Memory and Amnesia Flashcards
The three steps of the memory process:
- Encoding = The processing of information into the memory system
- Storage = The retention of encoded material over time
- Retrieval = The process of getting the information out of memory storage
What is required for memory?
Attention.
Our memory is an organ of reconstruction - this is made more difficult if we do not pay attention. Retrieval requires effort but this can be easier if we are prompted by something we paid attention to.
What is the main brain structure for memory?
Hippocampus - it is one of the few parts of the brain where neurogenesis (plasticity/cell regeneration) occurs which may explain why memory can get lost in retrieval. It is also why it is important to keep re-learning things from the past
What is the capacity of human memory?
Potentially infinite - there is no ‘space’ to fill with our memory it is a constantly changing area that keeps being reconstructed.
What is forgetting?
Functional remembering (unless it becomes pathological)
It is not the opposite of remembering - It allows us to update/modify our memories. It would not be beneficial to remember verbatim information so we forget unused information.
Why is memory unreliable?
Memory is a subjective thing - witnesses of the same event will have different accounts of it depending on their focus/attention/past experiences
The information deficit model
‘If we rely on memories that aren’t precise, we will construct them based on our beliefs’ - this is a poor model as we all do this
For example:
the hidden tiger = the grass moves, could be the wind but humans assume it is a tiger and run (in order to survive). If our brains worked like computers, we would think ‘statistically it is the wind’ and wouldn’t run - this might be right, but the one time it isn’t, we would die
What is cognitive offloading? (the google effect)
This is the cognitive consequence of having free access to all information immediately as we want it - we remember less.
60 Ps were asked to type/learn 40 factual statements - half were told to save their document and half were told to erase it. The erase group remembered significantly more than the save group
Benefits of note taking (Coria and Higham, 2018)
found that recall of a lecture was best for those who took handwritten notes rather than those who passively listened or annotated a PowerPoint.
What is the testing effect?
memory of a topic increases when some of the learning period is spent retrieving the ‘to-be remembered’ information
Meaning, self-testing soon after learning slows forgetting and improves recall
Do expectations influence our memory?
Expectations influence perception and so therefore influence our memory.
for example - the man who thought he was abducted by aliens bought an alien proof hat and hasn’t encountered aliens since - this is because his beliefs changed, he believes it works and so no longer has the expectation of alien encounters.
How does collective representation influence memory? (clock)
Collective representation is a view or image of something held by members of society that elicit widespread individual memories.
For example:
A clock in a train station broke following a terrorist attack and became a symbolic as it stopped at the exact time of the attack.
The clock was then fixed but when they asked train station workers/commuters (who saw the clock almost every da) if it was working (it was) 92% said no
The 92% remembered the clock being broken as it was an iconic symbol
How does previous knowledge effect memory?
Bartlett (1932) War of the Ghosts
He designed this story to see if cultural background and unfamiliarity with a text would lead to distortion of memory when recalling the story.
His hypothesis was that memory is reconstructive and that people store and retrieve information according to expectations formed by cultural schemas
How does change blindness effect memory?
Attention is required to encode memories - but humans aren’t good at this.
A study was carried out where an actor asked a participant for directions then two people carrying a picture came between them (a distraction to change the actor) very few people noticed they were talking to a new person.
this creates issues with EWT and identification as we can’t know if a person’s memories are reliable
What are the two traditions of human neuropsychology?
- Classical neuropsychology approach = what functions are disrupted by damage to region x?
- addresses questions of functional specialisation, tends to use groups study methods - Cognitive neuropsychology approach = can a particular function be spared/impaired relative to other cognitive functions?
- addresses question of what the building blocks of cognition are, tends to use single cases study method
Structure of neuropsychological assessment
- interview = exploring the symptoms
- screening = test battery to identify areas of problem
- neuropsychological examination = reach clinical labelling
- experimental tests = make precise diagnosis
How do we collect evidence for the structure of the mind?
We use individual cases - if we collect enough individual cases of the same phenomenon, we can produce an average.
How do we study individual cases in neuropsychology?
Deficits that arise as a result of brain damage are used to explore how the normal brain operates.
Conversely, theories derived from models of normal cognitive functions can help form questions asked in the examination/diagnosis/rehabilitation of people with cognitive deficits
