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Introduction To Cognition > Remembering and Forgetting > Flashcards

Remembering and Forgetting Flashcards

1
Q

What are the different types of information we are able to store long term?

A
  • Episodes: temporally distinct past experiences
  • Knowledge: word meanings, facts, categories etc.
  • Skills and abilities: effects of past experience demonstrated via performance
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2
Q

What sort of information does our memory for episodes tend to contain?

A

spatial and temporal contextual information

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3
Q

What does our memory for meanings of things not tend to include?

A

spatio-temporal context (you don’t remember the context in which you learnt it)

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4
Q

What is Tulving (1980s) LTM model?

A
  • Separates long term memory into different levels of consciousness:
  • Episodic: autonoetic (self-aware, e.g. a memory from primary school)
  • Semantic: Noetic (aware of info, not origin)
  • Procedural: anoetic (unaware, e.g. riding a bike)
  • Episodic, semantic and procedural memories are interactive and defined by levels of conscious awareness
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5
Q

Why is the ability to disconnect information from the context in which it was learned a useful property for a memory system?

A

It saves on storage

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6
Q

What does Tulving’s model distinguish between?

A
  • distinguishes between memory systems and tests
     Episodic or ‘direct test (e.g. recognition memory for previously presented items) is intended to measure episodic memory system
     BUT some episodic tests can be influenced by non-episodic memory systems:
     You can ‘know’ that you have seen an item recently without consciously ‘remembering’ the encoding event (e.g. you find it familiar but don’t recollect it
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7
Q

In episodic memory what is memory for events and experiences tied to?

A

A specific time and place

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8
Q

What are the typical types of episodic memory tests?

A

 Free recall
 Cued recall
 Recognition

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9
Q

How is episodic memory dissociated from other memory systems?

A

Impaired in amnesic syndrome: can’t store new episodic memories, but can learn new procedural skills

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10
Q

what is semantic memory?

A

General knowledge of objects, word meanings, facts, people without connection to a specific time and place (generic memory)

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11
Q

What are the typical types of semantic tests?

A

 Word definition
 Object naming/ definition
 Category fluency (animals: how many in 60 seconds)
 Matching tests

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12
Q

How does semantic memory dissociate from other memory systems?

A

 Semantic dementia (progressive loss of semantic knowledge)
 In Semantic dementia Episodic memory less affected; procedural memory preserved

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13
Q

What is procedural memory and how is it acquired?

A
  • Knowledge of how to do things; skills; ‘blueprint’ for action
  • Acquired through multiple trials, learning by doing
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14
Q

What are the typical types of procedural memory tests?

A

Pursuit rotor (tracking); mirror drawing (tracing); skill learning

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15
Q

How does procedural memory dissociate from other memory systems?

A

Largely preserved in amnesia and semantic dementia

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16
Q

How does H.M’s mirror drawing task (Milner 1962) show that episodic and procedural memory are different?

A
  • Amnesic patients can learn to perform ‘procedural’ tasks despite complete lack of (episodic) memory for training
  • H.M learnt how to mirror draw
  • he didn’t remember previously learning it
  • but still had the skill
  • his errors decreased exponentially each day
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17
Q

What is priming?

A

Improvement (speed/accuracy) in processing a stimulus (identification/ production/ classification) as a result of a prior encounter with the same or a related stimulus

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18
Q

What are the different types of test for priming?

A

 Perceptual identification (name an object from image obscured by noise)
- You will need to get rid of less of the noise if you have already seen the images
- Amnesics show this effect as well
 Word-stem/fragment completion (first word that comes to mind)
- People more likely to complete with words they have seen from the study faze
- Amnesics will also show this effect
 Sentence completion (‘conceptual’ priming)
- e.g. ‘the transplant surgeon removed the patient’s….’
- More likely to use a word you have heard recently

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19
Q

How does priming dissociate from other memory systems?

A

Largely preserved in amnesia

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20
Q

What is evidence for the fact the there are two different systems for priming and episodic memory?

A
  • Amnesic patients generally show intact perceptual priming
     Perceptual identification: identify studied items faster/ better than unstudied items
     Recognition memory tests: perform better under indirect instructions (‘go with your gut feeling’)
  • Right occipital lobe resection (patient MS, Gabrieli et al. 1995)
     Showed normal declarative memory (recall, cued recall, recognition), impaired perceptual priming
     Double dissociation: opposite to amnesic patients
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21
Q

What is Squire’s contemporary model of LRM systems?

A 
- Episodic and semantic memory = declarative (explicit) memory 
 Facts (semantic)
 Events (episodic)
 You can retrieve it 
- Procedural and priming = nondeclarative (implicit) 
 Procedural (skills and habits) 
 Priming
 Simple classic conditioning 
 Emotional responses 
 Skeletal musculature
22
Q

What was Penfield’s experiment (1958)about retrieval and what did this lead him to argue?

A

stimulating the temporal lobes of patients often elicited trivial ‘memories’
 He argues that the brain retains a permanent record of all experiences
 40 of 520 patients had ‘memories’ evoked, and most of these resembled dreams

23
Q

What is Ebbinghuas (1885) experiment for his forgetting curve?

A
  • Learned 169 separate lists of nonsense syllables
  • Relearned each list after an interval of 21 mins to 31 days
  • Time required to relearn list (to 100%) = measure of forgetting
  • Information of loss is rapid then levels off: a logarithmic function which holds for many different types of learned material
24
Q

What were the two early hypotheses about forgetting?

A
  • Decay: memory simply fades with time

- Interference: memory traces disrupted or replaced by subsequent/ prior learning

25
Q

What was Minami and Dallenbach’s Cockroach study (1946)?

A
  • Cockroaches trained to avoid electric shock
  • 24 hours later (allowed to move freely): 70% forgetting
  • BUT cockroaches that were immobilised (crawl into dark cone, freeze) for 24 hours after learning: only 25% forgetting
  • evidence for interference
26
Q

What is retroactive interference?

A
  • Later learning disrupts earlier learning

- Memory decreases as the number of intervening trials increases

27
Q

What is Slamecka (1980) experiment for retroactive interference?

A

read sentences 8 times followed by rest or 4 or 8 trials of equivalent sentences

  • Amount of original sentences forgotten as a function of number of intervening trials (RI)
  • Number of intervening trials critical - not just time
28
Q

What is proactive interference?

A
  • Prior learning disrupts subsequent learning
  • Interference builds up over trials
  • with similar stimuli
29
Q

What Have Underwood, Keppel and Wickens found about retroactive interference?

A
  • Performance declines over successive study-tests with similar stimuli
  • Performance recovers when switch to dissimilar stimuli: release from proactive interference (Wickens, 1970; MacLeod, 1975)
  • When category changed after interference builds up, performance jumps
30
Q

Why does proactive interference lead to forgetting?

A

 Assume a cue has a fixed capacity for activating memories – the more memories associated with that cue, the less well it can activate any of them
 Or (flipside): if several possible memories share similar overlap with retrieval environment, successful recall less likely

31
Q

What did Tulving (1974) say were the two major reasons for forgetting?

A
  • trace-dependent forgetting (= decay, deterioration)

- cue-dependent forgetting (failure of retrieval)

32
Q

What improves retrieval performance and makes retroactive interference weaker?

A

Cueing

33
Q

What was Tulving and Psotka’s (1971) experiment about cued/ free recall and what did they find?

A
  • Several word lists studied and tested one at a time
  • At end of experiment, memory for 1st list tested
  • Recall declines as the number of lists presented after original learning increases (retroactive interference)
  • RI selectively affects free recall (no cue)
  • Cued recall/ recognition less affected because context is (partly) reinstated during test
34
Q

What was Tulving’s (1979( encoding-specificity principle?

A
  • Retrieval success depends on ‘informational overlap’ between encoding (study) and retrieval (test)
  • Similar to transfer appropriate processing, but about context rather than processing
  • Context can be intrinsic or extrinsic
35
Q

What is intrinsic context?

A

Features that are an integral part of target stimulus

36
Q

what was Barclay et al (1974) experiment on intrinsic context?

A
  • Effect of study-test congruence on memory for target words:
  • Study:
     The man tuned the piano (vs the man lifted the piano)
  • Cued recall:
     ‘something melodious’ (congruent with ‘man tuned piano) -> 4.6 words recalled
     ‘Something heavy’ (incongruent with ‘man tuned piano’) -> 1.6 words recalled
  • Recognition cues were better if study and test intrinsic context were similar
37
Q

What is extrinsic context?

A
  • Other features present at the time of encoding (time, place, cognitive state)
38
Q

What was Godden and Baddeley’s (1975) Diver study experiment?

A
  • Study: list of words
     On land or
     Underwater
  • Test free recall and recognition
     On land or underwater
  • Significant test type x encoding context interaction (Study underwater lead to better recall underwater and vise versa)
  • However recognition doesn’t show that interaction: recognition always better for dry land. This is because recognition has strong intrinsic cues
39
Q

What did Freud (1901) believe in regards to forgetting?

A

People actively (/unconsciously) repress unpleasant memories

40
Q

What was Levinger and Clark’s (1961) experiment to support Freud’s forgetting theory?

A
  • word association task with neutral and negative words. - Recall of association tested after 4-month delay:
     Ss remember fewer negative word associations than neutral one
     Evidence for repression of emotional memories?
41
Q

What is the contrary evidence to Freud’s forgetting theory?

A

Parkin et al (1982) repeated word association study with immediate recall & 1-week delay:
 Immediate: neutral > emotional; 1 week: emotional associations better remembered
 Evidence against selective repression of emotional material?
- Further contrary evidence
 Memory of childhood abuse (Williams, 1994): those who suffered more abuse are most likely to remember

42
Q

What is Mike Anderson’s ‘think/no-think paradigm?

A

 Learning phase: participants learn cue-target pairs of words to criterion
 Think/No-think (TNT) phase: cue words are shown one at a time, in either green or red font
 Green = think (participants silently retrieve the target word and think about it)
 Red = no-think (participants try to prevent the target word from coming to mind
 Test phase: cue words presented, participants recall target word, regardless of whether cue was red or green or not shown in the T/NT phase
 Found that recall is worse if item was suppressed in the no-think phase

43
Q

What was Emily Holme’s Tetris studies?

A

Engaging in a visuospatial task (playing Tetris) after a traumatic event (in the lab: watching a traumatic film) can reduce ‘flashbacks’ (intrusive memories) over 1 week

44
Q

What is the physiological basis of memory?

A

glutamate release, protein synthesis, neural growth and rearrangement

45
Q

What does consolidation of memories do?

A
  • ‘Fixes’ information in long-term memory, strengthens connections between cortical regions over hours, days, months (‘systems’ consolidation)
  • Over time, cortical components of memories become less dependent on hippocampus for retrieval (hence HM can retrieve old memories)
46
Q

Why can’t HM recall events in the lead up to surgery?

A

New memories are initially labile (sensitive to disruption) before becoming progressively more stable as they are consolidated

47
Q

Will all memories be consolidated?

A

No. Consolidation is selective

48
Q

What is Nadet et al (2000) recent work on reconsolidation?

A
  • Reconsolidation can be ‘blocked’ or altered to e.g. remove emotional association
     Extinction
     Pharmacological intervention
  • Possible use as a treatment for PTSD, phobias
49
Q

Give a summary of forgetting

A

• Forgetting can occur as a result of
- Decay (maybe? – difficult to prove and explain)
- Interference (pro – or retro-active)
- Retrieval failure (context/ cue-dependent)
- Repression (maybe?) or motivated forgetting
- (Re-)consolidation failure (or non-selection)
• Most ‘accepted’ idea is that some combination of these, mainly cue-dependent forgetting (retrieval failures and consolidation failure account for most forgetting

50
Q

Give a summary of memory

A

• Memory can be defined by store
- Sensory stores
- short-term stores
- long-term store
• by process
- Short lasting effects of neural/perceptual/ informational processing
- Medium-duration effects of ‘working’ memory
- Long-term effects of processing at different depths
• Or by content system:
- Declarative: episodic, semantic
- Non-declarative: procedural, priming, etc.

Introduction To Cognition (10 decks)

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