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