Memory Flashcards
What is the method of loci?
Imagine a typical path you travel and place the to-be-remembered items along the path
What are the different types of long term memory?
Long term
Declarative (explicit) - Subject is aware that he/she is retrieving info from past (conscious)
Episodic memory (events)
semantic memory (facts, knowledge: no clear date/time)
NonDeclarative (implicit)
skill learning
priming
conditioning - learning about associations among stimuli
procedural memory - knowing how to do something
Describe the modal model of memory
Sensory memory -> attention -> working memory -> processing -> long term memory
Which statement about working memory is TRUE?
INFORMATION IN IT IS FRAGILE AND EASILY LOST
Which of the following would help improve recall of a difficult-to-understand paragraph the LEAST?
REPEATING THE PARAGRAPH ALOUD MANY TIMES
The advantage of successful “replication” includes:
PROVIDING STATISTICAL ASSURANCE FOR THE ORIGINAL RESULTS, AND RULING OUT UNNOTICED FACTORS SUCH AS EXPERIMENTER BIAS
Which of the following is the primary advantage of connecting new information to prior knowledge in several different ways?
IT ALLOWS THE INFORMATION TO BE ACCESSED FROM MULTIPLE RETRIEVAL PATHS
Which of the following is true regarding recall performance?
WHETHER A CLUE ABOUT A WORD’S SOUND IS MORE HELPFUL FOR RECALL THAN A CLUE ABOUT ITS MEANING DEPENDS ON HOW THE WORD WAS THOUGHT OF WHEN IT WAS LEARNED
The dangers of source confusion are not particularly relevant to which real-world situation?
JURY SELECTION
An experimenter reads a list of 30 words to participants at the rate of one word per second. This is immediately followed by a free-recall test. A second group hears the same words presented at the faster rate of two words per second. We should expect that the group hearing the slower presentation will show improved memory performance for the:
PRE-RECENCY PORTION OF THE LIST, BUT NO IMPROVEMENT FOR THE PRIMARY AND RECENT
Is Loss of memory due to decay of previously learned material, or loss of information from memory due to interference from new learned materials?
Decay is the method of forgetting
Read
Primacy is affected by speed
Recency effect is not affected by speed
Working Memory is affected by language (native Chinese speakers have greater arithmetic and number recall because they have fewer syllables to speak than native Arabic speakers)
working memory (visual infor) is stored as object-based
In which of the following situations are you LEAST likely to decide a stimulus is familiar?
PROCESSING FLUENCY IS QUITE LOW
Which of the following statements is TRUE about the role the hippocampus plays in memory?
THE HIPPOCAMPUS PLAYS AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN MEMORY CONSOLIDATION (HIPPOCAMPUS DAMAGE IS ASSOCIATED WITH INTEROGRADE AMNESIA)
Shallow encoding to deep encoding
Orthographic: is the word in capital letters (COLD vs. cold) (least remembered)
Phonological: does the word rhyme with “free”? (moderately remembered)
Semantic: what does it mean? (most remembered)
read
spaced learning is best
the longer the repetitions are spaced out, the better
repetition helps
Context helps and hurts
– Identical context good for that limited study/test
– Varied contexts good for robust, flexible learning
What is the subsequent memory paradigm?
Compare brain activity for items that were subsequently remembered and items that were subsequently forgotten
Difference is called subsequent memory effect
Two areas of brain detected by fMRI, used for encoding and retrieval in this experiment: left prefrontal cortex and left medial temporal lobe
N back is a typical test for which type of memory?
working memory
Read
the recency effect is stronger than the primacy effect
distinctiveness effect is the middle of the u-shape when you remember something that was distinct
Primacy vs recency effect
Primacy - Extended rehearsal moves info to long-term memory
Recency – Recent rehearsal keeps info in working memory at test
Immediate interference tests recency
Describe Baddeley’s model
Working memory is affected by Language, reading speed, and word length.
Central executive ->
visuospatial sketchpad (visual ST memory)
visual info stored as objects
limit 3-4 objects
If you remember one feature of an object, you get all
the other features for free
there is a linear relationship between object complexity and objects remembered
phonological loop (auditory ST memory)
How does encoding influence retrieval?
Encoding Organization
Depth of processing
encoding specificity
What are the typical tests for explicit vs implicit memory?
Explicit:
Typical tests: Recognition, Recall
Implicit:
Typical tests: Word completion, Word Identification
Exposure increases activation, even if no explicit memory
Previous exposure to rare words increases likelihood they are reported EVEN if subjects don’t recall seeing the word before!
What are types of amnesia?
Anterograde Amnesia (H.M)
– Inability to form new explicit memories
– Ability to form new implicit memories
– Damage to Medial Temporal Lobes (hippocampus)
Anterograde amnesia often involves retrograde amnesia
Retrograde Amnesia
– Inability to recall old memories, especially
episodic memories
– Damage to brain regions outside of the Hippocampus
Describe Clive wearing
Cause of amnesia ->herpes encephalitis - damage to hippocampus Preserved cognitive abilities - intelligence - skillsplaying piano and conducting
Anterograde amnesia
has no episodic memories
feels he is awake for the first time over and over. Memory lasts 2 minutes.
Clive, who, for all his musical powers, needs “close direction” from others. He needs someone to put the music before him, to get him into action, and to make sure that he learns and practices new pieces.
Is All Memory Impaired in Anterograde Amnesia?
Patients with Anterograde Amnesia can form new nondeclarative memories (e.g. Tower of Hanoi,
Mirror Drawing) without explicitly remembering the task.
Costs and Benefits of Schemas
The Good
• Provides framework within which to remember an event • ‘chunking’ since don’t have to remember all details
The Bad
• Can lead to misremembering a specific event via generalizations or confusion
Flashbulb memory
“flashbulb” memories are not special, but they are emotional and usually rehearsed more than ordinary memories
• Show same forgetting as any other memory
What are the 4 theories of categorization?
Categories
Category membership determined by necessary and sufficient conditions (All-or-none category membership)
Prototypes
Concepts defined by ‘ideal’ or ‘average’ member
Exemplars
Concepts defined by previously seen examples
Better than Prototype for context effects and ad-hoc categories
Theory-driven
Concepts defined by constructing theories
Use background knowledge and causal relationships to determine category membership
levels of categories
Superordinate Fruit Basic Apple Basic level can be ‘imagined’ First words that come to mind Subordinate Gala, Fuji, Honeycrisp
What is VSD system?
modality-specific input system that stores representations corresponding to the form or shape of objects, and which is used to access conceptual information
How do you test for category impairments?
• Picture naming • Sound identification • Object decision • Parts decision - Central-attribute judgments - Visual processing (e.g., visual matching & face recognition to measure general processing of visually complex stimuli)
Intrusion errors are typically caused by?
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE BROUGHT TO A SITUATION
Connections among our various memories do all of the following except
HELP US TO RESIST SOURCE CONFUSION
What is Deese-Roediger-McDermott Paradigm (DRM)?
Very simple task that leads to large numbers of memory errors (activating a single word that is not actually on the list of words; i.e. “sweet” in a list of “cookies,” “chocolate,” “creamy,” “sugar,” etc.)
According to interference theory, most forgetting is attributable to the fact that
NEW LEARNING DISRUPTS OR OVERWRITES OLD LEARNING
Which of the following is true about autobiographical memories?
RECONSTRUCTION OF PAST EVENTS WILL OFTEN BE CONSISTENT WITH CURRENT VIEWS OF SELF
The external validity of an experiment is BEST expressed by the following:
RESULTS ARE GENERALIZABLE TO DIFFERENT GROUPS OF PEOPLE AND SITUATIONS
Flashbulb memories are extremely detailed, vivid memories usually associated with highly emotional events. The accuracy of these memories seems
BEST PREDICTED BY THE CONSEQUENTIALITY OF THE EVENT TO THE PARTICPANTS’ LIVES
In one procedure, participants were asked to judge which was a better even number, “4” or “18”-
MADE THE JUDGMENT IN A FASHION THAT IMPLIED A GRADED MEMBERSHIP FOR THE CATEGORY
Categorization models based on family resemblance rely on:
FEATURE OVERLAP AMONG THE MEMBERS OF A CATEGORY
Which of the following statements about converging evidence is true?
IT IS IMPORTANT TO FIND CONVERGENCE FROM A VARIETY OF TASKS AS WELL AS THE LIMIT ON THE CONVERGENCE
What are 4 differences between working memory and LT memory?
working memory is limited in size, LT memory is vast
getting info into WM is easy, just think about it
getting info out of WM is easy
the contents of WM is fragile
Where are working memory and LT memory located
LT in the hippocampus
WM in the perirhinal cortex
working memory holds how many chunks?
7 plus or minus 2
random, read
WM is best thought of as a status, not a place
Operation span is a measure of WM capacity
The intentional to learn adds little to memory performance. What matters is how people approach the material they are seeing or hearing.
learning can be good for one sort of retrieval and bad for other sorts of retrieval
context reinstatement - improved memory performance if we recreate the context that was in place during learning
deep but unmatched context is inferior to not so deep but matched
Encoding specificity - what you remember = the stimulus + its context and meaning
Different retrieval paths can = different meanings of what is remembered
maintenance vs elaborative rehearsal
maintenance is rehearsing items with little though about meaning or how they relate to each other
elaborative rehearsal is opposite
intentional learning vs incidental learning
intentional learning is learning with an intention to learn (know you will be tested later)
incidental is learning without the intention to learn
Processing fluency
use of a pathway increases the processing fluency of the pathway - that is, the speed and ease with which the pathway will carry activation
can explain implicit memory priming
What is the feeling of familiarity?
when increased processing fluency, the stimulus will feel special and distinctive
if you’ve seen something recently but it does not feel familiar:
you detect the fluency but attribute it to a different source and therefor cant experience the sense of familiarity
if you havent seen it recently but it still feels familiar:
when the processing of a stimulus is more fluent than you expected, for example if the stimulus was presented a few ms longer than other stimuli. The processing of the stimulus is unexpectedly fluent and you seek an attribution for this fluency, and you are fooled into thinking its familiar
Read
Retrieval paths have a starting and ending point. to use the path u must return to the starting point.
network. A node becomes activated when it receives enough of an input signal to raise its activation level to its response threshold
Activating one node primes nearby nodes though spreading activation
Source memory is essential for reacall; recognition can be achieved either through source memory or through familiarity
What factors shape memory>
involvement with an event, emotion, passage of time
False memories
Intrusion errors - errors in which outside knowledge intrudes into the remembered event (ex. DRM)
False memories are more easily planted if the subject dont just hear about the false event, but also imagine it
False memories = misinformation effect
False memories can be just as emotional as real ones
A feeling of remembering is more likely with correct memories than false ones. However, remembering is not a reliable means to distinguish real from false memories
Real memories are recalled more rapidly (response speed) than false memories
No reliable method to distinguish real from false memories
Forgetting
Hypnosis and drugs do not improve memory recall
Autobiographical memory
Self-reference effect - memory advantage for materials pertaining to the self
Emotion aids memory consolidation
Flashbulb memories are not necessarily correct
Knowledge
graded membership - objects closer to a prototype are better members of the category than objects farther away
converging operations
Read, memory
Mnemonic strategies can help and hurt memory.
Explicit memory can overshadow implicit memory
