Memory Flashcards
Hypomemory
- Can’t forget
* all memory is stored, can’t distinguish what is important or unimportant
Encoding
• How info. gets to memory
Storage
• How info is stored in memory
Retrieval
• How info. gets out of memory to be “used”
What are the memory processes?
- Encoding
- Storage
- Retrieval
What are the tasks for studying memory?
- Recall
- Serial Recall Task
- Free Recall Task
- Cued Recall Task
Recall
Must produce knowledge from memory
Serial Recall Task
Repeat listed items in the exact order in which you read or heard it
Free Recall Task
Must repeat listed items in any order
Cued Recall Task
Memorized list of paired items; when given 1 item of the pair must recall its match
William James & his memory theory
- For over 80 years that was the only theory
- Primary Memory
- Secondary Memory
Primary Memory (William James)
- Present
- Effortless memory
- conscious
Secondary Memory (William James)
- Unconscious
- Permanent
- Retrieval is effortful
- All about the past
Immediate Memory/Short-term memory
- Sensory Store
* Short term store
Working memory
- Central executive
- Phonological loop
- Visual spatial sketch pad
Akinson & Shiffrin’s Modal Model of Memory
- Average idea of how things work
- Computer=model for human cognition
- memory= info processing
- Acquire store & retrieval info
- Component’s do NOT act in isolation
- Memory is LIMITED
Modal Model of Memory: Structural Features
- Sensory Memory
- Short term memory
- Long term memory
Sensory store
- Can hold many items
- Hold info long enough to be processed for basic physical characteristics
- Forms automatically w/o attention or interpretation
- Attention however IS needed to transfer info to short term/working memory
Short Term Memory
- conscious processing of info currently being actively worked on
- Stored acoustically
- Limited
- Lasts about 30 seconds
Short Term Memory: Miller (1956)
- Magical number +/- 2.
* Capacity usually 5-9 Items
Chunking
• words can be combined into larger meaningful sentences
• numbers can be combined into larger meaningful units such as telephone 3, social security #
- Effects of chunking: stretch short term memory capacity
Peterson’s short term memory task
- letter string and then number string told, had to repeat back the letter string
- first trial went fine, but after many trials performance decreases
- Proactive interference
- Maintenance rehearsal needs to occur to remember
Proactive Interfearance
info learned b4 is interfering with info you are currently trying to learn
Maintenance Rehersal
• Mental or Verbal repetition of information
Coding in short term memory
- Visual
- Auditory
- Semantically Coding
Auditory Coding
Represents items based on sounds
Visual Coding
Representing items visually
Semantically coding (wickens 1976)
• Created proactive interferance because of the meaning of the words. (all of the words presented were fruits)
Long Term Memory Store Function
- Organizes & stores info
- Passive form of storage other than working memory
- thought by some to be permanent
- Unlimited?
Working Memory
- Limited capacity system for temporary storage
* Manipulation of tasks (comprehension, learning, reasoning)
Working Memory Model
Central Executive
- Visual Spatial Sketchpad
- Phonological Loop
Phonological Similarity Effect
- Recall of characters of words is impaired if they are similar, recall more when they do not sound alike
- Items in the phonological store are based on phonological codes
Word Length Effect
•Memory for a list of words is better for short words rather than long words
Articulatory Supression
- Saying “The, the, the” while recalling a list of words
* Speaking interferes with the rehearsal of the words.
Persistence of vision
- Retention of the perception in our mind
* e.g: fireworks goes off and we still see it in our mind for a split second
Sensory store: echoic memory
- 3-4 seconds stored
* hearing
Sensory store: iconic
- .5 seconds
* vision
Central Executive
- “Manager”
- In charge of dividing attention btwn. auditory & visual tasks
- controls suppression of irrelevant information
The Modal Model of Memory
- Sensory Input
- Sensory Store
- Attention
- Short term store
a. Maintenance Rehearsal
b. Output - Encoding
a. Retrieval - Long term (permanent) store
Visuo-spatial sketchpad
- responsible for almost anything visual
- work space in which an image can be stored & manipulated
- e.g: map reading
Visuo-spatial sketchpad: Brooks (1968)
- if using visual spatial sketchpad more accurate results when using the phonological loop to to response bc that way it does not effect rehearsal
- if using the same system it will interfere with rehearsal
- working memory set up to process diff types of info. simultaneously
Levels of processing; Craik & lockhart (1972)
- argue that there are not separate stores
- deeper level of processing= higher prob. recall
- theory could never be proven bc researcher had no control over how the word had a deep effect on you
Phonological Loop
- Phonological store
2. Articulatory rehearsal process
Comprehension; Bransford & Johnson (1972)
- Group 1= saw the picture and weird story together & outperformed other bc they understood more
- cannot remember something you don’t understand
Testing: Roediger & Karipicke (2006)
- Testing better than rereading
What is good about testing?
Gives you experience to get what you know out of memory
What are some ways to improve memory?
- Associate what you are learning to what you already know
- Avoid illusion familiarity
- Take breaks
- Relate it to yourself
Distributed v. Mass practice effect
- Distributed = over an amount of time
* Mass practice= aka craming
Context effect: Encoding specificity
- Memory is best when studying & test cues match
* Experiment: if learned words under water, tested better under water. If learned on land, tested better on land.
Context effect: State dependent learning
- learning associated with emotional state
- experiment: studying while sad & tested while sad=did better
- results: persons memory is better when their mood during retrieval matches their mood during encoding.
Serial position effect: Recency Effect
- Remembering the last few words & write it down quickly so you wont forget
- goes into STM
Serial position effect: Primacy Effect
- 1st few words remembered: due to rehearsal.
- goes into long term, bc it lasts more than 30 seconds.
- if there were more space btwn. words, better recall
Serial position effect in: jury decision making
- prosecution always goes first, which means they set the story
- Important info in the middle
Serial position effect in: humor response
• Really funny joke (primacy)- Moderately funny to really funny (recency, what they will tell their friend)
What are some disruptions to the serial position effect?
- Von-Restorff Effect
- Next in line effect
- Vicarious peak effect
Von Restorff Effect
- surprising items that stand out is more likely to be remembered
- experiment: fruits listed & then modanna is said, recall word very well
Next in line effect
- Given word, say word, recall word
- Remember first & last word
- dont remember the word before or after theirs too well
Vicarious peek effect
• Remembering your word & your partners word very well
Memory in the brain
•not in one place. placed in the relative part bc of the diff. components to a memory
Frontal cortex
working memory
Medial temporal lobe
Long term memory
Long term Potentiation (LTP)
- Neuron changing
- enhanced firing of neurons = learning
- takes time to have “short cuts”
Consolidation
transforms new memories from a fragile state to a more permanent state
Standard model of consolidation
- retrieval on hippocampus during consolidation; after consolidation hippocampus is not needed
- hippocampus is the librarian knows where to go to look for things
- Reactivation occurs
Reactivation Consolidation
Replays neural activity w/ memory in a sleep/relaxed wakefulness state related to the memory
Hippocampus
highly active in recent memories
Cortex
Highly active in older memories
Anterograde (new)
• cant form new memories (hippocampus effected)
Retrograde (old)
• loss of memory for events before trauma
Explicit Memory
• Conscious
• Declarative
1. Semantic Memory
2. Episodic Memory
Semantic Memory
- Fact
- General knowledge
- No “mental time travel” required
- can be enhanced if you relate it to yourself
Episodic Memory
- Facts about you, episodes of your life
- can be lost
- Requires mental time travel
- No accuracy guranteed
Double Dissociation
Double Dissociation is when two related mental processes are shown to function independently of each other.
Implicit Memory Unconcious
- Repetition Priming
- Procedural Memory
- Conditioning
Procedural Memory
- Skill memory, Old memory
* Requires motor skills, not learning skill
Repetition Priming
- Given a word, may cause you to react quicker to a similar/related word/image. ex: presented with a bird may cause a quick reaction to seeing another bird.
- Warrington & Weiskrantz (1968): would stop presentation earlier bc they were learning.
- Tulving: finish the word. (in alzheimer’s patients)
Semantic Coding
Representing items in terms of their meaning
Release from proactive interference
- In Wickens (1976) experiment, the release occurred when participants were presented with a word from a different category
- Caused performance increase
Phonological store
• holds info for only a few seconds
Articulatory rehearsal process
• responsible for rehearsal to keep items in the phonological store from decaying
Conceptual Priming
- enhancement caused by the priming stimulus is base don the meaning of the stimulus.
- See furniture and then see a chair.
Propoganda effect
More likely to believe something heard before bc there have been exposure to it previously.
Classical Conditioning
(1) Neutral stimulus that will not cause a reaction is presented
(2) Conditioning stimulus that DOES result in a response is presented
