week 7 attn & mem Flashcards
What is memory?
Memory is learning that has persisted over time – information that has been encoded, stored, retained and may subsequently be retrieved through
- Recall
- Recognition
- Relearning
What is memory?
sensory stimulus, temporal chars, consciousness, processsing requirements
Sensory stimulus
Temporal Characteristics
- Short Term / Working
- Long Term
Consciousness
- Declarative/ Explicit
- Non-Declarative / Implicit
Processing Requirements
-Encoding, Storage and Retrieval
Information Processing
People are active participants in memory making
Includes both quantitative and qualitative aspects
Information is processed through a series of hypothetical stages or stores
Speed and resources
Speed of Processing
-How quickly and efficiently the early steps in information processing are completed
Processing Resources
-The amount of attention one has to apply to a particular situation
Attention
Capacity or energy necessary to support information processing
Alertness, ignoring distractions, attending to relevant (no irrelevant) information, dealing with multiple sources of information
Functional Perspective: attention is composed of separate dimensions serving different functions
- Automatic Processing
- Effortful Processing
Attention
selective, divided, task switching
Selective Attention
- Ability to distinguish relevant from irrelevant information
- Older adults more affected by number of distractors (esp. if they are random and chaotic)
- But they are better at selectivity!
Divided Attention Deficits
- Problems that occur when distributing attention across multiple sources of information
- Older adults have more problems on complex divided tasks
Task switching and executive control
–Age-related deficits
Working Memory
The active processes and structures involved in holding information in mind
Using that information to:
- -Solve a problem
- -Make a decision
- -Learn new information
Rehearsal: The process by which information is held in working memory
Working Memory
problems?
If WM breaks down
- Can’t keep on task
- Hard to solve complex problems
Older adults’ working memory declines
- But it is a very small decline
- Effects are larger when tasks involve speed of processing or episodic, long-term memory
Working Memory declines
- Due to a build up of proactive interference that older adults are less able to inhibit:
- —Inhibition Deficit Hypothesis of Aging:
- ———A major cognitive effect of aging is the reduced capacity to inhibit irrelevant stimuli - Due to difficulties in keeping track of multiple pieces of information or divided attention
Divided Attention Hypothesis of Aging:
—Dual-task performance is worse in advanced age than on the two separate tasks
Long Term Memory
The ability to remember extensive amounts of information from a few seconds, hours, or decades
- Implicit / Non-Declarative / Procedural Memory
- –Retrieval of information without conscious or intentional recollection
- Explicit / Declarative
- –Intentional and conscious remembering of information
Implicit memory
Results are mixed:
- Priming tasks (stem completion) moderate impairment
- Identification tasks (lexical decision/word fragment) no impairment
- When the response is non-obvious, novel associations must be learned and older adults don’t do as well
Motor performance for procedural tasks declines with age but the rate of motor learning and motor memory does not
False memories
False Fame Effect:
Older adults more susceptible to false information and leading questions
–Approx 15% of the population
–Approx 30% of victims of fraud
Older adults resort to familiarity in response to failures of episodic memory
Explicit memory
episodic & semantic
Episodic Memory
- -Conscious recollection of information from a specific event or point in time
- -Recall (remembering without hints) vs. recognition (choosing from items)
Semantic Memory
–Learning and remembering the meaning of words and concepts that are not tied to specific occurrences of events in time
Episodic memory
decline
Declines steadily through the adult years, across the board:
- Recall and recollection tests
- Verbal and visual materials
- Memory for card hands
- Memorising passages
- Memory for conversations
The magnitude of the decline depends on the nature of the task and the method of testing (recall vs recognition)
Episodic Memory
associative deficit hypothesis
Older adults have less capacity to learn new information?
Associative Deficit Hypothesis: The differences between young and old are attributable to basic learning capacity, rather than to attentional or strategic differences related to processing speed.
Moderating Factors? on decline
The overall decline in episodic memory is moderated by:
- Processing capacity
- -Older adults take longer to perceive and process materials
- -Are less likely to develop and use complex / effective learning strategies
Level of environmental support provided during retrieval
- -Age effects are largest in -tests lacking external cues (e.g. free recall)
- Action associations increase recall
- Binding of information / divided attention decreases recall
Moderating Factors?
age effects/recall tests/external cues
Age effects are clearest in recall tests (which lack external cues) while recognition tends to be relatively preserved
- Fewer retrieval cues in the recall task
- A greater involvement of association in free recall
- The nature of the task
- –If familiarity (“knowing”) is sufficient—no deficit
- —If recollection (“remembering”) is necessary—some impairment
Semantic memory remains with age
Semantic memory does not decline with age, it actually expands in some areas:
- -Vocabulary
- -Historical facts
Speed of access (a more sensitive measure) does decline
- -Older adults tend to use sentences that demand less working memory
- –But they also write “better” and “more interesting” sentences
Autobiographical memories
Recall of episodes from own past
- Serves three primary functions
- -Directive function - Use to guide future thoughts and actions
- -Self function -Create personal meaning, growth, wellbeing
- -Social function - Lets others, like, really get to know you
- Few age related losses
Content changes
- Older adults remember less negative
- More social, less self-focused
Declines?
-Semantic memories preserved, episodic prone to error. Older adults did equivalently with young on information recall but have less contextual detail in event memory
Reminiscence bump
see slide 24
Flashbulb memories
Vivid, long-lasting, detailed memory of a personal experienced event
Hard to measure whether this declines with age
- Emotional memories tend to be remembered more
- Our memories for details of events are highly inaccurate overall, even though they seem real
Prospective memory
Remembering to perform a planned action in the future.
Differences between event-based and time-based future events
-No event-based declines (cues given)
-Time-based declines (self-initiated cues)
In real-life prospective memory scenarios older adults often perform better than younger adults.
- -More aware of their memory limitations and compensate with various strategies
- -More ordered and structured lives, making it easier to form plans.
- -More motivated to perform well on a memory task; younger people can explain memory slips by “being too busy”.
Evaluation of memory
Aspects of Memory Self-Evaluations
- Metamemory: knowledge about how memory works and what we believe is true about it
- Memory Monitoring: awareness of what we are doing with our memory right now
Age Differences in Metamemory
- Older adults:
- -Seem to know less about how memory works than younger adults
- -View memory as less stable
- -Expect that memory will deteriorate
- –Perceive they have less control over memory
Memory Self-Efficacy
Memory self-efficacy: the belief that one will be able to perform a specific task
- One may know a good deal about how memory works, but still believe they possess low ability to perform a specific memory task.
- Memory successes tend to bolster self-efficacy, and failures reduce one’s belief of memory competence.
Age Differences in Memory Monitoring
-The ability to monitor one’s memory does not appear to decline with age.
