exam 1 psyc 248 studies

Ebbinghaus and Human memory expiriments

Ebbinghaus and Human memory expiriments

He focused on forgetting and how memory can deteriorate over time

• measured forgetting by examining how long it took to re-learn a previously learned list

• he was the first to conduct rigorous experimental studies of human memory

• believed that psyc of memory could be defined by precise mathematical laws (retention curve)

ebdinghause and his pesky retention curve

retention curve measures how much info is retained at each point following relearning

• look at da graph

Sperling (1960)

presented array consisting of three rows of four letters and subjects were cued to report part or whole of array

• showed that our visual system can hold a lot of info but if we do NOT attend to it, it can be rapidly lost

• look at da graph for his study (how iconic memory has high capacity but rapid decay)

Conrad (1964)

participants saw 6 letters then recalled them, compared results to a ratings of how confusable these letters sounded when said out loud

• letters that are rated as sounding similiar aremore likely to be misremembered as each other

• B misremembered more as V than X

Conrad and Hull (1964)

acoustic similiarities make some lists more difficult than others

• CVDPGT is harder to remember than KRXLYF

Baddely, Thomson, and Buchanan (1975)

presented words that either contained one syllable or five syllable words, they then recalled the words in order presented

• look at da graph, it shows the idea of word length effect

• verbal short term memory representations are sound based

• representations are maintained through the speech like process of rehearsal

Baddely and Hitch 1974

model of working memory where the focus is on manipulation of info

• central executive is made up of two sub-systems: phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad

• other types of cognitive tasks can be done at the same time as a digit span taks that occupies verbal STM

• response time of participants changed SLIGHTLY with increasing digit loads, error rate did NOT change

Peterson and Peterson 1959

tested how long an item remains in STM without rehearsal

• 3 letters presented, then a gap, then they must report the letters

• distractor item is introduced following a study item, memory for that item is diminished even tho the distractor is unrelated to the study

• STM forgetting arises as a function of time

Luck and Vogel 1997

visual STM has fixed capacity of four objects,

• the more square presented to the participants, the less amount of squares the got right

Allen, Baddely, and Hitch 2006

participants asked to remember colors, shapes, or both. They were also given a concurrent task of recalling a series of digits while observing shapes

• look at da graph = suggests that features are automatically bound together into objects

Klauer and Zhao 2004

Visual STM can focus on either objects OR locations in space.

Participants had the spatial task of remembering dot locations and the visual task of remembering specific ideogram

• capacity for objects is around 3-4 items

• rehearsal remains an important process

Strayer and Johnston 2001

divided attention

• cell phone use is more impairing than listening to the radio

• further experiments showed that this is due to the active use of attention during conversation = exceeds the capacity of the central executive

Conway, Cowan, and Bunting 2001

Operation span (OSPAN) task = 20 high span and 20 low span

• shadow message in right ear, 400 words presented to both ears

• at som point, the subjects name was presented in the left ear

• an inability to resist interference showed how they were all distracted by hearing their own name

Kane, Bleckley, Conway and Engle 2000

participants stare at fixation point for 200-2000 ms

blinking “=” sign appears just to the left or right if the fixation point

there were two block trials:

• prosaccade block: B, P, or R appears briefly just above the “=” sign, then state which letter was shown

• antisiccade block: B, P, or R appears briefly on the other side of the “=” sign

• Working Memory Control WMC appears to be involved in how efficient our inhibitory control of attention is

Eysenack and Eysenack 1980

examined the interaction of distinctiveness and deep encoding

• look at the chart and the graph, shows how more words are recognized from semantic memory and less in shallow

Hunt and Smith 1996: How does distinctiveness change the effectiveness of a memory cue?

Unique: write down a cue for that item that is different from all other items

shared: write down something that all the items share

• participants were able to recall more of the words from the shared list

Chee and Goh 2018: when does distinctivness affect the process of stimuli

participants saw a list of birds including the word kiwi

• distinctivness enhances memory

• can be seen in items or groups of items for multiple kinds of distinctiveness

• appears to be closely related to retrieval, but may also be present at encoding

Massen et al. 2009

What kinds of routes are best for the method of loci?

• compared using a route around the house(variable) and a route to work(constant)

• average words remembered higher in commute loci rather than house loci (look at da graph)

De Beni, Moe, and Cornoldi (1997) = are certain kinds of material easier to learn with the method of loci?

contrasts learning of material that will be written with material that will be presented orally

Bower and Clark 1969

Compared memory of group that used story mnemonic with group that did not

• learned 12 lists of nouns - recalled lists after all were learned

• groups that used the story mnemonic performed a lot better than the group that didn’t showing that story mnemonics have meaningful encoding, improves memory through retrieval structure, and speed-up principle

Kalakoski and Saariluoma (2001)

compared memory for street names in a group of taxi drivers and a group of control participants

• street names could be presented as either a route or a list of nearby locations on a map

• street names were either in order or random

• look at da graph

• shows that taxi drivers did better overall

Russell, Duchaine, and Nakayama (2009)

Case study of face recognition in groups that were either above or below average

prosopagnosia: significant difficulty with face recognition

“super-recognizers”: significantly better than average at face recognition

Ericsson et al 2017

case study of Feng Wang who was a two time winner of the wold memory championship

• attempted to replicate finding and understand strategy behind it

• consistently demonstrated a span of 200 digits at presentation rate of 1 digit/second

• his strat was to memorize images for all 2 digit numbers, images could then be combined into interactive images that encoded 4 numbers

Wilding and Valentine 1994

What kind of tasks benefit from strats?

tasks = strategic (face name associations) or nonstrategic (snowflake recognition)

groups = naturally-good memory versus people who used memory strategies

• exceptional memory can be the result of either strat of individual differences

• some tasks benefit more from memory strategies than others

Roediger and Karpicke 2006

testing yourself on info us better for long term learning rather than restudying

• compared memory for info that was repeatedly studied, tested only once, or tested three times

• people who were testing more had better memory of the info

Miyatsu et al 2018

testing and spacing are particularly effective in improving memory,

• wrote about the downsides and upsides of re-reading, flashacrds, highlighting, and note-taking