L6: Memory 2

Question 1

What are the two main types of long-term memory?

Answer 1

Explicit (conscious)
Implicit (not conscious)

Question 2

What are the 2 types of explicit memory?

Answer 2

Episodic memory (experiences in the past).
Semantic memory (facts, knowledge)

Question 3

What are the 3 types of implicit memory?

Answer 3

Procedural memory
Priming
Classical conditioning

Question 4

Outline the elements of episodic memory (3)

Answer 4

• Involves mental time travel
• Tied to personal experience; remembering is reliving.
• Partially overlaps with autobiographic memory.

Question 5

Outline the elements of semantic memory (3)

Answer 5

• Does not involve mental time travel
• General knowledge, facts
• Often result from episodic memories.

Question 6

What is autobiographical memory? (4)

Answer 6

• Memory for specific experiences from our life, which can include both episodic and semantic components.
• Involves mental time travel
• Multidimensional: spatial, emotional, semantic, experiential and sensory components.
• Active reconstruction based on combining episodic, semantic, sensory and seld-relevant information.

Question 7

How does our memory change for “exceptional” stimuli? (2)

Answer 7

• Emotional events: more easily and vividly remembered.
• Emotion improves memory, and becomes greater with time (may enhance consolidation brain activity in amygdala).

Question 8

What is an example of a study that supports procedural memory?

Answer 8

HM - was unable to form episodic memories, his procedural memory was fully in tact.
Mirror tracing task - HM thought he was practising it for the first time every time he did it.

Question 9

What is priming?

Answer 9

When information is pre-activated by a stimulus and changes your response to a following stimulus.

Question 10

What are the two types of conditioning?

Answer 10

• Classical conditioning: associates an involuntary response and a stimulus.
• Operant conditioning: Associate voluntary behaviour with a consequence.

Question 11

*What are engrams?

Answer 11

Engrams are the first physical traces of memory.
They initiate in the hippocampus and eventually are thought to be distributed in different parts of the cortex.

Question 12

What is consolidation?

Answer 12

Consolidation transforms new memories from a fragile state to a permanent state in the cortex.

Question 13

What are the 4 ways information can be transferred into the LTM?

Answer 13

Encoding
Retrieval
Maintenance rehearsal
Elaborative rehearsal

Question 14

What is encoding?

Answer 14

Acquiring information and transforming it into memory

Question 15

What is retrieval?

Answer 15

Transferring information from LTM to working memory

Question 16

What is maintenance rehearsal?

Answer 16

Repetition of stimuli that maintains information but does not transfer it to LTM.

Question 17

What is elaborative rehearsal?

Answer 17

Using meanings and connections to help transfers information to LTM

Question 18

What is the levels of processing theory?

Answer 18

Memory depends on how information is encoded (depth of processing)
It can be shallow or deep processing.

Question 19

What is shallow processing?

Answer 19

• Little attention to meaning
• Focus on physical features

Question 20

What is deep processing?

Answer 20

• Close attention to meaning
• Connecting new information to existing information.

Question 21

What are the 6 main factors that aid encoding?

Answer 21

• Visual imagery (picture superiority effect)
• Self-reference effect (memory is better if you can relate to something)
• Generation effect (generating relevant information leads up to 65% improvement).
• Organizing to-be-remembered information.
• Retrieval practice
• Drawing

Question 22

What is retrieval?

Answer 22

The process of transferring information from LTM back into working memory (consciousness)
The most vulnerable process of memory.

Question 23

How can retrieval be tested?

Answer 23

• Free recall (ppt recalls stimuli)
• Cued recall (ppt presented with retrieval cues to aid in recall of previous stimuli).

Question 24

Why is retrieval so vulnerable?

Answer 24

Many memory failures are failures of retrieval.
Emotion interferes with retrieval (positive events retrieved easier than negative).
Context interferes with retrieval (easier to retrieve information in similar situations or moods compared to when learnt).

Question 25

How can retrieval be improved?

Answer 25

Cues (especially self-generated)
The matching condition between encoding and retrieval (e.g. Baddely’s “diving experiment”.

Question 26

What are the two main types of consolidation?

Answer 26

Synaptic consolidation
Systems consolidation

Question 27

What is synaptic consolidation

Answer 27

Structural changes at the synapse take place over minutes or hours.
Learning and memory are represented in the brain by physiological changes at the synapse.

Question 28

What is one of the outcomes of structural changes at the synapse ?

Answer 28

Strengthening of synaptic transmission

Question 29

What is long-term potentiation (LTP)?

Answer 29

The strengthening of synaptic transmission by enhanced firing of neurons after repeated stimulation.

Question 30

What is systems consolidation?

Answer 30

Takes place over months or even years.
Gradual reorganization of neural circuits within the brain.

Question 31

What is reactivation?

Answer 31

A process in which the hippocampus “replays” the neural activity associated with a memory.
This occurs outside consciousness and long after the to-be-remembered event.

Question 32

What is cross-cortical consolidation?

Answer 32

Over time, connections are formed between cortical areas, and the connections between hippocampus and the cortex are weakened and eventually vanish.

Question 33

What is retrograde amnesia?

Answer 33

The loss of memory for events that occurred before the injury. It can extend back minutes, hours or years, depending on the nature of the injury.

Question 34

What is graded amnesia?

Answer 34

A characteristic of retrograde amnesia - the amnesia tends to be most severe for events that happened just before the injury and to become less severe for earlier events.

Question 35

What is anterograde amnesia?

Answer 35

The inability to form new long-term memories for events after trauma (H.M. example).

Question 36

What five memory principles can be applied to studying?

Answer 36

1. Elaborate
2. Generate and test
3. Organize
4. Take breaks
5. Avoid “Illusions of learning”.

Question 37

What factors affect consolidation?

Answer 37

Memory consolidation is enhanced during sleep.
Intentionally learning for recall or particularly relevant memories.
Memory is constantly constructed and remodeled in response to learning and current conditions.

Question 38

What are the changes that occur with age and memory?

Answer 38

Older adults often experience differences in memory, which supports the idea of different underlying memory systems.
Semantic memory increases until 60-65, then decreases slowly.
Implicit memory is not affected by age.
Episodic memory deteriorates rapidly after 60.
Recognition performance is better than free recall.