Memory

Question 1

Sensory memory

Answer 1

Very brief memories involving the senses

Question 2

Encoding

Answer 2

The process by which information enters our memory, sometimes fairly active, sometimes passive

Question 3

Storage

Answer 3

Process by which information is kept in the memory, connecting one’s pre-existing knowledge is important as information is stored with related concepts

Question 4

Retrieval

Answer 4

Pulling the pieces of memory back together, can be intentional or unintentional
Specific brain areas are associated with this such as the hippocampus

Question 5

Modal model of memory

Answer 5

Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)
Memories classed on duration
Sensory memories - very brief
Short-term memories - fairly brief
Long-term memories - longer held memories
Attention required to pass sensory memory to STM
Processed to LTM if information is processed in connection with prior knowledge

Question 6

Working memory

Answer 6

Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
Visuospatial sketchpad - storage of visual information in working memory
Phonological loop - storage of audio information in working memory
Episodic buffer - handles the brief storage of episodic memories when the visuospatial sketchpad or the phonological loop are engaged
Central executive - the manager of the working-memory system, controls the flow of information between the three storage subsystems, the flow of information between the episodic buffer and LTM, and which part of the system is the current focus of attention

Question 7

Clive Wearing

Answer 7

Clive suffered extensive damage to the hippocampus
He lost the ability to know what was going on around him for more than about a minute
He retained his ability to play the piano
He can hold memories in his STM for a short time, but loses them when his attention moves on
Cannot retrieve episodic and semantic memories

Question 8

Miller (1956)

Answer 8

Magic number 7 +/- 2

People could on average remember 7 +/- 2 things

Question 9

Episodic memory

Answer 9

Like an episode of your life, remembering what you did last thursday

Question 10

Semantic memory

Answer 10

General knowledge but no information about time and place we learned the knowledge, we just know

Question 11

Procedural memory

Answer 11

Memory for skills and tasks

Question 12

Recall tasks

Answer 12

Can be cued or free recall
Free-recall - asked to retrieve information without any cues
Cued-recall - cues aid the retrieval of the information

Question 13

Recognition task

Answer 13

Asked to verify if the information has been experienced before

Question 14

Implicit memory tasks

Answer 14

Designed to measure memory without intentional retrieval

Question 15

Prospective memory

Answer 15

Remembering to perform a task at some point in the future

Question 16

Tulving (1985)

Answer 16

LTM is split into episodic, semantic and procedural memory

Question 17

Squire (1992)

Answer 17

LTM is declarative or non-declarative

Question 18

Declarative memory

Answer 18

Episodic or semantic

Question 19

Non-declarative

Answer 19

Procedural, perceptual, classical conditioning, non-associative learning (reflexes)

Question 20

McClelland et al. (1995)

Answer 20

Events are stored in the hippocampal systems and transferred to the neocortex over time
Talk to each other using thalamo-cortical spindles to cause consolidation

Question 21

Catastrophic interference

Answer 21

Trying to introduce new information too quickly overwrites other information, introducing it more slowly produces more stable long-term memory

Question 22

Electrodes in rodents’ brains found that activation of neurons (the neurons activated when learning something) is replayed …

Answer 22

At high speed during sleep, believed to be how the consolidation of information happens

Question 23

Nadel & Moscovitch (1997)

Answer 23

Hippocampal complex encodes all information with is attended to
The facts are extracted and stored in the neocortex
There is always a level of contextual information even in semantic memory

Question 24

Atienza & Cantero (2008)

Answer 24

Asked participants in encoding phase if pictures were neutral, positive or negative and the intensity of this feeling
Asked 1 week later if the pictures were old or new, and if old, were they known or remembered
Half were stopped from going to sleep after encoding phase
Those whose sleep was prevented remembered less than those who slept
Memory consolidation was prevented due to lack of sleep
Semantic memory wasn’t affected as information is already there (known images were the same)

Question 25

Why do we not have perfect recall?

Answer 25

Memory is subject to various influences (suggestibility, misattribution etc)
Memory is reconstructive and not faithful recording

Question 26

Schacter (2001) 7 sins of memory

Answer 26

Persistence 
Transience 
Absentmindedness 
Blocking 
Bias 
Source misattribution 
Suggestability

Question 27

Persistence

Answer 27

Unwanted intrusions of memory

Question 28

Transience

Answer 28

Forgetting may result from insufficient consolidation

Question 29

Absentmindedness

Answer 29

Lack of attention during encoding

Question 30

Blocking

Answer 30

When trying to remember something, it is blocked, error of retrieval

Question 31

Bias

Answer 31

Expectation can affect how a memory may be perceived

Question 32

Source misattribution

Answer 32

Remembering information correctly but misremembering where the information came from (saying you remember a word from a list but actually you just know it)

Question 33

Suggestibility

Answer 33

Different words used affect how people recall an event (Loftus eye-witness testimony)

Question 34

James (2004)

Answer 34

Participants were shown faces and told their name and occupation
Some could be occupation or name (eg Cook)
More name errors were made than occupation errors
Occupation spreads more activation and therefore easier to remember

Question 35

Loftus and Palmer (1974)

Answer 35

Participants asked to watch car crash and asked how fast the car was going when it hit/smashed/collided/bumped/contacted
Speed estimate higher for more violent verbs

Question 36

Misinformation effect

Answer 36

Loftus and Palmer
Asked if the participants saw any broken glass
More participants in the smashed condition said they did when there was no glass in the scene
This is a false memory caused by misinformation

Question 37

War of Ghosts

Answer 37

Participants presented with a weird story
People added things in and changed things during recall
Because the story didn’t fit with their cultural expectations

Question 38

DRM paradigms

Answer 38

Roediger & McDermott (1995)
Participants given list of words united by theme but without the most obvious word
When asked to recall the list they often recalled the obvious word which wasn’t on the list
Making up a memory

Question 39

Critical lure

Answer 39

Related word that was not part of the list

Question 40

Unrelated lure

Answer 40

Unrelated word

Question 41

Loftus and Pickerell (1995)

Answer 41

Participants given information about 4 events, 3 true and 1 false
Asked to write details about the events and provide measure of clarity of memory
Interviewed 2 weeks later and 4 weeks later
29% remembered false events as being true

Question 42

Ost et al. (2013) false memories

Answer 42

No correlation between broad range of misinformation and DRM effects measures
Thus, DRM false memories and misinformation effect false memories do not appear to be equivalent and therefore not underpinned by the same mechanisms

Question 43

How do false memories in DRM paradigms happen?

Answer 43

Activation spreads when someone tries to remember something
Because activation spreads to the related lure, people misattribute the knowledge of a word as having remembered the word from the list