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1
Q

Accessibility

A

The degree to which information can be retrieved from memory. A memory is said to be accessible if it retrievable; memories that are not currently retrievable are said to have become inaccessible.

2
Q

Action slips

A

Unintended, often automatic, actions that are inappropriate for the current situation.

3
Q

Actor/Agent

A

In the case of the grammar approach, the person who performs some action in a sentence is the agent, such as Bill in “Bill hit the ball with a bat.”

4
Q

Ad hoc categories

A

Categories that people can generate on the fly the have all of the qualities of more traditional categories, but which are based on situational circumstances.

5
Q

Advantage of clause recency

A

The speedup of RT to information in the most recently processed clause.

6
Q

Advantage of first mention

A

The speedup of RT to information mentioned in the first sentence.

7
Q

Agnosia

A

A disruption in the ability to recognise objects.

8
Q

Agraphia

A

A disruption in the ability to write, caused by a brain disorder or injury.

9
Q

Alexia

A

A disruption in the ability to read or recognise printed letters or words, caused by a brain disorder or injury.

10
Q

Algorithm

A

A specific rule or solution procedure that is certain to yield the correct answer if followed correctly (contrasts with heuristic).

11
Q

Ambiguous

A

Having more than one meaning, said both of words (e.g. bank) and sentences (e.g. They are eating apples.)

12
Q

Amnesia

A

Memory loss caused by brain damage or injury. Retrograde amnesia is loss of memory for information before the damage, anterograde amnesia is loss of memory for information after the damage.

13
Q

Analogy

A

A relationship between two similar systems, problems, etc; a heuristic is which a problem is solved by finding an analogy to a similar problem.

14
Q

Anaphoric reference

A

The act of using a pronoun or possessive (or synonym) to refer back to a previously mentioned concept.

15
Q

Anomia/Anomic aphasia

A

A disruption of word finding or retrieval, caused by brain disorder or injury.

16
Q

Antecedent (in conditional reasoning)

A

The ‘if’ clause in the standard conditional reasoning (‘if-then’) tasks. In the statement ‘If it rains, then the picnic will be cancelled.’ the antecedent is ‘if it rains’.

17
Q

Antecedent (in language)

A

The concept in which a later word refers; for example, ‘he’ refers to the antecedent Bill in ‘Bill said he was tired’.

18
Q

Anterograde amnesia

A

Disruption in memory for events following the brain damage, usually a disruption in the storage of new information after brain damage.

19
Q

Aphasia

A

A loss of some or all of previously intact language skills, caused by brain disorder or damage.

20
Q

Apperceptive agnosia

A

A form of agnosia in which individual features cannot be integrated into a whole percept or pattern; a basic disruption in perceiving patterns.

21
Q

Arbitrariness

A

One of Hockett’s (1960) linguistic universals, that the connections between linguistic units (sounds, words) and the concepts or meanings referred to by those units are entirely arbitrary; for example, it is arbitrary that we refer to a table by the linguistic unit ‘table’.

22
Q

Argument

A

In the proposition the arguments are the ordered concepts the specify the meaning of the proposition. The arguments of the relation ‘HIT’ in the sentence ‘Bill hit the ball yesterday’ are ‘BILL’ as the agent, ‘BALL’ as the object, and ‘YESTERDAY’ as the time.

23
Q

Articulatory loop

A

The part of the phonological loop involved in the active refreshing of information in the phonological store.

24
Q

Articulatory suppression effect

A

The finding that people have poorer memory for a set of words if they are asked to say something while they are trying to remember.

25
Q

Associative agnosia

A

A form of agnosia in which the individual can combine perceived features into a whole pattern but cannot associate the pattern with meaning, cannot link the perceived whole with stored knowledge about its identity.

26
Q

Attend

A

The verb form of attention, meaning ‘to pay attention to’.

27
Q

Attention

A

The mental energy or resource necessary for completing mental processes, believe to be limited in quantity and under the control of some executive control mechanism.

28
Q

Attention capture

A

The spontaneous redirection of attention to stimuli in the world based on physical characteristics.

29
Q

Attentional blink

A

A brief slow-down in mental processing due to having processed another very recent event.

30
Q

Audition

A

The sense of hearing.

31
Q

Auditory sensory memory/echoic memory

A

The sensory memory system that encodes incoming auditory information and holds it briefly for further mental processing.

32
Q

Authorised

A

Intended or correct. An implication of a speakers statement is said to be authorised if the speaker intended the implication to be drawn; if the listener draws the intended inference, the inference is said to be authorised (contrasts with unauthorised).

33
Q

Autobiographical memory

A

Memories are specific, personally experienced real-world information, such as of one’s activities upon learning of the Challenger space shuttle disaster; the study of those memories.

34
Q

Automatic, automaticity

A

Occurring without conscious awareness or intention and consuming little off any of the available mental resources.

35
Q

Available (in memory research)

A

Present in the memory system. Information is said to be available if it is currently store in memory (contrasts with accessibility).

36
Q

Availability heuristic

A

A decision making heuristic in which we judge the frequency or probability of some event on the basis of how easily examples or instances can be recalled or remembered; thus, the basis of this heuristic is ease of retrieval.

37
Q

Axon

A

The long, extended portion of a neuron.

38
Q

Axon terminals

A

The branchlike ending of an axon in the neuron, containing neurotransmitters.