7 - Memory

Question 1

What is hyperthymestic syndrome?

Answer 1

Memory of life events that is highly accurate

Question 2

What is cognitive psychology?

Answer 2

The study of cognitive processes, what is used in making sense of the world
- Attention, memory, langauge, thinking and rasoning

Question 3

What is memory?

Answer 3

The retention of information over time

Question 4

What is a memory illusion?

Answer 4

False but subjectively compelling memory

Question 5

What are the major systems of memory?

Answer 5

Sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory

Question 6

What is sensory memory?

Answer 6

Brief storage of perceptual information before it is passed to short-term memory

• Preserves information briefly (.5-2 seconds) in the original sensory format
  i. e. visual, auditory, touch
• Allows sensory information to linger briefly after the sensory stimulation is over
• Decays rapidly and cannot be maintained by rehearsal

Question 7

What is iconic memory?

Answer 7

Visual sensory memory applying to vision

- photographic memory

Question 8

What is echoic memory?

Answer 8

Describe the ultra-short-term memory for auditory stimuli, auditory sensory memory
- can last as long as 5-10 seconds

Question 9

What is short term memory?

Answer 9

When information passes sensory buffers, it passes into short term memory, a second system for retaining information in memories for brief periods of time

• closely related to working memory
• Short term holds information in verbalised format
• Information in immediate consciousness
• Duration: decays within 20-30 seconds if unrehearsed
• Capacity: 7 +- 2 times

Question 10

What is the multistore model of memory?

Answer 10

Assumes that:

• Different memory stores for memories of different durations
• Original assumption was that storing and retrieving information involves passing information from one store to the next

Question 11

What is the distinction between primary and secondary memory?

Answer 11

William James

• Primary memory: information held in immediate consciousness = short-term memory
• Secondary memory: vast store of memory which gets called back into primary memory = long-term memory

Question 12

What is the evidence for distinction between short and long term memory?

Answer 12

1. Serial position effect in free recall

2. Neuropsychological data

Question 13

What is the serial position effect?

Answer 13

Free recall
- Recall as many words from the list in any order
- Primacy effect is high and recency effect is high while middle is low
Primacy and recency components are affected differently
- Faster rate of presentation
- Less time for rehearsal
- Reduces primacy effect not recency component
- Filter task (e.g. mental arithmetic task after list: becomes like middle component (serial position not at the end) removes recency effect

Question 14

What is the neuropsychological data for memory?

Answer 14

Henry Gustav Molaison:

• Hippocampus removed as a treatment for intractable epilepsy
• Intact remote memory and STM
• Unable to form new memories

Question 15

What is long term memory?

Answer 15

• Memory that can be retrieved after attention has been diverted
• Duration: minutes to years
• Capacity: unlimited

Question 16

What is chunking?

Answer 16

Grouping elements into meaningful units which improves performance on short-term memory tasks
- “short term meory” is affected by meaningful information in long term memory -> argues against strict serial organisation from STM to LTM

Question 17

What are the memory processes?

Answer 17

1. ENCODING: processing at the time of learning (levels of processing, schemas)
2. RETRIEVAL: processing at the time of recovering memory from storage (retrieval failure, reconstructive processes)

Question 18

What are the levels of processing?

Answer 18

Craik and Lockhart (1972) -> memory is a product of type of operations performed at encoding
- Orienting task:
» physical: word in capital letters?
» rhyme: does it rhyme with fate?
» semantic: does it fit the sentence ‘he dropped the __”
- Subjects given an unexpected test of memory with semantic orienting showing best results

Question 19

How do we organise memory by schemas?

Answer 19

When encoding complex material (e.g. prose or everday events), existing knowledge is used to impose organisation
- Schemas/scenario: conceptual framework about events e.g. going to resaturant

Question 20

What is flashbulb memory?

Answer 20

Extremely vivid and permanent memory of how one learned about a public event that produced high
level of emotion/arousal (e.g., where they were; what they were doing; )
- not necessarily accurate
- memory for detail decayed for everday and flashbulb memories

Question 21

What causes forgetting in long-term memory?

Answer 21

• Retrieval failure

- Reconstructive process

Question 22

What is retrieval failure?

Answer 22

• Not loss of information, but failure of access
• Due to mismatch in format between retrieval and encoding context
• Recognition failure of person out of context
• Childhood amnesia

Question 23

What is the reconstructive process?

Answer 23

Memory is not reproductive but reconstructive

• Pseudomemory demonstration
• Elizabeth Loftus has work on implatining memory and recovering memory

Question 24

What is organic amnesisa?

Answer 24

When memory is impared due to brain damage

• Anterograde amnesia: impaired learning of information since onset of amnseisa
• Retrodrade amnesia: loss of information learned prior to onset

Question 25

What are the causes of organisc amnesia?

Answer 25

• Surgical lesions
• Head injury
• Degenerative diseases
• Encephalitis
• Vascular disorders

Question 26

What is amnesia involving frontal damage?

Answer 26

• Head injury, Korsakoff’s disease, ageing

May show source amnesia and confabulation

Question 27

What is the neuroanatomy of memory?

Answer 27

• Neocortex: storage of sensory experiences i.e. different senses
• Limbic system: hippocampus, thalamus
• Prefrontal cortex: strategic retrieval (reconstructive proecss), checking consistency of retrieved material, Metamemory

Question 28

What are the long-term memory modules?

Answer 28

1. Declarative memory (verbalise memory)
   - Semantic memory
   - Episode memory (bound to temporal and spatial context)
2. Automotive motor skills