Psychology- Chapter 7 - memory

Behavioural Level of dementia

severe memory loss, disorientation

3 methods of improving memory retention for exams?

1. Use deep encoding - relate material to other knowledge that you already have 2. Doing practice tests- practice what you will be doing in the exam, try to recreate the exam situation by doing practice test 3. Use distributed practice

Miller's Magic Number

7 plus or minus 2 is the number of items that can be stored in the short term memory. This can be enhanced to upwards of 20 by chunking

Chunking

A short-term memory strategy that involves mentally rearranging many pieces of information into a familiar and meaningful pattern; a single chunk can represent a wealth of information

Keppel massed VS distributed practice study

All students studied a list of words 8 times, One group had all the 8 study trial on the same day ( mass practice) The other group studied the list two times four days in a row (distributed practice) FINDINGS: interestingly, the masses practice group did slightly better on the day after the test, however distributed group did much better on a test a week later.

phonological encoding

Based on how the word sounds Example: Does the word Rhyme with "cat"? Level: Intermediate

visual encoding

Based on physical properties of the word Example: is the words in capital letters Level: Shallow

semantic encoding

Based on the meaning of the word Example: Does the word fit in this sentence? " He met a___ on the street" Level: Deep

Why does encoding specificity aid with memory

Because if you are in the same environment this increases the likelihood that the original pattern of connections will get reactivated.

Brain level of dementia

Brain deterioration in areas including in the hippocampus i.e, the memory center of the brain

short-term memory (STM)

Can store limited amounts of information for an indefinite amount of time but it order for information to stay in STM, it must be rehearsed, without rehearsal STM can only hold information for a few seconds

massed practice

Clustering the repetition

Diving club experiment of encoding specificity

Diving clubs learned a list of words either on land or 20 feet underwater (study), then remembered that list either on land or 20 feet underwater (test) Recreation of the external conditions of study at the time of test led to better recall

context-dependent learning

External cues -- where you were

What Clive wearing's case shows us about memory

He is able to retain how to play the piano (implicit memory) but is unable to retain new information His case also shows the difference between STM and LTM as he can understand a sentence but cannot retain that information as to have a conversation

state-dependent learning

Internal cues -- how you felt

retrograde amnesia

Loss of memory for something that happened prior to a brain injury

Can we isolate age-related memory decline to either encoding or retrieving?

NOPE- there is evidence for both

source monitoring error experiment

Part 1: participants read names of non famous people Part 2: Participants were tasked to identify which names were of famous people off a list composed on famous people, non famous peoples names they had just made and other non famous names Results: There where able to determine famous VS non famous names Part 3: After 24 hours participants were asked to do the same test as part 2 Results: Participants identified some non famous people that they had read in part 1 as being famous FINDINGS: Humans reorganize information in memory to fit categories that describe our world, so they can be inaccurate. We fill in the missing information with what "fits" our belief system or expectations about the world (schemas), in other words we reconstruct our memories

Brewer & Trevens schema experiment

Participants waited in an office, then participants were called into another room. The participants where asked to recall how many of certain objects (books) where in the office. Some of the given items where actually in the office however some where not. This showed that many participants had a SCHEMA , as many of them stated that there where ___ number of book sin the office as they expected there to be books when infect there where none

whole report vs partial report condition

Participants were shown a grid of letters for a very short period of time. WHOLE REPORT CONDITION - they where asked to recall as many letters as they could remember. -- averaged 4.5 /12 (54%) PARTIAL REPORT CONDITION - after the letters where gone they were told to recall a specific line -- averaged 3.3/4 (83%) Hypothesis for discrepancy in % -- 1. Participants only saw that many letters in the time duration 2. Participants saw most or all of the letters but sensory memory faded too rapidly Findings: #2 is correct because participants in the partial report did not know which line they would be asked to recall

Roediger and McDermott's DRM test on false memories

Read a list of word to participants and then asked them to recall as many words as they could. Participants would often remember a word being said when it was not as they had predetermined associations with that word. Example: Frost, Arctic, Air, Shiver, Weather, Freeze Participants added word COLD

repressed memories and Freud

Real memories that have been pushed out of consciousness because they are emotionally threatening. Freud proposed that this is a "defence mechanism" but that we can "recover" these memories in psychotherapy and that it may be therapeutic to do so

What three areas is there little evidence of a memory decline with aging

Semantic memory Procedural memory Priming

distribute practice

Spacing the repetitions of to-be remembered information out over time

What distinguished the three stages of memory?

Span - how much information you can store in each stage Duration - how long that information can be stored for

sensory memory

Stores a lot of information but for very brief periods due to constant updating

Study that shows deficiencies in encoding may be tied to increased difficulties with attention

Study phase: Younger and older adults listened to melodies under three conditions 1. Intentional encoding--they were told to listen and remember for later 2. Dancing judgement-- say whether a rhythm is a march of a waltz - no mention of later memory test 3. Intentional and dancing judgement-- Same as 1) but with dancing judgment Test phase: indicate if they had heard the melody before FINDINGS: Shows that there is an encoding deficiency as they are not able to encode as well as younger adults but it is dependent on the amount of attention they put before the task at hand

Tip-of-theTongue Phenomenon

The inability to recall a word while knowing it is in memory. Memory retrieval issue

Neural level of dementia

The protein involved in production and growth of neurons stops working, Resulting in tangled clumps of cells that fall apart and disintegrate

How does the brain remember words?

There is overlap between memories IE if you start remembering one thing you remember other things EVIDENCE: People are faster at deciding "A canary is a bird" if a true statement rather than " A canary is an animal" because of the "number of links away" those words are stored in our memory

Chase and Simon chunking chess experiment

They compared expert and beginner chess players ability to recall positions of chess pieces #1 The pieces were in random positions on the board FINDINGS: There was very little difference from expert and beginner players in recall which showed that experts did not have innately better memories #2 The pieces were in real game positions FINDINGS: the experts recalled way more of the pieces positions which showed that experts used their memory differently probably using chunking which allowed them to remember less items

Encoding

Transforming information for storage in the long term memory

Inhibition method for rehearsal

Try to rember 3 letters while you count backwards in your head by 3s from 100 On average after 10-15 the memory of the letters was gone

episodic memory

Type of explicit memory memory of events in which we can remember our own participation "mental time travel" E.X - where you spent you 17th birthday

semantic memory

Type of explicit memory memory of facts "knowing" E.X chemical formula for table salt is NaCl

Priming

Type of implicit memory the activation, often unconsciously, of particular associations in memory

Schema

a conceptual framework a person uses to make sense of the world, expectations about our environment

hyperthymestic syndrome

a condition in which an individual possesses a superior autobiographical memory, meaning he or she can recall the vast majority of personal experiences and events in his or her life.

memory self-efficacy with age

a person's belief in his or her own potential to perform well on memory tasks Older people have the societal belief there memory will decline with age so they have less belief in their own age which makes it become a self-fulfilling prophecy

Depth of processing model

a theory of memory suggesting that how deeply something is encoded has an effect on its memorability -- using what the words mean Methods: Visual encoding, Phonological encoding, Sematic encoding

N-back task

a working memory task; the participant must decide whether the currently presented stimulus is the same as the one presented immediately before (1-back) or two items before (2-back) or three items before (3-back), etc

long-term potentiation (LTP)

an increase in a cell's firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation. Believed to be a neural basis for learning and memory

echoic memory

auditory sensory memory

Three Memory Model

sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory

flashbulb memories

detailed and vivid memory of where we were and what we were doing when an important event happened, thought to be specially resistant to decay, people claim to remember things vividly. These memories can actually be wrong and modified just like any memory

procedural memory

implicit memory that involves motors skills How to ride a bike

working memory (WM)

information that can be stored and manipulated at the same time Example: How do you calculate 17*24 in your head? Done in steps

Dementia

is an "umbrella" term for a number of neurocognitive disorders including - Alzheimer's disease - Huntington's disease - Lou Gehrig's disease - Parkinson's disease

implicit memory

memories we don't deliberately remember or reflect on consciously Priming or procedural

explicit memory

memories we recall intentionally and of which we have conscious awareness 1. Episodic 2. Semantic

mnemonics

memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices 1. Keywords: the use of imagery to relate known words to to-be-remembered words 2. Method of place: the be remembered items are imagined at intervals along a route. During recall the route is mentally traced

source monitoring error

misidentification of the source of a memory

reminiscence bump

older adults have the most autobiographical events from age 10-30 that they could remember

serial position effect

our tendency to recall best the last (a recency effect) and first items (a primacy effect) in a list INTERPRETATION: some of the items have entered LTM (primacy effect) while some are still in the STM ( recency effect) EVIDENCE: if you block rehearsal (E.X count backwards) then the regency effect disapears but not the primacy

encoding specificity

phenomenon of remembering something better when the conditions under which we retrieve information are similar to the conditions under which we encoded it Can be Context-dependent learning, or state-dependent learning

Pollyanna Principle

pleasant memories are more likely to be recalled than unpleasant memories

Study that showed retrieval deficiencies through tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon

presented people with Faces of politicians and celebrities they where supposed to answer the persons name, they could respond that they "know", "don't know", "TOT". As to verify if the person actually had it on the tip of there tongue they where presented a multiple choice list of names. If they go it correct they it was recorded as a true TOT FINDINGS: Older adults had far more cases of TOT

associative deficit hypothesis

proposal that age-related decline is not related to single memories but in making connections between memories

maintenance rehearsal

rehearsal that involves repetition without any consideration of meaning or making connections -- this process works fine as long as you are not distracted

elaborative rehearsal

rehearsal that involves thinking about the meaning of an item to be remembered or making connections between that item and prior knowledge, can be more effective for getting information from STM to LTM

long-term memory (LTM)

stores large amount of information for very long periods of time and maybe permanently

Putting the name to the face study

study phase: participants were presented with name/face pairs they where told they would be tested on their memory of 1) Names 2) faces 3) name-face pairs Test phase: Face recognition -- presented with face pairs - "Which face did you see before? Name recognition -- presented with name pairs - "Which name did you see before?" Name-face associative recognition -- presented with "a) two faces and a name and b) two names an a i) face / ii) name did you dee before" FINDINGS: Older adults didn't differ from young on just name or face recognition but were impaired on name-face associative recognition

anterograde amnesia

the inability to form new memories after a brain injury

Retrieval (memory process)

the process of getting information out of memory storage Long term to short term

rehearsal

the process of repetitively verbalizing or thinking about the information as to keep it in the STM

iconic memory

visual sensory memory