Describes this sort of vivid memory of finding out an important piece of news. The name refers to how some memories seem to be captured in the mind like a flash photograph; because of the distinctiveness and emotionality of the news, they seem to become permanently etched in the mind with exceptional clarity compared to other memories.

Relating new information to what one already knows

Forming mental images

Creating associations among information that needs to be remembered

Distinctiveness

Create meaning

Imagining events

It is selective

It is prolific

The process of encoding always involves recoding—that is, taking the information from the form it is delivered to us and then converting it in a way that we can make sense of it.

The physical change in the nervous system (whatever that may be, exactly) that represents our experience.

The neural changes that occur after learning to create the memory trace of an experience.

Refers to new activities (i.e., the subsequent lunches) during the retention interval (i.e., the time between the lunch 17 days ago and now) that interfere with retrieving the specific, older memory (i.e., the lunch details from 17 days ago).

When past memories interfere with the encoding of new ones.

Eg: If you have ever studied a second language, often times the grammar and vocabulary of your native language will pop into your head, impairing your fluency in the foreign language.

Available information

Accessible information

Developing effective cues that will lead the rememberer back to the encoded information

Mnemonic systems

When people encode information, they do so in specific ways

Eg: Take the song on the radio: perhaps you heard it while you were at a terrific party, having a great, philosophical conversation with a friend. Thus, the song became part of that whole complex experience. Years later, even though you haven’t thought about that party in ages, when you hear the song on the radio, the whole experience rushes back to you.

To the extent a retrieval cue (the song) matches or overlaps the memory trace of an experience (the party, the conversation), it will be effective in evoking the memory.

Production tests

Recognition tests

Eg: You see the person you met at the party and you cannot recall her name.

Retroactive interference is one of the main causes of forgetting

Eg. You see someone who looks like Lyn Goff and call the person by that name

People can sometimes remember events that did not actually happen—because during the process of recoding, details got added. Every time we retrieve a memory, it is altered.

Sometimes we make false memories from our inferences

Testing effect / The retrieval practice effect

Retrieval-induced forgetting