Perception
A student focuses on a whisper during a movie while ignoring the loud soundtrack.
What is Selective Attention?
A person sees a camera flash and the light lingers for a split second before vanishing.
What is Iconic Memory?
After a stroke, a man can't form new memories of his nurses, suggesting damage here.
What is the Hippocampus?
You get a new locker combo and find it impossible to remember the old one.
What is Retroactive Interference?
Using "PEMDAS" to remember the order of operations in math is this type of aid.
What is a Mnemonic?
An observer uses the different angles from both eyes to judge how close a fly is.
What is Retinal Disparity?
A teen remembers a 16-digit gift card code by grouping it into four sets of four.
What is Chunking?
A woman can still play the violin perfectly despite forgetting the day she learned it.
What is the Cerebellum (or Basal Ganglia)?
A witness "remembers" a broken headlight because a lawyer used the word "smashed."
What is the Misinformation Effect?
Studying for 20 minutes every night for a week instead of two hours once.
What is the Spacing Effect?
A plane looks like a speck in the sky, but you know it hasn't actually shrunk.
What is Size Constancy?
This middle stage of the multi-store model is where info is held while you think about it.
What is Short-term (or Working) Memory?
A person clearly remembers where they were when they heard about a massive earthquake.
What is a Flashbulb Memory?
You remember a joke perfectly but think a friend told it, when you actually saw it on TikTok.
What is Source Amnesia?
Relating new vocabulary words to your own personal childhood stories.
What is Deep Processing?
An infant stops at the edge of a glass-covered drop-off in a lab.
What is the Visual Cliff?
You remember the "Apples" and "Bread" at the top and bottom of a list but forget the middle.
What is the Serial Position Effect?
This brain structure is key for storing "how-to" motor skills rather than "what" facts.
What is the Cerebellum?
A man remembers how to walk and talk after a crash but cannot make new memories.
What is Anterograde Amnesia?
Being in the same caffeinated state during a test as you were while studying.
What is State-dependent Memory?
In a logo, you see a hidden shape in the white space between letters.
What is Figure-ground?
This biological process involves synapses becoming more efficient after repeated use.
What is Long-term Potentiation (LTP)?
Memories for general facts like "The first President" are called this.
What is Explicit Memory?
A student can't recall an old password because her new one keeps popping into her head.
What is Retroactive Interference?
Finding that you can learn a forgotten language much faster the second time around.
What is Relearning?