PSY200 - Exam 1 Flashcards
Sensory Memory Duration
Iconic <10 seconds
Sensory Memory Capacity
Seems large but rapidly decays over time.
Sensory Memory Encoding
Same form as stimuli:
Visual in visual format
Sound in sound format
STM Duration
Fades within 20 seconds.
STM Capacity
Verbal 7 +- 2 items.
Visual 4 items.
STM Encoding
Can be visual/spatial/phonological items in the same code.
Sparling Experiments
Sensory Memory
Whole report showed 3-4 item ability.
Partial report with tones showed about a 9 item ability.
Modal Model of Memory
Incoming info goes to sensory memory then to short term where rehearsal allows maintenance. From STM, memories may be lost/sent to LTM where they may be retrieved again to the STM.
Baddeley model
Working Memory
Articulatory suppression diminishes ability to rehearse. (sharing of resources)
Span Tasks
Measure working memory’s number storage capacity.
Memory span is the longest list of items that a person can repeat back in correct order immediately after presentation on 50% of all trials.
Also common measure of STM.
Chunking
More info for the same number of items.
LTM Encoding
Long encoding time, the stimulus together with its context but physical stimulus is lost.
Emotion Memory
Emotion leads to more epinephrine which releases more glucose which leads to better memory.
High confidence
High accuracy
Higher vividness
Eyewitness Memory
Confidence varies but is easily made concrete if suggested.
Accuracy also varies.
Vividness depends on danger of the situation.
Flashbulb Memory
Highly emotion/personal.
High confidence
Not necessarily very accurate
Really vivid
Eyewitness Testimony Errors
Reduce by:
Using sequential lineups
Not giving feedback to witnesses
Having similar subjects in lineup
Not telling officer conducting lineup who suspect is.
Asking witness directly after about his/her confidence
Tell witness that perp may not be in lineup
Misinformation Effects
Occur because of:
Overlap in related concepts
Situational expectations
Information added after the event
False Memories in Children
Children 3-6 more vulnerable to accepting a false memory as truth than older children or adults when the memories are distinctive but not with indistinctive memories.
False Memories in Adults
Adults were more confident in both distinctive and indistinctive memories when young children were only confident with distinctive memories.
Roediger McDermott task (DRM)
False Memory
Gives a list of words that relate to one word that they never see. Then asked to repeat words back. Will say the word that related but was never given.
Like bread schema in class.
Repressed Memories
Imagining an event that never happened can result in memory implantation.
Hippocampal activity with real/false memories
Exactly the same for both.
Typicality Effect
Reaction time higher when “a ___ is a bird” filled in by prototypical item than atypical item.
Robin vs. ostrich.
Family Resemblance/Graded Resemblance
Prototype/exemplar theories assume family resemblance. But not all categories have family resemblance.
So here, categorization can occur based on theories of the underlying properties of exemplars.
Sentence Verification Task
“Is a penguin a bird?”
Definitional Theory
Objects that meet a particular set of criteria are placed in a category.
Typicality effect has prototypical item also.
Prototype Theory
Store a prototype of the category - average of all the members of the category.
Prototype is a prototype so typicality effect.
Exemplar Theory
Within each category is each example that you have encountered which is categorized by comparing whatever example you have that comes easily to mind.
Faster at classifying things that are more like the exemplars you have seen, so explains typicality effect.
Subordinate
Most specific: a poodle is a type of dog which is a type of animal.
Basic
Middling amount of specificity, but most info. A dog is an animal.
Superordinate
Most general, least specific. Animal.
Semantic Model
Spreading Activation
Nodes: individual concepts (represented by clusters of features)
Concepts arranged in hierarchy with more general concepts on top and more specific concepts underneath.
Connectionist Approach
Network of nodes is a concept rather than one node.
Distributed activity of many units represents knowledge.
Weights determine at each connection how strongly an incoming signal will activate the next unit.
Network responds to stimulus, provided with correct response, modifies responding to match correct response.
Error signal is the difference between actual activity of each output unit and the correct activity.
Back-propagation
Error signal transmitted back through the circuit to indicate how weights should be changed to allow the output signal to match the correct signal.
Episodic LTM
Autobiographical events that can be explicitly stated. The collection of past personal experiences that occurred at a particular time/place.
Semantic LTM
Memories of facts, concepts, names and other general knowledge acquired of a lifetime.
Mnemonic strategies
Self-reference effect: tendency for people to have an enhanced memory for any tumuli that relates to themselves.
Levels of Processing
Shallow Processing has structural (appearance) and phonemic (sound) encoding.
Deep Processing: involves semantic processing, which happens when encoding meaning of a word while relating it to another word with similar meaning.
Anterograde Amnesia
Loss of memory for events after a neurological disturbance.
Retrograde Amnesia
All memories are not lost, but loss of some memories before accident occurs.
More distant memories are more likely to stay.
Consolidation
Processes of stabilizing a memory after initial acquisition.
Long-term Potentiation
A synapse increases in strength as increasing numbers of signals are transmitted between the two neurons.
Potentiation is process where synchronous firing of neurons makes them more inclined to fire together int he future.
Double Dissociation
When two related mental processes are shown to function independently of each other.
Information that you have to consciously work to remember is known as explicitly memory.
Information that you remember unconsciously and effortlessly is known as implicit memory.
