PSYC 2000 Chapter : Psych 2000 2 27 14
Psych 2000
2-27-14
Ch. 6 Memory
Amnesia
- Retrograde amnesia: loss of memory from the point of some injury or trauma backwards;
loss of memory for the past
- Anterograde amnesia: loss of memory from the point of injury or trauma forward; the
inability to form new long-term memories
Alzheimer’s disease
- Primarily causes anterograde amnesia, although retrograde amnesia can also occur as the
disease progress.
Retrieving memory
- Cues to help remember
o Retrieval cue: a stimulus for remembering
- Testing memory
o There are two main ways in which we test memory
▪ Recall
▪ Recognition
- Recall: the information to be retrieved must be “pulled” from memory with very few
external cues
o Free recall
o Retrieval failure: recall has failed (at least temporarily)
o Tip of tongue phenomenon
o Serial position effect: tendency of info at the beginning and end of a body of info to
be remembered more accurately than info in the middle of the body of info
▪ Primacy effect: remember info at the beginning better
▪ Recency effect: remember info at the end better
- Recognition: the ability to match a piece of info or a stimulus to a stored image or fact
o False positive: error of recognition in which people think that they recognize soe
stimulus that is not actually in memory
Eye Witness Testimony
- Eyewitness testimony is not always reliable.
- What people see and hear about an event after the fact can easily affect the accuracy of
their memories of that event
Document Summary
Retrograde amnesia: loss of memory from the point of some injury or trauma backwards; loss of memory for the past. Anterograde amnesia: loss of memory from the point of injury or trauma forward; the inability to form new long-term memories. Primarily causes anterograde amnesia, although retrograde amnesia can also occur as the disease progress. Cues to help remember: retrieval cue: a stimulus for remembering. Testing memory: there are two main ways in which we test memory, recall, recognition. What people see and hear about an event after the fact can easily affect the accuracy of their memories of that event. Automatic encoding: tendency of certain kinds of info to enter long-term memory with little or no effortful encoding. Flashbulb memories: type of automatic encoding that occurs because an unexpected event has strong emotional associations for the person remembering it. Hindsight bias: the tendency to falsely believe that one could have correctly predicted the outcome of an event.
