modules 23-25 - memory

Question 1

What is memory and how is it measured?

Answer 1

Memory is learning that persists over time, through the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information. Evidence of memory may be seen in an ability to recall information, recognize it, or relearn it more easily on a later attempt. Psychologists can measure these different forms of memory separately.

Question 2

How do memory models help us study memory, and how has later research updated the three-stage information-processing model?

Answer 2

Psychologists use memory models to think about and explain how our brain forms and retrieves memories. Information-processing models involve three processes: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Our agile brain processes many things simultaneously by means of parallel processing. The connectionism information-processing model focuses on this multitrack processing, viewing memories as products of interconnected neural networks. The three processing stages in the Atkinson-Shiffrin model are sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. This model has since been updated to include important newer concepts, such as working memory and automatic processing.

Question 3

How do explicit and implicit memories differ?

Answer 3

The human brain processes information on dual tracks, consciously and unconsciously. Many explicit (declarative) memories (our conscious memories of facts and experiences) form through effortful processing, which requires conscious effort and attention. Implicit (nondeclarative) memories (of learned skills and classically conditioned associations) happen without our awareness, through automatic processing.

Question 4

What information do we process automatically

Answer 4

In addition to skills and classically conditioned associations, we automatically process incidental information about space, time, and frequency, and familiar or well-learned information, such as sounds, smells, and word meanings.

Question 5

How does sensory memory work?

Answer 5

Sensory memory feeds some information into working memory for active processing there. An iconic memory is a very brief (a few tenths of a second) sensory memory of visual stimuli; an echoic memory is a 3- or 4-second sensor memory of auditory stimuli.

Question 6

What is our short-term memory capacity?

Answer 6

Short-term memory capacity is about seven bits of information, plus or minus two, but this information disappears from memory quickly without rehearsal. Our working memory capacity varies, depending on age and other factors, but everyone does better and more efficient work by avoiding task-switching.

Question 7

What are some effortful processing strategies that can help us remember new information?

Answer 7

Effective effortful processing strategies include chunking, mnemonics, and hierarchies. Each boosts our ability to form new memories.

Question 8

How do distributed practice, deep processing, and making new material personally meaningful aid memory?

Answer 8

Distributed practice sessions (the spacing effect) produce better long-term recall. The testing effect is the finding that consciously retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information enhances memory. Depth of processing also affects long-term retention. In shallow processing, we encode words based on their letters or sound. Retention is best when we use deep processing, encoding words based on their meaning. We also more easily remember material when we learn and rephrase it into personally meaningful terms, the self reference effect.

Question 9

Retrieving information that is not currently in your conscious awareness but that was learned at an earlier time is referred to as:

Answer 9

recall

Question 10

Which parts of the brain are important for implicit memory processing, and which parts play a role in explicit memory processing?

Answer 10

The cerebellum and basal ganglia are important for implicit memory processing, and the frontal lobes and hippocampus are key to explicit memory formation.

Question 11

Which brain area responds to stress hormones by helping to create stronger memories?

Answer 11

The amygdala

Question 12

What is the increased efficiency at the synapses, evidence of the neural basis of learning and memory, called?

Answer 12

LTP: long-term potentiation

Question 13

What is priming?

Answer 13

Priming is the activation (often without our awareness) of associations. Seeing a gun, for example might temporarily predispose someone to interpret an ambiguous face as threatening or to recall a boss as nasty.

Question 14

When we are tested immediately after viewing a list of words, we tend to recall the first and last items best, which is known as…

Answer 14

the serial position effect.

Question 15

What is the capacity of long-term memory? Are our long-term memories processed and stored in specific locations?

Answer 15

Our long-term memory capacity is essentially unlimited. Memories are not stored intact in the brain in single spots. Many parts of the brain interact as we encode, store, and retrieve memories.

Question 16

What roles do the frontal lobes and hippocampus play in memory processing?

Answer 16

The frontal lobes and hippocampus are parts of the brain network dedicated to explicit memory formation. Many brain regions send information to the frontal lobes for processing. The hippocampus, with the help of nearby brain networks, registers and temporarily holds elements of explicit memories (which are either semantic or episodic) before moving them to other brain regions for long-term storage. The neural storage of long-term memories, which is supported by sleep, is called memory consolidation.

Question 17

What roles do the cerebellum and basal ganglia play in memory processing?

Answer 17

The cerebellum and basal ganglia are parts of the brain network dedicated to implicit memory formation. The cerebellum is important for forming and storing classically conditioned memories. The basal ganglia are involved in motor movement and help form procedural memories for skills. Many reactions and skills learned during our first four years continue into our adult lives, although we cannot consciously remember learning these associations and skills (infantile amnesia).

Question 18

How do emotions affect our memory processing?

Answer 18

Emotional arousal causes an outpouring of stress hormones, which leads the amygdala to boost activity in the brain’s memory-forming areas. Significantly stressful events can trigger very clear flashbulb memories. Through rehearsal, memory of personally important experiences largely endures.

Question 19

How do changes at the synapse level affect our memory processing?

Answer 19

Long-term potentiation is the neural basis for learning and memory. In LTP, neurons become more efficient at releasing and sensing the presence of neurotransmitters, and more connections develop between neurons.

Question 20

How do external cues, internal emotions, and order of appearance influence memory retrieval?

Answer 20

External cues activate associations that help us retrieve memories; this process may occur without our awareness, as it does in priming. The encoding specificity principle is the idea that cues and contexts specific to a particular memory will be most effective in helping us recall it. Returning to the same physical context or emotional state (mood congruency) in which we formed a memory can help us retrieve it. The serial position effect is our tendency to recall best the last items (which may still be in working memory) and the firs items (which we’ve spent the most time rehearsing) in a list.

Question 21

What are three ways we forget, and how does each of these happen?

Answer 21

Encoding failure: unattended information never enters the memory system.
Storage decay: information fades from the memory.
Retrieval failure: we cannot access stored information accurately, sometimes due to interference or motivated forgetting.

Question 22

Why do we forget?

Answer 22

Some people experience anterograde amnesia, an inability to form new memories, or retrograde amnesia, an inability to retrieve old memories. Normal forgetting can happen because we have never encoded information (encoding failure); because the physical memory trace has faded (storage decay); or because we cannot retrieve what we have encoded and stored (retrieval failure). Retrieval problems may result from proactive interference, when prior learning interferes with recall of new information, or from retroactive interference, when new learning disrupts recall of old information. Motivated forgetting occurs, but researchers have found little evidence of repression.

Question 23

How do misinformation, imagination, and source amnesia influence our memory construction? How do we decide whether a memory is real or false?

Answer 23

Memories can continually be revised when retrieved, a process memory researchers call reconsolidation. The misinformation effect and imagination inflation may corrupt our stored memories of what actually happened. When we reassemble a memory during retrieval, we may attribute it to the wrong source. Source amnesia helps explain déjà vu. Since memory involves reconstruction as well as reproduction, and the misinformation effect and source amnesia occur outside our awareness, it is difficult to separate false memories from real ones.

Question 24

Why have reports of repressed and recovered memories been so hotly debated?

Answer 24

The debate focuses on whether memories of early childhood abuse are repressed and can be recovered during therapy. Unless the victim was a child too young to remember, such traumas are usually remembered vividly, not repressed. Psychologists agree that childhood sexual abuse happens; injustice happen; forgetting happens; recovered memories are common; memories of events that happened before age 4 are unreliable; memories recovered through hypnosis are especially unreliable; and memories, whether real or false, can be emotionally upsetting.

Question 25

How reliable are young children’s eyewitness descriptions?

Answer 25

Children are subject to the same memory influences that distort adult reports, and suggestive interviewing techniques can lead to false memories. However, if questioned by a carefully trained interviewer who asks nonleading questions, and especially if they have not spoken to involved adults prior to the interview, children can accurately recall events and people involved in them.