experimental study of memory in the 1880s by memorizing nonsense syllables and measuring how much he retained at later intervals. His results produced the forgetting curve, which shows rapid early loss that later levels off.
Category: Forgetting and Distortion
Question 3
Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch proposed that short-term memory is a multipart working memory system.
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Baddeley
Baddeley and Hitch's working memory model replaced the idea of a single short-term store with several components, including a phonological loop, a visuospatial sketchpad and a central executive. Baddeley later added an episodic buffer.
Category: Memory Stages and Models
Question 4
In short-term memory, decay is the fading of a memory trace simply because time passes.
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decay
Decay is the weakening of a memory trace over time when it is not used or rehearsed. Interference, in which other information disrupts a memory, is another reason information is lost from short-term memory.
Category: Memory Stages and Models
Question 5
Psychologist Endel Tulving first proposed the distinction between episodic and semantic memory.
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Tulving
Endel Tulving distinguished memory for personal experiences, episodic memory, from memory for general knowledge, semantic memory. Both are forms of explicit memory.
Category: Types of Long-Term Memory
Question 6
Identifying previously learned information when it is presented again, as on a multiple choice test, is recognition.
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recognition
Recognition is retrieval with cues: the correct information is presented and must be identified. It is generally easier than retrieving information with no cues at all.
Category: Retrieval
Question 7
The biological process by which a fragile new memory becomes stable in long-term storage is consolidation.
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consolidation
Consolidation stabilizes a memory after it is encoded, through changes at synapses over hours and across brain systems over weeks or longer. Sleep supports this process.
Category: Memory and the Brain
Question 8
The physical trace of a memory, thought to be stored in a group of neurons, is called an engram.
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engram
An engram is the physical representation of a memory in the brain. Karl Lashley searched for it in rats without finding a single location, and researchers are still working to identify how it is stored.
Category: Memory and the Brain
Question 9
Karl Lashley's equipotentiality hypothesis holds that if part of a memory area is damaged, another part of the same area can take over its role.
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equipotentiality
Equipotentiality means that parts of a brain area are equally able to support a function. Lashley proposed it after rats with cortical lesions in many locations could still run a learned maze.
Category: Memory and the Brain
Question 10
The seahorse-shaped structure in the temporal lobe that is essential for forming new explicit memories and for spatial memory is the hippocampus.
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hippocampus
The hippocampus helps consolidate new explicit memories and supports spatial and recognition memory. Damage to it, as in the patient H.M., can cause severe anterograde amnesia.
Category: Memory and the Brain
Question 11
Neuroscientist Eric Kandel won a Nobel Prize for showing how synapses change as memories form, using the sea slug Aplysia.
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Kandel
Eric Kandel spent decades studying how synapses control the flow of information through memory circuits. He shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this work.
Category: Memory and the Brain
Question 12
Long-term memory loss caused by disease, physical trauma or psychological trauma is amnesia.
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amnesia
Amnesia is significant loss of long-term memory. It is described as anterograde when new memories cannot form and retrograde when earlier memories are lost.
Category: Forgetting and Distortion
Question 13
Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus is known for research showing that misleading information after an event can change eyewitness memory.
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Loftus
Elizabeth Loftus documented the misinformation effect and showed that memories can be altered or even created by suggestion. Her work has had a major influence on how eyewitness testimony is viewed.
Category: Forgetting and Distortion
Question 14
In Schacter's seven sins of memory, the creation of false memories from misleading cues supplied by others is suggestibility.
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suggestibility
Suggestibility is one of Schacter's sins of distortion, in which outside influences such as leading questions implant false details in memory. It underlies the misinformation effect.
Category: Forgetting and Distortion
Question 15
In Schacter's seven sins of memory, recalling a detail correctly but linking it to the wrong source is misattribution.
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misattribution
Misattribution is a sin of distortion in which information is remembered but credited to the wrong time, place or person. An example is believing you read something in a textbook when you actually heard it from a friend.
Category: Forgetting and Distortion