Week 12 Flashcards
What are the two theories of forgetting, and describe?
Decay; memory traces become less accessible as they decay in strength with time, and interference; memories become less accessible as they are subject to increasing interference.
Explain how the paired learning experiment provides evidence for the interference theory. (A-B, A-D vs A-B, C-D)
Learning overlapping information (A-B, A-D) impairs performance, indicating interference
Explain the difference between interference and redundancy.
For interference to occur, information must have no intrinsic relationship to each other. Interference does not occur when the information is redundant.
Discuss the effects of irrelevant and redundant facts have on learning.
Subjects learned target fact, target fact plus 2 unrelated, target fact place related. Subjects learned relevant facts as good as single facts, and even better in delayed recall, and irrelevant facts the worst.
Give an example of how we might make inferences at the moment of memory retrieval.
Adding extra information based on prior knowledge about the subject. e.g adding ‘deaf, dumb and blind’ to paragraph about an known invalid.
Give an example of how we make plausible inferences at the point of recall.
Adding information that ‘makes sense’ given the prior knowledge and context of the ‘story’. People seem likely to judge what ‘might ‘ be true rather than trying to remember exact facts. Exact recall and plausible inference might be two different types of memory.
Describe non-declarative memory
memory that cannot be consciously retrieved, but manifest themselves in improved performance.
Which group of patients would show no improvement in procedural memory and why?
Parkinsons would display no improvement, due to damage to their basal ganglia, Amnesiac would improve because their basal ganglia is intact. MTL has no part in procedural memory.
the ____ is involved in procedural memory
basal ganglia
the ___ in involved in declarative memory
MTL
