Memory Flashcards
Explicit memory
- declarative
- facts and experiences we consciously know and declare
- encoded through conscious effortful processing (encoding that requires attention and conscious effort)
Implicit memories
- nondeclarative
- uses automatic processing (happens without our awareness, produces some things we can know without actively thinking about them)
- includes procedural memory for automatic skills (riding a bike, knitting) and classically conditioned associations among stimuli (tensing when seeing a dog after getting bit a decade ago)
- automatic processing includes info about space, time, and frequency
iconic memory and echoic memory
- iconic memory is a fleeting sensory memory of a visual stimuli; for a few tenths of a second our eyes register a picture-image memory and we can recall any part of it in amazing detail
- echoic memory is an impeccable, fleeting memory for auditory stimuli; lingers for 3-4 seconds
short term memory capacity
- we tend to remember about six letters and five words
- active processing after being exposed to new info is crucial to short term memory capacity
shallow vs. deep processing + Craik/Tulving
- shallow processing encodes on an elementary level, such as a word’s letters or a word’s sound
- deep processing encodes semantically, based on the meaning of the words… the deeper the processing, the better our retention
- Craik and Tulving showed that the deeper processing in third q yielded much better memory
the self-reference effect
- the tendency to remember self-relevant info
- is especially strong in individualist western cultures
- people from collectivist eastern cultures are more likely to remember self-relevent and family-relevant info equally well
explicit memory types
- semantic: facts and general knowledge
- episodic: personally experienced events
- network that processes and stores new explicit memories for facts and episodes includes the frontal lobes and hippocampus
- summoning past experience sends input to the prefrontal cortex (front part of the frontal lobes) for working memory processing
- recalling a password is left frontal lobe, a visual party is right frontal lobe
- women’s episodic memory passes mens
hippocampus function in memory
- grows as children mature
- left hippocampus damage means trouble remembering verbal info but no trouble recalling visual designs and locations… this is reversed with right damage
- rear area processes spatial memory
memory consolidation
- the neural storage of a long-term memory
- memories are registered and temporarily held in the hippocampus and is then migrated to the cortex for storage
- the hippocampus and cortex display simultaneous activity rhythms during sleep, as if having a dialogue
Parts of the brain and their corresponding memory-related function
- basal ganglia and cerebellum: implicit memory formation
- amygdala: emotion-related memory processing
- frontal lobes and hippocampus: explicit memory formation
stress and memory
- stress focuses memory by provoking the amygdala to initiate a memory trace (a lasting physical change as the memory forms that boosts activity in the brain’s memory-forming areas)
- stronger emotional experiences make for stronger more reliable memories, in part because we rehearse them… but are still prone to some error with time
- produces tunnel vision memory (focus attention and recall on high priority info and reduce recall of irrelevant details)
Kandel and James Schwartz
- used a slug to determine it releases more serotonin into certain neurons
- this makes the cells’ synapses become more efficient at transmitting signals
- experience and learning can increase and even double the number of synapses
long term poteniation
- an increase in a nerve cell’s firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation
- the sending neuron needs less prompting to release its neurotransmitter and more connections exist after rapidly stimulating certain memory circuit connections
- a physical basis for memory
- after ltp has occured, passing an electric current through the brain won’t disrupt old memories, but will wipe out very recent memories
- glutamate and creb enhance ltp
prospective and retrospective memory
- prospective memory retrieves memories for our intended future actions
- retrospective memory is used to retrieve memories from our past
- reminenscence therapy uses the power of retrieval cues to help people recall older memories
encoding specificity principle
- the idea that cues and contexts specific to a particular memory will be most effective in helping us recall it
mood-congruent memory
the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one’s current good or bad mood
serial position effect
-our tendency to recall best the last (recency effect) and first (primacy effect) items in a list
-right after getting new info, last is easier bc of working memory, but after a delay the recall is best for the first items
reconsolidation
a process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved, are potentially altered before being stored again
misinformation effect
- occurs when a memory has been corrupted by misleading information
deja vu
- seems to be familiarity with a stimlus and our uncertainty about where we encountered it before
- normally we experience a feeling of familiarity (termporal lobe processing) before we consciously remember details (bc of frontal and hippocampus processing)
- when these functions and brain regions are out of sync we may experience a feeling of familiarity without conscious recall