Memory

Question 1

Declarative VS Non-declarative memory

Answer 1

• Declarative: factual info
  
  • Semantic: general knowledge, undated
  • Episodic: personal experience, dated
• Non-declarative: actions, skills, conditioned responses, emotional memories

Question 2

How is long-term memory stored?

Answer 2

• Conceptual hierarchy
  
  • Based on common properties among items
  • Clustering - tendency to remember similar items in groups
• Schemas
  
  • Abstracted from previous experiences
  • More likely to remember things consistent with schemas/things that violate schema-based expectations
• Semantic networks
  
  • Nodes representing concepts joined by pathways that link related concepts

Question 3

What affects memory retrieval?

Answer 3

• Retrieval cues
  
  • Hints, related info, partial recollections
• Context cues
  
  • reinstating the context of an event
  • eg imagining sitting at the breakfast table to recall what was eaten for breakfast
• Misinformation effect
  
  • memory altered by introducing misleading post-event info
• Source-monitoring errors
  
  • Source-monitoring: making inferences about origins of memory
  • Error: memory from one source misattributed to another

Question 4

Explain the primacy-recency effect

Answer 4

• Primacy: things learned at the beginning
• Recency: things learned at the end
• Content in the middle requires further rehearsal to improve retention

Question 5

Describe the four theories of forgetting

Answer 5

• Ineffective encoding
  
  • Psuedoforgetting - attributable to lack of attention
• Decay
  
  • Gradual fading of memory with time
• Interference
  
  • Retroactive: new info impairs retention of previously learned info
  • Proactive: previously learned info impairs retention of new info
• Retrieval Failure
  
  • fail to access due to encoding failure or lack of retrieval cues
• Motivated
  
  • Repression of anxiety-provoking material

Question 6

Describe the Atkinson and Shiffrin model of memory storage

Answer 6

• sensory memory
  
  • preserves information in original sensory form (fraction of a second)
  • eg sensation of visual pattern, sound, touch
• short term memory
  
  • maintain unrehearsed information for up to 20 seconds
• long term memory
  
  • maintain info by rehearsal (repetitively verbalizing/thinking about info)
  • unlimited capacity store
  • permanent

Question 7

How is memory encoding enriched?

Answer 7

• Elaboration
  
  • Associate stimulus with other info
  • eg applying stimulus to personal experience
• Visual imagery
  
  • Create images to represent info
  • Easier for concrete objects than abstract concepts

Question 8

Describe Craik and Lockhart’s levels of processing theory

Answer 8

• Shallow processing
  
  • Structural encoding: physical structure
• Intermediate processing
  
  • Phonemic encoding: sound
• Deep processing
  
  • Semantic encoding: the meaning of verbal input
• Deeper processing leads to enhanced memory

Question 9

Define working memory capacity (WMC)

Answer 9

Ability to hold and manipulate information in conscious attention

Question 10

Prospective VS Retrospective Memory

Answer 10

• Prospective: remembering to perform actions in the future
• Retrospective: remembering events from the past/previously learned info