Exam 2 Flashcards
Path integration involves navigation via which cues?
idiothetic (internal)
Which of the following sources of information is recorded in the dessert ant’s odometer?
steps taken
Servomechanisms reduce the discrepancy between intended state and goal state via which of the following?
Negative Feedback loop
An animal’s specific knowledge of its pack or troop members is an example which type of memory?
Declarative
One fundamental aspect of memory, revealed by delayed matching tasks, is that animals will have worse memory for items as what increases?
Retention interval/delay duration
The shape of the serial position function can be changed by modifying certain factors such as time or list length. What happens to the shape of the function when you increase the retention interval (delay duration)?
Memory for the first item in the list gets better
In surprise tests of episodic memory, animals can only make the correct response if they encode memories in what way?
implicitly
The classic shape of the serial position function is…
U
What is primacy effect?
Improved memory for items at the beginning of a list
What is recency effect?
Improved memory for items at the end of a list
Tue or False: Interference is a cause of forgetting where competing memories block the ability to remember something specific.
true
3 W’s of episodic memory
- what
- where
- when
What was the incidentally remembered information in the Zhou et al. surprise test?
Food in the Radial Arm maze
What cognitive abilities modulates information seeking?
metamemory
How do bees demonstrate metamemory?
They improve performance when they opt out
What brain structure in animals and humans is associated with episodic memory?
hippocampus
Proactive and Retroactive interference together account for which aspect of memory?
serial position function
Tue or False: The recency to primacy shift with delay effect is general across all taxa.
true
What does MTS test?
working memory and short-term memory abilities
What do mazes test?
spatial memory and navigation abilities
What factors affect how long memories are stored?
- Ecological context
- Episodic memory
- Metamemory
- Implicit memory
Proactive interference
old information interferes with the learning of new information
retroactive interference
tendency of later learning to hinder the memory of previously learned information
implicit memories
not consciously accessible
ex: motor skills
explicit memories
consciously accessible
ex: features of others individuals
what causes forgetting?
- decay
- interference
What are two main lines of research for episodic memory?
- What- Where-When
- Implicit coding
Clayton’s Scrub Jay experiment results
- When they expected the worm to be rotten, they showed a preference for nuts
- When they expected the worm to be fresh, they preferred the worms
implicit encoding is…
automatic and umprompted
explicit encoding is…
intentional and prompted
What converging evidence do we have on the importance of the hippocampus?
1) Patient HM: had huge portions of hippocampus removed -> resulted in anterograde amnesia
2) Lidocaine in rat hippocampus: failed surprise tests
environmental geometry
spatial relationships between landmarks, boundaries, and other features in the environment
what do animals construct using environmental geometry?
cognitive maps
what errors can animals make when utilizing environmental geometry?
- misjudging distances
- wrong turns
- repetitive patterns
path integration
continuously updating an internal representation of one’s position and orientation relative to a starting point by integrating self-motion cues, such as speed, direction, and distance traveled
beacons
Environmental features that indicate/locate a goal location
landmarks
Relies on recognizable features in the environment as reference points
(Landmarks are distinctive and easily recognizable objects in the environment)
sun compass
relies on the sun’s position relative to the observer to establish direction
-> must have some form of an internal clock to work
