Chapter 6 Flashcards

1
Q

What is the most crucial feature of episodic memory?

A

Capacity to remember specific events–> need mental filing system to distinguish similar events

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
2
Q

What is Tulving’s mental time travel?

A

Reliving past experiences & using it to anticipate future events

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
3
Q

What is the basis of semantic memory?

A

accumulated & consolidated recollection of past memories

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
4
Q

Amnesiac patients who have impaired episodic memory also have impaired ——–.

A

Capacity to continue to develop knowledge about the world. (e.g don’t know current president but know the president of WWII)

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
5
Q

What did Martin Conway discover after studying retention of material from a psychology course?

A

After a short delay, the material was recalled in episodes, after a long delay, material was incorporated into semantic memory & separated from the actual learning event

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
6
Q

What was the main criticism of the Ebbinghaus tradition?

A
  • Clearly specified experiments with constrained goals could make us focus too much on narrow problems.
  • Attempt to separate memory from meaning leads to studying simple repetition habits
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
7
Q

How was Bartlett’s approach different from Ebbinghaus?

A
  • More naturalistic & informal
  • Studied recall of complex material (folk tales from unfamiliar cultures e.g War of Ghosts)
  • Use errors in recall as a clue about storage & encoding of material–> rationalizing stories by distorting them to fit own experience
  • Focused on participants’ effort for meaning (Ebbinghaus avoided all meaning)
  • Coined the term “shema”–>long-term structured representation of knowledge–> based on social & cultural influences–> influence all 3 stages of memory
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
8
Q

What are two criticisms of Bartlett’s approach?

A
  • Vague instructions to participants
  • Many recall distortions due to deliberate guessing & not due to memory problems (Neisser says this is because they were made to go beyond their recall capacity limit)
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
9
Q

Describe Sulin & Dooling’s study to test Bartlett’s assumption that LT delay intervals increase schema-driven errors:

A
  • Presented story of Gerald Martin in one Condition & Adolf Hitler in another
  • Asked whether various sentences were part of the text, one of which was about Jew persecution
  • Participants in the Hitler condition were more likely to incorrectly indicate that the sentence was part of text
  • Semantic knowledge about Hitler at long retention interval (1 week) but not at short one (5 mins)
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
10
Q

Describe Charmicheal’s experiment using ambiguous items

A
  • Ambiguously shaped items were given two labels (e.g hat & beehive)
  • When asked to draw items from memory, drawings were heavily influenced by verbal labels
  • Bias occurred during retrieval but not during encoding
  • Correct info was stored but since recalling task was difficult, participants relied on recognition rather than recall
  • So memory is aided whenever contextual cues arouse appropriate schemata
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
11
Q

What did Glaze surmise from his experiment with rating extent of similarity between consonant-vowel-consonants & real words?

A
  • Syllables that are rated as more meaningful are easier to recall (e.g CAS resembles Castle but ZIJ is harder to link to meaningful existing words)
  • Easier to remember things that are consistent with our well-learned language habbits
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
12
Q

What was Jenkins & Russel’s experiment with word associations?

A
  • In a mixed list of items, things that were associated were recalled as a cluster (e.g needle, thread, mend)
  • Learning paired words with a high inter-word association is faster (e.g bread-butter) than ones with low/absent inter-word association (e.g lobster-tower)
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
13
Q

What is paired-associate learning?

A

-Learning word pairs so that when one is produced, the second one could be recalled

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
14
Q

Words that evoke images are remembered—–. This was discovered by ——- and labelled as ——

A

Words that evoke images are remembered better. Allen Paivio discovered this and called it introspection.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
15
Q

What is the concept of imageability?

A

words that are easily imaginable can be coded in terms of their visual appearance & verbal meaning whereas abstract words are difficult to imagine visually–> dual-coding hypothesis

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
16
Q

How does the Cloze technique help us measure degree of redundancy in text?

A
  • The passage is presented with every 5th word deleted
  • Participants must guess missing words
  • Children’s text is more predictable–> more words filled
  • The more redundant & predictable as text is–> the more memorable
17
Q

What do Craik & Tulving say about levels of processing? Describe their experiment.

A

The more in-dept the information is taken in, the more durable their traces are in memory

  • Participants asked to make 3 types of judgements on words presented to them.
  • Visual processing (upper or lower case) vs Phonological (does dog rhyme with log?) vs Semantic (does the word “Field” fit in “the horse lives in—”)
  • “Yes” responses better recalled than “No” responses because a correct link between word & sentence made it easier to remember
  • Slower processing as a result of more difficult tasks (upper/lower case task replaced by counting vowels in target word) during visual & phonological processing did not lead to enhanced word recall
  • Whether or not a memory test is expected also does not enhance recall, the way material is processed does.
18
Q

What are 3 criticisms of the levels of processing theory?

A

1- Processing time is not an accurate measure of recall
2-Different features of a stimulus could be processed simultaneously instead of vision-phonology-semantics order
3-When focusing on one feature of stimuli, they could be aware of others too (e.g log rhymes with dog but you’re also aware of what they mean semantically)

19
Q

What is transfer appropriate processing (TAP) and describe related experiment by Morris et al.

A

Retention is at its best when mode of encoding & rehearsal are the same.

  • Participants must make phonological (shallow) & semantic (deep) judgments each word on a list & not warned about recall test
  • Memory was then tested by one of two recognition tests
    a) standard–> words previously presented to participant mixed with nonrepresented words
    b) Rhyme–> participant must decide if any of the new words rhyme with previously presented words

-For standard condition, the deeper the processing the better the performance but for rhyme condition the shallower the processing the better the performance

20
Q

words embedded in text that is semantically —– is better recalled.

A

Semantically rich & more elaborate.

21
Q

Compare maintenance rehearsal to elaborative rehearsal. Which one enhances delayed LT learning?

A

maintenance involves continuing to process an item at the same level (e.g repeating phone #) vs elaborative involves linking material to material already stored in memory which enhances delayed LT learning.

22
Q

Describe an experiment that links familiarity to recognition & recall

A
  • Participants given numbers to remember over delay
  • Read out words to interrupt rehearsal during the delay
  • After recalling memorized numbers, told to recall as many words said during the delay as possible.
  • Those words that were most repeated during delay increased recognition but not strong enough to enhance recall
23
Q

What is Mechanic’s test of intentional vs incidental learning?

A
  • Participants had to articulate a series of nonsense syllables either once or as often as possible
  • One group knew about recall test, the other did not.
  • Regardless of test knowledge, repeated articulation led to enhanced recall.
  • Those in incidental learning condition with one articulation did the worst
  • Repeating unfamiliar syllables boosts their representation in phonological LTM
24
Q

What was Tulving’s experiment on chunking trying to prove?

A
  • Gave participants a list of words & changed their order but as they got more familiar with the words they started chunking them in the same way trial after trial
  • Items were being grouped based on semantic categories & the groups got bigger and bigger.
  • Participants show better recall when when given sets of 4 items from the same category as opposed to multiple categories
25
Q

What is subjective organization? What are 3 examples of this?

A

Organizing unstructured material to enhance learning.

  • Hierarchical structure (participants get 65% correct response rate vs scrambled 19% correct) but not always possible
  • Coherent stories (creates chunks & links them together so fewer items are left out but too demanding & not every word can be semantically linked)
  • Visual imagery (imagining items interacting some way; not necessarily plausible ways)
26
Q

Describe Mandler’s experiment on Intention to learn:

A

Participants were given stack of cards with one word on each:
Group 1) Told to memorize them
Group 2) Categorize them in a meaningful way
Group 3) Memorize & categorize & warned about upcoming recall test
Group 4) arrange words in columns

Results: First 3 groups did similarly well despite 1 & 2 not knowing about test. Group 4 did worst. So processing is what matters not your desire to remember.

27
Q

Describe Ericsson & Chase’s student SF:

A
  • SF practiced hearing & repeating digit sequences for 1 hour per day
  • Performance improved as he worked out a way of encoding digits based on running times (e.g 4-3-8 as 4 mins 38 secs)
  • Encoding was hierarchical & spatial
28
Q

What is Long term working memory by Ericsson?

A

Development of structures in LT memory used for active but temporary storage (e.g mental calculators with imaginary abacus)

29
Q

What is the difference between LTWM & multicomponent WM system?

A

LTWM:
-Captures a class of situations in which expert LT knowledge is used to help perform specific cognitive tasks
-Has no fixed capacity & reflects many different mechanisms based on different processes in the brain
MCWMS:
-Is a unified cognitive system with limited capacity comprised of more than one component that are not equally used

30
Q

Describe Oliver & Ericsson’s experiment on seriation:

A
  • Seriation means placing items in serial order
  • Plays a role in both STM & LTM
  • Expert Shakespear actors were tested on line recall by using 1-4 probes (words) which led to a perfect recall for their 4-word sequences and fairly well in 1-word ones.
  • Accurate recall could not have been due to primacy cue so it must have been seriation
31
Q

What is the Hebb effect?

A
  • Proposed by Donald Hebb
  • Shows that digit sequences that were repeated every 3 trials show a gradual improvement in recall unlike nonrepeated sequences
  • Repeated presentation leads to implicit chunks with subsequences based on the primacy process
  • The effect occurs even with there’re long gaps in between repetitions (participants did not detect repetition)
  • Phonological similarity & articulatory suppression did not influence it
  • Suggests that it involves a LT component, even when learning pairs of nonwords.
  • Associated with the hippocampus, temporal lobes & insula (all areas associated with LT learning)
32
Q

What did Earhard discover about using seriation as a strategy?

A
  • Serial recall makes it easier for you to recall everything (e.g pilots doing instrument checks in a particular order)
  • Free recall is easier to conjure but might miss some items during retrieval
33
Q

Patients with damage to their hippocampus may still be able to recognize certain items/events provided that their ——– and —– are intact

A

Rhinal & perirhinal cortex

34
Q

Vargha Khadem has discovered evidence that clashes with what widely held assumption about semantic memory?

A
  • Discovered Jon who has a hippocampus half the normal size due to anoxia
  • Has above-average intelligence & excellent semantic memory
  • Despite the belief that semantic memory depends on episodic memory which depends on the hippocampus
35
Q

What was Brewer’s experiment on episodic memory?

A
  • 48 photographs of scenes required to be categorized as indoors or outdoors followed by an unexpected recall test where old & new scenes were mixed
  • Participants had to decide which scenes they had already seen
  • FUP questions were asked about whether they could “remember” or if it was “familiar” and the final category was “forgotten”
  • Activation in the right frontal lobe and hippocampal areas were associated with “remembered” but not with the other two
  • Suggests that those brain areas are linked with episodic memory
36
Q

Describe study of London taxi drivers by Maguire et al.

A
  • MRI scan suggests that the posterior region of hippocampus larger in more experienced taxi drivers while other hippocampus areas were smaller (brain structure modification due to navigation)
  • Driving simulator test while under PET scan showed that use of geographical knowledge & working out novel routes activated the hippocampus
  • Greater grey matter volume in the mid-posterior hippocampal area but less in anterior for taxi drivers in comparison to bus drivers
  • Taxi drivers performed better at landmark recognition & distance judgements but bus drivers excelled more on viso-spatial learning (copying figure & producing it after a delay)