L6: Memory 2 Flashcards
What are the two main types of long-term memory?
Explicit (conscious)
Implicit (not conscious)
What are the 2 types of explicit memory?
Episodic memory (experiences in the past).
Semantic memory (facts, knowledge)
What are the 3 types of implicit memory?
Procedural memory
Priming
Classical conditioning
Outline the elements of episodic memory (3)
- Involves mental time travel
- Tied to personal experience; remembering is reliving.
- Partially overlaps with autobiographic memory.
Outline the elements of semantic memory (3)
- Does not involve mental time travel
- General knowledge, facts
- Often result from episodic memories.
What is autobiographical memory? (4)
- 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.
How does our memory change for “exceptional” stimuli? (2)
- Emotional events: more easily and vividly remembered.
- Emotion improves memory, and becomes greater with time (may enhance consolidation brain activity in amygdala).
What is an example of a study that supports procedural memory?
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.
What is priming?
When information is pre-activated by a stimulus and changes your response to a following stimulus.
What are the two types of conditioning?
- Classical conditioning: associates an involuntary response and a stimulus.
- Operant conditioning: Associate voluntary behaviour with a consequence.
*What are engrams?
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.
What is consolidation?
Consolidation transforms new memories from a fragile state to a permanent state in the cortex.
What are the 4 ways information can be transferred into the LTM?
Encoding
Retrieval
Maintenance rehearsal
Elaborative rehearsal
What is encoding?
Acquiring information and transforming it into memory
What is retrieval?
Transferring information from LTM to working memory
What is maintenance rehearsal?
Repetition of stimuli that maintains information but does not transfer it to LTM.
What is elaborative rehearsal?
Using meanings and connections to help transfers information to LTM
What is the levels of processing theory?
Memory depends on how information is encoded (depth of processing)
It can be shallow or deep processing.
What is shallow processing?
- Little attention to meaning
- Focus on physical features
What is deep processing?
- Close attention to meaning
- Connecting new information to existing information.
What are the 6 main factors that aid encoding?
- 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
What is retrieval?
The process of transferring information from LTM back into working memory (consciousness)
The most vulnerable process of memory.
How can retrieval be tested?
- Free recall (ppt recalls stimuli)
- Cued recall (ppt presented with retrieval cues to aid in recall of previous stimuli).
Why is retrieval so vulnerable?
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).
How can retrieval be improved?
Cues (especially self-generated)
The matching condition between encoding and retrieval (e.g. Baddely’s “diving experiment”.
What are the two main types of consolidation?
Synaptic consolidation
Systems consolidation
What is synaptic consolidation
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.
What is one of the outcomes of structural changes at the synapse ?
Strengthening of synaptic transmission
What is long-term potentiation (LTP)?
The strengthening of synaptic transmission by enhanced firing of neurons after repeated stimulation.
What is systems consolidation?
Takes place over months or even years.
Gradual reorganization of neural circuits within the brain.
What is reactivation?
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.
What is cross-cortical consolidation?
Over time, connections are formed between cortical areas, and the connections between hippocampus and the cortex are weakened and eventually vanish.
What is retrograde amnesia?
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.
What is graded amnesia?
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.
What is anterograde amnesia?
The inability to form new long-term memories for events after trauma (H.M. example).
What five memory principles can be applied to studying?
- Elaborate
- Generate and test
- Organize
- Take breaks
- Avoid “Illusions of learning”.
What factors affect consolidation?
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.
What are the changes that occur with age and memory?
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.
