Long term memory Flashcards
What are the different types of long term memory?
Episodic
Procedural
Semantic
What is declarative memory?
What other type of memory is declarative?
Type of long-term memory that involves conscious recollection of particular facts and events
Episodic
What is episodic memory?
declarative- conscious access
Includes contextual details
Prone to forgetting
Memories- for events in your life
What is semantic memory?
Crystallized (stable) explicit knowledge about the world.
Acontextual
What is procedural memory?
Implicit- non-declarative
unconscious
Automatically retreived.
What brain region is episodic memory associated with?
Medial temporal lobe
What brain region is semantic memory associated with?
Lateral temporal cortex
What brain region is procedural memory associated with?
Basil ganglia
What drives memory encoding?
Prediction error = outcome- expectation
Brain is a prediction machine that learns when it is wrong.
Idea- stems from reinforcement learning theory.
What is a Pavlovian conditioning example ?
Pavlov showed that dogs could be conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell if that sound was repeatedly presented at the same time that they were given food. First the dogs were presented with the food, they salivated. The food was the unconditioned stimulus and salivation was an unconditioned (innate) response.
What is prediction error?
Principally, a prediction error can be defined as the mismatch between a prior expectation and reality.
What can episodic memory depend on?
Context.
Primacy effect- better at recalling words from list at beginning
Recency effect- better at recalling words from list at the end.
Dip in recollection- middle words in list.
Recall is better in encoding context- Godden & Baddeley
Modelling episodic memory
What is the temporal context model?
When you encounter new memories- you are adding new components to your memory.
If your most prominent memory is the last thing learnt- that shows recency effects.
memories overlap- lots of things added/ connected.
What does research show about the different types of memory?
They are interrelated/ depend on each other/ interact.
Research- episodic memories depend on semantic knowledge.
What was found?
Bartlett- war of the ghosts 1932
Experimenters read out story from non western culture- from native american story.
Participants - Americans living in the 1930s.
Concepts described in story were alien to the participants- they weren’t aware of the culture- they didn’t have the semantic knowledge backing the story.
When participants heard story & asked to recall some time later- they filled in gaps through adapting it to their own expectations about what was going on.
E.g. tried to make it more applicable to their own expectations of what would happen in that situation- used their own semantic knowledge for what happens in a particular event & changed the story to fit this.
What we remember is heavily influenced by the information already in our semantic memory system.
Research- episodic memories
What did Loftus & Palmer 1974 discover?
Showed video of two cars crashing into each other. Later asked participants to recall what happened in video- had to say how fast the cars were going when “smashed” “contacted”- manipulated the verb.
It had a drastic effect on how people
remembered the event happening. Example of where semantic memory systems influence what we remember.
Complementary learning systems
What is this?
Central idea- semantic memory can’t be updated too quickly (interference)
All “explicit” information is encoded by the episodic system first.
System consolidation- slowly transforms memories
episodic- >semantic
What part of the brain is associated with episodic memory?
Hippocampus- associated with episodic memory- encodes extremely fast & without much effort.
Idea- all new learning depends on hippocampus initially. Store info in hippocampus for short period of time- then over time- something happens where memories become less dependent on the hippocampus- they move into the neocortical network (outside surfaces of brain).
Consolidation- movement of memories from episodic to semantic.
What is system consolidation?
movement of memories from episodic to semantic
What plays a central role in system consolidation?
Sleep!
What did Walker & Brakefield find sleep to effect?
Found performance on a sequence learning task increased after sleep.
Brain waves move from hippocampus to outside surfaces of brain- they transmit info from episodic memory system to semantic system- do it over time.
What is a problem with the CLS model?
Schema consistent info can bypass system consolidation
Updated CLS model to account for the rapid semantic updating.
