PSY101 - Ch 6

Explain the biological bases of memory in the brain.

-Evidence suggests that nondeclarative memories are stored in the cerebellum, whereas short-term memories are stored in the prefrontal and temporal lobes of the cortex. Semantic and episodic memories may be stored in the frontal and temporal lobes as well but in different locations than short-term memory, whereas memory for fear of objects is most likely stored in the amygdala. -Consolidation consists of the physical changes in neurons that take place during the formation of a memory. -The hippocampus appears to be responsible for the formation of new long-term declarative memories. If it is removed, the ability to store anything new is completely lost.

Describe the process of sensory memory.

-Iconic memory is the visual sensory memory, in which an afterimage or icon will be held in neural form for about one fourth to one half second. -Echoic memory is the auditory form of sensory memory and takes the form of an echo that lasts for up to 4 seconds.

Explain the process of long-term memory, including nondeclarative and declarative forms.

-Long-term memory is the system in which memories that are to be kept more or less permanently are stored and is unlimited in capacity and relatively permanent in duration. Information that is more deeply processed, or processed according to meaning, will be retained and retrieved more efficiently. -Nondeclarative, or implicit, memories are memories for skills, habits, and conditioned responses. Declarative, or explicit, memories are memories for general facts and personal experiences and include both semantic memories and episodic memories. -Implicit memories are difficult to bring into conscious awareness, whereas explicit memories are those that a person is aware of possessing. -LTM is organized in the form of semantic networks, or nodes of related information spreading out from a central piece of knowledge.

Explain how the constructive processing view of memory retrieval accounts for forgetting and inaccuracies in memory.

-Memories are reconstructed from the various bits and pieces of information that have been stored away in different places at the time of encoding in a process called constructive processing. -Hindsight bias occurs when people falsely believe that they knew the outcome of some event because they have included knowledge of the event's true outcome in their memories of the event itself. -The misinformation effect refers to the tendency of people who are asked misleading questions or given misleading information to incorporate that information into their memories for a particular event. -Rather than improving memory retrieval, hypnosis makes the creation of false memories more likely. -False-memory syndrome is the creation of false or inaccurate memories through suggestion, especially while hypnotized. -Pezdek and colleagues assert that false memories are more likely to be formed for plausible false events than for implausible ones.

Identify the three processes of memory.

-Memory can be defined as an active system that receives information from the senses, organizes and alters it as it stores it away, and then retrieves the information from storage. -The three processes are encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Differentiate the retrieval processes of recall and recognition.

-Recall is a type of memory retrieval in which the information to be retrieved must be "pulled" out of memory with few or no cues, whereas recognition involves matching information with stored images or facts. -The serial position effect, or primacy or recency effect, occurs when the first items and the last items in a list of information are recalled more efficiently than items in the middle of the list. -Loftus and others have found that people constantly update and revise their memories of events. Part of this revision may include adding information acquired later to a previous memory. That later information may also be in error, further contaminating the earlier memory.

Identify the effects of cues on memory retrieval.

-Retrieval cues are words, meanings, sounds, and other stimuli that are encoded at the same time as a new memory. -Encoding specificity occurs when context-dependent information becomes encoded as retrieval cues for specific memories. -State-dependent learning occurs when physiological or psychological states become encoded as retrieval cues for memories formed while in those states.

Describe short-term memory, and differentiate it from working memory.

-Short-term memory is where information is held while it is conscious and being used. It holds about three to five items of information and lasts about 30 seconds without rehearsal. -STM can be lost through failure to rehearse, decay, interference by similar information, and the intrusion of new information into the STM system, which pushes older information out.

Describe the "curve of forgetting."

Ebbinghaus found that information is mostly lost within 1 hour after learning and then gradually fades away. This is known as the curve of forgetting.