W11: Memory 1

Question 1

Memory

Answer 1

The retention of information overtime

Question 2

The different kinds of memory

Answer 2

Autobiographical/episodic memory: self-reference, specific memory to the indiviudal

Semantic memory: shared knowledge by others

Lexical memeory: involving a word. E.g. What is the name of that thing?; what is both the name of a chocolate bar and the nightclub featured in the musical “Cabaret’?

Prospective memory: memory about the future

Procedural memory: memory regarding procedures or motor skills or actions

Question 3

3 types of memory stores

Answer 3

Sensory memory

Short term memory

Long term memory

Question 4

What are the assumptions of the multistore model of memory?

Answer 4

• Different memory stores for memories of differnt duration

Original assumption: Storing and retrieving information invovles passing information from one store to the next

Question 5

Explain how the multistore model of memory work

Answer 5

Stimulus comes in → held briefly in sensory memory → transferred to short term memory where information is maintained by rehearsal → some information gets transferred to long term memory and becomes more durable

Question 6

Sensory memory span, duration, and function

Answer 6

Preserves memory in its original sensoy format:
* Visual (iconic memory)
* Auditory (echoic memory)
* Touch (tactile memory)

Large span, short duration (.5 to 2 seconds)

Information not attended to is quickly lost in sensory memory –> lose most of processed info here

Question 7

Can sensory memory be maintained by rehearsal?

Answer 7

No. Sensory memory decays rapidly –> cannot be maintained by rehearsal

Question 8

What format does short term memory hold information?

Answer 8

Verbalised (speech) format

This means the information would be recoded into a verbal (speech format)

Question 9

Rehearsal

Answer 9

Repeating information to extend the duration of retention in STM

Question 10

How many items can short term memory hold?

Short term memory span, duration and function

Answer 10

Small capacity, with 7+/-2 items (due to being in the immediate consciousness); chunking helps increase capacity of STM

Short duration (20 - 30 seconds)

Retains info for short periods of time

Reasons for loss of short term memory: decay and interference

Rehearsal helps duration of STM –> 2 types (maintenance and elaborative –> more effective)

Question 11

Long term memory span, duration and function

Answer 11

Large capacity, long duration

Used to store info for a long period of time

Permits retrieval and reactivation of important information after minutes, months, years of the initial experience

Question 12

Short term memory vs long term memory

Primary memory vs secondary memory

Answer 12

Primary memory
* Equivalent to short term memory
* Info held in immediate consciousness

Secondary memory:
* Long term memory
* Enable memory to be recalled into the primary memory

Question 13

Serial-porision effect

Answer 13

Suggests that we are more likely to remember the first and last (i.e. primary effect and recency effect)

Question 14

Why is memory not credible?

Answer 14

Because it is more reconstrucitve than reproductive

It is also easiliy influenced by misinformation, pseudo memory, or just the brain’s tendency to fill in the blanks to make sense of the world

Psychologists have succeeded in impanting memories.

Question 15

What is chunking?

Answer 15

Organising material into meaningful groupings

Question 16

Maintenance rehearsal vs Elaborative rehearsal

Answer 16

Elaborative rehearsal is more effective

Maintenance rehearsal:
* Repairing the stimuli in their original form
* However, if interrupted whilst rehearsing, memory can be forgotten

Elaborative rehearsal:
* Linking stimuli to each other in meaningful way to improve retention
* Takes more effort but more effective (e.g. similar concept to chunking)

Question 17

Reasons for loss of STM

Answer 17

Decay: fading of info from memory

Interference: loss of info from memory due to competition from additional incoming information
* 2 types (retroactive interference, proactive interference)

Question 18

Contrast 2 types of interference in STM

Answer 18

Retroactive interference: occurs when learning something new hampers earlier learning

Proactive interference: occures when ealier learning gets in the way of new learning

Question 19

Long term memory

Primary effect

Answer 19

The tendency to remeber stimuli early in a list

Question 20

Long term memory

Recency effect

Answer 20

The tendecy to remember stimuli later in the list

Question 21

How does the primary effect reflects long term memory?

Answer 21

Because the earlier words more likely to be rehearsed, or even chunked in silent.

Question 22

How does recency effect reflects short term memory?

Answer 22

Because the last few words in the list were probably lingering in the short term memory

Question 23

How does a faster rate of presentation (i.e. saying the words faster) affect the primary effect?

Answer 23

Words presented faster –> less time for rehearsal as they fill up short term memory more quickly –> reduced the primary effect

But the last few words would still be in the short term memory

Question 24

How does filler task (e.g. mental arithmetic task) affect the recency effect?

Answer 24

Words at the end of the list is replaced with the arithmetic task –> short term memory is filled with the filler task –> removes the recency effect

Primary effect intact

Question 25

2 types

Types of long term memory

Answer 25

Explicit memory:
* Memory that are recall intentionally, where we have a consciouss awareness
* Often referred to as declerative memory
* E.g. sematic memory, episodic memory

Implicit memory:
* The process of recalling memories we do not remeber deliberately
* E.g. habitatuion, classical conditioning, priming, procedural memory

Question 26

LTM –> implicit memory –> procedural memory, priming

Procedural memory

Answer 26

Memory for motor skills and habits

Basically a memory for how to do things, even things we do automatically

Question 27

LTM –> implicit memory –> procedural memory, priming

Priming

Answer 27

The ability to identify a stimulus more easily or more quickly when we have previously encountered similar stimuli

Question 28

Methods for connecting new information to existing knowledge

Answer 28

Stage 1: Encoding
* Encoding: the process of getting information into our memory banks
* Many of our memory failures are actually failures of encoding → no encoding, no memory
* Attention, use of mnemonic help us encode memories in a way they makes them easier to encode and recall

Stage 2: Storage
* Storage: process of keeping information in memory
* Use schemas

Stage 3: Retrieval
* Retrieval: reactivation or reconstruction of experiences from our memory stores
* Use of retrieval cues: hints that make it easier for us to recall information
* Many types of forgetting result from failures of retrieval

Question 29

Types of mnemonic

Answer 29

Pegword method: using rhymes to recall lists of words

Method of loci: relies of imagery of places → locations → recall things by placing on the path as locations to be encountered

Keyword method

Question 30

Schemas role in memory storage

Answer 30

Schema: an organised knowledge structure or mental model that we have stored in our memory

Schema provides a frame of reference for interpreting new situation

Schema simplify things to make sense of the world
However, memory errors can occur due to oversimplification

Question 31

3 major ways to measure memory

Answer 31

Recall
* Requires generating previously encountered information on our own

Recognition
* Requires selecting the correct information from an array of choices

Relearning
* Reacquiring knowledge that we had previously learned but have largely forgotten over time
* Often referred to as method of savings

Question 32

Why is recalling more difficult than recognition?

Answer 32

Recalling requires 2 steps: (1) generating an answer, (2) determining whether it seems correct

Recognition on requires 1 step: determining which item from a list seems most correct

Question 33

Why is relearning a more sensitive measure then recalling and recognition?

Answer 33

It allows us to assess memory using a relative amount rather than the simply ‘right’ or ‘wrong’

Relative amount → how much faster was material learned the second time

Question 34

The law of distributed and massed practice

Answer 34

Applies to most form of learning

Remember things better in the long run when it is spread over long intervals rather than short intervals

Question 35

How the relation between encoding and retrieval conditions influences remembering

Answer 35

Individuals tend to remember better if they are tested under the same physical and emotional conditions as when they encoded the information → called the principle of encoding specificity

Context-depedent learning: superior retrieval when the external context of the original memories matches the retrieval context

State - dependent learning: superior retrieval of memories when the organism is in the same physiological or psychological condition during encoding

Mood - dependpent learning: similar concept to state but in mood

Question 36

Long term potentiation

Answer 36

LTP is the gradual strengthening of the connections among neurons from repetitive stimulation

Can be found in the hippocampus and other brain structures

Belived to be responsible for storing and forming memories

Question 37

Types of amnesia

Answer 37

Retrograde amnesia:
* Loss of some memories of our past
* Not common

Anterograde amnesia:
* Lost of the capablity to form new memories
* Occurs more frequent among poeple with brain damage

Question 38

The relevance of amnesia to the brain’s organisation of memory

Answer 38

Study of amnesic patients reveal that memories are stored in distinct memory systems because although amnesic patients can’t recall declerative memory, they are often still able to form new procedural memories

E.g. Patient Hm was able to improve every time he was asked to trace a star through a mirror (able to learn procedural memory –> which is an implicit memory), however, he doesn’t recall having done the tasks many times before (unable to recall explicit memory)

Question 39

Key impairments of Alzheimer’s disease

Answer 39

Alzheimer patients’s brain often include changes of enlargment of the ventricle severe loss of the cortex in areas involved in language and memory –> may contribute to memory loss and intellectual decline

Alzheimer’s disease is marked by loss of synapses and acetylcholine neurons

Question 40

How children’s memory abilities change with age

Answer 40

• Foetuses display habitation - a decrease in attention to familiar stimuli → an implicit memory
• Infants have worse memory than children, who have worse memories than adults, and young adults have better memories than older adults
• Infants have very specific memory –> if the context change, they stop demonstrating the conditioned behaviour
• Children’s memory span increase with age; conceptual understand increases with age (improves chunking as it relates to the general knowledge of the world)
• Over time, children developed enhanced meta memory skills
  
  • Meta memory skills: knowledge about their memory abilities and limitations

Question 41

Factors that influecing false memories

Answer 41

Flashbulb memory:
* Emotional memories that are extraordinarily vivid and detailed
* generally not accurate

Source monitoring confusion:
* Refers to the lack of clarity about the origin of a memory
* Source monitoring failure e.g. some people often mistakenly recall that they engaged in an action even though they didn’t perform it, but observed someone else doing it
* can also result in cryptomnesia: failure to recognise that our ideas originated with someone else

Question 42

According to Elizabeth Lofttus, how can memory be manipulated?

Answer 42

Using suggestive memory techniques, Loftus revealed that memories are far more malleable that when have been assumed

Suggestive memory techniques refer to procedures that strongly encourage people to recall memoris that may or may not have taken place

Question 43

In what ways can suggestive memory techniques be demonstrated?

Answer 43

Misinformation effect:
* Creation of fictitious memories by proving misleading information about an event after it takes place
* Older adults are more vulnerable to this –> due to difficulties with source monitoring

Implanting memories:
* Researchers have used fake photographs to show that memories can be ‘rewrite’
* Elizabeth Loftus ‘lost in the mall’ experiement