Ch 11 forgetting

Question 1

What was Skinner’s most important contribution?

Answer 1

A new way to look at memory: as experiences that change the organism’s tendency to behave in certain ways
- focus on the behaving organism and its relation to events in its past and current environments

Question 2

What is forgetting?

Answer 2

Deterioration in learned behaviour following a period without practice

Question 3

Is all deterioration in learned behaviour following a period without practice due to forgetting?

Answer 3

No, it is also due to aging, injury and disease

Question 4

What are we asking when we ask if someone has forgotten something?

Answer 4

We are asking whether the changes in behaviour produced by experience persist.

Question 5

Does forgetting always mean a decline in the probability of a behaviour?

Answer 5

No, sometimes it can mean an increase, such as when there has been conditioned suppression, which when forgotten can see a reappearance in the suppressed behaviour.

Question 6

What is used to measure forgetting?

Answer 6

Time, mainly by observing the retention interval and testing to see how much learned behaviour is still intact

Question 7

What is the retention interval?

Answer 7

The period after training during which the learned behaviour is not performed.

Question 8

What are the various ways that forgetting is measured?

Answer 8

• free recall
• prompted recall
• recognition
• relearning method
• delayed matching to sample (DMTS)
• extinction
• gradient degradation

Question 9

Why is free recall a crude measurement?

Answer 9

Because it does not capture all of the learning that has been retained despite not being able to perform

Question 10

What do savings refer to?

Answer 10

The attempts or time saved when a behaviour has been relearned more rapidly than the initial learning

Question 11

How is extinction used to measure forgetting?

Answer 11

After training is complete, one organism has a retention interval and another doesn’t, then the rate of extinction is compared between the two- the faster the rate, the more forgetting

Question 12

Can forgetting be measured without performance?

Answer 12

No, forgetting is measured by observing performance

Question 13

What are the variables in forgetting?

Answer 13

• retention interval: the longer the interval the greater the forgetting
• degree of learning
• prior learning
• subsequent learning
• context

Question 14

Why does time not account for forgetting?

Answer 14

Because time is not an event, it’s a concept. A non-event cannot cause and event, only another event can.

Question 15

What is the rule of the degree of learning?

Answer 15

The better something has been learned, the less likely it is to be forgotten

Question 16

What is overlearning?

Answer 16

When learning continues even after mastery has been achieved

Question 17

Is there a limit to the benefits of overlearning?

Answer 17

Yes, the law of diminishing returns applies after a point

Question 18

What is fluency?

Answer 18

The measurement of the degree of learning in terms of number of correct responses per minute

Question 19

How is the degree of learning measured?

Answer 19

Fluency, the higher the rate the lower the rate of forgetting

Question 20

How does meaningfulness influence forgetting?

Answer 20

The more meaningful a material is, the easier it is to retain

Question 21

What does meaningfulness mean?

Answer 21

Importance of prior learning

- prior learning can reduce forgetting

Question 22

What is Proactive interference?

Answer 22

When prior learning interferes with the recall of more recent learning

Question 23

What is paired associate learning?

Answer 23

A technique for measuring proactive interference where a person memorizes two paired word lists and is compared to a person who learned one. Depending on the order of the learning, interference can be demonstrated

Question 24

What affect does attitude have on recall?

Answer 24

A person is more likely to remember something they agree with than something they don’t

Question 25

What does sleep tell us about forgetting?

Answer 25

That forgetting is a function of learning because less forgetting occurs during an interval of sleep or rest than an interval of experience

Question 26

What is retroactive interference?

Answer 26

When what we learn interferes with our ability to recall earlier learning
- new learning pushes out old learning

Question 27

What is context?

Answer 27

The presence of a given pattern of stimuli

Question 28

What is cue-dependent forgetting?

Answer 28

When context cues that serve to evoke a behaviour were present during training but are absent during performance, causing performance to suffer

Question 29

What can be compared to cue-dependent forgetting?

Answer 29

Stimulus control

Question 30

What is reminiscence?

Answer 30

When performance improves with the passage of time

Question 31

What can cause reminiscence in 24 hours after training?

Answer 31

The physiological state of the organism matches its state from its best performance 24 hours previous

Question 32

What is state-dependent learning?

Answer 32

When behaviour is learned during a particular physiological state and is lost when that state passes

Question 33

What is included in context?

Answer 33

The state of the environment and the internal state of the learner

Question 34

What can explain people’s shitty eyewitness reports?

Answer 34

• reinforcement history and how questions are asked, previous experiences with certain words can lead us to believe they may be reinforced

Question 35

Is the ability to recall genetic or learned?

Answer 35

Both, inherited and a skill

Question 36

What is a way of improving our learning?

Answer 36

Memory strategies

Question 37

What are the main memory strategies?

Answer 37

• overlearning
• mneumonics
• mneumonic systems (loci, peg word
• context cues
• prompts (S+)