Quiz 5

Question 1

Semantic v. Episodic memory

Answer 1

Semantic: recollection of ideas, concepts, and facts (general knowledge), crystallized intelligence

Episodic: memories based on more than knowing it, events that happened, real life example is autobiographical memory, an encounter with a piece of info as long as you remember that initial encounter

Question 2

Semantic memory (neural correlates)

Answer 2

Acquisition of new semantic memories requires hippocampus, PFC, and lateral temporal regions

Question 3

Semantic memory (age effects - retrieval vs. acquisition)

Answer 3

retrieval: crystallized, process of access stored memories
acquisition: process of copying contents of physical memory to another storage device for preservation (requires hippo, PFC, and LTRs)

Question 4

Mental time travel

Answer 4

Episodic memory, the capacity to mentally reconstruct personal events from the past, as well as to imagine possible scenarios in the future (prospection), set in particular time and place, depends on retrieval and acquisition

Question 5

Recall v. Recognition

Answer 5

recall: HAVE TO describe details and come up with the info on your own
recognition: feeling that you have experienced it before, the task (not being asked to produce details)

Question 6

Correlated accuracy/d’ (age effects)

Answer 6

measure performance and looking at hit rate/ taking into consideration false alarm rate

• if you do not control for this the score would be 100%
• overall reduced impaired performance with a ton of moderating factors

AGE EFFECTS:

• greater deficit in OAs, don’t progress at the same speed as YAs(and deficit is greater on easier tasks)
• diffs are greater when specific details need to be retrieved, for faces compared to words
• minimized when events are semantically rich

Question 7

Hits

Answer 7

response: yes
signal: present

Question 8

False alarms

Answer 8

response: yes
signal: not present

Question 9

Misses

Answer 9

response: no
signal: present

Question 10

Correct rejections

Answer 10

response: no
signal: not present

Question 11

Criterion (age effects)

Answer 11

(c) what a person’s likelihood of saying yes or no, depends on how much a person’s memory signal passes the threshold

effects of age: can be liberal vs. conservative OR situational, based entirely on a person’s goals at the time of task

Question 12

Liberal v. conservative criterion

Answer 12

Liberal: more likely to have “yes” response, more hits and false alarms
-driven by desire to not miss things in memory tasks: OAs

Conservative: more likely to have a “no” response, more misses and correct rejections: YAs

Question 13

Theories for deficits: Limited Resource Theory

Answer 13

An underlying processing resource (attentional or WM capacity) that interferes with self-initiation encoding and retrieval process

• recall v. recognition
• can be mitigated by environmental support, categories/clustering, cues, internal structure, external strategies

Question 14

Theories for deficits: Inhibitory Control

Answer 14

Age related differences in memory attributed to a decline in attentional inhibitory control, can lead to MENTAL CLUTTER, leading to slower and more error prone retrieval
Castel: OAs have so much knowledge in their brain/info to go through that of course it will be harder, same idea as mental clutter

Question 15

Theories for deficits: Speed of Processing

Answer 15

Cog. slowing generally accounts for a greater proportion of age-related cog. impairments
The diffs. shift as memory tasks place greater demands on recall
Best for statistical data
Relationship between age and impairments is mediated by SoP

Question 16

Theories for deficits: Context/source memory

Answer 16

OAs have difficulty recalling FEATURES of an item, recollection vs. familiarity

Question 17

Self-initiated processes

Answer 17

Recall

Question 18

Environmental support

Answer 18

Recognition, more controlled and structured because provided with information

Question 19

Familiarity v. Recollection (neural correlated, age effects)

Answer 19

Familiarity: memory for encountering something previously; parahippocampal gyrus and perirhinal cortex; NOT RLY IMPAIRED IN OAs

Recollection: creating details associated with something that is familiar to us; NEED hippo, also PFC, lateral (hippo is where the binding is; IMPAIRED IN OAs

Question 20

Butcher on the Bus phenomenon

Answer 20

On a bus and see someone out of context that you know you have seen that person before, paste together features of the memory

Question 21

Source memory

Answer 21

relies on two processes (recollection and familiarity), encode in two contexts
Say if it is old or new AND say additional info about it…context along with the information and additional sense of recollection aka if they say it “on a desk” etc.

Question 22

Associative memory

Answer 22

Present two items and you have to assess whether you saw these items together in a stimulus; deficits greater for OAs bc binding is very difficult. When they are told to pair, their deficit increases

Question 23

Remember/know paradigm

Answer 23

remember (recollection)/ know (familiarity)
deciding which it is (entirely subjective) and do you remember that you saw it or not, then they will ask do you have recollection (context of where they saw it) or is it just familiar

Question 24

Item specificity

Answer 24

say new, similar, or same

[recollection is required to tell which “airplane” it was]

Question 25

Autobiographical memory (age effects)

Answer 25

OAs are more likely to retrieve more general auto. knowledge and less likely to retrieve specifics
- they rely highly on semantic mem.

Question 26

Autobiographical memory (neural correlates)

Answer 26

not just hippo, but NETWORK OF REGIONS (hippos frontal, posterior…whole brain) to help reconstruct

Question 27

Lifetime periods

Answer 27

largely semantic (super general and very broad stroke)

Question 28

General events

Answer 28

something EXTENDED over time (‘went on a trip to FL’) or something that happened often/CATEGORY EVENT (‘when you were in HS you used to stop at dunkin before school’)
semantic and episodic

Question 29

Event specific knowledge

Answer 29

remember that one time/isolated event (knowing all of the details)

Question 30

Generative v. Direct retrieval

Answer 30

Generative: working your way through the processes to get to a specific isolated event, any sort of thinking process or intention

Direct retrieval: when an event was so distinct in your life that it comes to you immediately
OAs do best with this one

Question 31

Over-generality effect in autobiographical memory (role of control/WM process/VAF1-4)

Answer 31

VAF1: semantic and VAF4: specific and episodic

Central executive and episodic buffer (part of WM where you combine information) and variables, they mediate the relationship significantly and can explain the relationship between age and auto. specificity

Question 32

False memory (relation to gist processing/familiarity)

Answer 32

DRM paradigm (saying bunch of words related to sleep but not actually the word “sleep”) semantic activation
Can be a considered as source error
Inc. effects compared to YAs

Gist-based memory is enhanced in aging

Question 33

Gist processing

Answer 33

Gist based is compensation for failed memory, memory for categories of events but missing precise details, often extracted across multi. specific events
similar to “schema”: script of related events

Question 34

Selective optimization with compensation

Answer 34

picking what you are good at and choosing that from the thing you used to do, this shift towards gist processing is an example of improved meta-memory and inc. wisdom in OAs (Castel) bc OAs are better at using memory for the purpose they need to use it for