Cog Test 2

Umass Amherst, Psych 315 Cognitive Psyhology -- Test 2 on Acquisition of Memories, Retrieval, and Remembering Complex Events. Textbook chapters 6-8.

Marla is given the following list of words: "giraffe, bird, alligator,
lion, eagle, gorilla." She is likely to remember the word "giraffe"
because of…

The primacy effect

What causes the primacy effect?

Words that get more attention (through solo/small group rehearsal) are better encoded into long-term memory

The short-term storage of verbal and auditory materials in working memory is often supported by the….

Phonological Loop

The short-term storage of mental images is accomplished by the…

Visuospatial sketch pad

Why does elaborative encoding facilitate recall?

It provides many potential retrieval paths via previous knowledge

In which of the following situations are you most likely to decide a stimulus is familiar?

a. processing fluency is quite low

b. processing fluency is at the level you had expected

c. you can recall when and where you last saw the stimulus

d. processing fluency is high and you attribute this to the stimulus being very beautiful

C. You can recall when and where you last saw the stimulus

Schema do all of the following except…

a. help us understand a situation

b. help us fill in gaps in our recollection

c. encourage the formation of certain types of errors in our perception and memory

d. prevent us from confusing an event with other, similar events

D: Prevent us from confusing an event with other, similar events

In a basic-recall task, participants read a story about a character named Nancy and her behavior at a party. During recall, participants…..

A. made fewer intrusion errors if they received a prologue giving context to Nancy’s behavior

B. remembered more details and made inferences about the story if they received a prologue giving additional context

C. remembered extra events that did not make much sense in the context of the story

D. were susceptible to leading questions unless they received a prologue giving context

B: participants remembered more details and made inferences about the story if they received a prologue giving additional context

What is an intrusion error? How is it able to happen?

An error in which other knowledge intrudes into the remembered event.

There is no boundary differentiating between new knowledge and old memories, so if they are deemed similar enough they can blend with each other.

What is the DRM procedure?

Giving a list of related words and seeing if participants “remember” seeing a related word that is on theme, but was not actually on the list

In the DRM procedure, participants are asked to remember a list of words like “bed, snooze, awake, tired, dream, rest..”, all words concerning the topic of sleep. However, the word “sleep” is not on the list. After this procedure, participants…

A. are likely to recall the word “sleep” being on the list, unless they are explicitly warned to be careful

B. are likely to recall the word “sleep” being on the list, even if they were explicitly warned to be careful

C. are less confident in their recognition of “sleep” than in their recognition of words that were actually on the list

D. are likely to say “sleep” was on the list in a recognition test but not during a recall test

B - participants are likely to recall the word “sleep” being on the list, even if they were explicitly warned to not fall for this

What is the misinformation effect?

When misleading information changes a person’s memory of an event

According to interference theory, most forgetting is attributed to the fact that…

A. due to a change in perspective, you lose paths to the information.
B. emotion causes the disruption of memories acquired earlier.
C. memories and memory connections fade with time.
D. new learning disrupts or overwrites old learning.

D: new learning disrupts or overwrites old learning

Which of the following is false about autobiographical memories?

A. People will bias recollection of past events away from current
characteristics.
B. Recollection is better for memories that seem more directly
relevant to the self.
C. When an event is forgotten, reconstruction tends to favor seeing
the self in a positive light.
D. Reconstruction of past events will often be consistent with
current views of self.

A: people will bias recollection of past events away from current characteristics

What is the retention interval?

The amount of time that elapses between the initial learning and subsequent retrieval of information

Which of the following statements is the most accurate?…

A. There is little or no relation between memory confidence and memory accuracy

B. People who are more confident in their memories are likely to
be more accurate.
C. Although jurors tend to believe that memory confidence in
witnesses is a good sign of memory accuracy, judges do not.
D. Indicating that someone has remembered correctly has no effect
on memory confidence.

A. There is little or no relation between memory confidence and memory accuracy

Why does retrieval failure get worse over time?

When the situation/setting in a moment is similar to that in a memory, there are open retrieval paths. So as time goes on and your situation changes, these retrieval paths are less and less accessible, and it is harder to get that memory out of long-term storage

What is explicit memory

Any knowledge we have a conscious awareness of

• -It is revealed by direct memory testing

• -Memory for specific events, and general knowledge

What is implicit memory

Any knowledge that one is not consciously aware of knowing.

• -Only revealed by indirect memory tests

• -Procedural memory (knowing how to do something), priming, perceptual learning (learning to perceive differently in order to understand something), classical conditioning (inherent actions)

Explain the results of the “remembering the Nancy story” study

People given context remembered more of the story than those not given context. People given context also added more things to the story than people not given context.

→ When we better understand a situation/its context, we use our own schema and inferences to add in additional information

What is special about Clive Wearing?

He suffers from amnesia and is unable to create any new memories. Things mentioned seconds before can disappear from his memory

What is interference in working memory?

Working memory can only hold so many pieces of information — interference is when new information kicks old information out

Why does the primacy effect happen?

Items early on in a list had more attention and no interference yet, and so they were rehearsed enough to make it into LTM (before being kicked out by interference)

What is double dissociation, and how does it apply to WM and LTM

Double dissociation is when two processes work distinctly and singularly, no one thing affecting them both.

The primacy effect comes from LTM, and the recency effect comes from WM. A filled delay affects the recency effect and not the primacy effect, and slower presentation effects the primacy effect but not the recency effect. This is a double dissociation between the two effect that proves WM and LTM are two separate things.

What is storage/holding capacity? How do you test it?

Storage capacity is a static measure of how many things WM can hold.

Can test this with a digit span task. — How many digits can a person repeat back from memory?

What is chunking? How many chunks can we remember at once?

People may chunk certain pieces of information together to more easily remember them. A person can remember 7(± 2) chunks on average

What is operation capacity?

Operation capacity is a dynamic measure of how well working memory can juggle multiple tasks

What makes up Baddeley’s WM model?

The central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketch pad.

The phonological loop can be split up into two parts. What are they and what do they do?

Phonological store: stores a limited amount of verbal and auditory information. It uses subvocalization (silent speech) to store this information

Articulatory rehearsal: constant rehearsal to maintain the information held in the phonological store

Participants are asked to study a list of words. Half of the participants are presented with the words at a fast rate, half of them at a slow rate. How would the rate of presentations affect recall?

A slow presentation rate would improve memory for the words at the beginning of the list (slow presentation → more rehearsal → stronger primacy effect)

What does the central executive do?

• -Controls the flow of information between the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketch pad.

• -Decides which subsystem to focus attention on

• -Manages working memory

• -Retrieves information from LTM

Does the intent to learn matter in processing/memorizing information?

No. As long as you are working with the information complexly, you will encode it into memory. Regardless of it you were trying to memorize of just thinking deeply about it.

Which group would perferm best on a memory test?

A. Participants engaged in shallow processing without previous warning of a memory test

B. Participants engaged in deep processing without a previous warning of a memory test

C. Participants with a previous warning or a memory test and no further instruction on how to study

D. Participants described in b. and c. would perform the best. There would be no difference between these two conditions

D. Participants described in b. and c. would perform the best. There would be no difference between these two conditions

• Deep processing = trying to memorize. If you’re engaged in the correct deep way, its just as effective as having the intent to study

What is context reinstatement?

Re-creating the context (setting, thoughts, feelings, etc) in which you learned something, to help in retrieving the information/memory

What is the encoding specificity principle?

Our tendency to encode not only the new thing learned, but much of the context of that moment as well. Therefore, these things will only feel familiar the next time we encounter them if they are also in a similar context.

Why does activating multiple retrieval paths help to better retirive information?

The summation of many subthreshold activations. Even if no one singular associated idea is activated enough to fire the desired recall information, if multiple different associative link all provide subthreshold activation to the concept, this can build up and sum to a full activation.

What is semantic priming?

Activation of an idea in LTM causes spreading activation to other ideas relating in semantic meaning to the first.

• This means that the semantically related ideas will not take less effort to recall/recognize/access from LTM

True or False: recall requires source memory

True. You must be able to locate where the memory is in LTM to be able to pull it into working memory and recall it.

Recognition can be achieved using either _______ or _______.

Recognition can be achieved using either source memory or familiarity.

Source memory comes from the ____ in the brain, and familiarity comes from the _______

Source memory comes from the hippocampus in the brain, and familiarity comes from the perirhinal cortex

What is the illusion of truth? How does it happen?

When you assume that something is true just because it is familiar.

The explicit memory of hearing the idea the first time is long gone, but there is still an implicit familiarity (with no source memory). So the brain tries to make sense of this by assuming that the source of the memory is credible. “I think I’ve heard that before…it must be true”.

What is processing fluency?

The speed and ease with which a pathway will carry activation.

True or False: Familiarity is a conclusion you draw rather than a feeling triggered by a stimulus

True.

Stimulus → bc of prior “practice” with stimulus, there is higher processing fluency than normal → notice quicker processing → conclude must have seen this stimulus before → attribution of fluency to prior event

How does Korsakoff’s Syndrome present?

It is a type of anterograde amnesia caused by severe alcoholism. The patients remember most things before the syndrome but are unable to form any new memories (if asked who the president is, will say one from decades ago). They can carry out a single conversation (WM intact), but once new information is introduced, the original topic is gone from memory (can’t put anything new into LTM)

Patients with anterograde amnesia have trouble forming new _____ memories, but can make some new ______ memories

Patients with anterograde amnesia have trouble forming new explicit memories, but can make some new implicit memories

(won’t want to shake a person’s hand who has shocked them before, but won’t know why, will only know the hesitation/fear)

Damage to the _____ harms the ability of implicit memory, while damage to the _____ harms the ability of explicit memory

Damage to the amygdala harms the ability of implicit memory, while damage to the hippocampus harms the ability of explicit memory

Intrusion errors are NOT typically caused by…

A. words or ideas associated with the material being learned

B. background knowledge brought to a situation

C. maintenance rehearsal

D. thoughts about an event that takes place after that event has occurred

C. Intrusion errors are not typically caused by maintenance rehearsal.

Intrusion errors happen as a result of new information entering WM. Maintenance rehearsal is repeating information already in WM

What was Bartlett’s War of the Ghost Experiment?

It was a repeated reproduction study. British participants read a story about Native American culture, and were asked to repeat it multiple times at multiple intervals after the initial read. They continuously morphed the story to fit more into their own understandings and culture

What is the weapon focus effect?

When there is a weapon in the picture, our attention gets drawn to it and it’s difficult to pay attention to anything else

True or False: We aren’t as good at perceiving things we are less familiar with

True

The Ebbinghaus forgetting curve is a result of forgetting because of ______

An elapsed retention interval (time). As time goes on from the initial event, the more of the event we forget.

Does time passing or interference have a stronger role on forgetting?

Interference.

Is our ability to retain information a different strength for autobiographical memory as opposed to other memories?

No. We remember and forget all memories, including life events, at the same rate