Memory Basics
This process transforms incoming information into a form the memory system can use.
What is encoding?
This type of memory involves consciously remembered facts and personal experiences.
What is explicit memory?
Essay questions generally require this retrieval method because students must produce information without answer choices.
What is recall?
This brain structure is especially important for forming and consolidating new explicit memories.
What is the hippocampus?
A student cannot remember someone’s name because the student was distracted during the introduction.
What is encoding failure?
This process maintains encoded information over time.
What is storage?
Remembering your first day of college is an example of this type of memory.
What is episodic memory?
Multiple-choice questions use this retrieval method by asking students to identify information they have encountered before.
What is recognition?
This brain region supports working memory, planning, organization, and controlled retrieval.
What is the prefrontal cortex?
An old password repeatedly interferes when someone tries to enter a new password.
What is proactive interference?
This process brings stored information back into awareness.
What is retrieval?
Knowing that Atlanta is the capital of Georgia is an example of this type of memory.
What is semantic memory?
Remembering 72941853 as 729–418–53 demonstrates this organizational memory strategy.
What is chunking?
This brain structure strengthens the emotional components of memory.
What is the amygdala?
After learning a new phone number, someone has difficulty remembering the previous number.
What is retroactive interference?
This memory system briefly records incoming sights and sounds.
What is sensory memory?
Typing without looking at the keyboard depends primarily on this type of memory.
What is procedural memory?
Seeing the word “clinic” makes someone recognize the word “doctor” more quickly.
What is priming?
This brain structure supports procedural memory, practiced motor skills, and conditioned physical responses.
What is the cerebellum?
Misleading information presented after an event changes a person’s later recollection of that event.
What is the misinformation effect?
This limited-capacity system actively holds and manipulates information while you solve a problem.
What is working memory?
Feeling tense when hearing a dentist’s drill is an example of this learned memory response.
What is Implicit/Conditioned memory?
This deep level of processing focuses on the meaning of information and its connections to existing knowledge.
What is semantic processing?
The hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and cerebellum demonstrate that memory depends on this rather than one storage location.
What is a network of brain regions?
This effective study plan combines short sessions across multiple days with practice producing information without notes.
What are spacing and retrieval practice?