Long Term Memory Flashcards
What is memory trace?
physical record of memories in the brain
What is maintenance rehearsal?
Rehearse information over and over
Kept in the working memory
Not effective at transferring it to the LTM
What is elaborative rehearsal?
think about them continually
relate it to things already known
What are the levels of processing?
Read a paper, ps are tested on it
Shallow: is the word printed in capital letters? 15% words remembered
Deeper: does it rhyme? (sound) 47% words remembered
Deepest: does the word fit into the sentence (meaning) 81% remembered
Effect happens regardless if the ps knew there would be a memory test
Why is consolidation useful?
At first, information is stored in the hippocampus, through consolidation information is stored in the cortex
Explains why patients who have a damaged hippocampus are able to remember memories from a few years ago and not recent ones
Do forming connections help us to remember deep processing information?
Deep processing help us to form connections
Viewed 15 noun pairs
Two forms of memorisation (either verbal repetition or imagined two objects interacting)
2x better at remembering words that were imagined
What study by Craik and Tulving showed evidence for the self reference effect?
Question like ‘is the word long?’
word like ‘beautiful’
recall after many question word pairs have been presented
found two types of questions: non self reflecting (does this word describe San Francisco?) and self reflecting (does the word describe me?)
What is the self referencing effect?
Words heard with self referencing questions were remembered 3x more often than words with non-self reflecting questions
This occurs due to deep processing
Use the question to make connections about our own life/experiences/perceptions
provides more cues for retrieval
What is the memory trace theory?
Making connections with other information gives us multiple memory traces
Multiple ways to retrieve the word (retrieval paths)
Does organising memory improve the recall of information?
Display words as a tree under two conditions (unorganised and organised)
Ps study the tree diagrams
Organised list: minerals associated with metals (silver, copper) and stones (ruby, diamond)
73% remembered compared to non-organised lists
Organised lists mean better recall
What is the spacing effect?
Spaced representations are rehearsed more
Spacing is important for incidental learning
Spaced presentations are better attended
Items spaced widely apart should have more distinct contextual associations so there should be more retrieval cues
Creates desirable difficulty
What is desirable difficulty?
Spaced practise makes learning more difficult and slower as there is more forgetting between presentations
Testing yourself and encoding information can help with this difficulty
How can we test the effect of retrieval cues?
Condition 1: see 600 nouns, generate 3 words associated with the nouns, ps don’t know the memory for the nouns will be tested
e.g. banana, associated with yellow, bunch, edible
Condition 2: see 600 nouns, 3 words are associated with this noun, but they’re made by someone else
Experimenter is testing cued recall. Ps must report the learned word when the experimenter read the list of associated words
Ps more likely to recall the noun when they made their own associate words
How can semantic processing be tested?
Does the target word fit into the sentence based on its meaning?
Hear the sentence, then the word, asked if it fits?
e.g. the (blank) rode the bicycle, does the word boy fit?
Correct answer: yes
Semantic processing leads to deep processing
How can rhyme processing be tested?
Does the target word rhyme when placed in the sentence?
Hear sentence, hear word, does it rhyme?
e.g. (blank) rhymes with toy, word is boy
Correct answer: yes
Rhyme processing leads to shallow processing
Do the rhyming or semantic condition go against the levels of processing theory?
Levels of processing theory predicts better performance for deep processing/semantic condition
However, this study finds that the shallow processing/rhyme condition produced more correct results
This finding is against the LOP theory as rhyming in retrieval goes better with rhyming in encoding
What is context reinstatement?
Recall of memory is better when the method of recall relies on information that was processed during encoding
What study was used to support context reinstatement?
MCQ test
Noisy study condition and silent study condition
The physical setting matters only indirectly, if the physical settings recreates the mental context of learning
If you change physical context without changing the mental perspective, the physical relocation has no effect
What other examples of context reinstatement can improve retrieval?
Good/bad mood
Alcohol vs none
Weed vs regular cigarette
All state dependent memory effects
State provides cues to memory retrieval
What is transient amnesia?
temporary amnesia
Is the hippocampus a storage site?
Difficult to reconcile the time-dependent effects of retrograde amnesia with the storage theory
If memories were stored here, presumably remote memories would be as likely to be as lost as recent memories
Is the hippocampus used for consolidation?
Hippocampus is used to consolidate new memories
Consolidation makes memories permanent
After they transfer to the neocortex
Retrograde amnesia can extend back for decades which means memories in the hippocampus are held there for a long time and the consolidation process is slow
Is the hippocampus seen as a librarian?
Doesn’t explain why explicit memories can’t be retrieved
where implicit memories can be
The hippocampus stores memories throughout the brain and retrieves them when required
Is the hippocampus used for tagging?
Difficult to separate context from memory
Even after remembering the context, memory cannot be retrieved
Hippocampus tags memories with its location and time of the memories occurrence
Stores memories only if the context is stored with it
Episodic and autobiographic memories are context dependent
