Chapter 8 Flashcards
What is memory?
A biological hard drive of information stored in the brain which makes up our identity, as well as our preferences and relationships or immediate intelligence.
What is the three step chain in how information is stored and used in our memory?
- Encoding: The process of how information is initially learned.
- Storage: The process of maintaining information over a short or long period of time.
- Retrieval: The process involved in recovering information from a memory to produce a response.
What is a search metaphor?
It describes the processes involved in memory using terms and phrases that relate to searching in physical or virtual space. It can include:
1. Reliving moments in the memory
2. Bringing something to the front of your mind
3. Finding a solution
What is a reconstruction metaphor?
To primarily use memory to construct together a useful response using both what we know and the situation around us.
What are flashbulb memories?
Vivid, detailed, and long-lasting recollections of learning about a surprising or shocking event, often including details about where you were and what you were doing at the time
What does it mean when we explain our memories to be “reconstructive”?
To reconstruct memories off of available information. The information used to recall a situation or memory at hand should be accurate and is incredibly important in relation to our long lasting memory, which can include visual or sensory information.
What is the Modal Memory Model?
A model that describes our process of retaining information. It occurs in:
1. Sensory Input becomes Sensory Memory
(This can be forgotten. If given attention, the steps continue:)
2. Immediate Memory
(Which can be forgotten. If not forgotten, it results in either a reaction, or is encoded into long-term memory:)
3. Long-Term Memory
(Indefinite storage which can be forgotten. Retrieval steps back to immediate memory.)
What is sensory memory?
A system that keeps information translated by the senses briefly active in an unaltered or unexamined (unprocessed) form.
What are two forms of sensory memory?
- Iconic memory: A visual form of sensory memory (icons, visuals, graphics)
- Echoic memory: An auditory form of sensory memory (echoes, sounds, lyrics)
What is immediate memory?
A system that actively holds on to a limited amount of information so taht it can be manipulated and processed. Known as short-term or “working” memory as it is the contents of consciousness.
How can information be stored in short term/immediate/working memory? What are some forms?
- Visually: Images
- Phonologically: Sounds
- Semantically: Meaning
- Action: Motor patterns
What are the limits of short-term/immediate/working memory?
There is a limited capacity for the amount of information that can be at attention at any given time as well as the limit of manipulation of said memory. Information at hand lasts about 20 seconds.
What are some characteristics of short-term/immediate/working memory?
- Representation
The kind of information a memory system contains. - Duration
How long a memory system can contain information before it is forgotten. - Capacity
How much information can be held in a memory system at any time.
How can short-term/immediate/working memory be forgotten?
- Decay: The information fades over a span of time.
- Interference: Loss of information due to competition with other information. Or, multiple points of attention that overrule other points of information at the time.
What is the meaning of duration for a memory system?
How long a memory system can contain information before it is forgotten. It can depend as we see a drop from as little as 3 seconds, but it can persist until 20 seconds. This is wholly dependent on the individual.
This can be indefinitely remembered as long as it is rehearsed.
What is the meaning of capacity for a working memory system? What about memory span?
How much information can be held in a memory system at any one time. Capacity is usually considered to be whatever you can rehearse in two seconds, typically 7 +/- 2.
Memory span is the number of items that can be kept active in immediate memory at one time.
What is chunking?
Grouping familiar stimuli for storage as a single unit.
Ex.
IHAT ESTU DYIN G > I HATE STUDYING
What are some patterns that have commonly been identified when we remember lists?
- Serial Position Effect
Describes the relationship between a word’s position in a list and its probability of recall. - Primacy Effect
The tendency to remember things at the beginning of the list. - Recency Effect
The tendency to remember things at the end of the list (most recently exposed to).
What is Long-Term Memory?
Our “library” of memories. Durable storage of past events and learned knowledge, which has a large storage capacity. This can endure for a lifetime, or be permanently stored.
What is encoding?
Forming a new memory code. How we initially learn information. Brains need to overcome the encoding problem to initiate the process of bringing information into our memory (put it into storage).
How can we enrich encoding memory?
- Elaboration
Linking a stimulus to other information at the time of encoding. (Thinking of examples) - Visual Imagery: Creation of visual images to represent words to be remembered (easier for concrete objects)
- Self-referent Encoding: Making information personally meaningful.
What are some types of Long-Term Memory?
- Procedural Memory
Memories whose contents pertain to how something is done. - Priming
Ability to identify a stimulus more easily or more quickly after we’ve encountered similar stimuli.
What are some times of Long-Term memory damage? (Amnesias)
- Anterograde Amnesia
The loss of ability to assimilate and retain new knowledge. - Retrograde Amnesia
The loss of memory of events that have happened in the past.
What is an example of an encoding strategy?
Spaced practice is better than massed. For example, studying for 30 minutes across 4 days rather than studying 2 hours in one day. Spacing works for improving episodic and semantic memory, and for procedural memory.
What are some simple mnemonics?
- Hierarchies
Organize items based on how they are related.
Ex. House > neighbourhood > city - Chunking
Combining items into larger units of meaning.
Ex. Blue, red, yellow > Colours
It’s easier to recall information with meaning.
What are SIMPLE mnemonic devices?
- Chunking
- The hierarchy technique (subjects with order)
What are SEMANTIC mnemonic devices?
- First letter technique (acronyms: ICL, TS, SYBAU, PMO)
- Narrative technique (creating a literary meaning and possible order of subjects)
What are VISUAL-BASED mnemonic devices?
- Bizarre Imagery (We tend to remember the unusual)
- Interactive Imagery
What are COMPLEX mnemonic devices?
- Method of Loci (assigning a location or environment to a sensation or memory)
Ex. Remember your grocery list by mentally walking through the house room by room.
What is retrieval practice?
The phenomenon that the repeated retrieval of information is more useful for long-term memory than other tasks, such as the repeated reading of the same information.
What is memory retrieval?
Process of transferring information from long-term memory back to into working memory (consciousness).
Cues are stimuli that lead to activation of information stored in long-term memory.
Priming tasks also display a use of implicit memory, as in being shown the word “STORE” and assuming the series of letters “STO__” to be “STORE” and not “STORM” or “STORK”.
What are conditions for memory retrieval?
Retrieval can be increased by matching conditions with conditions that existed during the encoding phase.
Methods include:
1. Encoding Specificity
2. State-Dependent Learning
3. Transfer-Appropriate Processing
What are some examples of state-dependent learning?
When associated with a specific internal state, examples can include:
When energized on caffeine when studying, being energized while you are taking the exam.
Mood, tiredness, fatigue.
What is transfer-appropriate processing?
Memory performance is more efficient if the type of task at encoding matches the type of task at retrieval.
Ex.
33% Efficiency = Encoding a meaning-based task, retrieved using a rhyming recognition test.
49% Efficiency = Encoding a rhyming-based task, retrieved using a rhyming recognition test.
Why do we forget?
Encoding failure:
1. Lack of attention
2. Lack of deep processing
Ex. Only encoding important tasks
Decay of memory trace
1. Long term physical trace in nervous system fades away over time and with disuse. If you don’t use it, you lose it.
Ex. Memory of a fun fact may degrade if there is nobody to tell fun facts to :(
What is interference theory? What are the two types?
Information forgotten because other items in the long term memory impair ability to retrieve it.
1. Retroactive Interference
When new memories interfere with the recall of old memories.
2. Proactive Interference
When old memories interfere with the recall of new memories.
What is an example if the interference theory of forgetting?
- Proactive interference
Learn Spanish > Learn French > Spanish interferes with recall of French words - Retroactive interference
Learn Spanish > Learn French > French interferes with recall of Spanish words
What are Schacter’s Seven Sins of Memory with errors of OMISSION?
Errors of Omission: Memory errors where information cannot be brought to mind.
- Transience: Memory for any particular event tends to degrade over time.
- Absent-mindedness: Memories are simply unavailable because of a failure to encode them in the first place.
- Blocking: Not enough distinctive cues are available to help us recover the specific memory.
What are Schacter’s Seven Sins of Memory with errors of COMMISSION?
Errors of Commission: Memory errors where wrong or unwanted information is brought to mind.
- Misattribution: Deja vu, the feeling that one has already experienced the sequence of events.
- Suggestibility: The misinformation effect. A phenomenon in which misleading information alters a subsequent memory.
- Bias: The use of schemas. Stereotypes.
- Persistence: PTSD, people who have it often have memories that are difficult to suppress. Flashbacks.
What is mis-remembering?
As memory is a reconstructive process, piecing together bits of information that intuitively make sense are often not highly accurate, and schemas (bias) can alter this result.
What is hyperthymesia?
A rare medical condition that leads to near-perfect autobiographical recall. The amygdala is larger for those, and create more connections to the hippocampus.
What is infantile (childhood) amnesia?
The inability to remember childhood experiences (Ages <3-4) as an adult. Extremely common. Theories include that the parts of the brain involved in encoding are not matured, or that encoding is limited in depth.
What is dementia?
Refers to impaired memory and other cognitive deficits that accompany brain degeneration and interfere with normal functioning.
What is alzheimer’s disease?
Severe retrograde and anterograde amnesia.
What is the theory of associative networks?
The theory that memory can be represented as a network of associated concepts. Each concept being represented by a “node”, where the lines indicate connection. Shorter lines indicate stronger relationships.
What are some partnered or conflicting types of memory?
Implicit vs. Explicit
> Unconscious or automatic memory (riding a bike) vs. The conscious recall of facts or events (detailed requires effort)
Declarative vs. Non-declarative (procedural)
> Similar to implicit vs explicit
Semantic vs. Episodic
> General knowledge and facts vs. Personal experiences and events
Prospective vs. Retrospective
> Remembering to do something in the future vs. Recalling past events or facts and experiences
What is prospective memory specifically?
Remembering to perform a task in the future which requires planning and attention. Good recalling memory doesn’t necessarily mean good prospective memory. Prospective memory happens to decline with age.
What is motivated forgetting?
Repression which may protect us by blocking the recall of anxiety-arousing memories based on Freudian concepts which can be either conscious or unconscious as a process.
