Cognitive Psychology Exam 2

Memory

Processes involved in encoding, retaining, retrieving, & using info about stimuli, images, events, ideas, & skills

• after original info is no longer present

Active any time some past experience has an impact on how you think or behave now or in the future

Modal of Memory

Memory Types:

1. Sensory Memory: initial stage that holds all incoming info for secs or fractions of a sec

2. Short-Term Memory: holds 5 to 7 items for about 15 to 20 secs

4. Long-Term Memory: can hold a large amount of info for years or even decades

Control Processes: active processes that can be controlled by the person

• rehearsal (telephone number)

• strategies used to make a stimulus more memorable

Is wrong

• but has been useful in stimulating research

Control Processes

active processes that can be controlled by the person

• rehearsal (telephone number)

• strategies used to make a stimulus more memorable

Storage and Retrieval

Modal of Memory is Wrong

Short Term Memory

umbrella term; includes both of these types of memory:

• Sensory memory: initial stage that holds all incoming info for secs or fractions of a sec

• Working memory: limited-capcity system for temporary storage and manipulation of info

Sensory Memory

retention, for brief periods of time, of the effects of sensory stimulation

info decays very quickly

• iconic memory

• echoic memory

• persistence of vision

Iconic Memory

brief sensory memory of things that we see

• responsible for persistence of vision:

  • retention of the perception of light

    • trail of light from a moving sparkler

    • frames in film

Echoic Memory

brief sensory memory of things that we hear

• responsible for persistence of sound

Persistence of Vision

retention of the perception of light

• trail of light from a moving sparkler

• frames in film

Sensory Memory Research

Sperling (1960) conducted some of earliest research in attempt to measuring the capacity & duration of sensory memory

• array of letters flashed quickly on screen

• participants asked to report as many as possible

Whole report method: participants asked to report as many as could be seen

• avg of 4.5 out of 12 letters (37.5%)

Partial report method: participants heard tone that told them which row of letters to report (immediate tone)

• avg of 3.3 out of 4 letters (82%)

• participants could report any of th

Delayed partial report method: presentation of tone delayed for a fraction of a sec after letters were extinguished (delayed tone)

• performance decreases rapidly

• performance decrease is due to the rapid decay of iconic memory (sensory memory)

But Sperling’s experiment confounds sensory memory w/other types of memory (e.g., working memory)
To determine duration & capacity of sensory memory, need paradigms that isolate sensory memory

Whole Report Method

Partial Report Method

Delayed Partial Report Method

Sensory Memory Duration

Sugita & colleagues studied sensory memory duration using perceptual illusions

In the following stimuli, most people perceive (a) w/the white lines separate, & (b) as a single white line behind a block

In fact, in (a) the white lines would connect to each other, but in (b) they wouldn’t

& the discontinuity of the lines in (b) is seen clearly when the block is absent

Working Memory

limited-capacity system for temporary storage & manipulation of info

• important in language comprehension, learning, & reasoning

can include new sensory info as well as info recalled from long term memory

Working Memory Duration

Storage duration: 15-20 sec (w/ot rehersal or other controlled processes)

Working Memory Capacity

can be assessed in many ways

• digit span: how many digits a person can remember

• chunking: small units can be combined into larger meaningful units

Chunking

small units can be combined into larger meaningful units

Phnonological Loop

verbal & auditory info

• whnonological similarity effect

• word length effect

• articulatory suppression

Phnonological Similarity Effect

letters or words that sound similar are confused

Word Length Effect

memory for lists of words is better for short words than for long words

takes longer to rehearse long works & to produce them during recall

Articulatory Suppression

speaking prevents one from rehearsing items to be remembered

Visuospatial Sketch Pad

storage of visual images in the mind in the absence of a physical stimuli

can be studied w/a mental rotation task

• trials that require greater rotations took longer

The Central Executive

acts as the attention controller (traffic cop)

• focus, divide, switch attention

controls suppression of irrelevant info perseveration

Perseveration

repeatedly performing the same action or thought even if it’s not achieving the desired goal

The Episodic Buffer

backup store that communicates w/LTM & WM components

holds info longer & has greater capacity than phonological loop or visuospatial sketch pad

Baddelely’s Model in the Brain

Prefrontal Cortex

responsible for processing & controlling incoming info

• damage to frontal lobe causes:

  • probs in controlling attention

  • difficulty w/working memory

Long Term Memory

archive of info about past events & knowledge learned

works closely with/working memory

storage stretches from a few moments to as far back as one can remember

more recent memories = more detailed

varies a lot in how detailed it is, in how much info you can retain over time

Primacy Effect

memory is better for stimuli presented at beginning of a list

• more likely to remember 1st word, had more time to reherse it

why?

• more time to rehearse info, more likely to enter long-term memory (LTM); tap into LTM

Recency Effect

memory is better for stimuli presented at end of a list

• sometimes more likely to remember very last thing on list; not as strong; still active in STM

stimuli still in short-term memory (STM)

Serial Position Curve

primacy effect

recency effect

Coding in Long Term Memory

a mental approach to coding:

• how is a stimulud or experience represented in the mind?

visual encoding

auditory encoding

semantic coding

Visual Encoding

visualizing a person or a place from the past

take info that we’ve gathered & generate mental images from it

• ex: visualizing what the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. looked like when you saw it last summer

Auditory Encoding

representing a sound (e.g., a song) you heard a long time ago

• repeating a song you’ve heard many times before, over & over in your mind

Semantic Coding

the specific wording is forgotten (might not remember explicit details)

general meaning can be remembered for a long time

• ex: recalling the general plot of a novel you read last week (Sachs)

Locating Memory in the Brain

Henry Molaison (HM) (bike accident, damaged something in head, after injury developed epilepsy)

• Surgery removed bilateral MTL (both sides) (hippocampus; parahippocampal gyrus, perirhinal cortex)

• Retained short-term memory & other cognitive abilities

• No longer able to form long-term memories

EP

• Virus damaged bilateral MTL (hippocampus; parahippocampal gyrus, perirhinal cortex)

• Retained short-term memory & other cognitive abilities

• No longer able to form long-term memories

KF

• An accident damaged his parietal lobe (supramarginal & angular gyri)

• Impaired STM (reduced digit span)

• Functional LTM

• Able to form & hold new memories

Hippocampus

doesn’t just support long-term memory

• activity is greater when holding new info in working
  memory

supports short & long term memory in the same way

• how? binding of high-resolution, complex info

  • can be items & contexts, or high-resolution features within items

  • not just storing memory, maybe also relevant for supporting memory

Types of Long Term Memory

typical conceptual divisions; Larry Squire’s model

• Explicit (conscious) (consiously aware of) (have to think of but always there):

  • episodic (personal events)

  • semantic (facts, knowledge)

• Implicit (not conscious) (don’t have to recall as use info):

  • procedural memory

  • priming

  • conditioning

Episodic Memory

involves mental time travel (episodes of your life)

tied to personal experience; remembering is reliving

“self-knowing”

memory for specific personal experiences, involving mental time travel back in time to achieve a feeling of reliving the experience

• ex: I remember going to get coffee at Le Buzz yesterday morning & talking w/Gil & Mary about their bike trip

Semantic Memory

doesn’t involve mental time travel

general knowledge, facts

“knowing”

memory for facts

• ex: there is a Starbucks down the road from Le Buzz

Separation of Episodic and Semantic Memories

KC - damaged hippocampus

• no episodic memory, can’t relive past events

• semantic memory intact, can remember general info about the past

I.W (encephalitis)

• impaired semantic memory

• episodic memory intact, can remember past events & create new event memories

retrieving episodic & semantic memories activate diff areas of brain

Episodic and Semantic Memory Interaction

episodic can be lost, leaving only semantic

• acquiring knowledge may start as episodic, but then “fade” to semantic

• consolidated, rely less on hippocampus

• alternatively, newer works suggest that multiple memory traces may be made at once (episodic = hippocampus; semantic = cortex)

semantic memories can be enhanced if associated w/episodic

• autobiographical memory

• personal semantic memory

Autobiographical Memory

specific experiences

includes semantic & episodic

ppls memories for experiences from their own life

memories have both episodic components (relived specific events) & semantic components (facts related to these events)

semantic components of it are personal semantic memories

• ex: I met Gil & Mary at Le Buss yesterday morning; we sat at our favorite table near the window, which is often difficult to get in the morning when coffee shop is busy

Personal Semantic Memory

semantic memories that have personal significance

Types of Explicit Long-Term Memory

Episodic

Semantic

Autobiographical

How Time Affects Memories

Forgetting increases w/longer intervals after encoding

Forgetting is not an “all-or-nothing” process

• familiarity: sense of knowing (“know”)

• recollection: contextual details (“remember”)

Remember/Know procedure

• contextual details get lost for memoties of long-ago events

Memory and the Future

Similar brain structures are involved in remembering the past & imagining the future!

constructive episodic simulation hypothesis

Constructive Episodic Simulation Hypothesis

episodic memories are extracted & recombined to create simulations of future events

helps us to anticipate future needs & guide future behaviors

Implicit Memory

occurs when learning from experience isn’t accompanied by conscious remembering

• procedural memories

• priming

• conditioning

Procedural Memory

skill memory: memory for actions

no memory of where or when learned

perform procedures w/out being consciously aware of how to do them

ppl who can’t form new LTMs can still learn new skills

• e.g. KC - stacking books at library

expert-induced amnesia

• being “in the sone”

• doesn’t require attention

Priming in Everyday Experience

Presentation of priming stimulus changes person’s response to a test stimulus

Propaganda effect

Involves implicit memory because it can occur when people aren’t aware of previously seeing or hearing statement

Implications for advertisement

Propaganda Effect

more likely to rate statements read or heard before as being true

Long-Term Memory Stages

1. Encoding:

   • acquiring info & transforming it into memory

   • where sensory memory is living

2. Retention:

   • period of time between encoding & retrieval

   • storing in the mind

   • where memory lives most of its life

3. Retrieval:

   • recalling or recognizing retained info encoded previously

   • when need info

   • act goes back into working memory

Getting Information into Long Term Memory

Various strategies can enhance memory encoding, which provide clues as to how memory encoding happens

• Maintenance rehearsal

  • Repetition of stimuli that maintains info

  • But results in poor memory (low transfer to LTM)

  • Not necessarily gonna keep info in your mind

• Elaborative rehearsal

  • Using meanings & connections to help transfer info to LTM

  • Encoding info that we tie to other things, link to other pieces of info

Levels of Processing Theory

Memory depends on how info is encoded

Depth of processing

• Shallow processing

  • little attention to meaning

  • focus on physical features

  • poor memory

• Deep processing

  • close attention to meaning; attach meaning

  • better memory, stronger capacity to remember

Other Factors That Aid Encoding

Visual imagery

• paired-associates learning

• tie 2 things together, force a mental image into someone’s head

Self-reference effect

• Self > Common'

• think about if word describes you

• when think about self, more likely to think words were common

Generation effect

• Read group: give bunch of words, pairings, remember overtime

• Generate group: fill in blank w/word that is related to 1st word

  • spend extra time, more likely to recall words

  • more effort into forming associations = stronger gonna stick

Organizing to-be-remembered info

• Words within categories can serve as retrieval cues

Retrieval practice

• Testing memory can result in better memory!

Presented difficult-to-comprehend info

• Having a mental framework of comprehension aided memory encoding & retrieval

Intentional Encoding

Trying to remember something

Trying to store all of the info

Incidental Encoding

Not trying to remember something

Capture info we don’t care to remember

Does Trying to Remember Something Help You Remember It?

Yes & no

You’ll generally remember things better if you try to remember them than if you don’t (intentional encoding)

• But this is due to differences in levels of processing

If make semantic judgments about incidentally encoded info (processing it on the level of meaning)

• then remember that info just as well as (& sometimes even better than) info intentionally encoded

• accidentally taps into deeper level of processing

Effective Studying

Strategies that help w/transferring info into long-term memory:

• Elaborate

  • Relating to other things that you know

  • Think through meaning of it

• Generate & Test

  • Make up questions yourself

  • Generate more meaning

• Organize

  • Create a framework, make the material meaningful

• Take Breaks

  • Don’t cram!

• Avoid “illusion of learning”

  • Fluency doesn’t = learning

• Be an “active” note-taker!

  • Computer note-taking results in more shallow processing & poorer performance on exams

  • More likely to simply transcribe

Consolidation

Transforms new memories from fragile state to more permanent state

• Synaptic consolidation

  • rapid (minutes to hours)

  • structural changes of the synapses

• Systems consolidation

  • gradual (months to years)

  • reorganization of neural circuits

Synaptic Consolidation

Learning & memory represented in the brain by physiological changes at the synapse

Neural record of experience
Long-term potentiation (LTP)

• Enhanced firing of neurons after repeated stimulation

• Structural changes & enhanced responding

At synapse:

• (a) stimulus is presented for the 1st time

• (b) stimulus is presented repeatedly

• (c) structural changes occurred (learning) → increase in firing rate

  • more you activate certain brain cells overtime, the more likely they are to strengthen their ability to communicate

Glucocorticoids (e.g., cortisol) & norepinephrine enhance this

• under stress more likely to remember neg images

• under stress diff things are getting consolidated

  • things that are threatening/unhappy, more likely to be stored

Reconsolidation

When the memory is retrieved, it becomes fragile

• Remember differently overtime

Similar to when it was originally formed

It needs to be this

Reactivating a memory can open it to being changed!

Can damage memory integrity

Consolidation and Sleep

Memory consolidation appears to be enhanced during sleep

• Especially shortly after

• Strongest reconsolidation effects

• 1 reason: sleeping stops interference from environmental stimuli

Some memories are consolidated more than others

• Memory for a task in 1 study was stronger when participants expected to be tested after awaking

Systems Consolidation

Standard model:

• (a) Connections between the cortex & the hippocampus (blue) are initially strong & connections between cortical areas are weak (dashed green)

• (b) As time passes, connections between the hippocampus & cortex weaken (dashed blue) & connections between cortical areas become stronger (green)

• (c) Eventually, only intercortical connections remain

Systems Consolidation & Amnesia

Systems consolidation is the typical explanation for patterns of amnesia

• Patients whose hippocampi are removed or damaged are famously able to remember remote memories better than recent memories

• Systems consolidation argues that this is bc the hippocampus is heavily involved in recent memory, but, over time, memories are moved from the hippocampus to the cortex

Memories are the largest thing in our brain

• no 1 brain region can be responsible for holding all of it, consolidate across regions

Does Systems Consolidation Occur?

Graded retrograde amnesia damage is less common in hippocampus damage than thought

• In fact, it almost never occurs for memories dependent upon the hippocampus

• Instead, it usually occurs for semantic (non-hippocampus) memories in cases of hippocampus damage

Studies w/healthy participants rarely find that the hippocampus is more active for recent than remote memories, though this is a crucial prediction of systems consolidation

• 79% of studies do not find the pattern that systems consolidation predicts!

Contextual Binding Theory

New theory that explains memory data well

• Posits that the hippocampus and cortex support different types of memory rather than the same memories at different times

• Explains all memory data that systems consolidation explains & more

Systems Consolidation & Contextual Binding

Support for systems consolidation is weaker than often assumed

Contextual binding theory of memory can account for data that are usually taken to support systems consolidation, as well as data that systems consolidation can’t explain

Memories formed by the hippocampus appear to stay in the hippocampus, & memories formed by the cortex (e.g., semantic memories) appear to stay in the cortex

Retrieval Long Term Memory

(Consciously) remembering information stored in long-term memory

Types:

• Recognition

• Recall

Recognition

Retrieval in the presence of the stimulus to be remembered

• directly have thing infront of you that youre try to remember

• No search; memory is supported by pattern separation & pattern completion processes

2 Processes:

• Familiarity: confidence-based sense of knowing (can be 100% confident)

• Recollection: threshold process w/contextual details

  • pulling actual details together

Recall

Retrieval in the absence of the stimulus to be remembered

• don’t have thing trying to remember infront of you

• Involves a search process for info, followed by pattern separation & pattern completion processes

  • pattern completion: think through what’s missing

Types

• Cued: Presence of a retrieval cue

  • “remember name of your first grade teacher”

  • give exact thing to pull from; looking for specific thing

• Free: Absence of a retrieval cue

  • “tell me about your first day of college”

  • generate a lot of info; bigger & broader

Retrieval Cue

Any stimuli that helps access info stored in long-term memory

• Aid in recall

• Most effective when created by the person who uses them

• Generate own info to remember things

Encoding Specificity Principle

We learn info together w/its context

“Diving experiment”

• Given list of words to remember; either learned while sitting in lab or while scuba diving

• Best recall occurred when encoding & retrieval occurred in the same location

“Studying experiment”

• Study in room thats very loud vs very quiet

• Best recall occurred when encoding & retrieval occurred under the same conditions

Memory performance seems to depend at least slightly on location

State-Dependent Learning

Learning is associated w/a particular internal state

• Happy or sad

• Better memory if person’s mood at encoding matches mood during retrieval

• Better memory for things learned while drunk if drunk!

Stress and Memory Retrieval

Stress impairs memory retrieval

• Made recall worse; harder to remember things when stressed out

• This effect is stronger for pos & neg info than neutral info

  • Suggests that memory retrieval of emotional info operates through at least partly different mechanisms from retrieval of neutral info!

  • Timing of stress really matters (make a diff in what find)