Study Guide Flashcards
What is the difference between short-term memory and long-term memory (lecture answer)
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.
What is the difference between LTM and STM (textbook answer)
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.
Describe Murdock’s serial postion curve
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
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?
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).
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?
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.
Did patient HM have short-term memory or long-term memory?
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.
What is the distinction between declarative and procedural memory?
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.
What is the distinction between episodic and semantic memory? Which one did patient KC retain? How are both these kinds of memory declarative?
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.
What did Petrican and colleagues (2010) demonstrate regarding the functioning of episodic and semantic memory in older adults?
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.
What did research using word-stem completion with amnesic patients demonstrate about implicit memory?
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).
What types of processing during encoding did you learn can improve memory? 1) Levels of processing
- 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)
What types of processing during encoding did you learn can improve memory? 2) Self-processing
- 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.
What types of processing during encoding did you learn can improve memory? 3) Survival processing
- 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).
What types of processing during encoding did you learn can improve memory? 4) Visual Imagery
- 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).
What types of processing during encoding did you learn can improve memory? 5) Generating Information
- 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).