Procedural Memory Flashcards
Define procedural
Heterogenous group of learning abilities unified by the fact they are not declarative - non conscious recall expressed via performance
Procedures/Skills and habits - brain regions
Striatum
Implicit memory/priming - brain regions
Neocortex
Simple classical conditioning - brain regions
Cerebellum
Amygdala
Non associative learning - brain regions
Reflex pathways
Wevidence for distinction between declarative and procedural
Experimental studies
Neuro imaging
Neuropsychology
Amnesia patients
Define procedures/ skills and habits
Acts performed regularly - routine
Depend on habits to respond to new novel stimuli in the environment
Include:
Perceptual and ‘motor skills
Cognitive skills
How are skills and habits investigated in the lab
Perform challenging task over repeated trials and over sessions
Learning via improvement in speed/accuracy
Compare healthy to amnesia - amnesia show preserved skill learning? - dissociation between procedural and declarative
Describe the mirror tracing task
Investigates perceptual and motor skills
Trace figure in paper by seeing mirror image of drawing
Healthy adults but but improve with training - amnesia also ie patient HM retain
Describe the persuit rotor task
Perceptual and motor skills
Pps maintain contact between stylus and disc on turntable
Time increase with practice in healthy, amnesia and alz
IMPAIRMENT IN HUNTINGTONS - basal ganglia damage includes striatum
Describe tower tasks
Cognitive skills
Tower of Hanoi - must plan ahead to complete quickly
Amnesia show mixed evidence and Huntington’s impaired
Define implicit learning
Learning about a stimulus in the environment without necessarily intending to do so
Resulting knowledge difficult to express
Describe sequence learning ‘serial reaction time task’
Light appears in 1/4 locations horizontally on screen
Press correct key below the light as fast as possible
Describe nissen and bullemer sequence learning
- Random sequence
- Repeating sequence - sequence follows a pattern
800 trials
Repeating sequence 50% reductions in RT but random little improvement
Many reported being aware of the pattern
BUT amnesia - improved without awareness
Willingham et al implicit sequence learning
Healthy pps show substantial improvement without explicit knowledge of sequence
Describe destrebecqz and cleermens sequence learning
Pps see repeating sequence and asked to generate new sequence without old
Inadvertently generate old sequence - unaware that producing it