Ch.5 Long-Term Memory

Episodic memory

memory for personal experiences, events, and episodes, often accompanied by contextual details

• these are also hippocampal dependent memories: binds the memory together

• can be thought of as mental time travel

Semantic memories

memory for general knowledge, facts, and concepts about the world

• all of our knowledge is semantic memory (ex: what is a duck, the capital of australia?)

• independent of learning context

Procedural memories

memories for how to do things, accessed without control or conscious attention

• automatically retrieved and utilized for the execution of the procedures involved in both motor and cognitive skills (ex: riding a bike, reading)

Explicit memories

those with conscious awareness

• episodic memory

• semantic memory

• working memory

Implicit memories

not consciously aware of

• procedural memory

• amnesia

Retrieval

the process of acessing and bringing information from memory storage

Encoding

the process of transforming info that can be stored in memory

Elaborative processing

creating additional information that relates and expands on what needs to be remembered

Levels-of-processing framework

argues that deep, meaningful processing of info leads to more accurate recall than shallow, sensory kind of processing

• Craik and Lockhart: memory is a byproduct of the level of processing performed at encoding

• Shallow = poor memory

• Deep = better memory

Shallow processing

the most basic (visual form) to phonology (how it sounds/rhymes with)

Deep processing

elaborate processing such as it’s meaning

Self-reference effect

memory is better when we relate the information to ourselves specifically

• Rogers et al: asking participants if a certain word could be applied to them

• self-referencing produced the best recall

• linking to be learned info to personally relevant info about oneself creates strong encoding

Generation effect

memory is better when we actively generate info rather than passively receiving it which leads to better memory retention

• Jacoby; Slamecka and Graf: group 1 read condition where entire word was given and group 2 generated the condition

• Group 2 remembered better because they generated the word themselves, they were not given the word

Acessibility of Memories

memory contains more info than we can access at any given moment

• providing hints (ex: 1st letter of words) can dramatically improve recall

• being unable to remember somehting now doesn’t mean the memory is lost forever

Tip of tongue phenomenon

a feeling that one knows the response but is unable to produce it

• Brown and Mcneil: retrieve the word corresponding to it’s provided definition, participants were asked to indicate if they were in ToT state and if so they had to guess the # of syllables and other info about the word

• Results: participants are better at remembering associated info than they were at producing the actual word

retrieval cues (1st step in retrieval process)

bits of info about target memory that guide the search

memory trace (2nd step in retrieval process)

the particular memory we’re seeking

associations (3rd step in retrieval process)

bonds that link together items in memory

• vary in strength

encoding specificity principle

memory depends on interaction between how the items were studied and how they’re tested

• recall more if retrieval context is similar to the encoding context

• any encoded aspect of the event can be considered a context

types of context

1. physical environment

2. internal environment (mood, psychoactive state)

3. semantic context

memory is worse when tested in a context different from the one in which it was originally encoded

physical context

godden and baddeley: diver’s study

• task: study words then recall them

• studied/tested under water or on land

state-dependent memory

• eich et al: study words after regular cigarette or marijuana, at test smoke same or different kind of cigarette

• goodwin et al: study words while sober or after drinking, at test remain sober or get more alcohol

mood-dependent memory

• bower et al: during learning and the test, participants were hypnotically induced into a positive or negative state

• better memory when emotional state during study matched that during the test

DRM effect (Deese, Roediger, Mcdermott)

semantically related words give rise to a false recall of a word that was never presented

• reality monitoring failure: people cannot remember whether they have actually seen the critical word or only thought about it during learning (ex: reminding yourself to take a pill and then wondering if you actually took it or not)

Reconstructive retrieval

refers to schema guided construction of episodic memories that alter and disort encoded memory representations

Brewer and Treyens

• experiment: which objects were in the picture?

• participants remembered more schema consistent than inconsistent items

• objects that weren’t present in the room but were falsely recognized with high confidence were schema consistent

• schemas can hurt and improve memory

Misinformation effect

the disortion of memory caused by exposure to misleading info after an event

Loftus, Miller, and Burns (1978)

• participants viewed slide event of sports car stopped at an intersection, then it turned and hit a pedestrian

• ½ saw the stop sign and ½ saw yield sign, they were questioned with consistent or misleading info

• results: post event misleading info cause retroactive interference with the oringinally encoded event memory

retroactive interference

forgetting caused by new interfering with the retrieval of older information

Biased lineups

the composition of a lineup can lead people to adopt more liberal or conservative response bias

• liberal: genuienly guessing

• conservative: more specific

simultaneous lineup

multiple choice situation where you’re shown ALL distractors at the same time

sequential lineup

being shown ONE distractor at a time, considered to be more accurate and effective

flashbulb memory (FM)

memory for the situation when you first learned of a surprising and emotionally arousing event

• example: heeseung leaving enhypen or 9/11

• has to involve a lot of people

• 1st person perspective, remembered right from within

Talarico and Rubin (2003)

• Ss had to report their memory for 9/11 (FM) along with a memory for an ordinary event from their life (EM = everyday)

• both memories showed ordinary forgetting although people were very confident about their memories of 9/11

Hippocampus

crucial for the formation of new episodic memories

amnesia

severe deficits in episodic memory usually due to brain damage (implicating hippocampal areas)

retrograde amnesia (RA)

cannot remember events PRIOR to brain damage

anterograde amnesia

cannot later remember events that occur AFTER brain damage

anterograde amnesia: preserved implicit memory

Participants studied a list of common such as food

1. Free recall (explicit memory)

2. Cued recall: given the stem of the word and asked to recall (explicit memory)

3. Stem completion: given the stem and asked to say any word that fits that stem (implicit memory)

assessment of retrograde amnesia (RA)

difficult to do because lost memories are often encoded outside of experimental control

• Sanders and Warrington’s first attempt to assess RA: presented patients w/ photos of famous people at specific points in time

general findings of retrograde amnesia (RA)

• amnesics perform more poorly than do controls

• retrograde loss: whether forgotten or not depends on how far back in time it goes aka temporarally graded RA

midazolam amnesia

inhibitory agent (belongs to benzodiazepines)

• used in conscious sedation surgery (medical procedures)

• causes memory loss before/during procedure

experimental advantages of midazolam amnesia

• fast acting: study period can begin after 5 minutes

• metabolized rapidly: test can occur 70 minutes after study period

• very dense amnesia with substantial preservation of cognitive function

Clive Wearing

• extreme case of amnesia

• diagnosed with viral encephalitis; hospitalized

• over next few months his memory impairment worsened

• lost capacity for new learning (hippocampus was completely destroyed almost),

• severe losses in autobiographical memory

• retained most of his musical ability

characteristics of Clive Wearing

• preserved procedural memory (piano)

• preserved language

• massive anterograde amnesia in episodic memory

• loss of semantic memory

• intact implicit memory (anticipation of video events)