Memory- using it not losing it

Question 1

Godden & Baddeley (1975)

Answer 1

Free recall of a list of 40 words was better when the environment (context) matched, whether underwater or on land

Question 2

Morris et al. (1977)
- how were words encoded?
- When asked if items were old or new, which did people remember best?
- When cued with rhyming items, what did people remember better?

Answer 2

• Words were encoded using ‘deep’ vs ‘shallow’ study tasks
• When asked if items were old or new, people remembered semantically encoded ones best (generated to fit sentences)
• When cued with rhyming items, people remembered rhyme encoded ones best (generated to make rhymes)

Question 3

What is an episodic memory made of?

Answer 3

• Details about an event eg. who was there
• Contextual information: time + location, what we were thinking
• Relations (associations) of details: people + time + location
• Reinstating part of a memory can help bring back the rest = contextual cueing / contextual reinstatement

Question 4

Recall versus recognition tests

Answer 4

Free recall (minimal cue): List all your lecturers this year

Cued recall (cue is more informative): What courses does she teach on?

Recognition: Have you seen her before?

Question 5

What can be a powerful contextual memory cue?

Answer 5

Location

Smith (2014)

Question 6

Smith & Manzano (2010)
Study and results

Answer 6

Study: videos with sets of words
Test: recall by writing down as many words as possible
Test with video as cue, or not

Written free recall of words improved by reinstating images from scene videos at test

Memory was dramatically better with this cue (scene reinstated)

Question 7

How do cues work?
- what type of memory?
- global matching models?
- complementary learning systems model:

Answer 7

• Content addressable memory – find by knowing content. Contrast with address addressable, e.g. where people live
• Global matching models: retrieval reflects the match between a cue and all stored memory traces (Clark & Gronlund, 1996)
• Complementary learning systems model: episodic memory representations stored in cortex, partial cue triggers pattern completion by the hippocampus (McLelland et al., 1995)

Question 8

How do cues work?

Answer 8

• features of event, hippocampus combines them
• at point of retrieval get partial cue
• Then get whole process by pattern completion
• Reinstates memory representations that were stored

The pattern completion and pattern separation processes in the context of Teyler and DiScenna’s (1986) indexing theory. Pattern completion: (A) A set of neocortical patterns activated by a particular experience projects to the hippocampal formation and activates a unique set of synapses. The memory for the experiences is stored as strengthened connections among those hippocampal synapses activated by the input pattern (this is the index). (B) A subset of the initial input pattern can activate the index. (C) When this occurs, output from the hippocampal formation projects back to the neocortex to activate the entire pattern. Pattern separation: The hippocampal formation supports pattern separation by creating separate indices to similar input patterns. Note that two similar input patterns (ABCD and CDEF) converge on different representational units in thelowerlevel that represents the hippocampal formation. In contrast, these two patterns would not be separated in the neocortex, so it would have trouble keeping these patterns separated.

Question 9

Encoding and retrieval:
1- how is context incorporated?
2- what helps retrieve memory?
3- what should a cue match?
4- encoding and retrieval are _____?

Answer 9

1- Context is incorporated in the memory trace
2- Cueing with context helps retrieve that memory
3- A cue should match – its processing overlap with – what was encoded (E.g. if you know your memory cue will be a photo of a location, you might encode that context better)
4- Encoding and retrieval are interdependent!- will make it easier to receive given that kind of cue

Question 10

What did Tulving (1974) and Wiseman & Tulving (1976) show?

Answer 10

Tulving (1974): Cue-dependent Forgetting
Apparent ‘Retroactive Interference’ of new word list learning on Free Recall for old lists

But NOT seen in Cued Recall, when specific cues were given for each list

Wiseman & Tulving (1976): Encoding Specificity Principle
Retrieval depends on ‘Informational Overlap’ between stored information and information presented at time of retrieval

Question 11

Smith & Manzano (2010)
Results with number of words tested

Answer 11

Study: videos with sets of words
Test: recall by writing down as many words as possible
Test with video as cue, or not

Results:
Scene cues more effective when each video context was studied with fewer words
Cues better when more diagnostic

Effectiveness of the cue depends on how unique or diagnostic the context is

Question 12

What did Celia Harris argue about memory in lockdown?

Answer 12

When events in our lives become similar to each other as during lockdown, it’s more difficult to find distinctive (diagnostic) cues to retrieve individual event

Question 13

Episodic reinstatement:
1- how are memory traces stored?
2- what happens if a partial cue overlaps with a memory trace?
3- what can this be shown by?

Answer 13

1- Memory traces are stored using some of the same neural representations that allow us to experience the events
2- If a partial cue overlaps with a memory trace it triggers recollection, and this reinstates the rest of the memory trace
3- This reinstatement can be shown with fMRI by looking for reactivation of neural patterns of experimental ‘events’

Question 14

Episodic reinstatement:
1- what did Polyn et al. (2005) measure?
2- how were neural patterns during study discriminated?
3- what happened during recall?
4- how do we ‘relive the past’ during recollection

Answer 14

1- fMRI brain activity patterns when people studied and recalled faces, locations and objects
2- Machine-learning algorithms were trained to discriminate neural patterns during study
3- during recall the same algorithms could ‘read out’ (decode) what (which category) people were recalling
4- Neural reinstatement of memory contents

This is a type of multivariate pattern analysis

Remember that recall = the task, recollection = the episodic memory experience

Question 15

Episodic encoding
1- what do events engage?
2- what is the PFC involved in
3- what are memories encoded as?
4- what does the hippocampus bind?

Answer 15

1- Events engage multiple areas of the cortex
2- organise information
3- a ‘byproduct’ of event processing
4- multi-element memory traces

Question 16

Episodic retrieval:
1- what is episodic retrieval triggered by?
2- what does the hippocampus initiate?
3- what is reinstated?
4- what is the PFC involved in?

Answer 16

1- a cue
2- recollection in response to the cue
3- (some of) the original cortical activity is reinstated
4- organise & monitor

Question 17

Polyn et al. (2005) show about brain activity patterns during recall

Answer 17

Reinstatement started about 5 sec before recall. Preliminary evidence that mental reinstatement (‘self-cueing’) actually triggers recall (but fMRI has poor time-resolution)

Shows that when people are recalling faces, the brain patterns are more similar to the original

Also, before people recall thew words, brain patterns are reinstated

This represented this process of self-cueing (mental representation)

Question 18

Episodic reinstatement:
1- Different types of events have ______?
2- What happens when a cue triggers pattern completion?
3- What can a memory cue be?
4- application?

Answer 18

1- unique patterns of brain activity which get stored in memory traces
2- When a cue triggers pattern completion, reinstatement of these patterns is thought to support recall
3- external (eg a smell, a photo) or internal - deliberate mental reinstatement may also trigger pattern completion
4- Application: the Cognitive Interview for eyewitnesses

Question 19

Diary studies: Linton (1978)

Answer 19

2-3 events recorded each day over 6 years
2 ‘semi-randomly’ picked later, monthly, for recall of details, dates. Delete event file if forgotten.

Qualitative study

When testing herself, 1 memory compared to 2 ect. after the same delay, items that had been repeatedly tested were better remembered

For 4+ tests, they remembered more than 70%

Question 20

Galton (1883)

Answer 20

Breakfast table questionnaire – ask to recall a particular personal episode each day

Question 21

What helps to remember things in the long term?

Answer 21

Testing your memory

Question 22

The testing effect

Hanawalt (1937) results

Answer 22

Testing boosts memory at 1 week

SSSS = study 4 times for 5 mins
SSST = study then recall test
STTT = repeated recall tests

That’s 52% forgetting in the repeated study condition
versus 10% in the testing condition (STTT)!

On immediate memory tests studying can be better

Question 23

(1) Semantic elaboration
- what enriches semantic representations of a memory, why?
- study? Carpenter (2009)
- what does this overlap with?

Answer 23

• Testing may enrich semantic representations of a memory because when we learn something, additional associations are formed around it, giving alternative retrieval routes
• study MOTHER–CHILD
• initial test with cue MOTHER: answer is CHILD
• later, can use associates of the cue, MOTHER, to retrieve the target
• E.g. FATHER: answer is CHILD – this answer is given more often after the practice test compared to a restudy condition

*this overlaps with the second account- by having these additional semantic association it gives you additional retrieval so more different cues

Question 24

In the brain:
- Wing et al. (2013)
- what regions?
- BUT…
- encoding activity?

Answer 24

• Wing et al. (2013) memory encoding during study vs. initial test
• Hippocampus and temporal ‘semantic’ regions - only during testing
• BUT don’t know if semantic processing actually happening AND overall activity in these areas greater during restudy
• Successful encoding activity – showed that people were encoding during the initial test or restudy

Question 25

(2) Episodic context
- when is the context different
- what updates context representations
- what now triggers recall?
- supported by?
- why?

Answer 25

• When item is studied and later tested, the context is different – not only place but also time, internal state
• Testing updates context representations so memory trace now includes both old and new context
• Larger range of potential cues can now trigger recall, as they may overlap with either old or new context
• Supported by findings that a difficult initial test is better e.g., recall MOTHER–C—- versus MOTHER—CHI–
• this is because people have to do more mental reinstatement (thinking back to place, time, internal state)

Question 26

Explain Wimber et al. 2015 study + results

Answer 26

• Learn 2 word-face and word-object pairs
• Test with cues: antique–?
• Practice tests to improve memory for only first pairs
• Indirect fMRI support for context account, strengthen relevant & weaken irrelevant object representations
• Stronger activation for tested items
• Suppression for competitor items
• (In cortical regions that represent face/object memories)

Testing strengthens relevant representations and suppresses irrelevant representations, so reducing the number of associations that retrieval cues trigger - dotted lines are best linear fit

The more they practiced trying to remember which face went with antique, there was a gradual reduction in representations

Question 27

Explain Sekeres et al. (2016) study

Answer 27

Memory for video clips tested over 7 days

Given 40 film clips, then another 40

Higher forgetting of peripheral (perceptual) details than central (gist) information

But cues (reminders = R) re-triggered recollection of the peripheral information

Repeated testing also reduced forgetting of peripheral details

Found that generally, people remembered the gist and forgot the detail

Question 28

• what does the testing effect show?
• what does this suggest about the variables that assist initial encoding

Answer 28

• The testing effect shows that a memory is updated in some way when it is retrieved
• Therefore, the variables that assist initial encoding may NOT be the same ones that benefit longer-term learning.

Question 29

Richards & Frankland (2017)
(maps)
What did they find?

Answer 29

Getting people to learn where certain places where

Store a memory: Kyles bistro is S-W from home

Learn something new: Kyle’s Bistro has moved to N-E
Found- forgot old memory to promote flexibility

Make a prediction: new restaurants often appear to the south
Found- forgot particulars to generalise

To make inference, you need an updated memory

Question 30

Systems consolidation vs Multiple memory traces

Answer 30

Systems consolidation – memories become independent of the hippocampus with time

Multiple memory traces – updating over time. Hippocampus always involved

In either case generalised, context-independent (semantic) memories develop over time
Some episodic memories may become semanticised

Systems consolidation doesn’t differentiate semantic vs episodic and consolidation may or may not involve ‘semanticisation’