A |
| Absentmindedness—When a person intends to perform one action but unintentionally does another. |
| Absorption—The continual transfer of the contents of working memory into long-term memory. |
| Accessibility of a trace—The ease with which a trace can be found in memory; sometimes believed to be due to the number of cues present. |
| Acetylcholine—A neurotransmitter that can affect memory processes (see scopolamine) and found in reduced levels in the brains of Alzheimer's victims.
|
| Acoustic encoding—Encoding of sounds or of acoustic information in verbal stimuli. |
| Activation of a trace—The increase in the strength of a trace in long-term memory due to rehearsing the trace in working memory. |
| Acronym—Arranging a list of words so that the first letters of the words themselves make a word. Acronyms are usually easy to learn and remember (see first letter mnemonic). |
| Acrostic—A procedure to learn a target word by making a sentence in which each word of the sentence begins with one of the letters that makes up the target word. |
| Action potential—The level of electrical stimulation of a nerve that, when exceeded, leads an electrical impulse to travel throughout a cell body to the axon branches which release neurotransmitters into the synapse. |
| Activation of a trace—The increase in the strength of a trace in long-term memory that results when information in the trace, or related to a trace, is presented. |
| Adrenaline (epinephrine)—A hormone that may enhance learning. |
| Adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH)—A hormone produced by the adrenal glands that in small doses may enhance learning. |
| Agnosia—An inability to recognize objects. Agreements to perform memory tasks. Dividing future memory tasks into parts and allocating them among individuals. |
| Alzheimer's disease—A disorder that typically leads to an obvious loss in short-term memory and long-term memory. |
| Alzheimer's Disease Associated Protein (ADAP) —A protein that seems to appear only in the tissue of people with Alzheimer's. It has been found in both the brain and
spinal fluid.
|
| Amnesia syndrome—A loss of an ability to form long-term memories. |
| Amphetamine—A stimulant that may enhance learning, especially when fatigue is present. |
| Amygdala—A part of the limbic system that is involved in forming long-term memories. |
| Amyloid precursor protein (APP)—A normal, essential substance made by brain cells that contain beta amyloid. In Alzheimer's, APP is cut and releases beta amyloid. Beta amyloid then forms clumps called senile plaque.
|
| Anterograde amnesia—The failure to learn, i.e., form long-term memories. |
| Aphasia—A difficulty in expressing and/or understanding language. |
| Apolipoprotein E (ApoE)—A protein that ferries cholesterol through the bloodstream. The ApoE gene has three variants (or alleles), E2, E3, and E4. Each person inherits an allele from each parent. Ninety percent of the population inherit
one copy of ApoE3, and 60 percent inherit two copies.
|
| Applicability of manipulations—The particular tasks for which mental manipulation will be effective. |
| Apraxia—A disorder due to brain damage that impairs a person's ability to move. |
| Architecture of memory—The arrangement of components of the memory system. |
| Arousal—A general increase in a person's energy that enhances capability to pay attention and to perform. |
| Arts of memory—Paintings, sculptures, or maps that have been designed to aid memory. |
| Assessment of Memory Abilities—Identification of strengths and weaknesses at memory tasks as revealed by formal testing by a psychologist. |
| Associationism—The view that memory is ultimately explained by forming associations between items. |
| Associations of a trace—Associations join traces to one another. |
| Associative Mental Manipulations—Techniques that lead traces to be connected together in long-term memory. |
| Attention—The process of orienting to the world around us and the contents of working memory. |
| Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder—(ADHD) is a diagnosis applied to children and adults who consistently display certain characteristic behaviors over a period of time, including inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. People who are inattentive may have a hard time learning something new. |
| Attention, distribution—The intensity of attention varies across memory traces. |
| Attention, level—The level of the intensity of attention. |
| Attribute mental manipulations—Techniques that foster comprehension of aspects of material to be learned. |
| Attributes of a trace—One of the aspects of a trace affected by mental manipulation. |
| Autistic savant—A person who demonstrates extraordinary mental ability in some area but also suffers retardation. |
| Autobiographical memory—Memory for the events of a person's life. |
| Availability heuristic—Judging the frequency of an event based on how easily instances of the event can be remembered. |
| Availability of a trace—Whether a trace is in memory or not. |
C |
| Cell assemblies—Groups of interconnected neurons hypothesized to retain memories (see macrocolumn and neural nets). |
| Central executive (processor)—A component of the memory system that directs the mental process that underlies memory performance. |
| Cerebellum—The bulbic structure at the back of the cortex that is involved in balance and movement and in establishing motoric memories. |
| Characteristic features—Features of concept that identify the characteristics of instances of a particular concept (see defining features). |
| Childhood amnesia—The inability to remember events from very early childhood (same as infantile amnesia). |
| Chunking—The combining of information into chunks to facilitate storage in STM. |
| Clustering—The organization of items into groups in memory based on membership in the same category (see subjective organization). |
| Coding of information—Identifying the features of a stimulus and storing them in memory. |
| Cognitive interview (guided recall)—A collection of retrieval strategies that sometimes increases recall. |
| Cognitive maps—A mental map of the environment. |
| Compliance—The performance of a memory task because the person is not motivated to do so. |
| Components of memory—The parts of the memory system. |
| Computerized axial tomography (CAT)—A scan of the brain that sends a rapidly rotating X-ray beam through the patient's head, taking pictures of the brain from different angles (see MRI and PET scans). |
| Conceptually driven tasks—Tasks that require active organization and elaborative processes (also called 'top down'). |
| Condition for memory tasks—Physical fitness that affects a person's ability to pay attention and perform memory tasks. |
| Confabulation—When a person makes up a false story, without doing so intentionally, concerning a past event in his or her life (see false memory syndrome). |
| Connectionism—The view that memory is explained by connections between items. |
| Consolidation—The physiological process that progressively transforms a temporary memory into a permanent memory. |
| Context dependent memory—Superior recall which occurs when it is attempted in the presence of a context that was also present during learning (see encoding specificity principle, state dependent memory, mood dependent memory, and transfer-appropriate processing). |
| Control processes—Flexible strategies used to facilitate the formation of long-term memories (see maintenance rehearsal and storage rehearsal). |
| Conversational flow manipulations—Techniques that affect the flow of conversation to give a person extra time for memory processing. |
| Cortisol—The major natural glucocorticoid (GC) in humans. It is the primary stress hormone.
|
| Credibility of memory performance—The seeming validity of a person's remembering, due to the person's skill at expressing the content of that recalled. |
| Cueing—The effect of physical cues that improves learning or remembering. |
| Cue-dependent forgetting—An inability to remember because retrieval cues are not present. |
| Cue gathering—Looking or listening for things that might facilitate a person's learning or remembering. |
| Cue-word method (for study of autobiographical memory)—A task that requires a person to recall a personal memory that is associated with a cue word. |
| Cultural memory tasks—Memory tasks that are common or important to a certain culture. |
| Cumulative rehearsal—The rehearsing of a set of items over and over (see noncumulative rehearsal). |
D |
| Decay of a trace (law of disuse)—The erosion or fading of a memory trace. Decay theory. A theory of forgetting that assumes memories grow weaker and weaker with the passage of time. |
| Declarative memory—A kind of memory that is directly accessible to conscious recollection. |
| Defining features—Features of concept that allow an object to be considered an instance of a particular concept. |
| Deja vu—The feeling that one has already experienced a situation while knowing that she or he has never encountered the situation before. |
| Dementia—Disorders that result in a significant loss of intellectual abilities, such as memory capacity, severe enough to interfere with social or occupational functioning. |
| Dendrites—Branches of a neuron that dispose a neuron to fire when stimulated by neurotransmitters. |
| Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)—Chemical chains that retain genetic codes and that some people assume are involved in memory. |
| Depression—The emotional state of being down that often leads to lessened memory ability (see anterograde amnesia). |
| Dichotic listening task—The task of listening to simultaneous messages (e.g., a list of letters or words) to each ear. |
| Digit span—A test in which a series of digits are presented and the person being tested must try to recite them in the order of presentation. |
| Directed forgetting (suppression)—The conscious attempt to forget a memory by deliberately trying not to think about it. |
| Displacement of memory—The hypothesis that new information can push old information out of memory. |
| Dissociative memory disorder—Where memory of one's identity is forgotten because of intense memories; (also called functional amnesia; see multiple personality disorder, psychogenic amnesia and psychogenic fugue). |
| Distinctiveness hypothesis—The hypothesis that deeper levels of processing result in better and more distinctive learning than shallower levels of processing (see elaboration hypothesis). |
| Distortion of a trace—An alteration of a memory trace. |
| Distribution of practice—When a person distributes his or her studying over time. |
| Dressing apraxia—A disorder in which people forget how to put on their clothes. |
| Dynamics of social interaction—The pace and content of conversation, which affects the encoding and retrieval of information. |
E |
| Easterbrook hypothesis—The hypothesis that increased arousal narrows attention, focusing on fewer cues in the environment than normal. |
| Efficiency of memory technique use—The speed with which a person is able to execute a manipulation. |
| Elaboration hypothesis—The hypothesis that deeper levels of processing result in better learning than shallower levels of processing. |
| Elaborative rehearsal (Type II rehearsal)—Repetition of information in order to analyze it more deeply forms a long-term memory of the information. |
| Electroconvulsive shock—Electrical stimulation to the brain used to treat depression that induces a brief retrograde amnesia. |
| Encoding—An incidental form of learning. |
| Encoding specificity principle—Superior recall of items that occurs when recall is attempted in the presence of cues that were also present during learning (see context dependent memory, state dependent memory, mood dependent memory, and transfer-appropriate processing). |
| Engram—The neuronal or chemical material in which a memory trace resides. |
| Environmental activity—A behavior that focuses on objects or events in order to stimulate, or even substitute for, memory. |
| Epilepsy—A disorder due to brain seizures that affect memory capabilities. |
| Epinephrine (Adrenaline)—A hormone that may enhance learning. |
| Exhaustive serial search—A search of memory item by item. |
| Experimental approach—The study of memory through experimentation. |
| Expert knowledge—The knowledge of experts that enables them to carry out impressive memory feats. |
| Explicit encoding (Intentional)—Trying to register information in memory. |
| Explicit remembering—Intentional recall. |
| External memory aids—The use of objects and devices to remember to perform memory tasks (see internal memory aids and commercial memory aids, reminding services and external knowledge sources). |
I |
| Iconic memory—A memory that provides a brief but highly accurate record for stimuli impinging on sensory receptors. |
| Idiot savant—A mentally retarded person who is nevertheless capable of performing impressive memory feats (see autistic savants, mono-savant, savant syndrome, talented savants and prodigious savants). |
| Immediate memory—The retention of items for about 30 seconds or less (see STM or primary memory). |
| Implicit memory tasks—Tasks that do not involve conscious remembering of past learning but do involve performance that shows such learning occurred. |
| Implicit remembering—Unconscious influence of information on recall. |
| Incidental manipulations—Behaviors that raise attention level in general. |
| Incremental learning—Learning bit by bit, rather than all at once. |
| Infantile amnesia—The inability to remember very early childhood. |
| Information-processing approach—The theoretical view that memory is best explained as a computer, where learning and remembering are done by mental programs. |
| Instructional variables—Aspects of the directions on how to perform a memory task. |
| Intentional forgetting—Deliberate forgetting due to inattention to the memory trace. |
| Intentional manipulations—Behaviors that raise attention by consciously focusing on certain details of the information encountered in the task. |
| Interference hypothesis of repression—The explanation that repression is due to the anxiety associated with the repressed memories. |
| Interference theory of forgetting—A theory that assumes forgetting occurs because the primary memory trace to be remembered is confused with one or more other memories. |
| Internal memory aids—The use of mental strategies to remember to perform retrospective and prospective memory tasks (see external memory aids). |
| Intrusion—An item recalled incorrectly. |
L |
| Language of Memory—Common words or colloquial expressions that describe memory performance. |
| Law of Contiguity—The law that two events or experiences which occur closely in time will become associated with each other. |
| Law of disuse (decay theory)—The explanation of forgetting as due to the weakening of habits over time. |
| Leading questions—Questions that suggest the answer to be given. |
| Learning—An intentional form of memory registration. |
| Levels of processing approach—The perspective that memories are learned by processing material. |
| Lexical decision task—The task of deciding whether a string of letters makes up a word or not. |
| Link mnemonic—A technical mnemonic in which a person visualizes each successive pair of a set of objects by interacting, forming a mental link from one object to another. |
| Linkword system—A mnemonic in which foreign language vocabulary is learned by forming an image of an object suggested by the foreign word in interaction with an image suggested by the English word. |
| Long-term memory system—The component of the memory system that retains information indefinitely (see secondary memory). |
| Long-term recency effect—The superior recall of the final items in a list. |
| Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery (LN)—A battery that presents a series of standardized cognitive tests, some of which assess memory performance. |
M |
| Macrocolumns—Interconnected neurons which function together to record engrams (see cell assemblies and neural nets). |
| Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)—A scan in which strong magnetic fields surround the head and bombard it with radio-frequency pulses whereupon the brain emits signals that the computer uses to develop pictures of the brain (see CAT and PET scans). |
| Maintenance rehearsal (Type I rehearsal)—Shallow repetition of information in order to just keep it in consciousness, but not learn it (see elaborative rehearsal). |
| Mamillary bodies—A structure in the diencephalon involved in learning. |
| Managerial memory manipulations—Enhancing memory through organizing use of memory manipulations. |
| Medial temporal regions—Inner areas of the temporal lobes that are involved in memory consolidation. |
| Mediation deficits—When an individual cannot make use of memory strategies. |
| Memorist—A person with superior memory skills without making use of traditional image-based mnemonics. |
| Memory aids—Objects or devices that facilitate memory performance. |
| Memory aids, commercial—A product that facilitates memory performance or does the memory task for a person. |
| Memory attitude manipulation—A behavior that corrects your misimpressions of memory performance and that fosters a realistic approach to memory tasks. |
| Memory blocks—When a person tries repeatedly to recall something but cannot do so. |
| Memory communication—Claims about memory performance that affect another's acceptance of the claims. |
| Memory condition manipulation—A behavior that enhances a person's memory performance by improving one's physiological and mental states. |
| Memory contrivance—A portrayal of someone else's memory performance as better or worse than it actually was in order to achieve certain social goals. |
| Memory disorder—A psychological and/or physiological condition that impairs memory performance and renders the person unable to function adequately in daily life. |
| Memory etiquette—Rules concerning how one should act when someone else fails at a memory task. |
| Memory feedback—Information about a person's memory performance (see memory contrivance). |
| Memory improvement—A program of imparting better memory processes (see memory rehabilitation). |
| Memory language—Words that convey memory states. |
| Memory pacts—Agreements wherein one person agrees to perform certain memory tasks in exchange for the other person performing other memory tasks. |
| Memory questionnaires—Questionnaires that ask about memory performance. |
| Memory rehabilitation—A program of retraining memory functions that have been lost due to disease, disorder or accident (see memory improvement). |
| Memory reputation—The beliefs that others hold regarding the likelihood a person will succeed or fail at memory tasks. |
| Memory rituals—Memory tasks customarily expected of individuals in certain cultures. |
| Memory role expectations—Memory tasks customarily expected of individuals in certain relationships (e.g., knowledge that people of a certain occupation are expected to know). |
| Memory savvy—Knowledge about how to recognize memory problems, link them with appropriate manipulations, and adjust your performance to fit the memory tasks that arise. |
| Memory slips—The recalls of something other than what was intended. |
| Memory span—The number of items recalled in correct order from a list. |
| Memory stereotypes—Beliefs people hold about the memory performance of others in a particular group (gender, race, physical appearance, or occupation). |
| Memory strategies—The mental activities used to enhance learning and retrieval. |
| Memory tasks—There are four categories of memory tasks: knowledge, events, intentions, and actions. |
| Memory tasks imposed by others—Situations in which social norms dictate that a person must perform certain memory tasks. |
| Memory test battery—A collection of standardized memory tasks that is administered to measure an individual's memory functioning. |
| Mental conditions that impair memory performance—Poor concentration, excessive emotions, anxiety, mood difficulties. |
| Mental status exam—An interview in which the examiner assesses the individual's cognitive abilities. |
| Metamemory—Knowledge and beliefs about how to perform memory tasks and about a person's awareness of one's own memory processes, abilities and interests. |
| Metamemory questionnaires—Tests of self-knowledge of memory performance and memory strategy use (see memory questionnaires). |
| Method of loci—A mnemonic in which a person memorizes a set of familiar locations (such as the rooms in one's house) and then mentally places each item on a list in the different rooms of the house. |
| Misinformation effect—The effect of leading questions about a previous event on a person's memory for the event. |
| Mnemonics—Knowledge about the ways of learning or remembering. |
| Mnemonist—Someone with a superior memory due to extensive knowledge and practice with mnemonics. |
| Mood-dependent memory—The hypothesis that memories may be retrieved best when a person's mood at the time of retrieval is the same as when learning occurred (see encoding specificity and state-dependent memory). |
| Mood induction—Presenting stimuli that elicit a particular mood state. |
| Motivated forgetting—Forgetting due to conscious suppression or repression of a memory. |
| Motivation—The influence of incentives and drives on a person's attempt to perform memory tasks. |
| Multi-Infarct Dementia —dementia brought on by a series of strokes.
|
| Multi-modal Theoretical Perspective—The hypothesis that memory is best improved by taking account of all psychological modes (such as perceptual, motivational, physiological, emotional, social). |
| Multiple personality disorder—When a person's personality structure divides into two or more distinct identities (see psychogenic amnesia and psychogenic fugue). |
N |
| Naive mnemonics—Mnemonic techniques that people naturally use without formal training or instruction. |
| Nerve Growth Factor—a substance that occurs naturally in the body and enhances the growth and survival of cholinergic nerves. |
| Network models—Models of memory where ideas are linked together in a network of interconnections. |
| Neural nets—Interconnected neurons hypothesized to mediate memories (see cell assemblies and macrocolumn). |
| Neurofibrillary tangles—Twisted nerve fibers and tangles of dead neurons called senile plaques that are believed to be involved in memory losses in Alzheimer's disease. |
| Neuron—The smallest anatomical unit of the nervous system. A neuron consists of a cell body, dendrites and an axon, and is separated from other neurons by a space called a synapse. |
| Neurotoxic—poisonous to nerves or nerve tissue. |
| Neurotransmitter—A substance that neurons release into synapses and that stimulates other neurons. |
| New approach to improving memory abilities—The improvement of memory ability by affecting memory directly or indirectly through other psychological functions (physical and mental condition, memory attitudes, perception and use of the physical environment, social interaction). |
| Next-in-line effect—The poor recall a person in a group has for what was said by others who spoke just before or after this person. |
| Nonverbal memory language—Gestures, facial expressions, and nonverbal sounds that a person remembers. |
| Norepinephrine—A neurotransmitter substance that can enhance subsequent memory performance (see neurotransmitter). |
| Nucleus basalis of Meynert —A small group of cholinergic nerve cells in the forebrain and connected to areas of the cerebral cortex.
|
| Number-letter mnemonic—A mnemonic in which a person first memorizes number to letter pairs with the digits 0 to 9. Later the letters of words may be memorized by converting the letters into numbers. Also, numbers may be memorized (such as historical dates) by converting numbers in to letters. |
P |
| Paired Associate Learning—Learning pairs of items so that the second item may be recalled when the first is presented. |
| Parallel distributed processing (PDP)—When mental processes occur simultaneously. |
| Pattern recognition—The recognition of an arrangement of different kinds of stimuli. |
| Peg system—A mnemonic in which a person first memorizes a series of mental hooks on which to "hang" items to be learned. For example, a person first memorizes a series of number-object pairs, usually in a rhyme ("one is a bun, two is a shoe, three is a tree, etc."), and then mentally places each item on a list to be learned on an object, resulting in rapid learning of the list. |
| Person schema—An idea about a person that is built up through experience about a person (their traits and typical behaviors). |
| Phases of memory processes—Registration, retention, and remembering. |
| Photographic memory (eidetic imagery)—The ability to remember a perfect image of a visual stimulus after the stimulus has been removed from view. |
| Physical conditions that impair memory performance—Fatigue, lack of sleep, medicines, major and minor health problems, poor nutrition, sensory deficiencies, and use of adverse substances. |
| Placement and Intentions—Placing objects in conspicuous locations facilitates the remembering of an intention. |
| Pollyanna principle—Information and events are more likely to be free recalled if they are pleasant. |
| Positron emission tomography (PET)—A picture of the brain by measuring the amount of glucose taken up by different groups of neurons may be obtained by injecting radioactively labeled glucose into the bloodstream and radiation detectors (see MRI and CAT scans). |
| Posttraumatic amnesia (PTA)—An amnesia from the onset of a coma to the recovery of continuous memory. |
| Presenile dementia—Dementias that occur before the age of 65 years. |
| Primacy effect—The superior recall of the initial items in a list. |
| Primary memory—Consciousness (sometimes regarded as short-term memory). |
| Priming—The increase in trace strength due to familiarizing oneself with the material to be learned or retrieved. |
| Proactive interference (PI)—The effect of prior learning on the recall of something learned more recently. |
| Procedural memory—Memory for actions or sequences. |
| Prodigious savant—A person who performs cognitive tasks at an exceptional level, but who is mentally retarded. |
| Production deficits—When an individual fails to generate an appropriate memory strategy for a memory task. |
| Proprioceptive cues—Information about what body parts are doing when something is learned. |
| Proposition—A unit of knowledge that can be asserted as being either true or false. |
| Prosopagnosia—A disorder in which a person cannot recognize the faces of familiar people. |
| Prospective memory—Remembering to carry out intended acts (see retrospective memory). |
| Pseudodementia—A severe form of depression resulting from a progressive brain disorder in which cognitive changes mimic those of dementia.
|
| Psychogenic amnesia—An amnesia due to an extremely stressful event (see psychogenic fugue and multiple personality disorder). |
| Psychogenic fugue—An amnesia in which a person loses his or her identity because of an extremely stressful event (see psychogenic amnesia and multiple personality disorder). |
R |
| Reality monitoring—Detecting whether a memory pertains to an event that actually occurred or that one imagined. |
| Realization—Incidental remembering. |
| Recall—Saying or writing what was presented or what occurred. |
| Recall congruency—The effect of mood on the recall of information during recall (see encoding congruency). |
| Recency effect—The superior recall of the final items on a list. |
| Recent memory—Memory for events that happened several hours or a few days previously. |
| Receptor site—The sites on the postsynaptic membrane that are affected by neurotransmitters. |
| Recognition—Indicating whether or not something was presented previously. |
| Reconstruction—Guessing what might have occurred or what might be true when one cannot recall this. |
| Refreshing—Reviving a memory by presenting some record of the event. |
| Reminding—Presenting a cue in order to lead a memory to be remembered. |
| Reminiscence—Repeated attempts at recalling autobiographical experiences, usually for pleasure. |
| Remote memory—Memory for events that happened a long time ago. |
| Repisodic memory—A memory that blends the memories of similar episodes. |
| Repertoire (of memory techniques)—A set of task-specific techniques tailored to particular memory tasks. |
| Repression—Inability to recall extremely unpleasant memories or experiences. |
| Resource-allocation hypothesis—Inability to recall due to attempting too many cognitive tasks. |
| Response bias—The tendency to recall information in a way that will be acceptable to others. |
| Retrieval—Intentional remembering. |
| Retrieval practice—Development of skill at retrieval through repeated attempts at a remembering task. |
| Retrieval structure of a trace—One of the four aspects of a trace that may be formed by a mental manipulation. A retrieval structure is developed by creating trace information that suggests the information in another trace. |
| Retroactive interference (RI)—Difficulty in remembering something learned in the past due to interference produced by recently learned information. |
| Retrograde amnesia—A loss of memory for events prior to a concussion or brain damage. |
| Retrograde facilitation—The facilitation of memory performance after electrical stimulation of the brain. |
| Retrospective memory—Recall of past events or information (see prospective memory). |
| Ribonucleic acid (RNA)—Chemical chains that some believe retain individual memories. |
S |
| Savant—A person of great learning or a certain mental skill. |
| Savings—A measure of what is retained from original learning. |
| Schema—A memory for a person, object, situation, or event that is built up through experience. |
| Scopolamine—A drug that appears to interfere with the use of memory. |
| Script—A type of schema that describes common, frequently occurring events. |
| Secondary dementias—Dementias due to illnesses that do not attack the brain. |
| Secondary memory—Information in long-term memory. |
| Selective recall—The superior recall for information that is consistent with a person's attitudes. |
| Self-observation of memory performance—Taking account of one's memory performance in a variety of memory tasks such as by completing memory questionnaires or by keeping a memory diary. |
| Self-reference effect—Superior recall due to deciding how well the material applies to oneself. |
| Self-schema—A memory about oneself, one's traits, and one's behaviors. |
| Self-terminating serial search—An item by item search of memory until the correct item is found. |
| Semantic memory—Memory for knowledge. |
| Senile dementia—A dementia developed after the age of 65 years. |
| Sensory memory—The brief memory for something just seen, heard, smelled, or touched. |
| Sensory register—The component of the memory system responsible for sensory memories. |
| Serial learning—Learning a sequence of items in order. |
| Serial position curve—The probability of recall according to the order in which items were studied. |
| Serial search—The retrieval of items in memory in the order they were stored. |
| Short-term memory (STM)—The retention of small amounts of information for about 30 seconds or less. |
| Skilled memory theory—A theory that individual differences in memory performance derive from differences in practice at memory tasks. |
| Social context techniques—Social behaviors that eliminate social factors harmful to performance. |
| Social information—Information about the attitudes, roles, and means-for-impressing others that affect memory performance. |
| Social memory-factors—Social tasks that make demands on memory (such as cocktail parties or receiving lines). |
| Spacing effect—Superior recall due to separating study sessions. |
| Spread of activation—Excitement that moves along the links of a memory network. |
| Stages of memory techniques—A technique is elicited, modified to the particular task, applied to the task, and assessed for its effectiveness. |
| State dependent memory—The facilitation in recall when memories are retrieved in the same "state" that a person was in when the memory was formed. |
| Story mnemonic—A mnemonic in which a person creates a story out of the words on a list. |
| Strength mental techniques—Techniques that increase the strength of the traces being studied. |
| Strength of a trace—One of the four aspects of a trace that may be affected by a mental technique. |
| Stress—Mental or emotional disturbance that disposes people to be absentminded. |
| Study formulas—Key words that are intended to orient a person for studying. |
| Subjective organization—The organization of words into groups in memory on the basis of meaning common to the words. |
| Superimposition method—A test for eidetic imagery in which a person superimposes the image of one array of dots on another dot pattern. |
| Superstitious environmental techniques—Objects that some people believe will bring good luck to their memory performance. |
| Suppression—The forgetting of a memory by deliberately trying not to think about it. |
| Symbolic memory tasks—Tasks whose performance convey respect or affection and affects the relationship between people. |
| Symbolic reminders—Culturally established symbols that convey that a memory task is to be performed. |
| Synapse—The space between neurons in which neurotransmitters are secreted. |
| Synesthesia—Where sensation in one sensory modality (e.g., hearing) evokes a sensory experience in another modality (e.g., vision, touch, etc.). |
T |
| Tagging—The theoretical assumption that memories are marked when they are encountered again. |
| Task situations—Categories of daily life in which memory tasks occur: home life, work, obligations, or recreation. |
| Task-specific techniques—A technique that is especially effective for a particular kind of memory task. |
| Task variables—The characteristics of a particular memory task or situation in which the task is performed. |
| Technical mnemonics—Mnemonics that people use after formal training or instruction (see naive mnemonics). |
| Test anxiety—Fear and nervousness that interferes with memory performance. |
| Test wise—An ability for taking tests. |
| Theory of disuse—Forgetting due to people not making use of information in memory. |
| Time-gap experience—The feeling that little or no time has elapsed when actually a considerable lapse has occurred. |
| Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon—When a person cannot recall a word but can recall some details about the word (like how many letters it has, what letter begins the word). |
| Top-down processing—Tasks that require active organization and elaborative processes. |
| Trace—A memory record of the details of an event or concept. |
| Transfer-appropriate processing—Superior recall which occurs when the kind of processing in recall is the same as was used when items were learned. |
| Transient global amnesia (TGA)—An amnesia that lasts only briefly (minutes, hours, or days). |
| Two-stage model of memory formation—A model of memory formation in which memories are first represented in short term memory and then in long term memory. |
