L4: Memory part 2 Flashcards
elaborative encoding?
Elaboration: actively relating new information to knowledge that is already in memory
Craik and Tulving (1975): Levels-of-processing (LOP)
Deep (top) arrow down to shallow (bottom)
In this study 3 diff types of encoding. Semantic judgment- when want them to memorise a word e.g: hat. Semantic judgment may be asked if hat a type of coding. Requires you to link hat to category of clothing and see where hat fits that collection of items.
Second condition: ask rhyme judgment. Does hat rhyme with cat? Info linked to hat is not as sdeep as the first one. Where semantic requires you to retrieve collection of different words. Here just if it fits rhyme.
Finally: hat written upercase or lowercase. Doesnt even require you to process it. See if it fits description of uopcase or lowercase.
So level of processing here lonoks for involvement of prior knowledge in your memory. More knowledge involved= deeper encoding. Semantic judgment induces deepest encoding. Requires you to put more effort. In this case predicted that if encoding is deeper gets better memory performance. Found gradient performance? Between them with semantic judgment with best memory performance and visual judgment the worst.
visual imagery encoding?
Visual imagery encoding
Visual imagery encoding: storing new information by converting it into mental pictures
Wollen et al. (1972): encoding with interactions remembers better, despite being bizarre or not
Method of loci: a memory aid that associates information with mental images of locations
A mental walk in a familiar place
Why is it effective?
Combining old and new
More modality to recollect information
Wollen et al. (1972) conducted a study showing that encoding with interactions between objects (even if they seem bizarre) helps with memory retention. This means that when objects or pieces of information are linked in a way that involves interaction (even if unusual or strange, like a cigar playing a piano), we remember them better than if they were simply presented without interaction.
One specific technique related to this is the Method of Loci, a memory aid that involves associating information with specific locations in your mind. In this method, you imagine walking through a familiar place (like your home or a familiar street), and each location you pass is linked with a piece of information you want to remember.
Why is it effective?
It combines old (familiar locations) and new (information to remember) knowledge, which makes it easier to recall.
It adds multiple modalities (visual, spatial, and sometimes even emotional), which enhances memory and recollection.
In a study, participants had to mentally imagine objects like a piano and a cigar, and then think about their interactions (for example The upper right image, showing a piano from below with its keyboard peeling off and a cigar burning at both ends, was intended to be bizarre but noninteracting.
The bottom left image shows elements interacting, but it is not bizarre: the cigar is merely resting on the piano. Finally, the bottom right image, a piano smoking a cigar, is both interactive and bizarre.
Wollen, Weber and Lowry found that the interacting images, both bizarre and non-bizarre, were easy for participants to recall. Bizarreness by itself did not aid memory. A cigar resting on a piano was just as effective as a cigar being smoked by a piano for purposes of improving memory.). The study found that creating such bizarre imagery helped with encoding and remembering the information, as opposed to non-bizarre imagery.
The Method of Loci works in a similar way. For example, imagine your house is flooded with milk to help you remember to buy milk. You are combining a familiar location (your home) with new information (milk), which enhances your ability to recall that information later.
This technique is similar to elaboration, where you combine old knowledge (familiar places) with new information (the shopping list) to create stronger, more memorable associations.
organisational encoding?
Organisational encoding: the act of categorising information by noticing the relationship between a series of items
Stevens (1988): study how waiter or waitress take orders
The researchers wired waiter and waitress and ask them to think out loud.
As soon as the waiter or waitress left a table, they immediately began grouping or categorising the orders into hot drinks, cold drinks, hot food and cold food.
They also grouped the items into a sequence that matched the layout of the kitchen. – first place drink orders, then hot food orders then cold food orders.
Mnemonic: a device for organising information into more meaningful patterns to remember
‘Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain’: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet
encoding survival-related information?
Charles Darwin proposed that memory should be particularly good at preserving information that is relevant for survival, as this would be essential for adapting to the environment.
In a study by Nairne et al. (2007), they compared three types of encoding tasks:
Survival encoding: How relevant each item would be for survival.
Moving encoding: How useful each item might be for setting up a new home.
Pleasantness encoding: How pleasant each word seemed.
The results showed that survival encoding led to the highest recall performance, meaning that people remembered survival-related information better than the other types of information.
Further analysis indicated that the superior memory performance for survival encoding was not due to differences in relevance or response time—meaning that survival-related items weren’t necessarily more relevant or quicker to respond to than the others.
However, the study also found that, across all three conditions (survival, moving, pleasantness), there was a trend of better recall for survival-related items, though not always in the same exact pattern or circular way across all participants. This suggests that survival-related information might have a special advantage in memory, regardless of other factors.
retrieval: bringing memory to mind?
Recognition: the capacity to correctly match information presented with the contents of memory
E.g., have you seen ‘method of Loci’ in this lecture?
Recall: the capacity to spontaneously retrieve information from memory
E.g., what was the method about using the locations of mental imageries?
Retrieval cues: external information that is associated with stored information and help brings to mind
Encoding specificity principle: a retrieval cue can serve as an effective reminder when it helps re-create the specific way in which information was initially encoded (Tulving & Thomson, 1973)
State-dependant retrieval: the tendency for information to be better recalled when the person is in the same state during encoding and retrieval
Godden and Baddeley (1975): divers’ memory test
Recalling the list of words in the same state as encoding increase the memory performance (e.g., encode underwater – recall underwater)
Persons physiological state and and psychological state and time of encoding associated with info being encoded
State itself can serve as memory cues.
transfer-appropriate processing (TAP)
Transfer-appropriate processing (TAP) suggests that memory is more likely to transfer successfully from one situation to another when we process information in a way that matches the retrieval cues that will be available later. In other words, how we encode the information (e.g., by thinking about its meaning, its sound, etc.) should align with the type of question or cue we will use to retrieve it later. Studies like Morris et al. (1977) and Roediger et al. (1989) support this idea.
Regarding the brain as an organ: If you ask someone, “Does it rhyme with ‘train’?” and then later ask them, “What word related to the body rhymes with ‘train’?”, they might recall the word “brain” more easily. This is because the encoding question (“Does it rhyme with ‘train’?”) was similar to the recall question (“What word of an organ rhymes with ‘train’?”).
If the encoding and retrieval questions match, it can make recall easier, which ties into the idea that using consistent encoding and recall strategies can boost performance, even when the level of processing (deep or shallow) differs. In simpler terms, if the way you study something is similar to the way you’ll be tested on it, you’ll perform better. For example, if you study by thinking about how something sounds (shallow processing) and are later tested by hearing similar sounds, your recall will be improved.
Dividing long term memory?
Long-term memory
Case of HM: cannot make new memories but his gaming performance improves each round (Milner, 1962)
Case of learning mirror-inverted words (Cohen & Squire, 1980)
Suggests we have 2 diff types of ltm. One can be damaged other functional
Explicit memory: the act of consciously or intentionally retrieving past experiences
Implicit memory: the influence of past experiences on later behaviour and performance, even though people are not trying to recollect them and are not aware that they are remembering them
long term memory: arrow to either explicit memory (with conscious recall) or implicit memory (without conscious recall) 2 arrows from explicit memory: semantic memory (facts and general knowledge) and episodic memory (personally experienced events)
2 arrows from implicit memory: procedural memory (motor and cognitive skills) or priming (enhanced identification of objects or words).
Semantic memory: a network of associated facts and concepts that make up our general knowledge of the world
Episodic memory: the collection of past personal experiences that occurred at a particular time and plac
Autobiographical memory: the personal record of significant event of one’s life (sometimes with strong emotions)
Flashbulb memories: detailed recollections of when and where we heard about shocking events (elaborate as every time it recalls).
Implicit memory
Procedural memory: the gradual acquisition of skills as a result of practice or ‘knowing’ to do things
Priming: an enhanced ability to think of a stimulus, such as a word or object, as a result of a recent exposure to the stimulus (Tulving & Schacter, 1990)
Not consciously recollected, actions
forgetting?
Transience: forgetting what occurs with the passage of time
The forgotten curve
Ebbinghaus (1964): remembering a list of nonsense syllables
Memory don’t fade at a constant rate as time passes
Most forgetting happens soon after an event occurs, with increasingly less forgetting over time.
graph of: savings (%) y vs time since original earning (x). shows decline then steady at 9 hours to 48 hours
Not just quantity, but also quality
Memory changes from more specific to more general over time
Serial position effect
Serial position effect: the enhanced memory for events presented at the beginning and end of a learning episode (Glanzer & Cunitz, 1966)
Primacy effect: for items remembered better at the beginning
Recency effect: for items remembered better at the end
graph of successful recall (%) vs position of word on a 40-word list. primacy region at beginning and large recency region at end. look at graph/
Prospect memory: forgetting the future
Prospect memory: remembering to do things in the future
Retrospective memory: information learned in the past
“when” something needs to be remembered is the key difference between the two: remember what to do, and do it in the future!
Two types of prospect memory:
Event-based memory: require an action when an event occurs
Time-based memory: require an action when a certain time or interval is reached
Both requires attention to monitor the pass of time
amnesia?
Anterograde amnesia: the inability to transfer new information from the short-term store into the long-term store
Retrograde amnesia: the inability to retrieve information that was acquired before a particular date, usually the date of an injury or operation
Sometimes can be both
Hm: recall childhood memories but cant form new ones?
While memory are stored in cortex, hippocampus is an index that links all the separate memory together
memory failiures?
Source monitoring and misattributions:
Source monitoring: recall of when, where and how information was acquired
Memory misattribution: assigning a recollection or an idea to the wrong source
Schacter (2001): Donald Thompson’s case – he was arrested for rape in 1975 based on the victim’s memory, but he was on a TV interview when the incident happened!
Three types of source monitoring
Internal: thoughts about doing vs. actually did, e.g., did I turn off the mic?
External: distinguishing between more than one external sources, e.g., did you tell me this?
Reality: distinguishing between actual event and an imagined one, e.g., did I attend the lecture today?
Déjà vu experience: where you suddenly feel that you have been in a situation before even though you can’t recall any details
Deja vecu: a confabulated memory where the individual is certain that the new experience is old
While memory are stored in cortex, hippocampus is an index that links all the separate memory together
