Week 6: Learning & Long Term Memory Flashcards
What is the definition of learning?
The acquisition of knowledge or skills through study, experience or being taught
If you learn general knowledge is is stored in the 1.___ memory
If you learn skills that is stored in the 2.____ memory
- Semantic
- Procedural
What is the difference between declarative and non-declarative memory?
Declarative involves conscious recollection & you can tell people what those memories are (declare them).
Non-declarative does not involve conscious recollection and cannot be told or declared
What are some examples of non-declarative memories?
Procedural memory, learning skills, classical conditioning, habituation
What are the two main forms of declarative memory and describe
Episodic - store and retrieve specific events, linked to a specific place in time
Semantic - general factual knowledge e.g., objects, words, meanings, facts
What are the four main categories in non-declarative memory?
- Procedural memory - skill learning, slow improvement with practice
- priming - faster target processing after presentation of a stimulus
- Classical conditioning - learned associations eliciting a response
4.Habituation - reduced response following repeated exposure
True or false?
Amnesia is normally specific to declarative memory and typically affects the episodic memory more than the semantic memory?
True
What are the two forms of amnesia?
Retrograde amnesia - impairment on information learned before amnesia onset
Anterograde amnesia - impairment on information after the amnesia onset
True or false?
It is common to find the two types of amnesia in the same patient
True
What are five common causes of amnesia?
- Bilateral stroke
- Closed head injury
- Chronic alcohol abuse resulting in Korsakoff’s Syndrome
- Brain infection
- Bilateral damage to hippocampus and adjacent medial temporal lobe regions
What four areas of amnesic syndrome are present in Korsakoff’s syndrome?
- Anterograde amnesia
- Retrograde amnesia
- Slight impairment on short-term memory
- Somewhat preserved skill learning
What are three factors of semantic memory?
- Consists of concepts and mental representations relating to objects, people, facts, words
- Information is often multi-modal (incorporates info from multiple senses)
- Consists of schemas (scripts that us to understand what’s going on)
What brain areas are stimulated to elicit a semantic memory and an episodic memory
Semantic - perirhinal
Episodic- hippocampal
When does an episodic memory become a semantic memory?
When you have forgotten the personal and contextual information associated with the memory
What is priming?
A form of non-declarative memory - the idea that you can speed up people’s performance by presenting them with stimulus physically or conceptually related to the target
