Cognitive Psychology

Monday, January 23, 2023

Obj:

• Describe the roles of the frontal lobes, hippocampus, cerebellum, and basal ganglia in memory processing.
• Explain how emotions affect our memory processing
• Analyze how external cues, internal emotions, and order of appearance influence memory retrieval

What is our working memory capacity?

• Working memory capacity varies, depending on age and other factors.
• Compared with children and older adults, you’d adults have a greater working memory capacity

Explicit (declarative) memories - our conscious memories f facts and experiences-develop with effortful processing, which requires conscious effort and attention.

Implicit (non-declarative) memories - of skills and classically conditioned associations-happen without our awareness, through automatic processing

• Sensory memory feeds iconic and echoic information into working memory for active processing
• An iconic memory is a very brief sensory memory of visual stimuli; an echoic memory is a three- or four-second sensory memory of auditory stimuli

Describe the effortful processing strategies that help us remember new information

• Effective effortful processing strategies include chunking, mnemonics, hierarchies, and distributed practice sessions (which produce results due to the spacing effect)

• The testing effect is the finding that consciously retrieving, rather than simply rereading, information enhances memory.

• Explicit memories are either semantic (facts and general knowledge) such as George Washington was our first president or episodic (experienced events) such as I had a clown at my 6th party

Describe the roles of the frontal lobes and hippocampus in memory processing

• The frontal lobes and hippocampus are parts of the brain network dedicated to explicit memory formation
  • Many brain regions send information to the frontal lobes for processing
  • The hippocampus, with the help of surrounding areas of cortex, registers and temporarily holds elements of explicit memories before moving them to other brain regions for long-term storage (memory consolidation)
• Implicit memory formation:
  • The cerebellum is important for storing classically conditioned memories
  • The basal ganglia are involved in motor movement and help form procedural memories for skills.
• Many reactions and skills learned during our first four years continue into our adult lives, but we cannot consciously remember learning these associations and skills- infantile amnesia