PSYC 248 Exam 2

Learning and Memory section 2

Nonsense syllables

a syllable with no meaning used by Ebbinghaus to eliminate effects of prior familiarity ( ex - gux, vec)  

Total time hypothesis

The amount learned depends on the time spent learning (in other words, learning is linearly related to amount of study)

Deliberate practice

Training activities that have been specifically designed to improve some aspects of an individual's target performance, trying to improve on a specific task 

Distributed practice

studying repeatedly with time intervals between study sessions, good for long-term retention

Massed practice

studying repeatedly with little or no time passing between study sessions 

Metamemory

people’s awareness and understanding of their own learning and memory processes and ability to regulate own memory

Testing effect

psychological phenomenon whereby memory of information has a better chance of being consolidated and successfully recalled in the long term if some part of study was spent practicing retrieving the memory (ex. testing yourself)

Test-enhanced learning

tendency for memory to be enhanced by testing

Consolidation

over time memories become more stable / are strengthened through consolidation, memory trace is gradually woven into the fabric of memory and connected to other memory processes, TIME-DEPENDENT

Implicit memory test

Non declarative, testing procedural knowledge, little to no instructions, indirect tests of memory, measuring effect of past experiences on present

Two types discussed: stem completion (wa——), word fragment (w-f-l-)

Reduced processing hypothesis

reduced or deficient processing, learners pay less attention to items that are closer together in time

Encoding variability hypothesis

Encoding same item in more different environments is more successful

Even time distance allows for variability

Pros: mathematical model can make specific predictions

Cons: not strongly supported by empirical tests, conflicts with other memory findings (ex. context-dependent findings)

Reminding hypothesis

Actively retrieving items is beneficial for memory

Larger gap between items -> more effort at retrieval -> greater benefit (improving overall memory for those items)

Pros: mathematical models fit existing data

Cons: newer, more research needed

Johnson and Uhl (1976)

Premise: looked at reduced or deficient processing, words were either massed or spaced and measured response time to weak tone in left ear

Conclusion: learners pay less attention to repeated items when the repetitions occur close together in time, supports reduced processing hypothesis

Tulving, Schacter, and Stark (1982)

Premise: studying 96 words + testing 1 hour later on half words and then 1 week later on other half using opposite test

Conclusion: demonstrated dissociation between explicit and implicit (fragment remaining same but recognition decreased, variable affected explicit a lot but not implicit)

Roediger and Weldon (1987)

Premise: items as pictures or words and tested with free recall or word fragment, picture free recall better but worse for word fragment

Conclusion: example of double dissociation, findings reveal implicit and explicit memory involve different systems

Roediger and Karpicke (2006)

Premise: Participants studied material under different conditions (restudying only, restudying with one test, and studying with three tests), given recall test five minutes or one week later 

Findings: after 5 minutes both restudying and 1 test outperformed 3 tests, after a week 3 tests did best 1 test did second best and then all studying did the worst 

New information: participants were not good at metamemory

Pashler et al. (2007)

The optimum interval between learning episodes should be 10–20% of the test delay

 In general, longer inter-trial delays are preferable to shorter ones

 The optimal spacing also depends on the length of the delay between learning and testing (retention interval)

Underwood (1970)

Premise: repetition (nouns in word list occurred between one and four times), spacing (half of nouns were massed, half of nouns were distributed)

Conclusion: spacing is better than massed practice for all frequencies of words, size of spacing effect increases as repetitions increase

Latimier, Peyre, and Ramus (2021)

Premise: asking two questions (1) across multiple studies, do we find that spacing consistently benefits memory? (2) across multiple studies, do we find that expanding retrieval consistently benefits memory?

Findings: studies with four or fewer exposures to each item showed no benefit. studies with more than four exposure to each item showed an effect

Conclusion: YES to (1) and NO to (2), expanding retrieval practice does help but it helps more when the items are seen more frequently

Finley et al. (2011)

Premise: manipulated how many cues participants could use for retrieval, diminishing (cues to word retrieval were removed), accumulating (cues to word retrieval were added), restudy (same amount of cues always available)

Conclusions: specific manipulations of distributed practice can improve memory even more, expanding retrieval improves memory assuming that items are seen many times, some difficulty is desired when aiming to improve learning 

Dual-coding hypothesis

items that are easy to visualize are encoded as images and words, and are therefore easier to retrieve (Paivio, 1966), two codes because its visually and verbally

Depth of processing

if you think about information meaningfully (deep processing), much more likely to remember that info than if you think about it superficially (shallow processing), true regardless of whether you intend to learn the material or not

Thought about deeper —> better encoding

Transfer-appropriate processing

we remember things best when we study in the way we will be tested, attention is best when mode of retrieval and encoding is the same, context transfers to help retain the information

ex: if your final test will be a rhyme recognition test, then you should study using phonological encoding rather than the deeper semantic encoding

relevant study: Godden and Baddeley

Incidental learning

a task which is usually followed by a surprise memory test

Intentional learning

please learn these words

Rote / maintenance rehearsal

repeatedly rehearsing an item on the same level

ex: repeating a phone number to yourself before you write it down

Elaborative rehearsal

adding info to items as you rehearse them, more complex than rote rehearsal, processed more deeply

ex: making up a story about the words you see in a list

Encoding

info moved from STM into LTM

Spatio-temporal context

consideration of the context in which learning occurs that reflects both the place (space) and the time sequence (temporal aspect) of the learning environment, TIME AND PLACE

Mere exposure effect

the second time we experience a stimulus, it is processed more easily than novel stimuli 

Phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking them 

Merely being exposed to some multiple times - may be more or less likely - tends to be better liking for it though

Schema

 long-term structured knowledge used to make sense of new material and subsequently store and recall it

mental framework that helps people encode and make sense of the world 

Eagle and Leiter (1964)

Premise: compared an intentional learning group (remember the words) with an incidental learning group (identify part of speech)

Findings: intentional was better at recall while incidental was better at recognition

Conclusion: benefit for recall likely the result of deliberate encoding strategies by a subset of participants, overall recognition better than recall, right orienting task may benefit learning for everyone in some situations

Nickerson and Adams (1979)

Premise: penny study, identifying which one from options is correct

Findings: only 42% chose the correct one, asked people to draw and 90% forgot liberty, 50% wrote lincoln the wrong way

Conclusion: simple repetition is not enough for learning

Sulin and Dooling (1974)

Premise: presented people with the same story about a dictator, whose name was either: Gerald Martin (an unknown) or Adolf Hitler (someone with semantic baggage), asked people whether they remembered reading a statement that the dictator “hated Jews,” which did not appear in the story at two delays (5 min vs. 1 week later)

Conclusion: schema-driven errors are more likely at long delays because schematic information is more durable than rote recall (prior knowledge interfering with current information)

Craik and Tulving (1975)

wtf is depth?

Craik and Lockhart (1972)

Info can be processed on a variety of levels from the most basic (visual) to sounds to deepest which is semantic 

Levels of processing:

Input - structural processing - acoustic processing - semantic processing 

Structural - is it uppercase

Acoustic - does it rhyme w sock 

Semantic - can you use in a sentence

Hyde and Jenkins (1973)

Premise: different orienting tasks, letter checking (contain e or g), pleasantness (how pleasant is the word)

Findings: differences by task type but not learning condition

Conclusion: rating pleasantness (deeper task) had better learning due to deeper processing of info, how material is processed determines the amount of material learned

Morris, Bransford, and Franks (1977)

Premise: encoding, semantic task (the — had a silver engine) vs rhyme task (— rhymes with brain), test was either standard recognition or rhyme based

Conclusion: memory was best when encoding type matched with how participants were asked to retrieve info, deeper processing results in better encoding, depending on task depth of processing may not provide greatest advantage

Other:

Depth involves connecting items to other pieces of meaningful info

Organization improves encoding by introducing additional  structure 

Can occur at multiple levels including 

• How stimuli is presented 

• How learning encourages strategy 

• From the expertise of the learner 

Broadbent, Cooper, and Broadbent (1978)

Premise: presented words either with or without visual organization

Finding: performance was significantly better with organization

Conclusion: visual organization is better than none for words

Tulving and Pearlstome (1966)

Presented lists that varied in number of related words per category (1, 2, 4) 

● Example: 2-related list: cow, rat, bomb, cannon, treason, theft, radio, music, cinnamon, pepper, engineer, lawyer 

● Results: more words per category improved uncued recall, words were recalled in related chunks 

Results 

● See that as semantically related words per category goes up, recall goes up 

● As word lists get longer, more was recalled 

● Even if only 1 or 2 or 4 semantically related words were included, the number of recall got better with longer list length 

● Suggests that people do notice these semantic relations as the items are encoded, and likely keeping that strategy in mind as the lists get longer 

● So this is a good strategy, having items be semantically related to each other 

● Authors noticed that people would recall these items in chunks, in terms of how semantically related they were to each other

Chase and Ericsson (1981)

Trained a student to increase digit span by presenting sequences of numbers 

4 - 3 - 8 

Student used extensive knowledge of running times to create chunks 

Result - could recall sequences of up to 80 digits in exact order of presentation

May, Hasher, and Stolzfus (1993)

Premise: younger adults preferred evening, older adults preferred morning, crossed time of day with preference

Findings: older people do better in morning, younger people in evening

Conclusion: people perform better at their preferred time of day, time of day is an important factor for encoding

Glenberg, Smith, and Green (1977)

Having nine times as many repetitions for a word only increased the recall by 1.5% and 9% for recognition.

Suggests that simple maintenance rehearsal doesn't help LT recall much.

The words were already known and thus the test relied on meaningful links between the already known words, which depend on deeper semantic features.

Retrieval

process of getting info back out of LTM

Cues

pieces of info that are associated with a memory

Target memory

the thing that you actually want to get back

Association

memories are linked to each other through associations

could be meaning-based —> Ex. cat-dog, cat-mouse

Could link to memories in other ways —> Ex. What did you see yesterday? When is the last time you saw a dog?

Spreading activation

given multiple retrieval cues, activation will spread

• Go from retrieving one cue to the next to the next, in order to retrieve a complete memory

• There could be other things in the spreading activation network when searching for a target memory based on cues

Pattern completion

retrieving features that were not cues, subset of features

Anything else that comes to mind when given cue that completes the entire memory information

• Within a memory, we'll have different cues as we search for target memory

• Could retrieve a lot of things if you were saw a squirrel or if you saw an animal recently, lots of things come to mind, other pieces of information are activated that exist in the semantic network, that gives a complete memory

• You're searching through memory to find the target memory and this will activate other features (not cues) and that is pattern completion

Encoding specificity

the more similar the cues are available at retrieval to conditions at encoding, the more effective the cues will be

Context cues

stimuli in the environment that can affect behavior and memory (visual, auditory, olfactory, or emotional / physiological state)

Direct / explicit memory tests

probably self explanatory by now lol

Source monitoring - error

when we do not correctly remember the source of a memory

Cryptomnesia

when we believe that we generated something that is actually a memory with a forgotten source

Context-dependent memory

info better recalled in same context as encoded

could involve space, time, mood, physiological state

State-dependent memory

involving physiological processes as context

may be influenced by a drug (alcohol, caffeine) or exercise (elevated heart rate)

Mood-dependent memory

a form of context-dependent memory where what is learned in a given mood (positive, negative or neutral) is best recalled in that mood

Recall and recognition memory

recall: actually drawing items out of memory and reporting them

recognition: saying whether you have seen an item before

Signal detection theory

Some items in memory are more active than others

Active memories will seem more familiar, but different

people have different thresholds at which they say an item was seen before

How do we account for this? Signal detection!

False alarm

identifying a new item as old

Hit

correctly identifying item as new / old

Miss

identifying an old item as new

Tip of the tongue state

occurs when we know info but cannot successfully retrieve it

Della Sala et al (1993)

Premise: tested memory for famous faces in people with prefrontal cortex damage, faces came from a variety of decades (some before brain damage and some after)

Findings: overall impairment for retrieving memories, regardless of when they were encoded

Conclusion: evidence for the importance of the frontal cortex for retrieval processes

Loftus and Palmer (1973)

 Watched the same video of a traffic accident

“How fast were the cars going when they ________ each other?”

contacted, hit, bumped, collided, smashed

“Was there broken glass at the scene?” 

People perceive the car collision differently 

Faster = worse they described the crash 

Brewer and Treyens (1981)

Subjects waited in this office, then asked about what was in the office

Falsely remembered objects you would expect in an office, but that weren’t actually there

Due to reconstruction based on a schema of what is typically in an office

Fernandes and Moscovitch (2000, 2003)

Main task: recall lists of words that they had heard previously (auditorily)

Secondary task: make judgments about unrelated items on a screen 

Any secondary task made retrieval more difficult

Full attention did best 

Anderson and Pichert (1978)

Read a story about two boys skipping school and hiding at one of their houses

Instructed to adapt either the perspective of a burglar or a home buyer during reading

More burglar info remembered from burglar perspective and vice versa for homebuyer perspective

Godden and Baddeley (1975)

encoding / retrieval in same vs different environment, underwater vs being on land, found that retrieval was better when in the same environment as encoding, example of context-dependent memory

Miles and Hardman (1998)

encoding / retrieval of words with normal or elevated heart rate, found that recall was better with the same state (resting for both or exercise for both), example of state-dependent memory

Eich, Macaulay, and Ryan (1994)

participants encoded and retrieved words with either pleasant or unpleasant mood

• Found retrieval was better when encoding and retrieval moods matched

• Another example for where match between encoding and retrieval helps memory

Incidental forgetting

not on purpose

Motivated forgetting

forgetting on purpose, occurs when people purposefully engage in processes/behaviors that intentionally diminish a memory’s accessibility

Forgetting curve / retention function

plotted forgetting curve, a rapid rate of forgetting initially, less additional forgetting at longer delays

Accessibility

whether the memory can be retrieved, given that it is stored

Availability

whether or not an item is in the memory store

Interference theory

Competition Assumption

 Any negative effect on memory arising from having competitors

 Increases with the number of competitors a target has

Trace decay

The gradual weakening of memories resulting from the mere passage of time 

Trace decay is difficult to prove behaviorally because it is typically impossible to show whether the memories are unavailable or just inaccessible 

Retroactive interference

the tendency for newer memories to interfere with the retrieval of older memories

Proactive interference

the tendency for older memories to interfere with the retrieval of newer memories

Retrieval-induced forgetting

Selective retrieval can harm recall of other memories related to the retrieved item

 Also compared to baseline items, for which no related items had been retrieved

 Suggests forgetting is adaptive to what is important based on retrieval practice!

Inhibition

it becomes more difficult, but not impossible, to retrieve items from the “Forget” list

retrieval can impair memory for competing information

Jost’s Law (1897)

memories become more stable overtime, forgetting becomes less overtime because of consolidation 

Ribot’s Law (1881)

Newly formed memories are more vulnerable to forgetting processes than older memories

This is thought to be caused by an insufficient time for the memories to consolidate

Carpenter,  Pashler,  Wixted, and Vul (2008)

testing decreases the rate of forgetting

Tulving, Schacter, and Stark (1982)

tests of implicit memory reveal slower forgetting

Jenkins and Dallenbach (1924)

sleep influences forgetting, speaks against the idea that memories just ‘decay’

Keppel and Underwood (1962)

examined Brown-Peterson's original results on the first trial (with trigrams of three letters), found no difference in retention at 3 seconds and 18 seconds

• Shows evidence to support an interference account rather than a memory decay account

Intentional / motivated forgetting

occurs when people purposefully engage in processes / behaviors that intentionally diminish a memory’s accessibility

Directed forgetting

TODO

Item-method directed forgetting

Given a series of items, for each item you're told either remember or forget, at the end of the list: you are asked to recall all items, including the ones you were told to forget

Impact quality of encoding for remember vs. forget items (remember items have deeper forms of encoding and rehearsal stops for forget items)

• Think this is likely the result of better rehearsal for the "remember" items and suppressed encoding for "forget" item

The item-method works on multiple stimulus types 

List-method directed forgetting

Not instructed to forget until some point during or after List 1, forget condition: halfway through or after List 1 participants are instructed to forget List 1, then instructed to remember List 2, remember condition: halfway through List 1 participants told please continue to remember subsequent items, at the end of List 2 (in both conditions) participants are asked to recall both lists

List-method directed forgetting asks participants to forget an entire set of items

Works for recall but not for recognition tests

This may be the result of retrieval suppression, context shift, or some combination of the two (see below)

Selective rehearsal

items that receive a ‘remember’ instruction are encoded more deeply

Encoding suppression

encoding is stopped for items that receive a "forget" instruction

• Suppression involves the intentional act of aiming to exclude items from memory awareness

• Specifically saying that encoding is being stopped for items with forgetting instruction

Retrieval inhibition hypothesis

proposed mechanism underlying list-method directed forgetting, suggests that the first list items are temporarily inhibited in response to being told to forget

• These items can be reactivated by subsequent presentation of to-be-forgotten items but thought to be initially inhibited upon being told to forget…

Context shift hypothesis

 the mind shifts into a different mental context when it begins to encode the "remember" list, separating these items from the "forget" list

Cognitive control

the ability to activate wanted thoughts and prevent unwanted thoughts from distracting us

• Cognitive control contributes to planning motor actions (e.g., hitting a button or not)

Think/no think paradigm

procedure designed to study our ability to suppress retrieval of a memory when confronted with reminders

• Essentially, adapted procedure to see whether people engage in inhibitory control to stop their retrieval

• Mimics times in life when we experience a reminder that we would prefer not to think about, when we're motivated or have a desire to put unwelcome memory out of our mind

Direct suppression

the no think conditions work by us directly preventing the unwanted thought from being retrieved