Memory Flashcards
What is Sensory Memory’s capacity, duration and function?
- Function: To sustain information about identification
- Duration: 1/2-3 seconds
- Capacity: very large (“scenic)
How did the Sperling study measure the duration and capacity of sensory memory?
- Had a block with a dot in the middle and then flashed 3 rows of four letters for about half a second (counted how many you could remember)
- had you only write down one row, but you didn’t know which row you had to write down until after
- varied the duration of the letters flashing to measure how long sensory memory lasted
What is Echoic Memory and it’s duration?
- auditory processing
- duration = 3 seconds
What is Iconic Memory and it’s duration?
- visual processing
- duration = 1/2 second
- *so quick that we have very little if any conscious awareness of it
What are attention, rehearsal, encoding and retrieval?
- Attention: selects information from sensory memory
- Rehearsal: Maintains information in working memory
- Encoding: sends information to long-term memory
- Retrieval: Brings information from LTM to working memory
What is short-term memory’s capacity, duration and function?
Function: to do conscious work, to think
Duration: 10-15 seconds without rehearsal
Capacity: 7 plus or minus 2 items
How did Peterson and Peterson study the duration of short-term memory?
- Remember letters
- Count backwards by 7s
- Keeps you from rehearsing so we can see how quickly the memory fades
What are long-term memory’s capacity, duration and function?
- Function: to tie together the past with the present
- Capacity: enormous (essentially unlimited)
- Duration: very long (essentially permanent)
What is Episodic memory and examples?
- Everyday events and personal experiences (conscious)
- What did you have for breakfast today
- Who was the lecturer in psych 1001 last week
- Where were you on your 18th birthday
What is Semantic memory and examples?
- general world knowledge that humans have accumulated throughout their lives (conscious)
- What is your mother’s first name
- What kind of bird is black and white, lives in the antarctic, and swims rather than flies
What is Procedural Memory?
- knowledge about how to do things (unconscious)
- Tying your shoes
- Driving a car
- Juggling
- Playing a musical instrument
Who is Clive Wearing? (Significance)
- has chronic anterograde and retrograde amnesia
- lost all memories of his past and cannot form new memories
- shows the importance of long-term memory in connecting past to present and guiding us in our actions
What is the serial position effect?
- Performance is best at the beginning and end of recall vs. the middle
- creates a sort of curve that looks like a U
What is recency?
- You are more likely to remember things that are more recent in your memory
- only effective if you are asked to recall shortly after the exercise
What is primacy?
- You are more likely to remember things that occur at the beginning of a sequence
- more time for repetition/rehearsal
What are the different kinds of long-term memory?
- Explicit –> in your awareness (episodic and semantic)
- Implicit –> outside your awareness (procedural, classical conditioning, priming)
What is a mnemonic?
a memory aid, such as an abbreviation, rhyme or mental image that helps to remember something.
What is imagery?
Creating an image of what a word looks like to help remember it
What is the method of loci?
imagining walking through a familiar place with landmarks acting as memory cues
What is the keyword method?
Imagining an interaction between words to help remember it
What is a narrative technique?
Weave together a story to remember a list
What is the misinformation effect?
when a person’s recall of episodic memories becomes less accurate because of post-event information
What is source monitoring errors?
a type of memory error where the source of a memory is incorrectly attributed to some specific recollected experience
What are examples of implanted memories?
- being lost in a mall as a child
- tying your shoes on the sidewalk as your friends walk ahead
What kinds of things increase the likelihood of false memories?
- if the event was traumatic/negative
- Similarity with another memory
- Telling the story over and over again
- Misinformation
What is anterograde amnesia and retrograde amnesia?
- Anterograde = you can’t form new memories
- retrograde = you can’t remember old memories
What is the role of the amygdala in memory?
to attach emotional significance to memories
What is a flashbulb memory?
a vivid, enduring memory associated with a personally significant and emotional event, often including such details as where the individual was or what he or she was doing at the time of the event
What is the difference between recall, recognition, and relearning as measures of memory?
- Recall = doesn’t require a cue
- Recognition = requires a cue in order to recall
- Relearning = learning something that you have already learned prior
What is encoding specificity (e.g., context-dependent learning; state-dependent learning)?
- context-dependent learning = being able to remember something when the context of the memory and your current context are similar
- state-dependent learning = being able to remember something when your current state of mind is similar to when the memory occurred
- encoding specificity = retrieval of memories are helped by the situation you are in when you are trying to recall them
Who was Ebbinghaus, and what was his forgetting curve?
- a german psychologist
- information is lost over time when there is no attempt to retain it
- the speed of forgetting depends on a number of factors such as the difficulty of the learned material (e.g. how meaningful it is), its representation and other physiological factors such as stress and sleep
In forgetting, what is the difference between decay and interference?
- Decay = forgetting due to the passage of time
- Interference = forgetting because other information in the LTM is interfering with the memory you are trying to retrieve
What is retroactive interference?
when current information you are learning affects how well you remember previously learned information
What is proactive interference?
when previously learned information affects how well you learn new information
What is the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon?
a state in which one cannot quite recall a familiar word but can recall words of similar form and meaning
