Memory 1 Flashcards
What was wrong with Clive Wearing?
Had a 7 second memory
Can encode information but can’t retrieve a mental representation of the information he encoded
His explicit memory is impaired, has trouble either forming or storing a mental representation.
His perceptual memory, semantic memory of words and procedural memory is intact so would probably be able to complete a fragment completion task.
What comes under explicit (declarative) memory?
LTM –> Episodic (autobiographical/past experience) and Semantic (knowledge/facts)
STM (& WM)
What comes under implicit (non-declarative) memory?
Sensory Memory
Procedural Memory (also comes under LTM) - Tulving (1985)
Perceptual Memory
What does Atkinson and Shiffrin’s Modal Model of Memory suggest?
That the human memory system has 3 separate components:
- Sensory register
- Short-term store (also called WM or STM)
- Long-term store (where information that has been rehearsed in the STM is held).
What are the four components of Baddeley and Hitch’s Working Memory model?
- Central Executive - coordinates the units and controls the focus of attention
- Visuospatial Sketchpad - stores and processes information in a visual or spatial form
- Phonological Loop - deals with spoken and written material (has inner ear and inner voice).
- Episodic Buffer - brings information from LTM to use in the present
What did Cowan propose?
That there are 2 stages of sensory memory storage: the first is the storage of unprocessed perceptual information, and the second is where the perceptual information connects with information stored in LTM that allows for interpretation of stimuli.
What did Sperling (1960) find?
Used a partial-report method where the PP only reports a portion of the display in that length of time which is indicated by a tone.
With no delay between the end of the display and the instruction tone, PPs could remember and report about 75% of the letters in the row they were asked to report.
But when asked to report all the letters, PPs could only report about 4 letters on average
Which parts of the brain are used to retrieve episodic memories?
The medial temporal lobe areas, including the hippocampus.
What are some methods used to test models of memory?
Recall and Recognition
Partial Reports
Old/New judgements
Ebbinghaus
Which type of LTM are classical conditioning and non associative learning part of?
Non-declarative (implicit) memory
Outline and explain the computational model of declarative memory consolidation
Outlines the transfer of information from STM to LTM
Rapidly encoded information is bound with existing information in the LTM
Links between encoded information and LTM are managed by hippocampal systems
LTM stores are in the neocortex
Abstraction of this information over time into the neocortex (LTM) = consolidation.
Describe complimentary learning systems in terms of catastrophic interference (McClelland et al., 1995)
Trying to introduce new information too quickly can overwrite existing information
For example, Penguins are birds, can move, grow and swim
But penguins don’t fly
Therefore all birds can swim and all things that swim are birds.
Outline the System Consolidation Hypothesis
There’s a process that needs to happen to transfer information from STM -> LTM
STM information is managed by hippocampal systems which communicates with the neocortex over time via the thalamo-cortical spindles
This communication transfers the information from hippocampal systems to the neocortex, enabling consolidation
During sleep, neuronal activation is replayed much quicker; starting the process of consolidation.
Describe how the role of sleep in the system consolidation theory has been tested
Atienza and Cantero (2008)
PPs classified pictures as either neutral, positive or negative and the intensity of the feeling
Half of the PPs were sleep deprived after encoding
Tested 1 week later
Classify old and new pictures as either known or remembered
Sleep deprived PPs couldn’t remember items, suggesting that they didn’t form a strong episodic memory of the event
And that sleep plays an important role in the consolidation of episodic memory.
Explain which parts of memory consolidation take place in which stages of sleep
The assumption that memory consolidation during sleep originates from the repeated reactivation of newly encoded memory representations.
These reactivations occur during SWS and mediate the redistribution of the temporarily stored representations to long-term storage sites where they become integrated with pre-existing LT memories.
Reactivation and integration of temporarily stored memories into LT stores accompany a qualitative reorganisation of the memory representation that needs to be stabilised in a synaptic consolidation process assumed to take place during succeeding periods of REM sleep.
Sleep as a state of greatly reduced external information processing represents an optimal time window for consolidating memories.
