G. Dennis Rains,
Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
| anterograde amnesia | An impairment in the ability to remember new events following some compromise of brain function.
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| buffers | Specialized temporary storage systems.
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| chunking | The organization of information into parcels, thereby making possible an increase in the capacity of short-term memory.
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| classical conditioning | A form of learning in which a previously neutral stimulus, the conditioned stimulus (CS), is paired with a stimulus that naturally causes a response, the unconditioned stimulus (US), until the CS also evokes a response (usually similar to that evoked by the US).
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| cognitive skill | An efficient, learned method for solving a particular kind of puzzle or problem (often a form of implicit memory).
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| confabulation | The tendency to deny an impairment and act as if it were not present even when doing so entails behavior that is inconsistent with reality.
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| consolidation | The process of storing information in long-term memory.
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| declarative memory | The ability to consciously remember and recount details of events, in contrast to the ability to perform some act or behavior. The term is essentially synonymous with explicit memory, although some theoretical distinctions between the two concepts have been drawn by some investigators.
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| delayed-alternation task | In a typical version of this task, which of two food wells is baited is alternated between trials, but the monkey does not see the baiting. After an interval, during which the food wells remain out of sight, the monkey must choose the well with the food. Success on this task requires that the monkey remember the response that he made on the previous trial.
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| delayed nonmatching to sample (DNMS) | A task in which a subject is first presented with an object and then, after a delay, presented with the previously seen object and a novel object. The subject must choose the novel object to obtain the reward.
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| delayed-response task | In a typical version of this task, a monkey first sees one of two food wells baited. A delay then follows, during which the two food wells are hidden. After the delay, the monkey must choose the correct response.
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| dendritic spines | Little knobs protruding from dendrites, increasing the surface area of the dendrite. The number of spines on a dendrite is correlated with the number of axonal inputs to the dendrite.
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| echoic memory | Highly accurate but extremely short-lived (milliseconds) auditory representations that are part of normal memory.
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| elaborative encoding | The active organization of information (for later recall) that takes place during or shortly after initial exposure.
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| elaborative rehearsal | The manipulation, processing, and organization (for later recall) of information that has already been encoded.
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| encoding | The form in which information is represented in the nervous system. This varies, depending on the aspects or features of the stimulus that serves as the basis for the encoding.
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| engram | The hypothetical (currently unknown) neural substrate (mechanism) of memory.
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| episodic memory | Memory for particular personal experiences.
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| executive function | (1) A group of functions that includes the formulation of goals, the development and execution of strategies to achieve those goals, the monitoring and evaluation of the extent to which these strategies may or may not be contributing to reaching the goals, and the adaptive modification of (or persistence in) behavioral strategies (and possibly also the goals themselves) in light of this evaluation. Lesions to prefrontal cortex disrupt executive function. (2) In the context of working memory, the component that takes care of the overall coordination of activities in working memory, including which content and processes should be shuffled in and out of the workspace.
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| explicit memory | The conscious representation (recollection) of past events.
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| global amnesia | A total devastation of memory, including both semantic and episodic memory.
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| iconic memory | Highly accurate but extremely short-lived (milliseconds) visual representations that are part of normal memory.
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| implicit memory | The nonconscious representation of past events. In implicit memory, past experience influences present performance without conscious memory of the past experience.
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| Korsakoff's disease | A thiamine deficiency disease associated with chronic alcoholism characterized by severe anterograde amnesia, severe retrograde amnesia, and a number of cognitive impairments similar to those seen after frontal-lobe lesions.
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| long-term memory | A memory system that stores an enormous amount of information for years or even a lifetime.
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| medial temporal-lobe amnesia | Amnesia (mainly anterograde but with a retrograde component) involving medial temporal-lobe structures, including the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, perirhi-nal cortex, and parahippocampal cortex.
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| metamemory | The ability to accurately appraise one's memory capability.
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| method of loci | A memory-facilitation method in which the subject imagines each to-be-remembered item as interacting with a location along a familiar route.
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| method of vanishing cues | A method used to train amnesic patients to retain information by exploiting their intact implicit memory. Patients are presented with cues to recall that, over trials, have progressively fewer letters. Using this method, even severely amnesic patients are eventually able to come up with the required information without any cue, although they have no conscious awareness of having been previously exposed to the material.
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| motor skill | Learned, coordinated motor control and coordination, as exemplified by throwing a baseball or riding a bike.
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| nonassociative learning | A change in behavioral response that occurs over time in response to a single type of stimulus; includes habituation and sensitization.
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| perceptual representation systems (PRS) | The hypothetical systems that mediate priming. Evidence suggests that they are closely linked to systems mediating perceptual processing.
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| perceptual skill | The learned development of some aspect of perceptual function, such as reading mirror images of words.
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| phonological buffer | A specific short-term memory store for auditory-verbal material. Also called phonological store.
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| phonological store | A specific short-term store for auditory-verbal material. Also call phonological buffer.
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| priming | The facilitating effect of prior experience on perception and other processes, without conscious recollection of the prior experience.
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| proactive interference (PI) | The tendency of previously presented information to interfere with memory for material that is presented later.
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| procedural (nondeclarative) memory | Memory for how to do things (ways of doing things) and for certain movements or motor skills, in contrast to declarative memory (conscious memory for specific information). Also called nondeclarative memory and roughly equivalent to implicit memory.
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| recent memory (intermediate-term memory) | A store that maintains information for a time period intermediate between short-term memory (seconds to minutes) and long-term memory (which may last a lifetime). Also called intermediate-term memory.
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| recognition memory | Memory that is manifested by discrimination of a previously seen object from one or more objects that had not been seen before.
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| registration | The initial processing of a stimulus by the nervous system (a prerequisite for further processing, including memory).
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| release from proactive interference | Reduction in the tendency for earlier-presented material to intrude into memory for more recently presented material when the more recently presented material comes from a different category than the earlier material.
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| repetition priming | The facilitation of perceptual processing of a stimulus due to prior exposure to the stimulus.
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| retrieval | The process of gaining access to information stored in memory.
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| retrieval cue | A stimulus that is perceptually, semantically, or in some other way similar to or related to information that one is trying to recall.
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| retrograde amnesia | A disorder involving major loss of previously remembered material.
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| schemas | The conceptual frameworks or cognitive structures in terms of which information can be organized, interpreted, and remembered.
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| semantic dementia | A selective impairment in semantic memory seen in association with dementia.
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| semantic memory | Memory for information whose acquisition is not tied to a particular personal experience (e.g., knowing that the capital of Italy is Rome). Also called generic memory.
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| short-term memory | A short-duration, limited-capacity memory system that holds information for only a matter of seconds, unless continuous rehearsal takes place. Information in short-term memory is highly vulnerable to the effects of interference.
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| source amnesia | Impairment in the ability to remember the source of information together with preservation of memory for the information itself.
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| storage | The maintenance of information in the nervous system over time.
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| strategic retrieval | The organized search for information in memory.
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| study-test modality shift | The phenomenon that priming does not occur if the initial presentation of the words is in a different modality from that used in the later test.
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| temporal gradient | The characteristic of retrograde amnesia that memory for more recently acquired information is more impaired than is memory for more remote information.
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| visuospatial scratchpad | A hypothesized visual-spatial short-term memory store.
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| working memory | A part of the memory system that is currently activated. This includes a workspace consisting of (a) several types of specialized temporary storage systems, which at any given time have a specific content, and (b) pro-cesses being brought to bear on this content. It also includes (c) the executive function, which takes care of the overall coordination of activities of working memory, regulating both the contents of the workspace and the processes interacting with those contents.
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| workspace | The component of working memory that consists of several different types of specialized temporary storage systems and processes being applied to their content.
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2002 McGraw-Hill Higher Education