encoding and consolidation

<aside> <img src="/icons/brain_pink.svg" alt="/icons/brain_pink.svg" width="40px" /> long term memory

✿ encoding
↳ process of acquiring information and transferring it to LTM
study results: no effect of repetition (number of intervening words) on encoding success how can we better encode information?
- does intention help to remember? study
  task: see a list of words
  participants made 2 judgments
  1. whether it contains an E or G
  2. how pleasant it is
  memory test: recall the words that you saw
  intentional learning group expected a memory test, incidental did not
  data: regardless of if you expected the test or not, you respond the same to memory test
  just the intention of memory doesn’t help you encode in a stronger way.
  BUT… pleasantness test had exponentially higher results
- depth of processing - Craik 1973
  “the meaningfulness extracted from the stimulus rather than… the number of analyses”
  Levels of Processing
  idea: the deeper the stimulus is processed the better it is encoded
  structural task: is the word in capital letters? ↳ e.g TABLE vs table
  phonemic task: does it rhyme with weight? ↳ e.g crate vs market
  category: is it a type of fish?
  ↳ shark vs heaven
  structural → phonemic → category
  shallow ————————————> deep
  result: better memory when depth of processing increases
  Other ways to establish deep Processing
  - Survival
    ↳ memory shaped by evolution to increase the ability to survive, basic survival challenges such as finidng food and evading predators
  - self reference
    list of adjectives, one of two judgements
    1. does this word describe you?
    2. is this word commonly used
    memory is better if you are asked to relate a word to yourself.
    participants
    self-reference effect
    ↳ you better remember the birthdays of people whose birthdays are closer to your own birthdays
  - Understanding
    ↳ understanding increases meaning during encoding
    task: Bransford and Johnson
    1. listen to a paragraph
    2. try to remember it
    3. recall as many ideas as possible
    surprise memory task!!!!
    context about an obscure paragraph lead to better encoding after having the textual context of what it was about
    however, no difference between no context, and context after the text. best encoding happens having the context before reading the text
  - Generation
    idea: if you generate information yourself using semantics, better encoding
    task: remember word pairs (some incomplete
    Key- Lock
    Bear - Fur
    Ear - Song
    the ones we had to guess ourselves were easier to remember, because we were generating the content and ideas ourselves.
  increased elaboration leads to better encoding
  richer network of semantic connections during encoding
✿ summary
↳ Increased elaboration leads to better encoding
↳ Richer network of semantic connections during encoding
↳ More ways to retrieve information during recall
- incorporating testing during encoding
  Roediger & Karpicke
  ↳ Participants studied some prose from Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOFEL)
  two conditions
  1. study, then study again
  2. study, then test
  final test after 5 minutes, 2 days or 1week
  results: if testing after 5 minutes group a did better, but after a delay (2 days, or 1 week) group b did better
  more retention when studying was followed by a test!
conclusions: encoding or “how should u study?”
ineffective: repetition and mere intention
effective: (deep meaning-based) processing
✿ storage/ consolidation
↳ the strengthening of information in long-term memory after the original learning experience
new memories are fragile and can be disrupted
task: study list 1 and then list 2
immediate study v.s delay
consolidation → the process that transforms new memories from a fragile state in which they can be disrupted, to a more permanent state
sleep is very good for consolidating memories
→ study - rats walk in a maze, firing of cells reveal that they encode rat’s location
→ while the mouse is sleeping, it starts to replay the path it took in the maze, simulating the experience.
how does this relate to learning?
→ hippocampal replay assists learning study
task: find cheese in a maze
→ disrupt hippocampal replay during sleep
result: consolidation really seems to happen during sleep
does this happen in humans?
approach: visual skill learning
Was there a T or L in the Middle?
sleep needed to improve on a task
27 participants played 7 hours of tetris of 3 days
Each night, they sept in the lab
They were woken in the first hour, and asked about their dreams
report:
novices reach the level of experts in skill
amnesics don’t improve
yet at night amnesiacs remember tetris game pieces in dreams (don’t remember context or where blocks are from)
novices dream about it
experts dre
summary
memory forms 3
✿ retrieval
→ the processing of accessing information stored into long- term-memory
- tip-of-the-tongue effect
  ↳ participants were given 204 probes of famous people
  ↳ initial rating of familiarity (like the harry styles test)
  ↳ successive testing over three weeks
  ↳ tip of tongue associated with associated partial information (first sound, length,..)
  → standard model of memory
  - memories distributed networks of associations
  - tip of tongue: not enough spread of activity between the nodes
    accessibility vs availability (phenomenon)
    available = the information is stored in memory
    accessible = the information can be retrieved
    prediction: presentation of cues should increase recall
    task: read the following sentences and remember the underlined words
    free recall v.s cued recall → presenting cues surrounding the context in which you try to memorize words, makes them accessible enough to be retrieved
    → individually activated and can reinforce one another
    retrieval cues
    - not all available info i acessible
    - acessiblity depends on having a good cue
    - if something is on ttoyt you just need a good cue!
- encoding speci**ficity (**what counts as a cue?)
  matching context between encoding and retrieval assists performance
  “we encode info along with it’s context”
  famous study: participants study lists of word in 2 enviroments
  1. group studies list on land
  2. group studies list underwater
result: participants that studied on land did better when studying on land,
result: those who studied underwater did significantly better when they were tested underwater → context in which they studied were retrieval cues
replicated at Princeton with VR →
music and encoding
study: participants read a study on pyschoimmunolgoy with headphones on
reading:
quiet condiiton: no sound
noise condition: cafeteria noise
short answer test on article
queit condition: no sound
noise condition: caefeteria sound
result: if studied with noise, test with noise is better performance. if studied with quiet, test with quiet better performance.
mood: participant studied a list of words and recalled them 2 days later
mood manipulated during study and test with happy or sad music
results: study with sad mood → test with sad mood better performance and etc…
other states → intoxication as a state, could it be a retrieval cue?
if you study drunk, better of testing drunk
relationship between encoding and retrieval
encoding specificity: context isn’t special just another set of associations
transfer appropriate processing
better performance when the type of processing matches during encoding and retreival
↳ explained through associative networks?
what counts as a cue?
types of processing as a retrieval cue? → e.g
Meaning condition
the_________ had a silver engine. TRAIN
the ________ walked down the street. BUILDING
rhyming condition
________ rhymes with legal. EAGLE
________ rhymes with car. POUND
↳ during retrieval/ tests ask
“does this word rhyme with one of the target words?”
RAIN (rhymes with train)
STREET (doesn’t rhyme)
result: in this task more words are retrieved from the rhyming task vs the meaning task
↳ this goes against levels of processing
deeper processing does not always ****result in better retrieval!
behavior is not determined by a single factor
interference (will be on the exam)
↳ retroactive interference: past memories become harder to remember because youve lerned so much information ( what was the name of the first person I met at this party?”
↳ proactive interference: new memory becomes harder to remember because theres so much information youve already learned (what was his name again → most recent person met at a party)
proactive interference in the lab
1. participants studied 10 pairs of adjectives
2. they came back, recalled the old list and studied new ones
3. they repeated this process two more times
4. results: never more than one list tested, but there was still interference