PSYC 1010 Exam 3 - Chapters 6 & 11

Memory

the ability to store and retrieve information over time

Three Key Functions of Memory

• Encoding

• Storage

• Retrieval

Encoding

the process of transforming what we perceive, think, or feel into an enduring memory; getting perceptions, thoughts, and feelings “into” memory/a memory system,

Storage

• the process of maintaining information in memory over time; keeping it (information) there (in memory)

• three major kinds: sensory, short-term, and long-term, which are distinguished primarily by the amount of time over which a memory is retained

Retrieval

the process of bringing to mind information that has been previously encoded and stored; getting it out of storage

Semantic encoding

• the process of relating new information in a meaningful way to knowledge that is already stored in memory; meaningfully connecting new information to existing information in memory

• increased activity in the lower left part of the frontal lobe and the inner part of the left temporal lobe

visual (imagery) encoding

• the process of storing new information by converting it into mental pictures; storing new information by turning it into an image

• activates visual processing regions in the occipital lobe which suggests that people actually enlist the visual system when forming memories based on mental images

organizational encoding

• the process of categorizing information according to the relationships among a series of items; using relationships between objects to create a structure

• not just for word lists (i.e. we might segment a shopping trip into event units such as driving to the mall, walking from the parking lot, returning a gift to Pottery Barn, checking out the Apple store, and so forth)

• activates the upper surface of the left frontal lobe

mnemonics

encoding strategies that improve subsequent retrieval

Survival Encoding

• draws on elements of semantic, visual imagery, and organizational encoding, which together produce high levels of subsequent memory

• encourages participants to think in detail about the goals they want to achieve and thus engage in extensive planning, which in turn benefits memory

Sensory memory

• a type of storage that holds sensory information for a few seconds or less; information needs to get from the external environment into the brain/mind

• Need to:

  • Have a relatively large capacity

  • Have a relatively short duration

  • Be veridical (truthful)

Iconic (Sensory) Memory

• a fast-decaying store of visual information

• usually decay in about 1 second or less

• full report problematic

Echoic (Sensory) Memory

• a fast-decaying store of auditory information

• usually decay in about 5 seconds

• smaller capacity than iconic

• longer duration than iconic

Short-term memory

• a type of storage that holds nonsensory information for more than a few seconds but less than a minute (i.e. getting told a phone number, and writing down and/or repeating it to quickly lose the information as soon as your attention focuses on anything else)

• information can be held in store for about 15 to 20 seconds

• with working memory, they are not the same concept, but both…

  • Hold a small (for a given value of small) amount of information

  • For a short (for a given value of short) period of time

• Most people can keep approximately seven items

The Decline of Short-Term Memory A 1959 experiment showed how quickly short-term memory fades without rehearsal. On a test for memory of three-letter strings, research participants were highly accurate when tested 3 seconds after exposure to each string, but if the test was delayed another 15 seconds, people barely recalled the strings at all (Peterson & Peterson, 1959).

Rehearsal

• the process of keeping information in short-term memory by mentally repeating it

• Each time you repeat the number, you are reentering it into short-term memory, giving it another 15 to 20 seconds of shelf life

• can play a role in the serial position effect…

serial position effect

the observation that the first few items and the last few items in a series are more likely to be recalled than the items in the middle

primacy effect

enhanced recall of the first few items in, say, a list of words; occurs because these items receive more rehearsals

recency effect

• enhanced recall of the last few items; can result from rehearsing items that are still in short-term storage

• eliminated when participants count backward by 3s after the final list item is presented, which prevents them from relying on short-term storage to rehearse the last few items

Chunking

• combining small pieces of information into larger clusters or chunks that are more easily held in short-term memory

• Items - can be a lot of things: words, phrases, numbers, objects, etc.

• Example: stanzas

working memory

• active maintenance of information in short-term storage

• includes two subsystems that store and manipulate information — one for visual images (the visuo-spatial sketchpad) and another for verbal information (the phonological loop) + episodic buffer & central executivie)

• (graph) consists of a central executive that controls the flow of information through the system, a visuo-spatial sketchpad and phonological loop that temporarily hold visual/spatial images and verbal/auditory information, respectively, and an episodic buffer that integrates the various kinds of information

episodic buffer

• integrates visual and verbal information from the subsystems

• plays a role in learning to recognize words, which requires combining visual and verbal information

• also integrates other kinds of sensory information, such as smell and taste

central executive

• coordinates the subsystems and the episodic buffer

• depends on regions within the frontal lobe that are important for controlling and manipulating information on a wide range of cognitive tasks

Long-term memory

• a type of storage that holds information for hours, days, weeks, or years; has no known capacity limits

• related to consolidation and reconsolidation

anterograde amnesia

the inability to transfer new information from the short-term store into the long-term store.

retrograde amnesia

the inability to retrieve information that was acquired before a particular date, usually the date of an injury or surgery

consolidation

• the process by which memories become stable in the brain; new information becomes “set” in the brain

• gets a boost from something that you do effortlessly every night: sleep

reconsolidation

when seemingly consolidated memories can become vulnerable to disruption when they are recalled, thus requiring them to be consolidated again; existing memories’ retrieval can be disrupted, meaning we have to “re-set” the memory

amygdala

• plays a key role in emotional memory; A key player in the brain’s response to emotional events

• small, almond-shaped structure

• influences hormonal systems that kick into high gear when we experience an arousing event; these stress-related hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, mobilize the body in the face of threat — and they also enhance memory for the experience

• heighted activity here increases the chance that such will be recalled in alter test

• Individuals with damage here, however, do not remember emotional events any better than they remember nonemotional events

synapse

the small space between the axon of one neuron and the dendrite of another

long-term potentiation (LTP)

a process whereby repeated communication across the synapse between neurons strengthens the connection, making further communication easier

engram

the enduring physical change in the brain that is produced by a particular experience forms the underlying basis of a memory, but the process of retrieval is necessary for it to manifest as a memory

optogenetics

which uses light to turn on and turn off specific neurons

targeted memory reactivation (TMR)

a procedure that involves presenting sounds during sleep that reactivate specific memories; effects are statistically significant; administered during Stage 2 and slow-wave sleep, not during rapid eye movement sleep

retrieval cue

external information that is associated with stored information and helps bring it to mind; external information that is tied to a memory

encoding specificity principle

• retrieval cue can serve as an effective reminder when it helps re-create the specific way in which information was initially encoded; The context in which we encode information can serve as a retrieval cue for a memory

• i.e. in one study, divers learned some words on land and some other words underwater; they recalled the words best when they were tested in the same dry or wet environment in which they had initially learned them, because the environment itself was a retrieval cue

State-dependent retrieval

• the process whereby information tends to be better recalled when the person is in the same state during encoding and retrieval; If your “state” at the times of encoding and retrieval are the same, recall is improved

• i.e. retrieving information when you are in a sad or happy mood increases the likelihood that you will retrieve sad or happy episodes

transfer-appropriate processing

the idea that memory is likely to transfer from one situation to another when the encoding and retrieval contexts of the situations match; If the type of processing used during encoding and retrieval is the same, recall is improved

contact tracing interview

individuals are questioned about all the people they have come in contact with during a recent time period in order to try to stop the spread of an infectious disease

Memory Testing Benefits Long-Term Retention With a 5-minute retention interval, the study–study condition results in slightly higher recall. But with retention intervals of 2 days and 1 week, the study–test condition yields much higher levels of recall than does the study–study condition (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006).

Retrieval-induced forgetting

a process by which retrieving an item from long-term memory impairs subsequent recall of related items (i.e. when a speaker selectively talks about some aspects of memories shared with a listener and doesn’t mention related information, the listener later has a harder time remembering the omitted events, as does the speaker); can affect eyewitness testimony

Explicit (or Declarative) Memory

• occurs when people consciously or intentionally retrieve past experiences

• Has a “sense” of memory

• Divided into:

  • Episodic (events, personal info)

    • Time-tagged

  • Semantic (general knowledge)

    • No time-tag

Implicit (or Procedural/Nondeclarative) Memory

• past experiences influence later behavior and performance, even without an effort to remember them or an awareness of the recollection

• Skills, habits, conditioned responses

• No “sense” of memory

Forms of Long-Term Memory Long-term memory consists of explicit and implicit forms, which can be further divided into specific subtypes.

procedural memory

the gradual acquisition of skills as a result of practice, or “knowing how” to do things

priming

• an enhanced ability to think of a stimulus, such as a word or object, as a result of a recent exposure to the stimulus during an earlier study task

• parts of the occipital lobe involved in visual processing and parts of the frontal lobe involved in word retrieval become active

  • if people perform the same task after being primed by seeing motel and table (finish/fill-in-the-blank activity), there’s less activity in these same brain regions

semantic memory

• a network of associated facts and concepts that make up our general knowledge of the world

• The hippocampus is not necessary for acquiring any new memories of this type

episodic memory

• the collection of past personal experiences that occurred at a particular time and place

• well suited to envisioning our personal futures because it is a flexible system that allows us to recombine elements of past experience in new ways

divergent creative thinking

generating creative ideas by combining different types of information in new ways (i.e. Imagining the future by recombining elements of past experiences)

collaborative memory

• how people remember in groups

• typically recalls more target items than any individual, suggesting that it benefits memory

collaborative inhibition

The same number of individuals working together recall fewer items than they would on their own.

severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM)

some otherwise high-functioning people seem to lack the ability to vividly reexperience past events, even though they know those events happened

transience

• forgetting what occurs with the passage of time

• Memory loss due to passage of time

• occurs during the storage phase of memory, after an experience has been encoded and before it is retrieved

• the forgetting curve (a rapid drop-off in retention during the first few tests, followed by a slower rate of forgetting on later tests)

The Curve of Forgetting Hermann Ebbinghaus measured his retention at various delay intervals after he studied lists of nonsense syllables. He measured retention in percent savings, that is, the percentage of time he needed to relearn the list compared with the time he needed to learn it initially.

retroactive interference

situations in which later learning impairs memory for information acquired earlier; current encoding interferes with previous encoding (i.e. by the time Friday rolls around, it may be difficult to remember what you had for lunch on Monday because later meals blend in with earlier ones)

Proactive interference

situations in which earlier learning impairs memory for information acquired later; past encoding interferes with current encoding (i.e. if you use the same parking lot each day at work or at school, you’ve probably gone out to find your car and then stood there confused by the memories of having parked it on previous days)

childhood/infantile amnesia

the fact that most of us have few or no memories from the first few years of life; Culture may thus impact how long our memories last

absentmindedness

• a lapse in attention that results in memory failure; one common cause is lack of attention because attention plays a vital role in encoding information into long-term memory

• Divided attention also leads to less hippocampal involvement in encoding (the hippocampus is important in episodic memory)

prospective memory

remembering to do things in the future

blocking

• failure to retrieve information that is available in memory even though you are trying to produce it; especially often for the because their links to related concepts and knowledge are weaker than for common names

• occurs more often as we grow older

• name ________ usually results from damage to parts of the left temporal lobe on the surface of the cortex, most often as a result of a stroke

memory misattribution

• assigning a recollection or an idea to the wrong source; these type of errors are a primary cause of eyewitness misidentifications

• Individuals with damage to the frontal lobes are especially prone to these type of errors

source memory

recall of when, where, and how information was acquired; misattributing the ______ of knowledge could be the cause of déjà vu experiences (when you suddenly feel that you have been in a situation before even though you can’t recall any details)

false recognition

• This mistaken feeling of familiarity

• Westerners tend to retrieve more specific details about actual past events (as well as falsified ones) than do East Asians, and suggest that culture plays an important role in shaping how people construct memories

Suggestibility

• the tendency to incorporate misleading information from external sources into personal recollections; possible that entire episodes could have never occurred

• People develop false memories for some of the same reasons memory misattribution occurs. We do not store all the details of our experiences in memory, making us vulnerable to accepting suggestions about what might have happened or should have happened

• played a key role in a controversy that arose during the 1980s and 1990s, concerning the accuracy of childhood memories that people recalled during psychotherapy

• also plays a role in another critically important real-world manifestation of memory: confident but inaccurate eyewitness identifications (highly confident but inaccurate identifications tend to emerge only later when an eyewitness’s memory is contaminated by suggestive influences, such as leading questions, confirming feedback)

Bias

• the distorting influences of present knowledge, beliefs, and feelings on recollection of previous experiences

• in a Democratic vs. Republican party, true or fake news study/experiement, participants remembered more false memories for false news stories about the opposing party. Interestingly, the study also showed that making people aware of their biases significantly reduced this tendency

• People were remembering the past as they wanted it to be rather than the way it actually was

persistence

the intrusive recollection of events that we wish we could forget

flashbulb memories

• detailed recollections of when and where we heard about shocking events (i.e. setting of when a person learned

• enhanced retention is partly attributable to the emotional arousal elicited by events, and is partly attributable to the fact that we tend to talk and think a lot about these experiences.

Overlap in mistakes made my LLMs and humans

memory misattributions (“hallucinations”) and bias (LLMs exhibit bias when they retrieve information in two different ways: (1) when bias is already present in the retrieved information or (2) when bias exists in the features of the retrieval algorithm used by the mode)

associative inference

• the ability to combine information acquired in different episodes to make new connections; lets us use memory in a flexible way, but, the flexibility of memory can sometimes result in mistaken recollections

• when participants made correct associative inferences, they also mistakenly recombined elements of the two scenes, leading to memory misattributions

Seven “Sins” of memory

costs we pay for benefits that allow memory to work as well as it does most of the time

Personality

an individual’s characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling; an individual’s unique and relatively stable pattern of thoughts, emotional responses, and behaviors

General personality measures

personality inventories and projective techniques

self-report

most popular technique under personal inventories, defined as a method in which people provide subjective information about their own thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, typically via questionnaire or interview.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

a well-researched clinical questionnaire used to assess personality and psychological problems; any potential biases of the person giving the test are minimized because no interpretation of responses is needed

validity scales

assess a person’s attitudes toward test taking and any tendency to try to distort the results by faking answers

Projective tests

designed to reveal inner aspects of individuals’ personalities by analysis of their responses to a standard series of ambiguous stimuli (i.e. Rorschach Inkblot Test); developers of these assume that people will project personality factors that are below awareness — wishes, concerns, impulses, and ways of seeing the world — onto the ambiguous stimuli and will not censor these responses

Rorschach Inkblot Test

developed in 1921, a projective technique in which respondents’ inner thoughts and feelings are believed to be revealed by analysis of their responses to a set of unstructured inkblots

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

developed in the 1930s, is a projective technique in which respondents’ underlying motives, concerns, and the way they see the social world are believed to be revealed through analysis of the stories they make up about ambiguous pictures of people; In creating the stories, the respondent is thought to identify with the main characters and to project their view of others and the world onto the other details in the drawing, and any details that are not obviously drawn from the picture are believed to be projected onto the story from the respondent’s own desires and internal conflicts

Benefits of technology in personality measurement

Psychologists are also using social media to better understand personality traits and how people express themselves. An important advantage of this approach, as with EAR (electronically activated recorder), is that it allows psychologists to study people as they actually behave out in the world

trait

a relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and consistent way; might provide an explanation for behavior in two basic ways: it may be a preexisting disposition of the person that causes the person’s behavior, or it may be a motivation that guides the person’s behavior.

Hierarchical Structure of Traits Traits may be organized in a hierarchy in which many specific behavioral tendencies are associated with a higher-order factor, such as neuroticism

Dimensions/Factors of Personality

The highest-level traits

Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors

• Established by Raymonf Cattell (1905-1998)

• Subjected earlier results to factor analysis

• Obtained smaller # of dimensions

Eysenck’s 2 Factor Model

• simplified things nicely with a model of personality with only two major traits (although he later expanded it to three

• distinguished people who are sociable and active (extraverts) from those who are quiet and introspective (introverts)

• also identified a second dimension ranging from the tendency to be very neurotic or emotionally unstable to the tendency to be more emotionally stable

• THIRD BEHAVIOR HE PROPOSED WAS PSYCHOTICISM

• Look for orthogonal (independent) dimensions

  • Introversion

    • How much one enjoys the company of others (?)

  • Neuroticism (Emotional Stability)

psychoticism

refers to the extent to which a person is impulsive or hostile

psychotic

refers to an abnormal mental state marked by detachment from reality

The “Big 5” Model

openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism; O.C.E.A.N.

• Openness to Experiences

  • Curious/Nonconforming vs. Conventional/Uncreative

• Conscientiousness

  • Organized/Reliable vs. Careless/Spontaneous

• Extroverion

  • Talkative/Sociable vs. Reserved/Enjoys Solitude

• Agreeableness

  • Trusting/Good-Natured vs. Uncooperative/Irritable

• Neuroticism

  • Insecure/Anxious v. Relaxed/Stable

• show up across a wide range of participants, including children, adults in other cultures, those who use other languages, and even nonhumans, suggesting that the it may be universal

The Big Five Factor Model

Personality differences

• differences were much more pronounced as children aged into adolescence, suggesting that cultural factors play a role in how children learn to express their emotions.

• adolescence is the emergence of differences in sex hormones during puberty (i.e. the transgender men now viewing themselves as being more masculine and their scores more closely matching those of cisgender men because of similar hormones)

reticular formation

the part of the brain that regulates arousal or alertness; not easily stimulated in extraverts/more easily stimulated in introverts, helping explain their behaviors

behavioral activation system (BAS)

a “go” system, activates approach behavior in response to the anticipation of reward; i.e. the extravert has a highly reactive ___ and will actively engage the environment, seeking social reinforcement and being on the go

behavioral inhibition system (BIS)

a “stop” system, inhibits behavior in response to stimuli signaling punishment; i.e. the anxious or introverted person, in turn, has a highly reactive ___ and will focus on negative outcomes and be on the lookout for stop signs.

androgynous

those who adopt the best of both worlds and identify with positive feminine traits and positive masculine traits; might be better adjusted than people who identify strongly with only one sex role or who don’t identify much with either one (i.e. those who endorse an androgynous sex role report fewer symptoms of depression than those with a masculine or feminine role, regardless of their biological sex)

Freudian slips

the origins of their everyday mistakes and memory lapses, errors that happen without any physical basis

psychodynamic approach

• regards personality as formed by needs, strivings, and desires largely operating outside of awareness — motives that can produce emotional disorders

• Est. by Freud (1856-1939)

  • His theories dominated psychology for so long, early on

• Levels of Consciousness

  • Conscious

    • What you are aware of 

  • Preconscious

    • What you can become aware of

  • Unconscious

    • Things you are (and remain) unaware of, that nonetheless affect behavior

• Levels of Personality

  • the id

  • the ego

  • the superego

id

• the part of the mind containing the drives present at birth; it is the source of our bodily needs, wants, desires, and impulses, particularly our sexual and aggressive drives;

• seeks immediate gratification of any impulse

• All unconscious

• Most basic, primitive part of personality

• Necessary for life; creates libido (psychic energy)

• Pleasure Principle

  • seeks pleasures, avoids pain, and wants those things RIGHT NOW

  • Seen in infants, non-human animals, us, etc.

superego

• the mental system that reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly learned as parents exercise their authority; acts as a kind of conscience, punishing us when it finds we are doing or thinking something wrong (by producing guilt or other painful feelings) and rewarding us (with feelings of pride or self-congratulation) for living up to ideal standards

• Conscious and unconscious

• Created by learned experiences and norms

• Conscience

  • Memories of things for which we have been punished/made to feel guilty; sense of wrong

• Ego Ideal

  • Memories of things for which we have been praised/made to feel proud; sense of right

ego

• the component of personality, developed through contact with the external world, that enables us to deal with life’s practical demands

• the regulating mechanism that enables us to delay gratifying immediate needs and function effectively in the real world

• example: helps you resist the impulse to snatch others’ food and also finds the restaurant and pays the check

• it is the mediator between the id and the superego

• Conscious & unconscious

• The Reality Principle

  • must consider the constraints of the real world on the desires of the id

anxiety

an unpleasant feeling that arises when unwanted thoughts or feelings occur (i.e. when the id seeks a gratification that the ego thinks will lead to real-world dangers or that the superego sees as leading to punishment); “alert“ signal —→ defense mechanisms

defense mechanisms

unconscious coping mechanisms that reduce the anxiety generated by threats from unacceptable impulses; For when the ego and super-ego just aren’t enough to do the job