IPSYC 283: Lecture 15 - Long Term Memory, Part I

Preview

STM and LTM
Memory Tasks
Memory Types and Evidence
Levels of Processing

Learning Outcomes

By the end of class you should be able to:
- Compare and contrast STM and LTM
- Describe several memory tasks and their implications
- Describe several different memory types and their evidence
- Discuss levels of processing

Which is the Penny?

This is a test to see how well people remember details of everyday objects.

Which is the Apple Logo?

Similar to the penny exercise, this tests memory for common logos

Memory

What is the point of studying memory?

Stages of Information Processing

Information goes through several stages:
- Sensory Filter
- Store
- Pattern Selection
- Recognition
- STM (Short-Term Memory)
- LTM (Long-Term Memory)

STM and LTM

Why do we think there are at least two different types of memory? (Hint: S_ P_ C____)
Short term memory (STM) accounts for the…
Long term memory (LTM) accounts for the…

STM and LTM

How can we eliminate the recency effect?
How can we eliminate the primacy effect?

STM and LTM

How does LTM differ from STM?
- Which can hold more information?
- Which can hold onto information for longer/after gaining new information?
- We want important things to go into LTM so that they don’t get replaced
- What do we call getting things from STM to LTM?
- How do we get things into LTM?

STM and LTM

What is the difference between maintenance rehearsal and elaborative rehearsal?
- Which is better?
What is retrieval?

STM and LTM

How do we search STM?
- In STM, we are just as fast when the search item is in memory as when it is not
What about LTM?

STM and LTM

For LTM, searches are faster when we find the item compared to when we do not
- This is evidence of…
This should make sense, unlike STM which has few items to search through, searching LTM could go on a LONG time if we had to search everything

STM and LTM

STM
- Accounts for recency effect
- Holds $7 \pm 2$ units or chunks
- Lose information due to replacement (and decay?)
- Can retrieve anything stored
- Exhaustive, parallel search
LTM
- Accounts for primacy effect
- Unlimited storage capacity
- Never lose the information due to time
- May be unable to retrieve information
- Self-terminating, serial search

Memory Types

What makes the distinction between STM and LTM meaningful?
Is cat memory and dog memory a meaningful distinction?
What about memory for faces versus objects?
What makes a type of memory a meaningful type of memory?

Memory Tasks

Let’s say you were read a list of words which included:
- Truck
- Happy
- Month

Memory Tasks

“Write down the words you remember”
- This is a recall task, you must generate the words you saw before (from memory)

Memory Tasks

“Which words did you see before?”
- BoatMonthEgg
- HappyWeekWrench
- DollarSodaTruck
- SavorTimerLunch
- This is a recognition task, you are given the words and asked which you have seen before

Memory Tasks

Complete the following words:
- M _ _ _ _
  - Note that you could complete these many ways
  - MARRY, MASKS, MEDAL, METAL, MONTH…
- TR _ _ _
  - TRUCK, TRICK, TRACK, TRAIN, TRAPS…
- H _ _ _ _
  - HEART, HAIRY, HAPPY, HEAVE, HANDS…
- This is an initial letters task, you are more likely to complete the words as a word you have recently seen

Memory Tasks

Identify the word below:
- HAPPY
- This is an example of word fragments, which are easier to identify if they are words you have recently seen

Memory Tasks

People with (some types of) amnesia can not do:
- Recall
- Recognition
But can do:
- Initial Letters
- Word Fragments
What is common to the pairs of tasks that they can and cannot do?

Memory Tasks

Both recall and recognition tasks require awareness
- In order to perform the tasks, you must know you have seen the words before
This is not the case for initial letters or word fragments
And people with amnesia are able to do these tasks, but still report that they do not remember seeing the words before

Memory Types

What is the difference between explicit and implicit memory?
- Explicit memory involves things of which we are aware, we remember these things and know that we remember them
- Implicit memory involves things of which we are unaware, but that still influence our behaviors

Memory Types

How do episodic and semantic memory differ?
- Both are explicit but…
  - Episodic memory memory for specific instances (what happened to you), event-centered
  - Semantic memory memory for concepts, facts, general and abstracted (rather than specific) knowledge, meaning-centered

Memory Types

What is semanticization?
- Some evidence that memories may typically begin episodic and become abstracted and combined with other info à semantic
- Some memories do stay episodic

Memory Types

What is procedural memory?
- Procedural memory is our memory for how to do things
- Is it implicit or explicit?
- Think about things you can do that you can’t say (or that get hindered by thinking)
  - Locker combinations, driving, etc.

Memory Types

People with amnesia may be able to learn procedural things (Tower of Hanoi, Mirror Trace) but do not remember ever seeing it before
Procedural is not the only type of implicit memory

Memory Types

EXPLICIT (conscious)
- LONG-TERM MEMORY
  - Episodic (personal events)
  - Semantic (facts, knowledge)
IMPLICIT (not conscious)
- Procedural
- Priming
- Conditioning memory

Memory Types

Interactions among the memory types
- Episodic can boost semantic
- Remembering how to do things (LSJ) – verbally and procedurally but not other semantic knowledge
- Use the right painting technique and answer questions about it

Behavioral Evidence

Serial position curve
Target primacy and recency effects independently
Experience semantic and episodic memories differently

Neuropsychological Evidence

HM has intact STM but not LTM (can’t form new memories)
KF has intact LTM but not STM (span of 2)
KC has intact semantic memory but poor episodic memory
LP has intact episodic memory but poor semantic memory
These are sets of…?

Neuropsychological Evidence

HM, KC, and LSJ have intact implicit memory, but not explicit memory
*Some of this is a combination of behavioral and neuropsychological evidence

Brain Imaging

Prefrontal STM
Distributed LTM
Hippocampus for both (?)
- Convert STM to LTM (?)
fMRI: distinct areas for episodic and semantic memory

Levels of Processing

“Shallow processing”
- Little has been done to the info
- It has not been combined/compared to other info
- It is difficult to retrieve
- Fewer false alarms
- Exact IF retrieved, “in tact”
- Faster to verify
“Deep processing”
- Processing has been done to the info
- It has been combined/compared to other info
- It is easier to retrieve
- More false alarms
- Gist if retrieved, reduced
- Slower to verify

Levels of Processing

Craik & Lockhart (1972)
- Structural (shallowest)
  - Capital letters, in red, length, “e”
- Phonemic
  - Rhyme
- Semantic (deepest)
  - Pleasant, synonym
- *Self-Reference (deeper-est)
  - Describes you

Book

Priming and Conditioning later
- Chapter 7
  - Elaborative rehearsal
  - Levels of processing
  - Self-reference effect

Review

LTM accounts for the effect
It can hold a(n) amount of information
For a(n) _ amount of time
It is searched in a , ____ - _____ way
The main reason we lose information from LTM is…

Review

Getting information into LTM is called…?
Getting information out of LTM is called…?
How can we get information into LTM?

Review

What is the difference between recall, recognition, initial letters, and word fragments as memory tasks?
What is the difference between explicit and implicit memory?
What is the difference between episodic and semantic memory?
What is procedural memory?
What is some of the evidence that we have more than one type of memory?

Review

What are levels of processing?
What is the self-reference effect?

Preview

This time we talked about long term memory
Next time we will discuss applications of long term memory for studying and eyewitness memory