Memory

Question 1

What are the subsystems of sensory memory?

Answer 1

Iconic store (visual input)
Echoic store (auditory input)

Question 2

What was Sperlings sensory memory study? (1960)

Answer 2

12 letters flashed for 50ms
Immediate recall of identified letters
Poor recall= 3-5 letters
Why?
Not enough time to scan all letters?
Scanned all letters but memory faded before recall?
-high medium and low pitches signalled for row to remember
Results
Most participants recalled all 4 letters
Delayed tone impaired performance
Conclusion: scan of full array but faded too quickly to be read - iconic memory only less than a second

Question 3

Describe the short term memory/working memory

Answer 3

Limited
Capacity: 7 +/- unrelated items (Miller 1956)
Duration: seconds if rehearsed
Mental workspace that stores information and uses it actively
Assessing short term memory: e.g. Digit span

Mental workspace that temporarily stores information and processes info
Short term memory too passive

Question 4

What are Baddelelys working memory components (2002) ?

Answer 4

CENTRAL EXECUTIVE
phonological loop
Episodic buffer
Visuospatial sketchpad

Question 5

What is the phonological loop do?

Answer 5

Related to sound, mental representations of sounds (spoken words etc)
Articulating rehearsal system
Phonological storage

Question 6

What is the episodic buffer ?

Answer 6

Temporary storage space for infos

Question 7

What does the visuospatial sketch pad do?

Answer 7

Mental representations of visual and spatial infos

Question 8

Describe long term memory

Answer 8

Recognition vs recall
Word lists
Figures
Information
Faces/people
Explicit - declarative, really aware of what we are doing have experienced, consciously aware (episodic) and what we learned at school, general things (semantic)
Implicit - non-declarative, everything that we remember without being able to remember how we remember it, procedural (practicing at getting better at something) conditioning (little Albert, something changes. E.g behaviour but not consciously aware) priming (UNI_)

Question 9

What is Atkinson and Shiffrins three stage model of memory (1968)?

Answer 9

Sensory memory (less than a second) ATTENTION ENCODING -> short term memory /working memory (7+/-2 seconds) ENCODING RETRIEVAL ->/

Question 10

Evaluate the factors that influence memory

Answer 10

One concept primes another
Spreading activation of related concepts
Nature of stimulus
-distinctive items/atypical behaviour is easier to recall
-cues help recall
Environmental, physiological, psychological

Question 11

What are the memory processes?

Answer 11

Encoding-information is processed so that it can be stored for later retrieval
Storage- placing newly acquired information into working memory or long term memory for later retrieval
Retrieval- re-accessing information from the past, which have been encoded and stored

Question 12

How do we enhance encoding (memory)?

Answer 12

Mnemonics (eg acronyms) 
OCEAN 
Method of loci (Yates, 1996) 
^relating items to something else 
Each location serves as a cue 
Verbal and visual (possibly semantic) coding 
Dual coding theory (Paivo, 1969) 
^we use more than one code to encode information

Question 13

What is a context-dependent memory?

Answer 13

Same environment for encoding and retrieval= better recall

External cues

Question 14

What is a state dependent memory?

Answer 14

Drugs/alcohol

Alcohol and recall- learning transfer was better in A-A condition than A-S

Question 15

What is a mood dependent memory?

Answer 15

Not reliable findings for better recall when in the same mood as when info encoded (e.g. Happy - happy)
BUT
Mood-Congruent-recall
Happy mood -> better recall of positive events
Better recall for emotional events

Question 16

What is a flashbulb memory?

Answer 16

Vivid, easily recalled, surprising

Question 17

What are the theories of forgetting in healthy participants?

Answer 17

Sensory memory= unattended information is lost
Short term memory= unrehearsed information is lost
Long-term memory= some information may be lost over time

Transience=decay of memory trace/time and disuse e.g. Languages being learned at school
^think of the serial position effect, memory is enhanced for early and late items and middle items are more effected by interference
^new memories can interfere with old ones e.g. Retroactive= new info interferes with old knowledge and Proactive= old info interferes with recall of new info
Blocking= tip of the tongue experience
^temp inability to retrieve information that is stored in memory
^we might produce related words (in sound or meaning) or we know the first letter
(Most in elderly or amnesic patients)
Absentmindedness= participants perform worse when they have to monitor two simultaneously presented tasks compared to being able to fully attending one task, occurs often during routine activities when less attention is required but more procedural me,our

Question 18

What is the enhancing of neural processing that results in the strengthening of synaptic connections?

Answer 18

Long term potentiation

Question 19

Automatic behaviours have been closely linked to the activation of the _______ through PET scanning studies

Answer 19

Frontal cortex (often associated with the experience of absentmindedness)

Question 20

A memory aid that associates info with mental images of locations is known as______

Answer 20

The method of loci

Question 21

What is the process for keeping info in short term memory?

Answer 21

Rehearsal

Question 22

What is the memory for skills called?

Answer 22

Implicit memory

Question 23

What is misattribution?

Answer 23

Distortion
Assigning a recollection or an idea to the wrong source
E.g. Witnessing an event and viewing photos later and people from photos misidentified as being involved in event (Brown et al 1997)

Question 24

What is suggestibility?

Answer 24

Distortion
Misleading info
Participants saw video of a car crash what happens if misleading information is given afterwards?
“How fast were the cars when they…contacted, hit, bumped into, collided, smashed?”
-more severe eg if said smashed then the participant said the car was going faster
(Loftus & Palmer 1974)

Question 25

What is bias?

Answer 25

Distortion
Knowledge, beliefs and feelings influence recollection of experiences
CONSISTENCY BIAS: Altering the past to fit the present
CHANGE BIAS: exaggerating differences between past and present
^ rating your relationship each year and if strength of love has increased whereas rating shows no difference
EGOCENTRIC BIAS: distorting the past to make us look better
E.g. How many As and Ds did you get in secondary school? More likely to remember As

Question 26

What is the earliest memory?

Answer 26

Adults= rarely recall events before the age of 3, spares memory for age 3-7 (not able to form episodic memory?)
Children (5-10)= frequently recall events when they were younger than 1 year old

Early episodic memory is influenced by current age
Memory increases with development and maturation
(Madsen & Kim 2016)

Question 27

Which areas of the brain are for what kind of memory?

Answer 27

Prefrontal cortex= working memory
Inferolateral temporal lobe= semantic memory
Supplementary motor area, basal ganglia (putamen), cerebellum= procedural memory

Question 28

Describe how the brain is effected by AH disease

Answer 28

Progressive brain disease
Impaired LTM and WM
-spreading from temporal lobe (including hippocampus) to frontal lobe and finally other brain areas