pysh 208 exam 2

Sensory memory capacity and duration ?

large capacity and very short duration( 1 sec of visual and 2-4 for auditory information)

Short-term capacity (STM) / Working memory (WM) capacity and duration?

Capacity is cited as 7 plus or minus 2 or 4 items, and duration is less than 20 seconds.

long-term capacity (LTM) capacity and duration?

capacity unlimited within human lifespan and duration unlimited (information held for years or decades)

current Consciousness resides in …

short term//working memory

You should STUDY —> WAIT —> and then …

TEST

The name for the time elapsed between encoding and retrieval is….

the Retention Interval

Sensory memory is the brief retention of the effects of…

sensory stimulation

sensory memory is considered….

"precategorical" and uninterpreted

visual iconic, is responsible for the persistence of vision, such as the….

trail of light seen from a moving sparkler or the dark intervals filled in during a film

Audio (Echoic): This is the persistence of sound like …

"hearing" a question in your mind just as you are about to say "What?"

what was the point of sperling's experiments?

To determine the capacity and duration of the sensory store.

In the whole report, participants reported an average of 4.5 out…

12 letters

In the partial report, using tones to cue a specific row, participants recalled about 3.3 out…

4 letters (82%)

With no delay, performance was…

high

with a 1-second delay (delayed partial report), participants could only report about…

1 letter per row, showing sensory memory decays within less than a second.

Rehearsal (Maintenance Rehearsal): This is a control process involving rote repetition to keep information active….

in STM, though it is not very effective for long-term encoding.

Digit Span: A task where a person reads a string of numbers and tries to….

repeat them back in order; it measures the number of items a person can hold in STM

Chunks: Meaningful units of information; chunking combines small units into …

larger ones to increase the effective capacity of STM

Immediate Test Problem: We cannot measure the true duration of STM with an immediate test because the participant can ..

simply use active rehearsal to keep the info alive indefinitely.

Brown-Peterson Task: Participants were given three letters to remember and then performed a …

filler task (counting backward by 3s) to prevent rehearsal

Duration Finding: They found that STM duration is approximately …

15–20 seconds when rehearsal is prevented

Forgetting: Initially thought to be decay (fading over time), but …

further analysis suggested interference

Keppel & Underwood (1962): They found that performance on the first trial was high regardless of …

the delay, and that forgetting only increased on later trials

Proactive Interference: Forgetting that occurs when old information interferes with …

the learning of new information

Retroactive Interference: Occurs when new information interferes with the …

retrieval of old information

WM vs. STM: While STM is mainly for temporary storage, working memory is a system for both ….

storage and manipulation of information during complex tasks like reasoning or comprehension

Operation Span: Unlike the Digit Span (simple storage), an operation span task (like the Reading Span) requires participants to ….

process information (e.g., read sentences) while simultaneously storing information (e.g., remembering words)

Central Executive: This is the attention controller that …

coordinates the other components; it is theoretically similar to Selective Attention processes from Chapter 4

Visuo-spatial Sketchpad: This component handles …

visual and spatial information

Example Task: Mental Rotation, where participants determine if two objects are …

the same by rotating them in their minds

Phonological Loop: This component holds …

auditory or verbal information

Articulatory Suppression: A task where speaking out loud (e.g., repeating "the the the") prevents rehearsal, showing that ….

the loop depends on an articulatory rehearsal process

Phonological Similarity Effect: The finding that it is harder to remember a ….

list of items that sound similar (e.g., "map, mad, man") than those that sound different

Brain Involvement: Working memory is primarily associated …

with the prefrontal cortex

Tennessee Williams Quote:

“One present moment that goes by so quick”: Refers to Sensory Memory or Short-term Memory

In a free recall test, a participant is asked to …

produce items they previously encountered in any order

In a recognition test, participants are shown previously studied items along with ///

unstudied "lure" items and must identify which ones they saw before

Performance and Implications: Performance is usually better on …

recognition tests than on free recall tests

This tells us that just because you cannot retrieve information using one method, it does not mean that…

information is gone from memory; rather, it may simply be a failure of retrieval

Serial Position Curve :

A graph plotting the percentage of participants who recalled an item versus the item's position in the list

drawing x and y axis on serial position curve :

x-axis: serial position of world on list

y-axis: percent recall

Immediate Test: A U-shaped curve showing ..

high recall for the beginning (primacy effect) and the end (recency effect)

Memory Processes: The primacy effect reflects Long-term Memory (LTM), while the…

recency effect reflects Short-term/Working Memory (STM/WM)

Briefly Delayed (No Filler): If the delay is unfilled (e.g., 30 seconds), the recency effect remains ….

because the items are still active in working memory

Briefly Delayed (With Filler): If a participant performs a distractor task like counting backward for 30 seconds, …

the recency effect is eliminated

Long Delayed (Minutes): On a test delayed by at least a few minutes, the recency effect disappears, …

leaving only the primacy effect

Primacy Effect Is What? Better memory for items at the beginning of a sequence. the cause behind it is

Participants have more time to rehearse these items, allowing them to be transferred into LTM.

Rundus (1971): Data showed that words at the start of the list were ….

rehearsed more frequently, and this rehearsal curve matched the recall curve for those early items

Recency Effect:

What: Better memory for items at the end of a sequence.

Cause: These items are still in STM/WM at the time of recall.

Affecting Primacy only: Increasing the presentation rate of words reduces …

rehearsal time, which impairs primacy but leaves the recency effect unchanged

Affecting Recency only: Introducing a delay filled with a distractor task after …

list presentation eliminates the recency effect but does not affect primacy

Semantic Coding in STM: Evidence is seen in the Wickens (1976) experiment, where participants showed …

Release from Proactive Interference , When the category of words changed (e.g., from professions to fruits), recall performance increased

Semantic Coding in LTM: The Sachs (1967) experiment showed that after listening to a passage, participants could not remember…

the exact wording of sentences but were very good at recognizing the general meaning (semantics)

Retrograde Amnesia: Inability to retrieve memories of events that happened before…

the brain injury

Anterograde Amnesia: Inability to form new long-term ….

memories after the injury

Causes and Brain Structure: Amnesia can be caused by…

trauma, disease, or surgery

HM and Clive Wearing:Intact Capabilities: Their STM/WM was functional …

Intact Capabilities: Their STM/WM was functional (they could hold a 15–20 second conversation), and their implicit memory was intact (they could learn new skills)

HM and Clive Wearing: Impaired Capabilities: They could not transfer information into LTM, meaning…

they could not form new explicit memories of facts or events.

Double Dissociation: This is established between Patient HM (functioning STM, impaired LTM) and Patient KF (functioning LTM, impaired STM), …

proving these systems are served by different mechanisms

The Difference: Explicit memory involves conscious recollection of events or facts, while implicit memory occurs when…

past experiences influence behavior without conscious awareness

Examples of implicit memory:

procedural memory, priming and classical conditioning

Procedural Memory: Memory for skills (e.g., riding a bike) where performance improves without the need …

to consciously explain how

Priming: When exposure to one stimulus changes the response to a ..

subsequent test stimulus

Classical Conditioning: Pairing a neutral stimulus with a response-eliciting stimulus (e.g., Pavlov's dogs) so that the response occurs even …

without conscious memory of the pairing

Repetition Priming: Occurs when the test stimulus is the same as or resembles..

the priming stimulus

Propaganda Effect: The tendency to believe a statement is true simply because of …

prior exposure

Lexical Decision Task: Measuring how quickly someone identifies a string of…

letters as a word

Word Fragment Completion: Asking participants to complete a word stem (e.g., "tab__" for "table") using the first word that …

comes to mind

Episodic: Memory for specific …

personal experiences (e.g., your first kiss)

Semantic: Memory for facts and …

generalized knowledge (e.g., the capital of Illinois)

Evidence for Difference: A double dissociation exists where Clive Wearing lost episodic memory but retained some…

semantic facts, while Patient MN showed the reverse pattern

Mirror Reading: Amnesic patients improved their reading speed over time despite not …

remembering previous sessions

Mirror Tracing: Patient HM significantly improved his ability to trace a star while looking in a mirror over …

several days, though he had no conscious memory of ever doing the task

Priming (Graf et al., 1985): Patients with amnesia performed poorly on explicit recall but performed just as well as controls on…

implicit word completion, demonstrating that priming does not require conscious memory

Constructive Episodic Simulation Hypothesis: The idea that episodic memory is used to imagine future scenarios, which helps ….

anticipate needs and guide behavior for survival

Passage of Time: As time passes, episodic details fade, and memories become "semanticized," meaning we …

remember the facts but lose the ability to "relive" the specific event

Remember/Know Procedure: A method to distinguish between episodic and semantic components: "Remember" indicates recollection of the specific experience (episodic), while…

"Know" indicates a feeling of familiarity without specific recollection (semantic)

Encoding is the process of acquiring information and….

transferring it into long-term memory (LTM)

One primary way to rehearse information is maintenance rehearsal, which involves….

rote repetition without consideration of meaning

Another primary way to rehearse information is elaborative rehearsal, which involves making …

meaningful connections

Elaborative rehearsal is significantly more effective for establishing lasting memories because it ties new information to an …

existing network of knowledge, creating more "hooks" or retrieval cues

Shallow processing (like maintenance rehearsal) focuses on…

physical features

deep processing focuses on…

meaning and relationships

Research by Craik and Tulving (1975) demonstrated that participants remembered words much better when they performed a deep task (like fitting a word into a sentence) compared to…

shallow tasks (like judging if a word is in capital letters)

Organization: Grouping information into meaningful frameworks, such as "trees" or mind maps, reduces the load on …

memory and provides a structure that serves as a retrieval cue

Imagery: Forming mental images where two items interact (e.g., a boat and a tree) can more than double memory compared to…

simple repetition

Generation Effect: Actively generating material yourself (e.g., finishing a word pair like "king-cr____") results in …

better retention than passively reading it

Testing Effect (Retrieval Practice): The act of retrieving information strengthens the memory trace; research by Roediger and Karpicke (2006) showed that …

being tested on material leads to much better long-term retention than just re-reading it

Self-reference Effect: Memory is improved when you relate information to yourself, likely because it …

links new data to the richness of your own identity

Spacing Effect: Distributed practice (studying in short intervals over time) is more effective than…

"massed" practice or cramming

Mnemonics: These are specialized encoding strategies like the pegword method (associating items with a rhyming list like "one-bun, two-shoe") or ….

the method of loci (placing items in a familiar mental location)

Students should avoid illusions of learning, such as fluency (mistaking the ease of reading for comprehension) or the ….

familiarity effect (recognizing something because you've seen it recently without actually knowing it)

Retrieval is bringing information from LTM back into….

Working Memory (consciousness)

A retrieval cue is a stimulus that helps you ….

access a target memory

Retrieval is most successful when the conditions at the time of the test match the ….

conditions that existed during encoding

Context-dependent (Encoding Specificity): Matching the external environment helps ….

retrieval; for example, divers who learned words underwater recalled them better underwater than on land

State-dependent Learning: Matching your internal state (like mood or awareness) improves memory; participants who were in a ….

happy mood while studying performed better if they were happy during the test

Transfer-appropriate Processing: Matching the cognitive task leads to better results; Morris (1977) showed that if you encode words based on rhyme, you will …

actually do better on a rhyme-based test than someone who encoded based on meaning

Consolidation is the process of transforming new…..

fragile memories into a more permanent state

Synaptic Consolidation: Occurs rapidly (minutes or hours) and involves…

structural changes at the individual synapses