Memory and Brain Processes: Autobiographical, Semantic, and Procedural Memory

Brain processes

Brain regions (hippocampus, cortex) involved in encoding, storing, and retrieving memories.

Conway's hierarchical organization

Autobiographical memory is organized into life periods, general events, and specific events.

Events

Specific experiences that occur at a particular time and place.

Life periods, themes

Broad phases of life (e.g., college years) organizing memory.

Extended events

Long or repeated experiences within a life period.

Infantile amnesia

Inability to remember events from early childhood.

retrieval cues

Stimuli that help trigger memory retrieval.

Self memory system; working self

The self organizes memory; the working self reflects current goals shaping recall.

Correspondence and coherence

Accuracy vs consistency with beliefs in autobiographical memory.

confabulation

False memories created without intent to deceive.

disputed memories

Memories that are contested or not agreed upon.

Flash bulb memory

Vivid memory of emotional events.

Reminiscence bump

Better recall for events from adolescence/early adulthood.

Simcock & Hayne studies (magic box)

Study showing children remember events but forget language tied to them.

Positivity bias

Tendency to remember positive events more than negative ones.

Contrasts with declarative, explicit memory

Procedural memory is implicit, unlike conscious declarative memory.

Habits, characteristics, how acquired

Procedural memory develops slowly through repetition and practice.

Cognitive skills, expertise

Mental skills (e.g., chess) built through experience.

Perceptual motor skills: open loop, closed loop

Open loop = no feedback; closed loop = feedback-based control.

Role of practice and talent

Skill improves with practice; talent affects learning speed.

Brain structures and processes, changes

Procedural learning changes brain pathways over time.

Basal ganglia, Parkinson's disease

Basal ganglia supports habits; Parkinson's impairs procedural memory.

Fitts stages of skill acquisition

Cognitive → associative → autonomous stages of learning.

Spacing effect, distributed practice

Better learning when practice is spaced out.

Power law of learning

Learning improves rapidly at first, then slows over time.

Cortical representation

Skills become represented in specific brain areas.

Experimental procedures: sentence verification, word verification, priming, word completion

Tasks used to study semantic memory.

Collins & Quillian theory and experiment

Semantic network model with hierarchical organization.

Spreading activation

Activation spreads between related concepts.

DRM procedure and semantic memory

Method showing false memories through related word lists.

Memory for faces

Specialized processing of faces in the brain.

functional/adaptive importance

Semantic memory helps with communication and survival.

Categories, theories

How concepts are grouped in memory.

Basic, superordinate and subordinate categories

Levels of categorization (animal → bird → robin).

Lexical memory, lexicon, semantic store

Storage of words and meanings in the brain.

retrieval cues

Stimuli that help access stored semantic information.

Organization of semantic memory

Concepts organized in networks and categories.

Agnosia, visual agnosia, prosopagnosia

Inability to recognize objects or faces despite vision.

Loftus

Researcher known for false memory studies.

Clancy's research on memory of alien abduction

Shows how false memories can feel real.

DRM procedure and false memory

Demonstrates creation of false memories through association.

Fuzzy trace theory

People store gist and detail; false memories come from gist.

Johnson

Researcher on source monitoring.

Reality monitoring, source monitoring

Distinguishing real vs imagined memory sources.

Brain processes/areas involved in source or reality monitoring

Prefrontal cortex plays key role.

failure to rehearse/suppression effects

Forgetting occurs when memories aren't rehearsed or are suppressed.

Techniques for studying source monitoring

Lab tasks testing memory source accuracy.

Brain involvement

Multiple brain regions contribute to memory processing.

Craik and Lockhart experiment

Showed deeper processing leads to better memory.

levels of processing

Depth of encoding affects memory strength.

elaborative processing

Deep meaningful processing improves memory.

rote rehearsal

Shallow repetition leads to weaker memory.

adaptive functions of episodic memory

Memory helps guide future behavior.

neuropsych evidence for semantic episodic distinction

Different brain damage affects semantic vs episodic memory differently.

Casey (2016) movie viewing study

People segment experiences into events for memory organization.