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encapsulates lectures 1 - 6
why is the temporal lobe considered an important area of the brain with respect to this class?
which area of the temporal lobe specifically do we really care about?
The temporal lobe houses the hippocampus which is heavily implicated in the formation of memories
specifically in the medial temporal lobe
which part of the brain processes sensory input?
the whole brain processes different sensory inputs
different areas of the brain are designated for specific types of information such as smell, taste, touch, etc.
where are long-term memories stores?
It will be stored in the places that your brain was activating at the time of the memory
Think of memory as the simultaneous reactivation of multiple areas of your multi modal monkey brain
Describe Sperling’s iconic memory experiment and follow up experiment. What are the results? What are the conclusions?
First Experiment
Background
presented matrix of letters for 50ms
asked participants to report as many letters as possible
Results
subjects recall only half of the letters
Conclusions
people suck at memory
Follow up Experiment
Background
sounded low, medium, or high tone immediately after matrix disappeared (each tone corresponds with specific row to report) [partial report]
Results
recall of that row was almost perfect
Conclusions
why is it important that the tone sounded AFTER the letters flashed instead of before in Sperling’s iconic memory experiment?
what if we were to delay sounding the ton after the letters flashed (instead of playing the tone immediately)?
Sperling was testing their capacity to intake information. Playing a tone prior to the flashing of letter will cue participants to a specific row which is NOT testing capacity but rather their ability to pay attention to specific rows.
We would expect that they would decrease their ability to recall the information because of how quickly we lose information in our sensory memory.
when tested we see that even as little as a SECOND makes us decrease our iconic memory by 1/2
There are five letters per row, and five rows total. A tone tells someone to report the letters in the fourth row. They report two letters.
how many letters are in this person’s iconic memory / sensory memory?
do you think the tone was played immediately after the icon was flashed
2 letters reported x 5 rows = 10 letters in iconic memory
Tone most likely played after 1 second because we observe less than half of the row’s letters being reported
what are the three different types of tasks that Yilmaz describes relating to word list experiments?
Overt Rehearsal
subjects asked to rehearse out loud
first few items receive the most rehearsal
Incidental Learning
subjects unaware of impending memory test (no rehearsal)
no primacy effect
Speeded List
less opportunity to rehearse
primacy effect reduced, recency unaffected
how would you expect classic amnesics to perform on word list experiments?
what is interesting with regard to the recency effect? why?
you would expect for rehearsal to not be helpful because they cannot store anything into long-term memory
reduced primacy effect because of this
in case studies, we observe a preserved recency effect because the recency effect is a short term memory phenomenon
STM occurs prior to LTM meaning the recency effect should be unaffected which is what is observed in research
what are the three different types of recall tasks?
Immediate Recall
Delayed Recall
Final Free Recall
