Retrieval Flashcards
What is tip of the tongue state? and ‘tip of the finger’?
- Tip-of-the-tongue state: a feeling that one knows a response yet is unable to produce it
A similar phenomenon (‘tip of the finger’) has also been reported in sign language users
What is retrieval?
- A progression from one or more retrieval cues to a target memory trace through associative connections
- The aim is to make the target available
What is the target memory trace?
The particular memory we are searching for
What are retrieval cues?
Bits of information about the target memory that guide the search
What are associations?
- Bonds that link together items in memory
- Vary in strength (e.g. banana would be more likely to have a stronger association with ‘fruit’ than ‘guava’)
What is the activation level?
- The internal state of a memory, reflecting its level of excitement
- Determines accessibility of the item
- Increases when
§ Something related to the memory is encountered - Persists for some time
What is spreading activation?
- The automatic transmission of ‘energy’ from one memory to related items via associations
- Proportional to the strength of connections
What is pattern completion?
- Retrieval: reinstatement (via spreading activation) of features that represent a memory
- Features, provided as cues, will spread activation to other features, completing the missing components
Pattern completion = the process by which spreading activation from a set of cues leads to the reinstatement of a memory
What sort of mechanism is pattern completion regarded as?
Pattern completion is regarded as a hippocampal mechanism
What are factors determining retrieval success?
- Attention to cues
- Relevance of cues
- Cue-target associative strength
- Number of cues
- Strength of target memory
- Retrieval strategy
- Retrieval mode
What does reduced attention to a cue do in terms of retrieval?
Reduced attention to a cue impairs its ability to guide retrieval
When does a secondary task reduce memory performance during retrieval?
Ø Related to the primary task
Ø Demands a lot of attention
This is called dividing attention
Does divided attention have a larger effect when tested with recall or recognition?
§ Larger effect when tested with recall than recognition
When are retrieval cues most useful?
§ Retrieval cues are most useful if:
§ Present at encoding
§ Encoded with the target
§ Similar to the original cue available at encoding
Having the right cue enhances retrieval – the best cues are the ones present at encoding -> encoding specificity
What is cue-target associative strength?
- Retrieval success depends on the strength of cue target association
- Determined by the length of time and attention spent on encoding the relationship
- Encoding the cue and the target separately is unhelpful
They need to be associated with each-other
Does more cues aid retrieval?
- Access to additional, relevant cues facilitates retrieval
§ Activation spreads from both cues to the target, facilitating retrieval
§ Cueing multiple access routes to a target (extra cues) can provide a super-additive recall benefit
Elaborative encoding maximizes the number of retrieval routes
Explain the effect of the strength of the target memory on retrieval
- Weakly encoded targets are more difficult to retrieve
§ The targets start at a lower activation level
§ Require a greater boost in activation to be retrieved - Explains the word frequency effect on recall
More frequent target words start with higher activation level -> more easily retrieve
What is retrieval success increased by?
§ The organisation of materials at encoding
§ Adopting efficient strategies of memory search
- Adopting a new perspective/ strategy can facilitate recall of different objects previously forgotten
Does completing multiple episodic tasks in a row improve retrieval performance and why?
yes because episodic retrieval is implicated in different brain regions (the prefrontal cortex) than semantic judgements
What are direct/ explicit memory tests?
- Ask people to recall particular experiences
- Require a contextual cue
- Reveal impaired performance in amnesiacs
In many cases rely on hippocampus
What are indirect/ implicit memory tests?
- Measure the unconscious influence of experience without asking the subject to recall the past
- Priming: recent experience with the stimulus improves performance
- Reveals normal performance in amnesics
What is a free recall task?
Explicit
‘recall studied items’
What is a cued recall task?
Explicit
‘What word was presented with DOG’
What is a yes/no recognition task?
Did you study: Dog…apple…monk?
What is a forced choice recognition task?
Forced-choice recognition
Explicit
Which word did you study: APPLE of MONK?
What is a stem completion task?
Implicit
Fill in missing letters with a word that fits: MO__
What is a fragment completion task?
Implicit
Fill in letters to make a word A_P_E
What is a conceptual fluency task?
Implicit
Name as many birds
What do contextual cues do?
Specify conditions under which a stimulus was encoded
What is a spatio-temporal/environmental cue?
Location and time during an event
Supermarket; lecture theatre
What is a mood cue?
Emotional state that one was in during the event
Sad; happy
What is a physiological cue?
Physical (pharmacological) state one was in during an event
Tired; drunk
What is a cognitive cue?
Collection of concepts one has thought about the event
Specific thought
What does it mean that memory is context dependent?
- Context reinstates original encoding environment and facilitates retrieval
Principle of encoding specificity: we encode information along with its context
What is the context dependent memory environmental factors test?
- Task:
- Taught divers word pairs in one of two contexts: dry land or underwater
- Tested cues recall in same or different environment
- Results:
- Material is recalled best in the environment it was learned
What is state-dependent memory
- Like context-dependent but relating to internal state/ environment
- Recall depends on the match between the participants internal environment (i.e. physiological state) at encoding and retrieval
- Recall is best if encoding and retrieval both occur when:
§ Drunk (Goodwin et al., 1969)
§ Under the influence of marijuana or caffeine (Eich, 1980)
§ Under the influence of exercising or at rest (Miles 7 Hardman, 1998)
State dependency disappears under recognition tests
What is mood-dependent memory?
- Mood-dependent memory: about the person/person match
- Recall is dependent on the match in mood states between encoding and retrieval
What is mood-congruent memory?
- It is easier to recall events that have an emotional tone that matches the current mood of the person
- Depressed individuals are more likely to recall mostly unpleasant memories
What is cognitive context-dependent memory?
- Retrieval is better if the same cognitive features/ tasks are involved
- Ideas, thoughts and concepts that occupied our attention
- Memory facilitated when cognitive context at encoding matches retrieval
What does it mean that memory is reconstructive?
- Retrieved memories are not entirely intact
- ‘Figure out’ some aspects of recalled experience
Reconstructive memories: inferential aspect of memory
What is recognition memory?
· Decide whether one encountered a stimulus before
· Presents the stimulus (i.e. target), unlike in recall
· Discrimination between OLD and NEW stimuli
· Old = studied stimuli
· New = non-studied distractors, lures or foils
· A measure of the participants’ level of guessing and decision-making bias for accepting items as old
What is signal detection theory (SDT)?
- SDT to understand and explore recognition memory decisions
- Developed from auditory perception
- Auditory task:
- Detect a tone (signal) presented against background noise
- Hard or easy to detect
- Four potential outcomes depending on whether target stimulus present:
Old:old: hit
New but say old: false alarm
Old but say new: miss
New: new: correct rejection
- New or old? Equivalent to signal vs noise
- How the old stimuli discriminated from the new
How does STD (signa detection theory) work in recognition memory?
- STD useful to understand how recognition decisions are taken and how to discriminate true memory from guesses
- Memory traces have strength values. These dictate how ‘familiar’ a stimulus feels
- The traces vary in their familiarity based on: attention at encoding and repetitions
- New and old items are combined in a recognition task each having their own distribution on a familiarity continuum
- New items are less familiar than old items. But distractors can be quite familiar e.g. they appear often or are similar to old items
- Therefore, the two distributions can overlap
Response criterion: items that surpass this are judged old. Can be more liberal or strict - Everything more familiar than (to the right of) the response criterion will be judged ‘old’
Everything less familiar (to the left of the response criterion) will be judged ‘new
What is the dual process theory?
- Recognition memory is based on two types of memory or process (Mandler, 1980):
- Familiarity:
§ A sense of memory without being able to remember contextual information
§ Described by signal detection
§ Faster and more automatic - Recollection
§ Retrieving contextual details about a stimulus – like cued recall
§ Slower and more attention demanding
What is recollection selectively disrupted by?
§ Divided attention during encoding
§ Divided attention during recognition
§ Advanced age and damage to the prefrontal cortex
- Familiarity is usually faster than recollection (as it is an automatic process)
What is the remember/know procedure to measure recognition memory?
- Participants decide whether they base their decision on:
- Remember the item being presented previously:
§ Recollect contextual details
§ Measure of recollection - Know it was presented previously:
§ Seems familiar
§ Measure of familiarity
what memory kind/ function is the hippocampus involved in?
Recall/ recollection
What memory kind/ function are the surroudning cortical regions (perirhinal/ entorhinal cortex) involved in?
Recognition memory/ familiarity
What structures are thought to support recognition memory?
The medial temporal lobe (MTL)
Give a summary of retrieval
· Memory can fail because retrieval fails
· Retrieval success is determined by the relationship between cues and target memories
· Tested using explicit (direct) tests or implicit (indirect) tests
· Context at retrieval and the degree of match to encoding context has major impact on retrieval success
· Recognition memory: familiarity and recollection
The MTL is critical for recognition memory. The hippocampus = recall/ recollectio
