Amnesia and Implicit Memory

retrograde amnesia

can’t retrieve information from the past

anterograde amnesia

can’t form new memories

dissociation between episodic and semantic memory revealed by patient KC

KC’s semantic knowledge was preserved but he couldn’t recall personal experiences

patient KC brain damage areas

all 4 lobes, left medial temporal lobe

patient KC experienced _____ amnesia

retrograde

patient HM experienced _____ amnesia

anterograde

HM displayed a dissociation between implicit and explicit memory by showing

his implicit memory was intact but explicit was impaired

HM performed ____ during free recall tasks, but ____ during crude recall and stem completion tasks

poorly, normally

mirror tracing task

test where someone has to trace the outline of a figure while looking in a mirror

what does mirror tracing test

skill learning and implicit/procedural memory

how did HM’s error rates change throughout each trial of the mirror tracing task

error rates decreased over time, procedural memory still intact

HM’s brain damage regions

hippocampus, medial temporal lobes

the pathway of the hippocampus can be described as a

one-way circuit

repetition priming

occurs when the test stimulus is the same as or resembles the priming stimulus

how did Jacoby and Dallas demonstrate repetition priming

participants were shown a list of words and divided into 2 groups. explicit memory group were shown new and old words and had to say if they were in the first part. implicit memory group were briefly presented words and then a visual mask and they had to say what the word was

Jacoby and Dallas results

words shown in part 1 facilitated the identification of the word in the part 2 tests even if they don’t remember seeing the word in part 1

how did patient HM get anterograde amnesia

he had bad seizures and got his hippocampus removed to try and help it

explicit vs implicit memory

explicit is conscious and you can talk about it, implicit is unconscious and you can’t talk about it until something reminds you of it

tests for implicit memory

perceptual recognition task, motor tasks, word tasks

dissociation

where 2 different mental processes function independently of each other

does implicit memory have an influence on conscious experience

yes and deja vu is an example of feeling like you’ve experienced something before

how do amnesic patients reveal memory

through implicit memory tests