2006PSY WK6 Learning & LTM Revision

What is long-term memory?

An “archive” of information about past events and knowledge learned

What memory system does long-term memory work closely with?

Working memory

What is the storage for long-term memory?

From about 30 seconds ago, to our earliest memories

What is incidental learning?

Any learning that is unplanned/unintended

When does incidental learning happen?

1. When engaging in a task/activity

2. As a by-product of planned learning

Does incidental learning involve some degree of consciousness?

Yes, even if not fully aware of exactly what has been learned, people are aware that they are processing information

What is some examples of incidental learning?

1. Learning the layout of your new house

2. Learning the face of the person who is always at the same tram stop as you in the morning

What is intentional learning?

Deliberate, conscious, and purposeful learning whereby the learner intends to retain information

What are some examples of intentional learning?

1. Learning a new language/instrument

2. Learning information in classes/for exams

What is implicit learning?

Learning inthe absence of any conscious awareness of what has been learned

What is explicit learning?

Learning achieved with full conscious awareness of what has been learned

What is the difference between implicit and incidental learning?

The potential level of consciousness

How can we assess implicit learning?

Through serial reaction time tasks

What are serial reaction time tasks?

A psychological experiment used to study motor learning and memory, particularly unconscious (implicit) learning

What is a problem for assessing implicit learning?

Retrospective problem 

What is the retrospective problem?

When participants are consciously aware at the time of learning but forgetting occcurs by the end of the experiment

Reber (1993) identified 5 major difference between explicit and implicit learning, what were they?

1. Robustness

2. Age independence

3. IQ independence

4. Commonality of process

What is robustness in Reber’s (1993) major differences?

The level of conscious awareness; implicit is more robust and durable than explicit

What is age independence in Reber’s (1993) major differences?

Implicit learning is relatively unaffected by age and development compared to explicit learning which is highly affected by age and development

What is low variability in Reber’s (1993) major differences?

There is little variation in the ability to gain implicit knowledge from person to person, whereas there is a lot of variation to gain explicit knowledge from person to person

What is IQ independence in Reber’s (1993) major differences?

Implicit learning is largely independent of IQ and resulting knowledge is consolidated with the passage of time, whereas explicit learning has been correlated with IQ (9, 10) and the resulting knowledge decaying over time

What does evidence suggest about implicit and explicit learning?

1. Two different types of learning

2. Affected by different factors

3. Involve different brain areas

Does learning involve implicit or explicit learning?

Learning involves implicit and explicit learning

What determines how well we remember information over time?

How information is encoded

What did Craik and Lockhart’s (1972) Levels of Processing consist of?

1. Shallow processing

2. Deep processing

What is shallow processing?

A way of understanding information by focusing on the physical, visual, and auditory features rather than its meaning

What are examples of shallow processing?

1. Repeating information over and over (rote memorisation)

2. Noticing fonts and capitlisation

3. Remembering page layouts

4. Remembering a book by its cover colour rather than the title

Why does shallow processing lead to poor memory?

1. Weak memory trace (information is not anaylsed for meaning so brain doesnt create strong memory trace)

2. Information is quickly forgotten (brain quickly discards information deemed "useless" because it hasn’t been connected to existing knowledge)

3. Lack of connection (does not involve connecting new information to what you already know, which is a key part of deep processing)

What is deep processing?

A cognitive approach that involves analysing information for its meaning, leading to better understanding and more durable memory retention

What are the key aspects of deep processing?

1. Focus on meaning

2. Connections to exisiting knowledge

3. Active engagement

4. Elaborative rehearsal

What are the key aspects of shallow processing?

1. Structural processing

2. Phonemic reading

3. Repetition

What are exmaples of deep processing?

1. Organising notes

2. Relating concepts to life experiences

3. Generating your own questions

4. Teaching the information to someone else

5. Evaluating and critiquing

Craik and Tulving (1975) compared recognition performance as a function of the task performed at encoding, what tasks did they use?

1. Shallow grapheme task

2. Intermediate grapheme task

3. Deep semantic task

What did Craik and Tulving (1975) find?

That recall was 3x better with deep processing than shallow processing

What did Challis et al. (1996) ask about the levels of processing?

If it was limited to explicit learning

Which task did Challis et al. (1996) use?

Word-fragment task; participants are asked to look at some words or read a passage and then later asked to complete a set of words with missing letters

What did Challis et al. (1996) find?

If the fragemented words has been displayed earlier, people performed better in the word completion task

Is implicit memory affected by level of processing?

Not really

What limitations did Morris et al. (1997) find?

The revevance of the test to the way information is processed and stored matters

What did Atkinson and Shiffrin’s (1968) single long-term memory store consist of?

1. Encoding

2. Storage

3. Retrieval 

Subsequent researchers have proposed several long-term memory systems, what are they?

1. Declarative memory (episodic, semantic, autobiographical)

2. Non-declarative memory (procedural, other forms of implicit memory [priming]

Is declarative memory implicit or explicit?

Explicit

Is non-declarative memory implicit or explicit?

implicit

What is declarative memory?

A long-term memory system that involves conscious recollection of facts and events

What other memory does declarative memory involve?

1. Episodic memory

2. Semanitc memory

3. Autobiographical memory

What other memory does non-declaraitve memory involve?

1. Procedural memory

2. Priming

What is episodic memory? (declarative)

A type of declarative memory that involves conscious recollection of previous experiences together with their context in terms of place, time, and associated emotions; a conscious memory of an experience

What are examples of episodic memory?

1. Remembering where you parked your car

2. Recalling your first day of preschool

3. Reliving the details of a vacation

Episodic memory is not a recorded reproduction, so it is?

Open to errors and illusions

Why is it a good thing that episodic memory is not a recorded reproduction?

1. It is too costy to process everything

2. Constructive elements are needed to use episodic memory for imagining future events

What study has been done to confirm evidence of episodic memory?

Brain imaging

What is semantic memory?

A type of declarative memory involving the capacity to recall words, concepts, or numbers which is essential for the use and understanding of language

What does semantic memory involve?

1. Facts

2. General knowledge about the world

3. Concepts

4. Language

What are examples of semantic memory?

1. Knowing the capital of Australia

2. Knowing the meaning of a word

3. Knowing lemons are yellow

Semantic information can sometimes be intertwined with episodic memories but?

They are still two different systems

How do we know semantic and episodic memories are seperate?

Evidence from individual’s with amnesia; episodic memories impaired, semantic memories intact

Do people with amnesia have problems with episodic or semantic memory?

Episodic

What is retrograde amnesia?

Impaired memory for events occuring before brain injury

What is an example of retrograde amnesia?

A person who, after a traumatic brain injury from a car accident, cannot remember the events leading up to the crash, such as the days or weeks prior

What is anterograde amnesia?

Impaired learning of new information after brain injury

What is an example of anterograde amnesia?

A person who can no longer form new memories after a brain injury

Are both types of amnesia present at the same time?

Yes

What has research by Speirs et al. (2001) and Vargah-Khadem et al. (2002) suggested about people with amnesia and episodic memory?

That people may stil be able to acquire episodic memory but the memory is very fragile

Do episodic and semantic systems need each other?

Yes, to recall something episodic we need to draw on semantic memories

Why would damage to the episodic/semantic system impair the other?

Because the are spatially close to each other in the brain

What is an alternative viewpoint about how many memory systems there are?

That there is one single system but it binds information or learns associations rather than implicit vs. explicit learning

For patients with amnesia, how do they assess implicit memory?

Through eye-movement monitoring

What were the results of using eye-movement monitoring to assess implicit memory for people with amnesia?

People lacked the ability to remember the information

Why do we forget?

1. Decay

2. Interference

Who is Ebbinghaus (1885-1913) and what did he do?

1. Pioneered the experimental study of memory

2. Discovered the forgetting curve

3. Discovered the spacing effect

4. The first to describe the learning curve

What does Ebbinghaus’s research show?

That long-term memory retention decreases most rapidly within the first hour after learning

According to Ebbinghaus (1885-1913) how much information is forgotten within the first hour of learning?

50%

According to Ebbinghaus (1883-1913) does forgetting continue to speed up or slow down?

Slow down

According to Ebbinghaus, how much information is forgotten within a month if the information is not reinforced?

90%

What is Ebbinghaus’ (1885-1913) forgetting curve?

It illustrates that people forget information at a rapid rate, especially within the first day of learning, and then the rate of forgetting slows over time

Who did Ebbinghaus (1885-1913) conduct his research on?

Himself

What was the conclusion of Ebbinghaus’ (1885-1913) research on himself?

1. Time to relearn nonsense syllables as a function of retention

2. Time to relearn indicates amount of forgetting

3. Memory retention declines unless the information is activiely reviewed and reinforced through methods like spaced repetiton 

What is the spacing effect (Ebbinghaus 1885-1913)?

The phenomenon where learning is more effective when study sessions are spread out over time rather than crammed into one session

What does the encoding specificity principle by Thomson and Tulving (1970) state?

That memory retrieval is most effective when the retrieval cues match the context presented during the initial encoding of the information

What does the encoding specificity principle by Thomson and Tulving (1970) mean?

That memory is not a direct function of processing strength but is highly dependent on the specific, interconnected cues that were encode along with the target information

What does the encoding principle by Thomson and Tulving (1970) suggest for retrieval to be successful?

That a cue is present which was also part of the orginal encoding environement

What happens if there is mismatch between contexts in the encoding principle? (Thomson & Tulving 1970)

Forgetting

Golden and Baddeley (1975) conducted an experiment on the encoding principle, what did they do?

Used an environemnt where learning and recall both occured (context)

What was the method of Godden and Baddeley’s (1975) encoding principle experiment?

1. 16 divers, wearing scuba gear

2. Learned some lists on shore, others 20 feet underwater

3. Recalled lists on shore or 20 feet underwater

What were the results of Godden and Baddeley’s (1975) encoding specificity experiment? (context effect observed)

1. Lists learned underwater were better recalled underwater

2. Lists learned on shore were better recalled on shore

3. Words learned and tested in the same environemnt are better recalled than those items for which the environemtal context varied between study and test

What is interference?

Competition from other material; Disrupts the memory process

What are the two types of interference?

1. Proactive interference

2. Retroactive interference

What is proactive interference?

A memory phenomenon where older, previously learned memories disrupt the ability to learn or recall new information

What are examples of proactive memory?

1. Calling a new partner by an old partner’s name

2. Using a previous password when trying to log in with a new one

What is retroactive interference?

A memory phenomenon where new information makes it harder to remember older information

What are examples of retroactive interference?

1. A new neighbours name causing you to forget the name of the previous neighbour

2. Having trouble recalling how to play a guitar after learning how to play the piano

How can we assess interference?

Paired associated tasks

What is paired associates task?

A memory test where participants learn pairs of items and are later asked to recall the associated item after being given the cue item

What is a cued-recall test and what is it used for?

The task type of a paired associates task used to measure episodic and associative memory by assessing how well people can remember specific events and the context they occured in

What did Underwood (1957) find about proactive interference after reviewing 14 studies?

That more previous experience with a partiicualr task led to more proactive interference resulting in worse performance

What 3 ways did Baum and Kliegl (2013) indentify to minimise the effects of proactive interference?

1. Tell participants they can forget the first list they learned

2. Test the knowledge of the first list

3. Ask participant to mentally ‘wak’ through childhood home and describe the details

What is recall?

To bring a fact, event, or situation back into one’s mind

What is a key word related to recall?

Remember/ing; “Can you remember the details of the figure on encoding specificity?”

What is recognition?

The identification of someone or something from previous encounters or knowledge

What is a key word related to recognition?

Recognise/ing; “Is this the figure we showed for encoding specificity?”