Chapter 6 Flashcards
long-term memory
- the system that is responsible for storing information for long periods of time
- can be thought of as an archive of information about past events and knowledge
Clive Wearing and retrograde amnesia
- Clive Wearing suffers from likely the worst case of amnesia ever recorded
- contracted severe amnesia in 2985 following a bout of encephalitis that destroyed a good amount of his medial temporal lobes of both sides of his brain as well as parts of his inferior frontal cortex
- Clive is unable to form any new long-term memories
anterograde amnesia
unable to recall memories from your past before a brain injury
serial position curve
- a memory experiment in which a list of words is presented to a participant one after another
- after the last word is presented the participant writes down the words they can remember in any order
- indicates better recall of items at the beginning and end of a list/sequence
primacy effect
- better recall of items at the start of the sequence
- thought to occur because there was more time to rehearse items at the start of the list and transfer them to LTM
recency effect
- better recall of items at the end of the sequence
- items at the end of the list are thought to be sitting in STM
coding
the form in which stimuli are represented in the mind
coding in STM and LTM
- auditory coding is the predominant type of coding in STM
- semantic coding is the most likely form of coding for LTM tasks
visual coding in STM
- if you remembered the pattern by representing it visually in your mind
- e.g. holding an image in the mind to reproduce a visual pattern that was just seen
visual coding in LTM
- when you visualize a person or place from the past
- e.g. visualizing what the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., looked like when you saw it last summer
auditory coding in STM
- illustrated by Conrads demonstration of the phonological similarity effect (misidentifying target letters as another that sounds similar)
auditory coding in LTM
e.g. repeating/singing a song you have heard in your head
semantic coding in STM
e.g. placing words in an STM task into categories based on their meaning (Wickens)
semantic coding in LTM
e.g. being able to recall the general plot of a novel you read (Sachs)
the wickens experiment (1976)
- participants were presented with words related to either fruits or professions
- participants in each group listened to 3 words and they then counted backward for 15 seconds, and then attempted to recall the three words
- this was done for 4 trials, with different words presented in each trial
- because participants recalled the words so soon after hearing them, they were using their STM
- the idea behind this experiment was to create proactive interference
- because words in the same category are presented in a series of trials, there is a falloff in performance on each trial
proactive interference
when information learned previously interferes with learning new information
release of proactive interference
a situation in which conditions occur that eliminate or reduce the decrease in performance caused by proactive interference
the sachs experiment (1967)
- participants listen to a tape recording of a passage and then measured their recognition memory to determine whether they remembered the exact wording of sentences in the passage or just the general meaning of the passage after a delay
- many of Sachs’s participants correctly identified sentence 1 as being identical and knew that sentence 2 was changed
- a number of people identified sentences 3 and 4 as matching one in the passage, even though the wording was different
recognition memory
- identifying a stimulus that was encountered earlier
- the procedure for measuring recognition memory is to present a stimulus during a study period and later to present the same stimulus along with others that were not presented
locating memory in the brain
- there is evidence that STM and LTM are separated in the brain, but also some evidence for overlap
- evidence for separation is provided by neuropsychological studies
- brain imaging experiments show that this separation is not so straightforward
neuropsychology experiment on memory
- patient HM underwent an experimental procedure designed to eliminate his severe epileptic seizures in which the removal of HM’s hippocampus was performed on both sides of the brain
- succeeded in decreasing his seizures but had the unintended effect of eliminating his ability to form new long-term memories though his STM remained intact
- led to an understanding of the role of the hippocampus in forming new long-term memories
- the fact that his short-term memory remained intact suggested that short-term and long-term memories are served by separate brain regions
brain imaging experiment on memory
- questioned whether the hippocampus, which is crucial for forming new long-term memories, might also play a role in holding information for short periods of time
- concluded that the hippocampus is involved in maintaining novel information in memory during short delays
- shows that the hippocampus and other medial temporal lobe structures once thought to be involved only in LTM also play some role in STM
mental time travel
- when a person travels back in time in their mind to re experience events that happened in the past
- associated with episodic memory in experiences
- described as self-knowing or remembering
semantic memory through experience
- the experience of semantic memory involves accessing knowledge about the world that does not have to be tied to remembering a personal experience
- accessing things we are familiar with and know about like facts, concepts, vocab, etc
- can be described as knowing, with the idea that knowing does not involve mental time travel
distinctions between episodic and semantic memory in neurpsychological evidence
in neuropsychological evidence a double dissociation is found between episodic and semantic memory, which supports the idea that memory for these two different types of information probably involves different mechanisms
distinctions between episodic and semantic memory using brain imaging
- levine et al. (2004) did a brain imaging experiment in which they had participants keep diaries on audiotape describing everyday personal events and facts drawn from their semantic knowledge
- participants later listened to these audiotaped descriptions while in an fMRI scanner
- the recordings of everyday events elicited detailed episodic autobiographical memories, while the other recordings simply reminded people of semantic fact
- results indicated that although there can be overlap between activation caused by episodic and semantic memories, there are also major differences
interactions between episodic and semantic memory based on the effect of knowledge on experience
our knowledge (semantic memory) guides our experience, and this, in turn, influences the episodic memories that follow from that experience
autobiographical memory
- memory for specific events from a person’s life, which can include both episodic and semantic components
personal semantic memories
- semantic components of autobiographical memories
- associated with personal experiences
2 degrees of forgetting and remembering
- familiarity
- recollection
familiarity
- the person seems familiar and you might remember his name, but you can’t remember any details about specific experiences involving that person
- associated with semantic memory because it is not associated with circumstances under which knowledge is acquired
recollection
- remembering specific experiences related to the person
- associated with episodic memory because it includes details about what was happening when knowledge was acquired plus an awareness of the event as it was experienced in the past
remember/know procedure
- distinguishes between the episodic components of memory (indicated by a remember response) and semantic components (indicated by a know response)
semanticization of remote memories
loss of episodic details for memories of long-ago events
constructive episodic simulation hypothesis
states that episodic memories are extracted and recombined to construct simulations of future events
explicit memory
- memory that involves conscious recollections of events or facts that we have learned in the past and are aware of
- conscious
- both episodic and semantic memory fall under explicit memory
implicit memory
- memory that occurs when an experience affects a person’s behavior, even though the person is not aware that he or she has had the experience
- unconscious
- procedural memory, memory and conditioning are involved in the implicit process
procedural memory
- memory for how to carry out highly practiced skills
- also called skill memory
procedural memory and attention
- the main effect of procedural memories is that they enable us to carry out skilled acts without thinking about what we are doing
- well-learned procedural memories do not require attention
expert-induced amnesia
- amnesia that occurs because well-learned procedural memories do not require attention
- e.g. a concert pianist who is very experienced and well-practiced can play the piano automatically without much thought
connection between procedural and semantic memory
knowledge about different fields (semantic information) is linked to the ability to carry out various skills (procedural memory)
priming
occurs when the presentation of one stimulus (the priming stimulus) changes the way a person responds to another stimulus (the test stimulus)
repetition priming
occurs when the test stimulus is the same as or resembles the priming stimulus
propaganda effect
people are more likely to rate statements they have read or heard before as being true, just because of prior exposure to the statements
classical conditioning
- the pairing of a neutral stimulus that initially does not result in a response with a conditioned stimulus that does result in a response
- a form of implicit memory
