Long term memory

Question 1

What is long term memory/what does it do?

Answer 1

• Holds an enormous amount of information - eg who we are, how we walk, use grammar etc
• Normally very efficient
• Has different components eg semantic/episodic

Question 2

What are the 3 logical stages of LTM?

Answer 2

• encoding
• storage
• retrieval

Question 3

Who developed the Levels of Processing model?

Answer 3

Craik and Lockhart (1972).

Question 4

What is the general theory of LOP?

Answer 4

That the more levels a stimulus went through, the more likely it was to be remembered.
Different types of rehearsal lead to different types of encoding.

Question 5

What are the 2 types of rehearsal within LOP? Which then lead to different levels of encoding.

Answer 5

• Maintenance rehearsal

- Elaborative rehearsal

Question 6

What is maintenance rehearsal?

Answer 6

• Simply repetition

- It prevents forgetting but does not lead to LTM storage.

Question 7

What did Craik and Watkins find about the relationship between maintenance rehearsal time and the level of learning?

Answer 7

There is no relationship between the two.

Question 8

What is elaborative rehearsal?

Answer 8

• encoding information in more meaningful ways

- leads to long term learning due to deeper encoding.

Question 9

What are the 3 levels of processing?

Answer 9

• shallow
• phonemic/auditory
• semantic processing

Question 10

Describe shallow (visual) processing.

Answer 10

What a word LOOKS like. eg is it in capital or lower case letters?

Question 11

Describe phonemic/auditory processing.

Answer 11

Making a judgement about the sound of each word - eg does it rhyme with x?

Question 12

Describe semantic processing.

Answer 12

Making a judgment about the words meaning. eg Does the word fit into the sentence - The man ate his _____?

Question 13

From their study on levels of processing (recall of words through different methods of processing) what did Craik and Tulvig (1975) find?

Answer 13

Words that had been processed at the deepest level (semantic) which are based on meaning, were remembered BEST.

Question 14

What did Kapur et al (1994) find about brain regions and processing?

Answer 14

Semantic processing activated more brain regions than shallow processing. This greater brain activity is associated with better memory.

Question 15

What view did Morris, Bransford and Franks (1977) introduce with regards to LOP?

Answer 15

That retrieval is just as important as encoding.

Question 16

What limitations did Craik and Tulvig find about LOP?

Answer 16

• Rehearsal in their experiment was inferred by the target words position in the word list eg SERIAL POSITION EFFECT.
• Due to this, depth of encoding cannot be the olny facilitating factor of memory.

Question 17

What was there ambiguity over in Craik and Tulvigs study of levels of processing?

Answer 17

The definition of ‘depth’.

Question 18

What is the multi-store model and who developed it?

Answer 18

• A model of how the three memory systems work and are integrated together.
• Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968).

Question 19

What important point to Eysenck and Keane make about the role of rehearsal in transferring memories from the short term store to the long term store?

Answer 19

Rehearsal is greatly over exaggerated. Only a small fraction of what we have stored in LTM was rehearsed during learning.

Question 20

Describe implicit learning.

Answer 20

Learning without knowing.

Memory that does not depend on conscious recall.

Question 21

Describe explicit learning.

Answer 21

Memory that requires conscious recollection of information.