Memory Development

Question 1

What is the Modal Model of Memory

Answer 1

•	Memory can be an item (information) and a process (storing and retrieval of information)
it includes:
o	Sensory
o	Short term or working
o	Long term

Question 2

What is sensory memory?

Answer 2

Start with sensory information which is filtered to short-term/ working memory by paying attention – important things are put into short term memory (ie listening in lecture)
o Complete in infancy, auditory is quite good
o Visual is limited and not as developed as auditory in infancy

Question 3

What is short term/working memory?

Answer 3

Also known as working memory because this is where information is manipulated and acted upon consciously
o Increases with age in size, speed and accuracy
o Tied to frontal lobe
o Selected information is passed to long term memory where it is encoded

Question 4

What is bottom up processing?

Answer 4

in the bottom-up processing approach, perception starts at the sensory input, the stimulus. Thus, perception can be described as data-driven. For example, there is a flower at the center of a person’s field. The sight of the flower and all the information about the stimulus are carried from the retina to the visual cortex in the brain. The signal travels in one direction.

Question 5

what is top down processing?

Answer 5

Top-down processing is defined as the development of pattern recognition through the use of contextual information. ie. hard to read handwriting, try to understand gist of entire paragraph rather than each individual word

Question 6

attention

Answer 6

older children better able to focus attention for longer periods

Question 7

inhibition

Answer 7

related to frontal lobes, and requires suppressing an active process and resisting interference
o Younger children lack inhibition
o Adults who have damage to their frontal lobe share this

Question 8

memory application for ADHD

Answer 8

• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is when attention and inhibition are seriously compromised
• 5-11% children in the US, more common in boys
• Difficulty with scholastic achievement
• Evolutionary psychologists speculate ADHD may be on a continuum of excitation/ inhibition
• May help be more vigilant (distracted by new stimuli) and respond quicker

Question 9

Barkley study

Answer 9

o Poorer on working memory
o Less proficient working memory
o Poorer delay of responses – have difficulty waiting for rewards
o Less likely to use strategies on memory

Question 10

long term memory facts

Answer 10

• Visible even in older fetuses
• See habituation or change in heart rate patterns when playing a song on pregnant mothers’ abdomens (9 months)
• Newborns show preference for stimuli exposed to prenatally
o Sounds and tastes

Question 11

long term memory (2 types)

Answer 11

o Nondeclarative: learned habits and skills (implicit)
- Unconscious, related to cerebellum and basal ganglia
- Motor skills, conditioning effects
o Declarative: facts and autobiographical memory (explicit)
- Semantic: knowledge of language, rules, concepts
- Episodic: memory of personal experiences
- Conscious, related to PFC and hippocampus- develops after 18 months

Question 12

long term memory - implicit

Answer 12

Implicit:
• Processed similarly at different ages
• Developmental invariant hypothesis
o Saying that no matter the point in development the processing is the same

Question 13

long term memory - explicit

Answer 13

Explicit:
• Script-based
• Role of parents in teaching children to remember
• Develops around 18 months because you need language to use this

Question 14

implicit vs explicit LTM

Answer 14

Implicit memory develops earlier and is more robust in resisting brain injury
• Suggest implicit memory is evolutionarily older than explicit (can be observed in animals)
• LT memory has some domain general components, but also has domain specific (eg. Math and science)

Question 15

investigating infant memory: Novelty preference

Answer 15

• Show a stimuli (e.g., bear), and put a delay
• Show child toy from before and a new toy
• If they look longer at the old toy they recognize it
• Shows preference (longer looking times) for a novel stimulus is taken as evidence for memory of original

Question 16

investigating Infant Memory: Conjugate Reinforcement

Answer 16

• Baseline kicking rate (3 minutes, unattached to mobile)
• Reinforcement period (9 minutes, ribbon attached to mobile and leg – if they move leg mobile moves)
• Delay
• Test period (unattached leg from mobile and see how much infant kicks)
• Will they return to baseline kicking amount and speed or reinforcement speed?
• Found that if the context changes (ie. Move from crib to play pen) the results are not as good

Question 17

Infant Memory: Deferred-Imitation

Answer 17

• Starts around 9 months
• Novel actions on objects
o Eg. Bauers three step sequence of having a metal post, striking with mallet
 Demonstrate that they will hang piece of metal and hit with mallet
• Delay
• Test
o See if they copy the behaviour
o 50% of 9 month olds could do this and they need many demonstrations

Question 18

Neurological basis of infant memory

Answer 18

• Long-term Memory requires hippocampus, PFC in temporal lobe
• Most of hippocampus is adult-like at birth
• Dentate gyrus (part of hippocampus- important for episodic memory) develops after birth
• Frontal cortex for encoding and retrieving declarative memories, slow to develop

Question 19

infantile amnesia

Answer 19

• Inability to remember autobiographical memories of childhood (before ages 3 or 4)
o Freudian account – memories repressed to preserve ego
o Memory as action patterns (pre verbal)
o Sense of self
o Verbatim vs fuzzy trace (gist)
 Children try to remember EVERYTHING but it can be difficult to do this

Question 20

what is event memory

Answer 20

memory for things that happen during course of day
o Doesn’t involve effort
o Children attend to different stimuli than adults, often irrelevant items and events

Question 21

script based memory

Answer 21

o Tend to remember recurring events
o Facilitate storage of consistent memory
o BUT leads to loss of info for individual episodes

Question 22

role of parents in memory

Answer 22

reminiscing, asking questions/cues,
o Making inferences
o Eg. American parents talk to children about 3x more about past events than Korean parents which influences autobiographical memories

Question 23

children as eyewitnesses: memory processes

Answer 23

. Memory Processes: encoding, storage, retrieval
Encoding: representation of event
Storage: info after witnessing
Retrieval: manipulation at time of testing

Question 24

children as eyewitnesses: focus of study

Answer 24

Focus of study by which the type of information being assessed

Question 25

children as eyewitnesses: personal factors

Answer 25

Personal factors: developmental and associated social, cognitive and emotional skills

Question 26

children as eyewitnesses

Answer 26

• Open-ended free-recall questions, young children recall less than older children, but what they recall is central and accurate
• Correct and incorrect recall increases in cue—recall questions, reducing accuracy
• The more specific the question the more suggestable the child
• Accuracy of memory related to:
o Length of delay
o IQ
o Level of stress – moderate levels may make it easier but too high or too low can impede on accuracy
o Interviewer characteristics
o Knowledge – likely to recall something that usually happens in the scheme even if it didn’t

Question 27

Percentage Correct and Incorrect to Misleading Questions (Cassel & Bjorklund, 1995)

Answer 27

• With misleading questions children are more suggestable than adults (ie. The girl allowed the boy to take the bike right?”
• Correct misleading questions children more accurate

Question 28

perspective memory: mental time travel

Answer 28

• Remembering to do something in future
• Motivation has a huge role
• Sommerville et al. (1983)
• Parents remind 2, 3, 4 year olds:
o Low interest (remind me to buy milk at store tomorrow)
o High interest (buy candy at store tomorrow)
o Short delays (5 min or less)
o Long delays (later in the day, tomorrow)
• High interest short delay most memory