Chapter 3 Flashcards
Memory:
A system to not only allows us to record, store, and retrieve the information
that is acquired through our senses, but that also influences the way this information is
perceived, encoded, and stored.
Encoding
The processes involved in getting the information into the system by
transforming an external stimulus into an internal representation that allows us to
retain it in the cognitive system.
Storage
Information retention over time. It can be short term or relatively permanent.
Retrieval:
The processes that allow us to find the information stored in our memory
Forgetting:
The processes that prevent us from finding information stores in our
memory.
The model of Atkinson and Shriffin
-Sensory memory
Sensory memory: The briefest memory stores.
The information stored in these sensory
registers is not yet encoded, but stored in the
sensory modality in which it has been
perceived.
Research has mostly focused on visual (iconic)
and auditory (echoic) memory
o These sensory registers store incoming
sensory information for less than a
second, before the information is either
lost or transferred into short-term
memory
-Working or short-term memory
Working memory: A unitary system where
input from the different sensory memories is
integrated with information from long-term
memory to be briefly held in conscious
awareness and manipulated.
Input of new information is only possible if old
information is moved out
Most information held in short-term memory is information that we are consciously
aware of
Verbal rehearsal lengthens the time period information stays in the short-term store
and at the same time builds up the trace in the long-term memory
Long-term memory
Long-term memory: It stores nearly unlimited amounts of information for a nearly
unlimited period of time.
Information that has entered the processing system through modality-specific sensory
stores and gone through the limited short-term memory needs to be encoded
semantically before entering
-long-term memory
The more the individual rehearses material, the greater the likelihood that it will be
stores in long-term memory; rehearsal requires attention
-Evidence for the multi-systems view of memory
Retrieval from STM is faster than retrieval from LTM
The capacity of STM is much more limited
o Can only hold 5-7 pieces of unrelated information
Recall is affected by the position of the item within the series
o Primacy effect → more 6me to rehearse
o Recency effect → item has not been pushed out of STM
STM and LTM use different forms of coding
o LTM → semantic codes
o STM → acous6c or phonological coding
Neuropsychological studies of patients with amnesia; STM can be impaired, but not
LTM, and vice versa
-Problems with the model of Atkinson and Shriffin
Amnesia patients prove the assumption that information can only reach LTM through
STM wrong
Sensory memory
The briefest memory stores.
The information stored in these sensory
registers is not yet encoded, but stored in the
sensory modality in which it has been
perceived.
Working memory
A unitary system where
input from the different sensory memories is
integrated with information from long-term
memory to be briefly held in conscious
awareness and manipulated.
Long-term memory
It stores nearly unlimited amounts of information for a nearly
unlimited period of time.
Levels of processing approach
The levels of processing approach assumes that items are remembered better the
more we pay attention to them, and the more deeply they are processed
There is no need to distinguish between two memory systems to account for
differences in the length of time that things are remembered
Longer storage results from deeper processing and not from transfer of information
from STM to LTM
The model of working memory of Baddeley and Hitch
Replacing the model of working memory as a unitary system by a multi-component
working memory model
Central executive: A controlling attentional system that has no own storage capacity. It
supervises and coordinates a number of subsystems.
o Plans sequences of activities
Phonological loop: Responsible for short-term storage and manipulation of speech-
based information.
o Phonological store
o Articulatory rehearsal system
Without rehearsal, information will fade away
Translate written material into phonological code to allow storage in
the phonological loop
o Finite length; the longer the words, the fewer words we recall without error
Visuospatial sketchpad: Responsible for short-term storage and manipulation of visual
information.
o Plays an important role in spatial orientation and the solution of visuospatial
problems
The phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad can operate at the same time
Episodic buffer: A place where information from LTM and the subsystems of working
memory can be temporarily stored, integrated, and manipulated.
o Here, the consumer consideration set (the number of brands from a given
product category that a consumer is actively choosing from at a given occasion)
manifests itself
Further temporary storage systems are likely to store information from other senses
such as the chemical senses of taste and smell
o Scratch-‘n’-sniff ads
Central executive
A controlling attentional system that has no own storage capacity. It
supervises and coordinates a number of subsystems.
-Plans sequences of activities
Phonological loop
Responsible for short-term storage and manipulation of speech-
based information.
o Phonological store
o Articulatory rehearsal system
-Without rehearsal, information will fade away
- Translate written material into phonological code to allow storage in
the phonological loop
o Finite length; the longer the words, the fewer words we recall without error
Visuospatial sketchpad
Responsible for short-term storage and manipulation of visual
information.
o Plays an important role in spatial orientation and the solution of visuospatial
problem
Episodic buffer
A place where information from LTM and the subsystems of working
memory can be temporarily stored, integrated, and manipulated.
Here, the consumer consideration set (the number of brands from a given
product category that a consumer is actively choosing from at a given occasion)
manifests itself
consumer consideration set
the number of brands from a given
product category that a consumer is actively choosing from at a given occasion
Forms of long-term memory
Conscious memory = declarative, explicit, recollective
Nonconscious memory = implicit
Declarative or explicit memory
Two subcategories:
1. Episodic memory: Memory about a specific event that occurred at a particular
place and time.
2. Semantic memory: The abstracted words, concepts, and rules stored in our
long-term memory whose context of acquisition was long ago forgotten.
Free recall tests: Respondents who previously had to learn a list of words are simply
asked to recall as many of the recently presented words as possible.
Recognition tests: Memory of the (previously) learned words is assessed by presenting
participants with a list of words consisting of words that had been presented in the
earlier list intermixed with words that had not been presented, and asking them to
identify those words that had been presented earlier.
Episodic memory
Memory about a specific event that occurred at a particular
place and time
Semantic memory:
The abstracted words, concepts, and rules stored in our
long-term memory whose context of acquisition was long ago forgotten.
Free recall tests
Respondents who previously had to learn a list of words are simply
asked to recall as many of the recently presented words as possible.
Recognition tests
Memory of the (previously) learned words is assessed by presenting
participants with a list of words consisting of words that had been presented in the
earlier list intermixed with words that had not been presented, and asking them to
identify those words that had been presented earlier
Implicit memory
Implicit memory effects occur when previous experience facilitates our performance
of subsequent tasks without us remembering the previous experience or being aware
of its influence on our performance
In measures of implicit memory, instructions refer only to the task at hand and make
no reference to prior experiences
o Word stem completion test: Participants are presented with the first few
letters of each word hat had been presented earlier and are asked to present
the first word that comes to mind to complete the stem.
o Word fragment identification test: Participants are presented with a few letters
of the word and are asked to name a word that fits.
o Perceptual identification: Participants who had previously been presented with
a list of words are then presented with words from the list as well as other
words at very brief exposure, and are asked to identify these words.
o Lexical decision task: Participants are either presented with words or non-word
letter strings and are asked to decide as quickly as possible whether the
presented item was a word or a non-word.
Decisions about target words are made quicker when they had
previously been presented
o Category instance generation: Participants who had previously learned a list of
words containing among others a set of animals are then asked to name as
many animals as they can remember.
o Non-verbal measures of implicit memory have also been used (picture
fragment naming)
Probably most advertising effects are due to incidental exposure to advertising
The incidental ad exposure should result in implicit memory, whereas the continent of
the ad to which we pay attention should be stored in explicit memor
Word stem completion test
Participants are presented with the first few
letters of each word hat had been presented earlier and are asked to present
the first word that comes to mind to complete the stem.
Word fragment identification test:
Participants are presented with a few letters
of the word and are asked to name a word that fits.
Perceptual identification
Participants who had previously been presented with
a list of words are then presented with words from the list as well as other
words at very brief exposure, and are asked to identify these words.
Lexical decision task:
Participants are either presented with words or non-word
letter strings and are asked to decide as quickly as possible whether the
presented item was a word or a non-word.
Decisions about target words are made quicker when they had
previously been presented
Category instance generation:
Participants who had previously learned a list of
words containing among others a set of animals are then asked to name as
many animals as they can remember.
Priming:
The phenomenon that exposure to an object or a word in one context
increases the accessibility of the mental representation of that object or word in a
person’s mind.
o As a result, the activated concept exerts for some time unintended influence
on the individual’s responses in subsequent unrelated contexts without the
individual being aware of this influence
Differential impact of manipulations of processing depth on measures of explicit and
implicit memory
o Performance on the explicit memory test was worst in the no context and best
in “generate” condition
o Performance on the implicit memory test was worst in “generate” condition
and best in the no context condition
Supraliminal priming
The participant is exposed to the priming stimuli as part of a
conscious task.
o Being aware of the stimulus, but not its influence
Knowledge structures in long-term memory
Encoding usually relies on some kind of prior knowledge
Categories are the most elementary knowledge structure, reflecting a class of objects
that we believe belongs together
By categorizing a stimulus, we assign meaning to that stimulus without having to think
about the properties and functions of that object
An early classical view assumed that categories should be represented as a set of
defining features that apply to all category members
o However, most natural categories cannot be defined in terms of such features
More recently, a probabilistic or prototype view of category representation has
become accepted, which conceives of categories as a list of features that are typical
for the category but not necessarily defining it
o Classifying exemplars on the basis of their similarity to the prototype
Scripts: Abstract knowledge structures that describe standardized sequences of events
and the interrelationship between different (role-)categories.
o Cultures vary in terms of scripts that apply to specific situations
Knowledge stored in memory does not consist of isolated bits, but of a network of
association between these items
Associative network models conceive of mental representations of each isolated piece
of knowledge as a discrete “node” connected to other nodes by “links” of various
types
o Links are formed or strengthened whenever items that are experienced or
thought about together
o The level of activation of nodes can vary rapidly over time and varies from
occasion to occasion
o The more activated a node is, the more likely it is that it will burst into
awareness, be recalled, or be applied to incoming information
o LTM as a single large associative network
o STM as the currently activated subset of the LTM
Scripts
Abstract knowledge structures that describe standardized sequences of events
and the interrelationship between different (role-)categories.
o Cultures vary in terms of scripts that apply to specific situations
The role of memory in judgements: on the ineffectiveness of traditional measures of
advertising effectiveness
Standard strategies marketers use to measure the effectiveness of an ad are recall
tests and recognition tests; these are ineffective
o Exposure to advertisements can impact implicit memory, and these effects
may not be detectable with measures of explicit memory
o Recollection of arguments made in a campaign may be unrelated to
consumers’ attitude towards the advertised product, because the targets of
advertising campaigns may change their product judgements online while
being exposed to the campaign
Implicit memory and the measurement of ad effectiveness
Recognition was poorer when attention was divided (rather than undivided) and when
assessment was delayed (rather than immediate) → measure of explicit memory
The effect of ad exposure on implicit memory was as strong under divided as under
undivided attention and as strong after a week as it had been when tested
immediately → measure of implicit memory
Sole use of measures of explicit memory to assess the effectiveness of advertising is
likely to result in an underestimation of the impact of advertising campaigns on
memory
Attitude change achieved by a campaign, rather than memory for arguments
contained in the advertisements, should be the indicator on which an evaluation of
campaign effectiveness should be based
Memory-based vs. online judgements
Memory-based judgment: Making a judgement after taking all the available
information in.
Online judgement: Integrating the information while we are exposed to it.
o Our evaluations could be relatively unrelated to the product claims, even
thought we might still be able to recall them at some later time
When participants knew beforehand that they had to make a judgement (online task),
the correlation between recalled information and evaluation was non-significant
When participants did not know that they had to make a judgement, and had to make
it after listening to the information (memory-based task), a considerable correlation
emerged between recall and evaluation
Why are the evaluations of individuals who make online judgements unrelated to
argument recall?
o Individuals who are trying to form an evaluation while listening to information
are more likely to elaborate the information they are given
In evaluating the product, they will rely more heavily on their own
reactions and elaborations of the original information than on the
information itself
Individuals store both attribute-based and evaluation-based representation in
separate representations; each of these may be used independently in subsequent
judgments
o Evaluation-based representation is used for making global memory-based
judgements
o Attribute-based representations is used for making discrete memory-based
judgments
Memory-based judgment:
Making a judgement after taking all the available
information in
Online judgement:
Integrating the information while we are exposed to it.
o Our evaluations could be relatively unrelated to the product claims, even
thought we might still be able to recall them at some later time
Memory factors in brand choice
Consumers make numerous decisions every day that can vary on a continuum of the
level of involvement required in making that decision
o Low involvement – repetitive, routine, or habitual choices
o High involvement – infrequently bought, and expensive goods
Consider-then-choose decision strategy
Purchasing situations vary in the extent to which they encourage more memory-based
or more stimulus-based strategies
Highly accessible brands are likely to attract more attention and to seem more familiar
Differences in conceptual elaboration should have greater impact on memory-based
than stimulus-based choices
o Sentences were better remembered in measures of explicit memory
o Words in isolation led to better performance on measures of implicit memory
Memory-based choices benefitted more when the brand name was presented in a
context that encouraged elaboration (i.e. as part of a sentence), whereas stimulus-
based choices benefitted more when the brand name was presented in an isolated
context
In addition to increasing the accessibility of the primed brand name, priming can also
increase the accessibility of closely associated brands and of the product category to
which the brand belongs
o More likely if the brand is prototypical for the product category, and if that
particular product category was previously not highly accessible in the
individual’s mind
By reminding individuals that there is an attractive but non-obvious choice alternative,
some individuals are likely to choose this alternative, which they would not have
thought of unaided
Under certain conditions, even mere exposure to a brand name can increase
evaluation by increasing processing fluency; but these effects are limited to stimuli
that are unfamiliar
The set of brands consumers consider when deciding on a purchase is typically not
only smaller than the total number of brands available in the marketplace, but also
smaller than the number of brands of which the consumer is aware
Priming that required a greater degree of conceptual elaboration was more effective
for memory-based choices but was less effective when choice was stimulus-based
o For stimulus-based choices, exposure to the brand name as a single word was
most effective
Under certain conditions, priming can influence purchasing decisions:
o When individuals have no particular preference for a specific brand
o When their preferred brand is not available
o When an attractive, but less accessible, subcategory of a given product
category has been primed
Forgetting the message: advertising clutter and competitive interference
Forgetting is influenced by:
o The passage of time
o Experiences in the period between exposure to information and recall
Exposure to competing information (interference theories)
Retroactive interference: The effect of later learned material on earlier learning.
Proactive interference: What we have learned earlier can interfere with later learning.
Advertising clutter: The extent to which multiple messages compete for the consumer’s
attention.
Retroactive interference
The effect of later learned material on earlier learning.
Proactive interference
What we have learned earlier can interfere with later learning
Advertising clutter
The extent to which multiple messages compete for the consumer’s
attention.
Competitive interference and memory for advertisements
Retroactive interference experiment
o There was evidence of a great deal of competitive interference when target
ads were presented with ads of brands from the same product class, but only
for participants who merely had to evaluate interest value
o The recall of participants who had to think about a purchase decision (deeper
processing), was not affected by competing information
Proactive interference effects appear to increase with the passage of time
Similarity of advertising execution can also impair recall of advertising claims
o The interference effect disappeared when product class was used as a cue
Moderators of the impact of advertising clutter
The processing goal of the recipient of the ad information
o Competitive interference stronger with more superficial processing
Brand familiarity
o The impact of competitive interference is less strong for brands that are highly
familiar
o Familiar vs. unfamiliar products
Combating interference due to advertising clutter
Retrieval cues
o Useful in reducing interference from other advertisements for competing
brands from the same product category
Repetition of advertisements and spacing
o Positive relationship between number of trials and recall
o The impact of ad repetitions on product attitudes is curvilinear and likely to
decrease after a few repetitions
o Spacing the repetitions of an ad rather than massing them can substantially
increase the probability of message recall
o Attention hypothesis: People pay less attention to a second or third
presentation of the same advertisement if they realize that it is the same and
that they miss nothing if they ignore it.
o Encoding variability hypothesis: Spaced presentations enhance recall, because
spacing can increase encoding variability
Formation of more cue-target associations
o Retrieval explanation: Each time information is retrieved form memory
increases the probability that it can be recalled the following time. The more
difficult the acct of retrieval, the more potent it will be as a learning event.
Serial position
o Items presented first and last are recalled better than items that were
presented in the middle, although the recency effect disappears if there is a
delay between presentation of the words and recall
o Advertisements were more likely to be recalled if fewer commercials had been
shown within a commercial break
Attention hypothesis
People pay less attention to a second or third
presentation of the same advertisement if they realize that it is the same and
that they miss nothing if they ignore it.
Encoding variability hypothesis:
Spaced presentations enhance recall, because
spacing can increase encoding variability
Formation of more cue-target associations
Retrieval explanation
Each time information is retrieved form memory
increases the probability that it can be recalled the following time. The more
difficult the acct of retrieval, the more potent it will be as a learning event.
Can advertising distort memory?
Advertising presented after experiencing a product can distort consumer’s memory of
their experience
If a positive ad is shown before a judgment is made, the judgement will be better than
when the ad is shown afterwards; selective information search
The effect of advertisements shown afterwards reflects a distortion of individuals’
memories of their evaluation, involving some form of selective retrieval, with possibly
a reinterpretation of the retrieved evidence in the light of the ad claims
The effects of advertising on selective information search and on selective retrieval
are most likely to occur for products or product dimensions that the average
consumer finds difficult to judge
Reconstructive memory
o Every act of remembering involves a reconstruction of information and this
process is susceptible to inaccuracies
o With no delay between the own experience and the ad, participant will still
have a clear memory of their own experience and will rely most heavily on this
information in making their judgement
Advertisements are most likely to distort our memory for experiences that have been
rather ambiguous
