WEEK 10 - Memory Part 2 Flashcards
What are “schemas”?
mental representations (generalisations) of categories of objects, events and people
example: Most Australians and New Zealanders have a schema for cricket match, so simply hearing these words is likely to activate whole clusters of information in long-term memory, including the rules of the game, images of players, bats, balls, a green field, and long, hot summer days.
What are the ways in which a witness’ memory be altered?
- Through hearing new information about a crime. It can make it harder to retrieve the original memory (
- New information may be integrated into the old memory, making it impossible to distinguish the new information from what was originally seen
- An eyewitness report might be influenced by the person’s assumption that if a lawyer or police officer says that an object was there or that something happened, it must be true
What are “constructive memories?”
Where our memories are affected by what we experience but also by what we already know about the world. We use that knowledge to organise new information as we encounter it, and we fill in gaps in the information as we encode and retrieve it.
Example: students asked to wait for several minutes in the office of a postgraduate student. Later, they were asked to recall everything that was in the office. Most of the students mistakenly ‘remembered’ seeing books, even though there were none.
How is semantic and episodic information integrated in constructive memories?
Parallel distributed processing models.
What are “spontaneous generalisations”?
Produced by parallel distributed processing networks.
Example: If your friend tells you that she just bought a new car, you would know without asking that like other cars you have seen, it has four wheels.
Spontaneous generalisations are helpful, but they can also create significant errors if the network is based on limited or biased experience with a class of objects (there are, in fact, three-wheeled cars).
What is the relearning method - and who devised it?
Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist.
It is a way of measuring forgetting by comparing the number of repetitions needed to learn and, after a delay, relearn the same material
What does Ebbinghaus’ “curve of forgetting” show us?
- The same strong initial drop in memory, followed by a more moderate decrease over time. The shape of the curve is the same no matter what type of material is involved. Even the forgetting of events from daily life tends to follow Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve.
- Information from arithmetic to bike riding is often retained for decades. You may forget something you have learned if you do not use the information, but it is easy to relearn the material if the need arises, indicating that the forgetting was not complete.
What are the two processes that can cause us to forget?
Decay theory and Interference
What is “decay theory”?
a description of forgetting as the gradual disappearance of information from memory
What is “interference”?
the process through which either the storage or the retrieval of information is impaired by the presence of other information
How does forgetting occur in short-term memory?
If an item is not rehearsed or elaborated, memory of it decreases consistently over the course of about 18 seconds.
Decay appears to play the main role in forgetting information in short-term memory. But interference through displacement can also be operating. Rehearsal prevents displacement by continually re-entering the same information into short-term memory.
How does forgetting occur in long-term memory?
In long-term memory, forgetting seems to be more directly tied to interference. Sometimes, the interference is due to retroactive inhibition or proactive inhibition.
What is retroactive inhibition?
A cause of forgetting in which new information placed in memory interferes with the ability to recall information already in memory
Example: Retroactive inhibition would help explain why studying French vocabulary this semester might make it more difficult to remember the Italian words you learned last semester.
What is proactive inhibition?
A cause of forgetting in which information already in long- term memory interferes with the ability to remember new information
Example: The French words you are learning now might make it harder to learn German next semester.
Does interference affect recall because it pushes information out so information is lost or does interference affect recall because it makes information harder to retrieve?
Information harder to retrieve = faulty retrieval. Not decay.
What is a “repressed memory”?
A painful memory that is said to be kept out of consciousness by psychological processes
What do psychologists say about whether traumatic memories can be repressed and then recovered?
The available evidence is not strong enough to support the conclusion that traumatic memories can be repressed and then accurately recalled. Any given ‘recovered’ memory, they say, might actually be a distorted or constructed memory
What are “false memories”?
Distortions of actual events and the recall of events that didn’t actually happen – can be at least as vivid as real, accurate memories, and that people can feel just as confident about them.
People with certain brain characteristics and those who are prone to fantasy, who easily confuse real and imagined stimuli, and who tend to have lapses in attention and memory, are more likely than others to develop false memories and possibly more likely to report the recovery of repressed memories
What is “prospective memory”?
The ability to carry out future intentions at a specific time (for example, remembering to leave the house at 11 a.m. to attend an appointment an hour later) or in response to a specific event (for example, remembering to lock the front door of your house when leaving).
Ongoing deficits in prospective remembering have been correlated with ageing
What does successful prospective memory require?
That the intention to remember is encoded and recalled some time later in response to a cue, so that accurate prospective memory task performance has both a prospective component (remembering to remember) and a retrospective component (remembering the content of what is to be remembered).
What is event-based prospective memory?
When you need to remember to do something by a certain event
Example: Take medication after dinner (dinner is the event)
What is time-based prospective memory?
When you need to remember to do something by a certain time
Example: Take medication at 8pm
