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Adult Development > week 7 attn & mem > Flashcards

week 7 attn & mem Flashcards

1
Q

What is memory?

A

Memory is learning that has persisted over time – information that has been encoded, stored, retained and may subsequently be retrieved through

  1. Recall
  2. Recognition
  3. Relearning
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2
Q

What is memory?

sensory stimulus, temporal chars, consciousness, processsing requirements

A

Sensory stimulus

Temporal Characteristics

  • Short Term / Working
  • Long Term

Consciousness

  • Declarative/ Explicit
  • Non-Declarative / Implicit

Processing Requirements
-Encoding, Storage and Retrieval

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3
Q

Information Processing

A

People are active participants in memory making

Includes both quantitative and qualitative aspects

Information is processed through a series of hypothetical stages or stores

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4
Q

Speed and resources

A

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

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5
Q

Attention

A

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
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6
Q

Attention

selective, divided, task switching

A

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

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7
Q

Working Memory

A

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

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8
Q

Working Memory

problems?

A

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
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9
Q

Working Memory declines

A
  1. 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
  2. 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

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10
Q

Long Term Memory

A

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
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11
Q

Implicit memory

A

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

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12
Q

False memories

A

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

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13
Q

Explicit memory

episodic & semantic

A

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

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14
Q

Episodic memory

decline

A

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)

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15
Q

Episodic Memory

associative deficit hypothesis

A

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.

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16
Q

Moderating Factors? on decline

A

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
17
Q

Moderating Factors?

age effects/recall tests/external cues

A

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
18
Q

Semantic memory remains with age

A

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
19
Q

Autobiographical memories

A

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

20
Q

Reminiscence bump

A

see slide 24

21
Q

Flashbulb memories

A

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
22
Q

Prospective memory

A

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”.
23
Q

Evaluation of memory

A

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
24
Q

Memory Self-Efficacy

A

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.

25
Q

Theories of Aging (re mem decline)

A

Disuse view “Use it or lose it”

Systems view

Processing views

  • Speed
  • Lack of inhibition
  • Transfer-appropriate processing

Contextual views

26
Q

Slowing down…

A

We have to wade through our memories to make choices

Older adults are slower at this

In general, slowing is core part of age-related memory decline

Older adult needs between 1.4 and 1.7 seconds to do what a younger adult can do in 1 second

27
Q

Factors that preserve memory

A
  • Exercise, diet, physical health
  • Multilingualism and Cognitive Functioning
  • Semantic Memory in Service of Episodic Memory
  • Negative Stereotypes and -Memory Performance
  • Continued mental activity
    • –But rates of decline don’t differ across professors/blue-collar workers

-An enriched environment (at least it works for rats …)

28
Q

Memory strategies

A

Strategies are deliberate activities designed to improve memory (e.g., tie string around finger),

-Older adults don’t spontaneously use these as much as younger adults in both encoding and retrieval processes

Why?

  • “Disuse view” use these strategies because of longer time away from educational system
  • Diminished attentional capacity view: Fewer attentional resources available to engage in encoding strategies (and maybe they don’t execute them as well)
  • Memory self-efficacy view
29
Q

Factors that improve memory

A

Training rests on the assumption that older adults use poor memory strategies (alterable) as well have declines in efficiency of brain (unalterable)

Memory training works (and better than placebo)

Many programs focus on creating “mind-palaces”

  • Meaningful material may allow the active learner to compensate for declining episodic memory
  • Explicit memory training (e.g. mnemonics) can help
  • But young participants gain substantially more from training than the elderly
30
Q

Memory Training (E-I-E-I-O)

A 
E – I – E – I – O Strategy
External aids (
-eg explicit - appointment book
-eg implicit - color-coded map

Internal aids

  • eg explicit - mental imagery
  • eg implicit - spaced retrieval

Explicit (direct aids)
Implicit (indirect aid

31
Q

Deep and shallow processing

A

Shallow Processing
1. Structural processing (appearance - encode only the physical qualities
2. Phonemic processing – encode sound.
Involves maintenance rehearsal leads to fairly short-term retention

Deep Processing
3.Semantic processing - encode the meaning relate it to similar information

Deep processing involveselaboration rehearsalwhich involves a more meaningful analysis and leads to better recall.

32
Q

Learning Outcomes

A

Describe the features of memory and attention
Understand the key components of the information processing system and how these differ by age
Differences in working memory
Differences in long-term memory
Understand factors which influence both implicit and explicit memory
Describe how key memory processes function in older adults
Understand memory training tools and techniques

Adult Development (11 decks)

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