Memory: Acquisition and Retrieval Flashcards
What did Murdoch conclude from the following experiment:
Participants were asked to memorise a list of word and they were allowed to say the words in any order (free recall).
Murdoch wanted to know how many words were recalled based on their position in the list.
In this experiment, the first 5 words were recalled better. This is called the primacy effect. This is due to the fact that participants have more time to rehearse these words and transfer them to LTM.
As the words go on, the attention gets divided between the words reducing the ability to remember them.
On the other hand, the recency effect happens for the last words memorized.
Murdoch did a second experiment where participants were asked to count backwards from 30 after the last word in the list. What happened?
Counting prevented the rehearsal of the last words memorized thus dropping the ability to recall them so the information does not make it to the WM.
Double Dissociation
When two mental processes are shown to be independent.
Patient H.M
Patient H.M. was a patient with epilepsy who got their hippocampus removed.
At the time, it was not known that the hippocampus was important for the LTM and so Patient H.M. was not able to create new memories anymore.
Patient K.M.
Patient K.M. had their LTM but not their STM. Usually, memory span if of about 5s to 9s but this patient had a span of 2s.
Is memory retrieval dependent on how it was encoded?
Yes, if you don’t use the same connection you will not retrieve the information.
Context-dependent Learning
When you remember something by finding yourself in the same context as when it was encoded.
In a study by Godden and Baddeley, divers were divided into two groups. Group A had to memorize a list of words underwater and group B had to memorize the same list on land.
Explain the results.
Each group was able to better recall the list of words if they were in the same environment as when they learned it.
There have been other studies that support this. For example, studying in silence vs studying with noise.
Can you still recall the information even if you are not in the same location as when you learned it?
Yes! You can imagine it. Actually, retrieval is not only a physical context but also psychological.
State-dependent Learning
Retrieval of information is better when the mood and mental state of the person is the same when they encoded the information and when they are retrieving it.
True or False
There is a greater benefit if the participant creates their own retrieval cues.
True!
In an experiment by Mantyla, participants were divided into 3 groups. The first groups were allowed to create their own cues and use then for retrieval, the second group gets cues created by someone else and have to use those cues during retrieval. Finally, the third group was given no cues for memorizing and they were given some cues for retrieval.
What is stored in memory?
The material and all the connections.
Encoding Specificity
The idea that you recall better if you are in the same context
Long-term Memory is divided into two subsystems
Explicit and Implicit Memories
Explicit Memories
Conscious memories. Is formed by the Declarative memory (which are events and facts). Declarative memory is divided into Episodic and Semantic memories.
There was a study made with two groups of people. Group A was composed of people with Amnesia, group B was a control group.
The participants were asked to rank from 1 to 5 how much they liked certain words.
After, they were given a list of words to memorize.
What did the researchers conclude?
When participants were asked to recall the memorized words, amnesic participants did very poorly, were as the control group was almost as good as when they were prompted with the 3 first letters.
Amnesic people were much better at remembering the words when the 3 first letter were prompted and they were memorized via ranking their pleasantness.
