Chapter 5 - Memory Models and Research Methods

Question 1

Memory

Answer 1

The means by which we retain and draw on information from our past experiences to use in the present; the dynamic mechanisms associated with storing, retaining, and retrieving information about past experience. There are three common operations of memory: encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Question 2

Encoding

Answer 2

Transforming sensory data into a form of mental representation.

Question 3

Storage

Answer 3

Keeping encoded information in memory.

Question 4

Retrieval

Answer 4

Pulling out the information stored in memory.

Question 5

Recall

Answer 5

Producing a fact/word/other item from memory. For example fill-in-the-blank tests.

Question 6

Recognition

Answer 6

Selecting or identifying an item as being one that you have been exposed to previously. For example multiple choice/true-false tests.

Question 7

Types of recall

Answer 7

1. Serial recall - recalling in the exact order the items were presented.
2. Free recall - recalling in any order you choose.
3. Cued recall - items are presented in pairs, and you are cued with one item of one pair, and asked to recall the mate.

Question 8

Relearning/savings

Answer 8

The number of trials it takes to learn once again items that were learned in the past.

Question 9

Explicit memory

Answer 9

Conscious recall/recognition.

Question 10

Implicit memory

Answer 10

Unconscious recall/recognition.

Question 11

The process-dissociation model.

Answer 11

Both implicit and explicit memory play a role in every response, so only one task is needed to measure both.

Question 12

Rotary pursuit task

Answer 12

A task used to test procedural memory, where participants maintain contact between an L-shaped stylus and a small rotating disk.

Question 13

Mirror tracing

Answer 13

A task used to test procedural memory, where participants trace the outline of a shape only seen in a mirror.

Question 14

The Atkinson-Shiffrin multistore model.

Answer 14

Human memory has three separate components:
a sensory/iconic store, where sensory information enters memory, a short-term store, also called working memory or short-term memory, which receives and holds input from both the sensory register and the long-term store, and a long-term store, where information which has been rehearsed (explained below) in the short-term store is held indefinitely.

Question 15

Permastore

Answer 15

The very long-term storage of information, such as knowledge of a foreign language or mathematics. Some research suggests that permastore is a separate memory system, while Neisser and others think that one long-term system can account for it as well.

Question 16

The levels-of-processing framework (LOP)

Answer 16

Memory does not comprise any specific number of separate stores, but rather varies along a continuous dimension in terms of depth of encoding. There are theoretically an infinite number of levels of processing at which items can be encoded through elaboration: a successively deeper understanding of the material to be learned, with no distinct boundaries. This model emphasizes processing as the key to storage. The level at which information is stored will depend, in large part, on how it is encoded. The deeper the level of processing, the more likely it is that the item will be remembered.

Question 17

The self-reference effect

Answer 17

Participants show very high levels of recall when asked to meaningfully relate words to themselves by determining whether the words describe themselves.

Question 18

Within-item elaboration

Answer 18

Elaborates encoding of the particular item in terms of its characteristics, including the various levels of processing.

Question 19

Between-item elaboration

Answer 19

Elaborates encoding by relating each item’s features at various levels to the features of items already in memory.

Question 20

Working memory

Answer 20

Holds the most recently activated/conscious portion of long-term memory, and moves these activated elements into and out of brief, temporary memory storage. Important for problem solving tasks and academic success.

Question 21

Baddeley’s components of working memory

Answer 21

An integrative model by Baddeley that combines the notion of working-memory and the LOP model, where the LOP framework serves as an extension of the working-memory model. Baddeley suggested five elements of working memory. The visuospatial sketchpad briefly holds visual and spatial images. The phonological loop briefly holds verbal information for comprehension and acoustic rehearsal. The central executive allocates attention within working memory, decides how to divide attention between two or more tasks. The subsidiary slave systems perform other cognitive or perceptual tasks. The episodic buffer explains how we integrate information in working memory, long-term memory, the visuospatial sketchpad and the phonological loop.

Question 22

Tasks used to test working memory ability

Answer 22

1. Retention-delay tasks: an item is shown, a retention interval occurs which is filled with other tasks, or unfilled, a stimulus is shown again, and the participants answers whether it is old or new.
2. Temporally ordered working memory load tasks: a series of items is presented, and after a while an item is shown, and the participant answers whether it is old or new. Another form is when stimuli are presented, and the participant repeats them back in the order they were presented.
3. Temporal order tasks: a series of items is presented, and after a while two previously presented items are shown, and the participant answers which item was shown more recently.
4. n-back tasks: stimuli are presented, and at specified points, one is asked to repeat the stimulus that appeared n presentations back.

Question 23

Tulving’s multiple memory systems model

Answer 23

Tulving proposed a distinction between semantic and episodic memory, two forms of explicit memory. Lesions in the frontal lobe seem to affect recollection about when a stimulus was presented, but not the fact that they were presented. It is not clear whether they are two distinct systems, or if episodic memory is merely a specialized form of semantic memory. A great deal of interaction occurs between these two types as well.

Question 24

Connectionist models

Answer 24

Parallel processing models of memory. Our brain handles many operations and processes at once, so that a parallel-processing model of working memory may make more sense, according to these models.

Question 25

The connectionist parallel distributed-processing model (PDP)

Answer 25

The key to knowledge representation lies in the connections among various elements/nodes stored in memory, not in each individual element. Activation of one node may trigger activation of a connected node. Different activation patterns represent different concepts. The spreading of activation continues as long as the activation does not exceed the limits of working memory.
A prime, according to the PDP model, is a node that activates a connected node, and the priming effect is the resulting activation of that node.

Question 26

Mnemonists

Answer 26

People that have extraordinary good memory abilities, often by using special techniques.

Question 27

Hypermnesia

Answer 27

Producing retrieval of memories that seem to have been forgotten.

Question 28

Retrograde amnesia

Answer 28

Loss of memory of events before the trauma that induced the memory loss.

Question 29

Anterograde amnesia

Answer 29

Inability to make new memories.

Question 30

Infantile “amnesia”

Answer 30

Inability to recall events that happened when we were very young.

Question 31

Amnesia

Answer 31

Severe loss of explicit memory - procedural memory is usually not impaired.

Question 32

Alzheimer’s disease

Answer 32

Progressive memory loss and dementia (loss of intellectual function that impairs everyday life). Leads to atrophy, especially in the hippocampus area.

Question 33

Double dissociations

Answer 33

People with different kinds of neuropathological conditions show opposite patterns of deficits.