Topic 6&7: Long-Term Memory: Structure & Function Flashcards
Topics 6 & 7
What is Priming? How does it occur?
Priming occurs when the presentation of one stimulus (the prime) changes the way a person responds to another stimulus (the test).
Does Priming occur consciously?
No, it often occurs without our awareness and participants often dont recall seeing the original prime
What is Encoding?
The process of acquiring information to be transferred to Long-Term Memory.
What is Retieval?
Bringing information back from Long-Term Memory by transferring it into Short-Term Memory/Working Memory
What is one of the main factors that determines whether you can retrieve a memory?
The way in which that information was encoded when you originally learned it.
What is Maintenance Rehersal?
Rehearsal that involves repetition, without any consideration of meaning or making connections to other information.
What is the result of maintenance rehersal?
Results in little to no encoding and extremely poor memory recall/retrieval
What is Elaborative Rehersal?
Rehersal that involves thinking about the meaning of an item to be remembered or making connections between that item and prior knowledge
What is the result of Elaborative Rehearsal?
Much more encoding, and far better memory recall
What are the two criteria of how well information is encoded?
Depth or level of processing
What are the two processes an item could be encoded into?
Depth?
Deep or Shallow
What did Tulving (1975) test for?
Tested memory following different levels of processing
How did Tulving present his research? What did he do?
Presented words to participants and asked them three types of questions.
What three questions did Tulving ask his participants?
- A question about the physical features of the words
- A question about Rhyming
- A fill-in-the-blank question
What is paired-associate learning?
Participants are first presented with pairs of words, then one word of each pair is presented, and they must recall the other
How can encoding memory be improved?
Memory can also be improved by encoding information in a way that relates the material to yourself
What is the Self-Reference Effect?
Memory for words is improved if you can relate them to who you are
What is the Generation Effect?
Generating informatin yourself, rather than receiving it passively, enhances learning and recall
What percentage of people recalled better with the generation effect?
30% more than those who simply just read them
Explain an executive function strategy we do to organize items?
We tend to spontaneously organize items as we recall them
What is a reason for the effectiveness for retrieval cue?
Retrieval Cues help remember a word that helps us remember other words in that category which produces organized and systematic list
What happens if the original information is presented in an already organized manner?
Presented material to be learned in an “organizational tree”; organized according to categories
What are the 4 “trees”?
Minerals, Animals, Clothing, and Transportation
What is the Retrieval Practice Effect?
Increased memory performance as a result of memory retrieval practice
What is the Testing Effect?
Enhanced performance on a memory test caused by being tested on the material to be remembered
What is Self-Testing and Practice?
An elaborative process, whereby you continue to make connections with the material, even after the material is “learned”
What is the Illusion of Learning?
a type of cognitive bias that explains why we sometimes forget things that we thought we have already mastered well
What are some retrieval cues?
words, locations, sounds, and smells
How can Retrieval be further increased with matching conditions?
Retrieval can be futher increased by matching the conditions at retieval to the conditions that existed at encoding
What are 3 ways we can match the conditions at retrieval to the conditions at encoding?
- Encoding specificity
- State-dependent learning
- Transfer-appropriate processing
What is encoding specificity?
We learn and encode information in a context or a specific setting
Explain Baddeley’s Diving Experiment (1975)
Divided both groups so that half then recalled the words underwater and half recalled them on land
What is Transfer-Appropriate Processing?
Retrieval is better if the same cognitive tasks are involved during both retrieval and encoding
What are the two Transfer-Appropriate Processing?
Meaning and Sounds/Rhyming
What is Consolidation?
The process that transforms new memories from a fragile state, in which they can be disrupted, to a more permanent state, in which they are more resistant to disruption
What does consolidation imply?
It implies that once permenant memories are consolidated, they are strengthened and become more permanent
What is consolidation essential for?
Consolidation is essential for getting Short-Term Memory into Long-Term Memory
Where does the consolidation process happen?
The consolidation involves physiological changes at the level of the synapses
What is synaptic consolidation?
A process of consolidation that involves structural change at the synapses
Explain how an experience/stimulus allows a neurotransmitter release?
An experience/stimulus causes nerve impluses to travel down an axon. Once at the axon terminal, neurotransmitter release occurs.
What does repeating the neurotransmitter release do for thr snyapse?
Repeating the neurotransmitter release multiple times strenghrens the synapse causing structural changes and greater neurotransmitter release
What is one of the outcomes of synaptic consolidation?
Long-Term Potentiation
What is believed about our experiences and memories with synaptic consolidation?
Believed that all our experiences/memories are represented by these changes and the pattern of firing across groups of neurons
How is snyaptic consolidation improved? with what?
Greatly improved by sleeping
What is the role of the hippocampus?
Helps with consolidation, otherwise we get anterograde amnesia
What is Reconsolidation?
When a memory is retrieved, it becomes fragile again, and needs to once more undergo consolidation
What is a false memory?
a memory that is inaccurate or that recalls an event that didn’t happen
What are the three different forms of memory?
- Episodic Memory
- Semantic Memory
- Procedural Memory
What is the Primacy Effect?
The first word, when you hear it, gets 100% of your attention and rehersal time
The second word, when you hear it gets 50%
and so on
Which researcher helped discover the Primacy Effect?
Rundus (1971)
How did Rundus (1971) test for the Primacy Effect?
Tested how rehersal impacts the serial position curve by presenting a list of 20 words and asked them to recall
What is the Recency Effect?
The most recently presented words are still available in STM and so are easily remembered
Which researchers helped discover the Recency Effect?
Glanzer and Cunitz (1966)
How did Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) help discover the Recency Effect?
Generated the traditional serial position curve. On the next list, they had participants recall the words only after they counted backwards for 30 seconds.
How does counting cause interference?
Counting causes interference as it prevents the control process of rehersal
What were the results of the Recency Effect?
No-delay results were as expected… By preventing rehersal, we lose the rehersal effect
What is Recency effect due to?
Recency effect is due to recent storage (recall ~30secs) of information in the Short-Term memory
Who is Henry Molaison in Neuropsychology? What did he do?
As a chil, he began to have seizures following an accident on his bike. He has surgery on in th medial temporal lobes which reduced his seizures but left him with an inability to form new long term memories
Which part of the brain did Henry Molaison hve surgery on?
Bilateral hippocampus removal
Who is KF (1970s) and what happened to him?
Parietal lobe damage following a motorcycle accident which results in the loss of STM
Is the hippocampus responsible for LTM or STM
forming LTM
Who is Endel Tulving (1985)?
Made the distinction is made between the types of information being remembered
What are explicit memories ?
Declarative memories… Memroies that i am aware/concious of; things that i can “declare”
What are episodic memories?
Personal Events… Defining feature of episodic memory is mental time travel.
Reliving or Remembering
What is Autonoetic conciousness?
Awareness of Time
What is Semantic Memory?
Facts and Knowledge… Accessing knowledge; does not have to be tied to remembering a personal event.
Who is Kent Cochrane (KC)? What did he suffer from?
Age of 30, suffered a MVA that resulted in a bilateral hippocampal loss
What did Kent Cochrane (KC) lose?
Lost episodic memory and his autonoetic awareness of time (both directions)
Semantic Amnesia
a memory disorder that makes it difficult to use language, recall facts, and learn new information
How do epsiodic and semantic memory interact from time to time? 2 Reasons
- Knowledge/facts impacts our experiences, and our recall of those experiences
- Autobiographical Memory
How do knowledge/facts impact our experiences, and recall those experiences?
-The knowledge you have impacts what you will pay attention to and what you will later recall as your experience
-If you have no knowledge, your recollection of the experience will be quite different
What is an Autobiographical Memory?
Memory for experiences specifically from our own life
- Includes things that you know about yourself
- Can include both episodic and semantic components
Is forgetting an “all-or-nothing” process?
Not usually
What is semanticization of remote memories?
Over time, we tend to lose more episodic details about our memories, particularly for events that occured a long time ago
Is there a difference between “remembering/recalling” an experience and “knowing/being familiar with” the experience?
Yes
What is Implicit Memory?
“unconcious”/”automatic”/”nondeclarative” memory
We can do many things wihtout needing to conciously think about them
What is Procedural Memory?
“Skill Memory”
- Memory for how to cary out highly practiced, learned skills
What is recall?
The amount of attention we dedicate when the task is novel is quite high at the high
What memory allows us to carry out skills more automatically?
As time goes on, our procedural memory allows us to carry out the skills more automatically, without the need to pay aas much attention
What is expert-induced amnesia?
describing the state of expertise when being able to usefully describe how something is done is no longer possible’. For example, think about learning to drive
