What is Memory? (1)

echoic memory

auditory memory sense - lasts 2 to 4 seconds

Clark Hull, stimulus response learning (S-R)

based on behavior of rates in mazes - started to be abandoned in 1950's

sensory memory

brief storage of information within a specific modality

iconic memory

brief storage of visual information - 250 milliseconds

disease related studies

characterizing the deficits and preserved abilities in patients suffering from specific diseases

schema

how our knowledge of the world is structured and influences the way in which new information is stored and subsequently recalled

patient HM had which parts of his brain removed...

medial part of the temporal lobe

explicit / declarative memory

memory open to intentional retrieval based on recollecting personal events (episodic memory) and facts (semantic memory)

working memory

memory system that underpins our capacity to "keep things in mind" when performing complex tasks

model

method of expressing a theory more precisely, allowing predictions to be made and tested

modal model

model of memory developed by Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968

when people remember words successfully, this part is activated...

parahippocampal gyrus

priming

process where the presentation of an item influences the processing of a subsequent item, either making it easier to process (positive) or more difficult to process (negative)

lesion studies

profiling patients with organic brain damage to relatively focal regions (like HM and his hippocampus)

Frederic Barlett

rejected verbal learning, proposed schema

implicit / non declarative memory

retrieval of information from long-term memory through performance rather than explicit conscious recall or recognition

Herman Ebbinghaus, German philosopher

showed it is possible to plot systematic relationship between the conditions of learning and the amount learned - first classic book on science of memory, 1885

drawback to medicine that could improve memory...

socioeconomic standing and accessibility could allow for unfair advantages

semantic memory

system assumed to store accumulative knowledge of the world

episodic memory

system assumed to underpin the capacity to remember specific events

long-term memory

system(s) assumed to underpin the capacity to store information over a long periods of time

mental time travel

term coined by Tulving, to emphasize the way in which episodic memory allows us to relive the past and use this information to imagine the future

short-term memory (STM)

the retention of small amounts of material for 30 seconds

reductionism

the view that all scientific explanations should aim to be based on a lower level of analysis - psychology in terms of physiology, physiology in terms of chemistry, and chemistry in terms of physics

memory technique used for thousands of years....

visual imagery mnemonics

amnesiacs typically...

- have significant impairments in episodic memory - difficult forming new semantic memories - preserved ability to acquire and utilize implicit memories

ebbinghaus memory curve

60% of what he learned after 9 hours, 75% loss of what he learned after a month

classical conditioning

a learning procedure whereby a neutral stimulus (ex. a bell) that is repeatedly paired with a response-evoking stimulus (ex. meat powder), will come to evoke that response (salivation)

masking

a process by which the percept and/or storage of a stimulus is influenced by events occurring immediately before presentation (forward masking) or, more commonly, after presentation (backward masking)

brains of Alzheimer's patients are disfigured by....

amyloid plagues and neurofibrillary tanglespatien

gestalt psychology

an approach strongly in Germany 1930'2, that attempted to use personal principles to understand memory and reasoning

verbal learning

an approach to memory that relies principally on the learning of lists of words and nonsense syllables

psychophysics

an attempt to systematically map the relationship between physical stimuli onto their perceived magnitude - overturned by Ebbinghaus

Edward Tolman, cognitive map

any visual representation of a person's mental model for a given process of concept