Lecture 18: Memory Mechanisms Flashcards
1
Q
What is comparative cognition?
A
- Approach to the study of animal behaviour that focuses on ‘the mechanisms by which animals acquire, process, store, and act on the information from the environment’
- Includes perception and attention, learning, memory, etc.
- Tells us about the uniqueness of human behaviour
2
Q
What is cognitive ethology?
A
- Advocates that animals are capable of conscious thought and intentionality
- Used to explain complex examples of animal behaviour
- Conscious intent cannot explain all complex human behaviours, so this is not a useful explanation of complex non-human behaviour
3
Q
What kind of behaviour explanations does comparative cognition favour?
A
- Favours explanations of behaviour which are open to refutation by observation and experiment
- Cognitive mechanisms can be tied to unambiguous behavioural predictions and can then be supported/refuted by experimental evidence
- Constructs/models behaviours that cannot be characterized by simple S-R mechanism
- Uses simplest possible explanation for observations
4
Q
What is anthropomorphism?
A
- Interpretation of complex behaviour in nonhuman animals based on the assumption that these animals might have the same thoughts, emotions, and intentions as people might have
- Hamper our understanding of cognitive mechanisms since they overemphasize conscious human experience and are often accepted without experimental proof
5
Q
What do cognitive mechanisms involve?
A
- Internal representation of something and rules for manipulating that internal representation
- Must be inferred by behaviour
6
Q
What is memory?
A
- The ability to respond based on information that was acquired earlier
- Humans can make explicit responses to memory tasks
- Animals are unable, so existence of memory in animals can be determined if their current behaviour is based on some aspect of earlier experience
7
Q
How are studies of learning different from memory studies?
A
- Learning = manipulate conditions of acquisition
- Memory = focus on conditions of retention and retrieval
8
Q
What are the 5 types of human learning/memory?
A
- Procedural memory
- Perceptual memory
- Semantic memory
- Primary/working memory
- Episodic/declarative memory
9
Q
What is procedural memory?
A
- Memory for learned behaviour of cognitive skills that are performed automatically without need for conscious control (implicit)
- What to do/how to do it
- Ex. playing chess/riding bike
- Classical and instrumental conditioning
10
Q
What is episodic memory?
A
- Explicit
- Memory for a specific event or episode
- What, where, when
- Ex. guest lecturer
11
Q
What is working memory?
A
- Temporary storage and manipulation of information needed to complete the task at hand
- Ex. following multi-step instructions
12
Q
What is reference memory?
A
- Long-term retention of information necessary for the successful use of incoming and recently acquired information
- General knowledge
- Required for use of working memory
- Need to know about how to fix car (reference), and which steps have been done (working)
13
Q
What is the Delayed Matching to Sample test? What was found when patients with schizophrenia performed this test?
A
- Show sample, retention period, identify correct response
- Patients with schizophrenia showed a delay dependent deficit in task performance
- Schizophrenia includes WM deficit
14
Q
What does the Delayed Matching to Sample test require?
A
- Working memory (retaining info from sample to choice)
- Reference memory (remembering structure of task)
- Most common procedure to study non-human WM
- Can determine how animals remember different types of stimuli
15
Q
What are the procedural detriments of DMTS?
A
- Type of stimulus
- Duration of exposure to sample stimulus
- Retention interval after sample before choice (more likely to make mistakes with increased delay)
16
Q
Does memory fade as a function of time?
A
- No
- Numerous factors contribute to memory failure
17
Q
What is the effect of a delayed retention interval on DMTS? Who examined this?
A
- Sargisson and White
- Introduced different delay intervals from beginning of training to determine if introducing longer delay intervals during training would result in better performance
- Longer retention delays during training increased performance
- Best performance when tested on delay they were trained with
18
Q
What effect might reward signal have on DMST performance?
A
- White and Brown
- Pigeons show better memory performance if they receive a signal prior to choice that the correct response will be rewarded with large rather than small reward
- Switching reward from large to small impairs memory
- Switching from small to large reward improves performance
- Memory is not a passive process, but matches the demands of the environment
19
Q
How can we test whether participants are learning specific S-R relations or general same-as rule?
A
- Test how matching performance transfers to new stimuli
20
Q
What is the type of learning related to?
A
- Size of stimulus set
- Small = S-R learning
- Large = General same-as learning
21
Q
What are trials-unique procedures?
A
- Different stimulus serves as the sample on each trial
- Accurate performance only possible if participant learns general same-as rule
22
Q
What is the Morris Water Maze?
A
- Spatial memory in mazes
- Platform hidden underwater
- Rats are motivated to find it
- Must learn where platform is in relation to spatial cues
- Measure latency and distance
- Escape latency and distance moved decreases over each day of training
23
Q
What is the Radial Arm Maze?
A
- More ecologically valid lab technique
- 8 arms with food at end
- Food is not replaced
- Rats will attempt to complete in most efficient way
- With little training, rats rarely enter arm previously chosen
24
Q
How are rats successful with the radial arm maze?
A
- Rats use distinctive features in the environment as landmarks and locate maze arms relative to those landmarks
- If landmarks are moved, rats will treat arm as new location
- Spatial location is determined by distal cues in room, not local cues in maze
25
What can the radial arm maze be used to assess?
```
Working memory capacity
- Vary # of arms in maze (16-24)
Duration of spatial memory
- Insert retention interval
- Allows rat to collect food from 4/8 arms, then removed for retention interval, then placed to retrieve remaining pellets
```
26
How does the intertrial interval affect the radial arm maze?
- Rats trained with the longer inter-trial interval performed better over each retention interval (better long-term memory)
- All groups performed better when retention interval was lower
