Block 1 - Memory

Question 1

What was the conclusion of the partial reproduction paradigm by Sperling?

Answer 1

That participants had seen all of the letters but were only able to remember a few - providing evidence for the existence of iconic memory. This was shown in the task by the finding that participants when cued by a tone to remember letters from a particular row compared to participants who were instructed to report the whole matrix of letters.

Question 2

Which lower level processes are regulated by executive functions?

Answer 2

• Memory search
• Coping with novel situations
• Perception
• Motor control
• Evaluating risks
• Sequencing and prioritising actions
• Decision making
• Self directed behaviour towards a goal
• Planning for the future
• Self-regulation
• Breaking out of habits

Question 3

Shifting

Answer 3

Switching between task sets or response rules. A good measure of this is the Wisconsin card sorting task.

Question 4

Limitation of Wisconsin card sorting task?

Answer 4

Not very specific (pure) can also be a measure of learning from feedback and many other things. Purer neuropsychological tasks may aid theory development in the field and allow for better diagnoses.

Question 5

How do people with frontal lesions perform on the Wisconsin card sorting task?

Answer 5

• Poorly
• Demonstrating perseveration
• Struggle with shifting to a new rule
• Also struggle with inhibition (of the first learned response)

Question 6

Name 2 tasks that measure inhibition

Answer 6

1) Go/No-Go
2) Stroop task

Question 7

Inhibition

Answer 7

Suppressing or resisting a prepotent (automatic) response in order to make a less automatic but task-relevant response.

Question 8

Updating

Answer 8

Monitoring and coding incoming information for task-relevance and replacing no longer relevant information with newer, more relevant information.

Question 9

Typical task measuring updating

Answer 9

Spatial N-back task but no neuropsychological task for this.

Question 10

Primacy and Recency Effect

Answer 10

In a word list (serial reproduction task) words towards the beginning and end of the list are recalled best whereas words in the middle are often forgotten

Question 11

Proactive interference

Answer 11

Old memories interfering with the ability to encode and retrieve new information

Question 12

Retroactive interference

Answer 12

New memories interfering with the ability to retrieve previously learnt (old) information => overwriting

Question 13

The Suffix Effect

Answer 13

If a word list is followed by an irrelevant item (the suffix), recall of the final item is substantially impaired (diminishing of the recency effect). This impairment is called the suffix effect.

The suffix has to be perceived as speech in order for it to have a large effect on memory performance. If the suffix is a pure tone, there is no impairment.

Question 14

Why is it difficult to measure aspects of executive functions?

Answer 14

Specific EF factor is often accompanied by Common EF factor which you don’t want to measure.

Non EF processes and error contribute much variance!

More subtle effects of EF might be missed by ceiling effects and error

Question 15

EF in Addiction and Depression

Answer 15

• Reduced executive functioning
• Reduced cognitive control
• Less able to maintain long-term goals
• Less able to control negative thoughts and resist temptationsb

Question 16

Baddeley et al. (1986)

Answer 16

Dual Task Performance study: researchers calibrated health aging subjects on 2 tasks for maximum single task performance
- Remembering a random digit (phonological)
- Tracking a moving target (visuospatial)

Then they did both together and found only a 10% drop in performance.

However, when repeated in Alzhimer’s patients found a 40% drop in performance.

They concluded that Alzheimer’s patients had a specific problem with dual tasks regardless of task difficulty.

The problem was with
- Task coordination
- Temporary binding
- Dual Task impairment is related to the overlap of size of shared brain areas

Question 17

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