Chapter 8

Question 1

Memory can be broadly divided into what 3 parts?

Answer 1

Sensory memory
Short-term memory
Long-term memory

Question 2

What is sensory memory?

What happens when attended to vs. unattended to?

Answer 2

Information coming into senses
- Vision and auditory information (unattended information is lost)
○ Theoretically unlimited, but also decays relatively quickly if not attended to
- If we do pay attention, it will enter into short-term memory store

Question 3

What is short-term memory?

How can it become longer-term memory?

Answer 3

like a holding area for memory

• If you make it meaningful in some way, you give it the opportunity to be encoded into longer-term memory
• If something isn’t done with that information at that short-term memory storage point, then the information is lost

Question 4

What is maintenance rehearsal?

Answer 4

• repeating it over and over to self, ex. keeping it alive until you can get a pen and write it down
• a shallow way to hold onto information - just trying to keep the short-term memory alive

Question 5

What is long-term memory? How is it made?

Answer 5

If more meaningful strategy is used and person considers the information in a meaningful way, then the information has a chance to be encoded and stored in long-term memory
- Once in long-term memory, there is a chance it can be retrieved for later

Question 6

Unrehearsed short-term memory is typically lost in what duration?

Answer 6

30 seconds

Question 7

Once encoded in long-term memory, how long can it stay?

Answer 7

Once encoded in long-term, can stay indefinitely - depends on how well it was encoded (ranges from 1min to a lifetime)

Question 8

Why is forgetting necessary?

Answer 8

Forgetting is a necessary part of this. Irrelevant information eventually becomes lost, freeing cognitive resources to process and form new memories.

Question 9

What is the serial position effect?

Answer 9

According to serial position effect, where a word is located within a list of other words will affect how well that word is remembered - because certain positions within a list of words are privileged when it comes to increasing probability that they will be remembered.

Question 9

What are the 2 components of the serial position effect?

Answer 9

primacy effect
recency effect

Question 9

What is the primacy effect?

Answer 9

People have a good memory for items at the beginning of a list
- Ex. first 5 words have greater probability of being remembered
- More attention is given to encoding these words than other words in the list
- Become more meaningful from the list and as a result can be more easily recalled later

Question 10

What is the recency effect?

Answer 10

Recency effect: people also have a good memory for items at the end of a list
- Ex. last words of list
- Just because these are the last words you heard, they are freshest in memory, so probability of recalling them is likely higher

Question 11

What is the difference between working memory and short-term memory?

Answer 11

they are the same thing

Question 12

If it is a longer list and a longer delay between hearing words and recalling them, what do primary and recency effect actually reflect?

Answer 12

primacy effect reflects more long-term memory and recency effect reflects more short-term memory

Question 13

What is the effect of delaying recall on primary and recency effect?

Answer 13

Effect of delaying recall is going to affect recency effect, but generally has no impact on primacy effect.

During the delayed recall, the memory traces for those words of the recency effect is starting to decay (they are being held in that short-term memory store and are not strongly encoded - strongly dependent on time to get at them)

Words of primacy effect are more resistant to time delays

Question 14

Long-term memory can be broadly divided into what 2 types?

Answer 14

Explicit memory

Implicit memory

Question 15

What is explicit memory?

Answer 15

• memory that we have conscious awareness of
• requires conscious effort to retrieve
• can be verbally described (also called declarative memory)

Question 16

What are sub-categories of explicit memory?

Answer 16

Episodic memory: autobiographical events in a person’s life (personally experienced events)

Semantic memory: facts and knowledge (information you just know - what you have learnt in school, vocabulary, knowledge acquired)

Question 17

What is implicit memory?

Answer 17

Memory that a person has acquired, but doesn’t require conscious effort to retrieve.
Just knows how to do it, often difficult to describe because it is usually something they just know and can’t explain how they know it.

Question 18

What are sub-categories of implicit memory?

Answer 18

Classical conditioning: associating two stimuli elicits a response
Ex. time of day you start to feel hungry

Procedural memory: motor skills and habits
Ex. how to ride a bike, how to hold a pencil, writing - don’t think about how to do it

Question 19

What does depth of processing refer to?

Answer 19

The strength of memory trace that is laid down during short-term memory period that can allow for a stronger memory trace to be encoded and stored in long-term memory

The deeper the information is processed in short-term, the stronger the long-term memory trace will be and the higher the probability that a person can retrieve the information later

Question 20

In the experiment in class, is explicit or implicit learning expected to do better for later recall?

Answer 20

Explicit learning did well, but where recall was the best was the condition where the person had to rate the pleasantness of each word they were hearing - even though it was an IMPLICIT learning condition
○ Because they had to consider the word carefully in a strange way - they were processing each word at a deeper level than in all of the other conditions

Question 21

What is the generation effect?

Answer 21

a strategy used in short-term memory to strengthen long-term memory trace

given first word and only first letter of the second word, then asked to generate second word that is related to first word – person’s memory for second words would be better using this method as opposed to given the second word

Question 22

Why does the generation effect work?

Answer 22

By requiring person to generate the words themselves, they are processing the words at a deeper level than if the words are just presented to them.
By requiring more effort to generate the words, it encodes the words at a deeper level in short-term and makes them easier to retrieve from long-term memory later.

Question 23

What is the production effect?
How does it work?

Answer 23

Refers to saying the words that you want to remember later

Verbalizing the word takes effort and can help strengthen the memory trace for later

Question 24

What is the enactment effect?

Answer 24

• Verbalizing, gesturing
• The effort of presenting the information can strengthen the memory trace
• Ex. when studying for an exam, might present information almost like they are explaining it to another person

Question 25

What is the testing effect?

Answer 25

• Method of studying material in which instead of just studying and memorizing the information, a person studies it and then tests themselves on it periodically.
• Incorporating testing into studying enforces them to think of the material in different ways, from different angles
  ○ Effort makes information more meaningful and memory for it becomes stronger

Question 26

Does the testing effect work over the long-term?

Answer 26

Real strength of testing effect can be seen over the long-term

Long-term retention of the material using this method is much greater than if they only study the material and never test themselves

Question 27

What is metamemory?

Answer 27

A person’s own knowledge and self-awareness of their memory
- Can stand outside themselves and assess their own level of knowledge, have an objective judgement of how well they’re learning

Question 28

What is the labor in vain effect versus proximal learning?

Answer 28

Labor in vain effect: trying to study material and it is very dense and difficult
- Not really understanding it, but keep re-reading the same passage and not really getting it
- Person may keep trying to plow through - end up just spinning their wheels

Proximal learning strategy:
- Baby-step approach to learning material
- Learning in chunks
- Understand and master one chunk before moving on to the next part

Question 29

What do “superior memorizers” use to remember lists of items?

Answer 29

often use mnemonic strategies - often combine visual imagery with spatial memory

ex. memory palace

Question 30

What are the different problems of memory?

Answer 30

blocking (tip of tongue)
proactive interference
retroactive interference
absentmindedness
prospective memory

Question 31

What is blocking?
Is it a problem of retrieval or memory?

Answer 31

tip of the tongue phenomenon

• often occurs because of interference from words that are similar in sound or meaning
• a problem of retrieval, not memory

Question 32

What is proactive interference?

Answer 32

older stuff is getting in the way of remembering the newer stuff

Question 33

What is retroactive interference?

Answer 33

newer stuff is getting in the way of remembering older stuff

Question 34

How does absentmindedness affect memory?

Answer 34

results from improper or incomplete encoding of the information; often due to a lack of attention

usually happens with routine, everyday activities

Question 35

What is prospective memory?
Why can it be difficult?

Answer 35

• Refers to memory for things that we intend to do in the future
• Often difficult for people because it lacks specific retrieval cues
  ○ Something we intend to do in the future but haven’t done yet - so we don’t have the retrieval cues associated with us actually doing the thing we intend to do

Question 36

What are flashbulb memories?

Answer 36

• Special type of memories that stand out because they represent an important event or incident that occurred in a person’s life
  ○ Ex. high school graduation or a wedding, car accident, a fight

Unusual and unique experiences can end up being a flashbulb memory for a person as well

Question 37

What is the Von Restorff effect?

Answer 37

Can explain flashbulb memories

Refers to any kind of event or experience that on its own stands out from the rest and becomes more memorable as a result
- These memories exist like snapshots

Person would not have a coherent memory of everything that happened, but there will be little pockets of memories related to the events

Question 38

What is context dependent memory?
What does it teach us?

Answer 38

Retrieval of a memory can be aided if a person finds themselves in the same context in which the original memory was encoded.
Ex. if a person studies for a test in the same room in which they are going to take the test in (where they will be required to retrieve the information), it can be a good idea to study there too because when you encode the information and learn the info in the same context, it can aid retrieval

Question 39

What is category clustering? What is its benefit?

Answer 39

If words allow themselves to fit neatly into categories, this can aid in the retrieval of those words
Because when a person remembers one word, it triggers the memory for a related word.
When they remember one type of word belonging to the category, it triggers the memory for the other words - as a result, word lists that accommodate these categories are remembered at a higher rate compared to lists that don’t fit in categories

Question 40

How do errors in memory form?

Answer 40

Reality is that our memories are recreations of events and there are flaws in the recreations.
Errors can find their way in through that process of encoding to recall.

Question 41

How can the wording of questions affect memory?

Answer 41

Ex. in class - the word choice of “smash” versus “hit” impacted memory of car crash video they watched.

Conclusion was that the wording of the question induced the students in group “smashed” to remember a more violent collision than had actually occurred.

A week later:
About twice as many people in group “smashed” reported seeing broken glass even though there was no broken glass in the actual depiction of the accident.
- Shows that by slightly changing the way a question is worded, it can elicit a different kind of memory

Question 42

Errors in memory can be formed by what 4 factors?

Answer 42

misinformation
reality monitoring
source monitoring
destination

Question 43

How does misinformation impact errors in memory?

Answer 43

Person hears information after the fact and that information can affect their true memory from the event
○ Ex. people in group “smashed” had a different memory compared to group “hit” because they received misinformation - in this case, it was through the way the question was worded

Question 44

How does reality monitoring impact errors in memory?
Give examples.

Answer 44

Usually daily routine memories that on their own are not very memorable - may question whether or not the event actually occurred or not.

Ex. parks car in parking lot - then wonders later, did they buy a parking ticket and put in on their dash?

Ex. did I lock the door when I left or did I just imagine that? Did I lock my car when I parked it or did I imagine that?

Question 45

What is source monitoring? How can it affect errors in memory?

Answer 45

Person becomes unsure of what the source of a memory was.

Ex. told some sort of news or gossip but can’t remember who told them.

Question 46

What is destination error?

Answer 46

When a person forgets who they told a piece of information to
- Ex. told a story and if they make a destination error, a couple weeks later they may tell the same person the story and not remember that they already told them

Question 47

What does memory consolidation refer to?

Answer 47

Refers to the storage of memory

Have an experience, encode that information into long-term memory storage (consolidation)

Question 48

At what point is memory available for retrieval?
Retrieval brings memory into what?

Answer 48

Once memory is in long-term memory storage, then it is available for retrieval, so the person can go back again and bring it back out - when they do that, bringing it back into that short-term memory storage area.

• Dealing with info in moment, so sitting within short-term memory storage while they bring that info back into their current awareness
  
  • When they stop thinking about the information, the information is reconsolidated (put back into long-term memory storage and is available for retrieval at a later point)

Question 49

After retrieval of memory, what happens when you stop thinking about the information?

Answer 49

The information is reconsolidated (put back into long-term memory storage and is available for retrieval at a later point)

Question 50

When can alterations to memory occur?

Answer 50

Between consolidation and reconsolidation, alterations to memory can be made
- The memory can change and be manipulated
- The memory that is reconsolidated then gets reconsolidated with changes that occurred during point that memory was brought into awareness

Question 51

What does active reconsolidation do?

Answer 51

It can strengthen memory trace (person will remember the event and it will be fresh again, then stored again) - whole process of reconsolidation allows it an easier chance at retrieval later down the road.

• Thinking about long-term memories and considering them this way makes it easier to retrieve
• Can also change/alter memory

Question 52

Does creating a long-term memory trace require effort?

Answer 52

Yes, it is an effortful process

with effort, a memory trace becomes stronger and retrieving it gets easier

Question 53

When do initial neural connections occur?

Answer 53

in short-term memory

Question 54

What can happen if neural connections are strong enough?

Answer 54

If a strong enough connection is laid down, they can establish retrieval paths later in long-term memory

Question 55

What determines the quality of a given long-term memory?

Answer 55

Depends on the stability of the underlying neural network involved.

Question 56

What happens to neuronal activity during consolidation and reconsolidation?

Answer 56

After consolidation, then it can sit for a while and that memory trace can lay dormant, and parts of it can decay.
When the memory is retrieved again, those neurons that are involved in processing the memory are reactivated.

Question 57

What did the case of Henry Molaison (HM) tell us?

Answer 57

His hippocampus was removed to stop seizures
- after removal of hippocampus - he showed anterograde amnesia and could no longer learn new information
- he also showed retrograde amnesia - his memories before the surgery were impaired in such a way that the memories that were closer to the time of the surgery were more foggy, but the further back he went into his childhood those memories were spared

Question 58

The case of HM showed what importance of the hippocampus?

Answer 58

Showed that the hippocampus is critical for encoding new experiences and then transferring those experiences into long-term memory.

Question 59

Is the hippocampus involved in procedural memory?

Answer 59

No - HM was able to show learning in mirror-drawing task, even though he didn’t remember learning it (but he showed improvement in the task)

Question 60

What is the case of Clive Wearing?

Answer 60

He had damage to the hippocampus and other regions. Developed condition that caused significant inflammation in his brain, resulting in extensive damage to the hippocampus and beyond.

He couldn’t learn new information
- Can’t meet new people and remember them later; can’t learn new facts; can’t learn about new places
- Ability to learn new episodic memories and new semantic memories no longer existed
- Unlike HM, his retrograde amnesia was not “graded” - he had no memories of his previous life
○ Like he lives in a permanent present

Question 61

What was the difference between HM and Clive Wearing’s memories?

Answer 61

Clive’s retrograde amnesia was not graded so he had no memories of his previous life and lived in a constant present

Question 62

Does the hippocampus store memories?

Answer 62

no
Hippocampus is a structure critical for transferring short-term memories into long-term memories; for encoding those short-term experiences and creating a long-term memory trace

Question 63

Where are memories stored?

Answer 63

Memories are stored all over - distributed networks throughout the brain with origin of networks beginning in the hippocampus.