Memory and Amnesia

Question 1

are metaphors of memory good

Answer 1

no
account for memory but arent a good way of doing so
based on technology of the time went from wax tablet to computer

Question 2

what is the broad memory process

Answer 2

encoding - processing information into the memory system
storage - retention of encoded material over time
retrieval - getting the information out of the memory storage

Question 3

are memories fixed

Answer 3

no they are representations of what we remember and change all the time
they get manipulated they are not fixed in an archive

Question 4

why can memory fail us

Answer 4

• We may not notice something
• We may notice it but not encode it
• Encode but not consolidate
• Consolidate but not retrieve
• Retrieve it wrongly
• Retrieve correctly but forget it quickly.

Question 5

what is the testing effect

Answer 5

memory is increased when some of the learning period is spent retrieving the to be remembered info
counters the effects of forgetting
actively rehearsing increases learning

Question 6

according to roediger HL should you test immediately after learning

Answer 6

no, testing immediately is bad and rereading produces a better result immediately after. 2 days between learning and revising testing method proves better results

Question 7

does the testing effect relate to the elderly and people with neurological issues

Answer 7

yes
single testing forget more than young or healthy people
repeated testing = people attain much more and age affect disappears if they keep testing

Question 8

what is the difference in question asked between clinical and cognitive neuropsychology

Answer 8

clinical - what has happened to cause symptoms

cognitive - what does pattern of impaired and intact capabilities show about how the normal mind and brain work

Question 9

what are the two traditions of human neuropsychology

Answer 9

1) What functions disrupted by damage to the region x? (classical neuropsych approach) Addresses the questions of functional specialisation converging evidence and functional imaging. Tends to use study group methods.
2) Can a particular function be spared/impaired relative to other cognitive functions. Addresses questions of what the building blocks of cognition are (irrespective of where they are). Tends to use a single case methodology.

Question 10

what is plasticity

Answer 10

the brains ability to change as a result of experience and this persists throughout life
the changes in neural connectivity are greatest in childhood.

Question 11

what is phrenology

Answer 11

• Differences in personality traits manifest in differences in cortical sizes and bumps on the skull
• Crude division of psychological traits e.g love of animals and this is not grounded in science.
• Now discredited but used in the 19th century.

Question 12

how did phrenology contribute to modern day psychology

Answer 12

it was the start of studying parts of brains doing diff things and different parts of the cortex serving diff functions

this has stood the test of time

Question 13

what is functional specialisation

Answer 13

diff areas doing diff things
modern cog neuroscience uses empirical methods to ascertain different functions
doesnt assume each region has one function or each function has a discrete location
does assume some degree of specialisation of neurons in particular regions

Question 14

what is the problem with using single cases for establishing patterns

Answer 14

they show a pattern but some cases dont verify what we want
Black swan analogy always have to look for black swans (karl popper)

is still value in single cases can change the way we think about memory, hard to recreate same injuries to increase study size anyway

Question 15

what is the function of the hippocampus

Answer 15

most encoding and storage occurs here

Question 16

what is a double dissociation

Answer 16

used to determine if an anatomical structure is responsible for a process. need two patients with lesions, one performs well on task a and pathologically on task b. have second ppt that is pathological on a but performs well on b. from this we can infer that task b is related to function b and task a is related to function a and that they are run by different neuronal and cognitive networks

Question 17

what is the short conclusion for when a double dissociation is observed

Answer 17

When double disassociations are observed we are allowed to postulate that the two relevant memory systems involve different cognitive systems possibly mapped onto different neuronal networks

Question 18

what is anterograde amnesia

Answer 18

memory deficit of learning new things.

Question 19

what is the back story for the HM 1950 case study

Answer 19

young man suffered from difficult to treat epilepsy
experimental surgery removed medial temporal lobes (bilaterally) which contained the hippocampi
temporal lobectomy

Question 20

what were the results on HM memory after the surgery

Answer 20

profound amnesia
cant remember new memories (anterograde amnesia)
can still remember how to speak and learn new motor skills
bilateral removal of the hippocampus and surrounding area also lead to retrograde amnesia deificts back 10 years before surgery

Question 21

double dissociation to show that long term and short term memory are different things

Answer 21

HM global amnesiac - normal digit span remembered but impaired ltm
KF - normal ltm for word lists but impaired digit span
dissociation between ltm and stm allows us to postulate that they are controlled by different memory systems and the damage is in different neural systems

Question 22

what are the characteristics of stm

Answer 22

limited capacity
limited duration
holding available recent and relevant information in a temporary store

Question 23

what are the characteristics of ltm

Answer 23

unlimited storage
relatively permanent
store for episodic and semantic memory

Question 24

what are the primacy and recency effects

Answer 24

in free recall more items are recalled from the start of the list (primacy) and from the end of the list (recency)

Question 25

what is the serial position curve

Answer 25

demonstrates the recall of items as you progress through a list and demonstrates the recency and primacy effects on a u shape

Question 26

what are the two case studies that show pathological recency and primacy effect

Answer 26

amnesiacs show no primacy effect and it is pathological, no encoding benefit - HM remember last few words when not interrupted but primacy effect gone.

Patient KF intact primacy effect but an impaired recency effect.

Question 27

how can we use the primacy and recency effects to pin down the kind of amnesia new patients are showing

Answer 27

Two effects predicted the amnesic patients’ impairments and can predict performance on classical psychological tasks.
Can use this to pin down kind of amnesia new patients show.

Question 28

what are the hippocampal and parahippocampal regions responsible for and where are they

Answer 28

hippocampal formation is responsible for episodic memory
parahippocampal region for semantic memory
they are very close in the brain
lesions can impair them both because they’re close

Question 29

what does the case study of KC teach us

Answer 29

intact semantic memory but impaired episodic. cant learn anything but can remember facts from before had motorcycle accident with very severe brain lesion

therefore semantic and episodic memory are different.

MRI displays extensive damage to patient KCs MTL/hippocampus in axial and coronal sagittal views

Question 30

what is the difficulty with defining normality in memory

Answer 30

it’s unreliable hence need to define it within imperfect systems in order to diagnose a pathological memory deficit
example of unreliable memory = eyewitness testimony.

brain reconstructs events and is an organ or re presentation

Question 31

how has evolution selected for an inaccurate brain

Answer 31

ancestors see grass move assume tiger and flee, even though they were wrong 99% of the time. brain incorrectly tells people to run, a computer however would always stay as the probability of it being a tiger is so low its not worth running so the computer would die from the tiger one day.

fearful and false assumptions kept us alive and false memories were selected for evolution

Question 32

what was sir Frederick Bartletts central insight in memory

Answer 32

memory isnt like a tape recorder doesnt faithfully play back our experiences.
Instead reconstructs them imaginatively

Question 33

what was Bartletts study that highlighted the reconstructive nature of memory

Answer 33

presented story of ghosts to ppt of indian origin the people reconstructed based on what they believe. Investigated how memory of a story is affected by previous knowledge, does cultural background and unfamiliarity with a text lead to distortion of memory, reconstructed on cultural schemas

Question 34

what is change blindness

Answer 34

when we encode what we expect to encode dont notice a change

Question 35

what is the study that demonstrates change blindness

Answer 35

ppt asked q by experimenter on the street, during qs a piece of wood goes between and the sight is blocked off, experimenter changes as it passes. ppt doesnt realise because they are wearing similar clothes
information is mediated by our beliefs didnt expect the person to change so they didnt notice

Question 36

what is the study highlighting the inaccuracy of eye witness testimony

Answer 36

loftus and palmer
ppt watch video of car accident, asked to remember if glass broken using different words “hit” vs “smashed” each other was there broken glass. people who heard hit reported broken glass 14% of the time but smashed incorrectly reported smashed glass double the amount of times

memory is unreliable so eye witness testimony is too, questions change the answer

Question 37

what is the disney experiment

Answer 37

waited for tourists to leave and asked whether they remember seeing buggs bunny. lots of people said they did but hes not a disney character so its impossible
expectation that it could have happened caused them to remember something that didnt happen

Question 38

what do we need to sacrifice to plan the future

Answer 38

In order to plan the future, which is what memory is about, we need a system of representations rather than mere recordings of events. The price we pay is a memory system which is fallacious and prone to errors.

Question 39

what real life story proves that memory is reconstructive

Answer 39

karl popper and wittgenstein discussing if there is a science in morality. Wittgenstein picked up a poker from the fire to play with as the conversation got heated. then asked popper to think of an example of a moral stance and he said not to threaten lecturers with a poker as it had offended

The people who were in the room many years later asked to recall the event all 9 said different things

Question 40

what is the information deficit model

Answer 40

dispel a myth e.g vaccines are bad
people agree immediately after
return a month later no notion of what is false ortrue they have mixed into the same thing
educating people can backfire and lead to people remembering misinformation about things

Question 41

what do we need to define for deciding what is pathological

Answer 41

errors and false memories

Question 42

what is forgetting

Answer 42

Forgetting is defined as the lack of availability, partial or total, temporary or permanent, of memories of lived events or of information previously encountered, processed or learned.

Question 43

when does forgetting occur

Answer 43

when something is disregarded, erased or transformed during encoding or retrieval. After the learning phase, information may be inaccessible because of inhibition, removal or interference.

Question 44

what does forgetting identify

Answer 44

the difference between what has been encoded consciously or unconsciously and what is remembered + available for retrieval

Question 45

how does forgetting manifest

Answer 45

omission errors (with or without awareness of not remembering) or commission errors (false memories, intrusions, and substitutions). Different error types reflect different neurobiological and cognitive mechanisms.

Question 46

is forgetting necessary

Answer 46

yes
it reflects normal functioning
essential for categorisation, learning and abstract reasoning
for maintaining social and affective relationships

Question 47

what does pathological forgetting look like

Answer 47

disproportionate or abnormally fast forgetting are pathological
lack of forgetting is also abnormal

Question 48

is forgetting ever voluntary

Answer 48

it can be induced voluntarily to preserve feelings and pursue personal goals in everyday life or following specific instructions in experimental settings

Question 49

how do we forget

Answer 49

trace decay theory - memory trace fades and the memory is no longer availabe

Interference theory - the memory trace is no longer accessible as another memory trace interferes with its retrieval

Question 50

how did Ebbinghaus’s create the forgetting curve

Answer 50

he started the idea of studying forgetting and determined the curve. Memories fade away as function of time. made curve by studying himself. on learning non sensical lists of syllables

Question 51

describe ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve

Answer 51

fast forgetting at the start then slowed down

plateaus later on, important to know if forgetting is abnormal in a patient

Question 52

experiment to show what determines forgetting

Answer 52

ppt repeat material different amounts of times, 6,4 or 2 times. more repeated the more is remembered in immediate memory. independent of initial learning stage the curves are parallel. more repetition = more remembered but decay rate is the same

Question 53

what is the experiment to prove consolidation occurs

Answer 53

psychologists wait at football game until someone had an injury found that these people if asked remembered exactly what happened, followed ambulance and asked again at diff points where they didn’t remember anything. It encoded but faded after 10 mins so failed to consolidate. People with no concussion show same remembering immediately to 20 mins later, people with concussion remember immediately but fades to 0 by 20 mins.

Question 54

how do we separate the passage of time causing forgetting and interference

Answer 54

ask ppt to encode material then either perform interference tasks or rest in a dark room (minimal interference) with ppt with normal and with amnesia. test both 30 mins to week later people in interference remember less than people with less interference, if time alone responsible there would not be a difference due to the condition of what happens during this time. Therefore interference plays a role in forgetting. People with dense amnesia with minimal interference remember much better as compared to the usual condition where they remember 5% as opposed to 60%. This interference changes according to how close the interference happens to the remembering event.

Question 55

how does closeness of interference to presentation of material relate to forgetting

Answer 55

longer interference is postponed the better the performance

the earlier a lack of consolidation occurs the worse remembering is

Question 56

what is the etymology of forgetting

Answer 56

Etymologically, the word “to forget” derives from the old English word forgytan, which is composed by for- and gietan (to grasp) and literally means “to lose (one’s) grip on” (Hoad, 1996). In Italian: dimenticare, from the Latin demens which means “without mind”. In most languages, forgetting denotes a defective memory.

Question 57

what are the adaptive reasons for forgetting

Answer 57

the loss of access to information through disuse is seen not as a failure of the system, but an adaptive feature that facilitates updating.
not retrieved = not reinforced = forgotten
not useful to remember every parking space has in your life

Question 58

describe transient epileptic amnesia

Answer 58

– TEA have often malfunctioning hippocampus as demonstrated by MRI scans. They learn something they are normal, then after 30 mins still normal, encoding, storage and first retrieval normal but showed diff forgetting curve compared to Ebbinghaus. Instead they drop dramatically (fast pathological forgetting)

Question 59

how should forgetting be viewed

Answer 59

Forgetting should not be conceived as the opposite of remembering, rather as functional to remembering, unless it becomes pathological.