cognition - memory research and sensory memory

Question 1

what is memory

Answer 1

-mental process or ability to encode, store and retrieve information

Question 2

the 3 stages of memory

Answer 2

encoding - to get information into the memory system, (new info and you want memorise it you have to code it, so link old knowledge)

storage: to retain information over time (can be divided into diff time frames eg 1 second)

retrieval - to get information out of memory.

Question 3

early memory research
early figures
Hermann ebbinghaus (1850-1909)

Answer 3

-one of the first scientific study of memory
-in 1885 published a work called memory - a contribution to experimental psychology
-was appointed as a professor at uni of berlin

Question 4

Hermann Ebbinghaus
testing memory
nonsense syllables
confounding familiarity

Answer 4

-some people may have prior knowledge about certain things affecting memory, creating confounding variable

-he developed a smart design, developed nonsense syllables

-these are 3 words/letters which are nonsense words, which nobody has prior knowledge about them

-so therefore if we present these nonsense words to a participant, there wont be any confounding variables of familiarity so can test peoples memory

Question 5

early efforts in neuroscience
-Carl Lashley 1950
-experiment

Answer 5

-carl lashley - made efforts to search for a single brain region of memory (called it engram)
-he hypothesised that there is a single area in our brain that is responsible to store memory and every piece of information

Question 6

carl lashley 1950 experiment
results

Answer 6

in order to search such an engram or such region of the brain he trained a rat to run through a maze (with cheese at the end of the maze)

-he systematically removed part of the rats brain in order to search for such a region

-although he tried to remove several different parts of the brain, he was not successful. any removal of any specific area did not affect the performance.

-but, the more brain tissues were removed, the worse the rats performed (so amount of brain parts matter)
-look at graph in slides
-40-60% removed then rats made errors

Question 7

what did carl lashley conclude
-memory and localisation
-equipotentiality

Answer 7

-memories are not localised but they are widely distributed across the cortex
-equipotentiality -all parts of the cortex contribute equally to the complex behaviours like learning and memory

Question 8

lashleys conclusion- what parts were right and wrong

Answer 8

memory is widely distributed - right

specialised memory systems exist in many parts of the brain - wrong - they do but they are widely distributed

-so many brain circuits are involved in a complex act like running a maze and eliminating one part of the brain is not enough to disrupt the entire act (so removing one part doesn’t disrupt the memory in another part)

Question 9

current view on memory

Answer 9

we have a specialised memory system and they all work together towards one complex task

Question 10

early efforts in neuroscience
Donald Hebb (1904 -1985)

Answer 10

-one of the forerunners of computational neuroscience-mathematical modelling of brain activity

-according to Hebb , electrical activities of neurons in our brain , which is associated with all kind of sensory ,motor, cognitive experience will leave an imprint in the neuronal or synaptic structure
-it fires one single neuron or cell and it will modify the under the neural structures
-this modification will persist for a long period of time. (if you want to remember something for long you have to repeatedly review the material)
- this will leave a persistent, prolonged period of time for the electric acitivities which modify the structure of our neurons, and that gives our memory

neuronal and synaptic modifications —–> learning and memory ____ hebbs postulate: cells that fire together, wire together

Question 11

terje lomo 1966
long term potentiation

Answer 11

a persistent strengthening of synaptic connections induced by a brief period of high-frequency presynaptic activity.

-incoming action potential arrives at the same time
-as postsynaptic neuron has the action potential,
-later this synapse is strengthened

summarised
-when incoming signal fires, it activates the end bit of the other neuron and they fire together
-after a while they are connected, and the connection is strengthened after repeated learning

Question 12

long term potentiation and memory

Answer 12

-LTP has been shows in areas associative with memory and learning : hippocampus amygdala

-mutant (genetically modified) mice that display little hippocampus, and little no long term potentiation process, have problems memorising

Question 13

modern memory research
the multi store model (atikson and Shiffrin 1971)

Answer 13

sensory registers
visual ,auditory,haptic etc
-
short term store
temporary working memory
control processes rehearsal,coding,decisions, retrieval strategies
-
long term store
permanent memory store
back to short term store and response output

-after it gets input from the environment there’s a sensory register that registers information from visual system ,auditory system, haptic system etc for all the senses
-after that its passed on to the short term store where you temporarily use your working memory to process information , including control process rehearsal, coding decisions and other things.
-once its passed that short term stage, then its going to the long term stage.

Question 14

what is sensory memory

Answer 14

sensory memory or sensory registers: very temporary buffer that allows us to hold information from different sensory modalities (visual,auditory,olafactory,tactile,gustatory)

Question 15

what happens to information in sensory memory when its attended to vs when its unattended to

Answer 15

-when information is attended , the it goes to short term memory store

-when its not attended to it can rapidly decay

Question 16

different types of sensory memory

Answer 16

iconic memory - memory of our visual system

echoic memory - the auditory sensory memory

Question 17

iconic memory
capacity? (give evidence of exp)
results

Answer 17

-George sperling (1960) presented participants letter array (3 rows, 4 letters in each row) for a short period of time (.015-.5 sec) and asked them to report all the items they saw
-participants on average could report about 4.5 letters (4.5/12 = 37.5%)

-if information in iconic memory decays quickly, participants don’t have enough time to report it.

Question 18

iconic memory decays quickly, participants don’t have enough time to report it
what’s used to solve this problem

Answer 18

partial report technique

Question 19

sperling 1960
partial report technique
experiment
results

Answer 19

-sperling presented participants letter arrays and asked them to report a sub set of letters

partial report : he first showed the letters, then after the letters disappeared, he asked the participants to report the letters from either the first,second,or third row depending on whether they heard a high,medium or low tone

-participants could on average report 3 out of 4 letters in each trial. 3/4 = 75%

-shows you if you hold info of 3 rows briefly, if you get asked to recall all of them, the information starts to decay whilst you recall them, but if your asked to recall one row you could report the row more correctly because there’s no decay

on average 9/12 letters available in their iconic memory

Question 20

how long does iconic sensory memory last
experiment
results

Answer 20

-to examine this sperling presented participants first, the letter arrays and the tone, but between the disappearance of the letter display and onset of cue tone there would be a delay of 0, .15,.30,.50 or 1 seconds

(if the tone was played immediately after the display your more likely to recall the letters)

as the delay of tone increases the number of letters remembered decreases

Question 21

iconic memory can last about ___ seconds

Answer 21

1

Question 22

echoic memory
experiment
darwin, Turvey and Crowder 1972

Answer 22

-sensory memory for auditory information

-for the whole report - you report all 3 lists from what you hear in headphones

-for the partial report you get a cue: this time a visual cue : if you saw light on the left you only recall information you hear from the left speaker.
-light on the right-right speaker
-centre - both speakers

-the interval from list offset to cue onset was
-0 seconds, 1 second or 4 seconds