Memory Flashcards
1
Q
What is memory?
A
- Set of storage systems and processes for…
- Encoding
- Storing
- Retrieving (information acquired through senses)
- Relating “ to previously acquired knowledge and experience
- Mental representation of knowledge within memory systems stored within neural networks of the brain
2
Q
What is encoding?
A
- Processes involved in attending to and acquiring information from experiences and mental processes
-
Registration of information in sensory regions of brain
- Attention to elements of an experience (Sensory → STM)
- Interpretation + Integration of experience with prior knowledge
3
Q
What is storage?
A
- Encoded representations consolidated in memory traces and stored in networks of neurons throughout the brain
- Different kinds of memory stored in different networks
- Storage capacity and duration differ between different memory systems
4
Q
What is retrieval?
A
- A reconstructive and (sometimes) error-prone process that changes the memory trace through ‘reconsolidation’ after retrieval
- Can be explicit (with effort + intention) or implicit (knowing and doing)
- Recalling memory = Activate same areas used for storage responsible for specific components (e.g. visual in occipital)
- Highly context-dependent → Depends on right ‘cues’ in environment or generated internally
- Examples
- Personal reminiscence of past experiences
- Recalling facts
- Executing practiced motor skills
- Conditioned responses
5
Q
What is sensory memory?
A
- Temporary, sensory-based representation of input received through sensory channels
- Provides a buffer/ holding area (brief retention) between early sensory processes and later cognitive processes
- Enough time for attention → Awareness
- Only some information will be retained
6
Q
What are types of mental representations of memory?
A
- Sensory
- Store information in a sensory mode
- Verbal
- Store information in words
7
Q
Describe sensory registers
A
- Hold information about a perceived stimulus for approximately 0.5s after the stimulus disappears
- Mental representation for further processing
8
Q
What are the types of sensory registers?
A
- Iconic → Visual
- 0.5 - 2s
- Remarkably accurate
- Contains more information than people can report before it fades
- If emotional → Slow decay (esp fear)
- Echoic → Auditory
- 3 - 4 s
9
Q
Describe Sperling’s full report in relation to iconic memory
A
- Fixation cross → Disappears
- Array of capital consonants (3x4)
- Remains on screen for 0.05s
- Initial conclusion = Capacity was 4 letters
- But participants reported that there was a rapidly fading visual
- Time to say letters = Image already decay
10
Q
Describe Sperling’s altered partial report in relation to iconic memory
A
- Partial = Don’t have to recall full thing
- Fixation cross → Disappears
- Array of capital consonants (3x4)
- Remains on screen for 0.05s
- Auditory tone indicating line to be remembered
- High, medium, low
- No way of knowing which row will be called
- On average - regardless of row - Able to get 3.7 letters
- Sperling conclusion → AT least 12 items
- Means that full report resulted in an underestimation of capacity
11
Q
How can Sperling’s experiment be altered further to test for iconic duration?
A
- Systematically increase time in between array presentation and cue (variation)
- How long (retention interval) can they continue to report all 4 letters?
- Duration conclusion → Memory reduced to one letter after 0.5s
12
Q
What is short-term memory?
A
- Sensory information not lost → Passed to STM
- Holds a small amount of information in consciousness
- Capacity - 7 ± 2 items
- Duration - 15 - 30s → Unless deliberate effort made to maintain via repetition
13
Q
Explain the limited capacity of STM
A
- Only 7 ± 2 items
- If slots full, information has to leave before new information can be added
- New information can also ‘bump’ out old information
14
Q
What is rehearsal?
A
- Maintaining information deliberately
- Maintenance → Repetition
- Elaborative → Giving meaning to the material (better for LTM storage)
15
Q
What are the serial position effects (STM)?
A
- Primacy
- Easily recall first few items in a list
- Opportunity to rehearse increses likelihood that they are transferred to LTM
- Eliminated if rehearsal is prevented by introducing a concurrent task
- Recency
- Easily recall items near the end of the list → Still contained in STM
- Reduced by introducing a filled retention interval before recall
16
Q
Why are items in the middle of a list the hardest to recall?
A
- Presented too long ago to still be in STM
- So many items came before and after → Little opportunity for rehearsal = Limited transfer to LTM
17
Q
What is long-term memory?
A
- Important information from STM → LTM for long-term storage
- Retrieval → Recovering information from LTM into STM for conscious manipulation
18
Q
How is STM distinguished from LTM?
A
- STM
- Brief
- Limited in capacity
- Quickly accessed
- LTM
- Enduring
- Virtually limitless
- More difficult to access
19
Q
How has the serial processing model of memory evolved?
A
- Cannot provide a full account of memory
- Most sensory information never processed consciously → Can still be stored + Retrieved
- Process of selecting sensory information to store in STM is influenced by LTM
- LTM activated before STM → Compare past info to present
- Memory = Modules
- Discrete but interdependent processing units for different kinds of memories
- Operate simultaneously rather than serially (one at a time)
- Question about if STM is only a single memory store
- Different kinds of information
- Forms of remembering that do not require retrieval into consciousness
- Demonstrated directly in behaviour
20
Q
What is working memory?
A
- The temporary storage and processing of information that can be used to…
- Solve problems
- Respond to environmental demands
- Achieve goals
- Active → Information remains only as long as the person is consciously…
- Processing
- Examining
- Manipulating
21
Q
Is the limited capacity within working memory applied to all types of information?
A
- No
- Multiple systems → Processing functions do not compete for limited space
- Visual
- Verbal
- ‘Central executive’ → Controls and manipulates information in other 2 stores
22
Q
What is the central executive (working memory)?
A
- Responsible for rehearsal, reasoning and making decisions (balance 2 tasks simultaneously)
- Has its own limited capacity → Independent of information it is storing or holding momentarily in mind
- Directs + receives information from visual and verbal elements of working memory
- Information brought together in episodic buffer (parietal cortex)
- Prefrontal cortex
23
Q
Describe the visual and verbal stores in working memory
A
- Both have active manipulation
- Visual (Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad)
- Temporary image that can be held in mind for 20-30s
- Images can be mentally rotated, moved around or used to locate objects out of sight
- Location and Objects = Separate
- Right occipital-parietal
- Verbal (Phonological Loop)
- Words stored in order → Based on sound = Differing phonemic information makes items more distinctive and easily discriminable
- Left fronto-temporal
- Broca’s and Wernicke’s
24
Q
What brain part is responsible for working memory?
A
- Prefrontal cortex
- Activation provides access to consciousness to representations normally processed in other parts of the cortex → Can temporarily hold the information in mind and manipulate
- Active when …
- Stimuli is no longer there = Need to be held in working memory
- Need to adapt to limited capacity = Two tasks simultaneously
25
What is chunking?
* Mnenomic that uses LTM knowledge to group units of information together (to occupy one 'slot')
26
What are the types of stored LTM?
* **Declarative** → Knowing what, why, where and when
* **Semantic** - General world knowledge or facts
* **Episodic** - Events and experiences
* **Hippocampal-dependent**
* **Nondeclarative** → Knowing how
* **Procedural** - Skill/ habit memory
* **Associative** and **Non-associative** learning
* Revealed when **previous experience facilitates performance on a task**
* Cortex → Basal ganglia
* **Not hippocampus**
27
How are declarative and non-declarative memories intertwined?
* If requires high skill
* Declarative memories (such as keyboard) → Overtime action becomes more automatic and natural and therefore non-declarative
28
What the types of expressed LTM?
* Explicit → Conscious recollection
* Recall - Spontaneous conscious recollection of LTM information
* 'Tip-of-the-tongue' - Efforts of recall failing → Information there but unable to retrieve
* Recognition - Explicit sense or recollection that something currently perceived has been previously encountered or learned (APK)
* Implicit → Memory expressed in behaviour = Does not require conscious recollection
* Priming - Prior exposure to stimulus → Changes processing of new information (unaware)
29
When the frontal lobe is damaged, how are semantic and episodic memory affected?
* Little trouble retrieving semantic
* Deficits in episodic
* Trouble distinguishing real from false memories
30
What is everyday memory?
* Memory that occurs in daily life
* Storing information that is needed → Meaningful and emotionally significant
31
What is retrospective memory?
* Memory for things from the past
32
What is prospective memory?
* Memory for things that need to be done in the future
* Remembering to remember (intent)
* Includes when → Specific or interval of time
* Knowing if it has been completed = 'Shut off'
* Remembering what to remember (content)
33
What is level of processing?
* Degree to which information is elaborated, reflected upon and processed in a meaningful during memory storage
* Shallow, structural → Physical
* Deeper, phonemic → Simple descriptive language for characteristics
* Semantic (deepest) → Meaning
34
What is the encoding specificity principle?
* Notion that the ease of retrieval depends on the match between the way information is encoded and later retrieved
* Includes context of encoding and recall/ retrieval
35
What is state-dependent memory?
* Being in a similar mood at encoding and retrieval
* As long as it is not so intense that it ends up inhibiting the memory
36
What is the spacing effect?
* Memory retention being better when rehearsed over longer intervals
* Tends to double long-term retention
37
How can representational modes help with encoding LTM?
* Encoding a memory in multiple modes (visual, procedural..) increases the ease of retrieval
38
What are mnemonic devices (include 2 types)?
* Systematic strategies for remembering information
* Most useful when the information lacks clear organisation
* Types
* Method of Loci
* SQ4R
39
Explain the method of loci
* Using visual imagery as a memory aid
* Steps
* Decide on a series of 'snapshot' mental images of familiar locations
* Visualise each item at different locations in a sequence → Make image as vivid as possible (maximise likelihood of retrieval)
* When required, walk through the locations to bring back the mental images
40
Explain the SQ4R method
* Useful for remembering textbook information
* Steps
* Survey - Skim through content → Headings + Summaries
* Question - Headings → Questions
* Read - Answering questions as you read
* Recite - Rehearse relevant information while reciting before next section
* Review - End of chapter, recall questions + Relate content to life
* wRite - Answering questions in lectures
41
What are networks of association?
* Clusters of interconnected information
* Make new information easier to access → Connect new to old information
* Node - Each piece of information along a network
* Intermediate Link → 2 Step connection
42
What is spreading activation?
## Footnote
Networks of Association
* Activating one node triggers activation in closely related nodes
43
What are schemas?
* Patterns of thought/ organised knowledge structures that render the environment relatively predictable
* Affect remembering by...
* Influencing information encoded
* Shaping the way they reconstruct data they have already stored
44
What is a flashbulb memory?
* Vivid memories of exciting or highly consequential events
* However if in state of alarm during encoded → Truthfulness of memory affected by reconstructive processes
* Dependent on adrenalin (fight or flight hormone)
45
What is the decay theory?
* Forgetting as a result of a fading memory trace
* Fading with disuse
46
What is the interference theory?
* Intrusion of similar memories on each other
* Types
* Proactive → Interference of previously stored memories with retrieval of new information
* Retroactive → New information interferes with retrieval of old information
47
What is motivated forgetting?
* Forgetting for a reason
* Explicit instruction of self or others
* Implicit → Parking in different parking space
48
What is anterograde amnesia?
* **Inabillity** to **retain new declarative (episodic and semantic)** memories
* **A**nterograde = After
* Damage in temporal lobe → **Hippocampus and subcortical**
49
What is retrograde amnesia?
* Losing memories from a period **before** the time that a **person's brain was damaged**
* **Temporally graded** = Most recent memories affected first and oldest memories usually spared
* Brain tumours and strokes
50
Describe the case of H.M (Henry Molaison
* Removed medial portion of both temporal lobes
* Both hippocampi (treat epilepsy)
* **Retrograde**
* No longer recognise hospital staff nor find his way to the bathroom
* Did not remember the death of a favourite uncle 3 years ago
* **Early memories vivid and intact** → Evidence of it being **temporally graded** (spared)
* **Severe Anterograde**
* Recall nothing of his hospital stay
* **No new episodic or semantic memory since surgery**
* **Retained non-declarative**
* **Normal sensory** and **working memory (STM)**
51
What does the case of H.M indicate about memory?
* Bilateral removal of hippocampi
* Severe anterograde amnesia
* Can still learn non-declarative skills
* Indicate that hippocampi are essential for consolidation of new declarative memories
* Also insinuates that different areas of the brain are responsible for non-declarative
* Improved behaviour despite a lack of declarative memories of previous learning
