Memory: Encoding Flashcards
What 3 things are episodic memories made of?
- Contextual information
- Details about an event
- Relations of details
What did Craik et al (1996) find about divided attention and memory?
Dividing attention during encoding significantly impairs memory
What is the role of the hippocampus in relation to memory?
Binding items with context to create memories
Uncapher and Rugg (2009) conducted an fMRI study on attention and memory; what did they find?
Participants attended to either colour or location;
- attention boosted source memory for the attended feature
- hippocampus activated more when encoding attended features
What is the picture superiority effect?
- Pictures are easier to remember than words
- As are mentally imageable and concrete words
What does Paivio’s (1971) Dual Code Theory suggest?
An image presented with a verbal code produces a richer memory trace
What is a limitation of Paivio’s (1971) Dual Code Theory?
Explains the picture superiority effect but does not predict it
What is the Von Restorff effect?
A memory boost from processing difference in the context of similarity
How did Ensor et al (2019) abolish the picture superiority effect?
They made the words more distinctive using colours and fonts
What 3 things did Borkin et
al (2013) find make data visualisations more memorable?
- Objects
- Colour
- Complexity
What did Naspi et al (2021) find in relation to meaning and memorability?
Images are less memorable when their concepts share more features with other concepts
What did Rust and Mehrpour (2020) find in relation to the memorability of people vs natural scenes, typical vs atypical objects?
- Images with people are memorable, but images of natural scenes aren’t.
- Atypical versions of objects are memorable
What did Bower et al (1975) find in relation to ‘droodles’?
Free recall of (re-drawing) droodles was much better when story was known; understanding reflects prior knowledge schemas
What did van Kesteran et al (2013) find in relation to related vs unrelated course content?
Memory for course-related (schema) information was better than unrelated (no schema) information 24 hours later
What did van Kesteran et al (2014) find in their fMRI study of encoding schema-related vs unrelated facts?
Schema-related:
- higher activation of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)
- lower activation of medial temporal lobe (MTL); inc. hippocampus
- mPFC activation predicted course performance in year 2
What is the prediction error/distinctiveness effect?
Unexpected objects remembered better than neutral objects
What is the schema effect?
Expected objects remembered better than neutral objects
What does the Levels of Processing Theory suggest about memory encoding?
Memory encoding is a byproduct of ongoing processing
What does PFC damage do?
Impairs memory control; does NOT cause amnesia
What is the dorsolateral PFC involved in?
Organisation in encoding and executive functions
What is the ventrolateral PFC involved in?
Semantic encoding and semantic control
What did Long et al (2010) find in relation to the activation of brain areas during encoding?
Activation of DLPFC predicted:
- later semantic clustering
- increased activation of hippocampus
What did Carr et al (2013) find in their fMRI study of distinctive processing?
Faces more likely to be recollected if people judged their distinctiveness; processing distinctiveness boosted hippocampal activation
