Cognitive Psychology Exam 2

Serial Position

the term for the primacy and recency effect, or the tendency of remembering the first and last couple of words on a list

Relational/Elaborative Rehearsal

thinking about the concepts behind things and understanding their relationships to things

Elaborate Encoding

thinking about the word in context of a complex sentence full of relationships

Digit span task

A person is read a series of digits and asked to repeat them back immediately after. If the person gets it correct, they are read a longer list of digits. This continues until the person makes errors. The digit span itself refers to how many numbers a person can successfully repeat back

What is context reinstatement?

A strategy where you can obtain the benefits of context-dependent learning from a different setting; re-creating the thoughts & feelings of the learning episode i. Mental context is important to memory retrieval, not physical environment itself

How is memory network activated?

Activation occurs in a node when the node receives a strong enough input signal; the node receives this from neighboring nodes, which raises the activation level. When the activation level reaches the response threshold, the node fires, becoming a source of activation for others.

Is the spreading activation a neutral/unbiased process?

Activation travels from node to node via associative links. Spreading activation is when each node becomes activated and fires and it serves as a source for further activation, then spreads onwards through the network. It is a biased process because it uses the nodes and links as a source to connect and fire off of. Spreading activation is "one node activating nearby nodes"

What is context-dependent learning?

Context-dependent learning is that learning in a specific setting and are then tested in this same setting/environment will result in the best test results

Which type of processing led to the best recall? How did all of this incidental learning compare to the intentional learning condition, in terms of recall? What can we conclude from this?

Deep processing led to the best recall, so we can conclude that the approach & manner of engagement is what determines how good the memory is later; the intention to learn on its own seems to be irrelevant

Why is exposure and repetition not sufficient to get information into LTM?

Exposure and repetition do not help LTM because you have no reason to notice them so are unlikely to remember them when they are of need

Distinguish forgetting from a memory error

Forgetting occurs when you once knew information and had learned it, but you no longer know it. Memory error is when you mistakenly believe that there was a certain aspect in your remembered event/thing/situation that actually wasn't there, but you "remember" that it was

What pattern of brain activation, indicative of active encoding, can predict which items will be remembered later?

Higher levels of brain activity (in the hippocampus & regions of the prefrontal cortex) were associated with greater probabilities of retention later on

Illusion of Truth

If hear statements multiple times (feel familiar), are more likely to believe they are true

How accurate is long term memory? How can we better remember things over the very long term?

In most cases, long term memory with longer retention intervals are associated with more forgetting. We can remember things better over the very long term if we learn the material well to begin with, or if we revisit the material periodically

How does memory confidence correlate with the actual accuracy of our memories?

It doesn't; There are factors that influence confidence in memory, but these are not correlated to accuracy. The factors influencing confidence do not impact one's memory

Intentional Learning

Learning that is deliberate, expecting to be tested later

Incidental Learning

Learning without any intention of learning

Why does a reading span test provide a better way to measure working memory capacity?

Measures working memory capacity because juggling the processes of reading, remembering, and processing things is what working memory does in day to day life, so the better you do on the task, the better your working memory is

Double dissociation

a distinction between episodic and semantic memory, showing that two functions are localized in different areas of the brain

How do our memory connections (between episodes and between the memory and our internal thoughts) set us up for this type of error?

Memory connections set us up for this type of error because as we keep adding more and more connections and links between episodes, you may lose track of the "boundary" between them. This means that you're more likely to lose track of which pieces of information are from which specific event. This occurs because there are no clear boundaries separating each episode from one another; elements that were part of your thinking during an event that is going to be stored in memory can be misremembered as if they were part of that event's experience

Modal Model of Memory

Modal memory is the process of information going from sensory to short-term to long-term memory. In sensory memory, the information goes into either visual (iconic) or auditory (echoic) memory. Short-term memory, aka Working Memory, is where information is held while you're working on it. Long-term memory is where some of the information makes it to, which stores the info long term in a bigger, more permanent location

What can help to document the difference between source memory & familiarity during recall?

Neuroimaging

What pattern of activation is seen in the medial prefrontal cortex when subjects are asked to relate stimuli words to themselves vs. other people/physical appearance of word?

Participants are more likely to remember words that are related to themselves; the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) is activated during self-referential condition in the test

Free recall

Participants listen to a series of ~30 words and then are immediately asked to repeat back the words that they just heard

What is the evidence for a double dissociation between implicit and explicit memory?

Patient with hippocampus damage and patient with amygdala damage (only) were exposed to many trials with green, yellow, red lights and no boat horn, and blue light with the boat horn. The patient with hippocampus damage had fear response with blue light exposure, but did not remember when specifically asked which color light had the horn [indicating implicit memory]. The patient with amygdala damage had no fear response, but could easily state that the blue light had the boat horn [indicating explicit memory].

Deep Processing

Paying attention to meaning

What are regularizing errors?

Regularizing errors are when you incorrectly believe that something is part of a memory, making your recollection seem more typical & normal than it actually was

Primacy effect

Remembering the first few words on a list

Recency effect

Remembering the last few words on a list

Why can flashbulb memories gain inaccuracy over time?

Retention interval- the longer the time that passes, the more you forget. However, the better you learned the information at the beginning, and revisiting the information/event, the less details you will forget over time

How does our schematic knowledge set us up for regularizing errors?

Schematic knowledge is when you take something (what you usually would assume is "normal" in a situation/setting) despite not noticing them during the event, and taking these assumptions and attributing them to your memory.

How can your self-schema influence errors in your autobiographical memory?

Self-schema can cause errors to occur in autobiographical memory because of one's sense of self; The self-schema consists of the belief that they are mostly the same as they are now. In terms of remembering the past, people are likely to base their beliefs on the idea that they are mostly the same/stable, so they will reconstruct their history in a biased, possibly incorrect manner where they maximize their personal stability

How do we know that measures like the reading span test are valid?

Since people with a greater working memory capacity have an advantage in testing/assessments, it proves that people with a larger span do better in tasks requiring the coordination of different pieces of information

Where is there high activity related to learning associated with memory of an object?

The Hippocampus

Understanding information is the key to remembering it long-term - what is the evidence for this?

The evidence states that the better participants' understanding of a sentence or a paragraph, if questioned immediately after viewing the material, the greater the likelihood that they will remember the material after a delay

Which cortex has a high level of activity during learning?

The Rhinal Cortex

Retention interval

The amount of time that passes between when you learn something and when you retrieve this information. The longer the interval, the more you are likely to forget of the information that had been learned

How does it support the idea that connections made during learning help with retrieval?

The connections that are made during learning, such as look, feel, and sound, influence the thoughts that come to mind and so when these same conditions are experienced again they bring back the connections to the memory that was formed in them

How was the subject's interaction with the stimuli moderated to manipulate the level of processing?

The intentional group knew that they would have to remember each of the words, while the incidental group only was told to remember a single letter, so this controlled their levels of processing the stimuli

Words in the serial position are advantaged because:

The last viewed words are in the working memory (words from recency effect); the first viewed words are repeated over & over in the person's mind in an intense effort to remember them, but once more words appear the person's focus is off guard so they are paying less attention to the currently presented words and are focused on still remembering the first few ones

When can memory confidence and accuracy of memories become dissociated?

The link between confidence and accuracy was diminished when evidence showed that confidence increased but accuracy remained unchanged.

How does memory confidence correlate with how convincing we are to others?

The more memory confidence we demonstrate, the more convincing we will seem to others.

Explain the incidental learning conditions in the shallow/moderate/deep processing experiment?

The participants were told 24 words, and the incidental group was asked whether each word contained the letter e or not; they were not told that they would be tested later

Transplant Errors

Transplant errors are when a bit of information that we encountered in one context is transplanted into another context

Sensory Memory

Visual (iconic) or Auditory (echoic) memory

How can mnemonic strategies work against understanding?

When using mnemonics, you're usually just focused on one aspect of the material that you're studying, so you aren't paying attention to the other aspects of the material that you would also need to know

Schema [scripts]

a cognitive structure that helps us perceive, organize, process, and use information

Implicit Memory

a type of memory in which previous experiences influence the performance on a task, without the conscious awareness of these prior experiences

Explain the idea of the memory network? How is information organized?

a. The memory network is the theory that memory consists of a vast network of ideas. b. The memory information is organized by various ideas. The representation of ideas is nodes. The nodes are tied to connections called associations/associative links, which carry the ideas like wires. This can be imagined like nodes - light bulbs that are turned on by incoming electricity and associative links - wires carrying the electricity

What is the structure of working memory?

a. A system made up of several components. The main component is the Central Executive, which contains the control for the processes of our thoughts. b. It contains 2 loops that are used when the executive function is needed for more complex matters. These can store the information briefly as if jotted down on a notepad, then can relay them when needed soon without bothering the executive when it is busy i. Articulatory Rehearsal Loop - stores verbal material ii. Visuospatial Buffer - stores visual materials and mental images

According to the theory of processing fluency, how do we arrive at a feeling of familiarity? How can this be artificially created to make things seem familiar, when they are not?

a. According to the processing fluency, we arrive at familiarity through exposure to a stimulus, practice in perceiving the stimulus, gaining fluency (the ability to process it quickly), registering the stimulus as special, determining the attribution of the fluency, such as a particular event (Ex.: That picture seems distinctive, and I know why: It's the same picture I saw yesterday in the dentist's office), and this achieves "Familiarity" b. This can be artificially created through the manipulation of the stimulus presentation to make the thing's perception easier, leading to the step in fluency much more quickly and seemingly as if it has been practiced, although the practice step was skipped

What is the evidence for a double dissociation between episodic and semantic memory?

a. Clyde Wearing: episodic memory is very disrupted, but memory for generic info & love for his wife are intact b. A different woman suffered damage to front area of temporal lobes: lost memory of common words, events, famous people, inanimate/animate objects, but remembered some specific past events like honeymoon and father's death

Three theories of Forgetting

a. Decay - the fading of memory over time; connections may need to be refreshed, and without this refreshing the connections weaken gradually b. Interference Theory - The time passing is a factor but not a cause; the new learning that occurs disrupts the older memories c. Retrieval Failure - failure to recall the information

How well are traumatic memories remembered? What is the theory of repression and recovery? What are some alternate explanations for these observations?

a. Traumatic memories are often remembered very well, for many years. This is often due to the consolidation mechanism. b. The theory of repression is that painful memories will be pushed out of memory awareness as self-protection, but these memories can be recovered, or made conscious again, in some circumstances. This theory is mostly viewed with skepticism by memory researchers though c. Instead of repression, other reasons for not remembering are sleep deprivation, head injuries, stress, or substance abuse

How does emotion help you remember? Three reasons why emotion helps you remember?

a. Emotion helps you remember because of promoting consolidation, ensuring you will pay attention and rehearse the event in memory, and deciding what you will specifically pay attention to b. Consolidation - process through which memories are biologically cemented into place; emotional events trigger response in amygdala, which increases activity in hippocampus, which establishes memories c. Ensuring attention - emotional events are important to you so you will pay close attention to them, which is an aid to memory. You will also think them over in your mind afterward, adding to memory rehearsal and making them well remembered d. Pointing Attention - attention will be focused on a few aspects of what is going on, as these are directly relevant to whatever your goal or emotional involvement is, so you will likely pay close attention to these aspects and commit them to memory

Use false fame, illusion of truth, and source confusion studies concepts to explain what can go wrong if you have familiarity, but no source memory.

a. False fame is when you have previously formed implicit memories that make something or someone like a famous actor in a picture "ring a bell" because the stimulus is distinctive, but this feeling of judgment of fame leads to misattribution of who the famous person really is b. Illusion of truth is when despite learning something was false, the person has an implicit memory of someone saying the previous part of the statement that they had thought was true, and since this true part sounds familiar due to the earlier exposure, it increases the credibility of the statement in their mind in comparison to those that they had never heard before c. Source confusion is if participants realize that somebody or something looks familiar, but they don't recall where they came from correctly and accidentally pin the blame on someone who was simply exposed to them earlier, but not for that thing/reason. An example of this is when someone goes to report a crime, and are shown mugshots of people who may have committed the crime, then come back a few days later and are shown more mugshots, and one of these mugshots is a repeat so they recognize it. This familiarity makes them think that this is the criminal in the crime, but it really was just the guy they had seen previously in the other picture.

Distinguish familiarity and source memory .

a. Familiarity refers to an instance where something provokes a subjective feeling of recognition, which we believe is a memory, but cannot remember the exact instance when/where you encountered that thing before. Source memory is recollection of the source of your current knowledge.

How do the lexical-decision making and word-stem completion tasks provide evidence for the existence of implicit memory?

a. Implicit memory - a type of memory in which previous experiences influence the performance on a task, without the conscious awareness of these prior experiences b. Explicit memory - the conscious & intentional recollection of experiences and information c. The lexical-decision making task provides evidence of implicit memory because participants in a study had the best performance identifying a word when they had previously been exposed to the test word/were thinking about the word's meaning d. Word-stem completion tasks are another example with evidence for implicit memory because participants are more likely to provide a particular word if they have recently encountered it (priming) e. Overall, your current behavior is demonstrably influenced by a prior event, but you may be entirely unaware of it

How can eye witness testimony be influenced by memory errors? Discuss the studies by Loftus et al examining the impact of leading questions and misinformation.

a. One study showed that testimony was influenced by memory errors by asking participants after showing them pictures of an accident "how fast were they going when they hit each other?" And "how fast were they going when they smashed into each other?" The participants were asked later on whether they had seen broken glass, and those who had the "smashed" question much more frequently 'remembered' glass, even though there was none in the image. This shows that just one word can change the memory and create error in people's memories. b. Another one of these studies asked whether the man in the image was bleeding from his knee or elbow, despite him not bleeding at all in the image, so this forced the participants to make up some misinformation and attribute this to their memory and choose an option. c. Another study exposed participants to "other witnesses" testimonies, which contained some errors, and were asked if this matches what they recalled from it as well. This made participants pick up the false leads and consequently believe they had remembered the same or similar things, even if they hadn't before.

Use the memory network to explain why retrieval cues, context reinstatement, and semantic priming helps us remember.

a. Retrieval cues help us remember because they activate the nodes in the memory that represent your knowledge on the topic, and then the activation will spread outward from these related nodes and will connect to nodes with the specific information that you need on the topic. When the nodes spread the activation, the other nodes will receive activation and this will raise the activation to the threshold levels, allowing you to remember b. Context reinstatement is helpful to memory because when you are back in the setting where you learned something, it will trigger the same type of thoughts and these may be linked to the nodes that represent the learned material. All of the connected nodes will be receiving double input, both from the nodes representing thoughts about the list of items, and from the nodes that are connected to the setting. Having a double input will make it more likely that activation will occur, thus providing a memory advantage. c. Semantic priming helps us to remember things because it is the use of a previously presented word to produce a state of readiness and quick responding later on; semantic priming spreads activation within associative networks more quickly as it connects (the first word in the pair) to the next term/thing

Distinguish retrograde from anterograde amnesia

a. Retrograde amnesia is caused from an injury; it deletes memories from before the injury b. Anterograde amnesia is the disruption of memories following the injury i. Ex. 50 first dates, can't form any new memories

Reading span

asking participants to remember the final word in each sentence they are read in a series of a few sentences being read out loud

Source Memory

based on memory connections between the target material and setting in which you encountered the material

Familiarity

distinct form of memory - independent of source memory [can find someone familiar, without knowing how you know them]

Retrieval failure

failure to recall information

storage

holding the memory of acquired information until it is needed

Hierarchy of Memory

i. Explicit Memory (conscious) 1. Episodic Memory (for specific events) 2. Semantic Memory (general knowledge) ii. Implicit memory (revealed by indirect tests/ unconscious) 1. Procedural Memory a. Knowing How to do something 2. Priming a. Changes in perception and belief caused by previous experience 3. Perceptual Learning a. Recalibration of perceptual systems as a result of experience 4. Classical Conditioning a. Learning about associations among stimuli

How does neuroimaging help us distinguish these two types of memory as different during recall, and during learning?

i. Recall: 1. fMRI scans can show the differences in participants' brain activity, as during "remembering and knowing" judgments, there is heightened activity in the hippocampus. [Hippocampus is crucial for source memory]. During "know' responses, the anterior parahippocampus is activated, indicating that this site is crucial for familiarity. ii. Learning: 1. When certain brain areas like the rhinal cortex are especially active during learning, then the stimulus is likely to seem familiar later on [Rhinal Cortex is crucial for familiarity] 2. When other areas like the hippocampus are active during learning, it indicates that the person will "remember" the stimulus when tested later 3. Both of these brain sites are crucial for establishing source memory

Implicit Memory

indirect memory testing (ex. through priming tasks) -Tachistoscopic identification

Recognition

information is presented to you, and you have to decide if it is sought-after or not

Acquisition

learning information and putting it in your memory

False Fame Task

list of names with famous & not famous people; later asked to identify which names were famous ones

Explicit Memory

measured by direct memory testing (ex. recall & recognition tests)- recognition memory

False Memories

memories are imperfect; they can be forgotten or distorted

Flashbulb memories

memories that are typically of highly emotional events that are full of clarity despite many years passing; Not very accurate, but some are

Source Misattribution

misremembering the time and place of witnessing/seeing something happen [attributing it to a different instance]

Interference theory

new learning disrupts old memories

Intrusion errors

other knowledge intrudes into the event that you're remembering

Maintenance rehearsal

people can simply focus on the items that need to be remembered (the meaning or relation of items is irrelevant)

How does our understanding of a situation set us up for intrusion errors?

people infer things from a situation and remember these inferences as if they are recalled facts

Recall

presented with a retrieval cue that broadly identifies the information sought, you need to come up with the information on your own

Semantic Priming

priming based on the fact that the two words are related in meaning (vs. repetition priming- prior exposure to same stimulus)

Chunking

remembering a "package" of letters so you only have to remember a few random letters after or before it ex. HOSPITALALI

Memory rehearsal

repeating a term over & over to oneself in the attempt to memorize it

Lexical-decision making task

shown a string of words, asked to decide if it is a word or not; first exposure primes subjects to better recognize words later, but no conscious memory after delay; Same results with word-stem completion tasks

Mnemonic strategies

strategies used to improve memory, like ROY G BIV or "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge" -Help organize material that needs to be remembered

Decay

the fading of memory over time

Memory Bias

the changing of memories to fit current beliefs or attitudes

Explicit Memory

the conscious & intentional recollection of experiences and information

Suggestibility

the development of false memories from misleading information

Autobiographical Memory

the memory that we each have for the events in our lives

Processing fluency

the sequence of detectors, and the connections between them, that the activation flows through in recognizing a specific stimulus

Retrieval

when you remember something; locating the information in your memory and bringing it into active use