CHAPTER 8 reading - MEMORY

Question 1

Method of loci

Answer 1

a memory aid that associates information with mental images of physical locations

Question 2

Schema is a

Answer 2

mental framework - organised pattern of thought - about some aspect of the word

Question 3

Memory is enhanced by forming

Answer 3

associations between new information and other items already in our memory

Question 4

Priming

Answer 4

refers to the activation of one concept (or one unit of information) by another e.g. fthe word fire engine primes the node for red which makes it more likely that our memory for this colour will be assessed

Question 5

Excitatory =

Answer 5

increasing the likelihood that a neuron will fire

Question 6

Inhibitory =

Answer 6

Decreasing the likelihood of firing

Question 7

Declarative memory involves

Answer 7

factual knowledge and includes two subcategories episodic and semantic memory

Question 8

Episodic memory is

Answer 8

our store of knowledge concerning personally experienced events

Question 9

Semantic memory represents

Answer 9

general factual knowledge about the world and language, including memory for words and concepts

Question 10

Amnesia =

Answer 10

memory loss

Question 11

HM surgery

Answer 11

had most of his hippocampus and surrounding brain tissue surgically removed to reduce his severe epileptic seizures

Question 12

Procedural (non-declarative) memory

Answer 12

Reflected in skills and actions

Classical condition effects are seen in this division of memory

Question 13

Explicit memory

Answer 13

Involves conscious or intentional memory retrieval, as when you consciously recognise or recall something

Question 14

Rcognition requires

Answer 14

us to decide whether a stimulus is familiar

Question 15

Implicit memory

Answer 15

occurs when memory influences our behaviour without conscious awareness

Question 16

Retrieval cue is

Answer 16

a stimulus, whether internal or external, that activates information stored in long-term memory

distinctive stimuli are generally better remembered than non-distinctive stimuli

Question 17

Context dependent memory

Answer 17

it is typically easier to remember something in the same environment in which it was originally encoded

shown by the Godden and Baddeley (1975) experiment - scuba diving experiment

Question 18

Encoding specificity refers to the fact that

Answer 18

we can retrieve information better if we are in the same context or state that we were in when we encoded the information. This is not necessarily true for out mood states

Question 19

When the material is meaningful …

Answer 19

we are likely to retain more of it over time

Question 20

Why do we forget?

Answer 20

Encoding failure
Decay of the memory trace
Interference
Motivated forgetting

Question 21

Encoding failure

Answer 21

Failing to encode the information into long term memory in the first place

Question 22

Decay of memory trace

Answer 22

decay theory = proposed that with time and diuse, the long term physical memory trace in the nervous system fades away

the longer the tim

Question 23

Interference

Answer 23

forget information bcause other items in long term memory impair our ability to retrieve it

Question 24

Proactive interference

Answer 24

occurs when material learned in the past interferes with recall of newer material

Question 25

Reteroactive interference

Answer 25

occurs when newly acquired information interderes with the ability to recall information learned at an earlier time

Question 26

Motivated forgetting

Answer 26

people are consciously or unconsciously motivated forget

repression is a motivated process that protects us by blocking the conscious recall of anxiety arousing memories

Question 27

Repression

Answer 27

a motivational process that protects us by blocking the conscious recall of anxiety-arousing memories

Question 28

Amnesia commonly refers to

Answer 28

memory loss due to special conditions such as brain injury, illness or psychological trauma

Question 29

Reterograde amnesia

Answer 29

Represents memory loss for events that took pace sometime in life before the onset of amnesia

Question 30

Anterograde amnesia

Answer 30

Refers to memory loss for events that occur after the inital onset of amnesia

Question 31

Dementia

Answer 31

refers to impaired memory and other cognitive deficits that accompany brain degradation and interfere with normal functioning

Question 32

Alzheimers disease is a

Answer 32

progressive brain disorder that is the most common cause among adults over the age of 65 years old

Question 33

Schemas

Answer 33

Bartlett believed that people have generalised ideas (schemas) about how events happen, which they use to organise information and construct their memories

Question 34

Misinformation effect

Answer 34

the distortion of memory by misleading postevent information

Question 35

Source confusion

Answer 35

the misinformation effect can also occur because of source confusion - our tendency to recall something or recognise it as familiar but to forget where we encountered it

Question 36

Misiformation is more problematic for

Answer 36

younger children and when leading questions are used. Psychologists still debate whether recovered memories of abuse are accurate, or whether they were forgotten due to repression or other psychological processes

Question 37

Working memory stored in

Answer 37

cortical networks located in different lobes of the brain become more active

Question 38

Sensory memory stored in

Answer 38

Stimuli enters and is transformed into neural cdes and sent to the brain, where sensory areas of the cerebral cortex intiially process it

Question 39

Frontal lobe plays a key role in

Answer 39

working memory

generally become more active during tasks that place greater demands on working memory

seems to be particularly important in supporting central-executive functions, such as allocating attention to other components of working memory

Question 40

Many patients with extensive hippocapal damage such as Clive Wearing and HM retain

Answer 40

the use of their short term memory but cannot form new, explicit long-term declarative memories - memories for new personal experiences and facts

Question 41

Hippocampus is said to

Answer 41

help to gradually convert short term memories into permanent ones

memory consolidation - the meaning of events or information and so on are processed initially in different regions of the cortex and then gradually bound together in the hippocampus

research has demonstrated that the hippocampus has an important role in encoding the context of the memory, particularly where the event occurred, helping us to differentiate our episodic memories

Question 42

Amygdala

Answer 42

encodes emotionally arousing aspects of stimuli and plays an important role in helping us form long term memories for events that stir our emotions

Question 43

Cerebellum plays an important role in

Answer 43

forming procesural memories

Question 44

Ensduring increase in synaptic strength is called

Answer 44

long term potentiation - it is the development of a memory and involves chemical and structural changes to synapses