Memory- Encoding and recall Flashcards
What is visual encoding?
Memories that are stored visually (think windows on your house)
What is acoustic encoding?
Memories that you heard and can hear again (like humming your favourite song)
What is semantic encoding?
Facts that you don’t really have to think about (like knowing the animal, elephant, and being able to use it in a sentence)
What is cued recall?
When something’s on the tip of your tongue, someone gives you a clue and suddenly you remember it
What is free recall?
When you remember something without cue or clues (all by yourself)
What is recognition?
When you don’t remember something but you recognise it. (Multiple choice questions, you recognise one of the answers more than the others)
What is episodic memory? (LTM)
Memory for events (episodes) from your life. Like your 11th birthday
What is semantic memory ? (not encoding) (LTM)
It’s like your personal encyclopaedia. It holds all the facts and figures and other useful information that you need to know.
What is procedural memory? (LTM)
Procedural memory, also known as muscle memory, is your memory on how to do things. (In my case, how to play the saxophone or clarinet)
How could you remember this sequence of letters? FYIBBCFAQITVKGUSAATM
Chunking (group them into meaningful letters) FYI BBC FAQ ITV KG USA ATM
Tell me a bit about Baddeley’s study
-The aim was to see if there was a difference in the types of encoding in short term and long term memory
-Group A had to remember a list of words that rhymed
Group B had to remember a list of normal everyday words
Group C had to remember a list of synonyms (but they had to wait 20 mins)
Group D had to remember a list of normal words (they also had to wait 20 mins)
-Groups B and D did better than groups A and C, do you remember why?
What is long term memory?
Memories that are stored for long periods of time. There are three types
-Episodic
-Semantic
-Procedural
Things are encoded into your long term memory when they are repeated
Pro and con of Baddeley’s study being taken in a lab
Pro- there are less distractions as it’s a controlled environment and the tests are easier
Con- since it was taken in a controlled environment, the results don’t tell us how the brain works in the real world with background noise and stress.
Pro and con of random sampling
Pro- it includes people and minds of all sorts so the results tell us how everyone thinks
Con- some people that are randomly selected might not be stable or they might have a disability so severe they are unable to do the experiment
Coding, Capacity and Duration in sensory memory
Coding: can be visual and acoustic
Capacity: is very high in sensory memory
Duration: not very long, information remains in your sensory memory for less than half a second unless you pay attention to it
Coding, capacity and duration in short term memory
Coding: tends to be acoustic
Capacity: on average between 5 or 9 items or chunks of information
Duration: less than 30 seconds unless it is rehearsed
Coding, capacity and duration in long term memory
Coding: tends to be semantic
Capacity: potentially unlimited
Duration: potentially up to a lifetime
What is serial position?
Describes the tendency of people to recall the first and last words in a list of words best. It is the position of the words that influences the likelihood of their recall
What is coding?
The format in which information is stored in various memory stores
What is capacity?
The measure of the amount of information that can be held in a memory store
What is duration?
How long information lasts in your memory
What is interference ?
Interference is when we have two conflicting memories. One prevents us accessing the other.
What is reconstruction?
Fragments of stored information are reassembled to make a story. Our cultures and minds reassemble these fragments to make a story that makes sense for us.
Reconstructive memory, social and cultural influences.
Social/cultural expectations may influence our recall. For example. In Bartlett’s War of the Ghosts study, hunting seals was remembered as going fishing, and in that picture with the mugger, people always remembered the mugger being the black man with the open razor.
Effort after meaning
We focus on the meaning of events. Afterwards we make an effort to interpret the meaning into more familiar terms
What is a repeated measures design?
An experimental design where the same participants take part in each condition of the experiment
What is an evaluation?
An evaluation is key criticisms on a psychological study. A good way to make a good evaluation is to have a:
Point
Explanation
and Conclusion
What is context?
The situation in which something happens. Context can act as a trigger to memories, making memory more accurate
Ethical design in psychology experiments
Requires a balancing act between the benefits of the research and the costs or risk of harm to participants. For example, implanting false memories could be seen as unethical
What is false memory?
When you remember something that didn’t actually happen, but it feels like it did
What are false memories based on?
They are based on reconstructive memory
What is primary data?
Data that has been generated by the researcher himself/herself, surveys, interviews, experiments, specially designed for understanding and solving the research problem at hand
What is systematic sampling?
When you have a system for your sampling. For example, say you have 20 people. For your sample you could take every second person to be a participant in the study.
What is a debriefing?
A debriefing is where you tell the participants what the study was about at the end of a study. Like in the ‘lost in a mall’ study they were told which memory was false
One criticism of false memory
It’s unethical. If a false memory is implanted successfully, you have just controlled someone’s memory. Even if you implanted a memory that someone actually used to like cars, you’re taking away their right to an opinion. They’re losing their autonomy
What is an independent measure design?
Where different participants are used in each condition of the independent variable.
What is a matched pairs design?
Where each condition uses different participants, but they are matched in terms of important characteristics, e.g., gender, age, intelligence, etc
What is perception?
The organisation’s n and interpretation of sensory information by the brain to understand the world around us. This may involve basic perceptual processes like separating objects from the background
What is sensation?
The physical stimulation of sense receptors by the environment, such as light striking the retina at the back of the eye or sound waves processed by the ear
What is the difference between sensation and perception?
Can be summed up as the difference between feeling and thinking. Sensation is our body detecting a stimulus in the environment. Perception is how are brain organises and interprets these sensations.
What is Gregory’s constructivist theory?
Gregory suggested that there is a clear difference between perception and sensation. He said that perception is a combination of stimulus information, and the brain using past experience to make sense of the sensations.
What is Gibson’s direct theory?
He saw perception and sensation as pretty much the same thing. He argued that the image which reaches the eye contains all the information we needed to understand the thing we are looking at.
What are visual cues?
Visual information from the environment about movement, distance etc
What are visual constancies?
Our ability to see an object as the same even if the actual image received by the idea has changed
What is retinal disparity?
The way the left and right eye view slightly different images. The size of the difference gives the brain information about depth and distance
What is relative size?
Refers to the fact that smaller objects in the visual field appear further away
What is occlusion?
Describes the fact that objects that hide or are in front of others appear closer to us
What are binocular depth cues?
Cues that are only detected when both eyes are used such as convergence and retinal disparity
What is convergence?
It’s to do with how hard the eye muscles have to work to view objects. The closer an object is, the harder the eye muscles have to work, and this gives information about depth and distance
What is height in plane?
The objects higher up n the visual field appear further away
What is linear perspective?
When parallel lines converge in a way that suggests distance
What are monocular depth cues?
Perceptual cues which can be detected with one eye
Describe the Ponzo illusion
It’s an example of a misinterpreted depth cue. These are usually to do with size or length. In this illusion the horizontal line higher up in gene image appears longer than the horizontal line towards the bottom. Both lines are actually the same size
Describe the Müller-Lyer illusion
Another misinterpreted depth cue. This is also rp do with the distortion of line length. This time the vertical line with the outgoing arrows is perceived as longer than the other line. They are the same size.
Describe Rubin’s Vase
It’s an ambiguous figure. After staring at this illusion for a few seconds, you should be able to see both the faces and the vase. Both are correct so your brain cannot decide which one to focus on
Describe the Ames Room
Another misinterpreted depth cue. The trick is the shape of the room. Although to the observer looking through the peep hole, the room would appear to be square in shape, it’s actually a trapezoid.
What is ambiguity?
The way in which some images or stimuli can be in more than one way
What is fiction?
When a figure is perceived even though it is not part of the image or stimulus presented, for example the Kanizsa triangle
What are misinterpreted depth cues?
Some visual illusions rely on misinterpreted depth cues in order to ‘work’. The brain sees linear perspective in the picture creating the impression of difference, and mistakenly applies the rule of size constancy
What is size constancy?
The brain’s ability to perceive familiar objects as the same size, despite changes in the size of the image on the retina
What are visual illusions?
The unconscious ‘mistakes’ of perception. In fact they are not really mistakes, but are normal, relatively consistent phenomena which are subject to regular rules of perception.
What is motion parallax?
A type of monocular depth cue that provides the brain with important information to do with movement. Objects that are far away appear to move more slowly as we move than objects that are close to us
What is nature? (psychological term)
The aspects of behaviour that are inherited. The term ‘nature’ does not simply refer to traits or abilities present at birth but to any determined by genes, including those that appear, for example, at puberty
What is the Kanizsa triangle and how does it work?
Makes it look like there is a second triangle over the first even though there is nothing there. This works using illusory contours which creates the impression that the overlapping triangle has continuous edges all the way around it
What is the Müller-Lyer illusion and how does it work?
We unconsciously perceive the vertical line with the fins facing down as being the outside corner of a building which would be projecting out at us. At the same time we see the line with the fins pointing up as being the inside corner of a room which would be stretching away from us. This is an example of size constancy and misinterpreted depth cues
Explain optic flow patterns?
When we are moving- in a car, plane, or on foot- the point we are moving towards stays stationary while the rest of the view seems to rush away from it. These optic flow patterns are detected by our eyes and let our brain know that we are moving. The information the brain gets allows us to make judgements about the speeds d direction of movement. If there is no ‘flow’ the brain knows that we are not moving
Gibson’s direct theory of perception said that perception was ‘innate’. What does innate mean?
Innate in this case means that it’s natural, we were born into it and our brain doesn’t have to see something and then perceive it, we can just look at something and know what we do with it
What is inference?
A process involving taking information in front of you and drawing a conclusion about what it means based on other things you know. E.g. someone is smiling, you infer that they are happy or pleased, but then you realise that someone is standing on their foot and their smile was actually a grimace
