memory and amnesia Flashcards
what are the three stages of the memory process?
encoding, storage and retrieval
where is the main memory place in the brain?
hippocampus
where is semantic memory stored?
parahippocampal region
what part does frontal lobe play in memory?
allows us to check and control the memory system
what are the three different types of memory?
episodic, semantic and procedural
what is episodic memory?
memory of events
what is semantic memory?
memory of facts
what is procedural memory?
memory of actions and skills
what are the two types of amnesia?
anterograde and retrograde amnesia
what is anterograde amnesia?
when you can remember the past but cannot learn new things
what is retrograde amnesia?
when you can’t remember the past but can learn new things
what part of the brain did patient HM have removed?
bilateral medial temporal lobes (including hippocampus)
what part of the brain did patient HM have removed?
bilateral medial temporal lobes (including hippocampus)
what kind of amnesia did patient HM have?
both
what is change blindness?
observers failing to notice major differences in their surroundings
what is an example of change blindness?
a man asks for information, when the participant turns around the man asking for info changes, the person being asked doesn’t notice the change in person
what are the real world implications of change blindness? give an example/stat
makes eye witness testimonies unreliable. e.g. 20% of people in an eye witness police line up will pick an innocent actor
what is an example of implanted memories?
people coming out of Disney land were asked if they shook hands with bugs bunny (not a Disney character so impossible. over 50% said they shook his hand
school teachers purse was stolen, she said he had a weird nose, people later reported seeing a weird nose
what does double dissociation mean?
When two related mental processes are shown to function independently of each other
what does double dissociation mean?
When two related mental processes are shown to function independently of each other
where does long term memory take place in the brain?
medial temporal lobe
where does short term memory take place?
left parietal lobe
where does short term memory take place?
left parietal lobe
what is the information deficit model?
saying that public scepticism towards science is cause by a lack of understanding resulting from a lack of information
evidence for the information deficit model
vacines
people were either exposed to nothing or told ‘myths aren’t true, you should vaccinate your children’
those who were exposed to myth debunking retained more myths and were more likely to not vaccinate their children
going against what they’re told by science because they are sceptical
two forgetting hypotheses
decay over time (trace decay theory)
interference
what is interference theory?
we forget because some memory traces interfere with the retrieval of others
what is the graph as evidence for the trace decay theory?
ebbinghaus forgetting curve
what does the ebbinghaus forgetting curve suggest?
that we forget rapidly begin with
forgetting then slows down and becomes an asymptote
what are the two types of interference?
proactive interference and retroactive interference
what is proactive interference?
something you already know stops you learning something new
what is retroactive interference?
later learning hinders the memory of previously learnt stuff
why is forgetting good?
forgetting those things which are not retrieved often makes more relevant information take precedence
forgetting is an adaptive feature that facilitated updating
what was Bartlett’s experiment?
English participants had to read a Canadian Indian folk story
asked to recall the story at different intervals
what were the results of Bartlett’s experiment?
at longer intervals between reading the story and remembering - participants were less accurate
where elements of the story failed to fit the schema of the participant, these elements were omitted from recollection or replaces with something more familiar to them (e.g. canoes became boats)
give some of the cause of amnesia
stroke head trauma (e.g. concussion) brain surgury alzheimer's alcoholism stress malnutrition
what is short term memory?
memory for information currently in mind
what is long term memory?
stored information that is not needed at that point in time
what is the different in LTM and STM capacity?
LTM has basically unlimited capacity
STM has limited capacity
what is implicit memory?
unconscious memory
don’t have to think about it to remember it
built on past experience
e.g. procedural memory (don’t consciously remember how to walk)
where is episodic memory stored?
hippocampal formation
definition of learning
an enduring change in behaviour potential that results from experience
what brain area deteriorates in Huntington’s patients?
caudate nucleus of basal ganglia
what brain area deteriorates in Alzheimer’s patients
medial temporal structures
what is recall?
having to retrieve information from your memory
what is recognition?
having to identify a target from a number of possible targets
what are the two types of long term memory?
declarative (explicit) and non-declarative (implicit)
what are the two types of explicit memory?
semantics and episodic
what are the four types of implicit memory?
procedural, classical conditioning, priming and non-associative learning
what is the difference between science and pseudo science?
EVIDENCE
how can you effectively myth debunk?
fill the gap you create
if you hold a belief and that belief is taken away our mind falls the gap with a false alternative instead
timeline of methods to research memory
introspection –> experiments –> case studies
what is serial position effect?
a words position in a series of words affects how well we remember it
in a list of words, which words do we remember best?
first and last
what are the names of the effect that mean we remember the first and last words in a list best?
primacy effect
recency effect
what are the three ways of retrieving information from memory?
recall
recognition
cued recall
where are context representation and item representation happening in the brain?
context - parahippocampal region
item - perirhinal
what happens in the entorhinal cortex?
send information to hippocampus to put items into context
what is confabulation?
when patients have false memories that they believe to be real
