10. Long Term Memory & Learning Flashcards
What does the levels-of-processing approach argue about long term memory?
Argued that how we process information during learning determines how well we remember information over the long term. The greater the extent to which meaning is processed, the deeper the level of processing, the better it is remembered.
Deeper levels of analysis produce ____(3)_____ memory traces than shallow levels of analysis
more elaborate, longer lasting, and stronger
Describe the study which tested the elaboration of processing and its effects of memory.
Participants assigned to different modes of learning requiring different levels of processing, recognition performance was compared.
- shallow grapheme task (appearance) “Is the word printed in capital letters”
- intermediate phoneme task (sound) “does this word rhyme with ____”
- deep semantic task (meaning) “is this word a type of ____?”
Deep processing memory recall was 3 times higher than that of shallow processing. (42 cs 65 vs 90% correctly recognized)
Describe the study which tested processing depth on effects of memory.
simple vs complex sentence frames
Does the word fit into the sentence?
“She cooked the ____.” vs “The great bird swooped down and carried off the struggling ____”
Cued recall was twice as high for words accompanying complex sentences.
Shows that memory is better following deeper processing.
What is the self-reference effect?
We are especially likely to remember information if we relate it to ourselves, because this encourages deep processing. LTM was better when learning occurred under self-reference conditions than any others.
What is distinctiveness of a memory?
Means that the memory trace differs from other memory traces because it was processed differently at the time of learning. Distinctive memories are generally better remembered. Distinctive memories are well remembered in tests of explicit memory (conscious recollection) but it had no effect on implicit memory (no conscious recollection).
Why are distinctive memory traces so well remembered?
Much forgetting is due to interference
Distinctive memory traces may be easy to remember because they are dissimilar to other memory traces. Hence they are less liable to interference.
What are 3 limitations of the levels-of-processing approach?
1) Memory depends a lot on the relevance of stored information to the requirements of the memory test.
2) Effects of depth of processing is typically much less with implicit memory
3) We still are not clear the relative importance of depth, elaboration, and distinctiveness in enhancing LTM
What is transfer-appropriate processing?
whether what we have learned leads to good performance on a subsequent memory test depends on the relevance of that information (and its associated processing) to the memory test.
What is implicit learning?
learning occurring in the absence of conscious awareness of what has been learned.
