Episodic Long-Term Memory

Chapter 6 of Psych 270

What is this

Squire’s taxonomy of long-term memories

What is explicit memory

Long-term memory knowledge that can be retrieved and then reflected on consciously (aka declarative memory)

What is implicit memory

Knowledge that can influence thought and behavior without any necessary involvement of conscious awareness (aka non-declarative memory)

What is episodic memory

autobiographical; stores personally experienced events (e.g., the events your experienced at a fun party

What is semantic memory

Stores general world knowledge, like concepts and categories (e.g., knowing that the capital city of Saskatchewan is Regina)

What are the preliminary issues

Mnemonics, the ebbinghaus tradition and metamemory

What is a mnemonic

An active, strategic learning device or method

What are the strengths of mnemonics

The material to be remembered is practiced repeatedly
The material is integrated into an existing memory framework
The mnemonic provides a way to retrieve the material

What is method of loci

Uses known locations as cues for memory items (based on visual imagery)

What are the steps of using method of loci

Choose a known set of locations
Forms a mental image of each thing you want to remember and place it in a location

What is the peg-word technique

A pre-memorized set of words serves as a sequence of mental “pegs” onto which the to-be-remembered material can be “hung”

What are the mnemonic principles

Provide a structure for learning
Form durable and distinctive memory traces (by means of visual images and rhymes)
Guide retrieval by providing effective cues for recalling the information

What is the three-step sequence for learning and memory

Encoding, retention, retrieval

Who is Herman Ebbinghaus

Founder of scientific research on memory
Studied his own memory (used himself as the only participant in his studies and studied memory using nonsense syllables)
Used the relearning task and savings score

What were Ebbinghaus results

Forgetting curve (aka retention curve)
Evidence of overlearning (more frequently repeated list = twice the savings score and longer lists were remembered better)

What is distributed practice

Study time is spread out over many, shorter sessions

What is massed practice

Study time is grouped together into one long session

What is metamemory

Knowledge about one’s own memory, including how it works and how it fails to work

What is metacognition

Knowledge about one’s own cognitive system and its functioning

What is isolation effect

Better memory for information that is distinct from the information around it (having one word in red when everything else is black)

What are the important principles of storage

Rehearsal, organization, imagery

What is rehearsal

A deliberate recycling of short-term memories contents
A deliberate recycling or practicing of information in the short-term store

What is Rundus (1971)

Participants learned 20 item lists of words (got 5 seconds/word)
People were told to rehearse words aloud, but could rehearse any words that they wanted

What are the two kinds of rehearsal

Maintenance rehearsal and elaborative rehearsal

What is maintenance rehearsal

A low-level, repetitive information recycling (holding the number for the pizza restaurant in memory until you dial it)

What is elaborative rehearsal

A more complex rehearsal using the meaning of the information to store and remember

What did Craik and Lockhart study (1972)

The two different kinds of rehearsal and depth of processing

What is depth of processing

Memory is determined not by how long information stays in the system, but by how the person processes it

What is shallow processing

Leads to poor long-term memory traces (used in maintenance rehearsal)

What is deep processing

Leads to strong long-term memory traces (used in elaborative rehearsal)

What is organization

The structuring or restructuring of information as it is being stored in memory

What is bower et al. (1969) study

People got 4 trails to learn 112 words
Two conditions: organized condition & control
Organized: got organized lists with headers
Control: same physical structure of lists, but randomized words

What is subjective organization

Organization developed by a person for structuring and remembering information
Organization developed by the participant for structuring and remembering a list of items without experimenter-supplied categories

What is imagery

The mental picturing of a stimulus that affects later recall or recognition

What did Paviio do (1971)

Reviewed studies on mental imagery and found a beneficial effects for memory

What is Schnoor & Atkinson (1969) paired associate task

List of words pairs are presented to a person
After the first presentation, the first word (the stimulus) should act as a cue for the second to-be-produced (the paired associate response)

What is dual coding hypothesis

Words that denote concrete objects, as opposed to abstract words, can be encoded into memory twice (once verbally and again as an image)
Concrete words can be stored twice in long-term memory, once as a word and again as a picture
Abstract words are only stored once

What is encoding specificity

Each item is encoded into a richer memory representation that includes the context it was in during encoding (extra information that was present during encoding of an item is also stored)
Anything present during learning a target can serve as an effective cue for later remembering that target
State-dependent learning

What is decay

The older a memory trace is, the more likely it has been forgotten

How do you study interference in long-term memory

Paired associate learning

What is paired associate learning

A list of stimulus terms is paired, item by item, with a list of response terms (after learning, the stimulus terms are used as cues for the response terms)
Often used to study proactive and retroactive interference

What is retrieval failure (aka forgetting)

When a memory is lost in the system, as opposed to from the system

What is tip of the tongue states

When a person is temporarily unable to remember some shred of information (e.g., a name) that they know is stored in long-term memory

What is availability

The memory trace exists; it was encoded into long-term memory
-Once encoded, information stays in long-term indefinitely

What is accessibility

Degree to which the memory trace can be retrieved from memory
-Information is in long-term memory, but may or may not be accessed

Why does retrieval failure happen

Occurs when the information is available, but not accessible

What do retrieval cues do

Help restore the original learning context

What is amnesia

Loss of memory or memory abilities due to brain damage or disease

What is retrograde amnesia

Loss of memory of events before the injury

What is ribot’s law

Temporal gradient in retrograde amnesia

What is anterograde amnesia

Loss of memory of events after the injury

What is dissociation

A disruption in one component of cognition but no impairment of another

What is double dissociation

Finding reciprocal patterns of disruption
-In one patient, A is disrupted but B is not
-In another patient, B is disrupted but A is not

What happened to patient K.C.

Episodic memory processes were disrupted, but semantic memory processes were intact

What happened to patient H.M.

Unable to transfer new information to long-term memory, but able to retrieve already stored memories from long-term memory

What is repetition priming

A previous encounter with information facilitates later processing on the same information, even unconsciously