Long Term Memory Systems Flashcards
What is non-declarative, explicit. Procedural memory?
Typically reflected through changes in behaviour eg. How to ride a bike. Doesn’t involve conscious recollection. Preserved in amnesiacs
How much info can our LTM store?
Reber 2010, 2.5 petabytes. (Computer metaphor)
Describe the effects of anterograde amnesia
Marked impairment in ability to remember new info learned after the onset amnesia
Describe retrograde amnesia
Problems remembering events prior to the onset amnesia. Usually graded in nature.
Describe common etiologies of amnesia
’ bilateral stroke
‘ closed head injury-multiple cog imp
‘ chronic alcohol abuse leading to a thiamine deficiency and Korsakoff’s syndrome.
‘ bilateral damage to the hippocampus and adjacent regions of the medial temporal lobes (bilat re sections no longer preformed)
Ashcraft 2006 (evidence for distinction between STS & LTS)
Serial position effect.
Fast-recall task of list of words
Most words in middle forgotten
Primacy effect: first words looked over more and so stored in LTM
Recency effect: last words still available in the STM
What is declarative/explicit memory?
Long-term memory for facts and events that can be ‘declared’. Involves conscious recollection. Impaired in amnesiacs
Craik and Lockhart (1972)
Levels of processing
Making things meaningful makes them more memorable.
Deeper levels of processing encourage better recall because of distinctiveness and elaboration
What is a common criticism of the LOP framework?
That it describes rather than explains
What is self reference effect?
Rogers, kuiper & kirker 1977
Participants asked to process a list of words according to following conditions; Physical characteristics Acoustic characteristics Semantic characteristics Application to themselves
Best recall with self reference
What is context dependence? (Godden & Baddeley, 1975)
Learning phase: on shore or 20ft under water
Test phase the same recalled words better
what is retrieval based learning? (Karpicke, 2012)
Practicing retrieving info is best way of making it last in your LTM. Effects last over time.
What is the ‘Expecting to teach effect’
Participants studied a 1541 word passage. And expected to either teach it or be tested on it. Participants who were going to teach it recalled more
Roediger 1980, metaphors of memory
An aviary
A library
A computer hard drive
A video recorder
What is a recovered memory case (2009)
Claims that the person had no knowledge of any abuse until it suddenly came back many years later
What is the permastore?
Bahrick 1984: analogy to permanent frozen polar regions, very long, stable memories.
Bahrick, Bahrick and Wittlonger 1975: even after 25 years former students showed they forgot remarkably little about their classmates
Bahrick, Hall and Da Costa (2008): Collage graduates memory of their grades remained fairly constant over spans of up to 54 years
Not all memory is stored accurately. Describe Bartlett and ‘war of the ghosts’
Bartlett was interested in what happens when info is passed from one culture to another. Used a North American story.
Participants do not recall the story verbatim but reconstruct the details according to pre existing schemata.
Not always clear and misleading.
According to Bartlett….
We try to make sense of new information and relate it to information we already know. We make an effort after meaning.
We get the idea of schema or script into which new information can become assimilated
What are schemata?
The use of past to deal new experience
Stored framework about some topic
General knowledge structure used for understanding
What are the functions of schema?
(General) to help us understand incoming information
(Specific) categorise new instances
Infer additional attributes
Guide interpretation attention
Not always accurate
Eg. Stereotypes
How do schemata effect recall?
Anderson and pitchert (1978) found that people remember more details relevant to Their schemata
Tukey and Brewer (2003) eye witnesses
Eyewitnesses have better recall for schema-related info. They generally interpret ambiguous info as being constant with the schema.
What is weapon focus effect
The presence of a weapon causes eyewitnesses to fail to recall other details.
Describe the effect of anxiety and stress on memory
Deffenbacher et al (2004) meta-analysis.
Negative impact on eyewitness identification accuracy
Reduce ability of eyewitness to remember culprit, crime scene and action details.
What is the effect of leading questions?
Loftus and Palmer (1974)
Trigger word
Speed estimation? Smashed v contacted
What is the effect of post-event misinformation?
Lotus, Miller and burns (1978)
Stop v yield
75 v 41% accuracy
Memory can be distorted by the way questions are phrased
What is transactive memory effect?
Memory conformity for details that is affected by how well you know/like the person you are discussing with
