8&9. Memory

Question 1

what are the different types of memory?

Answer 1

sensory
short term (working)
long-term

Question 2

how long does sensory memory last?

Answer 2

< 1s

Question 3

How long does short-erm memory last?

Answer 3

1-10 s

Question 4

how long does long-term memory last?

Answer 4

> 10 s

Question 5

what is involved in sensory memory?

Answer 5

• Iconic (visual) memory

* Echoic (auditory) memory

Question 6

what is involved in short-term memory?

Answer 6

• Central executive
• Visuospatial sketchpad
• Phonological loop
• Episodic buffer

Question 7

what is involved in long-term memory?

Answer 7

• Declarative (explicit) memory

* Non-declarative (implicit) memory

Question 8

what does the human memory system consist of?

Answer 8

• Human memory consists of multiple subsystems
• Each of them is supported by its own neural
mechanisms

Question 9

what does sensory memory do?

Answer 9

Registers information about the environment and holds it for a very brief period of time

Question 10

what did a study on sensory memory involve and what results were obtained?

Answer 10

• After brief exposure (e.g., 50 ms), observers are asked to recall the letters
• Observers are able to report 3–6 letters
• Observers are also aware that there were more
letters
– Because presentation was very brief, observers did
not have enough time to read and rehearse them

Question 11

what do the findings of the study on sensory memory suggest?

Answer 11

– Many items are stored in memory initially
– While they are still in memory, observers can attend to some of the items and report them
– But they fade away quickly—that’s why observers can report only 3–6 items

Question 12

what does sensory memory do?

Answer 12

Sensory memory doesn’t last long. This memory is modality-specific
– Masking effect
An intermediate system in which information has to reside on its journey from sensory memory to long-term memory

Question 13

what is iconic memory in short term memory?

Answer 13

Visual sensory memory

Question 14

what is echoic memory in short term memory?

Answer 14

Auditory sensory memory

Question 15

What was Atkinson and Shiffrin’s (1968) theory of short term memory

Answer 15

Proposes that as information is rehearsed in a limited-capacity short-term memory, it is deposited in long-term memory

sensory memory -attention-> short term memory -rehearsal-> long-term memory

Question 16

what is the capacity of short-term memory?

Answer 16

Short-term memory has a limited capacity to hold information

Question 17

what is the memory span?

Answer 17

– The number of elements one can hold in short-term memory store
– It is usually around seven

Question 18

which items in short term memory later remembered?

Answer 18

Items learned earlier and later tend to be better remembered (recency and primacy effect)

Question 19

Is short-term memory distinct from long-term memory?

Answer 19

– Different capacity limits—the 7±2 limit does not apply to long-term memory
– Damage to the medial temporal lobe can cause severe impairment of long-term memory but it does not affect short-term memory

Question 20

what is alan Baddeley’s theory of working memory and what does it benefit?

Answer 20

Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch proposed a model of working memory in 1974, in an attempt to present a more accurate model of primary memory (often referred to as short-term memory). Working memory splits primary memory into multiple components, rather than considering it to be a single, unified construct. These elements are the central executive, visuospatial sketchpad and the phonological loop. Later the episodic buffer was added.

Alan Baddeley’s theory of working memory is a different way of characterizing short-term memory
• This model overcomes many of the limitations of the short-term memory model
– As a result, the working
memory model has replaced the short-term memory model

Question 21

what is declarative memory?

Answer 21

– Memories for facts and events
– You can explicitly remember these memories
– Also called explicit memory

Question 22

what is non-declarative memory?

Answer 22

– Memories that you cannot explicitly retrieve (e.g., motor skills)
– Also called implicit memory

Question 23

what does the lack of agreement on terminology reflect in memory?

Answer 23

This lack of agreement on terminology reflects the complexity of memory research (and the fact that it is still work in progress)

Question 24

what are the categories of declarative memory

Answer 24

episodic (events)

semantic (factss)

Question 25

what is episodic memory?

Answer 25

specific personal experiences from a particular time and place

Question 26

What is semantic memory

Answer 26

world knowledge, object knowledge, language knowledge, conceptual priming

Question 27

what area of the brain processes declarative memory?

Answer 27

medial temporal love, middle diencephalon and neocortex

Question 28

What are the categories of non-declarative memory?

Answer 28

procedural, perceptual representation system, classical conditioning, nonassociative learning

Question 29

what is procedural memory?

Answer 29

Skill (motor and cognitive)

Question 30

what part of the brain brain processes procedural memory?

Answer 30

basal ganglia and cerebellum

Question 31

what is perceptual representation system?

Answer 31

does perceptual priming

Question 32

what part of the brain processes perceptual representation systems?

Answer 32

perceptual and association neocortex

Question 33

what is classical conditioning

Answer 33

conditioned responses between two stimuli

Question 34

what part of the brain processes classical conditioning?

Answer 34

skeletal muscle

Question 35

what is non-associative learning?

Answer 35

habituation and sensitization?

Question 36

what part of the brain processes non-associative learning?

Answer 36

reflex pathways

Question 37

what affects memory encoding?

Answer 37

The way information is processed affects how well it is encoded in long-term memory – Depth (levels) of processing (Craik & Lockhart, 1972)

Question 38

when will information be better encoded?

Answer 38

Information that is processed in a deeper and more meaningful manner will be better encoded

Question 39

what was Slamecha and Graf's (1978) study?

Answer 39

– Generate condition • What is a synonym of sea that begins with the letter o? (ocean) • What is a rhyme of save that begins with the letter c? (cave) – Read condition • Participants just read a rhyme pair or a synonym pair Task: recognition of the second word of a pair ``` results: • Synonym pairs were better recognized • The generate condition yielded better recognition performance • Both are effects of deeper processing ```

Question 40

what can determine the amount of material remembered?

Answer 40

Depth of processing, not whether one intends to learn, can determine the amount of material remembered

Question 41

what was Hyde and Jenkins' (1973) study?

Answer 41

– Group 1: judged whether a presented word contained letters e or g – Group 2: rated the pleasantness of the words • Half the participants were also instructed to memorize the words – The other half did not know that they would be tested on their memory for words results: incidental - words recalled (%) orienting task) rate pleasantness: 68 check letters: 39 intentional - words recalled (%) orienting task) rate pleasantness: 69 Check letters 43

Question 42

how are memory traces associated with each other?

Answer 42

– Semantic information | – Episodic information

Question 43

when does activation of memory traces occur?

Answer 43

Activation of memory traces spreads from items currently or recently attended along paths of a network

Question 44

what does the property of a memory trace determine?

Answer 44

The property of a memory trace that determines how active the trace can become

Question 45

how does memory strength increase and decrease?

Answer 45

Increases with learning, decays with time

Question 46

what was Penfield and Robers (1959) study on forgetting?

Answer 46

– Electrically stimulated patients’ brain during surgery – When the temporal lobe was stimulated, patients reported memories that they were unable to remember in normal recall Is memory still in the brain, even when it seems forgotten?

Question 47

what was Nelson (1971) study on forgetting?

Answer 47

– Participants learned number-noun pairs – 2–4 weeks later, they performed recall or recognition tests – They relearned the pairs they missed in test, but some of them were changed – They performed the memory test one more time

Question 48

what were the results from Nelson (1971) study on forgetting?

Answer 48

– In the second test, unchanged pairs were recalled/recognized better – Suggest that memory for missed pairs in the first test was not gone completely Even when people appear to have forgotten memories, sensitive tests can find evidence of some of them

Question 49

What does most of recall in real life involve?

Answer 49

Much of recall in real life involves plausible inference rather than exact recall. Thisis called plausible retrieval

Question 50

what are the two conditions in memory tests?

Answer 50

– Exact recall | – Plausible retrieval

Question 51

In the following passage what is the exact, plausible and false: The heir to a large hamburger chain was in trouble. He had married a lovely young woman who had seemed to love him. Now he worried that she had been after his money after all. He sensed that she was not attracted to him. Perhaps he consumed too much beer and french fries. No, he couldn’t give up the fries. Not only were they delicious, he got them for free.

Answer 51

– Exact • The heir married a lovely young woman who had seemed to love him – Plausible • The heir got his french fries from his family’s hamburger chain – False • The heir was very careful to eat only healthy food

Question 52

in plausible retrieval, what do people often judge?

Answer 52

People often judge what plausibly might be true | instead of trying to retrieve exact facts

Question 53

what is the efficacy of plausible retrieval?

Answer 53

Plausible retrieval might seem inaccurate, but in real-world settings it often works well

Question 54

what is false memory?

Answer 54

Sometimes we are required to clearly separate what we actually learned from our inferences – e.g., eyewitness testimony

Question 55

what is a good example of false memory?

Answer 55

Eyewitnesses are often inaccurate in the testimony they give – Sometimes they are not even aware that they are making inferences rather than remembering what was actually experienced

Question 56

what is source confusion in false memory?

Answer 56

People confuse what they actually observe about an incident with what they learn from other sources

Question 57

What was Loftus (1975) experiment?

Answer 57

– Participants (who had witnessed a traffic accident) were asked about the car’s speed when it passed a Yield sign – However, there was no Yield sign – Many participants remembered having seen one

Question 58

what is non-declarative (implicit) memory?

Answer 58

Non-declarative memories cannot be consciously retrieved, but they manifest themselves in the form of improved performance

Question 59

what is procedural memory?

Answer 59

Procedural memory: implicit knowledge about how to perform tasks e.g. Most of us have learned to ride a bike but have no conscious ability to say what it is we have learned

Question 60

what was Berry and Broadbent (1984) study on procedural memory?

Answer 60

– Participants tried to control the output of a sugar factory by manipulating the size of the workforce – They saw a month’s sugar output of the factory (e.g., 6,000 tons) – They chose the number of workers for the next month (e.g., 700) – They were presented with the next month’s output, and then chose the following month’s workforce – Goal: keep the output between 8,000 and 10,000 tons • Participants were given 60 trials • They got quite good at controlling the output • However, they were unable to state what the rule was – They claimed that they made their responses on the basis of “some sort of intuition” – They acquired implicit procedural memory

Question 61

what was Graf et al's (1984) study on priming?

Answer 61

– Amnesic patients and neurologically-intact control participants were tested – Task 1: word recall—participants learned a list of words and then recalled them – Task 2: word completion—they were presented with the first 3 letters of a word they had studied in Task 1 and asked to make an English word using the first 3 letters (e.g., ban___ à banana) Amnesic patients’ performance on word completion task showed that they maintained some memory for the studied words – even though they couldn’t explicitly recall them in the recall task

Question 62

what is priming?

Answer 62

* An enhancement of the processing of a stimulus as a function of prior exposure * This enhancement takes place without conscious awareness

Question 63

What is the process of working memory?

Answer 63

the central executive is split up into: the phonological loop (langauage), visuospatial sketchpad (visual semantics) and the episodic buffer (short-term episodic memory)