Memory Basics
the relatively permanent and limitless storehouse of the memory system. Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences.
Long-Term Memory
a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event.
Flashbulb Memory
the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.
Creativity
a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.
Algorithm
A child's speech that sounds like a telegram —“go car”—using mostly nouns and verbs.
Telegraphic Speech
the process of getting information out of memory storage.
Retrieval
organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically.
Chunking
a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people.
Concept
a sudden realization of a problem’s solution.
Insight
beginning at about 4 months, the stage of speech development in which the infant spontaneously utters various sounds at first unrelated to the household language.
Babbling Stage
the immediate, very brief recording of information from the senses in the memory system.
Sensory Memory
our tendency to recall best the last (a recency effect) and first items (a primacy effect) in a list.
Serial Position Effect
a mental image or best example of a category.
Prototype
the way an issue is posed; how an issue is presented can significantly affect decisions and judgments.
Framing
impairment of language, usually caused by left-hemisphere damage.
Aphasia
memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and “declare.”
Explicit Memory
an inability to form new memories.
Anterograde Amnesia
narrows the available problem solutions to determine the single best solution.
Convergent Thinking
judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to match particular prototypes.
Representativeness Heuristic
in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning.
Morpheme
a momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 or 4 seconds.
Echoic Memory
an increase in a cell’s firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory.
Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)
expands the number of possible problem solutions.
Divergent Thinking
a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence.
Confirmation Bias
in a language, a system of rules that enables us to communicate with and understand others.
Grammar