PSY211 Exam 2

Memory

the process involved in retaining, retrieving, and using information about stimuli, images, events, ideas, and skills after the original information is no longer present

Clive Wearing

British musician with 7-second memory due to damage to amygdala and hippocampus, Only remembers his wife but greets her sincerely like it was the first time hes ever seen her. Has no short term memory, forgets question as he is answering it.

Prefrontal Cortex

part of frontal lobe responsible for thinking, planning, and language

Modal model of memory: Sensory Memory

stores "raw" sensory input for just a moment

Modal model of memory: Short term Memory

stores small amounts of information (5-9 items) for a brief amount of time (15-20 seconds)
ex.) phone numbers, words on screen, grocery list

Working memory model: Working memory

limited capacity system for temporary storage and manipulation of information for complex tasks such as comprehension, learning and reasoning

Working memory model: central executive

Overall memory processor, boss of your memory, integrates everything together for you

Working memory model: phonological loop

Language
ex.) description of how to get somewhere, allows you to understand what is being said

Working memory model: episodic buffer

memory strategies
ex.) rehearsing where you are headed

Working memory model: visuospatial sketch pad

helps with vision and images
ex.) seeing or thinking about where you are going

Difference between long term and short term memory

Short term memory occurs in the prefontal cortex and long term memory is generally housed in the hippocampus

Hippocampus

A neural center located in the limbic system that helps process explicit memories for storage.

Murdochs list of words experiment

Goal: how does information get transferred from stm to ltm?
Method: listen to list of words and write down all the words remembered
Results: Primacy and recency effect
Conclusion: Information that is rehearsed gradually gets absorbed in LTM

Primacy effect

memory is better for items at the start of the list

Recency effect

LTM is better for info or items at the end/bottom of the list

Explicit/Declarative memory

Conscious memory

Explicit/Declarative memory: Episodic

mental time travel, personal experiences

Explicit/declarative: Semantic

Knowledge and facts (A timeline for your life)

Implicit/nondeclarative memory

unconscious memory

Implicit/nondeclarative memory: Priming

past experiences changes response without conscious awareness

Implicit/nondeclarative memory: procedural

skills and actions, ex,) tying your shoes, showing is easier than telling
ex.) surfing, riding a bike, golf, typing, fishing

Implicit/nondeclarative memory: Conditioning

pairing a neutral stimulus with another stimulus that elicits a response

Encoding

acquiring information and transforming it into memory

Retrieval

process of transferring information from LTM back into working memory

Consolidation

process that transforms new memories from a fragile state to a more permanent state

Maintenance rehearsal

maintains information, but does not always transfer it to long term memory
ex.) repetition

Chris Hemsworth: Limitless Episode 5 Memory

Chris learns to how to improve his memory and brain health through challenges because he is at risk of developing Alzheimers, so he must maintain his mental and physical health.
-ex.) immersing yourself in nature away from stress of the modern world, eat and sleep, nourish your mind with new experiences and challenges, share knowledge with people you love.

elaborative rehearsal

Transfers information to long term memory.
ex.) forming connections to what you already know

Levels of processing theory: Shallow

little attention to meaning (poor memory)
-ex.) reading something and having no idea what you read

Levels of processing theory: Deep

Close attention to meaning (good memory)

What tech is doing to our brains: Nicholas Carr

Mind is changing as if someone is rewiring his brain, he is not thinking the way he used to think

What tech is doing to our brains: Betsy Sparrow

Search engines have changed the way we remember things, we no longer rely on our own knowledge rather where we can find the knowledge

Photo taking impairment effect

Poor memory as a result of taking pictures

Encoding specificity

encoding information along with its context ex.) childhood home

Retrieval cues

words or other stimuli that help us remember information

State dependent learning

learning is associated with a particular internal stat

Transfer appropriate processing

when type of task at encoding matches the type of task at retrieval

Effective studying: elaborate

thinking about what you are reading and giving it meaning by relating it to other things you know

Effective studying: Generate and test

active involvement in material

Effective studying: Organize

creating a framework

Effective studying: match learning and testing conditions

memory is better when encoding (studying) matches the retrieval (testing)

Effective studying: take breaks

Memory is better for multiple short study sessions

Autobiographical Memory

recollected events that belong to a person's past include episodic and semantic components

Milestones

Societally chosen significant acheivements

Significant events

Events that happened to you and you didn't realize was significant until later on
ex.) remembering how a relationship started but didn't realize how important your meeting was until after connecting/getting closer (breakups, environmental occurrences)

Transition points

Beginning of something; metamorphosis into a new...xyz
ex.) engagement, birth of siblings, identity formation

Reminiscence bump

Enhanced memory among older (over 40 y/o) people for events that occurred during teen and young adult years

Amygdala

two lima bean-sized neural clusters in the limbic system; linked to emotion.

Flashbulb memories:

memory for circumstances surrounding shocking, highly charged important events

Repeated recall method

comparing later memories to memories reported immediately after to see if memory changes over time

The constructive nature of memory

The idea that what people report as memories are constructed based on what actually happened plus additional factors, such as expectations, other knowledge, and other life experiences.

Source monitoring

paying attention

Source memory

process of determining the origins of our memories.

Source monitoring error

Misidentifying source or memory; source misattribution

Concepts

mental representation (having pictures in your mind)
ex.) concept of animals and then imagining animals

Categories

Placing items into groups. Helps us understand new examples we haven't previously encountered
ex.) placing kittens into a group and dogs into another group

Definitional approach to categorization

category membership based on whether the object meets the definition of the category

Family resemblance

Things in a category resemble one another in a number of ways

The prototype approach

typical prototype is based on an "average" of category members encountered in the past

The exemplar approach

argues that we first learn information about some specific examples of a concept; then we classify each new stimulus by deciding how closely it resembles all of those specific examples, easily to take into account atypical cases

Gender stereotypes

beliefs about characteristics deemed appropriate for males and females
- develops in childhood

Stereotype

oversimplified generalization about a group of people

Draw a scientist Meta-analysis

- 5 decades of studies examine US Childrens gender science stereotypes
-Historically less than 1% of children drew female scientists
-Presently 28% of children draw female scientists

Stereotype threat

anxiety that you will confirm a negative stereotype about your social group which interferes with your performance

Think differently mindset

Way to overcome your own stereotypes

Persistence of vision

continued perception of a visual stimulus even after it is no longer present

Echoic memory

Brief sensory memory for auditory stimuli that lasts for a few seconds after a stimulus is extinguished.

Articulatory Suppression

Interference with operation of the phonological loop that occurs when a person repeats an irrelevant word such as "the" while carrying out a task that requires the phonological loop.

Perseveration

Difficulty in switching from one behavior to another, which can hinder a person's ability to solve problems that require flexible thinking. Perseveration is observed in cases in which the prefrontal cortex has been damaged.

Release from proactive interference

a situation in which conditions occur that eliminate or reduce the decrease in performance caused by proactive interference

Propaganda effect

People are more likely to rate statements they have read or heard before as being true, just because of prior exposure to the statements.

Illusions of learning: fluency

repetition causes the reading to become easier and easier giving the illusion of learning, increased fluency doesn't necessarily mean better memory of the material

Illusions of learning: familiarity effect

Rereading causes material to become familiar so when you encounter it a second or third time, there is a tendency to interpret this familiarity as indicating you know the material. recognition does not equal memorization

Illusions of learning:highlighting

Highlighting material does not mean that you are deep thinking with the material

Reactivation

A process that occurs during memory consolidation, in which the hippocampus replays the neural activity associated with a memory. During reactivation, activity occurs in the network connecting the hippocampus and the cortex. This activity results in the formation of connections between the cortical areas.

Schema

a person's knowledge about what is involved in a particular experience

Script

A type of schema. The conception of the sequence of actions that describe a particular activity. For example, the sequence of events that are associated with going to class would be a "going to class" script.

Basic level category

In roschs categorization scheme, the level before global level. According to Rosch the basic level is psychologically special because it is the level above much information is lost and below which little is gained

Spreading activation

activity that spreads out along any link in a semantic network that is connected to an activated node

anterograde amnesia

a type of memory loss that occurs when you cant form new memories

retrograde amnesia

inability to retrieve information from ones past

Dr. Elizabeth Loftus: How reliable is your memory and the misinformation effect

memories are not static recordings but are reconstructive, meaning they can be altered over time, influenced by suggestions or new information. Compared memory that of a wikipedia page, we and other people can go and change aspects of it

Dr. Steve Ramirez and Dr. Xu Liu: A mouse. A laser beam. A manipulated memory.

Showed its possible to manipulate specific memories in a mouse using a technique called optogenetics. Significance of this is for understanding how memories are formed, stored, and potentially altered in the brain, offering insights that could one day apply to humans.