COG PSYCH 7

What is Korsakkof’s Syndrome? Are there any similarities to Korsakoff’s Syndrome and Henry Molaison?

Korsakkof’s Syndrome is severe memory loss and being unable to create new memories.

• H.M. and Korsakoff’s patients have ‘unconscious’ memories that can be tested indirectly

  • EX) If asked about a certain president, they weren’t able to recall past presidents BUT if they heard about a certain president somewhere else, they will recall them better.

  • What does this mean? There is probably another level of encoding and information that we don’t really consider when using our memory everyday.

    • Cannot be directly tested, but have ‘stitched’ enough of the results to have a good degree of understanding.

What are the different ways to retrieve information from memory?

• Recall or recognition

• How information was learned interacts with how it is retrieved later.

What are Retrieval Paths? How are they important?

Retrieval Paths are the connections or neural routes in the brain that link stored memories to conscious awareness

• Learning connects new material with existing memory

  • These connections serve as ‘retrieval paths’

• Retrieval paths are useful only if you are able to access them

  • Learning can be an excellent preparation for one sort of retrieval but useless for other types.

What is Context-Dependent Learning? Context Reinstatement?

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It is dependent on the state the learner is in during acquisition.

• Smith et al. (1978)

  • Participants studied in Room A and were tested in Room B.

  • Performance was not affected by the room change if participants thought about Room A before taking the test.

• Context Reinstatement:

  • Recreating the context (i.e. thoughts, feelings) of the learning episode

What is Encoding Specificity?

• Refers to remembering both the materials to be learned and the context of those materials

  • Materials are better recognized as familiar later if they appear in, or cued by, a similar context.

  • EX) “The man lifted the piano” vs. “The man tuned the piano”

    • Lifted = participants received more ‘benefit’ since it was more familiar to them, easier time ‘detecting’ piano as a heavy object. But did not recall that the piano had a beautiful sound.

    • Tuned = participants were having a difficult time determining that the piano was a heavy object. They were able to recall that the piano makes a beautiful sound.

What do we mean by the ‘Memory Network’?

• Memory can be thought of as a vast network of ideas.

  • Ideas represented as nodes connected to each other via associations or associative links

What is ‘Spreading Activation’? What is Summation?

• Def’n: Activation travels within a network from node to node via associative links

  • A node’s activation level increases with increasing input from neighboring nodes

  • The node fires if the response threshold is reached

    • Activates neighboring nodes

    • Draws attention to firing node

  • Summation - Subtreshold activation can accumulate

• Similar to neurons and action potentials

What are Retrieval Cues?

Networks that suggest an explanation for why hints help us remember.

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What is Semantic Priming?

• Def’n: Activation of an idea in memory causes activation to spread to other ideas related to the first in meaning

  • Demonstrated using lexical-decision tasks

• EX) Recognizing the word nurse much faster when it is preceded by the related word doctor rather than an unrelated word like bread

What is Recall? Recognition?

• Recall:

  • Individual generates the memory after being given a broad cue identifying the information sought

    • EX) “What was the name of the restaurant that we went to?”

  • Requires memory search

  • Depends heavily on memory connections

• Recognition

  • Information is presented, and the individual must decide if it is the sought-after information information

    • EX) “Is this the name of the restaurant?”

  • In the absence of source memory, recognition often depends on the feelings of familiarity

    • EX) If I had a certain sauce at a party and remembering the packaging, I would go to the store and find the packaging despite not knowing the name, and choose which one looks the most familiar.

How does Familiarity and Source Memory work together?

• “Where do I know this person from?”

  • You detect that this person is different, they have been encoded before, however you cannot find the source memory.

What is Implicit Memory? What are the types of Implicit Memory?

• Revealed by indirect memory testing, such as a lexical-decision or word-completion task

• Unconscious awareness of the memory

The Types:

• Procedural Memory

  • Knowing how to do something (i.e. how to play an instrument)

• Priming

  • Changes in perception and belief caused by previous experiences

• Perceptual Learning

  • Recalibrating perceptual systems caused by previous experiences

• Classical Conditioning

  • Learning about associations among stimuli

What is Explicit Memory? What are the types of it?

• Revealed by direct memory testing, such as a recall test or a standard recognition test

• Tests conscious awareness of the memory

Types:

• Episodic Memory

  • Memory for specific events

• Semantic Memory

  • General knowledge, not tied to any time or place (knowing general facts)

What is the ‘False Fame’ experiment done by Jacoby et al. in 1989?

A multi-phase test where participants read a list of non-famous names, experience a time delay or attention distraction, and then rate a new list of names for fame. They found out that people mistake the vague feeling of familiarity for fame. They used their sense of familiarity to determine if non-famous names to be famous.

What is the Illusion of Truth?

• Illusion of Truth Def’n: effect of implicit memory in which claims that are familiar (i.e. from being heard before) end up seeming more plausible

  • Occurs despite warnings in advance

  • Consequences of political headlines, social media

  • Feedback cycle

What is Source Confusion?

• Source Confusion – witnesses can suffer a failure of memory regarding context or circumstances:

  • Brown et al. (1977):

    • 29% of participants falsely believed that they saw a person commit a crime

    • In actuality, they had actually only seen that person in a previous photograph

What does it mean by ‘memory without awareness’?

• People are often better at remembering that something is familiar rather than remembering why it is familiar

  • Familiarity without episodic memory*

    • * ‘Personal autobiography’ and storing specific, life events tied to a time and place.

• People can also be influenced by previous encounters without a sense of familiarity

What is the Processing Pathway?

• Def’n: the sequence of detectors and connections between them that leads to recognizing or remembering a stimulus/idea

  • Repeated use of this pathway strengthens it

• Use of a pathway increases its processing fluency

  • People are sensitive to the degree of processing fluency

What do attributions to fluency tell us?

• Changes in fluency or discrepancies between expected and experienced fluency can trigger attribution processes

  • “Why did that stimulus stand out?”

  • Often accurately interpreted as familiarity

What is the Nature of Familiarity?

The steps leading to a judgement of familiarity:

• Exposure to a Stimulus —> Practice in Perceiving —> Fluency —> Stimulus registered as “special” —> attribution of fluency to a specific prior event —> Familiarity

The Creation of an Illusion of Familiarity:

• Manipulation of a stimulus presentation designed to make perceiving easier —> Fluency —> Stimulus registered as “special” —> attribution of fluency to a specific prior event —> Familiarity

What are the two different types of amnesia?

• Anterograde Amnesia

  • Cannot remember anything after a certain incident.

  • Cases of this amnesia provide evidence of an impaired episodic memory but an intact implicit memory

  • Similar to Korsakoff’s Syndrome:

    • Unable to recall explicit memories

    • Intact implicit memories

      • EX) Answer repeated trivia questions correctly, confabulate the source

• Retrograde Amnesia

  • Cannot remember anything before a certain incident

What does it mean by ‘Disrupted Episodic Memory, Spared Semantic Memory’?

• Double dissociation between episodic and semantic memory*

  • EX) Clive Wearing and Patient K.C. both had intact semantic memory, but impaired episodic memory

  • * ‘Mental encyclopedia’, storing universal facts, concepts, and rules

• Being unable to remember personal life events, but still knowing general facts and word meanings.

What Kind of Memory is Disrupted in Amnesia?

• Edouard Claparede performed an informal experiment with a woman with Korsakoff’s amnesia

• When introducing himself to the woman, he hid a pin in his hand, which pricked her when they shook hands.

• Later the woman could not explicitly remember Claparede but refused to shake his hand, saying that “Sometimes pins are hidden in people’s hands”

Can there be Explicit Memory Without Implicit Memory?

• Hippocampal Damage

  • Fears with no explicit memory

  • Normal on indirect memory tests, impaired on direct tests

• Amygala Damage

  • Memory with no fear

  • Normal on direct memory tests, impaired on indirect tests

What is the optimal learning strategy?

• The ideal form of learning depends on how the memories will later be used or retrieved

• We often do not know how we will need the information later, though

• The optimal learning strategy is to use multiple perspectives