Chapter 1: Why do we need memory

Question 1

encephalitis

Answer 1

inflammation of the brain that can be fatal. Can cause brain damage, typically in areas of memory

Question 2

clive wearing

Answer 2

musician suffered encephalitis from herpes, was amnesic and couldn’t remember anything longer than a few seconds. Would write “consciousness was finally recovered” even though it had been recovered previously. He had long term memory though, musical memory and skills were intact

Question 3

reductionism

Answer 3

the view that all scientific explanations should come to be based on a lower level of analysis: psychology in terms of physiology, physiology in terms of chemistry, and chemistry in terms of physics

Question 4

who was the first person to demonstrate that it was possible to study memory experimentally

Answer 4

Ebbinghaus, nonsense study

Question 5

verbal learning

Answer 5

a term applied to an approach to memory that relies principally on the learning of lists of words and nonsense syllables. Emphasized careful mapping phenomenon

Question 6

gestalt psychology

Answer 6

George Mandler and Endel Tulving
attempted to use perceptual principles to understand memory and reasoning
Internal representations rather than observable stimuli and behavior

Question 7

schemas

Answer 7

Frederic Bertlett’s way to explain how our knowledge of the world is structured and influences the way in which new information is stored and subsequently recalled “effort after meaning”, complex tasks

Question 8

model

Answer 8

a method of expressing a theory more precisely, allowing predictions to be made and tested

Question 9

memory system requires three things:

Answer 9

Encode- enter information into system
Store- hold onto
Retrieve

Question 10

modal model developed by

Answer 10

Atkinson and Shiffrin

Question 11

sensory memory

Answer 11

a term for the brief storage of information from senses

Question 12

iconic memory

Answer 12

brief storage of visual information

Question 13

echoic memory

Answer 13

brief storage of auditory information

Question 14

Sperling’s study

Answer 14

participants only had to recall one line

If asked right after recall was good, if there was a delay there was memory loss

Question 15

masking

Answer 15

a process by which the perception and/or storage of a stimulus is influenced by events occurring immediately before presentation (forward masking) or after (backward masking)
Ex: brightness masking- bright light distraction of visual
Pattern masking- fragments of letters

Question 16

recency effect

Answer 16

easier recall on recent information

Question 17

short term memory (STM)

Answer 17

the retention of small amounts of material over periods of a few seconds

Question 18

working memory (WM)

Answer 18

a memory system that underpins our capacity to “keep things in mind” when performing complex tasks

Question 19

long term memory (LTM)

Answer 19

a system or systems assumed to underpin the capacity to store information over a long period of time
two categories: explicit and implicit

Question 20

explicit/ declarative memory

Answer 20

memory that is open to intentional retrieval, whether based on recollecting personal events (episodic) or facts (semantic)

Question 21

implicit/ non-declarative memory

Answer 21

retrieval of information from LTM through performance rather than explicit conscious recall of recognition doing something rather than overt remembering

Question 22

semantic memory

Answer 22

a system that is assumed to store cumulative knowledge of the world
Ex: how society works

Question 23

episodic memory

Answer 23

a system that is assumed to underpin the capacity to remember specific events
Ex: specific single events

Question 24

mental time travel

Answer 24

a term coined by Endel Tulving to emphasize the way in which episodic memory allows us to retrieve the past and use this information to imagine the future

Question 25

classical conditioning

Answer 25

a learning procedure in which a neutral stimulus (a bell) that is paired repeatedly with a response evoking stimulus (meat), will come to evoke that response (salivation)

Question 26

priming

Answer 26

the process of a subsequent item, either making it easier to process (positive priming) or more difficult (negative priming)
Ex: amnesia patients shown word BRING, then when asked to guess word starting in BR— they guess bring