PSCL 357 EXAM 2

encoding

(Acquistion) first stage of the memory process- in it information is transformed into a form that can be process further and stored (usable mental form)

DRM procedure

(Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigram) a procedure used to study false memory in humans by giving participants a list of closely related words and then asking them whether a specific salient (but absent) word was included • Ex: researchers might present a list of words related to cats (whiskers, fur, purr) later a participant is likely to claim mistakenly that cat was on the list o This is based on relatedness o There was an activation of critical item during encoding of list • It is a breakdown in source monitoring (misattribution) • Factors affecting false memory in the task: o Presentation duration- false recall first rises then declines as the presentation rate of the study list is slowed down o Presentation modality- false memory is higher if list if given auditory, rather than visually o Presentation encoding- either asked subjects to focus n each individual item or to relate them together during encoding of the study list

Episodic memory

(Events) a category of long term memory that involves the recollection of specific events, situations and experiences • A type of declarative memory- info that has truth (explicit)

Semantic memory

(facts) a subdivision of declarative memory that stores general knowledge, including the meanings of words and concepts • A type of declarative memory- info that has truth (explicit)

Script

A cluster of knowledge about sequences of events and actions expected to occur in particular settings. • In other word's "large scale knowledge structures that guide interpretation and comprehension of daily experience"- from slides • Inspired by issues in artificial intelligence and social psychology

Schema

A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information. • Emphasized reconstructive memory • Most famous studies involved repeated reproduction of materials including wars of the ghosts

Misinformation effect

A memory-distortion phenomenon in which a person's existing memories can be altered if the person is exposed to misleading information. • Shown in eyewitness testimonies • Example of suggestibility • What caused misinformation effect: o Memory impairment: a genuine change or alteration in memory of an experienced event as a function of some later event o Source attribution: the inability to distinguish whether the original event of some later event was the true source of the information o Misinformation acceptance: subjects accept additional information as having been part of an earlier experience without actually remembering that information (biased guessing)

Cryptomnesia

A type of misattribution that occurs when a forgotten memory returns without it being recognized as such by the subject but rather It being something new and original (unconscious plagiarism)

Semantic Netowrks

Concepts joined together by pathways that link related concepts or similar meaning, organized frameworks of knowledge (nodes) • Ex: connecting he words "canary" and "ostrich" with the word "bird" • Everyone has their own semantic network that reflects the individual's expertise and knowledge • Developed by Quillian who was first researching knowledge in computers but then saw that this showed how human remember and learn long term memory • Each concept is represented by a node o A node is a point or location in the semantic space o Nodes are linked by pathways that are labeled directional associations between concepts

Infantile amnesia

Inability of adults to remember personal experiences that took place before an early age • Extreme cause of autobiographical forgetting o Autobiographical memory is the study of one's lifetime or collection or narrative of personal memories o Autobiographical forgetting is little to no memory for events in first few years of life • Possible explanations: o Repression- explained by Freud o Encoding specificity principle o Development of sense of self o Result of changes in nervous system

Metamemory

Knowledge and awareness of a person's own memory and functioning

Encoding specificity principle

Principle stating that recall is better if the retrieval context is like the encoding context. • Memory researcher, Tulving suggest that the context matters while recalling • Retrieval is cue dependent o Environment plays a role as being a cue o A cue is effective to the extent that it overlaps with information contained in the memory trace o There was an experiment dealing with the physical environment that shows this- subjects hear a list when on land and others under water- then they had to recall in their respective environments- showed that people are affected by a change in environment. • Retrieval cues may sometimes impair recall o Negative part-set cuing effect= also called memory inhibition which is the ability not to remember irrelevant information o This occurs because retrieval is competitive

Prospective memory

Remembering information about doing something in the future; includes memory for intentions. • 2 basic kinds o event based- remembering to do something when a certain event occurs o Time based- remembering to do something based on the passage of time

Sternberg Memory-Scanning Task

Short term memory scanning task which explained how people recognize objects in short term memory o The experiment focused on a memory set then a probe- in other words a person was given a set of letters typically consisting of 2-6 items (memory set) one at the time, then people were given a single letter (the probe) and had to respond "yes" or "no" depending on whether the probe was in the memory set. o In this experiment the focus was response time- the people had to indicate as rapidly as possible whether the probe was in the memory set or not. o What Sternberg Found: Found that response time varied with the size of the memory set as memory set got larger response time increased also. Sternberg found and developed a 4 stage processing model: 1. Encode Probe 2. Scanning (compare probe with items in memory set) 3. Binary Decision (yes/no decision) 4. Execute motor response (actually pressing the button to say yes or no) • Also figured out how scanning occurs: is it serial or parallel? o Serial: doing things one at a time (this is what Sternberg favored- because as you add an item you increase response time) o Parallel: doing things all at once (simultaneous scanning much like Treismans theory) Sternberg states that scanning is a serial- exhaustive process- which contends that when questioned regarding the presence of an item in a memory set, people will search every item in short term memory without stopping even if the item was found (you can self terminate however) • Self terminating: you choose when you stop • Exhaustive: you work till completed • What this experiment shows: • This experiment shows that you can use behaviors to test theories about what the mind is doing- Sternberg's experiments used behaviors to show that the mind is using serial exhaustive memory scanning o Your mind is processing things one at a time and does not stop till work is completed or you self terminate • Limitations of Sternberg's work: • Serial exhaustive scanning can't be applied widely because it has low ecological validity o Ecological validity because it has too many items in memory for serial exhaustive scan o People don't tend to look and compare features one by one • There are many problems with this task because some items are responded more quickly than others: o People tend to remember repeated items and things of the last set then in the beginning • People propose a mimic serial, exhaustive scanning- which are parallel models but people slows down the items being scanned and there is a cascade which is where processes overlap time.

Spreading activation

The process through which activity in one node in a network flows outward to other nodes through associative links (The mental activity of accessing and retrieving information from the network) • Accessing occurs quicker when you know more about a topic (paradox of expertise) • Structure is based on cognitive economy- only non redundant facts are stored (small network) • Requires the concept of inheritance- properties of higher nodes apply to lower connected nodes unless specifically negated • How quickly you respond to a question depends on how far you had to travel in your semantic network (shown in sentence verification task)

Reminiscence bump

The tendency of older people to recall autobiographical memories from the years of adolescence and early adulthood than any other time. • Exception to recency effects in autobiographical memory • First documented with Galton Crovitz technique- gives people timeline and have them write down significant memories

Continuous-distractor task

a challenge of memory retentiveness in short term memory in which a constant sequence of objects is displayed • If you have a continuous distractor task (distractor activity after every item on the list) then recall will be like immediate recall (recency effect is brought back)

Feeling of knowing

a feeling that allows people to predict beforehand whether they will be able to remember something

Imagination inflation

a memory phenomenon in which vividly imagining an event markedly increases confidence that the event actually occurred (increases false memory) • Proven in Goff & Roediger experiment in which subjects were given lists of actions- some were performed others were imagined people had difficulty recalling which was which • If psychologist do this, people can really get messed up (an example is a psychologist telling asking their patients questions if they were abused and making them imagine it- even if the patient isn't abused they will think they are) • Memories are implanted

Method of loci

a mnemonic technique that involves associating items on a list with a sequence of familiar physical locations • A type of mnemonic device- strategies that helps us to remember

Pegword mnemonic

a special use of the mnemonic in which serial order of a list is recalled through variations in a standard set of images • A type of mnemonic device- strategies that helps us to remember • Relies heavily on rhymes (ex. One is a bun, two is a shoe)

Clustering

a technique to enhance memory by organizing items into conceptually related categories • Clustering is different then chunking because clustering deals with encoding and then showing how they would be recalled but chunking deals with storage in WM.

Brown-Peterson Task

a test designed to test the limits of working memory capacity o Brown and Peterson state that forgetting is caused by decay o This test is the hallmark of rapid forgetting, along with limited capacity o Their test: A simple 3 letter trigram was presented to people followed by a 3-digit number. People were then asked to attend to the letters, then to begin counting backwards by 3's from the number they were given • The counting was used as a distracting method which varied in length • Wanted to distract to prevent rehearsal of the 3 letters o Counting backwards requires the same cognitive mechanism as rehearsal o What their test proved: Findings found that the longer the interval delay the less trigrams were recalled (less of an ability to rehearse) • in other words, with increasing time period, less and less information remains in short term memory • Found that short term memory has limited duration when rehearsal is prevented. They proved rapid decay- forgetting caused by passage of time in short term memory o Other people supporting this experiment: Muter states there is a rapid delay due to passage of time • He found even faster forgetting in his experiment with 2% of trials o Skepticism: Criticism is that this experiment has low ecological validity as people do not do this in life Skeptical people: Keppel and Underwood • They were skeptical because they believed the repeated trials was the cause of Proactive interference: interference by older material on your memory for current information • They try to confirm this by saying that in the Brown's Peterson's task there was very little forgetting in the first trial, but on the second trial it drops tremendously; o therefore, this is proving that it is not time that is critical or decay, but it is a buildup of proactive interference o concept of principle of interference is introduced This concept highlights the importance of similar things • Similar things interference with each other • Dissimilar things do not interfere with each other • If memory material is switched, interference should be reduced

Survival processing

adaptive memory encoding that have evolved to help retain survival and fitness related information • This is said to be the best type of processing

Primacy effect

advantage in memory (STM retrieval) for items in early positions • This is the first portion of the serial position curve (a graph of item by item accuracy on a recall task) • A strong primary effect means good, accurate recall of the early list items usually because of rehearsal and additional attention • Primacy effects usually not found after incidental learning

Recency Effect

advantage in memory (STM retrieval) for items in late positions • Final portion of the serial position graph • People tend to be able to recall the last portion of the list better then the beginning- because last view items are still being maintained in short term memory • High recency means high accuracy or recall and low recency means a person was barely able to recall the last portion of the list • Recency has a bigger effect in immediate free recall because last view items are maintained in short term memory, thus being easily accessible • What eliminates recency effect: o A distractor activity after the last item o Results show: Immediate free recall: people could recall last view items best Delayed free recall: people can not recall last view items as easily

Phonological confusions

also called acoustic confusions- the errors that people make in immediate recall reflect the sound of items people have to remember • This shows evidence for a phonological loop • Proven by Conrad • Misremembering a word that sounded like it should have been in the set, but wasn't • Errors people make are based on sound even if the list is visually presented • Ex: if you give a person a list and they have to recall It they will make an error most often with things that sound the same (like B and V)

Baddeley & Hitch working memory model

alternative model of short term memory which highlights the idea that there is a central executive that controls and coordinates the operation of 2 subsystems: phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketch pad. • Aim: To investigate if people can use different parts of working memory at the same time • Method: conducted an experiment in which participants were asked to perform 2 tasks at the same time (dual task technique)- a digit span task which required them to repeat a list of numbers and a verbal reasoning task which required them to answer true and false questions • Results: As the number of digits increased in the digit spans tasks, participants took longer to answer the reasoning questions but they didn't make any more errors in the verbal reasoning tasks as the digits increased. • Conclusions: the verbal reasoning tasks made use of the central executive and the digit spans task made use of the phonological loop • Working memory is not a single buffer meant to gold information • It is a system composed of specialized subsystems • It is intended both to hold information and to carry out processing • It is the latest version of working memory that explains that this system has 2 subsystems that are controlled by the central executive o Central executive: Drives the whole system (boss of working memory) and allocates resources and data to the subsystems. It also deals with coming up with overall strategies (tasks such as mental arithmetic and problem solving) o 2 subsystems: Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad (inner eye): stores and processes information in a visual or spatial form- used for navigation Phonological Loop: is the part if working memory that deals with spoken and written material- consists of 2 parts • Phonological store (inner ear): holds information in speech based form for 1-2 secs • Articulatory Control Process (inner voice): used to rehearse and store verbal information from the phonological store - These components recycles info for immediate recall • States the task interfere with each other if they draw on common resources • Episodic buffer: acts as a backup store which communicates with both long term memory and components of working memory o Chunking is used to help with the recall of verbal info o This is the process of integrating info in different modalities (auditory and visual) to form unified memories that can be stored in long term memories.

Feature-comparison models

an approach to semantic memory in which concepts are stored in memory according to a list of necessary features and characteristics • Developed by Smith and his colleagues • Is used to derive predictions about categorization times in a situation where a subject must rapidly decide whether a test item is a member of a particular target category • In this semantic model it is assumed that certain occurrences are categorized using its features or attributes of the two subjects that represent the part and the group • States that semantic memories were captured as feature lists (simple one element properties of the concept) but then these features vary I terms of their definingness- with defining features being more emphasized then less defining features • an alternative from semantic network models in which here you can show how you reach a negative decision

Long-Term recency effect

an examination of the continuous distractor task and ratio rules • If you have a continuous distractor task (distractor activity after every item on the list) then recall will be like immediate recall (recency effect is brought back) • Ratio Rules= magnitude of recency effect is a function of ratio of interpresentation intervals to retention interval o Interpresentation intervals= the amount of time between each item o Retention interval= the amount of time of presentation of last item from when we gotta recall (how long we saw this item for) So the more scrunched up the items are and the time is= the items are more easily recognizable • Recency effects also occur in everyday life • Recency effect does not reflect short term memory but instead affect the separation of items in our mind

Implicit memory (non declarative)

behavior influenced by knowledge without any necessary involvement of consciousness • Knowing how to do something- it is non verbal, tied with movements (ex. Knowing how to tie a shoelace) • This is not affected by amnesia

Negative part-set cuing effect

being cued for part of the information makes recall harder

Verbal overshadowing

brains have a part that thinks in words and a part that thinks in pictures; when forced to describe something you interfere with visual memory and moved your processing from right to left hemisphere (talking about an event can impair memory for that event)

Ad hoc categories

categories created spontaneously to fulfill a goal or need • Ex: people design a classification of items for their needs right then and there, so classification will be different for things to sell at garage sale, things to take out of a burning house • Barsalou states that people often make up new categories based on situational circumstances (we create when we need them) • Categories may not just be descriptive bur rather explanations- explanation based theories- categories are essentially theories of the world we create to explain why things are the way they are o They are structures we impose on the world o Psychological essentialism- people treat members of a category as if they have the same underlying essence

Automatic priming

finding relationships fast w/o thinking (can only have a positive impact on RT) • Fast • Positive • Unrelated to strategy or intention • Even if you don't know if you saw some word you could be primed with a related word

Strategic priming

finding relationships more slowly by using a thoughtful approach (could have positive or negative impact on response time) • Slow • Positive or negative • Dependent on strategy- more likely to occur if primed trials occur frequently in experiment

Transience

forgetting over time • Involves the forgetting curve

Chunking

grouping items together into richer, more complex forms. • It is a method of recoding • Effort of active encoding- we are not passive • Allows us to hold onto more information • Ex. 177620012016 chunk into 3 dates, (1776, 2001, 2016) • Short term memory is an example of limited capacity and being able to hold fixed number into chunks

irrelevant speech effect

immediate memory is disrupted by the presence of irrelevant speech • This shows evidence for a phonological loop • Proven by Colle and Welsh

Word-length effect

immediate memory is worse for longer words than for shorter words • This shows evidence for a phonological loop • Proven by Baddeley

Phonological similarity effect

immediate memory is worse when people need to remember a set of words that are phonologically similar, compared to dissimilar words • This shows evidence for a phonological loop • Proven by Conrad and Hull

Absent-mindedness

insufficient encoding • Everyday memory failures in remembering information and intended activities

Serial learning

learning a list of items in order until they can be recalled perfectly • Ivan Ebbinghaus was the first to do research on memory • Most famous experiments are about: o Non sense syllables- would randomly put 2 consonants and a vowel and make a long list of them- and would then documents how many trials it took fro him to learn them o Relearning tasks- a list is originally learned, set aside for a period of time and then later relearned to the the same criterion of accuracy o Saving score: the reduction in the number of trials necessary for relearning

Magical Number 7 plus or minus 2 (Miller)

limit on memory span, as well as information processing in a number of other tasks. o This is part of the concept of limited capacity theory of computers o Developed by Miller, who also explained chucking as an important method of encoding long lists

Retrograde amnesia

loss of memory for events or info learned before brain damage • Cause of retrograde amnesia is ECT

Anterograde amnesia

loss of memory for events that have occurred after brain damage • One cause is Korsakoff's syndrome • The case of HM is an example of anterograde amnesia

Storage

maintaining encoded information in memory over time (memory trace)

Serial exhaustive scanning

memory set is scanned one item at a time (serial) and the entire set is scanned on every trial whether or not a match is found (exhaustive)

Suggestibility

misinformation effect • Example is eye wittiness testimonies- easily suggestible

Representational Momentum

misremembering location of an object so that it is further along path of travel than when last seen (instead of knowing the exact location of a moving object, we actually think it is a bit further along its trajectory) • This is a small but reliable error in our visual perception of moving objects • It shows that there is a visuospatial sketchpad • Can be influenced by other embodies aspects of the situation

Tip of the tongue states

momentarily unable to recall a word • Demonstrates how retrieval can be partial (retrieval failure) • People in this state have partial knowledge of the word they are trying to retrieve

Wicken's Release from Proactive Interference

o Wicken's experiment (1972) proved that when there is a change in the nature of material you see that there is better recall This proves the principle of interference and proactive interference material was so similar people were affected by the old information and as trials continued their recall worsened, but when the material is changed up proactive interference is lessened and recall increases. o Proved that the problem with many experiments is that there are too many trials and the problem with too many trials is that you have to discriminate between most recent stimuli and earlier stimuli o Gardiner (1972)- also agreed with Wicken but he used letters instead of numbers and had people state the most recent set of 3 letters (temporal discrimination)

Subjective organization

organization developed by a person for structuring and remembering a list of items without experimenter supplied categories (recall of unrelated words) • Went against the theory of clustering • Tulving people supported this because they argue that even when there isn't an organizational group (unrelated words) people could recall o People are developing a richer organization Saw this by viewing that people showed consistency

articulatory suppression effect

people have poorer memory for a set of words if they are asked to say something while trying to remember the words • This shows evidence for a phonological loop • Ex: say "LALALALALA" when saying a list- is you say this then the lalala sound fills up your phonological loop and impairs memory

Mental rotation

people mentally turning, spinning, or rotating objects in the visuospatial sketchpad of working memory • Shows that there is a visuospatial sketchpad • Time required to say whether one 3-d object is a rotated image of another depends on how much rotation is required

Judgements of learning

prediction made after studying some material whether it will be remembering on a later test • Accuracy of judgments of learning is enhanced if the judgments are not made immediately after studying has ended by rather after a delay

Explicit memory (declarative)

requires knowledge to be retrieved and reflected on consciously • Recall and recognition tasks are examples of memory tests

Blocking

retrieval failure • Shows that retrieval is a competitive process o Retroactive interference o Proactive interference o Tip of the tongue o Negative part-set cueing effect

Negative repetition effect

showed that repetition can hurt recall if It leads you to organize items poorly (organization can beat repetition) • Developed by Peterson & Mulligan • Experiment: 2 groups o 1st group= a control group that were given a single presentation o 2nd group= repetition group that received 2 pairs of list o Experiment showed that repetition group did worst because concentrated on the sound in the second list instead of grouping them together This processing is based on sound People don't concentrate on the meaning of words

Task switching

shows interplay between attention and working memory • Task switching is interference when you have to go back and forth between tasks • First studied by Jersild (1927) who: o Compared single task condition with task switching condition showed there is a decrease in memory when task switching

Missattribution

source monitoring • Source monitoring is the ability to remember the origin of a memory, be it something you encountered or something you imagined • DRM is a breakdown in source monitoring

Von Resteroff effect

tendency to remember distinctive stimuli better than less distinctive stimuli

Source monitoring

the ability to accurately remember the source of a memory, be it something you encountered or something that you imagined (Knowledge and awareness of a person's own memory and functioning) • A type of metamemory • Implicated in false memory in DRM task • Can result in cryptoamnesia (unconscious plagiarism)

Retrieval

the cognitive operation of accessing information in memory so that the original event is re experienced. • how you retrieve info is dependent on how you encode it

Generation effect

the finding that information you generate or create yourself is better remembered to information you only heard or read • This is a related phenomenon to rehearsal

Depth of processing

the idea that the processing that occurs as an item is being encoded into memory can be deep or shallow (describes encoding and the ways of rehearsal) • Deep processing involves attention to meaning and is associated with elaborative rehearsal o What leads to deep processing: Elaborative rehearsal - goes beyond the information contained in the stimulus itself (how things enter long term memory) Semantic orienting questions Self orienting questions Distinctivness: von restoraff (isolation) effect- you have better memory for information that is distinct from the information around it Physical enactment- improved memory for participant-performed tasks • Shallow processing involves repetition with little attention to meaning and is associated with maintenance rehearsal • Developed by Craik and Lockhart • Processing of a stimulus goes through ordered stages • Memorability depends upon depth to which information has been processed • Incidental learning occurs- which is where learning occurs when you are no trying o Occurs because of being asked questions based on physical characteristics, rhyming and meaning

Prototypes

the item with the most features in common with the other items in the same category; the "most typical" • Concepts are prototypes and are defined probabilistically • Typical members are produced are examples faster

working-memory span

the number of words one can remember accurately (2-5 words) • Working memory span is very low because we have to divide mental resources when working with working memory. • Our resources are divided for holding words and identifying meaning (storage and processing involved) • Measure used to access working memory capacity

Bias

the tendency for knowledge, beliefs and feelings to distort recollection of previous experience • Hindsight bias- people think the way things are, was the way things were (ex: people remember their grades as better than they were)

Retroactive interference

the tendency of current learning to hinder the memory of old- previous learned material • Way retrieval is impaired

Proactive interference

the tendency of previously learned material to hinder current learning • Way retrieval is impaired • Similarity affects this

Persistence

the tendency to remember facts or events that one would rather forget • Post traumatic stress disorder is an example of memory persistence

Boundary extension

visual memory error in which people misremembering more of a scene that was actually viewed • People tend to think boundaries are extended • It shows that there is a visuospatial sketchpad

Animacy effect

when subjects were asked to recall the list, recall was better for words naming living things than words naming non living things • This effect is part of survival processing