Memory Flashcards
Remember stuff about memory!
What does memory consist of?
Information we have stored; experiences and general knowledge.
What three mental processes are involved in memory?
Learning information, retrieving that information later on, and using the information.
What four types of information is memory key for processing?
Object recognition, imagery, language, and decision making.
What two things explain how memory is coded?
Levels of mental representation and the nature of representation.
What two things are involved in “levels of mental representation”?
Memory for overall meaning vs. details.
What two things are involved in “nature of representation”?
Perception-like vs. abstract ideas.
How many pictures were presented in the Levels of representation: Visual (Mandler & Ritchey, 1977) study?
8 pictures
What were participants tested on in the Levels of representation: Visual (Mandler & Ritchey, 1977)?
Both old pictures and changed pictures.
What were the independent variables in the Levels of Representation: Visual (Mandler & Ritchey, 1977) study?
Change type, which were either “token” or “type”
In the Levels of representation: Visual (Mandler & Ritchey, 1977) study, what was the “token” condition?
A change in detail.
In the Levels of representation: Visual (Mandler & Ritchey, 1977), what was the “type” condition?
A change in overall meaning.
In the Levels of representation: Visual (Mandler & Ritchey, 1977), what was the dependent variable?
The percentage of correct rejections of changed pictures.
What were the results of the Levels of Representation: Visual (Mandler & Ritchey, 1977) study?
For the “token” condition, there was a 60% correct rejection rate. In the “type” condition, there was a 94% correct rejection rate.
According to Wanner (1968), which is better, our memory for meaning or our memory for actual words?
Our memory for meaning.
What were the conclusions of the Levels of representation: Visual (Mandler & Ritchey, 1977)?
For both visual and verbal, meaning is remembered better than details.
According to Fletcher & Chrystler (1990), when are differences more pronounced?
When there are longer delays.
What is a practical implication of the Levels of representation: Visual (Mandler & Ritchey, 1977) study?
Cognitive economy.
What is cognitive economy?
The need to manage one’s mental resources, including time, effort and specific processing tools.
What is a perception-like mental representation?
Perceptual details are represented.
What are abstract ideas in mental representation?
Perceptual details are stripped away; proposition and networks of propositions.
What is amodal perception?
Perceiving something as a whole when only parts are actually seen.
What is a proposition?
THe smallest unit of information that can stand alone. It has a truth value (can be judged as true or false).
In the statement “Jack searched the NY Times for the weather forecast”, what are the two propositions?
Jack searched the NY Times, and Jack searched for the weather forecast.
What can be represented by a proposition?
Sentences, events, and pictures.
Name a disclaimer about propositions
Alternative “rules” exist; variations of same theme.
What is a propositional network?
Representations containing multiple linked propositions.
What is some evidence of propositional representations.
Words are more strongly connected in memory when they come from the same proposition.
In the Weisberg (1969) study on propositions, what was the procedure?
Participants read and memorized the sentence “Children who are slow eat bread that is cold.” They were then given a cue (bread) and responded with the first word from the sentence that came to mind.
What were the results of the Weisberg (1969) study on propositions?
“Slow” was in a different proposition from the word “bread”, but technically closer to “bread’ in the sentence.
“Cold” was further away from “bread” in the sentence, but in the same proposition.
Participants almost always recalled “cold” rather than “slow” though.
What is the conclusion of the Weisberg (1969) study on propositions?
Connections between concepts in memory depend more on membership in propositions than physical position (proximity) in the sentence.
What was the procedure for Ratcliff & Mckoon (1978) on propositions?
Participants studied four sentences and were then shown words and asked if the words had appeared in any of the sentences.
What were the conditions in the Ratcliff & Mckoon (1978) on propositions?
The relationship between two consecutive test words: From different sentences, from two propositions in the same sentence, and from the same proposition.
What was the dependent variable in the Ratcliff & Mckoon (1978) on propositions?
The “yes” response time for the second word (priming effects).
What were the results of the Ratcliff & Mckoon (1978) on propositions?
Participants were slowest when the two words were from different sentences (671ms), faster when they were from two different propositions from the same sentence (580ms), and even faster when the two words were from the same proposition (560ms).
What did the Ratcliff & Mckoon (1978) study show support for?
Propositions
What do linguists use as a convenient way to talk about propositional networks?
Ellipses and arrows in a diagram.
In a propositional network diagram, what do ellipses represent?
Propositions, relations, and arguments.
In a propositional network diagram, what are the ellipses called?
Nodes
In a propositional network diagram, what are the arrows called?
Links
In a propositional network diagram, what do the arrows indicate?
A word’s semantic case.
In a propositional network diagram, what is a “relation”?
Verbs, adjectives, and other relational terms.
In a propositional network diagram, what is an “agent”?
The “doer” of an action.
In a propositional network diagram, what is a “patient/object”?
The “recipient”
What is a semantic network?
How conceptual knowledge is organized.
In a semantic network, what do the nodes represent?
Concept categories
In a semantic network, what do the links do?
Connect concepts and denote properties.
In a semantic network, why are properties of higher level categories true of lower level categories as well?
They are not redundantly listed (cognitive economy)
In a semantic network, how are categories for concepts developed?
From our experiences over time
What is an exception to concepts of categories being highly similar across individuals?
Episodic memory
What do categories for concepts help us do?
Make inferences (retrieve properties)
In a semantic network, what does the retrieval mechanism do?
Spreads activation
As a baseline, are nodes for most concepts in semantic memory active or inactive?
Inactive
In a semantic network, what happens when a concept is encountered?
The node representing that concept is activated.
What do activated nodes do?
They prime other nearby nodes. Activation spreads via the links, and decays with distance and time.
What was the procedure for the Collins & Quillian semantic network study (1969)?
Participants were given statements and declared them either true or false. The DV was the RT of a correct “true” answer.
What was the conclusion of the Collins & Quillian (1969) semantic network study?
Participants were slower at assessing the statements when the Prime and its paired target were farther removed in the semantic network. Example: A canary (prime) is a bird (target) is closer than “a canary is an animal”
In a lab setting, how might you test the concept of spreading activation in the semantic network?
With true/false verification statements
What is an example of a real world test of spreading activation in the semantic network?
Scheme activation
What is a schema?
A highly elaborated category within the semantic network. One that we encounter often in life.
What is a script?
An event schema - an event you encounter regularly).
What does activation of a schema or script do?
It primes its associated attributes and default values
What does schema activation affect?
How we interpret and recall information
What was the result of Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts study (1932)?
Participants tended to exclude, add, and change information in ways that made the story more consistent with the existing schemas.
In the restaurant script study (A. Anderson, Garrod and Sanford, 1983), what were the conditions?
Within: “40 minutes later, Bill…” and Beyond: 5 hours later, Bill…”
What were the results of the restaurant script study (A. Anderson, Garrod and Sanford, 1983)?
Participants mentioned the main (Bill) more often in the “beyond” condition and the script-dep (waiter) more often in the “within” condition.
Name three things that result from schema activation
Stereotype activation
Reconstructing memories as more schema- consistent
Info remains in foreground when relevant to current script; irrelevant falls to background.
What did Pecher, Zeelenberg and Barsalou (2003) find about Schemas?
Participants had to say if a word and a feature matched (Blender-Loud). Response time was faster when modalities matched from trial to trial (blender-loud, leaves-rustling - both sound modalities)
What did Glenberg and Kaschak (2002) find in their study on schemas (involving a lever)?
Response times were longer when the instruction was to close a drawer, since pulling the lever would contradict the motion of closing a drawer which was simulated in the P’s heads.
What did Stanfield and Zwaan (2003) find in their pencil study?
Participants were faster at responding to “was this object in the previous sentence?” when the position of the pencil in the picture matched the position it would be in in the sentence
Vertical for “Johnny put the pencil in the cup” and horizontal for “Johnny put the pencil in the drawer”
What was found about occluding events in a study by Horton & Rapp, 2003?
Participants read 24 lines of a story. In one condition, her mother stepped in front of the TV, and in the other, she stepped behind it.
The DV was the response rate of a question pertaining to what was on the TV.
Participants were slower at responding when the mother was standing in front of the screen.
This means the participants were picturing the mother in front of the screen, occluding the subject in question.
What is dual-code theory?
Rather than abstract propositional representations, we represent information in combined verbal and visual codes.
When we hear a sentence, we develop an image of what it describes. If we later remember the image, we will remember what the sentence was about, but not the exact words.
If we see a picture and describe what we find important, then later only remember our description, we will only have remembered what we found important at the time.
What is embodied cognition?
The idea that the motor cortex is activated in language. If a person reads the word “kick”, the leg region of the motor cortex becomes activated because we are acting out what the word describes mentally.
What are mirror neurons?
Neurons which become activated when we perform an action, watch someone else perform an action, or hear a person perform an action.
What are abstraction theories?
The idea that we form a concept of something in our brains and compare instances of it to our concept.
What are exemplar theories?
The idea that we only store specific instances in our brain and compare other instances to an average difference of those instances.
What part of the brain is associated with biological categories?
The temporal lobe, and the visual cortex (occipital lobe)
What part of the brain is associated with artifact categories?
The frontoparietal lobes, and motor regions
