Lectures 12-13 Memory Flashcards

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1
Q

Define memory

A
  • Capacity of the nervous system to acquire and retain usable skill and knowledge
  • ability to use experience in your life
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2
Q

Stages of memory depend on what characteristics?

A
  • duration
  • capacity
  • purpose
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3
Q

What are the 3 stages/types of memory?

A
  1. Sensory
  2. Short term (close to working)
  3. long term memory
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4
Q

Types of sensory memory? Examples?

A
  1. iconic (visual)
    –> letters flashed on a screen for a short period of time. Ability to remember letters is iconic memory
  2. echoic (auditory)
    –> you’re listening to your professor give a lecture, and you remember the sentence they said to write it in your notes
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5
Q

Sensory memory (dur. cap. pur.)

A

Duration:
- iconic: 3-4 sec
- echoic: 1/4 sec
(Very short)
Capacity:
- very large
Purpose:
- perceive the world around us as constant, we don’t forget what’s around us

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6
Q

Short term memory (Dur, cap, pur)

A

Duration:
- 20-30 sec
Capacity:
- 7 +/- 2 (depending on how big the info is)
Purpose:
- keep track of info you need to remember for a short amount of time to accomplish a specific task

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7
Q

Chunking def?

A

Organizing pieces of information into groups that are meaningful to you

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8
Q

Short term memory example?

A

You remember the code you’re sent to log in, but you don’t need it after that

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9
Q

Imagine that you receive a code to get access to your bank account. You look at the code and repeat it until you use it 10 sec later. Based on the modal memory model, what are you doing?

A

You get the iconic sensory input (look at code). You pay attention to the information and rehearse it so it is in your short term memory. Then, the information is lost because you don’t continue to rehearse it

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10
Q

You might have noted when you play cards that you keep checking the cards you have. Based on what we have learned about memory why is that? What type of memory is active when we first get the cards? Explain your answer.

A

Short term memory
You have to keep checking because you don’t keep rehearsing the information and it hasn’t been encoded into long term memory.
When we first get the cards, it’s iconic sensory memory. You briefly remember the information about what you saw, but you can’t remember it after that. So, you pay attention and rehearse it to keep it in short term memory

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11
Q

Types of long term memory? Type of information? Easy to describe?

A
  • Declarative (what)
    –> Semantic (fact)
    –> Episodic (personal experiences)
    –> easy to describe
  • Procedural (how)
    –> unconscious recall of motor skills, behaviors, habits
    –> very difficult to describe
    –> usually motor memories
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12
Q

What type of memory did Ebbinghaus study? What theory did he discover?

A

Long term memory
“Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve”

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13
Q

Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve: what does it show? what was he remembering? How to increase the curve? Problems?

A
  • shows extreme and then gradual decrease/loss in memory
  • used CVC trials
  • you can remember much more if you look at it again, more retention in the long run
    problems:
  • he chose nonsense words. You’re much more likely to remember something if it has meaning to you
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14
Q

What is CVC? give an example?

A

Consonant vowel consonant
one syllable, 3 letter words
ex. bap, tif, bep, zik

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15
Q

Let’s say that you spent the whole night studying for an exam. Based on Ebbinghaus’s studies, are you doing the right thing? (Yes/no) Why? How could you improve your study habits?

A
  • No, you’re not doing the right thing.
  • According to Ebbinghaus, repeated exposure and rehearsing the information is very important to remembering it in the long term
  • If you study all night, you’re only exposed to it once
  • to improve, repeatedly study over the course of a few weeks
  • also, staying up all night doesn’t allow you to sleep, which is also important for encoding information
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16
Q

Other ways to improve long term memory?

A
  • overlearning (repetition)
  • distributed practice
  • elaborate on material
  • get good sleep
  • memory techniques such as mnemonics, method of loci, and palace method
17
Q

Why do we need sensory memory? Give an example of iconic memory and an example of echoic memory

A
  • Sensory memory is important because it allows us to perceive our environment as constant. Without it, we would forget our surroundings
  • Iconic ex: seeing letters flashed on a screen for a short period of time and being able to repeat them
  • Echoic ex: hearing your professor speak and being able to copy the sentence into your notes a moment later
18
Q

What are the types of long-term memory? How do they differ from each other.

A
  • Declarative (what)
    –> Semantic (fact)
    –> Episodic (personal experiences)
    –> easy to describe
  • Procedural (how)
    –> unconscious recall of motor skills, behaviors, habits
    –> very difficult to describe
    –> usually motor memories
19
Q

Give a personal example of each type of long-term memory:

A

Declarative:
- semantic: I remember that the capital of Portugal is Lisbon
- episodic: I remember the events on the day of my high school graduation
Procedural:
- I know how to ride a bike

20
Q

What are the 2 reasons why we forget?

A
  1. interference
  2. decay
21
Q

what is decay?

A

when you don’t use a pathway, it becomes weaker, and eventually the connection is gone

22
Q

define interference

A

either the storage or retrieval is blocked or impaired by the presence of other information

23
Q

What is interference related to? what are the two types? explain and give examples

A
  • related to the cues we use to remember things
  • proactive
    –> old information interferes with new
    –> you have an old friend called prudence, then you meet someone called patience. You might call patience ‘prudence’ on accident
  • retroactive:
    –> new information interferes with old
    –> if you change your phone, it can be difficult to remember the old one
    –> learning a 3rd language –> 2nd one is harder
24
Q

What is failure of memory? What are the most common examples:

A
  • remembering wrong (not forgetting)
    examples:
  • long term memory is biased
  • you reconstruct what makes sense to you (constructivist theory)
  • flashbulb memories
  • misattributions
25
Q

Describe false fame effect, sleeper effect and cryptomnesia

A

False fame:
- exposure to people’s names can make you believe they’re famous
- the name is familiar, and you can’t attribute the familiarity to having read the name of a non-famous person
- you attribute it to their ‘fame’

Sleeper effect:
- you see information on a source you know is untrustworthy
- eventually, you forget the source of the information (and its untrustworthiness), and only remember the information
- the information becomes ‘fact’ in your mine

Cryptomnesia:
- you remember an idea, but not where it came from –> you think it’s your own
- you tell your friend an idea
- time goes by, and they come to you and say they came up with the idea
- they don’t remember the source of the idea was originally you

26
Q

Why do people make “bad” eyewitnesses? Can an eyewitness be manipulated? How? How are false memories created?

A
  • bad eyewitnesses because memory is easily suggestible
  • bad at identifying features of other races/ethnicities
  • yes, people can be manipulated
  • exposure to an idea or piece of information that you don’t remember can ‘create’ a memory of that piece of information
  • False memories are created by suggesting things that the eyewitness did not originally remember
  • ex. in the first interview, you’re asked if they wore a red jacket. You say no, or you don’t know. Second interview: you’re asked if they wore a red jacket. The red jacket sounds familiar, you’re more likely to say yes
27
Q

Describe the “Car accident experiment” and what Dr. Loftus concluded from it.

A
  • Dr Elizabeth Loftus played a short clip of a car accident for 3 groups of people, and asked how fast they were going
  • for group 1, she said ‘smashed’, for 2 she said ‘bumped’ and for 3 she said ‘hit’
  • determined that people were so easily suggestible by the language of the question, that it significantly altered their perception of how fast the cars were going
28
Q

I have noticed that despite having studied French for many years, if I try to speak it now the English words come to my mind before the French ones. What is happening to my memory of the French language?

A

there is retroactive interference. You learned French as your second language, and English as your 3rd. the new information (english) is interfering with recall of the old information (french)

29
Q

What does the constructivist theory of memory say? How does this model explain how the stories we tell change trough time?

A
  • you construct memories to fit with what makes sense to you
  • the stories change as we rationalize what makes sense to us, especially after we hear new information (whether its true or not)