Exam 3: Chapter 7-9

Question 1

Compare and contrast episodic and semantic memories – table 7.1 and figure 7.1. Realize the two processes are fundamentally interdependent. - Ch.7

Answer 1

Episodic Memory:
event-related: “I remember”
- can be communicated flexibly
- consciously accessible
- tagged with spatial and temporal context
- must have experienced the event personally
- learned in a single exposure: can be weakened by exposure to similar events

Semantic memory:
factual: “I know”
- can be communicated flexibly
- consciously accessible
- NOT necessarily tagged with spatial and temporal context
- can be personal or GENERAL information
- can be learned in a single exposure but can also be strengthened by repetition

strength of the memory decreases as there is repeated episodic memories, though with the number of similar events semantic memories strengthen the memory

Question 2

Understand the difference between explicit (declarative) and implicit (nondeclarative/skill) memories.

Answer 2

Explicit:
- declarative
ex. remembering first time you rode a bike (episodic) and remembering who was the first president of the U.S. (semantic)

Implicit:
- non-declarative
ex. remembering how to ride a bike

Question 3

What is the name of the process that moves memories from working memory to long-term memory?

Answer 3

consolidation

Question 4

For what is Endel Tulving known (with regard to memory)?

Answer 4

Tulving would say “no” (nonhuman episodic and semantic memory), because non-human critters can’t re-experience an event in memory.

Tulving has argued that episodic memories require a conscious sense of self that non-human animals simply lack.

• Episodic may develop only after sufficient semantic memories
  are formed OR semantic may develop from repeated episodic

Question 5

Describe the tests used and basic findings of research on episodic and semantic memory in nonhuman animals (rodents and scrub jays, for example).

Answer 5

Radial arm maze indicates semantic memory in rodents:
- Food always placed in a specific food arm.
- Rat always starts from a specific start arm.
- After training, rat is started from a new armbut navigates directly to the food arm.
- This demonstrates flexible use of memory,a hallmark of semantic memory.

Scrub jays bury worms and nuts in sand-filled ice-cube tray.
- When allowed to recover food 4 hours later, chose worms (favorite food).
- After 124 hours, tended to choose the still-edible nuts.
- Suggests an ability to recallspecific details of what wasburied, where it was buried,and when it was buried—an episodic memory?

Question 6

What are the 3 basic principles for encoding (or storing) a memory?
- Describe how encoding is influenced by mere exposure.
- Explain why memory is better for information that relates to prior knowledge.
- Describe what is meant by depth of processing and explain how it enhances memory.

Answer 6

1. Mere exposure to Information Does Not Guarantee Memory
   - Unfortunately, simple repetition is not an effective way of encoding new memories!
2. Memory is Better for Information That Relates to Prior Knowledge
   - Background knowledge dramatically enhances encoding!
3. Deeper Processing at Encoding Improves Recognition Later
   - Craik and Tulving proposed that the more deeply you process information, the better it is encoded. This is called the levels-of-processing effect.
   -

Question 7

What are the 3 key principles for successfully retrieving a memory?
- Describe the concept of transfer-appropriate processing.
- What does it mean to say more cues = better recall?
- How can struggling (or even failing) to remember improve memory?

Answer 7

1. Memory Retrieval Is Better When Study and Test Conditions Match
   - transfer-appropriate processing: retrieval works best when conditions are similar to encoding conditions
2. More Cues Mean Better Recall
   (free recall – tough)
   (cued recall, a bit easier)
   (recognition, much easier)

• the more cues provided the easier it is to recall a memory

example: asking someone for a celebrity but giving them that they acted in a specific move, they had a grammy, and so on

3. Struggling (and Even Failing) to Remember Can Improve Memory
   - Mere act of testing serves as a powerful enhancer of later memory!, What do you think happened when they were quizzed a week later? :
   re-read: 40% recall vs. tested on: 55% recall

Question 8

What are the four common problems of memory failure?
- Describe how interference accounts for forgetting, and distinguish between retroactive and proactive interference.
- Describe the memory failures of misattribution, source amnesia, cryptomnesia, and false memory.

Answer 8

Four Common Problems:

1. forgetting
2. interference
3. source monitoring
4. false memory

• Similar/overlapping information can interfere with memory, producing storage and retrieval errors.
• Proactive interference: old information interferes with new information
• Retroactive interference: new information interferes with old information
• Memory misattribution: when information is correctly remembered but mistakenly associated with an incorrect source
• Source Amnesia: when information is correctly remembered, but the source is not remembered at all
• Cryptomnesia: mistakenly remembering someone else’s ideas as one’s own
• Loftus and colleagues have shown that memories can be modified and manipulated after encoding. A false memory is of an event that never actually happened.

Question 9

What is metamemory? Feeling-of-knowing? Tip-of-the-tongue? Judgment of learning?

Answer 9

Metamemory refers to knowledge or belief about one’s own declarative memory.
1. FOK (feeling of knowing) —> TOT (tip-of-the-tongue)
2. JOL (judgment of learning)

Question 10

Explain how research in agnosias has provided further evidence that different types of information may be stored in different ways in a variety of cortical areas.

Answer 10

Cortical lesions can display different kinds of agnosia (a selective semantic memory impairment)
- Auditory agnosia for speech – can’t understand spoken words, though other sounds are recognized and reading/writing intact
- Tactile agnosia – can’t recognize objects by feel

• agnosia is not knowing what something is, so tells us that different types of information will be stored different ways, since you can independently have tactile agnosia alone

Question 11

What are the differences in visual agnosias, auditory agnosias and tactile agnosias?

Answer 11

• Auditory agnosia for speech – can’t understand spoken words, though other sounds are recognized and reading/writing intact
• Tactile agnosia – can’t recognize objects by feel
• Visual agnosia - can’t recognize by looking at

Question 12

Describe the role of the neuronal networks in semantic memory formation and storage. Why is the sensory cortex part of this process? How about the association cortex?

Answer 12

Taken together, this evidence suggests that semantic memories are stored across many specialized processing centers in the cortex.

• For example, your semantic memory of an apple may involve visual components in visual cortex, olfactory components in olfactory lobe, associations with other fruits in associative cortex, etc.
• Sensory cortex – first cortical processing center for a sense
• Association cortex – links across senses

Question 13

Describe the role of the medial temporal lobes (most specifically, the hippocampus) in memory storage.

Answer 13

• Consolidation seems to depend on the medial temporal lobes (MTL)
  
  • hippocampus and surrounding cortex (entorhinal, perirhinal, and
    parahippocampal)
  • Hippocampus -> episodic memory
  • Surrounding region -> semantic memory

Question 14

What is the standard consolidation theory? The multiple trace theory?

Answer 14

Standard Consolidation Theory

• During learning, the MTL (Medial Temporal Lobes) relays information to the cortex.
• Over time, however, the cortex gets the message and the memories become independent of the MTL.
  Explains why brain disruption usually damages recent memories (still undergoing consolidation) but not older memories (fully consolidated)

Multiple Trace Theory
- The theory that episodic (and possibly semantic) memories are encoded by an ensemble of hippocampal and cortical neurons and that both Hpc and Ctx are normally involved in storing and retrieving even very old memories.
- Each time a memory retrieved, it becomes a new episodic memory (reconsolidation).
- Thus, one event can have multiple “memory traces” and general content becomes semantic.
Explains cases of severe retrograde amnesia. Also suggests that spared memories after MTL damage are actually semantic rather than true episodic.

Question 15

Describe the role of the frontal cortex in memory storage and retrieval.

Answer 15

The frontal cortex may play an organizing role in declarative memories:
- Selecting information to be encoded into long-term memory
- Retrieving information back into working memory

The frontal cortex plays an important role in metamemory
- Damage means people struggle with knowing what they know (FOK, TOT, JOL)

Question 16

Describe the roles of subcortical structures (most specifically, the basal forebrain and the diencephalon) in episodic and semantic memory.

Answer 16

• Two additional structures play
  important roles in regulating episodic and semantic memory: the diencephalon and the basal forebrain
• damage to either can cause amnesia
• The basal forebrain (structures at the base of the forebrain) and diencephalon connect with the hippocampus via a fiber bundle called the fornix.
• MTL is regulated by the basal forebrain
• Certain strokes can lead to basal forebrain damage, resulting in anterograde and retrograde amnesia.
• Both the MTL and frontal cortex are regulated by the diencephalon
  
  • mammillary bodies
  • mediodorsal nucleus of thalamus

Question 17

What leads to Korsakoff’s disease? Realize that a symptom of Korsakoff’s disease is confabulation.

Answer 17

Korsakoff’s disease:
- Thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency
- Sometimes accompanies chronic alcohol abuse.
- Patients act like they have MTL damage, but damage is to diencephalon and other structures.

• confabulation: a neuropsychiatric disorder wherein a patient generates a false memory without the intention of deceit

Question 18

Describe the differences between transient global amnesia and functional amnesia.

Answer 18

Transient global amnesia (hippocampus) —temporary memory disruption, often due to brief interruption of blood flow to the brain.
- can be caused by head injury, low blood sugar, heart attack or stroke, tranquilizers, alcohol “blackouts”
- Case of SG, caused by blood flow disruption during surgery
- suggests transient abnormalities to hippocampus

Functional (or psychogenic) amnesia—results from psychological (rather than physical) cause.
- loss of personal identity due to severe psychological trauma

Question 19

Define/describe retrograde versus anterograde amnesia. What is the Ribot gradient?

Answer 19

• retrograde amnesia: cannot recall memories of past
• anterograde amnesia: cannot form new memories

Ribot gradient - the further back you go the more clear memories get for anterograde amnesia, consolidation period, the further back you go the more likely they will be consolidated and the closer you go to the accident the less recall/consolidation happens

Question 20

Be able to answer questions about what happened to patient HM and what important scientific concepts were learned during his case study.

Answer 20

Patient HM:
- Medial temporal lobes were
removed on both sides
- Anterograde Amnesia: Couldn’t form new lasting memories
- After surgery, met a new doctor; completed hours of testing with him;
the next day, didn’t recognize the doctor.
- After surgery, told favorite uncle had died. Was extremely sad and
upset, but the next day, didn’t remember that it had happened

Still Intact:
- most of his memories before the surgery
- could remember new things as long as he was working/attending to the information
- picked up some semantic memories (JFC is the president)

Question 21

Identify what a skill is, and contrast a skill (procedural) memory with memories for events and facts. - Ch.8

Answer 21

A skill is an ability to perform a task that has been honed through learning.

Skill memory (AKA procedural memory) shares some characteristics with declarative memory (episodic and semantic):
- Improves with practice
- Can become long-lasting

Skill Memories:
1. are difficult to convey except by direct demonstration
2. may be acquired w/o awareness
3. require several repetitions

Memories for events and facts:
1. can be communicated flexibility
2. have content that is consciously available
3. can be acquired in a single exposure

Question 22

Explain the difference between closed and open skills.

Answer 22

• Closed skills are rote sets of movements that, ideally, never vary.
• Open skills require adjustments based on the environment.

Question 23

Compare and contrast cognitive skills with perceptual-motor skills.

Answer 23

• Perceptual-motor skills: learned movement patterns guided by sensory inputs
• Cognitive skills: habits of problem solving

Question 24

Describe the relationship between talent, expertise, and cognitive and perceptual-motor skills.

Answer 24

• talent is when discussing genetics –> Rotary task
• expertise is having enough practice, practice plays more of a role in expertise then talent
• talent is just a leg up, talent plays a role in what we choose

Cognitive skills: habits of problem solving
- Examples: playing cards, budgeting your money, taking tests

Perceptual-motor skills: learned movement patterns guided by sensory inputs
- Examples: how to hit a curve ball, driving a car, playing the piano

• An expert is someone who hasmastered a skill better thanmost people

Question 25

Describe how practice contributes to the acquisition of skills. Is all practice good practice?

Answer 25

Research shows that not all practice is good practice:
- Practice is usually ineffective without quality feedback on performance.
- Practice should be spaced out rather than crammed/massed together.
- Practice should consist of a mix of skills (varied practice) rather than focus on one single skill (constant practice).

More repetition does not guarantee improvement!
- In other words, it is not just practicing that matters.

Question 26

What is meant by “knowledge of results”? What is the power law of practice?

Answer 26

• Feedback about performance, AKA knowledge of results, is critical to the effectiveness of the practice!
• Power law of practice: the time of reading, pages per minute, can improve over time through practice and feedback, but you will bottom out at some point since you have different limitations

Question 27

What is meant by spaced vs. massed practice and which is “better”?

Answer 27

spaced practice

Question 28

Is constant or variable practice thought to be better?

Answer 28

Constant practice is focused on a single skill.
- Constant practice: Play the G Major scale 20 times.

Variable practice alternates between a set of skills.
- Variable practice: Play the G, C, E, and D Major scales 5 times each.

• Variable practice is often (but not always) more effective
• constant practice is sometimes as good or better
• unclear how to pick the best practice schedule for a specific skill

Question 29

Define implicit learning and explicit learning. Describe a way that can be used to measure implicit skills.

Answer 29

• Explicit learning is learning with conscious effort:
• e.g., studying for an exam
  Implicit learning is learning without conscious effort:
• e.g., Have you ever realized that you know the words to a popular radio song, even though you never really tried to learn the lyrics?
• Implicit skills measured by Rotary Pursuit Task and patient HM drawing stars through a mirror –> procedural tasks are good for demonstrating implicit skills

Question 30

What does it take to become an expert? What role does talent play? Is there a genetic component to talent?

Answer 30

Expertise requires extensive practice:
- People must practice extensively to become true experts.
- Some estimates indicate a minimum of 10,000 hours of practice is required for deep expertise in a complex skill (e.g., chess).

Talent – the ability to master a skill with little effort – also plays a role:
- those who start off performing a skill well are most likely to end up becoming experts
- is this because they had right genes for expertise, or because early success helped them stick with the intense effort required?

• Rotary Pursuit Task shows that both talent and effort matter

Question 31

Identify and define Fitts’s three-stage model of skill learning (cognitive, associative, and autonomous).

Answer 31

1. Cognitive stage: performance is based on rules that can be verbalized
   example: using written instructions to set up a tent
2. Associative stage: actions can be stereotyped
   example: setting up a tent in a fixed sequence, without instructions
3. Autonomous stage: movements seem automatic
   example: setting up a tent while carrying on a conversation about politics

Question 32

Discuss what is known about skill decay.

Answer 32

Skill decay follows a similar power law:
- Rapid decay when practice is first terminated
- Slower decay as time progresses

Question 33

Describe how skill learning transfers (or doesn’t) across tasks. What is Thorndike’s identical elements theory with regard to transferring skills?

Answer 33

Thorndike (1901) proposed the identical elements theory:
- Training and new context will share at least some elements.
- The more shared (identical) elements, the better skills will transfer.
- For example: Baseball to softball will transfer better than baseball to cricket.

Question 34

What does it meant by “learning set formation”?

Answer 34

Acquiring the ability to learn novel tasks rapidly based on frequent experiences with similar tasks is called learning set formation, or learning-to-learn.

Question 35

Describe the role of the basal ganglia in skill learning and memory.

Answer 35

The basal ganglia are critical for learning to generate motor responses based on environmental cues.
- active during learning of perceptual-motor skill and when people learn cognitive skills
- link sensory events to responses

Question 36

Describe the role of the cerebral cortex in skill learning and memory.

Answer 36

• Cerebral cortex is mainly involved in controlling complex actions

Question 37

Describe the role of the cerebellum in skill learning and memory.

Answer 37

• The cerebellum is especially critical for learning and performing movement sequences that require precise timing.

Question 38

Apply knowledge about skill learning and memory to clinical examples of Parkinson’s disease and motor prosthesis therapy.

Answer 38

Parkinson’s disease—increasing muscular rigidity, tremors, difficulty initiating movements
- Reduction in brainstem neurons that modulate BG and cerebral cortex activity
- Decreased dopamine
- Difficulty learning serial reaction time and rotary pursuit tasks
- Can learn mirror reading

• Drug therapies and surgical procedures may temporarily relieve symptoms (e.g., deep brain stimulation to BG-cortical loop).

Similarly, a motor prosthesis is an electromechanical device that can help people recover lost abilities learn and perform perceptual-motor skills.
- Unlike sensory prostheses, which automatically respond to environmental inputs, motor prostheses must be consciously controlled by their users.
- Instead of delivering electricity to neurons, the implanted electrodes collect electrical signals from motor neurons and transmit those signals to a computer for processing.

Question 39

Describe the three basic memory components of the Atkinson-Shiffrin model of memory. - Ch.9

Answer 39

Input –> Sensory Memory –> Short-Term Memory –> Long Term Memory

Question 40

Identify the two types of transient memory.

Answer 40

• Sensory Memory
• STM

Question 41

What are the major differences between sensory memory and STM? What does it take to move information from sensory memory to STM?

Answer 41

Sensory Memory:
- Separate for the different senses
- Extremely rapid decay (~1s) and rapidly over-written by new incoming sensory information
- Transfers to STM

STM:
- Multimodal (general for senses)
- Small capacity
- Quick decay (<1 min) and over-writing
- Rehearsal – preserves info in STM
- Transfer to/from LTM

It takes attention to transfer sensory memory to STM

Question 42

What are the major differences between STM and LTM? What does it take to retain STM to ultimately consolidate it to LTM?

Answer 42

STM:
- active contents of consciousness
- access is rapid
- capacity is limited
- forgotten quickly

LTM:
- not currently in consciousness
- access is slower
- capacity is unlimited
- forgotten more slowly

Repeating particular pieces of information results in data transfer into LTM

Question 43

Describe the Sperling’s task (partial report technique). What important concept does it demonstrate?

Answer 43

The Sperling task – partial report technique
- Have participants only report 1 row, signaled by a tone after presentation

This concept demonstrates the ability for sensory memory to hold a complete snapshot of the world, but it fades very rapidly

• visual sensory memory typically holds only three letters

Question 44

What is Miller’s 7 +/- 2? What is chunking and how does that help us store more in STM?

Answer 44

• Miller: 7 plus or minus 2 (lower limit more common in humans)
• Recoding (AKA chunking) – finding meaning in information being stored in STM
  
  • Random numbers (14921894)
  • Recode into meaningful years: 1492, 1894
  • Depends on having meaningful chunks available

Helps, since chucking helps us remember longer strings of words without remembering every number independently

Question 45

Describe the three components of working memory, according to Baddeley.

Answer 45

Baddeley also decomposed working memory into 3 component parts
- Phonological loop – inner voice
- Visuospatial sketchpad – inner eye
- Central executive – attention

Question 46

Explain the concepts of maintenance and manipulation as they relate to the central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad.

Answer 46

So, the central executive monitors, updates, and reroutes information, while the phonological loop is verbal repetition of information, and the visuospatial sketchpad uses object and location

Central Executive:
-Holds both visual and spatial information for manipulation
(the mind’s eye)
- Limited capacity, but capacity is independent from phonological loop (filling one doesn’t impact the other)
- Well studied in non-humans because it is experimentally tractable

Question 47

Understand the human self-ordered memory task, the Wisconsin card-sorting task, the Stroop task, Raven Progressive Matrix Test of Nonverbal Intelligence, the DNMS task and what (specifically) they are designed to test.

Answer 47

Self-ordered Memory Task:
- At each step, choose an item not yet selected; this requires monitoring of memory for each prior step.

Wisconsin card-sorting task:
- Patients try to learn a rule governing the sorting of cards (e.g., by color).
- After they catch on, however, the rule is changed (e.g., by shape), requiring an updating of memory and behavior.

This requires cognitive control by switching between tasks

Stroop Task:
- participants name the color of the ink used to print a set of words.
- The central executive also plays a role in selecting appropriate behaviors and inhibiting inappropriate behaviors.

Raven Progressive Matrix Test of Nonverbal Intelligence:
- trying to choose from the pattern which pattern comes next

Delayed Nonmatch-to-Sample (DNMS) Task
- Novel object shown
- Delay
- Choose the non-matching object
(Nonhuman visuospatial sketchpad test)

Question 48

Describe the relationship between working memory and intelligence.

Answer 48

• Intelligence: capacity to learn, reason, and understand.
• One possibility: excellent working memory function
  
  • Working memory correlates with verbal SAT scores (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980).

Question 49

Describe common behavioral and cognitive consequences of prefrontal lobe damage.

Answer 49

• Studies with both animals and humans implicate the frontal lobes of the brain – especially the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the most anterior section of the frontal lobes – as critical for working memory and cognitive control.
• if damage to the prefrontal cortex it would get rid of working memory or possibly cognitive control

Question 50

Identify the two subdivisions of the lateral prefrontal cortex, and describe the role of each in working memory.

Answer 50

• The ventrolateral PFC supports encoding and retrieval – associated with the visuospatial sketchpad and the phonological loop.
• The dorsolateral PFC supports higher order executive-control functions such as monitoring and manipulating (central executive).

Question 51

Use the diagram to help learn the anatomical substrates of memories.

Answer 51

Working memory –> prefrontal cortex

Long-term Memory:
- Explicit Memory:
- Remembering events (episodic
memories)
+
- Knowing Facts (semantic memory)
= hippocampus, nearby cortical areas, medial diencephalon

• Implicit Memory:
  
  • Skills and habits —> striatum, motor areas of cortex, cerebellum
  • Emotional associations —> Amygdala
  • Conditioned reflexes —> Cerebellum

dorsolateral PFC –> central executive
ventrolateral PFC —> phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad

Question 52

Describe the relationship between schizophrenia and prefrontal cortical dysfunction, including how dopamine is involved.

Answer 52

Schizophrenia affects many behaviors and many brain regions, but two prominent symptoms include:
- poor working memory, especially involving central executive (manipulation) –> prefrontal cortical dysfunction
- altered frontal lobe function, especially DLPFC

Example:
- Schizophrenics do poorly onthe Wisconsin card-sortingtask.
- They also fail to show anincrease in DLPFC activitywhile completing the task.

Question 53

Explain how prefrontal cortical dysfunction or basal ganglion deficits can contribute to the symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Answer 53

ADHD
Difficulties with:
- Planning, organizing time
- Keeping attention focused on a task
- Inhibiting response to distracting stimuli

• May involve dysfunction in PFC cortical and subcortical connections, including the basal ganglia.
• Evidence that genes associated with ADHD may be involved in dopamine regulation in the brain.
• smaller right PFC
• ADHD patients may also have a “noisy” basal ganglia.
  
  • Medications for ADHD may increase the saliency of the basal ganglia signal to the PFC by increasing extracellular dopamine.
  • basal ganglia = skill learning and action selection