Memory Basics
This type of conscious, declarative memory handles facts and experiences that one can consciously know and openly report.
What is explicit memory?
Strong emotions trigger stress hormones that provoke this specific limbic system structure to initiate a memory trace.
What is the amygdala?
This specific type of amnesia describes an inability to retrieve old memories that were stored prior to a trauma or condition.
What is retrograde amnesia?
This term describes "cognition about our cognition," referring to how we track and evaluate our own mental processes.
What is metacognition?
According to Charles Spearman, this general intelligence factor underlies all of our specific mental abilities.
What is g?
Aside from space and frequency, this is the third type of information that our brains automatically process without effort.
What is time?
This structure acts as a temporary holding zone for explicit memories before they are consolidated and moved to other brain regions for long-term storage.
What is the hippocampus?
Misattributing a reconstructed memory to the wrong source is known as this phenomenon, which helps explain the feeling of déjà vu.
What is source amnesia?
This is a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people that helps simplify our everyday thinking.
What is a concept?
This specific type of intelligence represents our accumulated knowledge and verbal skills, which steadily increases up into old age.
What is crystallized intelligence?
Recording momentary images (iconic) or echoes of sounds (echoic), this memory stage feeds our active working memory
What is sensory memory?
If you are forming or storing an implicit memory created by classical conditioning, you are heavily relying on this part of the brain.
What is the cerebellum?
This effect occurs when exposure to misleading data corrupts a person's stored memory of what actually happened.
What is the misinformation effect?
Contrasted with explicit reasoning, this is an effortless, immediate, and automatic feeling or thought born of experience.
What is intuition?
Unlike achievement tests that assess what you have already learned, these tests are intended to predict your capacity to learn a new skill.
What is an aptitude test?
Chunking, mnemonics, and hierarchies are all categorized as this type of processing strategy to help us remember new information.
What are effortful processing strategies?
These deep brain structures are involved in motor movement and facilitate the formation of our procedural memories for physical skills.
What are the basal ganglia?
Memory researchers use this term to describe the process where our memories are continually revised and reassembled when retrieved.
What is reconsolidation?
While an algorithm guarantees a correct answer through a step-by-step process, this simpler cognitive strategy offers a faster shortcut.
What is a heuristic?
Standardizing an intelligence test typically results in scores that form this symmetrical, bell-shaped distribution around an average baseline.
What is a normal curve?
While short-term memory is brief and limited, the storage capacity for this type of memory network is essentially limitless.
What is long-term memory?
Learning relies on this synaptic change, which involves an increase in a synapse's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation.
What is synaptic enhancement?
If a patient is perfectly capable of remembering their past but suffers from the inability to form any new memories, they have this condition.
What is anterograde amnesia?
Expertise, a venturesome personality, imaginative thinking skills, and intrinsic motivation are the primary components that foster this.
What is creativity?
Robert Sternberg’s triarchic theory proposes three intelligence areas: analytical, practical, and this innovative third type.
What is creative intelligence?