Cognitive Psych: Exam #2 Flashcards
STM is limited in…
Capacity and duration
Working memory definition
the use or manipulation of information to accomplish a particular task
Elements of Baddley’s WM model
1) central executive
2) visuospatial sketch pad
3) episodic buffer
4) phonological loop
Phonological loop
holds and manipulates auditory information
Visuospatial sketch pad
Holds and manipulates visual and spatial information
Episodic buffer
How you combine information from the phonological loop and visuospatial sketch pad
- ex: making a mental map from verbal directions
Central executive
decision making: manages and coordinates the use of working memory
The central executive is involved in…
1) updating: replacing old content with new information (ex: have to remember last 3 letters)
2) Shifting: changing goal of the task
3) inhibition: avoid making a response
4) maintenance: keeps information in WM
5) disengagement: cancels previous information or goals
Evidence that working memory components are separable
study: people are given a chess task and also a secondary task that either involved 1) the phonological loop (repeating a word aloud) 2) the visuospatial sketch pad (tap out a pattern) 3) generate random letters (central executive)
results: the visual and central executive task had more cost –> relates back to capacity as this is what you are using during the chess task – phonological loop had no cost so suggests there are different stores
Parts of working memory
Central executive + STM
Evidence that attention is involved in WM
1) as your cognitive load increases (anything else that requires attention) your digit span decreases
2) can also be flipped: your attention is worse when your memory load is high
Applications of stress and WM
the more stressed you are the smaller your digit span is
Operation span task
given a simple addition or subtraction problem and have to remember the second digit presented (ex: 5 + 6 = ? have to solve for 11 and remember 6)
How id Baddeley’s model different from Atkinson and Shiffrin
WM is limited in capacity
WM is separated from control processes
Applications of Central Executive
1) can decide how best to chunk items
2) how best to store information (ex: visually or verbally)
Differences between LTM and STM
1) the rate of forgetting is much slower in LTM than STM
2) LTM is unlimited in capacity
Atkinson and Shiffrin: How does info get into LTM?
due to control processes:
1) rehearsal: repetition of items over and over until learned
2) coding: place new information in context with older information
3) imaging: using visual images to learn verbal information (ex: method of loci)
Serial positioning curve
1) primacy effect: items first presented are recalled the best
2) recency effect: more recently learned items are recalled better
Primacy effect definition and evidence
earlier presented items have a higher recall probability due to more rehearsal
- evidence: told participants to only rehearse each item twice - primacy effect decreased
Recency effect: definition and evidence
items last presented have a higher recall probability due to dumping from STS
- evidence: if you wait 30 seconds until retrieval, the recency effect goes away
Serial positioning curve and amnesia
amnesiacs have impaired LTM so they do not show a primacy effect (nothing gets to LTM) but they do show a recency effect (as this is due to STM)
Types of LTM
1) declarative: facts and concepts (episodic: recollections of personal experiences) and semantic: general knowledge about the world)
2) procedural: actions, skills and operations
Evidence for different types of LTM
study: amnesiacs and controls where they study a list of words and take a recall, recognition, fragment identification, or cued recall test
findings: amnesiacs were just as good as controls for fragmented and cued recall but but recall or recognition - suggests different memory stores
Direct memory task
directly ask people to search memory and recall/recognize past events
- ex: recall and recognition tests
Indirect memory tests
a test that does not explicitly ask about past events but is influenced by the memory of those events
- ex: fragment identification and cued recall
Superior episodic memory
people who can remember all the details of their lives
aka “HSAM”
HSAM + semantic memory
study: HSAM participants asked either a episodic question (about a memory in the past) or a semantic question (about general knowledge)
findings: they were better at episodic memory than control but slower at giving semantic memories - suggests there are different memory stores for episodic and semantic memory
What is the purpose of memory?
1) recall past events
2) use general knowledge to navigate certain situations
3) envision the future: both semantic and episodic memory: you retrieve specific experience and recombine them into something new
- semantic memory play more of a role in goals
Evidence for procedural memory being separate from declarative memory
1) if you have read a story once before, you are faster at reading it a second time but you do not get many quiz questions right (even true for amnesiacs)
2) HM: retrograde and anterograde amnesia but STM and procedural memory intact (shows physical seperation for LTM and STM in the brain)
Engram
the neural substrate for storing and recalling memories
Hebbian Learning
memories are formed via changes in the connections between neurons
Brain regions important for memory
- cortex
- hippocampus: thought to bind diverse information into a coherent whole
Consolidation definition
The process by which memories are created and stored by individual neurons
- “things that fire together wire together” - the more times the elements of a memory fire together (emotions, location, age etc) they eventually become one thing (the hippocampus is no longer needed to bind them together)
How do we strengthen neural connections?
Study 1: people had to remember the place of a cat on the board - when they went to sleep, they were cued with the meow that was played during learning
- meow reactivated the memory of the meow and thus the cats place on the board (consolidation)
- if you are cued during sleep forgetting decreases
Study 2: people had to listen to a story and either wakeful rest (just sit there) or complete a spot the difference task
- immediate recall: same performance
- after a week: people who were in the wakeful rest condition had better memory – you can strengthen connections by thinking about learning (consolidation is automatic)
Metacognition
awareness of how cognitive processes affect or improve information processing
- ex: knowing what you know/don’t know is an example of metacognition
Acquisition definition
storage of information in LTM
Retention definition
maintaining information in LTM
Retrieval definition
recalling information from LTM
Judgement of Learning (JOL) definition
Your estimate of how well you think you have learned a concept
Immediate JOL
how confident you are immediately after learning that in ____ amount of time you will be able to recall an item
Delayed JOL
how confident you are after a delay that you will be able to recall the items you learned
Immediate vs. delayed JOL
study: given pairs of random items for later recall and given immediate or delayed JOL for your comprehension of those items
Results:
- immediate JOL: you did worse than you predicted: the information feels familiar due to the recency effect (they are still in STM but have not actually transferred to LTM)
- delayed JOL: more accurate prediction and more accurate results
Retrieval fluency
the ease with which you can recall an item
Ways to improve retention
1) quizzing is better than studying for a long retention interval
verbal rehearsal definition
rereading material out-loud over and over
Does rote rehearsal help items get into LTM?
study: given a list of words but told you will be asked to recall the most recent one you saw starting with a “g” – every new “g” word you see replaces the old one
- manipulating how close the “g” words are: if they are back to back, you don’t rehearse the first one that much because it is immediately replaced (“g” word with the most items in between the next one should be best recalled)
- findings: more rehearsal did not increase recall
Rehearsing and the primacy effect
Rehearsal has two functions:
1) maintaining items in STM: if this is the case (you are just trying to remember for now) you will not have better retention with more rehearsal
2) elaborating items for transfer to LTM and future retrieval: if time is used to enrich material, retention will improve
Memory codes definition
the format of the information encoded into memory
orienting task definition
instructions to focus on a particular aspect of the stimulus
- way to control which memory codes people choose
Levels of Processing definition
There are multiple ways to encode material and some are better than others (semantic/deep is best)
Levels of processing “levels”
from shallowest to deepest:
1) structural: emphasizes physical features
2) phonemic: emphasizes pronunciation
3) semantic: emphasizes meaning
Evidence for LOP
study: presented 12 pairs of related items
conditions:
- structural: count all the “e’s” or number of letters
- semantic: rate the word’s pleasantness
- control: incidental learning (not warned about recall test)
Results: rating pleasantness (semantic) produced the best recall even if you did not know a test was coming
Criticisms of LOP
1) it takes longer to do semantic processing than structural process so the effect is due to longer rehearsal time
2) it does not explain why semantic codes are more effective than structural codes
Evidence for time in relation to semantic vs. structural processing
given a structural task that takes a long time (does this word follow a VVCCVV pattern?) or a semantic test that is short (see if a word fits into a sentence)
findings: you still had better recall for the semantic condition even though the structural took twice as long - semantic processing is driving the effect not time studying.
Two explanations for why semantic codes are more effective
1) semantic codes are more elaborate
2) semantic codes are more distinctive
Semantic coding and elaboration
when you process something semantically you don’t just store the item but also the associated items and the context
study: 3 different elaboration levels
- simple: the shirt is torn
- medium: the ghost frightened the children
- complex: the great bird swooped down and grabbed the struggling worm
findings:
- more elaborate/detailed things were remembred better
- elaboration has to be precise and consistent (detailed and related to the original context – saying “yes” it makes sense leads to a higher recall probability)
Coding definition
placing new information in context with older, already learned information
consolidation definition
a process by which memories are created and stored by individual neurons
Long-term potentiation definition
strengthening of synapses that result from simultaneous activation
What do students do under time pressure?
Study “judged easy” material
Clustering definition
the number of associated pairs recalled together
- if salt and pepper are in a list, they are clustered as they are related
Uncued recall
recall that has to occur without any hints or cues
Cued recall
recall where a hint or cue is provided
Study on precision of elaboration
conditions:
- base: the old man bought the paint
- imprecise: the old man bought the paint on the top shelf
- precise: the old man bought the paint to color his cane
- self-generation: the old man bought the paint to ____
findings: precise cues lead to best recall
Emotional distinctiveness
items with high emotional impact are better remembered (ex: flashbulb memories)
Encoding specificity principle definition
the effectiveness of a retrieval cue depends on how will it relates to the initial coding of the item
Evidence for encoding specificity
study: you study a target word in either a rhyme or semantic condition
retrieval conditions:
- identical: given what you studied
- similar: another similar rhyme or associated with
- different: given the condition you did not study
findings: you are best when your study condition matches your test condition (you want to match level of processing at study and retrieval)
Transfer appropriate processing definition
encoding material in a manner related to how it will later be used
Evidence for transfer appropriate processing
study: you read a passage either expecting an inference test or a memory test
findings: you did best in whatever condition you were expecting
Difference between encoding specificity and transfer appropriate processing
BOTH suggest good performance depends on maximizing the similarity between encoding and retrieval
Differ on:
1) transfer appropriate processing: retrieval condition are fixed so you decide how to encode the material
2) encoding specificity: you have already encoded the material and you choose the best retrieval cue
