M2 Lecture 11 Flashcards
what are the types of long-term memory
Implicit and Explicit memory
what are the two main categories of implicit memory
procedural memory and priming
what is priming
When prior exposure facilitates information processing without awareness
explain the Experimental Paradigm to study implicit memory
showed priming effect
¤ Experimental Paradigm to study implicit memory: Word-fragment completion test
¤ Participants study a list of words
¤ After a day, they complete word fragments
¤ Typical result: Participants are likely to use studied words to complete the fragments, but without being aware they are doing this
what is Procedural memory
Memory for well-established procedures and skills
¤ These don’t require conscious thought to be
activated in mind
¤ Writing
¤ Riding a bike
what kind of knowledge is associated with implicit memory
Tacit Knowledge
what is Tacit Knowledge
Information that is hard to verbalize or describe
where is procedural memory located in the brain
Basal Ganglia (Striatum) and Prefrontal Cortex
habits are part of implicit or explicit memory
implicit
Activities that may initially rely on declarative (explicit) memory, but with training/exposure become habitual and implicit
what are habits
Sequences of behaviors that are learned and can operate on autopilot ¤ These can be:
¤ Motor action sequences (e.g., remember your phone’s password by just moving your fingers over the pad)
¤ Repetitive thoughts and emotions
¤ Habitual acts are related to conditions like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and addiction
explain the experiment about Forming and breaking habits
¤ Rats trained on a T-shaped maze
¤ At the decision point, learned they would be rewarded (choc.
milk; sugar water) for turning left or right based on tones
¤ Habit formation depends on the striatum but difficult to break
¤ When one reward was removed (choc. milk), rats still ran through the maze as determined by the tones
¤ When one reward was mixed with a substance that made the rats sick, they still ran to that reward when hearing the tone
¤ Breaking habits requires the prefrontal cortex
¤ Inhibited specific cells in the prefrontal brain via optigenetics
¤ The rats stop engaging in habitual maze running
what are the two main areas of explicit ling term memory
episodic and semantic
what is Episodic memory
Remembering specific events and episodes
Retrieval is accompanied with the context in which something was originally learned
¤ The what, the where and the when
¤ “Dancing at my high school prom”
what is Semantic memory:
Remembering facts and general
information about the self and world
¤ Retrieval is independent of the context in which it was originally learned
¤ “Proms occur at the end of high school”
are episodic and semantic memory intertwined
no– Patient KC: impaired episodic memory
yet he could recall facts about where he works but not necessarily what he did at this work
Dividing long-term memory via consciousness: what are the 3 types of consciousness
Anoetic Consciousness
Noetic Consciousness
Autonoetic consciousness
what is Anoetic Consciousness
¤ Procedural memory
¤ No awareness of knowing. No personal engagement
what is Noetic Consciousness
¤ Semantic memory
¤ You have an awareness of knowledge. No personal engagement ¤ Feeling of familiarity or kn
what is Autonoetic consciousness
¤ Episodic memory
¤ You have an awareness and personal engagement in a remember episode ¤ Mental time-travel
what are the diff ways of storing explicit memeories
Memory traces
Memory schemas
what are Memory traces
¤ Physical representation in the brain ¤ The substrate of memory
¤ Traces are not static
what are Memory schemas
¤ Information extracted from overlapping experiences
¤ Helps organize information at retrieval
¤ These reflect connections between existing information with a current experience
further explain the hypothesis of explicit memories: memory traces
The reappearance hypothesis
¤ The same memory can disappear and reappear,
unchanged, again and again
¤ A memory trace is just reactivated with no interpretation
what is Evidence against memory traces
¤ Autobiographical memories of the same event vary
considerably over time and retrievals
¤ Memories are reconstructed when we remember them
what are flashbulb memories
¤ Vivid, detailed memories of significant events ¤ Typically public events
¤ Typically emotionally arousing
what are Two necessary features for flashbulb memories
Surprise and Consequence
what theory is associated with flashbulb memories
Brown and Kulik’s (1977) Now Print! Theory
what is the Brown and Kulik’s (1977) Now Print! Theory
Significant experiences are immediately “photocopied” and preserved in long-term memory (lends to the reappearance hypothesis) …
explain how the Now Print! theory was tested
¤ Asked about the 9/11 (flashbulb event) and other autobiographical events at three time periods
¤ For both memory types, the research examined
¤ The details used to describe these events
¤ Participant ratings for how the events were remembered
¤ vividness of the recollection ¤ belief in their memory
¤ confidence in their memory
How do flashbulb memories change over time?
Is this change different from non-flashbulb autobiographical memories?
¤ How consistent are the details used to describe events across the three sessions?
¤ The number of details that didn’t change across the sessions (consistent details)
¤ The number of details that changed across the sessions (inconsistent details)
what is the difference between objective details of flashbulb memories and regular memories
The objective details of flashbulb memories and regular memories are similarly recalled, but the experience of remembering is different
Details: No difference between flashbulb and Details: No difference between flashbulb and everyday memories
Ratings: Flashbulb memories has greater ratings of belief and recollection (vividness) over time
Are people more consistent with recalling certain types of details from flashbulb memories?
¤ Surveyed 3000 people in the US at three time points about 9/11 and memories
¤ 1 week after attack; One year later; Two years later
¤ Asked questions about objective details and emotional reponse
¤ Objective details: number of planes, name of airlines
¤ Emotional response: reactions to hearing the news
are flashbulb memories more or less consistent across time than objective memory
Memories for emotional responses are less consistent across time than objective memory, but only for flashbulb memories
what are some Factors that affect forming flashbulb memories
¤ Flashbulb memories are not recordings of events, they change over time
¤ Emotional aspects of the event are less consistently recalled across time for flashbulb memories compared to regular memories
¤ Personal experience (e.g., distance) can determine whether a memory is a flashbulb event
what is Memory consolidation
¤ Experiences are encoded and then consolidated into a long term memory trace ¤ The formation of stable cortical representations of memories
learning stimulus –> short term memory —-consolidation—> longterm memory
what is Memory re-consolidation
The act of recalling a consolidated memory makes it de-stable or an active memory ¤ Once a memory is active, connections can be strengthened and modified before being
reconsolidated
¤ Memories are dynamic
What influences remembering in the real world?
Schemas
what are Schemas
¤ What we expect to find as we explore the world or learn new information
¤ A way to organize and categorize information
what tested schemas
The work of Bartlett ¤ The War of Ghosts experiments ¤ Participants read a story about young men hunting seals in a river ¤ Asked to reproduce that story ¤ Examined how the story would change
what is Method of repeated reproduction (relating to the war of ghosts story)
¤ Participants read the story. recalled it 15 minutes later, then again at a later
time point, and again at a later time point ¤ How does the story change across time?
what is Method of serial reproduction (relating to the war of ghosts story)
¤ Participant A recalls the story to Participant B who recalls that story to
Participant C …
¤ How does the story change across people
what was the finding for the war of ghosts experiment for schemas
¤ First finding: Participants remembered a simplified version of the story
¤ Second finding: The story became more conventional with repeated
retrieval (i.e., closer to a participants’ schema)
¤ There were omissions/changes that followed a process of rationalization:
¤ People dropped or changed material that didn’t fit with their schema
¤ There was no mention of strange phases like “a black thing rushed
out of his mouth” that was in the original story
¤ People changed uncommon activities (e.g., seal hunting) to more conventional activities (e.g., fishing)
give a final conclusion for the schema findings
¤ Schemas are the scaffolding that we use to interpret events
¤ If we can’t remember the full details of an event, we ‘fill in’ the gaps with schemas as we construct the past
wha are The virtues and sins of memory construction
¤ Adaptive processing
¤ False memories
explain the Virtues of schemas
¤Enables us to store the central meaning or gist of new information
¤ Related to the benefits of forgetting discussed last lecture ¤Helps us understand new information and fill in missing parts of
it using ‘default values’
¤ This makes the world more predictable
wha are the Virtues of reconstructive memory
¤ The same processes that help us construct the past help us imagine the future and plan for our lives
¤ These are processes of the hippocampus
what is a disadvantage of rschemas
¤ Because memory is reconstructive, we don’t always remember correctly …. ¤ This leads to distortions and false memories
what is the Deese-Roediger-McDermott effect
¤ Study a list of associated words that has a strong associate/prototype but that prototype is not present on the studied list
¤ Nap, Bed, Rest
¤ At test: Free recall or recognition test with words from the list and the
associated prototype
¤ Nap, Bed, Rest, Sleep
¤ People will mistakenly remember the non-studied prototype
¤ False memory
¤ Why? People construct a schema at study that affects remembering
False memories: Three examples
¤ The misattribution effect ¤ The misinformation effect ¤ Implanted memories
what is The misattribution effect
¤ A failure in source monitoring
¤ Retrieving information that is assigned to a wrong source ¤ E.g., recalling the right person but from the wrong place
what is The misinformation effect
¤ The effect of leading questions on false memory formation
¤ Participants viewed a simulated car crash ¤ After, asked either:
¤ “how fast were the cars going when they SMASHED into each other?”
¤ “how fast were the cars going when they HIT into each other?”
aka work choice impacts memory
what are Implanted memories
¤ Asked people to recall childhood experiences recounted by their parents over three experimental sessions
¤ A false memory was added to the list of experiences by the experimenter ¤ An overnight stay in a hospital
¤ 20% of people had a false memory of this event by the end of the experiment
give a summary for this lecture
¤ Implicit and Explicit memory dissociate
¤ Big lesson: Memories are reconstructed and not permanent stores
¤ Memories we believe are static and accurately recalled change with time (flashbulb memories)
¤ Schemas guide how we encode and retrieve information
¤ Distortions in memory can be adaptive and ‘sinful’
¤ They help us plan for the future
¤ They lead to false memories
