Memory 1 Flashcards
What is memory?
The process of storing information and experiences for possible future retrieval
What does cognitive psychology mainly focus on in memory?
1) Cognitive structure of the memory system
2) Processes behind the memory system
What are the 3 task stages of memory?
1) Study event (study info when you first get given it)
2) Delay period (a period of not doing any studying)
3) Recall test event (recalling info you learnt during study event)
What are the 3 processes of memory?
1) Encoding
2) Storage
3) Retrieval
What does the Encoding process in memory involve?
- The initial learning of the information process
- The learning/storing of info can be either incidental (storing info without knowing) or intentional. (storing info with a purpose)
- Learning info may also depend on the type of material to be stored (e.g. numbers, words, quotes, etc.)
- Learning info may also depend on the modality of presentation (e.g. bullet points, lengthy paragraphs, video, etc.)
What does the Storage process in memory involve?
- Duration (how long the info is stored for)
- Activity (What other things did you do during this period of not studying)
What does the Retrieval process in memory involve?
- Free recall (recall anything that comes to your mind about the topic)
- Cued recall (recall specific things about a topic e.g. specific chapters of a textbook)
- Recognition (can you recognise the info if it was presented to you?)
What is the name of the memory model which includes sensory stores, short terms stores and long-term stores?
Multi-store model of memory
Does memory only rely on one part of the brain?
No
- Memory involves interconnective parts of the brain working together
Who said that there is a distinction between primary and secondary memory?
William James
Which memory allows info to remain in consciousness after it has been perceived and forms part of the psychological present?
Primary memory
What is Primary memory?
When information which remains in consciousness after it has been perceived and forms part of the psychological present?
Which memory allows info about past events that have left consciousness (you can remove the info but also bring it back into primary memory/ dormant) and forms part of the psychological past?
Secondary memory
What is Secondary memory?
When info about past events that have left consciousness (you can remove the info but also bring it back into primary memory/ dormant); forms part of the psychological past?
Which memory forms part of the psychological past?
Secondary memory
Which memory forms part of the psychological present?
Primary memory
Which memory remains in consciousness?
Primary memory
Which memory leaves consciousness but can remain dormant and be brought back into consciousness?
Secondary memory
What did Hermann Ebbinghaus contribute to the study of memory?
His study “Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology”
Who published “Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology”
Hermann Ebbinghaus
What did Ebbinghaus do in his study?
- Performed memory experiments on himself
- Studied forgetting long term memory using himself as a subject
- Found many methods and effects to enhance memory
Who pioneered CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) nonsense syllabes?
Ebbinghaus
Who pioneered Savings (less time to relearn)?
Ebbinghaus
What is savings in memory?
Less time to relearn info
- The number of trials for relearning is less than the number of trials for original learning of info
Who pioneered the Learning Curve and Forgetting Curve?
Ebbinghaus
What is the Forgetting Curve?
When forgetting information happens very rapidly over the first hour after learning it but it later slows down considerably
Who pioneered the effects of overlearning?
Ebbinghaus
Who pioneered Stimulus-stimulus associations?
Ebbinghaus
Who pioneered Voluntary/Involuntary memory?
Ebbinghaus
Who pioneered the Capacity of short-term memory = 7?
Ebbinghaus
What is the “Capacity of short-term memory = 7”?
People can repeat up to 7 items/syllables without error after a single reading
Who pioneered Recollection (vs familiarity)?
Ebbinghaus
What is Recollection (vs familiarity)?
Recollection = When recurring ideas simply return
Familiarity = When knowledge of recurring ideas’ previous existence and circumstances comes back
Who pioneered the serial position curve?
Ebbinghaus
What does the Serial Position Curve suggest?
Murdock
- People are better at recalling items at the beginning of a list than items in the middle (primacy effect/ you repeat the first few items the most)
- However, people are even better at recalling items at the end of the list (recency effect)
Who thought of the Modal Model?
Atkinson and Shiffrin
List the order of the Modal Model
1) Sensory input (visual, auditory, etc) –> Sensory stores
2a) If you pay attention to input = Sensory stores –> Short-term store
2b) If you don’t pay attention to input = Sensory stores –> Decay
3a) You can report info from the STS straight away
3b) If you rehearse info = STS –> LTS
3c) If you don’t rehearse info = STS –> Displacement (loss of info due to limited capacity in STS)
4a) Info stored in LTS remains (infinite capacity and duration)
4b) If you retrieve info = LTS –> STS to be reported
4c) Failure to recall LTS info is due to interference
What term is used to describe information/input loss when you don’t pay attention?
Decay
What term is used to describe information/input loss when you don’t rehearse?
Displacement
What term is used to describe information/input loss when you exceed the limited capacity in the STS and you don’t rehearse to maintain in the LTS?
Displacement
What term is used to describe being unable to recall information in the LTS?
Interference
What process is needed for information in sensory stores to move to STS?
Attention
What process is needed for information in STS to move to LTS?
Rehearsal
What process is needed for information in LTS to move to STS in order to be reported/recalled?
Retrieval
What is the primacy effect?
When you remember items at the beginning of the list because you rehearsed the items over and over again until they enter long-term memory
What is the recency effect?
When you remember items at the end of the list because the brain is able to hold up to 7 items in the short-term memory
Describe the shape of the Serial Position Curve
- Like a U shape but with a long tail
- Beginning starts at a high point, gradually decreases
- Middle part remains constant and lower than the beginning and final part
- Final part gradually increases and is higher than the beginning
What did Murdock specifically look at when studying the Serial Position Curve?
Whether primacy and recency effects are still present when there are various numbers of items presented
Does the Serial Position Curve apply to various numbers of items?
Yes
The U-shaped curve with a short head, flat middle and long tail applies to various list lengths (e.g. a 10-item list, 25-item list and 32-item list)
What are the 3 things scientists love
1) Interactions
2) Double Dissociations
3) U-shaped curves
Why do scientists love…
1) Interactions
2) Double Dissociations
3) U-shaped curves
Because these things show that there is more than 1 mechanism at play (not a monolith)
Do recency and primacy effects correspond to different processes?
Yes
Primacy = Long-term memory
Recency = Short-term memory
Does the primacy effect correspond to LTS or STS?
LTS
Does the recency effect correspond to LTS or STS?
STS
How do you reduce recency effects?
- Implement a delay after all of the items on the list have been called out
- Instead of asking Ps to recall items immediately, delay for 10-30 secs
What diminishes recency effects?
The filled delay between the list and the recall
Anything beyond 30 seconds ago is …
1) Beyond STS
2) Beyond LTS
Beyond STS
How do you know that the recency effect is diminished after implementing a delay after the list?
Because anything you remember from the list after a delay of more than 30 seconds is not considered STS. It is LTS.
Why does the primacy effect gradually decrease as the list goes further?
- Because the first item on the list gets all the rehearsals in the first interval
- Then, the rehearsal splits when the second item is given
- The rehearsal splits again with when the third item is given and so on…
- So rehearsal keeps splitting and you only have a limited interval to split the rehearsal
- Thus, the number of rehearsals reclines exponentially over time
- That’s why only the first few items on the list are remembered (you rehearse and they get stored in the LTS)
The primacy effect is related to…
The number of rehearsals as early items receive more rehearsals and are better recalled
Who introduced the Magic number 7 (+/-2)?
Miller
What is the Magic number 7 (+/-2)?
- People can typically recall lists of length 5-9 (they can repeat up to 7 items, (+/-2))
If the Magic number 7 (+/-2) theory claims you can only remember 6-9 items, how can some people remember more (e.g. Pi numbers)
These people chunk numbers into meaningful groups/segments, visualise the items or follow the method of loci (Mnemonic Strategies)
What is an effective Mnemonic Strategy to remember more than 6-9 items?
Chunking items into meaningful segments
A student memorises these 12 numbers
1066 1989 2023
They memorised these numbers as meaningful dates rather than separate digits
What is this an example of?
Mnemonic Strategy (Chunking)
What technique was known to prevent rehearsal in the short-term store?
Brown-Peterson paradigm
Who proposed the Brown-Peterson paradigm?
- Brown
- Peterson and Peterson
Describe the Brown-Peterson paradigm
1) Participants were given a nonsense trigram (3 consonant letters e.g. HPS) to remember
2) Participants were asked to count backwards in 3s from a specified random number
3) The counting continues until they see a red light appear and then they start recalling the trigram
4) The purpose was to prevent rehearsal by asking participants to perform an unrelated task to “distract them” from rehearsing
5) Because the trigram was not rehearsed, it decayed after no rehearsal for more than 20-30 secs (Trace decay)
Define Trace decay
When the memory of unrehearsed items decays over time due to no rehearsal for more than 20-30 secs
What is the Phonological Confusability Effect?
In visually presented letters, recall performance is worse on similar-sounding letters
In visually presented letters, recall performance is worse on similar-sounding letters. For example, ‘C G V T’ is harder to recall than ‘F T K W’. This is an example of…
Phonological Confusability Effect (Conrad)
Who proposed that in visually presented letters, recall performance is worse on similar-sounding letters (Phonological Confusability Effect)?
Conrad
Who proposed immediate recall is worse if words are phonological similar (Phonological Confusability Effect)?
Baddeley
Immediate recall is worse if words are phonological similar. For example “Map, Man, Can, Mad, Cap” are harder to recall than “Pen, Rig, Day, Bar, Sup”. This is an example of…
Phonological Confusability Effect (Baddeley)
What does the Phonological Confusability Effect conclude?
- The coding of storage in STS must be phonological
- People make more errors when letters/words rhyme or sound phonological similar
- This explains why people struggle to recall rhyming letters or words in a list; they are confusable
Information in the STS is stored using the (phonological/semantic) code
Phonological code
There is (an effect/no effect) of semantic similarity in immediate recall
No effect
What is the duration of STS?
Duration = 20 secs
What is the capacity of STS?
Capacity = 7 items (+/-2)
What is the code of STS?
Code = Phonological (based on sound patterns/how similar sounding the items on the list are)
What is the duration of LTS?
Duration = Infinite?
What is the Capacity of LTS?
Capacity = Limitless?
What is the Code of LTS?
Code = Semantic
What evidence supports that LTS has a limitless capacity?
1) Vocabulary increases over lifespan
2) 2,500 images for 10 secs each and 90% remembered days later (Brady et al.)
What is the Semantic Confusability Effect?
Baddeley
- People recall items worse if they are semantically similar (items are similar in terms of meaning/synonyms)
- e.g. “Great, Big, Huge, Wide” is harder to recall than “Run, Easy, Tug, End”
Who introduced the Semantic Confusability Effect?
Baddeley
People recall items worse if they are semantically similar (items are similar in terms of meaning/synonyms). For example, “Great, Big, Huge, Wide” is harder to recall than “Run, Easy, Tug, End”. This is an example of…
Semantic Confusability Effect
What is the difference between Phonologically similar and Semantically similar?
Phonologically similar = Items on the list are similar in terms of sound (rhyme)
Semantically similar = Items on the list are similar in terms of meaning (synonyms)
What is the Duration of the Sensory Store?
Duration = 500 ms (iconic); 1-5 sec (echoic)
What is the Capacity of the Sensory Store?
Capacity = Large-ish
What is the Code of the Sensory Store?
Code = Modality-specific
What technique did Sperling suggest that is related to the Sensory Store?
Partial report technique
Who introduced the Partial report technique?
Sperling
Describe the Partial report technique experiment
1) Participants were presented with a matrix of letters (12 letters arranged in a matrix) for 1 sec using a Tachistoscope
2) When asked to report the letters, participants could only report 3-4 out of 12
3) However, participants claimed that they had remembered more but by the time it was time to report the letters, the memory of the other letters seemed to have faded
4) After that, the matrix was presented and Ps was cued to only report one row of the matrix
5) If they could report 3-4 in a row, it means they store all 12 letters in the matrix
What does the Partial report technique suggest about reporting? (bottleneck)
People forget most items previously presented to them, whilst they report the first few items they remembered
What are the types of stores in the Sensory Store? List 2
1) Iconic store
2) Echoic store
What modality of information does the Iconic store keep?
Modality of info = Visual
What modality of information does the Echoic store keep?
Modality of info = Auditory
What is the Duration of the Iconic Store?
Duration = 500 msec (1/2 a second)
What is the Duration of the Echoic Store?
Duration = 1-5 secs
What is the main purpose of the Iconic Store?
Allows people to visualise an image after the physical stimulus is no longer there
What is the main purpose of the Echoic Store?
For a brief time, the brain registers and temporarily stores a perfect version of sounds around you until it is processed
What is the Capacity of the Iconic Store?
Capacity = 12+ letters (depends on stimuli)
What is the Capacity of the Echoic Store?
Capacity = depends on stimuli
How is information in the Iconic Store lost?
Decay
How is information in the Echoic Store lost?
Decay
Who are the 2 well-known patients often referred to as Neuropsychological evidence for dissociations?
1) HM
3) KF
What did HM struggle with?
Long-term memory loss
How did HM get a lesion which caused problems with his memory?
- Had epileptic seizures
- Had surgery to remove medial temporal lobes
- Removal cured seizures but caused him to suffer from long-term memory loss
Who worked with and studied HM’s memory abilities?
Brenda Milner
What was Brenda Milner primarily known for?
- Studying patients with unilateral MTS surgeries
- Looking for hemispheric differences
- Studied HM
What condition was HM diagnosed with?
Anterograde Amnesia
Patients of Anterograde Amnesia (such as HM) experienced … (List 4 things)
1) Inability to acquire new memories
2) Normal digit span for short-term memory (7 items (+/-2)
3) Memory of past intact
4) Could acquire some skills but subconsciously
What did KF struggle with?
Short-term memory loss
How did KF get a lesion which caused problems with his memory?
KF suffered brain damage from a motorcycle accident that damaged his STM
Unlike HM, KF could not …
- Could not do the STS of 7 items (+/-2)
- But could store items in his LTS
What are the double dissociations between patients HM and KF?
HM = normal STS, trouble with LTS
KF = normal LTS, trouble with STS
