Chapter 6: Human Memory Encoding and Storage

Question 1

what brain structures are involved in the creation and storage of memory

Answer 1

TEMPORAL CORTEX
-Includes the hippocampus
-Involves storage of new memories

PREFRONTAL BRAIN REGIONS
-Responsible for the encoding of new memories and retrieval of old memories

Question 2

explain the model of memory

Answer 2

Sensory Store — (Attention) –> Short-Term memory —- (Rehearsal)-> Long-term memory

-The first place information has to enter is the sensory store (sensory memory, it is brief and fleeting, but everything you experience gets in there for a short period of time but it gets dumped easily too)
-Then things you retain from the sensory store goes into short-term memory, whatever you are actively thinking about is short-term memory
-When you work with things in the short-term memory and rehearse them, then they get put into the long-term memory

Question 3

what is long term memory

Answer 3

Long-term memory is your repository for things you know but are not currently thinking about; short term memory is what you are currently thinking about

Question 4

what are the two ways for things to get into short term memory

Answer 4

1) Can pull things from long term memory into short term memory
2) Or things you are perceiving right now

-Can hold around 7 pieces of information at a time

Question 5

explain sensory memory

Answer 5

Holds Information Briefly
-Stage of memory that registers information about the environment and holds it for a very brief period of time
-Ex. Showing people a display briefly of letters and then they are asked to recall it later

Question 6

explain the procedure of sperling study that measured the capacity of visual sensory memory

Answer 6

Whole-report procedure
-Participants are asked to report all the items of a display.
-They can do six at most. (when asked to report entire display)
-What we did in previous example, flash something very briefly and ask participants to recall what they saw on the screen

Partial-report procedure
-Participants are cued to report only some of the items in a display.
-Flash the screen the same way as before, but then they would hear a tone (high, medium, or low), if you heard the high tone report top line, medium middle, and low bottom
-People were able to do this one

Question 7

results of the sperling study of looking at an array of letters

Answer 7

Demonstrating the Existence of a Brief Visual Sensory Store

-After the display was turned off, they were cued by a tone, either immediately or after a delay, to recall a particular one of the three rows.
-Also played around with delaying tone, when you heard the tone changed
-The number of items reported decreased as the delay in the cuing tone increased.

Implication is that all of this is stored in sensory memory and you are able to use it if your attention is drawn to it right away, especially if your attention is only directed to a part of it you are able to report the part more accurate than trying to report the whole array
-when looking at the whole array: By the time you reported several letters when you are directed to the whole picture, the other ones are already out of your short-term memory

Question 8

what is the visual sensory memory store called and what does it do

Answer 8

-Iconic memory
-Memory system that can effectively hold all the information in the visual display
-If attention is drawn to something immediately, you are going to be able to recall what is there

Question 9

what is the auditory sensory memory store called and what does it do

Answer 9

Echoic memory
-Perceptual regions of the cortex hold a brief representation of sensory information for further processing.
-it lasts about 10 seconds (lasts longer than visual memory)

Question 10

what is the theory of short-term memory and the study that shows how STM can be deposited into LTM

Answer 10

-Proposed intermediate system in which information has to reside on its journey from sensory memory to long-term memory

Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)
-as information is rehearsed in a limited-capacity STM, it is deposited in long-term memory

Question 11

what is chunking

Answer 11

when you are able to put together more pieces of information into one chunk

Question 12

what is memory span

Answer 12

-Number of elements one can immediately repeat back
-Typical short-term memory span is about seven items of information (i.e., words).

Question 13

explain the study that shows how much can be held in short term memory

Answer 13

-Information cannot be kept in short-term memory indefinitely
-Showed string of numbers – look for repeats
-Participants looked at screen and numbers appeared on the screen, notice what numbers if any of the numbers were repeated
-Were looking when people could notice the repeats

Lag: how many numbers between the repeat number, when the lags were smaller people were more likely to notice that they have seen the numbers before

Results: drops off very quickly after 7, shows new information bumps old information out of short term memory
-When you take in new information into the 7 slots, the old information gets bumped
-7 +/-2 capacity of chunks (pieces of information) in short term memory to recall things

Question 14

what is depth of processing and an example

Answer 14

-rehearsal improves memory only if the material is rehearsed in a deep and meaningful way (what you do with memory in short-term determines how it gets into long-term)
-Depth of processing more critical to memory than how long information is rehearsed

ex. When studying, what determines if memory will go into long term memory? The depth about how you are processing something, if you repeat things over and over again, if you do it long enough you will remember what you repeat

Question 15

what is shallow processing

Answer 15

Fragile memory
-When you repeat things over and over again, using information, but not using it in a deep way

Question 16

what is deep processing

Answer 16

Durable memory (left prefrontal regions active here)
-Apply meaning, think about the meaning of what you are studying, think about the information you are currently learning and how it relates to information you already know

Question 17

what is Baddley’s theory of working memory

Answer 17

-system that provides temporary storage for information that is currently being used
-Different from short term memory – just keeps information active

Came up with model that explains the different things you can do with working memory:

Visuospatial Sketchpad <-> Central Executive <-> Phonological Loop

Question 18

what is the visuospatial sketchpad

Answer 18

the ability to visualize things, ex. Seeing numbers when doing a math problem

Question 19

what is the phonological loop

Answer 19

when you think of something you want to remember you repeat it in your head over and over again until you have it memorized or until you get somewhere where you can write it down

Question 20

explain areas of the brain in working memory

Answer 20

Different areas of the frontal and parietal cortex appear to be responsible for maintaining different types of information in working memory.
-Makes sense because parietal is attention and frontal is memory

Question 21

what does the phonological loop consist of

Answer 21

ARTICULATORY LOOP
-“Inner voice” used during rehearsal of verbal information
-The articulatory loop involves speech, so Brocca’s area may be involved. (often involved when doing verbal kinds of things)

PHONOLOGICAL STORE
-An “inner ear” that hears the inner voice and stores the information in phonological form

Question 22

explain the delayed match to sample task with monkeys that highlighted the areas of the frontal cortex

Answer 22

Delayed match-to-sample tasks with monkeys (Goldman-Rakic, 1992), trying to find out where exactly this was going on in the brain, remembering what tile the food was under
-Monkeys with lesions in the frontal cortex cannot perform this working memory task (Brodmann area 46).
-Trying to see what they could not do with certain parts of the brain lesioned
-Delayed match to sample task: have a monkey in the cage with two wells in front of it, put food in one of the wells, covered up the wells and covered up the cage and see if they went to the right well
-Would just block vision for a short period of time (monkey would have to use short term memory
-46 area, part of the brain they would lesion to get it to not have working short term memory

Question 23

explain the monkey study in humans

Answer 23

Human infants cannot perform similar tasks successfully until their frontal cortices have somewhat matured (around 1 year).

PET scans and humans (Smith and Jonides, 1995)
-Right prefrontal area 47, similar to the monkey area just slightly below
-May correspond to the central executive
-May control representation of info in other brain regions

Question 24

what is spreading activation

Answer 24

how information comes into short term memory other than from the environment

-The process by which currently attended items can make associated memories more available
-Proposes that activation spreads along paths of a network

ex.
Free-association task
-Bible
-Animals
-Flood
-What pops into your mind when you see these three words? Most people say Noah’s Ark

Question 25

why does Noah come into your brain after seeing these three words

Answer 25

when shown the three words, those concepts in your brain become activated, the activation then spreads out to other associated concepts, the word Noah is connected to all three things, but the other things are not associated to all the words
-Because something is getting activation from three things rather than one, it gets enough activation to spring from long term memory to short term memory

Question 26

what two things impact the probability of retrieval

Answer 26

-Baseline activation
-Activation from associated concepts

Question 27

what is baseline activation definition

Answer 27

how much activation to certain things have at base level
-Ex. For someone who studies the bible, the word bible might bring Noah into the mind, high baseline activation

Question 28

explain the priming memories study about pairs of words

Answer 28

Participants judged whether pairs of items were real words.
-People had to make this judgment as quickly as possible
-When the pairs had an associated relationship (bread, butter), participants were faster than when unrelated.
-These two things tend to be connected so people were able to make judgements quicker

Why? When you see the word bread and butter, their concepts/activations are connected so you have an overall bigger activation and it is easier to recognize them in your head
-Associative spreading of information

Question 29

explain the power law of learning and the lifting weights example

Answer 29

Memory performance improves as a function of practice
-Increasing practice has diminishing returns.
-Related to how we learn to do things, we know that practicing things improves memory and ability to do things

Diminishing Returns Ex. Lifting weights, progress happens quicker in the beginning and then you plateau and it is harder to make progress, can add more weight quicker in the beginning but the more and longer you do it the less weight you can add, it is not that your strength goes away
-You get less and less better at something the longer you do it

Question 30

explain the function of memory practiced

Answer 30

As a memory is practiced, it is strengthened according to a power function.

Question 31

explain the Pirolli and Anderson study about the power function and recognizing objects

Answer 31

-Had people study stimuli and then tested people with how many seconds it took them to recognize stimuli
-Over the course of the first couple days they were able to remember these things quicker, over the course of more and more days the curve starts to flatten
-The reason this is called a power function

Question 32

power law and neural components

Answer 32

Power law is related to basic neural changes involved in learning.

-Activation in prefrontal regions appears to drive long-term potentiation in the hippocampus (Paller & Wagner, 2002).

Question 33

explain long term potentiation

Answer 33

-The increase in responsiveness
of a neuron as a function of past stimulation
-Occurs in the hippocampus and cortical areas
-A form of neural learning
-Changes that are happening to neurons as they fire over and over again, the more often they fire, the easier it is for them to fire again; however the change in likelihood gets smaller and smaller over time

Ex. Thinking negative thoughts in depression, thoughts can spiral until you cannot stop thinking about them, the more times you think that the easier it is to think that type of thing

Question 34

explain long term potentiation in rats

Answer 34

-Stimulated the hippocampus in rats
-Looked at the likelihood those nerves would fire again
-Originally the hippocampus became more likely to fire on its own in the first few days, but gets less and less as time goes on

Question 35

neural activation and practice

Answer 35

Neural activation changes with practice.
-You remember something faster after you have thought about it more often.

Question 36

explain the research illustrating the role of the prefrontal cortex in forming new memories (memory for words and pictures)

Answer 36

Memory for words (Wagner et al., 1998)
Memory for pictures (Brewer et al. 1998)

Would have people study words or pictures (left side of brain is important for language, right side of the brain is more perceptual/spatial)

Activation in brain
-for words and for pictures
-Activation is always higher for things you remember than things you forget, reason to think activation drives whether you will remember these things later on or not
-You see response happening seconds after the activation is occurring

Question 37

what is elaborative processing

Answer 37

-Involves creating additional information that relates and expands on what it is that needs to be remembered
-Thinking about things in a deep way

Question 38

explain the study about studying for elaborative processing

Answer 38

-Demonstrated the importance of elaboration on memory performance (study vs. generating elaborations)
-Gave people phrases to remember, people were either told to study the phrase or finish it
-Testing people on how well they remembered the phrases, found that people were better at remembering the phrases when they generated an elaboration on it

Question 39

explain the Otten et al study for brain activity and recall

Answer 39

-Noted that high activity in prefrontal and hippocampal regions is predictive of subsequent recall for all kinds of materials
-Elaboration creates more activity

Question 40

explain the Marsh and Butler study that explains the difference between studying something and testing yourself on the information

Answer 40

-Instead of simply studying passively you can actively test yourself on what it is you are trying to remember
-Flashcards are a tremendous tool to help you test yourself
-Study found that people who tested themselves did better than people who just studied

Another study by Roediger and Karpicke (2006)
found that as time went on people who tested themselves did better to a greater extent than people who just studied, the importance of testing increases with delay

Question 41

explain the incidental vs. intentional learning about rating pleasantness of words

Answer 41

Intention to learn material is not as important to memory as level of processing.

Hyde and Jenkins (1973)
-People were shown words and then were later on asked to recall those words, researchers are looking at % of recall
-IV: ask people to rate the pleasantness of the words they were looking at;
-IV: check the letters within the word (e.g. how many vowels)
-People were also either told they were need to recall or not told (incidental learning vs. intentional)

Results: rating the pleasantness of the words made a huge difference in remembering the words compared to checking the letters, whether they were told to recall or not did not matter

Question 42

what are flashbulb memories and the example about JFK

Answer 42

Particularly vivid memory for events that are very important or traumatic

People claimed to have vivid memories of Kennedy’s assassination 13 years later.
-Brown and Kulik (1977)

Question 43

explain accuracy of flashbulb memories

Answer 43

Flashbulb memories may not be as accurate as originally thought and fade with time.
-McCloskey et al. (1988); Talairco and Rubin (2003)
-Do not confuse vivid with accurate
-Particularly emotionally arousing things allow for worse memory in humans

Ex. Studies done after 9/11, people the day after 9/11 went out and researched people’s memories about this; then interviewed them years later and compared the two recalls
-People’s memories were very inconsistent despite the vividness of the memories they recalled

Vividness and accuracy are not the same
-Common misconception