By Kathleen B. McDermott and Henry L. Roediger III, Washington University in St. Louis.  “Memory” is a single term that reflects a number of different abilities: holding information briefly while working with it (working memory), remembering episodes of one’s life (episodic memory), and our general knowledge of facts of the world (semantic memory), among other types. Remembering episodes involves three processes: encoding information (learning it, by perceiving it and relating it to past knowledge), storing it (maintaining it over time), and then retrieving it (accessing the information when needed). Failures can occur at any stage, leading to forgetting or to having false memories. The key to improving one’s memory is to improve processes of encoding and to use techniques that guarantee effective retrieval. Good encoding techniques include relating new information to what one already knows, forming mental images, and creating associations among information that needs to be remembered.

Teaches principles of experimental methods in human perception and cognition, including design and statistical analysis. Combines lectures and hands-on experimental exercises; requires an independent experimental project. Some experience in programming desirable. To foster improved writing and presentation skills in conducting and critiquing research in cognitive science, students are required to provide reports and give oral presentations of three team experiments; a fourth individually conducted experiment includes a proposal with revision, and concluding written and oral reports.

Seminar in real-time language comprehension. Models of sentence and discourse comprehension from the linguistic, psychology, and artificial intelligence literature, including symbolic and connectionist models. Ambiguity resolution. Linguistic complexity. The use of lexical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, contextual and prosodic information in language comprehension. The relationship between the computational resources available in working memory and the language processing mechanism. The psychological reality of linguistic representations.

Principles of operation, algorithms, applications, and limitations of optical detection, storage, processing, transmission and display devices and systems. Topics: review of basic properties of electromagnetic waves; holography; spatial light modulator and display devices; thermal and quantum photodetectors; optical storage media such as disks and 3-D holographic materials; fiberoptic communication systems; optical interconnection device technologies; coherent and incoherent light processors based on Fourier optics, Acousto-optics, and optoelectronic neural networks; role of optics in next-generation computers; applications to image processing, pattern recognition, radar systems and adaptive optics; limitations of optical processors.

Psychology is designed to meet scope and sequence requirements for the single-semester introduction to psychology course. The book offers a comprehensive treatment of core concepts, grounded in both classic studies and current and emerging research. The text also includes coverage of the DSM-5 in examinations of psychological disorders. Psychology incorporates discussions that reflect the diversity within the discipline, as well as the diversity of cultures and communities across the globe.Senior Contributing AuthorsRose M. Spielman, Formerly of Quinnipiac UniversityContributing AuthorsKathryn Dumper, Bainbridge State CollegeWilliam Jenkins, Mercer UniversityArlene Lacombe, Saint Joseph's UniversityMarilyn Lovett, Livingstone CollegeMarion Perlmutter, University of Michigan

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Discuss the three basic functions of memoryDescribe the three stages of memory storageDescribe and distinguish between procedural and declarative memory and semantic and episodic memory

The way memory functions is described in 3 ways: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Important concepts related to memory duration (e.g., short-term, working, and long-term memory) and memory types (e.g., explicit and implicit) are included. Duration: 3:03.