Study Guide

Question 1

What is the difference between short-term memory and long-term memory (lecture answer)

Answer 1

Memory drives the interactions in our day-to-day lives. Things that happen in the present moment (i.e., someone asking you a question) registers in our short-term memory. They keep this information in mind as the “context of what is currently going on in my experience”. As they get this question, not only are they registering it in their short-term memory, but they are also having their long-term memories evoked about that question in order to impact what is going on in this conversation. Essentially, we draw information from our long-term memory to guide ourselves through social interactions and environments.

Question 2

What is the difference between LTM and STM (textbook answer)

Answer 2

Long-term memory is the system that is responsible for storing information for long periods of time. Can be described as an archive of information about past events in our lives and knowledge we have learned. LTM therefore provides both an archive that we can refer to when we want to remember events from the past and a wealth of background information that we are constantly consulting as we use working memory to make contact with what is happening at a particular moment Long-term memory spans from 30 seconds ago to your earliest memories; however, the exception “I just sat down” and anything you were rehearsing don’t count as long-term memories. Your first recollection of something would be defined as your short-term/working memory because it happened withing the last 30 seconds.

Question 3

Describe Murdock’s serial postion curve

Answer 3

A serial position curve is created by presenting a list of words to a participant, one after another and after that last word, the participant is to write down all of the words that they remember in any order. The serial position curve plots the percentage of a group of participants that recalled each word versus the position in the list. This indicates that memory is better for words at the beginning of the list and at the end in contrast to those words in the middle. End items were remembered especially well

Question 4

What accounts for the primacy portion of the serial position curve? Is this part of the curve typically associated with short- or long-term memory?

Answer 4

participants know that their memory is going to be tested so they try to keep this information and keep it in their memory, so they rehearse it more. If this is the case, then the information that you are presented at the very start of the list are going to be rehearsed more often because there are more opportunities to rehearse them as you are waiting for the final test at the end. Rundus found that those words that people remembered especially well were the words that were most likely to be rehearsed more times during the experiment. This is associated with long-term memory. (The transfer from STM to LTM).

Question 5

What accounts for the recent portion of the serial position curve? Is this part of the curve typically associated with short- or long-term memory?

Answer 5

When people get the 20-word list, as soon as that 20th word is shown, they are then told to recall every word on that list. They suspected that if you are getting the test right away, then the items at the very end of the list that were just presented were just rehearsed in short-term memory. Therefore, the items you were just presented with are fresh in your mind- so you recall them first and then the rest of the items on the list. In their experiment there were two conditions, The first condition notes that when there is no delay between the presentation of the list and the test that follows where you are asked to recall those items  allows you to keep those items in short-term memory. However, in the second condition when there is a 30-second delay, after the list and before the test (With some distractor activity in 30-second delay) then you recall.  The distractor test prevents you from keeping those words in short-term memory. This accounts for the recency effect: when there is a delay, you wipe out things from the STM and that recency effect goes away; however, when there is no delay = keep things in the STM and the recency effect occurs. Therefore, this part of the curve is associated with short-term memory.

Question 6

Did patient HM have short-term memory or long-term memory?

Answer 6

Patient HM had short-term memory, was able to recall words within minutes etc., However, when there was a delay/distraction activity, those memories were basically lost.

Question 7

What is the distinction between declarative and procedural memory?

Answer 7

Declarative memory can be described as “knowing that” and procedural memory can be described as “knowing how”. These processes are a part of long-term memory. To further explain, procedural memory  doesn’t require conscious effort to know how to do these tasks  unconscious process  i.e., riding a bike. In contrast, declarative memory is knowing things or being able to verbally express things in a way that other people can understand. There are two types of declarative memory: semantic and episodic.

Question 8

What is the distinction between episodic and semantic memory? Which one did patient KC retain? How are both these kinds of memory declarative?

Answer 8

According to Tulving, the defining property of the experience of episodic memory is that it involves mental time travel—the experience of traveling
back in time to reconnect with events that happened in the past. In short, when I remember this incident, I feel as if I am reliving it. Tulving describes this experience of mental time travel/episodic memory as self-knowing or remembering. In contrast, to the mental time travel property of episodic memory, the experience of semantic memory involves accessing knowledge about the world that does not have to be tied to remembering a personal experience. This knowledge can be things like facts, vocabulary, numbers, and concepts. When we experience semantic memory, we are not traveling back to a specific event from our past, but we are accessing things we are familiar with and know about.

Tulving made this distinction. Patient KC had good semantic memory – he could recall what he used to do for work, and that his family went up North every summer. However, he did not have good episodic memory – he could not remember what happened at those trips up North. So, semantic memory means that we would be able to recall facts about Toronto; however, episodic memory would be the ability to recall specific facts about specific events that took place in Toronto as if we were reliving the experience. Both kinds of memory are declarative because semantic is recall of facts and episodic is recall of personal facts; both are intentional and conscious recall.

Question 9

What did Petrican and colleagues (2010) demonstrate regarding the functioning of episodic and semantic memory in older adults?

Answer 9

This result illustrates the semanticization of remote memories—loss of episodic detail for memories of long-ago events.

Took older adults and they would show them pictures of events that happened in the world over an extended period. Some of the pictures that were shown were events that happened 10 years ago, and some were from 40-50 years ago. Asked participants to indicate what the event was in the photo and if they knew that event, then the were to indicate if they were able to remember things related to this event/what you learned when this event happened (i.e., something you hears on television or a phone call that day). Do you know this event, or do you remember this event/details of something happening during this event? People were more likely to forget events, the older they got (forget 40-50 years more than the 10-years picture). 40-50 years ago: the proportion of known to remember responses was much greater than the 10-year. When we think about things later in our past, we lose the details about the past. Semanticization of remote memories.

Question 10

What did research using word-stem completion with amnesic patients demonstrate about implicit memory?

Answer 10

Your past experiences can unconsciously impact your current behavior. (Priming- unconsciously presenting a word  can impact context of word-stem completion). Comparing neurotypical individuals and amnesiac individuals  Recall without priming amnesiacs preformed worse than neurotypicals  Recall with word-stem (priming – present words, than complete word-stems) amnesiacs were just as likely to complete the word stems with words that were presented as controls.

This shows that unconscious retrieval of information still impacts their behavior. They still have implicit memory. They just can’t consciously recall these things. (The more you are exposed to something, the more that is going to impact your behavior down the road).

Question 11

What types of processing during encoding did you learn can improve memory? 1) Levels of processing

Answer 11

1. Levels of processing
   - When we are exposed to information, what are we doing with it, how are we thinking about it and does that matter for how well we remember that information down the road?
   - Craik & Tulving  participants were exposed to the word list stimuli, and what they would vary is the different types of processing that participants would carry out around each item in the list
   - One condition: participants were asked to think of a superficial feature of the item i.e., how that item sounds  rhymes.
   - Second condition: think about the meaning of the word, i.e., word = car, question = can you travel long distances with that item?
   - How does this help? Results: when words are thought about more meaningfully, we remember that information better later. (Better than superficial)

Question 12

What types of processing during encoding did you learn can improve memory? 2) Self-processing

Answer 12

• Based on the idea of if we think about things in a meaningful way, we will remember them better. However, this form of encoding consists of thinking about different ways we can find meaning in an item
• But what Rodgers and their colleagues found using the word list paradigm is that
• One condition: ask them about the meaning of a word (car example)
• Second condition: meaning with the relation to the self (i.e., do you have a car?)  more meaningful (memory is based on relevance to us)
• How does this help? Results: Meaning with self-relation allowed people to remember even better.

Question 13

What types of processing during encoding did you learn can improve memory? 3) Survival processing

Answer 13

• Nairne and Pandeirada  why did our memory systems evolve in the first place? Once we understand  then we can understand when memory is especially is good
• Basic paradigm: standard word list was used
• One condition: standard meaning-based processing question (i.e., item= car, can you travel long distances in it)
• Second condition: would this item (on the list) help you to survive on a deserted island?
• Remembering where things are and useful to our survival.
• How did this help: meaning based processing still good, but survival had a small boost above this processing? Is it survival-based processing? It could be- but it is self-relation (putting themselves in the scenario of being deserted on an island).

Question 14

What types of processing during encoding did you learn can improve memory? 4) Visual Imagery

Answer 14

• Paivio asked participants to learn un-related word pairs i.e., car-apple.
• One condition: repeat word pairs (verbal-based processing)
• Second condition: encode item and imagine a mental image where the words were paired together (an apple on a car for example)
• When we try to encode information  does thinking about things visually support memory
• How does this help/results: forming mental images improves memory, if you are not forming mental images, you don’t remember as well. When we form visual images, we are creating a second code in our memory for the information. (Two different routes to access that information).

Question 15

What types of processing during encoding did you learn can improve memory? 5) Generating Information

Answer 15

• Jacoby presents word-related pairs.
• One condition: participants were asked to read it out loud once and see it once and then move on.
• Second condition: Initial exposure: don’t see the full second word (the last two letters of the word are not provided (up to the participant to generate that word).
• The second condition ensures that participants are going to generate the information that was seen in the read (first) condition.
• How does this help/results: When we generate information actively we remember better versus just re-reading (Relation to testing effects) generating information (not retrieving though).

Question 16

What types of processing during encoding did you learn can improve memory? 6) Retrieval Practice

Answer 16

• Roediger & Karpicke study
• Rereading when there is a short delay = more effective
• Rereading when there is a long delay = less effective
• Self-testing with short delay = less effective
• Self-testing with long delay = more effective

Question 17

Describe and discuss the episodic specificity principle and transfer appropriate processing. What is the difference between the two? How is state- dependent memory similar to the encoding specificity principle? What evidence did you learn that supports these theories of encoding/retrieval interactions?
Lecture Answer:

Answer 17

Encoding Specificity is the idea that the conditions that are present when I am encoding something into memory the extent to which the conditions overlap that are present when I am t trying to retrieve something from memory (Tulving). The extent to which these conditions overlap with one another is going to determine how well I can remember something from memory. Overall, the Encoding Specificity: Memory works best when the conditions at encoding match the conditions present at retrieval. Transfer-appropriate processing is very similar to state dependent and encoding specify processing. Essentially, How you process information while encoding is going to determining how well you remember it if it is the same at the processing at the retrieval. So, these are different because encoding specificity focuses on the matchup between the conditions at retrieval and encoding versus transfer-appropriate focuses on how the type of processing matches up. State-dependent memory is similar to the encoding principle because it is the study of conditions that are internal during the time of retrieval and encoding (both study conditions).

Question 18

Evidence for encoding specificity

Answer 18

o Godden and Baddeley used the standard word list paradigm
 But manipulated how the list was learnt.
 One condition: was asked to learn this information on land
 Second condition: one group learned underwater
* Manipulated where the test occurred after: on land or in water
* On land: Retrieved information better on land, than underwater
* On water: Retrieved information better underwater, not on land
* Encoding Specificity: Memory works best when the conditions at encoding match the conditions present at retrieval.

Question 19

Evidence for Transfer Appropriate

Answer 19

o Morris, Bransford, Franks et al.
 Word list paradigm
 If you think about things in a meaning-based way you are going to remember them better than if you think about them in a more superficial way.
* Recall test = meaning-based way of thinking.
* Superficial test = rhyme test?
o One condition: encoding superficially
o Second: encoding meaning based
o Test: superficial test for both conditions
o If you had processed the information superficially you do better in the rhyme test than if you thought about the meaning
o How you process information while encoding is going to determining how well you remember it if it is the same at the processing at the retrieval.
* Testing effect (practical relation)
o Retrieval process studying → retrieving information to do a test

Question 20

Evidence for state-dependent

Answer 20

o Eich et al.
o Whether or not the conditions that you are experiencing internally are similar at encoding and retrieval.
o Study: standard word list paradigm:
o Not manipulating where but instead are manipulating their internal state
 One condition: learning sober
 Second condition: learning intoxicated
* Learned and retrieved sober = do much better than when intoxicated.
* Learned intoxicated and retrieved intoxicated: yes- but there is a caveat.
* Conditions at present encoding have to match conditions at present retrieval. (Internal state conditions)
* Yes, if the states are both intoxicated but overall your best bet is to be sober at all times.
* Emotion is an internal state → encoding information
o Chances are when we are in a negative state we think about more negative things. (Primed to retrieve negative things) Same with positive things → positive bias → keep thinking about more positive things → can be a pitfall.

Question 21

Compare and contrast the three accounts of reminiscence bump.

Answer 21

1. Self-image hypothesis  when we are in our late teens, we crystalize our understanding of who we are as a person. (I am caring, etc.,)  self-image is formed during this time period of the late teens/early twenties
2. Cognitive hypothesis  novel things experiencing during this time bump (teens/twenties). These novel things are happening  our brain is good at detecting these novel things  evidence: novel things happen like going to college in western society  those that have immigrated to Canada, the bump is later (immigrate at a later time, the bump is later  30/40 years).
3. Cultural life hypothesis  what are events that individuals will experience in their lifetime? These events are according to a cultural script. However, cultural expectations and scripts can change over time.

Question 22

What parts of the brain are important for emotional memory?

Answer 22

Amygdala and hippocampus  more so the amygdala
The amygdala sends signals to the hippocampus to support emotional memory, specifically negative emotional events.

Question 23

Are all aspects of emotional experiences remembered well? Provide evidence for your answer.

Answer 23

Not all aspects of emotional experience are remembered well.
- Rimmele et al. Participants were better at remember the emotional negative pictures rather than the neutral images (not a remarkable amount though
- What was the color panel? → people weren’t as good at detecting the color panel in the negative emotion setting in contrast to the neutral images.
o This goes to show how we remember the central details in a negative emotional event quite well but the peripheral details not so well.
o I.e., held up a gunpoint → laser focused on what the gun looks like, less on what the perpetrator looks like.

Question 24

What does the research say about the memorability of flashbulb memories? Can people have false memories related to flashbulb memories?

Answer 24

• Flashbulb memory → national or global event that occurs where we remember what we were doing, where we were, and who we were with.
• 9/11 Attacks in New York City → People remember these flashbulbs
  o People swear that the remember those exact details about that day
• Flashbulb memories originated with Neisser and Harsch, 1992.
  o Challenger shuttle explosion
  o At the time, it was a very dramatic event.
  o Report from one student → first time report
  o A couple years late → completely different report.
• The death of princess Diana (Ost et al. 2002)
• Do you remember things about that event? 44% people remember seeing the car chase → those were never shown at the time.
• Flashbulb memories are not immune to the conditions of human memory. therefore, you can have false memories related to flashbulb memories

Question 25

Name two pieces of evidence indicating that memorization abilities and autobiographical memory are different from one another.

Answer 25

• Autobiographical → really good, but forming new memories isn’t better than anyone else’s ability → and can find people that perform vice versa.
• Double dissociation
• Marilu Henner → remember things their own life well → but in a lab, she won’t remember lab stimulus better than any other individual
• And we have the vice versa of this as well:
• Using memory techniques → similar to a lab based setting.
• But not good at everyday memory.
• Easier to study in a lab → controlled conditions
• Neural activity overlaps for both but still different

Question 26

Name six examples that demonstrate the constructive nature of human memory.

Answer 26

1) Cultural Influences, Frederick Bartlett (1932)
* Undergraduate students read story called war of ghost in a lab (in the UK)
* Reading about individuals from an indigenous populations (very different perspective of the students in UK)
* After some time (ie.. day later) they would come back to the lab and remember as much details as much as you can.
* People were remembering things that were more inline with their cultural experiences
* People in the UK rarely hunted seals → fished instead
* The students would insert their own cultural expectations to fill in the gaps in their memory

2) General Knowledge (Cathleen Mcdermmet and Jason Chan)
- Series of studies → studied pragmatic inferences
- Students read a series of sentences → delay after they read the sentences → would come back and then have to fill in a blank in the sentence.
* What would happen: people made mistakes
* I.e., the baby stayed awake all night → people wonder why they do, so they make inferences when they read → so they would remember the inferences instead of the actual “stayed awake” aspect

3) Schematic knowledge
- There are certain things we anticipate to occur in specific situations
- Show a picture of the office → try to remember where a specific object was
- Even if the books weren’t there, people generated answers that we anticipate the object would be i.e., on the desk, on a shelf, etc.

4) Script knowledge → events that unfold over prolonged periods of time in predictable ways
- Ie., walking into a restaurant → greeted, seated, brought menus, water and bread.
- We tend to remember things whether or not they are apart of the experiment.
- Falsely remembered things that when we think about what the script is it is the first thing we usually did.
5) Spreading Activation (Cathleen Mcdermmet and Henry Roader)
* Constructive nature of memory
* Presented an abundance of words that were related to that last word presented → 80% falsely remembered it.

6) Perspective
Perspective through which we experience the world and how we remember those experience
Every experience we have we experience in our own eyes.
Perspective → seeing an audience as a professor → remember it in the first person perspective
This is the way that we usually remember things.
Remember events from a third person perspective
Can remember it in the perspective of a student where we watch ourselves lecture
We can’t actually experiences
So it is our brain trying the best to construct it based on past experience

Question 27

What did Loftus and colleagues (1978) find using the misinformation paradigm?

Answer 27

When participants are asked to think about a question containing misleading information → more likely to falsely remember

Question 28

What did Loftus and Palmer (1974) learn about suggestibility in memory?

Answer 28

When participants are asked to think about a question containing misleading information → more likely to falsely remember.
- Our memories are very suggestible. (Loftus and Palmer)

Question 29

What four techniques can be used to improve the accuracy of eyewitness line-ups?

Answer 29

• Should inform witness that suspect may not be in the lineup.
• Should not have filler look like
• Present individuals one by one, not simultaneously.
• The person conducting the criminal lineup should not know what the perpetrator is

Question 30

What is a prototype? Name three pieces of evidence indicating that people may think about categories in terms of prototypes.

Answer 30

Protype → over time throughout our experiences, our brain is creating the statistical average of what a bird is… Based on all the birds I have seen.
- Hypothetical construct

1) Ratings of representativeness
* How representative this bird is of your prototype of birds
* Sparrow would be more representative than an ostrich.

2) Sentence verification (___ is a bird)
* Yes or no. (I.e., Sparrow is bird) those that match more closely to our prototype we can verify faster.

3) Listing examples
* Tell me about all the birds you know
* The birds that fit our prototypes are better listed more.

Question 31

What is the difference between an exemplar and a prototype?

Answer 31

Exemplar theory
* Atypical members of our prototypes can challenge this
* Rather than having a prototype to remember, we just remember the specific examples that we have been exposed to.
* To be more flexible we have to remember specific memories.
* I.e., first time seeing an ostrich → a specific example that we remember is a part of that prototype

Overall:
* Exemplar = specific example, Prototype = statistical average of what something is

Question 32

What are the three levels of organization of category knowledge? What is the name of the overall structure of the organization of category knowledge?

Answer 32

Overall structure = semantic network
- Hierarchically organized (Superordinate → basic level → subordinate)
- Example: picture of a guitar → subordinate level → musical instrument, basic → guitar, subordinate → acoustic guitar

Question 33

Do people always think about categories in terms of their basic level?

Answer 33

No- experts think at:
* Experts → showing details at the subordinate level
* Experiment: non-experts and experts identifying types of birds
* If you were not an expert, you were more likely to say something at the basic level
* Bird watcher (expert) say subordinate level (birds by name)
o It is possible to see the world at a subordinate level, but only typically when we are an expert at that topic.

Question 34

How does the multi-factor approach to category knowledge inform the sensory-functional hypothesis?

Answer 34

Allows us to understand what parts of the brain are associated with specific factors tying into a stimuli
Comparing neurotypical individuals and damaged individuals
Behavioral data relating to sensory data.

The observation that living things are distinguished by sensory properties and artifacts by functions led to the sensory-functional (S-F) hypothesis, which states that our ability to differentiate living things and artifacts depends on a memory system that distinguishes sensory attributes and a system that distinguishes functions. The idea of distributed representation is a central feature of the multiple-factor approach, which has led to searching for factors beyond sensory and functional that determine how concepts are divided within a category

So, sensory functional = Different features we see in our day to day lives that we may have trouble focusing on
* Animate options = thinking about sensory features
o More difficult?
* Inanimate = thinking about functions
Whereas, multiple factor approach = Participants rated it on a different features i.e., color of a mammal, (Rate that concept on low to high) Animals and artifacts were multiple things they were rating
* One related to color = sensory feature, one related to motion = perceptual feature, one related to action = functional feature
* Color = people associated color better with animals rather than artifacts (animals above 0, artifacts below 0) (above 0 = above average, less than 0, below average)
* Motion = people associated motion better with animals rather than artifacts (animals above 0, artifacts below 0) (above 0 = above average, less than 0, below average)
* Action = People associated function better with artifacts rather than animals (artifacts about 0, animals below 0).

Question 35

According to the semantic category approach how is conceptual knowledge represented in the brain?

Answer 35

• Concepts that we are familiar with in the world around us = different regions of the brain, not just one. These concepts are made up of different features = therefore different regions. Specialized regions in the brain for specific features.

The semantic category approach proposes that there are specific neural circuits in the
brain for some specific categories.

While the semantic category approach focuses on areas of the brain that are specialized
to respond to specific types of stimuli, it also emphasizes that the brain’s response to items from a particular category is distributed over a number of different cortical areas.

Question 36

Describe the embodied approach to category knowledge?

Answer 36

The response to a hammer activates visual areas that respond to the hammer’s
shape and color, but it also causes activity in areas that respond to how a hammer is used and
to a hammer’s typical motions. This idea that some objects, like hammers, cause activity in
areas of the brain associated with actions, brings us to the embodied approach.

• Functional features of concepts
• Our brain simulates us using them (functional tools)
• Premotor cortex → controls action with the body (in front of the motor cortex)
• Also predicts what other people are going to do.
• Premotor cortex calculates us doing it and stimulates it without consciousness to that process
• Primate and electrode in the premotor cortex → give them a treat, before reaching for it, activity in the premotor cortex goes off suggesting stimulation of that behavior before
• If you restrained its arms → someone else reaches for it, the monkey can’t reach, their premotor cortex will still fire

Question 37

How does the distributed-plus-hub view of category knowledge help to explain deficits that often accompany semantic dementia?

Answer 37

Our knowledge is distributed → but there is a hub → anterior temporal lobe = damage = degrades in semantic memory (identifying things in the world around us)

According to this model, areas of the brain that are associated
with specific functions are connected to the ATL, which serves as a hub that integrates the
information from these areas. These functions include valence—
which is weak versus strong (yellow); speech (pink); auditory (red); praxis—which refers to
involving manipulation (dark blue); functionality (light blue); and visual (green).
Evidence supporting the idea of a hub with spokes is that damage to one of the specialized brain areas (the spokes) can cause specific deficits, such as an inability to identify
artifacts, but damage to the ATL (the hub) causes general deficits, as in semantic dementia (Lambon Ralph et al., 2017; Patterson et al., 2007). This difference between hub and
spoke functions has also been demonstrated in non–brain-damaged participants using a
technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).