Quiz 5 Flashcards
Semantic v. Episodic memory
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
Semantic memory (neural correlates)
Acquisition of new semantic memories requires hippocampus, PFC, and lateral temporal regions
Semantic memory (age effects - retrieval vs. acquisition)
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)
Mental time travel
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
Recall v. Recognition
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)
Correlated accuracy/d’ (age effects)
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
Hits
response: yes
signal: present
False alarms
response: yes
signal: not present
Misses
response: no
signal: present
Correct rejections
response: no
signal: not present
Criterion (age effects)
(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
Liberal v. conservative criterion
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
Theories for deficits: Limited Resource Theory
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
Theories for deficits: Inhibitory Control
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
Theories for deficits: Speed of Processing
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
Theories for deficits: Context/source memory
OAs have difficulty recalling FEATURES of an item, recollection vs. familiarity
Self-initiated processes
Recall
Environmental support
Recognition, more controlled and structured because provided with information
Familiarity v. Recollection (neural correlated, age effects)
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
Butcher on the Bus phenomenon
On a bus and see someone out of context that you know you have seen that person before, paste together features of the memory
Source memory
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.
Associative memory
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
Remember/know paradigm
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
Item specificity
say new, similar, or same
[recollection is required to tell which “airplane” it was]
Autobiographical memory (age effects)
OAs are more likely to retrieve more general auto. knowledge and less likely to retrieve specifics
- they rely highly on semantic mem.
Autobiographical memory (neural correlates)
not just hippo, but NETWORK OF REGIONS (hippos frontal, posterior…whole brain) to help reconstruct
Lifetime periods
largely semantic (super general and very broad stroke)
General events
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
Event specific knowledge
remember that one time/isolated event (knowing all of the details)
Generative v. Direct retrieval
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
Over-generality effect in autobiographical memory (role of control/WM process/VAF1-4)
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
False memory (relation to gist processing/familiarity)
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
Gist processing
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
Selective optimization with compensation
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
