UConn Psych 1100 Eric Lundquist Final Exam

Long Term Memory

Relatively permanent, infinite capacity, semantic (boat/ship), structural pattern of connections, Forgetting is Misplacement/retrieval failure

Short Term Memory
(Working Memory)

Seconds to minutes, 5-9 pieces of information, phonological (boat/coat), dynamic pattern of activity, Forgetting is displacement/decay

Flow of information in memory

Stimulus -> STM -> rehearsal-> LTM

Two types of rehearsal

maintenance- holds info in STM
elaborative- moves info to LTM

Primacy effect

Early part of list recalled better than the middle, from the LTM

Recency Effect

Last part of list recalled better than middle, from STM

Trace Consolidation

A memory goes from a dynamic pattern to a structural pattern

Amnesia

An interruption of trace consolidation

Retrograde amnesia

Events before trauma

Anterograde amnesia

Events after trauma

Proactive interference

Old info affects new in LTM forgetting

Retroactive interference

New info affects old in LTM forgetting

Depth of Processing Experiment (Craik and Tulving 1975)

Asked people questions such as Visual (Capital?), Acoustic (Rhyme?), or Semantic (Sentence Fit) Deeper thinking led to better memorization of said words

Episodic

Episodes or events with time and place (I saw an elephant in 2004)

Generic/semantic

Facts, concepts, and meanings (An elephant has floppy ears and a trunk)

Explicit

Reference to prior learning:
Recall- what were words on list
Recognition- Circle the words you saw earlier

Implicit

No concious awarness of remembering:
stem completion- MOT__
Word fragment completion- _U_O_O_I_E

Declarative

Knowing that (mainly explicit) statements, using episodic and generic information

Procedural

Knowing how (mainly implicit) Skills: riding a bike/playing an instrument

Retention Without Awareness

Amnesiac patients and normal controls tested for memory of words learned previously, amnesiacs were bad at explicit but equal on implicit memory tasks

Encoding Specificity Principle

Retrieval cue- current stimulus that aids retrieval, any memory for an item has the items context in it too, context cues should be just like context when learned

Context-Dependent Memory

Scuba divers learned words under water or on land, tested for recall, better in context when in same enviornments

Loftus and Palmer experiment (1974)

View slides of car accident, ask how fast were cars going when HIT/SMASHED INTO each other, week later, was there broken glass? Yes was WAY more likely for Smash group so memory can be distorted

Sensation

Basic, primitive mental state corresponding to energies in environment, experience of the world

Perception

Mental state corresponding to properties of objects and events in environment, knowledge of world

Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies

Quality of sensation is based on nerve fibers being stimulated, NOT the stimulus
Fibers of optic nerves are normally stimulated by light, but can be stimulated by pressure, electric current etc.

Short to Long wavelength spectrum

Gamma
X-Ray
UV
Color(blue, green, red)
Infrared
Microwaves
Radar
FM
TV
AM

Photoreceptors

Light sensitive neurons in the retina of the ye that produce action potentials when stimulated by light
2 of these- Rods and Cones

Two types of Photoreceptors

Rods- Low light conditions like nighttime- black/white only
Cones- Bright Light Conditions like daytime; COLOR vision

Three types of cone cells

Short wavelength- most sensitive to blueish light
Medium wavelength- most sensitive to greenish light
Long wavelength- Most sensitive to redish light

All send to opponent process cells

3 types of Opponent Process Cells

In retinal ganglion cells, thalamus or cortex
Black/White
Red/Green
Blue/Yellow
When excited see White, Red, Blue
When inhibited see Black, Green, Yellow

Structure of Eye

Retina consists of receptors (rods and cones), bipolar cells, ganglion cells, and others
Light enters pupil, then passes through eyeball to retina, then hits receptors

Optic Nerve

Bundle of axons of ganglion cells, leading out back of eye to brain

Fovea

Central depression retina where cones are most densely packed- most acute vision

Rods

Very sensitive; black/white; night vision; mostly periphery; 120,000,000

Cones

Less sensitive; color; daytime vision; mostly in fovea; 6,000,000

Lateral Inhibition

Neighboring receptor cells tend to inhibit each other, so dark looks darker and light looks lighter

Proximal Stimulus (Retinal Image)

Stimulation of receptors produces sensations of brightness and colors, then these sensations must be interpreted

Issues with Proximal Stimulus

Inverted
Size is same no matter what distance
Two Dimensional

So perception in brain not eye

Depth Perception- Empiricist

Retinal image + Cues along with knowledge from experiences (Linear perspective, interposition, relative size)

Linear perspective

Convergence point is far away (Long road)

Interposition

Closer objects will block farther objects

Relative Size

Nearer objects cast larger retinal images than father objects

Form Perception- Nativist View

Retinal Image + Innate Laws of Organization (we've evolved to know what is happening)

Phi-Phenomenon

Stimulus in two locations near same time, seen as one moving stimulus (light flashing experiment)

Weber's Law

Change in light intensity over the original light intensity will always be 1/60 to notice a difference

Generic vs Semantic Memory

Generic memory is facts, semantic memory is mainly the meaning of words and concepts, is a part of generic memory