Class_08_Short and Long-term Memory Flashcards
Serial Position Curves: STM & LTM
- STM: Primacy effect
- LTM: Recency effect
Characteristics of STM
- phonological code
- very short duration of storage
- maintenance rehearsal
-> LTM - George Miller 7+- 2
Test of STM
Digit Span Task
Location of Digit Span
Left perisylvian region
Location of LTM
Hippocampus at Medial temporal lobe
Case HM
Bilateral hippocampus lesion
- can’t form new memory
- good STM
- good intelligence
- good motor skills
- can learn skill through repetition
-> declare vs non-declarative memory
Hippocampus
Form new declarative long-term memories
- Temporal lobe
- supplied with blood mainly by the posterior cerebral artery
- if one hippocampus is preserved, memory function will not be too impaired
2 Types of Amnesia
- Retrograde
- Anterograde
Retrograde Amnesia
Lose memories for things that they knew before the brain damage
Anterograde Amnesia
After the brain damage there is inability to form new accessible memories
Medial Temporal Lobe Syndrome
Combination of anterograde and variable retrograde amnesia
Different Types of LTM
- Episodic and semantic memories
- Declarative and nondeclarative memories
Episodic Memories
- Personal experience
- have a contextual feeling of place and time
Semantic Memories
- General knowledge
- Vocabulary
- do not have any contextual feel to them
Semantic dementia
Damage mainly outside of the medial temporal lobes
- bad semantic tasks
- good learning of presented material
Alzheimer’s Disease
Degeneration of the medial temporal lobes
- have anterograde amnesia
- good semantic processing
- i.e., deciding an animal is real or not
Tests for Retrograde Amnesia for Semantic
- Object decisions tasks from BORB
- Pyramids and Palm Trees Test
- Cambridge Semantic Memory Test Battery (Cactus and Camels test)
- Peabody Picture Vocabulary
Declarative Memory
Explicit memories
- Memory that we can ‘say’ or ‘declare’
- e.g. what is the capital city of North Korea?
- visual imagery of memories = declarative memory
Nondeclarative Memory
Implicit memories
- Memory that affect behavior or performance
- cannot verbally report them
Multiple Nondeclarative Memory Systems
- learn skills
- make emotional associations to things
- learn habits
- recall
- recognize priming words we have seen or heard recently
Impaired STM
- Occipital lobe damage
- Parietal lobe damage
- bad digit span
- good associate learning task (LTM)
Test for Anterograde Amnesia
- Rey- Osterrieth Complex figure
- visual memory - Hopkins Verbal Learning Test- Revised
- reading lists of words to patients, and then allowing immediate recall, several times
- STM
- LTM Recall
- Recognition
- Episodic
- Not semantic
Wechsler Abbreviated Memory Scale
2 Tasks
1. recalling stories that are read aloud to the patient
2. Visual task, involves studying 4 different images
- STM
- LTM
