Lecture 3 - Remembering & Forgetting Flashcards
What are the three processes involved in remembering?
Encoding: Registering new information into memory
Storage: Storing the newly encoded information in memory
Retrieval: Recovery of previous material
According to the modal model, likelihood of transfer from STM to LTM is a function of amount of rehearsal of that information, which can be known as maintenance rehearsal. Define maintenance rehearsal.
Rehearsing it the amount required to maintain it in our STM
What are the 2 types of maintenance rehearsal?
Maintenance rehearsal: maintaining them by keeping them active in STM (by repeating them phonologically)
Elaborative rehearsal: By creating a story/elaboration on the material given
Describe Glenberg, Smith, & Green’s (1977) study
- P’s had to recall 4 digit numbers
- In between study & recall, had to rehearse a distractor word for a period of time
After 54 trials, P’s were asked to recall the distractor words - They found that the act of repeating a word doesn’t seem to take things into LTM (things are not recalled better if you repeat them for longer
What is Craik & Lockhart’s (1972) theory?
The Levels of Processing Theory
What are the 3 levels of processing?
Structural, phonological, semantic
What does the levels of processing theory suggest about memory?
That the ‘deeper’ an item is processed, the better it’s retained
What is the Transfer Appropriate Processing theory?
Memory performance depends on the extent to which processes used at the time of learning are the same as those used when memory is tested
(i.e., learning to ride a bike vs a psychology exam)
Describe the Encoding-Specificity Principle (Tulving & Thomson, 1973)
The likelihood of retrieval depends on the overlap between cues present at encoding and retrieval
What are the two types of contextual cue?
Intrinsic: features that are integral to the stimulus
Extrinsic: Other features present at the time of encoding
Godden & Baddeley (1975) found what?
That words learned in the same environment as testing were recalled better than learning and recall being in 2 different environments
Describe state-dependent recall
Recall is better if one’s internal state during recall mirrors state during encoding (e.g., alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, marijuana)
Describe forgetting as a result of decay
Long-term memories gradually fade as a product of time
What is The Law of Disuse?
If you do not retrieve the memory then it will fade as a result of disuse
Describe interference theory
That we forget because the interference of other memories and learned material gets in the way of the target memory
Descibr Jenkins & Dallenbach’s (1924) research into decay vs interference
- P’s learned nonsense syllables either a) immediately before bed or, b) at the beginning of the day
- P’s tested at varying intervals
- Those who were awake suffered from more interference and therefore forgot more
Describe Baddeley & Hitch’s (1977) research into Rugby Players’ decay/interference
- Rugby players recalled games they had played in a season
- General decline in recall over time/number of games
- Number of intervening games was the only significant predictor of recall of team names
What are the 2 types of interference?
Retroactive & proactive
What is retroactive interference?
New learning interferes with prior learning
What is proactive interference?
Where something you have already learned impacts learning something new (e.g., hot water taps in italy - C = caldo = hot)
Descibe Wickens el al.’s (1963) study into the release of proactive interference
- In control condition, P’s memorised trigrams across 4 trials
- P’s in experimental condition memorised 3 digit numbers on the 1st 3 trials and then a trigram on the 4th = release from PI
- Performance starts to decrease for the letter condition as they receive similar trigrams each time
