W4: Encoding and Retrieval

Question 1

Long-Term Memory

Answer 1

The vast repository that contains all of your knowledge and beliefs, most of which you are hot thinking about (ie, aren’t working on) at this moment.

When we store information in LTM, we often need to retrieve it. This can be easy but can also be difficult - it depends on the retrieval cues we have available to us. We can also use the connections we have between memories - the retrieval paths.

Question 2

Retrieval Cues

Answer 2

Cue (stimulus/ prompt) from the environment or internal state.

The cue is only effective if it is congruent with what was stored in memory (eg. lifted piano - heavy).

Question 3

Context Dependent Learning

Answer 3

Forming memory connections between the thoughts, feelings, visuals, sounds, etc, from being in an environment (a context) and the materials being learnt.

Forming links between context cues and target learning material.

Question 4

Evidence for Context Dependent Learning

Answer 4

Godden & Braddeley’s 1975 experiment and Grant et al.’s 1998 experiment.

Question 5

Godden & Braddeley’s 1975 experiment

Answer 5

Godden and Braddeley tested participants’ recall ability in different contexts: underwater or on land.

The results demonstrated that memory was worse (recall dropped) when the recall context was different to the acquisition/ study context, compared to when recall context was the same as the study context.

Eg. studying underwater then testing underwater produced better results than studying underwater then being tested on land.

Question 6

Grant et al’s 1998 experiment

Answer 6

Similar to Godden and Braddeley’s experiment - Grant et al examined noisy vs quiet study contexts, then tested recall in matching or different contexts.

When studying in a noisy context, there was better recall when the testing context was nosy rather than quiet. Likewise, when studying in a quiet context, recall was better in a quiet context as opposed to a noisy context.

Question 7

Mental Context Reinstatement

Answer 7

Recreating the thoughts and feelings of the learning episode (study context) even if you’re in a very different place at the time of recall.

A strategy with which you can get the benefits of context-dependent learning, because what matters for memory retrieval is the mental context, not the physical environment itself - the psychological context can be just as important as the physical context.

Question 8

Retrieval Path

Answer 8

When you want to locate information in memory, you travel on those paths, moving from one memory to the next until you reach the target material.

These highways - the memory connections - can influence your your search for the target information. They can also change the meaning of what is remembered.

Question 9

Encoding Specificity

Answer 9

What you encode (ie, place into memory) is specific - not just the physical stimulus as you encountered it, but the stimulus together with its context. We learn the broader, integrated experience: the word as the perceive understood it.

Example: “piano as a musical instrument” isn’t what participants learned if they got the “the man lifted the piano” sentence - they learned “piano as something heavy”.

Question 10

Memory (Network)

Answer 10

According to many theorists, memory is best thought of as a network of ideas.

We can think of these representations (ideas) as “nodes” within the network, just like knots in the fisherman’s net. These nodes are tied to each other via connections we’ll call “associations” or “associative links”.

Question 11

Spreading Activation

Answer 11

Activation travels from node to node via associative links. As each node fires, it serves as a source for further activation, spreading onward through the network.

Activation spreads out from its starting point in all directions simultaneously, flowing through whatever connections are in place.

HOW IT WORKS
A node becomes activated when it has received a strong enough input signal. Once a node has become activated, it can activate other nodes: energy will spread out from the just-activated node via its associations, and this will activate the nodes connected to the just-activated node.

Question 12

Response threshold

Answer 12

The more activation arrives at a particular node, the activation level for that node increases. Eventually, the activation level will reach the node’s response threshold. Once this happens, the node fires. The firing of the node draws attention to that node; this is what it means to “find” a node within a network.

Question 13

Sub-threshold activation

Answer 13

Activation levels below the response threshold.

Question 14

Summation

Answer 14

Activation is assumed to accumulate, so that two sub-threshold inputs may add together and bring the node to threshold.

Question 15

Evidence for linked nodes / spreading activation

Answer 15

Priming, eg. repetition and expectation-based priming, and semantic priming.

Question 16

Semantic Priming

Answer 16

Priming: a specific prior event will produce a state of readiness later on.

Semantic priming: a word which follows a meaning-related word already has sub-threshold activation, thereby accelerating the process of bringing this node to threshold. Ie, Priming results from the fact that two words in a pair are related in meaning.

Evidence: lexical decision task
First word primes second: eg. doctor-nurse; bread-butter

Question 17

What is the lexical decision task?

Answer 17

Participants read paired stimuli and are asked to say as quickly as possible whether the item is a word or not.

Example: doctor-nurse vs chair-bread, vs house-fime.
People are faster to say that two words in a pair are both real words if they are related to each other rather than not.

Question 18

Summation of sub-threshold activation

Answer 18

A question-plus-hint accomplishes more than a question alone because the insufficient activation received from one source can add up to the insufficient activation received from another source - the two combined activate the target nodes.

Example: south dakota capital + man’s name

Question 19

Recall Test

Answer 19

Participant given a retrieval cue - usually in the form of a question - and they need to seaerch their memory for the answer,

Question 20

Recognition Test

Answer 20

A question presented with the answer as one of the options and participants need to recognise it as the correct answer,

Question 21

Source Memory

Answer 21

Actually remembering the event/ ansewr - the “source”

Question 22

Familiarity

Answer 22

An event/answer cannot actually be remembered but one answer feels more familiar than another, so you “know” the answer through that feeling.

Question 23

Two types of memory

Answer 23

Implicit (unconscious, eg. skills) and Explicit Memory (conscious, eg. facts)

Question 24

Indirect memory tests

Answer 24

The feeling of familiarity often occurs in this test. Questions are not direct. Priming. “Knowing”

Examples: word-stem completion tasks.

Question 25

Direct memory tests

Answer 25

Directly asks about past events. “Remembering”

Examples: Recall, recognition.

Question 26

False Fame Effect

Answer 26

Names that have been repeated in earlier tasks were judged as “more famous” names later.

Driven by implicit memory (not seen in people who had the source memory). Repeated names were processed more fluently thus felt more familiar, which participants interpreted as the people being famous.

“There’s no such thing as bad publicity”.

Experiment: Jacoby et al (1989)

Question 27

Illusion of Truth

Answer 27

Previously repeated statements are judged as more credible than new statements.

Driven by implicit memory. Repeated statements are processed more fluently which is interpreted as a feeling of credibility. Ie. repetition priming causes people to misattribute that familiarity to credibility.

Experiment: Begg et al. 1992

Question 28

The Truthiness Effect

Answer 28

People are more likely to agree that statements are true when they are accompanied by a photo that does not actually provide any useful information.

1) Photos help generate “evidence” to support their hypothesis
2) Increased processing fluency is interpreted as a feeling of “truthfulness” - it has been primed

Question 29

Processing fluency

Answer 29

The speed and ease with which a pathway carries activation.

Exposure to a stimulus > Practice in perceiving > Fluency > Stimulus is “special” > Attribution of fluency > Familiarity

Question 30

Memory Hierarchy

Answer 30

Memory

A: Explicit memory

• Episodic Memory (memory for specific events)
• Semantic Memory (General knowledge, not tied to any time or place)

B: Implicit memory

• Procedural memory (knowing “how”, eg. skills)
• Priming (changes in perception and belief caused by previous experience)
• Perceptual learning (re-calibration of perceptual systems as a result of experience)
• Classical conditioning (learning about associations among stimuli)

Question 31

Source confusion

Answer 31

A memory distortion that occurs when the true source of the memory is forgotten

Question 32

Processing pathway

Answer 32

The sequence of detectors, and the connections between detectors that the activation flows through in recognising specific stimulus.

Question 33

Retrograde amnesia

Answer 33

Inability to remember events that occurred before the incidence of trauma or the onset of the disease that caused the amnesia.

Question 34

Anterograde amnesia

Answer 34

Inability to form new memories (post-event). Only impacts explicit memory - implicit memory may stay intact.

Question 35

Word-stem completion task

Answer 35

A cognitive task in which the respondent is given the first few letters of a word (such as VIK … ) and tries to complete the word as quickly as possible.

Question 36

Explicit Memory without Implicit Memory or viceversa?

Answer 36

There is evidence with anterograde amnesia/ Korsakoff patients that explicit memory is disrupted but implicit memory intact.

There is evidence of intact explicit memory but impaired implicit:

Study compared

(1) Damage to hippocampus but not amygdala
(2) Damage to amygdala but not hippocampus

Results

(1) showed fear reaction (same as control group) but could not explicitly recall which light had been associated with the boat horn (fear stimulus).
(2) Was able to report which light colour was associated with boat horn (fear stimuus) but showed no fear response.