Unit 3 (Chapters 6-8) Flashcards
An archive of information about past events and knowledge learned
Long-term memory
What are the two memory types called?
Recognition and Recall
The identification of a stimulus that was encountered earlier
Recognition Memory
The person must produce the item to be recalled without any prompt or cue.
Free recall
The person must produce the item to be recalled
- Provides cues in order to help the person recall information
Cued-Recall
The distinction between short-term and long-term memories
Serial Position Curve
________ is the primary cause of forgetting in LTM
Interference
Older memories interference with retrieving newer memories
Proactive Interference
Newer memories interfere with retrieving older memories
Retroactive Interference
Loss of the ability to recall past events
- Loss of episodic memory
- Semantic memory still intact
Retrograde amnesia
Loss of the ability to form new memories
Anterograde amnesia
Specific experiences, including semantic and episodic memory
Autobiographical memory
Semantic memories that have personal significance
Personal semantic memory
- Conscious memories
- Episodic memories (personal events)
- Semantic (facts; knowledge)
Explicit memory
Three types of implicit memory
1) Procedural memory
2) Priming
3) Conditioning
Occurs when learning from experience is not accompanied by conscious remembering
Implicit Memory
Procedural/Skill Memory
Memory for actions
A psychological concept that describes how a person’s response to a stimulus can be influenced by prior exposure to a different stimulus
Priming
A phenomenon where a subject’s behavioral response improves when they are repeatedly presented with stimuli
Repetition Priming
A person is more likely to rate statements read or heard before as true, even when they have been told otherwise
Propaganda Effect
Acquiring information and transforming it into memory
Encoding
Transferring information from LTM to WM
Retrieval
Repetition of stimuli maintains information but does not transfer it to LTM
Maintenance rehearsal
Using meanings and connections to help the transfer of information to LTM
Elaborative rehearsal
Close attention and elaborative rehearsal focused on meaning and relation to other things
Semantic (Deep) processing
Paying little attention to meaning
Non-semantic (Shallow) processing
The process that transforms new memories (STM) from where they can be disrupted, to a more permanent state (LTM), where they are resistant to disruption
Consolidation
Learning and memory are represented in the brain by physiological changes at the synapse
- Rapid
Synaptic Consolidation
Involves reorganization of neural connections and takes place over a longer time span
Systems Consolidation
What was Murdoch’s Serial Position Curve Experiment?
Task:
- Present participants with a long list of words, then ask them to recall them
- Plotted how many people remembered the first word, second word, etc.
- Made participants rehearse out loud
Results :
- Memory is better for words presented at the beginning of the list (primacy effect) and the end of the list (recency effect)
Better memory for things presented earlier/first in a task
Primacy Effect
Better memory for things presented last in a task
Recency Effect
What was Wickens et al. experiment about coding in short-term memory?
Task:
- Subjects were divided into either the “fruits” group or the “professions” group
- Subjects in the Fruits group are presented with the names of three fruits on each trial.
- After each presentation, subjects counted backward for 15 seconds and then recalled the names of the fruits.
- Subjects in the Professions group were presented with the names of three professions on trials 1, 2, and 3 and with the names of three fruits on trial 4.
- They also counted backward for 15 seconds before recalling the names on each trial.
Results:
- The Fruits group showed reduced performance on trials 2, 3, and 4, caused at least partially by proactive interference.
- The Professions group showed similarly reduced performance in trials 2 and 3.
- The increase in performance on trial 4 represents a release from proactive interference because the names of fruits, rather than professions, were presented on trial 4.
Describe Patient HM
- Had a removed hippocampus
- LTM impaired. STM intact
- Cannot remember new information
Describe Patient KF
- Had damage to the parietal lobe
- STM impaired; LTM intact
- Able to form and hold new memories; Reduced digit span
Patient KF and Patient HM are an example of what?
Double dissociation for STM and LTM
Which type of memory involves mental time travel?
Episodic Memory & Autobiographical Memory
The ability to mentally revisit past events and imagine possible future scenarios
Mental Time Travel
Describe Patient KC
- Had damage to the hippocampus
- Episodic memory impaired; Semantic memory intact
- Cannot relive past events; Can remember general information about the past
Describe the Italian woman who suffered a encephalitis attack
- Semantic memory impaired; Episodic memory intact
- Can remember past events and create new event memory
Patient KC and the Italian woman are an example of what?
Double dissociation for Episodic and Semantic memory
What are the two types of LTM?
1) Explicit Memory
2) Implicit Memory
What is the Remember/Know procedure?
- Give participants a memory, and they can choose between the following:
1) Remember if the stimulus is familiar and remember the circumstances when they first encountered it
- Episodic memory
2) Know if the stimulus is familiar but don’t remember the circumstances
- Semantic memory
3) Don’t know if the stimulus is familiar
What occurs during the semanticization of remote memories?
- A loss of episodic details for memories of long-ago events
- Taking an episodic memory and making it more like a semantic memory
Memories of events that happened in the distant past, such as years or decades ago
Remote Memory
What did Addis study?
- Neuroimaging while participants thought about..
- Events from the past
- Events that might happen in the future
Results: - Similar brain areas involved with both past and future imaging
What is the Constructive Episodic Simulation Hypothesis?
Episodic memories are extracted and recombined to create simulations of future events
- Helps us to anticipate future needs and guide future behaviors
What was Graf and coworkers experiment?
Three groups of participants:
- 1) Patients with Korsakoff syndrome
- 2) Patients in alcohol treatment
- 3) Patients with no history of alcohol use
Task:
- Presented a list of 10 words; participants rated each word for how much they liked the word
- Explicit Recall: recall as many of the words as possible
- Implicit word completion: present word stems that can be completed with a word from the list.
- “HORSE” will prompt the completion of “Ho____” with the list words.
Results:
- Amnesiac patients did poorly on the recall test compared to the medical inpatients
- Amnesiac patients did as well as the other patients on the implicit memory test
What are the two assumptions of the Levels of Processing Theory (Craik & Lockhart)
1) A memory trace is a by-product of perception and comprehension
- If this is true, intent to remember is not required
2) Retention of information is determined by what is encoded (type of processing)
Why is trying to retain information with the intent to remember not efficient?
Retrieval occurs spontaneously and naturally
What was Craik and Tulving’s Stimulus “Train” Experiment
- Three different conditions, Varied by question type
- Stimulus “Train”
1) Physical features: Are their capital letters?
2) Does it rhyme with “pain”
3) Fill in the blank: “He saw a ______ on the tracks” Is it coherent?
Results:
- Stimulus “Train”
- Deeper processing (fill-in-the-blank question) is associated with better memory
What are some factors that aid encoding?
- Distributed Practice (!!!)
- Retrieval Practice (!!!)
- Visual Imagery
- Self-reference effect
- Self-generation effect
- Organizing to-be-remembered information
- Relating words to survival value
Analyzing information and finding how it’s relevant to you in your everyday life
Self-Reference Effect
People remember information better when they generate it themselves, rather than passively receiving it
Self-Generation Effect
What was Bransford & Johnson’s exeriment?
- Presented difficult-to-comprehend information
- Experimental group (EG) 1 saw a picture that helped explain the information before reading it.
- EG 2 saw a picture after reading the passage
- The control group did not see a picture
Results: - EG 1 outperformed the others
- Having a mental framework of comprehension aided memory encoding and retrieval.
What was Karpicke & Roediger’s study-and-test experiment?
- Group 1: studied and tested all words/all sessions
- Group 2: studied only words missed in previous tests; tested on all words
- Group 3: studied all words; tested only on words missed in previous tests
Results: - Group 1 recalled 81% a week later
- Group 2 recalled 81% a week later
- Group 3 recalled 36% a week later
- Shows that testing memory retrieval can improve memory
Enhanced performance due to retrieval practice
Testing effect
What was Tulving and Pearlstone’s recall study?
- Presented participants with a list of randomized words to recall
- Words came from specific categories such as birds, furniture, professions, etc.
- Free recall condition: participants were asked to write down as many of the words as they could remember
** Recalled 40% of the words ** - Cued-recall condition: provided with the names of the categories (birds, professions, furniture, etc.) and then asked to write down all the words they could remember
** Recalled 75% of the words. **
What was Mantyla’s cued recall study?
- Participants presented a list of 504 nouns
- Study phase: asked to write three words they associated with each noun
- Test phase: 3 conditions
- Group 1: presented with the three words they had generated themselves
- Group 2: presented with the three words someone else had generated
- Group 3: Never saw the word list but presented with three words someone else had generated
Results: - Memory was best when retrieval cues were created by the participant (G1) and not as good when retrieval cues were created by someone else (G2)
- Control participants (G3) who tried to guess the words based on retrieval cues generated by someone else did very poorly
Retrieval is ___ dependent
Cue
What was Baddely’s “Diving Experiment”?
- Encoding condition 1: Participants put on diving gear and study a list of words underwater
- Encoding condition 2: Study list of words on land
- Retrieval condition 1: Test for memory of word list underwater
- Retrieval condition 2: Test for memory of word list on land
Results:- Best recall occurred when encoding and retrieval occurred in the same location
- Retrieval can be increased by reinstating the context in which learning occurred
- Learning is associated with a particular internal state
- Better memory is a person’s mood at encoding matches the mood during retrieval
State-dependent learning
What was Eich & Metcalfe’s experiment?
- Encoding condition: Participants were put into either a sad or happy mood and then studied a list of words
- Came back 2 days later, half of each encoding group (sad/happy) put into either a sad or happy mood, then tested for the words they had learned 2 days earlier
Results:
- Those who studied in a sad mood and tested in a sad mood (and vice versa) did better than cross-conditioned subjects
What was Morris and coworkers’ rhyming and meaning study?
Two conditions: Rhyming & meaning condition
Results:
- Participants in the rhyming condition performed better in this task.
- Better retrieval occurs if the encoding and retrieval tasks are matched.
What was Muller and Pilzecker’s experiment?
- Two groups of participants learned lists of nonsense syllables
- In the immediate (no delay) condition, participants learned the first list and then immediately learned the second list
- In the delay condition, the second list was learned after a 6-minute delay
Results - Participants in the delay condition were able to recall more nonsense syllables.
After encoding, the activity of the hippocampus fades with time
- Only intercortical connections remain
Standard Model of Consolidation
The hippocampus is activated during the retrieval of both recent and remote memories
- Hippocampus-cortical connections remain
Systems Consolidation
Retrieved memories become fragile and are consolidated again
Reconsolidation
Which area of the brain is responsible for determining the emotional components of memory?
Amygdala
What was the Brunet and coworkers’ experiment?
- Participants reactivated a traumatic memory
- Propranolol is administered to block amygdala stress receptors during the reconsolidation of memory
- Later reactivation of the same memory showed lower stress responses
Memory is better for multiple short study sessions
Spacing effect
Memory for specific experiences from our life, which can include both episodic and semantic components
Autobiographical Memory (ATM)
The tendency of older adults to recall more memories from their adolescence and early adulthood
Reminiscence Bump
What are the three explanations for the Reminiscence Bump?
1) Self-Image Hypothesis
2) Cognitive Hypothesis
3) Culture Life Script Hypothesis
Memory is enhanced for events that occur as a person’s self-image or life identity is being formed
Self-Image Hypothesis
Encoding is better during periods of rapid change that are followed by stability
Cognitive Hypothesis
Personal events are easier to recall when they fit the cultural life script
Cultural Life Script Hypothesis
Memory for the circumstances surrounding shocking, highly charged important events
Flashbulb Memories
What are some examples of flashbulb memories?
9/11, challenger explosion, Kennedy’s assasination
What was the Neisser and Harsch Challenger Study?
- Studied people’s memories of the day they heard about the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle
- Participants filled out a questionnaire within a day of the Challenger explosion
- The questionnaire asked about where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the event
- Completed the same questionnaire 2.5-3 years later
Repeated viewing/hearing/talking of event
Narrative Rehearsal Hypothesis
What are some examples of the narrative rehearsal hypothesis?
TV, newspaper, radio, talking with others
Prior knowledge has a significant influence on our episodic memory
Conceptually-Driven Processing
Occurs at encoding; the retrieval of memories in which those memories are altered, revised, or influenced by newer info
Constructive Processing
Occurs at retrieval; we reconstruct a memory by combining elements from the original material with existing knowledge
Reconstructive Processing
What was Barlett’s research study?
- Has people study material and then recall it several times, once shortly after study and then again at later intervals
- Conclusions:
1) People do not recall events verbatim. They forget specifics and recall the gist of an event or narrative
2) Subject world knowledge played a significant role in what and how the story was recalled
a) Memory for story events that did not fit with their understanding of the world was modified
b) Normalization became more pronounced the greater the delay between reading and recall
The enhanced probability of evaluating a statement is true after repeated presentation
The Illusory Truth Effect
An inference made based on knowledge gained through experience with language
Pragmatic Inferences
Inferences based on personal knowledge
Elaborative inferences
Organized information related to knowledge about some aspect of the environment or topic of knowledge
Schema
Knowledge about the spatial arrangement of specific locations
Scene Schemea
Conceptions of sequence of actions that usually occurs during a particular experience
Scripts
What was Brewer and Treyen’s Study?
- Participants brought into an office and told to wait
- After 35 seconds, they are taken to another room and asked to write down everything they could remember from the office
- Results:
- They recalled schema-consistent items (desk, chair, etc.)
- However, they did not recall schema-inconsistent items (skull model, etc.)
- They also recalled many items that were not actually present (books, stapler, etc.)
- They were recalling what they thought should be in an office.
Misleading postevent information presented after someone witnesses an event can change how that person later describes the event
Misinformation Effect
What was Loftus and coworkers study?
- Participants see slides of traffic accident with stop sign
- Introduce MPI (Yield Sign)
Results:- Participants remember what they heard (yield sign) and not what they saw (stop sign)
What was Loftus and Palmer’s study?
- How fast were the cars going when they hit/smashed each other
- After the video, asked a number of questions.
- Group 1 got the question “How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?”
- Group 2 got the same question but “smashed” replaced “hit”.
- Results
- Those hearing “smashed” said the cars were going faster than those who heard “hit”
Failure to distinguish the source of information
Source Monitoring Error
What was Lindsay’s Study?
- Participants watched a slideshow of a man stealing a computer narrated by a female voice.
-They were then divided into 2 groups - Difficult condition: Misleading narrative by the same female voice immediately after slide show
- Easy condition: Misleading narrative by mae voice 2 days after the slide show, right before test.
In each case they were told to ignore misleading information - Results
- Same voice for both stories created source monitoring errors
Changing voice (female to male) did not create as many errors
- Same voice for both stories created source monitoring errors
What was Hyman and coworkers study?
- Participant’s parents gave descriptions of childhood experiences
- Participant had conversation about experiences with experimenter; experimenter added a new event
- When discussing it later, the participant now remembers the new event as actually happening and provided details
A testimony by an eyewitness about what he/she saw during the crime
Eyewitness Testimony
What was Wells and Bradfield’s study?
- Participant view security videotape with the gunman in view for 8 seconds
- Everyone identified someone as the gunman from photographs afterward
- The actual gunman’s picture was not presented
What was Stany and Johnson’s weapons focus study?
- Participants viewed a video of a simulated crime
- Results
- Participants in the “no-shoot” condition remembered more details about the perpetrator, the victim, and the weapon than participants in the “shoot” condition
- Presence of a weapon that was fired is associated with a decrease in memory about the perpetrator, the victim, and the weapon
What was Ross et al. Experiment?
- Studied the effect of familiarity on eyewitness testimony
- When the actual robber was not in the photo, subjects in the experimental group erroneously identified the male teacher as the robber 60% of the time
- When the actual robber was in the photo, the male teacher was identified 18% of the time
