Chapter 2 Flashcards
What is the three step model psychologists often use to represent memory?
Encoding, storage, retrieval
What did Tulving say were the three types of declarative memory?
Semantic, spatial, episodic
What is non-declarative memory?
How to do something.
Where is the hippocampus located?
The medial temporal lobe.
Which brain structure is associated with episodic memory?
The hippocampus
What is episodic memory?
Refers to specific events in one’s life.
What is converging evidence?
Evidence from different kinds of studies.
Using cognitive neuropsychology to study amnesiacs can help us understand what?
Normal memory.
What kind of memories can’t/couldn’t CW and HM form?
New episodic memories.
How does CW feel most of the time?
In an eternal present, as if he has just woken up.
What disease did CW contract?
Encephalitis
What can CW remember?
Some events before the encephalitis and skills such as music.
Amnesiacs often have what kind of amnesia?
Anterograde and varying retrograde.
Why did HM have surgery?
For epilepsy.
In amnesic syndrome, what are the implications of amnesiacs having a normal performance on STM tasks?
That there is a separation between STM and LTM in the brain.
In amnesic syndrome, what are the implications of semantic memory being unaffected?
That there is a separation in the brain between episodic and semantic memory.
In amnesic syndrome, what often happens to procedural memory?
Nothing
What is the difference between explicit and implicit recall abilities in anterograde amnesiacs?
Implicit is still possible (man who hid pin when shaking hands) but explicit isn’t.
Because amnesic syndrome patients are not a homogenous group, what are needed?
Sub-classifications e.g. Korsakoff or fugue
To what extent are single case studies like HM useful?
Yes, very useful but not possible to generalize.
What did Milner and colleagues believe about the role of the hippocampus in LTM and STM?
That it is responsible for converting STM to LTM.
How did Milner and colleagues know that LTM memories are not stored in the hippocampus?
Because HM did not have retrograde amnesia.
What does evidence from NA show?
That other brain areas can be involved in anterograde amnesia.
Which brain areas were affected with NA?
The mammillary body (part of the diencephalon), which receives input from the hippocampus and relays it to the thalamus.
Which area of the brain is affected in Korsakoff’s syndrome?
The mammillary body, same as NA
Korsakoff’s syndrome is due to a deficiency of which vitamin?
Thiamine (B1)
Converging evidence of the role of the hippocampus in LTM shows what about birds?
Larger hippocampus, better at remembering where they stored food.
What happens to place cells (individual neurons) in the hippocampus of a rat in a specific locations in its environment?
Specific neurons fire suggesting that the rat has built a cognitive map of its environment to encode locations of important items in its environment.
What is the difference between the brains of black-taxi drivers and bus drivers in London?
Taxi drivers have higher volume (and higher for more time/expertise) of right hippocampus because a lot of spatial information versus bus drivers only specific routes.
What does converging evidence help you be more confident about?
Causality
What is a quasi-experiment?
Using groups which already exist and not assigning participants randomly.
What was Huppert and Piercy’s experiment on Korsakoff’s patients?
Show sets of photos on day one and different set on day two. After ten minute delay on day two, show photos and ask which seen on day two. Easy for controls versus Korsakoff’s.
In the Huppert and Piercy, how did Korsakoff’s patients do for item based information versus context based information?
ok at item-based information (ever seen) and not good at context-based information (when seen).
What is it called when you can remember what seen but not when seen?
Source amnesia.