Abstraction & Hyperspecificity

Question 1

Explain the principle of abstraction, using empirical evidence

Answer 1

abstraction
- People memorise conglomerations of ideas
- Not verbatim information
- People appear to lose specific surface information (shortly after study)
- People retain “gist”: Generalised, abstracted information
- People infer things they never heard or saw
- Explanations and models must accommodate abstraction
- Most of our long term memory is devoted to things which are devoid of detail but maintain the gist of the info

sachs (1967)
galileo and writing a letter about him

Harris (1977): The “Gargoil” Commercial
“Wouldn’t it be great,” asks the mother, “if you could make him coldproof? Well, you can’t. Nothing can do that.” [Boy sneezes.] “But there is something that you can do that may help. Have him gargle with Gargoil Antiseptic. Gargoil can’t promise to keep him coldfree, but it may help him fight off colds. During the cold catching season, have him gargle twice a day with full-strength Gargoil. Watch his diet, see he gets plenty of sleep, and there’s a good chance he’ll have fewer colds, milder colds this year.”
When participants are asked:
- Does gargling with Gargoil Antiseptic help prevent colds?
- Ahm, no, not really.
- But 90% of people say it does.
-The literal (surface) meaning is lost and people walk away with what they infer (abstracted) this meaning is not stated but rather hinted

Bransford & Franks (1971)
Constructed sentences with FOUR ideas (=declarative parts)
The ants in the kitchen ate the sweet jelly which was on the table
- Ants were in kitchen
- Ants ate jelly
- Jelly was sweet
- Jelly was on table
These 4-idea sentences were never presented. Instead participants were presented with sentences with 1 to 3 ideas
THREE ideas
- The ants ate the sweet jelly which was on the table
TWO ideas
- The ants in the kitchen ate the jelly
ONE idea
- The ants ate the jelly

Question 2

Understand how false memories can be considered an effect of abstraction

Answer 2

To understand abstraction we can look at false memories
- its an example of generalisation

Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm
- Study list of words
- cloud, drop, water, sun, storm, shower,…
- In subsequent memory test, up to 70% of participants remember the item “rain”
- “rain” is not on the list…
- …but all list items are associated of rain
false memory can be seen as an instance of generalisation or abstraction

congruent lures
- no old new difference and confidence is higher for 4 sentences they’d never seen

Question 3

Explain the principle of hyperspecificity, using empirical evidence implicitly

Answer 3

Hyper-specificity
- The idea that abstraction is encoded but specific details about a stimulis are also encoded and we show facilitation for that item in a test
- Memory for surface features persists we just have to look for them differently (indirectly)
- for example lexical decision task, worn naming task, living/non-ling tasks

repetition priming and hyper specificity Tenpenny 1995
- in a lexical decision tsk of the word tiger
- when perceptual features change we see less priming which indicated that specific features are important and represented in memory
- the reduction in priming shows surface features are represented in memory
- the difference between the two priming effects is what reflects hyperspecificity

reading and rereading texts 160 pages of:
- normal condition
- rotated text
- inverted text
- mirrored
- letter rotated
- rotated and mirror-reversed
- then has participants read text a year later
- then time to read page decreases as a function of time indicating they are learning how to read it inverted
- then a year after that they found a loss in performance increase but the skill is maintained, it has the same gradient as NEW condition but lower y intercept

long lasting perception
- 17 years later can still identify a picture more quickly

Question 4

Discuss the encoding specificity principle, using empirical evidence

Answer 4

Encoding specificity
- Retrieval success depends on the similarity, or informational overlap, between information in memory and information available at retrieval
- Best retrieval if encoding conditions = retrieval conditions
- Similarity between the learning experience and retrieval environment
- Both context and own state are important and can serve as retrieval cues

Encoding context
- Any stimulus we encode is encoded in a specific context, e.g. time of encoding, place, other stimuli (people, things) present, task specifics
- At a basic level, context can influence encoding efficacy,
○ Unitization (feature binding demands) easier to remember vs. (Karlson et al., 2010)
- synchrony: better memory for words chanted together
- More generally, context matters because context elements are always encoded with a stimulus, and can thus be used as retrieval cues

Encoding Specificity Principle (Thomson & Tulving, 1970)
- A retrieval cue is effective if and only if it was encoded at study
- Encoding specificity rejects the ideas:
○ Encoding operations of class X (e.g., deep encoding) are always better than those of class Y
○ Retrieval cues of class X (e.g., strong associates) are always better than Y
- The match between study and test matters

Encoding specificity: Godden & Baddeley (1975)
- Participants learn words on land and under water
- Impairment if you went from one context to the other context
- It also works with internal states, e.g. relating to substance intake (alcohol, nicotine, caffeine) and mood (i.e., state-dependent memory)

Question 5

Understand the principle of transfer-appropriate processing

Answer 5

• Memory performance depends on match of encoding and retrieval operations, not necessarily context
• is different to the assumption that deeper encoding is always better
• more about operations that were doing as opposed to context (specificity)

Question 6

Abstraction vs hyper-specificity

Answer 6

Specificity apparent with
- Memory tasks that require perceptual processing of specific cues
- Performance benefits when a cue present at study is repeated at test
- e.g., repetition priming (implicit) or recognition of images (explicit).

Abstraction apparent with
- non-specific, direct (explicit) tests
- mainly free recall
- Abstraction is then adaptive and useful
- Free recall of prose
- But can also be maladaptive when you are led into abstraction
- Abstraction can contribute to false memories