7 - Memory Flashcards
Memory
The ability to store and retrieve information
Amnesia
- deficit in long-term memory
- resulting from disease, injury, psychological trauma
- loses the ability to retrieve vast quantities of information
Retrograde Amnesia
inability to access memories created before brain damage
Anterograde Amnesia
a condition where people lose the ability to form new memories (more common in real life)
Priming
facilitation of a response to a stimulus based on recent experience with that stimulus or related stimulus
What part of the brain is important for storing new memories?
regions within the temporal lobes, specifically the hippocampus
Implicit Memory
- memories expressed without conscious effort or intention (memories we don’t realize that we know)
- expressed through responses, actions, or reactions
- unconscious or automatic memories (ex. knowing you can ride a bike - motor actions to express that memory come naturally)
What brain systems mediate implicit memory?
(3)
Basal Ganglia
Amygdala
Cerebellum (typically motor skills)
Explicit Memory
- memory that is consiously retrieved
- “knowing that” memory (typically what is being tested on exams)
Implicit Memory System
Procedural Memory
involved skills and habits
- ex. daydreaming while driving but you don’t get in a crash
- motor skills, cognitive skills, and habitual behaviours
Q: Practicing a dance routine requires what type of implicit memory?
Procedural memory (skills and habits)
Explicit Memory
Episodic Memory
- person’s memory of past experiences (typically identified by a time and a place)
Explicit Memory
Semantic Memory
Memory for facts that are independent of one’s personal experiences (ex. game show trivia)
Q: Is your memory of what you ate for breakfast yesterday a semantic memory or an episodic memory?
Episodic because it is about personal experience
Encoding
The process where our perception of a stimulus or event gets transformed into a memory
Q: According to the dual-coding hypothesis, would a presentation of the word ‘car’ or the word ‘ride’ be more likely to encode into memory? Why?
‘car’ is a word that can be visualised whereas ‘ride’ can’t really be visualised easily
dual-coding hypothesis: information that can be coded verbally AND visually is more likley to be encoded into memory
Schemas
Cognitive structures in long-term memory that help us perceive, organize, and understand information
- filling gaps in info with existing memories
Ex. paragraph only makes sense once you know that it’s about laundry (laundry schema)
Q: According to the levels of processing model of encoding, does maintenance rehearsal of information encode more deeply, and why?
Elaborative rehearsal because it makes the information more meaningful by attaching it to existing knowledge and beliefs
(maintenance rehearsal is simply repeating the item over and over and memorizing it)
Organization Affects Memory Encoding
Chunking
Organizing information into meaningful units to make it easier to remember
Organization Affects Memory Encoding
Mnemonics
Learning aids or strategies that improve recall through the use of retrieval cues
- organizing incoming info and linking it to existing knowledge
using sayings like “neurons that fire together, wire together” (LTP)
Mnemonics
What is the Method of Loci
Associating items you want to remember with physical locations
- ex. when learning names, imagining people in different areas of your room and then mentally walking through your room next time you need to remember their name
Serial Position Effect
What is the Primacy Effect?
What type of memory storage does it reflect?
better memory for items presented at the beginning of a list
- long-term memory because you will likley rehearse them the most (encoding before there’s too many to remember)
Reconsolidation
re-storage of a memory after retrieval (reinforcement?)
- typically used for updating and strengthening memories
Q: What are the 2 proposed functions of reconsolidation?
Updating (modifying) and strengthening memory
