Exploring Psychology Chapter 8 Study Questions

What are the levels of processing, and how do they affect encoding?

Depth of processing affects long-term retention. In shallow processing, we encode words based on their structure or appearance. Retention is best when we use deep processing, encoding words based on their meaning. We also remember more easily material that is personally meaningful, the self reference effect.

What are some effortful processing techniques that can help us remember new information?

Effective effortful processing strategies include chunking, mnemonics, hierarchies, and distributed practice sessions. The testing effect is the finding that consciously retrieving, rather than rereading, information enhances memory.

What information do we automatically process?

In addition to skills and classically conditioned associations, we automatically process incidental information about space, time, and and frequency.

What is memory, and how is it measured?

Memory is learning that has persisted over time, through the storage and retrieval of information. Evidence of memory may be recalling information, recognizing it, or relearning it more easily on a later attempt

What are the capacity and location of our long term memories?

Our long term memory capacity is unlimited. Memories are not stored in single spots. Many parts of the brain interact during retrieval.

How do psychologists describe the human memory system?

Psychologists use memory models to think and communicate about memory. Information- processing models involve three processes, encoding, storage, and retrieval. The connectionism information-processing model views memories as products of interconnected neural networks. The three processing stages in the Atkinson- Shiffrin model are sensory memory, short-term memory, and long term memory. More recent research has updated this model to include two important concepts 1. working memory, to stress the active processing occurring in the second memory stage and 2. automatic processing, to address the processing of information outside conscious awareness.

How does sensory memory work?

Sensory memory feeds some information into working memory for active processing there. An iconic memory is a very brief (a few tenths of a second)sensory memory of visual stimuli; an an echoic memory is a three to four second sensory memory of auditory stimuli.

What is the capacity of our short term and working memory?

Short term memory capacity is about seven items, plus or minus two, but this information disappears from memory quickly without rehearsal. Working memory capacity varies, depending on age, intelligence level, and other factors.

What roles do the frontal lobes and hippocampus play in memory storage?

They are parts of the brain network dedicated to explicit memory formation.

How do explicit and implicit memories differ?

Through parallel processing, the human brain processes many things simultaneously, on dual tracks. Explicit (declarative) memories, our conscious memories of facts and experiences, form through effortful processing, which requires conscious effort and attention. Implicit (non declarative) memories, of skills and classically conditioned associations, happen without our awareness, through automatic processing.