Lecture 2: Episodic and Semantic Memory

Question 1

What is episodic memory?

Answer 1

Specific events located at a specific point in time. “Mental time travel”

Question 2

What is semantic memory?

Answer 2

Memory for facts.
Short delay: information is recalled in episodes
Long delay: the same information is integrated into semantic memory

Question 3

How are the memory systems different?

Answer 3

Functionally, different types of information and different experiences

Question 4

Is there neurophysical evidence?

Answer 4

Spiers, Maguire, and Burgess (2001) -> 147 cases of amnesia ; substantial or even dramatic loss of episodic memory ; semantic memory effects more and more variable and generally smaller.
Damage to hippocampus & MTL affects episodic memory
BUT, hippocampal amnesia may affect acquisition of new semantic memories more than retrieval of old ones (Clark & Maguire, 2016)

Question 5

What are Semantic Dementia patients?

Answer 5

Severe loss of concept knowledge but intact episodic memory (and intact cognitive abilities). Damaged anterior frontal and anterior temporal lobes.

Question 6

What is Bartlett’s Approach to meaning and schema’s?

Answer 6

• Recall of complex materials (e.g., drawings and folk tales)
• Examined recall errors
• Unlike Ebbinghaus, he stressed participants’ effort after meaning.

Question 7

What is a schema?

Answer 7

Structured representation of knowledge about the world, events, people or actions. - used to make sense of new material, to store and later recall them. - influenced/determined by social and cultural factors.

Question 8

What is “The War of the Ghosts”?

Answer 8

> Native American folk tales
People committed many errors and distortions when they asked to recall these
In their recall, made the story more coherent and omitted details
Recalled stories were more “Westernised”

Question 9

Sulin and Dooling 1974 conducted a study concerning schematic knowledge, what did it do?

Answer 9

Ppts were told a story about dictator, either an unknown one or Hitler.
Test sentence: “He hated the Jews…”
Short delay (5 mins): No difference between the groups
Long delay (1 week): ppts who read about Hitler were more likely to incorrectly agree.
Concluded that schematic knowledge may affect memory especially at longer intervals.

Question 10

What is the role of meaning?

Answer 10

It is ascribing meaning to stimuli affects encoding and storage.

Question 11

What did Jenkins and Russell, 1952 conclude?

Answer 11

Related words within lists tend to be recalled as a cluster/together.

Question 12

When is memory practice guided by meaning?

Answer 12

When ppts are given the opportunity to organise information in a meaningful way.

Question 13

What is Paivio’s dual-coding hypothesis?

Answer 13

More imageable words are more memorable.

Question 14

What is Transfer-Appropriate Processing?

Answer 14

Memory retrieval is best when the cues available at testing are similar to those available at encoding.

Question 15

Why is deeper coding better?

Answer 15

Craik and Tulving, 1975 - richer and more elaborate encoding leads to better memory

Question 16

What is hierarchical organization?

Answer 16

Proposed by Bower et al., 1969 - recall is better when words are organized than presented when in scrambled order

Question 17

When are items chunked together?

Answer 17

• When they are linked to a common associate
• When they come from the same semantic category
• When they form a logical hierarchical structure or matrix

Question 18

What factors aid encoding?

Answer 18

• Creating connections, in the form or imagery and meaning
• Organisation - recall by groups; present in an organised way
• LOP/TAP - deeper processing; similar encoding - retrieval procedures
• Active creation - generate/test

Question 19

What is the Hierarchical Network Model?

Answer 19

Semantic memory is organized into a series of hierarchical networks.

Question 20

What is cognitive economy?

Answer 20

Properties are stored higher up to minimise redundancy

Question 21

Is there support for the hierarchical network model, if so, what is there?

Answer 21

> Sentence verification task - “Decide as quickly as possible whether sentences are true or false”.
Unless the information is directly linked/stored with a concept of semantic memory, we infer the answer from properties of higher nodes
Making more inferences slows verification

Question 22

Are there any problems with the hierarchical model?

Answer 22

• Familiarity, in the sentence verification example, “a canary has skin” is not a familiar sentence. when controlled, hierarchical distance effect is reduced
• Typicality - verification is faster for more representative member categories, independent of hierarchical/semantic distances

Question 23

What is the Spreading Activation Model?

Answer 23

Proposed by Collins & Loftus, 1975. Semantic memory is organised by semantic relatedness/distance. The length of links indicates the degree of semantic relatedness. Activity at one node causes activation at other nodes via links.

Question 24

Is there any support for the Spreading Activation Model?

Answer 24

Yes, the semantic priming task, when presenting one stimulus that is semantically related makes subsequent processing more efficient (e.g., faster).

Question 25

What is organisation?

Answer 25

Proposed by Tulving, 1962 - memory is benefitted by subjective organisation [Chunking]

Question 26

Is there an example of TAP (Transfer-Appropriate Processing)?

Answer 26

Yes, memory is better if the format is at the same at encoding as at testing [Kohler et al., 2000] - If you have studied dog and house as objects, you will remember them better if you are tested with objects.

Question 27

How can the levels of processing effect be explained in terms of TAP?

Answer 27

Deep encoding is more similar to the way memory is tested. When we engage with meaning related processing with semantic coding, we see a better memory performance.

Question 28

Is there support for TAP?

Answer 28

Yes, by Morris, Bransford and Franks, 1977.
Task:
- Incidental learning: ppts were not told they would be tested later
- Phonological or semantic judgements about words
Standard recognition tests for the encoded words. Rhyming recognition test for encoded words.
Concluded that learning is more efficient when tested the same way as learned.

Question 29

What is maintenance rehearsal?

Answer 29

Repeating items over and over to maintain them in short term memory. [As something was learned]