Memory

Question 0

How long does sensory memory last?

Answer 0

Only a few seconds.

Question 1

What are the 3 stages of memory?

Answer 1

Sensory, short term, and long term.

Question 2

What is iconic memory?

Answer 2

The sensory memory for vision

Question 3

Describe George Sperling’s experiment involving iconic memory.

Answer 3

Participants were shown a group of letters for a fraction of a second and were told to write them down. They could write part of the letters down, but by the time they wrote down the first letters, they had already forgotten the last ones. This shows sensory memory exists, but only for a few seconds.

Question 4

What is backward masking? Who discovered this?

Answer 4

Ulric Neisser discovered backward masking. This is when subjects are exposed to a bright flash of light or a new pattern before the iconic image fades, the first image will be erased or forgotten. It works for the auditory system as well.

Question 5

What is an icon?

Answer 5

A brief visual memory

Question 6

What is sensory memory for auditory sensations called?

Answer 6

Echoic memory

Question 7

What is working memory?

Answer 7

The type of short term memory that is needed to perform the task that someone is working on at that moment.

Question 8

What did George Miller find about STM?

Answer 8

It has the capacity of about 7 items (+ or - 2 items).

Hint: Think phone numbers (Ex./ 555-4567)

Question 9

What is the key to keeping items in the short term memory and transferring them to long term memory?

Answer 9

Rehearsal (repeating or practicing)

Question 10

What are the 2 types of rehearsal?

Answer 10

Primary (maintenance) rehearsal and secondary (elaborative) rehearsal

Question 11

What is primary or maintenance rehearsal?

Answer 11

Simply repeating material in order to hold it in STM.

Question 12

What is secondary (elaborative) rehearsal?

Answer 12

Organizing and understanding material in order to transfer it to LTM

Question 13

What is interference? What are the 2 types?

Answer 13

Interference is how other information or distractions cause one to forget items in the STM. 2 types are Proactive and retroactive interference.

Question 14

What is proactive interference?

Answer 14

Disrupting info that was learned BEFORE the new items were presented, such as a list of similar words. It causes proactive inhibition.

Question 15

What is retroactive interference? What does it cause?

Answer 15

Disrupting info that was learned BEFORE the new items were presented, such as a list of similar words. It causes retroactive inhibition.

Question 16

What is Long-term memory retention measured by?

Answer 16

Recognition, Recall, and Savings

Question 17

What does recall require?

Answer 17

Recall requires that subjects generate information on their own.

Question 18

What are the 2 types of recall? What do they mean?

Answer 18

Cued recall begins the task; fill-in-the-blank tests are an example. Free recall is remembering with no clue.

Question 19

What does Savings measure? How does it do this?

Answer 19

Savings measures how much info about a subject remains in LTM by assessing how long it takes to learn something the second time as opposed to the first time.

Question 20

What is the encoding specificity principle?

Answer 20

Material is more likely to be remembered if it is retrieved in the same context in which it was stored. LTM is subject to this.

Question 21

What type of memory consists of details, events, and discrete knowledge?

Answer 21

Episodic memory

Question 22

What type of memory consists of general knowledge of the world?

Answer 22

Semantic memory

Question 23

What type of memory involves knowing “how to” do something?

Answer 23

Procedural memory

Question 24

What type of memory involves knowing a fact?

Answer 24

Declarative memory

Question 25

What type of memory involved knowing something and being consciously aware that you know it? An example is knowing a fact.

Answer 25

Explicit memory

Question 26

What type of memory involves knowing something without being aware of knowing it?

Answer 26

Implicit Memory

Ex./ An amnesia patient had completed a mirror drawing several days in a row and each day his performance increased, but each day he reported never having done the task before.

Question 27

Describe the forgetting curve.

Answer 27

The forgetting curve depicts a sharp drop in savings immediately after learning and then levels off, with a slightly downward trend.

Question 28

True or False:

Hermann Ebbinghaus came up with the learning curve AND the forgetting curve.

Answer 28

True.

Ebbinghaus was the first to study memory systematically.

Question 29

Is memory reconstructive or rote? That is, are people more likely to remember ideas of a story or details and grammar?

Answer 29

People are more likely to remember ideas, called reconstructive. Fredrick Bartlett discovered this.

Question 30

Allan Paivio suggested the dual code hypothesis. What is this?

Answer 30

The idea that items will be better remembered if they are encoded both visually and semantically (with understanding).

Question 31

Explain depth of processing. Who came up with this idea?

Answer 31

Ferguson Craik and Robert Lockhart assert learning and recall depend on the depth of processing. Different levels exist from the most superficial phonological level to the deep semantic (meaning) level. The deeper and item is processed, the easier it is to learn and recall.

Question 32

What did Elizabeth Loftus find about the memory of traumatic events?

Answer 32

She found that the memory of traumatic events is altered by the event itself and by the way that questions about the event are phrased. Example of cars “crashing” or “rate upon impact.”

Question 33

Brenda Milner wrote about a patient “HM.” What was his story?

Answer 33

He was given a lesion of the hippocampus because he suffered from severe epilepsy. After the surgery, he could remember everything before the surgery and store more STM’s, he could no longer form LTM’s.

Question 34

What is serial recall?

Answer 34

A list- such as the USA presidents- is recalled in order.

Question 35

What are primacy and recency effects?

Answer 35

First and last few items learned are easiest to remember whereas the ones in the middle are forgotten.

Question 36

Serial anticipation learning. What is it?

Answer 36

Similar to serial learning, instead of being asked to recall an entire list of items, the subject is asked one item at a time.

Question 37

What is the type of learning we use when we study foreign languages?

Answer 37

Paired-associate learning.

We pair words together and associate them together. When I study Portuguese I pair the English word with the Portuguese word.

Question 38

What is decay theory or trace theory?

Answer 38

One of the 2 main theories in the origin of forgetting. It posits that memories simply fade with time. This theory has been called too simplistic because other activities are known to interfere with retrieval.

Question 39

What is interference theory?

Answer 39

One of the two main theories that suggests the origin of forgetting. It suggests that competing information blocks retrieval.

Question 40

What are memory cues that help learning and recall called?

Answer 40

Mnemonics

Question 41

What does the generation-recognition model suggest?

Answer 41

Anything that one might recall should be easily recognized.

Question 42

What phenomenon has occurred when a certain memory is on the verge of being retrieved but is not successfully retrieved?

Answer 42

Tip-of-the-toungue phenomenon

Question 43

What is state-dependent memory?

Answer 43

Similar to state-dependent learning. Retrieval is more successful if it occurs in the same emotional state or physical state in which encoding occurs.

Question 44

What is the brain’s tendency to group similar items together when they they are learned together or not?

Answer 44

Clustering

Question 45

What is another name for photographic memory?

Answer 45

Eidetic imagery.

It is more common in children and in rural cultures.

Question 46

What are memories that seem to be burned into the brain?

Answer 46

Flashbulb memories

Question 47

What is the Zeigarnik effect?

Answer 47

The tendency to recall uncompleted tasks better than completed ones.

Question 48

Give an example of the cocktail party effect.

Answer 48

A person can attend to one salient message (like their own name) and tune out others.