Chapter 17 Flashcards
Who discovered the method of Loci?
Simonides–> items are associated with various locations well known to the learner
What are the advantages & disadvantages of method of loci?
- Easy to use with concrete words but not so much with abstract ones
- Very effective for retention during lecture-style presentations
- Use of imagery can be prevented during spatial tasks (e.g driving)
- Susceptible to proactive interference, especially when the same stimulus is associated with different responses (same location, different items)
- Most effective when based on a route to work because locations are more accessible
- Hard to recall item without going through the whole list in sequence
- Not very useful in everyday life
What are the advantages & disadvantages of the pegword system?
- Able to recall items in the correct order even if they are completely unrelated
- Requires extensive training to have reliable & rapid access to pegwords
- Abstract material is hard to associate with pegs
What are the advantages & disadvantages of the visual imagery mnemonic for learning names?
Improves name recall by 80% in laboratory conditions
-Is not effective in social conditions as it hard to find time to construct such mnemonics with divided attention or under severe time pressure
What are the advantages & disadvantages of verbal mnemonics?
- Widely used among medical student for learning anatomy
- Has the advantage over the method of loci & pegword because it does not require prior learning
- Very different stories can be constructed for word lists
- However, it requires extensive training
- Hard to recall item without going through the whole list in sequence
- Is ineffective under high speeds of stimuli presntation
What did Bower find about the effectiveness of MofL?
- Compared recall of 5 20-item lists of nouns between method users & non-users
- Method users recalled 72% of nouns vs. only 28% for non-users
Describe De Beni’s experiment testing method of loci in 2000-word oral or written text memorization
- Memory was tested shortly after presentation & 1 week later
- No effect when the text was in written form because of visual interference from text disrupted visual imagery needed for MofL
- Very effective for oral presentation
What is the pegword system?
A technique where items are associated with pegwords which rhyme with a different number between 1-10 (e.g one-bun, two-shoe)
-Take first pegwoed (e.g one) & form an image of the associated word (e.g bun) interacting with the item you need to learn (e.g spaceship is a flying bun) until all items are in the correct order
How does the visual imagery mnemonic for learning names work?
-Think of imaginable substitute for persons’s name & link it to prominent feature in their face e.g Eysenk–> Ice Sink–> big nose like a tap over the sink.
Describe Morris et al. naming party
- University students went to party & told to
1) Use imagery mnemonic
2) Do expanded retrieval practice (retrieve names after increasing intervals following first hearing it)
3) Just learn their names - Imagery mnemonic was even less effective than just learning their names & had an average recall of only 12 names
- Retrieval practice greatly increased name recall especially when the times for practice were self-generated (when load of other tasks were low)
What is the story mnemonic?
- Most effective verbal mnemonic
- Linking a series of unrelated words together within a story
- Involves visual imagery & producing sentences
- Those who constructed narrative stories recalled 93% of 12 lists of 10 nouns vs only 12% of non-users
Describe the experiment to test memory of Helsinki taxi drivers vs students by Kalakoski
- Had to recall lists of 15 street names in fixed order
- Condition 1) streets were connected within spatially continuous route–> Majority correct for drivers
- Condition 2) streets were presented in random order–> still majority drivers with a slight drop from first condition
- Condition 3) nonadjacent streets all over the town in random order–> no difference in the performance of 2 groups
-Drivers could not make use of their spatial knowledge to organize randomly distributed information
What are the 3 requirements of achieving high memory skills according to Ericsson?
1) Meaningful encoding: related to pre-existing knowledge
2) Retrieval structure: cues should be stored with info to aid retrieval
3) Speed-up: extensive practice allows the process to speed up
What are the benefits of training your working memory?
-Greater attentional control
-Less mind wandering
-Increase LT memory
However, studies show no transfer of training to any nontrained measures
Describe the study comparing naturals vs strategists by Wilding & Valentine
-Memory performance of World Memory Champ contestants divided into strategists or naturals on
A) Strategic tasks (name-face associations)
B) Nonstrategic tasks (recognition of snow crystals)
-Strategists performed exceptionally well on strategic tasks than nonstrategic ones but naturals did well on both
According to Maguire et al, what area of the brain is activated within superior memorizers during learning?
- Areas involved in spatial memory & navigation because they use MofL
- Their performance was ordinary on memory tasks for which they had no specific strategy
Face & object recognition depends on which factors?
Face–> shape & surface reflectance
Object–> shape information
- Genetic factors explain the existence of super-recognizers since identical twins perform much more similar in these tasks than fraternal ones
- Low correlation between IQ & face recognition
Those with highly superior autobiographical memory perform well in which tasks?
- On the 10 dates quiz (identify the day of the week for each date)
- Normal performance on other memory tasks like digit span
- Most HSAMs have obsessional characteristics–> organize their memories by time of events & spend time recalling them
- Structural differences in their temporal lobe areas vs control groups
Outstanding memory depends mostly on which factor?
On extensive prolonged practice
-Most strategists use story method & visual imagery
What are the brain areas identified as different in memory experts?
1) areas associated with spatial memory & navigation
2) prefrontal areas associated with WM & attentional control
3) areas forming part of autobiographical memory network
Name all 4 memory experts:
Chaou Lu,
- Famous mnemonist with a record for reciting pi
- His memory performance depends on story mnemonic
- Only has to look at words for 9-10 secs to recall 100% correctly
- Almost perfect recall of a list of 300 digits which involved use of LT WM
- He encodes groups of 4 digits with single image combine with MofL
Shereshevskii
- No limit to the amount of info learned (100 digits or nonsense syllables, poetry etc.)
- Had exceptional imagery & capacity for synesthesia (stimulus in one sense evoke image in another)
- Found it difficult to forget things unless he imagines whipping it from a blackboard
Rajan
- Former pi record holder with digit span of 59 for visual & 63 for auditory.
- Originally average symbol span but increased it to 30 items by recoding symbols into different digits
PI
- Used modified version of MofL to learn digit sequence for pi considering them 2 at a time
- Sometimes converted them to words based on pronunciation similarities or resemblance in physical characteristics
- Then produced stories based on earlier processing
- Poor visual memory for neutral faces & common events
Describe the strategy used by Chao Lu & PI:
1) Adjacent digits formed into small chunks
2) Visual image/word used to represent each chunk
3) Language used to combine info from all chunks
4) Resembles an elaborated version of the story method
