Memory for Everyday Activities Attention: limited-capacity processes devoted to the monitoring of internal and external events Multimode Theory: a theory of attention positing that we can engage in early or late selection depending on the situation; late selection requires more attentional resources than early selection Working Memory: the processes involved in examining, considering, manipulating, and responding to internal and external events Divided Attention: monitoring and responding to more than one source of information Psychological Refractory Period: a period of time during which the response to a second stimulus will be significantly slowed because of the processing still occurring on a stimulus presented earlier Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA): the time that lapses between the presentation of two stimuli

Memory for Everyday Activities (page 2) Automaticity: the tendency for cognitive processes to occur nonintentionally, unconsciously, and with little effort after extensive practice Action Slips: absentminded actions that are often the result of automatic processing Modal Model: the information-processing view of memory that postulates a series of chronologically arranged stages through which incoming information passes (sensory memory, STM, and LTM) Sensory Memory: proposed by the modal model of memory; an extremely brief representation of a just presented stimulus Long-Term Memory (LTM): the representations of experiences, knowledge, and skills that we have accumulated throughout our lifetimes Short-Term Memory (STM): the set of processes that we use to hold and rehearse information that occupies our current awareness Visual Persistence: the continuation of the neural response to a visually presented stimulus after its removal; experienced as a fading icon or image

Memory for Everyday Activities (page 3) Brown-Peterson task: a sequence of letters is encoded, followed by a distraction task of counting backward, followed by recall of the letter sequence Magical Number: 7 ± 2, the number of items we can hold in STM Memory Span: the capacity of STM; the longest string of information a person can immediately recall Retention Interval: the amount of time between encoding and retrieval Chunking (recoding): regrouping items in STM Word-Length Effect: the finding that STM span is negatively related to the length of encoded items

Memory for Everyday Activities (page 4) Phonological Similarity Effect: the finding that lists of similar-sounding items are more difficult to keep track of in STM than are lists of different-sounding items Decay: the loss of information from memory with the passage of time Interference: when information currently in memory is negatively influenced by the presentation of other information Proactive Interference: occurs when earlier information interferes with the ability to retain information that comes later Retroactive Interference: occurs when later information interferes with the ability to retain information that came earlier Release from Proactive Interference: the release from the cumulative effects of proactive interference when there is a change in the nature of the stimuli being encoded Articulator Loop: a subcomponent of working memory that allows for the mental rehearsal of incoming information

Memory for Everyday Activities (page 5) Articulatory Suppression Task: a task designed to prevent the rehearsal of information in the subvocal rehearsal mechanism of the articulatory loop Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad: a subcomponent of working memory that allows for the processing of spatial information and manipulation of visual images Central Executive: a limited-capacity control mechanism for working memory that is responsible for the higher-level thought processes involved in planning, reasoning, and language comprehension Episodic Buffer: component of working memory that is responsible for integrating information processed by the articulatory loop and the visuospatial sketchpad, as well as relevant information from long-term memory Executive Attention: function of working memory whereby we control the allocation of attention Working Memory Span: a measure of the cognitive processing capacity that is available when a person does two tasks (e.g., memory and computation) concurrently