Week 5 - external environment & one's own representations [2]

Question 1

Evidence for dbl diss: episodic /// semantic memory

Answer 1

CASE KC - Tulving et al, 1988 –> patient demonstrated inability to recollect personally experienced events from birth, but pre-trauma knowledge about maths, geography & general knowledge was preserved
(Green and Hodges, 1996) BRAIN –> patient experiences progressive loss of knowledge surrounding public figures (‘semantic dementia’) but showed no detectable increase in retrograde amnesia for personal experiences.

Question 2

Anatomy of memory - which regions for which purpose?

Answer 2

Hippocampus - episodic memory (events)

Parahippocampal region - semantic memory (facts)

Question 3

(Graham et al., 2000) Observations of semantic dementia? What does this suggest?

Answer 3

SEMANTIC DEMENTIA- temporal lobe atrophy
- no recognition of famous faces, buildings or sort animals into the correct category
- could mimic actions of objects through gestures but could’t say what they were
EARLY ALZHEIMERS - hippocampal atrophy

Question 4

CASE MS - outline

Answer 4

29 year old, surgery of the RHS occiptal lobe due to epilepsy. Hemaniopic.
Test subject on implicit memory task (priming task) against healthy and amnesic controls

Question 5

CASE MS - findings

Answer 5

• no sig diff in conceptual priming

- less visual priming effect is seen for MS on word completion task. Impaired explicit memory.

Question 6

CASE MS - implications

Answer 6

supports idea that there is a double dissociation between implicit memory /// explicit memory

• explicit memory has a distinct processing system from implicit memory
• perceptual priming is damaged in MS

Question 7

What is learning?

Examples of implicit and explicit learning

Answer 7

An enduring change in behaviour that results from experience
Implicit – riding a bike, driving a car
Explicit - conscious recall of info eg for an exam

Question 8

Example of implicit memory task

Answer 8

Cognitive task, such as filling in the blanks of a word (word completion task).
Repetition priming gives the participant a question along with a previously presented cue that could evoke words that may be related to this one cue

Question 9

What areas of the memory are spared and impaired in amnesia ?

Answer 9

Spared: STM and non-declarative memory
Impaired: episodic memory definitely, semantic typically.

Question 10

Organ of representation – what is meant by this?

Answer 10

The brain re-constructs events to plan for the future.

The brain doesn’t ‘replay’ events, it re-represents them, therefore is prone to error.

Question 11

Organ of representation –> what areas are involved in autobiographical retrieval and semantic planning?

Answer 11

• Medial prefrontal cortex
• Posterior mediolateral cortex
• Laterotemporal cortex

Question 12

Bartlett, 1932 study ‘ the war of the ghosts ‘ – what did this study involve and demonstrate?

Answer 12

Wanted to investigate how the recall of a story is impacted by existing knowledge/cognitive schemas (due to influences such as cultural background or unfamiliarity)
Hypothesised that memory is stored and retrieved according to cultural schemas

Question 13

What happens when we forget, and why do we forget?

Answer 13

Forgetting is functional to remembering –> we are not making economical use of cognitive resources if we retain detailed info within the brain indefinitely. It is an adaptive feature that facilitates updating
As retrieval decreases, accessibility decreases

Question 14

Why do amnesiacs forget?

Answer 14

Memories fade as a function of time. Lack of glutamate is argued to be a causative factor in amnesia –> facilitate biochemical changes required for memory formation.

Question 15

Primacy and recency effect (Capitani, Della Sala, Logie, Spinnler, 1992) - what is it?

Answer 15

Reflects typical functioning of the STM and LTM. The serial position curve is a demonstration of this.
Recency effect is a property of all types of memory systems, including verbal STM
Experiments show that when participants are presented with a list of words, they tend to remember the first few and last few words and are more likely to forget those in the middle of the list.

Question 16

Criticisms - primacy and recency effect?

Answer 16

Moreover, the serial position curve has been used widely for clinical investigations in patients with memory deficits. This is despite the lack of norms for the measures derived from the curve.

Question 17

Primacy and recency effect (Capitani, Della Sala, Logie, Spinnler, 1992) - implications of the study?

Answer 17

Use a set of standardised norms from 321 italians in conjunction with serial position curve in attempt to identify pathologies.
The standardised norms offer a clinical and experimental tool which, coupled with a multiple single case approach, allows us to show dissociations and double dissociations among the performance patterns obtained from all three pathological groups.
—> Demonstrated that different areas of the brain were responsible for different aspects of the memory. This is evidenced in the paper by different patterns in performance.