Memory Exam 2

encoding specificity

retrieval of info from memory will be maximized when the conditions at retrieval match the conditions at encoding

state-dependent memory

encoding specificity is applied to internal human states, such as drug states or mood states

part-set cueing

cueing part of a list of items interferes with retrieving the rest of the list items

part-list cueing

relies on the recall of well-learned lists; names of U.S. states

multiple trace theory

the hippocampus does not store memories, but connects parts of memories and is essential in both encoding and retrieval, for new and old memories

general systems consolidation theory

over time, replayed memory becomes independent of hippocampus, dependent only on cortical connections

Ribot's Law

newer memories will be more affected by retrograde amnesia than older memories

Remember/ Know Judgements

remembering includes episodic memory, recall of the context of learning, "know" is context free.

- remember = recollection; know = familiar

levels of processing

encoding into long-term memory is enhanced by processing for meaning; the more we focus on meaning, the more likely we are to retain the information

- applies to episodic and semantic memory

Craik and Lockhart's level of processing

- contends that most natural learning is incidental rather than intentional

- "deeper levels of processing" applies meaning to process information

- "shallow processing" comes from maintenance rehearsal or processing for sensory characteristics

Incidental learning (Craik and Lockhart)

people encode information not by actively trying to remember but rather as a by-product of perceiving and understanding the world

Intentional learning (Craik and Lockhart)

people actively engage in learning information because they know that their memories may be tested

maintenance rehearsal/ rote rehearsal

saying, or thinking, or writing something over and over; better than no rehearsal but not as effective as elaborative rehearsal, deep processing

encoding strategies

Personal relevance, relating to existing

knowledge, survival processing,

generation effect, organization

generation effect

memory is better when we generate associations ourselves than when we simply read or see them

organization (encoding strategy)

you can use both standard and subjective strategies to organize information, leads to deeper processing and strong encoding

survival processing (encoding strategy)

applying information to a survival scenario, how could you use this in the desert

brain involvement in episodic memory

right pre-frontal cortex involved in retrieval; left pre-frontal lobe is more involved in encoding (at least for verbal material)

neuropsychological evidence- episodic/ semantic distinction

amnesia usually affects only episodic memory and not semantic memory; rarely, is only semantic memory affected

Craik and Tulving experiment (levels of processing)

- performed ten experiments

- asked participants to attend to shallow aspects of stimuli and others deeper aspects of stimuli

- incidental learning tasks

- reaction time measured during encoding (time to say yes or no)

- reaction time was slower for deeper levels of processing

- items which the answer was "yes" were more likely recognized

Casey movie viewing study (2016)

1. group saw whole episode of Twilight Hour ; recent memory (RM) condition

2. saw first 15 minutes of episode one day, the last ten minutes the next day; distant memory (DM) group

3. saw only the last ten minutes; no memory condition (NM)

results: asked questions about the movie, no difference between RM and DM but both higher than NM group

elaborative processing

thinking about new information and relating it to something you know, making connections

episodic memory

- personally experienced events

- events or episodes

- "mental time travel"/ remembering

procedural/ implicit memory (included)

includes habits, grammar; sequential pattern learning, perceptual motor skills, cognitive skills, expertise, probabilistic category learning, organizational routines (EMTs, ER trauma teams), classical conditioning, repetition priming

procedural/ implicit memory (definition)

memory for how things are done that is relatively automatic and inarticulate; not taught by describing but demonstrating

Habits (procedural memory)

overlearned behavior patterns, activated by specific contexts; enacted ballistically without executive control; often not consciously guided, requiring minimal attention, allowing another task/activity to be done at the same time

Motor skills (procedural memory)

reaching, manipulating tools, walking; may require minimal attention, allowing for another activity to be done at the same time

perceptual motor skills (procedural memory)

driving, riding a bike, skate boarding, surfing, skiing

cognitive skills (procedural memory)

expertise: speaking in sentences, reading, writing, radiological diagnosis, mental math (for some people)

what does it mean for a behavior to be automatic? (procedural memory)

if the sensory stimuli associated with the task almost always elicit the behavior; AND the person can execute the behavior while engaging in a secondary task (learned /

practiced past the point of asymptotic performance)

Wood and Runger (2016 AnnRev Psych) on Habits

- activated in memory in specific recurring contexts without executive control

- insensitive to short-term changes in goals, to value of response outcomes, and to changes in the response-outcome contingencies

- executed with limited thought, behaviors are executed as a unit

perceptual motor skills: open skills/open loop skills

people respond based on changing demands of the environment: tennis, team sports

perceptual motor skills: closed skills/ closed loop skills

predefined sequence of movements: running, knitting, knot tying

determining level of expertise (procedural memory)

talent, practice with feedback, experience with multidisciplinary practice

- researchers disagree strongly on determining

- Ericsson argued for 10,000 hours of practice

- Howard (2009) argued early talent determines who puts in 10,000 hours

- Göllich (2025) argued patterns differ for high early performance and world-class adult performance

role of practice and talent

as practice increases, performance is more due to talent

Fitt's three-stage model of skill learning: stages

cognitive stage, associative stage, autonomous stage

Fitt's three-stage model of skill learning: Cognitive stage

performance is based on rules that can be stated; using written instructions for look-ups in Excel; starting a car with manual transmission by reciting the steps

Fitt's three-stage model of skill learning: Associative stage

actions become stereotyped; typing the formula in the top of a column, without instructions, dragging it down the column; starting a car with manual transmission without thinking about the steps

Fitt's three-stage model of skill learning: Autonomous stage

actions seem automatic; setting up the spreadsheet functions while carrying on a discussion; starting a car with manual transmission while conversing

power law of practice

early gains in speed and accuracy are greatest, additional practice/ training leads to smaller and smaller gains, but gains continue

distributed practice (procedural memory)

Baddeley studied massed versus distributed practice; he found longer retention of skill with distributed practice, it also produces better performance on delayed tests

brain changes with learning (procedural memory)

-Motor skill learning and practice promote increased myelination

- Depends on the ability of the brain to generate new oligodendrocytes

- Motor cortex, somatosensory cortex, visual cortex, cerebellum reorganize to support skill

Basal ganglia: importance in procedural memory

critical for learning to generate motor responses/cognitive responses to environmental cues, including category learning

Regions of somatosensory and motor cortex: importance in procedural memory

needed for skill expansion with practice

Cerebellum: importance in procedural memory

particularly important for learning and performing sequences that require precise timing and for execution of skills to become automatic

semantic memory

type of long term explicit memory; info learned over time, general knowledge about the world, past early childhood, associated with language; no context associated with the contents of the memory; more rapid retrieval than episodic memory

semantic memory (stores knowledge)

concepts and categories, basic concepts- frequently occurring, similarly shaped, similar function, short words

- allows for generalizations across instances of similar things/events; faster action, decision making

differences between semantic and episodic memory

episodic: organized by temporal, spatial and social context; retrieving involves conscious understanding of recalling the past

semantic: organization is assumed to be context free; multiple associations

semantic and episodic interactions and same neural networks

- much of the content of semantic memory relates to action and perception and overlaps with the brain areas responsible for perceiving and acting

- representations of perceiving and acting are also part of recent episodic memories

How is semantic memory and lexical memory studied?

most common: sentence verification, word verification, fMRI studies

sentence verification task

Collins and Quillian (1969) (testing their semantic network or semantic hierarchy model) - a series of sentences, true and false, presented one at a time, and reaction times recorded

example: A canary can fly; a canary is yellow; a canary has skin

word verification task

a series of words and non-words are presented one at a time and reaction times recorded for each

example: participants respond to whether a letter string is a word or not: Doctor, Nurse, Bread, Pencil, Thermos, Freld

Quillian's semantic network

every word has stored with it pointers to other words in memory; the configuration of pointers is the word's meaning

Collins and Loftus on semantic memory

organized according to semantic relatedness or distance, and acquired in experience

semantic priming

the effect of one word or idea on the processing of a related word or idea; improves performance for related words in lexical decision tasks even across languages, for bilinguals

category

mental representation of a group of associated or similar ideas

prototype theory

we construct an average of the examples (that we know of) and compare new objects to that prototype to determine if it fits the category

feature comparison theory

we compute a list of features that define a category; new objects are compared to the feature list; characteristic features are typical; defining features are required

lexical memory

our mental dictionary, a representational system for the words of our language

priming word completion

study some words, given word frames to complete for studied and non-studied words

memory for faces (semantic memory)

may be purely semantic (celebrities), may be associated with episodic information (friends and family)

spreading activation (semantic memory)

refers to the transfer of activation from one node to an associated node, each node is a unit of memory

scripts (semantic memory)

relate to sequences of events in commonly occurring situations (taking an exam, going out to dinner); knowledge of scripts includes typical goals and allows us to form reasonable expectations

Frames (semantic memory)

concepts in which knowledge of objects and their parts and properties are stored

schemas (semantic memory)

exert a top-down influence on memory and perception (Bartlett, Piaget); stereotypes are social schemas

Lexicon

internal representation of words; different things stored about each word in our lexicon: Meaning, Linguistic information: singular noun (lemma-level), Phonological information that guides articulation, Orthographic information for reading

two views of lexical memory and (fluent) multilingualism

1. Single-store 2. Dual-Store

Single-store (two views of lexical memory)

common semantic level of representation; meanings are shared. shared semantic representational system connects to lemma- level of each language; each connects to the phonology of the word

Dual-store (two views of lexical memory)

meaning is represented separately for each language in lexical memory

cross-language semantic priming

- supports single-store view

-task is to determine if a string of letters is a word; categorically related words should prime each other, making recognition faster

visual agnosia

can't recognize specific things, can take many forms; may be specific to artifacts, or man-made objects; may be specific to natural forms, plants and animals; may be generalized

prosopagnosia

inability to recognize faces

aphasia

intact access to verbal descriptions of inanimate objects, but not of living things

semantic memory: brain involvement

anterior frontal and anterior temporal areas are more involved than medial temporal and posterior sensory areas

Conway's theory of representation in autobiographical memory

levels create an interacting but hierarchical representation structure in our memory system: 1. Episodes or specific events 2. General events 3. Life-time periods AND the working self- a monitoring system

event-specific memories

the episodic memories that we accumulate over our lifetimes. events are the fundamental units of conscious AM. may be for an instant or minutes

extended events

particular unique events, that differ in how long they last (Example: 15 months of online school; a unique vacation)

general events

include combined, averaged, and cumulative memories of highly-similar events (Example: attending elementary school, high school, riding campus bus)

lifetime periods

ways we organize our autobiographical memories (both event-specific and general events); the idiosyncratic, personal ways in which we organize our autobiographical past (example: "before i came to college..." "before covid..."

working self concept

includes the goals and self-images that make up our view of ourselves; a collection of autobiographical knowledge, goals, and self-monitoring processes

coherence

the processes that yield autobiographical memories that are consistent with the working self

confabulation

a memory error that is the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive

childhood (infantile) amnesia

refers to the observation that adults have almost no episodic memories from the first three to five years of their life

explanations for infantile amnesia

psychodynamic (no support); age-related changes in self-concept; neurological transitions in memory systems; the influence of language on memory development (strongest support)

influence of language on memory development

the growth of language ability in the young child provides the structure and narrative schemas necessary to support episodic memories; (vocabulary to name objects, events; ability to structure a story)

Simcock and Hayne (2002)

presented two, three, and four year old children with a demonstration of their incredible shrinking machine. toys are placed at the top of the machine and a shrunken object comes out the bottom

- a year later, the researchers return and children are asked to recall what was shrunken

- children only remembered those objects for which they possessed the vocabulary for when they witnessed the event

flashbulb memories

highly confident personal memories of surprising events, not necessarily more accurate

ordinary mechanism approach (flashbulb memories)

flashbulb memories are simply normal memories but are of emotionally charged and socially significant events

Diary studies (autobiographical memory)

provide a written record by which memories can be compared; so they are extremely useful tools in study of autobiographical memory

cue-word techniques (autobiographical memories)

an ordinary word is provided to participants and they are asked to provide the first memory-from any point in their life- which the word elicits; sometime the last or most recent memory related to a cue-word

Highly superior autobiographical memory

- rare ability to recall events accurately, by date

- typically starts at a date in late childhood or early adolescence (10.5)

- prone to same mistakes in memory as the rest of use

- some brain differences

- maybe related to OCD, in some individuals

reminiscence bump

refers to a spike in recalled memories corresponding to late adolescence to early adulthood, or roughly between ages of 16 and 25; the cue word technique produces higher peak frequency

observer memories

memories in which we take the vantage point of an outside observer and see ourselves as actors in our visual memory

field memories

autobiographical and visual memories in which we see the memory as if we were looking at the event through our own eyes; more associated with emotion

PTSD

intrusive memories are typically field memories- switching to an observer view may lower emotional activation- UNWANTED

involuntary memories

unbidden memories that seemingly come spontaneously; may be pleasant, unpleasant, neutral

disputed memories

falsely remembering someone else's memory as one's own; only 8% of siblings have disputed memories but percent rises about 70% among twins

autobiographical memory brain regions

memories given high judgements of emotionality were correlated with greater activity in the hippocampus and the amygdala and frontopolar areas in frontal lobe

false memories

common; may be of no consequence or very serious consequence; falsity may be omission of part of an event, inclusion of false parts of events, reversals of actors in events, remembering an event that never occurred

Clancy on false memory

studied memory errors in people who claimed recovery of memory of CSA; alien abduction memories; most suffered from sleep paralysis were prone to errors in DRM paradigm; memories were confusion of dream imagery with real events