Cognitive Psychology Chapter 6 & 7

Parahippocampal gyrus

(closely related to sensory regions) both false and new items produced identical weak responses, and true items produced a larger response

Central Executive

(controls how these systems are used) can put information into any of the slave systems or retrieve information from them. It can also translate information from one system to another.

Nondeclarative Memory

(implicit memories) includes procedural skills (e.g., motor, perceptual, cognitive), priming (perceptual, semantic), conditioning, and nonassociative (habituation, sensitization).

Procedural knowledge

(implicit memory) memory of how to perform tasks without conscious awareness (e.g., riding a bike).

True or False: New explicit memories are built in hippocampal regions, but old knowledge can be implicitly primed in cortical structures.

True

True or False: Patients with damage to the hippocampal formation show both retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia.

True

True or False: People show better memory if their external context and their internal states are the same at the time of study and the time of test

True

True or False: People will often judge what plausibly might be true rather than try to retrieve the exact facts

True

True or False: Serious errors of memory can occur because people fail to separate what they actually experienced from what they inferred, imagined or were told.

True

True or False: When participants elaborate on material while studying it, they tend to recall more of what they studied and also tend to recall the inferences that they did not study but made themselves.

True

Human memory depends on _______structures of the brain for the creation and retrieval of memories

frontal

Sams, Hari, Rif and Knuutila (1993) study presented one tone followed by another at various intervals. When the second tone was different from the first, it produced a mismatch negativity as long as the delay between the two tones was less than 10 s.

This indicates than an auditory sensory memory can last up to 10s, consistent with other behavioral measures. It appears that the source of this neural response is at or near the primary auditory cortex.

Decay Theory

the idea that memory traces simply decay in strength with time is one of the common explanations of forgetting

True or False : Atkinson and Shiffrin's theory of short-term memory postulated that as information is rehearsed in a limited-capacity short-term memory, it is deposited in long-term memory; but what turned out to be important was how deeply the material is processed

True

True or False: Even when people appear to have forgotten memories, there is evidence that they still have some of these memories stored.

True

True or False: Forgetting results both from decay in trace strength and from interference from other memories.

True

True or False: Learning additional associations to an item can cause old ones to be forgotten.

True

True or False: Practice shows diminishing improvement with practice

True

True or False: The hippocampus responds to false memories with as high activation as it responds to true memories and so fails to discriminate between what was experienced and what was imagined

True

True or False: The strength of a memory trace decays as a power function of the retention interval

True

anterograde amnesia

a condition that prevents one from forming new long-term memories

Shepard & Teghtsoonian

demonstrated that inforrmation cannot be kept in short-term memory indefinitely because new information will always be coming in and pushing out old information.

Activation

determines both the probability and the speed of access to memory. Author designed an equation for activation (see chapter). There are two critical factors in the activation equation: the base-level activation (which sets a starting activation for the idea) and the activation received through the associations (which adjusts this activation to reflect the current context).

Amnesia

(can result in hippocampal damage) memory loss

Critical variable is not sleep but rather the time of day during which material is learned

Early evening is the highest arousal and that retention is best for material learned in high arousal state.

Hippocampus

Important role in storage of new memories

Bransford, Barclay and Franks: experiment that demonstrates how inference can lead to incorrect recall

Participants thought they actually studied what was implied by the studied material.

Associative Spreading

activation spreads from one word to the next. This makes the second word more active and make that word easier to judge. This can facilitate the rate at which words are read.

Dissociations

aka contrasts between explicit and implicit memory. example: typists cannot recall arrangement of keys on the keyboard except by imagining themselves typing. explicit memory shows no knowledge of the keyboard; implicit shows total knowledge. Amnesic patients often cannot consciously recall a particular event but will show in implicit ways that they have some memory for the event.

Craik and Lockhart

argued that what was critical was not how long information was rehearsed, but rather the depth to which it is processed

Prefrontal region

associated with encoding and retrieval of old memories

Flashbulb memories

events so important that they seem to burn themselves into memory forever (e.g., 9/11). Evidence shows that amygdala enhances retention of memories. In a state of arousal, the amygdale releases hormones that influence the processing in the hippocampus that is critical for forming memories

Episodic

include info about where and when they were learned

Phonological loop

involves phonological rehearsal; composed of multiple components

Study of pictorial material

involves sometimes right hemisphere or both left and right hemisphere

State-dependent learning

people find it easier to recall info if they can return to the same emotional and physical state they were in when they learned the information. 1) there is a state-dependent effect reflected by better recall when the state at the test matched the state at study 2) there is an overall higher level of recall when the material was studied in a non-intoxicated state

Declarative Memory

refers to factual memories we can explicitly recall. Hippocampus is important for establishing these memories. Two subtypes: Episodic - include info about where and when they were learned Semantic - reflect general knowledge of the world (e.g., what a dog is)

Spreading Activation Theory

refers to the process by which currently attended items can make associated memories more available. Implies that we can improve our memory by providing prompts that are closely associated with a particular memory.

retrograde amnesia

the loss of memory of events that occurred before the injury

Basal ganglia

(subcortical) appears to be critical for sequence learning; critical to motor (e.g., damage results in Huntingtons) and cognitive control (i.e., connects to the prefrontal cortex.

Working Memory

(these systems compose of) a system for holding information that we need to perform a task.

Two mechanisms that can produce forgetting

1) decay of trace strength and 2) interference from other memories. Both interference and decay effects contribute to forgetting.

Sperling (1967) varied the postexposure field (the visual field after the display). When the postexposure field was light, the sensory information remained for only 1s but when the field was dark it remained for a full 5s.

A bright postexposure field tends to "wash out" memory for the display. Following a display with another display of characters effectively "overwrites" the first display and so destroys the memory for the first set of letters.

Theory of short-term memory

Attended information went into an intermediate short--term memory where it had to be rehearsed before it could go into a relatively permanent long-term memory.

Sperling (1960) experiment: presented arrays consisting of three rows of four letters. Participants were cued to attend two just one row of t he display and to report only letters in that row. The cues were in the form of different tones (high for top row, medium for middle, and low for bottom). Participants were able to recall all or most items from a row of four. (partial-report procedure)

Because participants did not know what would be cued, they must have stored it in short-term visual memory. Memory of the actual display decays very rapidly and is essentially gone by the end of 1s. This experiment demonstrates the existence of a very brief visual sensory store.

Reder argued that much of recall in real life involves plausible inferences rather than exact recall (e.g., Darth Vader inferred as evil).

Exact condition - participants' response times increased when studied more facts (fan effect) Plausible condition - participants' response times decreased when studied more facts. The more facts they learned, the more ways there were to judge a particular fact to be plausible. Thus, plausibility judgment did not have to depend on retrieval of a particular fact.

True or False: In the high-fan condition, there is a lower hemodynamic response where there is a lower activation of concepts.

False: There is a HIGHER hemodynamic response in the high-fan condition when there is a lower activation of concepts due to the prefrontal structures working harder to retrieve the memory in conditions of lower activation. Conceptually, higher mental processes are more difficult and require higher metabolic expenditures and reflecting greater mental work.

Kapur et. al PET study of the difference between brain correlates of the deep and shallow processing of words. Study time waas the same, participants remembered 75% of the deeply processed words, and 57% of the shallowly processed words.

Found that there was greater activation during deep processing in the left prefrontal region

Delayed match-to-sample task

Frontal Cortex, specifically area 46) Food is placed in one of two spots and covered. A curtain is drawn for a delay period. The curtain is raised, and the monkey chooses where the food was placed. Within area 46, neurons fire only during the delay period of the task, as if they are keeping the information active during that interval. A lesion to the area of the prefrontal cortex in the left hemisphere caused monkeys to not remember the locations in the right visual field (same when other hemisphere)

Penfield electrically stimulated portions of patient's brains and asked them to report what they experienced. He determined the functions of various portions of the brain. Stimulation to the temporal lobes led to reports of memories that patients were unable to report in normal recall, such as events from childhood (Ch 7)

Generally discredited by memory researchers because 1) could not find results in every patient, 2) patients had Hx of epilepsy (i.e., déjà vu phenomenon), and 3) no verification of memories. Appropriately sensitive tests can find evidence for remnants of some memories that appear to have been forgotten.

Encoding-specificity principle

If the contextual factors are sufficiently weighted in favor of recall, as they were in pg. 199, recall can be superior to recognition. Memory for material to be learned can also depend heavily on the context of other material to be learned in which it is embedded. (e.g., of study with words "sky" and "blue" - memories were better in the context of the other word). Recognition is usually superior to recall. Thus, we would expect that if a participant could not recognize a word, they would be unable to recall it (not in Tulving's experiment, pg. 199).

Study of verbal material

Involves left hemisphere

How interference affects memory

It is difficult to maintain multiple associations to the same items. It is harder both to learn new associations to these items and to retain the old ones if new associations are learned. It causes it to be forgotten rapidly.

Eyewitness testimony and false-memory controversy

Loftus et al showed that subsequent information can change a person's memory of an observed event. It is possible to create false memories by use of suggestive interview techniques.

Average memory span

No more than seven or eight digits (seven elements), although some theorists say less

Shepard & Teghtsoonian (1961) presented participants with a long sequence of 200 three-digit numbers. Task was to identify when a number was repeated. If the participants tended to keep only the most recents numbers in short term memory, memory for the last few numbers would be good but would get worse as the numbers were pushed out of short-term memory

Recognition memory drops off rapidly over the first few numbers, but then the drop-off slows to the point where it appears to be reaching asymptote at about 60%. The rapid drop-off can be interpreted as reflecting the decreasing likelihood that the numbers are being held in short-term memory. The 60% level of recall for later memories reflects the amount of information that got into long term memory. Assumption is that the amount of rehearsal controls the amount of information transferred to long-term memory.

Rundus asked participants to rehearse out loud. The more participants rehearsed an item, the more likely they were to remember it

Reflected the fundamental property of short-term memory that it is a necessary half-way station to long-term memory

Interference Theory

Research shows that it is difficult to maintain multiple associations to the same items. It is harder both to learn new associations to these items and to retain the old ones if new associations are learned. This appears to imply that it would become increasingly difficult to learn new info about a concept. Fortunately, there are important factors that counteract such interference. Interference effects - the basic idea is that when participants are presented with a stimulus such as a cat, activation will spread from it to all of its associates. There is a limit. The more things associated with that source, the less the activation that will spread to any particular memory structure. Learning additional associations to an item can cause old ones to be forgotten.

Elaborative Processing

Results in better memory) involves creating additional information that relates and expands on which it is that needs to be remembered. The critical factor is not whether the participants or experimenter generates the elaborations but whether the elaborations prompt the material to be recalled. Study techniques that involve generating and answering questions lead to better memory for text material. Prefrontal and hippocampal regions involved in memory for material that is processed meaningfully and elaborately seems to be the same regions that are involved in memory for material that is processed shallowly. More elaborative processing results in better memory, even if that processing is not focused on the meaning of the material. Level of processing, and not whether one intends to learn, determines the amount of material remembered.

Interaction of Elaboration and Inferential Reconstruction

Semantic elaborations facilitate the process of inference by providing more material from which to infer. Experiment by Owens, Bowers and Black: Those in the theme condition (read additional information) introduced a great many more inferences that had not actually been studied. Because of the additional elaborations these participants made, they were able to recall more of the story.

Elaboration & Inferential Reconstruction

Semantic elaborations should facilitate the process of inference by providing more material from which to infer. Thus, elaborative processing leads to both increased recall of what was studied and the number of inferences recalled.

___________ is held briefly in cortical sensory memories so that we can process it.

Sensory information

True or False: Material learned in the laboratory can interfere with material learned outside the laboratory.

True

True or False: Retentions show diminishing loss with delay

True: Bahrick's experiment looked at student's retention of Spanish vocabulary and found a slow decay of knowledge combined with a substantial practice effect speculated to be d/t physiological deterioration of old age.

True or False: In trying to remember material, people will use what they can remember to infer what else they might have studied

True: Dooling and Christiaansen and Spiro found evidence for increased inferential intrusions with increased delay of testing.

True or False: Learning redundant material does not interfere with a target memory and may even facilitate the target memory.

True: Recall was better at one week's delay when the participant had to learn additional facts causally related to the target facts .

True or False: Reaction time increases with fan for all types of facts. Participants respond faster to actual facts than experimental facts

True: True facts are more encoded in memory than fantasy facts. The more fantasy facts the longer it took to recognize a fact they already knew.

True or False: memory of measure deteriorates with delay

True: memory loss is negatively accelerated, rate of change gets smaller and smaller as the delay increases

Baddeley proposed two systems of rehearsal processes ("slave systems") for maintaining information (there may be more than two systems):

Visuospatial Sketchpad - involves visual rehearsal; Phonological Loop - involves phonological rehearsal; composed of multiple components

False-memory syndrome

a controversy that involves cases where individuals claim to recover memories of childhood sexual abuse that they had suppressed. It is possible to create false memories by use of suggestive interview techniques (i.e., inserted or implied suggestions). The process by which we distinguish between false memory and imagination is quite fragile, and it is easy to become confused about the source of information.

Phonological Store

a store is in effect an "inner ear" that hears the inner voice and stores the information in the phonological form. Activates in the parietal-temporal region.

auditory sensory store

also known as echoic memory; people can report an auditory stimulus with considerable accuracy if probed for it soon after onset

mismatch negativity

an ERP measure; when a sound is presented that is different from recently heard sounds in features such as pitch or magnitude (or is a different phoneme), there is an increase in the negativity of the ERP recording 150 to 200 ms after the discrepant sound

Priming

an implicit memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus influences a response to another stimulus New explicit memories are formed in the hippocampus; but with experiences, this information is transferred to the cortex. That is why hippocampal damage does not eliminate old memories formed before the damage. The permanent knowledge deposited in the cortex includes such information as word spelling and what things look like. These cortical memories are strengthened and primed and become more available in a later retest.

iconic memory

brief visual memory revealed in Sperling's experiments. Unless information in the display is attended to and further processed, it will be lost.

Memory span

capacity of short-term memory was identified by this; refers to the number of elements one can immediately repeat back.The amount of rehearsal controls the amount of information transferred to long-term memory.

Hippocampus

does not appear to be proficient in repeated sequences

Explicit Memory

term used to describe knowledge that we consciously recall

Long-term Potentiation (LTP)

increase in neural responsiveness that occurs as as a reaction to prior electrical stimulation. occurs in the hippocampus and cortical areas) when a pathway is stimulated with a high-frequency of electric current, cells along that pathway show increased sensitivity to further stimulation. Thus, it seems that neural activation changes with practice, just as behavioral measures do. -decrease in LTP in the rat hippocampus with delay Damage to the hippocampal region here often results in amnesia. The relationship between the hippocampus and regions of the prefrontal cortex is generally thought that processing activity in prefrontal regions regulates input to hippocampal regions that store in memories. The prefrontal region is critical for storing a memory successfully. There is also a lateralization of prefrontal processing, verbal material on the left and visual material on the right.

Visuospatial Sketchpad

involves visual rehearsal

Mood congruence

it is easier to remember happy memories when one is in a happy state and sad memories when one is in a sad state.

Restriction of interference

it only occurs when one is learning multiple pieces of info that have no intrinsic relationship to one another. Interference does not occur when the info is somewhat redundant. Learning redundant material does not interfere with a target memory and may even facilitate the target memory. When people cannot remember a particular fact, they are able to retrieve related facts and so infer the target fact on the basis of the related facts. People make such interferences at the time of recall. They seem unaware that they are making inferences. People can also elaborate on the story based on previously learned information (e.g., Helen Keller story & deaf, dumb, & blind). In trying to remember material, people will use what they can remember to infer what else they might have studied.

visual sensory store

memory system that can effectively hold all the information in the visual display. While information is being held in this store, a participant can attend to it and report it.

Adaptive Control of Thought (ACT)

one speaks of memory traces as varying in their activation

Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm

participants studied a list of words and were later shown a series of words to decided if they studied those words (three types: true, false, & new). Participants could distinguish true items from new ones, but they had trouble with false ones. 88% of true items accepted, 12% of new items, and 80% of false items. Hippocampus proper - true words and false words produced identifiable activation, and new words produced weaker response Parahippocampal gyrus - (closely related to sensory regions) both false and new items produced identical weak responses, and true items produced a larger response The hippocampus responds to false memories with as high activation as it responds to true memories and so fails to discriminate between what was experienced as what was imagined.

Plausible condition

participants' response times decreased when studied more facts. The more facts they learned, the more ways there were to judge a particular fact to be plausible. Thus, plausibility judgment did not have to depend on retrieval of a particular fact.

Exact condition

participants' response times increased when studied more facts (fan effect)

Glenberg, Smith and Green : Participants studied a 4 digit number for 2s, then rehearse for 2, 6, or 18s and then recall the four digits. Their recall was poor and showed little relationship to the amount of rehearsal .

passive rehearsal does not result in better memory. There may be no short-term, half-way station to long-term memory. Information may go from sensory stores to long-term memory.

Plausible retrieval

recalled or recognized facts that were not explicitly presented; Reder found that participants response times increased with delay in exact condition and decreased in the plausible condition >>> respond more slowly because exact traces are getting weaker; respond faster in plausible condition with delay because they no longer try to use inefficient exact retrieval. Using plausibility is faster.

Articulatory Loop

refers to the "inner voice" that rehearses verbal information. Activation in Broca's area when participants are trying to remember a list of items.

Strength

refers to the quantity that determines this inherent availability of a memory. Increasing practice has diminishing returns

Power Law of Learning

refers to the way that memory performance improves as a function of practice. As a memory is practiced, it is strengthened according to a power function.

Semantic

reflect general knowledge of the world (e.g., what a dog is)

depth of processing

rehearsal improves memory only if the material is rehearsed in a deep and meaningful way

Korsakoff syndrome

results from a thiamine deficiency in the brain (linked to alcohol abuse, infection, malnutrition, etc). May result in retrograde or anterograde amnesia.

Power law of forgetting

retention functions are generally power functions. Both functions are negatively accelerated, but with an important difference. Whereas practice functions show diminishing improvement with practice, retention functions show diminishing loss with delay. There may be a direct relationship between the concept of strength defined at the behavioral level and strength defined at the neural level.

Search of Associative Memory (SAM)

speaks of images (memory traces) as varying in their familiarity (activation)

Human memory depends on _______temporal structures for the permanent storage of memories

temporal

Implicit Memory

term used to describe knowledge that we cannot consciously recall but nonetheless manifests itself in our improved performance on some task

anterograde amnesia

the inability to learn new things. It can occur along with some preservation of long-term memories (e.g., HM). Indicates that neural structures involved in forming new memories are distinct from those involved in maintaining old ones. Memory deficit is not complete and there are certain kinds of memories that the patient can still acquire (i.e., implicit learning capacity). Patients can remember things for a short time before forgetting them.

Fan Effect

the increase in reaction time related to an increase in the number of facts associated with a concept. The more things associated with that source, the less the activation will spread to any particular memory structure (spreading activation theory explains this) Material learned in the laboratory can interfere with material learned outside the laboratory. (e.g., of fantasy facts about Napoleon. The more fantasy facts participants learned about him, the longer it took to recognize the facts they knew about him). Prefrontal structures must work harder to retrieve the memory in conditions of lower activation. The more facts associated with a concept, the slower is retrieval of any one of the facts (recognition time increases)

encoding specificity principle

the probability of recalling an item at test depends on the similarity of its encoding at test to its original encoding at study. People show better word memory if the words are tested in the context of the same words with which they were studied.

Hippocampus proper

true words and false words produced identifiable activation, and new words produced weaker response. The hippocampus responds to false memories with as high activation as it responds to true memories and so fails to discriminate between what was experienced as what was imagined.