Week 2 Lecture 2 - memory

Question 1

What is episodic memory?

Answer 1

memory for specific events located at at specific moment in time

Question 2

What is sematic memory?

Answer 2

facts about the world

Question 3

How are episodic memory and semantic memory functionally different?

Answer 3

they hold different types of information
they hold different experiences

Question 4

In the case of 147 cases on amnesia, what was found?

Answer 4

• substantial loss of episodic but semantic loss generally smaller
• damage to hippocampus affects episodic more than semantic BUT hippocampal amnesia my affect acquisition of new semantic memories more than retrieval of old ones

Question 5

What do semantic dementia patients suffer from? Where is the brain damaged?

Answer 5

• severe loss of concept knowledge but intact episodic memory
• damage to anterior frontal and anterior temporal lobes

Question 6

Are episodic and semantic memories independent?

Answer 6

Yes but many LTM are a mix of episodic and semantic memories
they dynamically interact and affect each other

Question 7

What was Bartlett’s approach to meaning and schemas?

Answer 7

• recall of complex material
• examined recall errors
• stressed ppts effort after meaning (unlike Ebbinghaus)

Question 8

What is a Schema?

Answer 8

• structured representations of knowledge
• can be used to make sense of new material
• influenced/determined by social and cultural factors

Question 9

How might schematic knowledge affect memory?

Answer 9

may affect memory, especially after longer intervals

Question 10

What does ascribing meaning to stimuli affect?

Answer 10

encoding and storage

Question 11

How do related words in a list tend to be recalled?

Answer 11

as a cluster/ together

Question 12

When given the opportunity to organise info in a meaningful way, what is memory guided by?

Answer 12

meaning

Question 13

What is Paivio’s Dual-coding hypothesis?

Answer 13

more imageable words are more memorable

Question 14

What can words be encoded in terms of?

Answer 14

visual appearance
verbal meaning

Question 15

What do multiple encoding routes lead to?

Answer 15

increased rate of successful recall

Question 16

What level of processing is better for recognition?

Answer 16

deep processing
particularly for “yes” responses
studied with matched RT across tasks observed the same effect

Question 17

What are some limitations of LOP theory?

Answer 17

difficult to define and measure
LOP not processed serially but simultaneously
deeper not always more memorable

Question 18

What are the levels in LOP?

Answer 18

visual (structure)
phonological (acoustic)
sematic (meaning)

Question 19

What is transfer appropriate processing (TAP)

Answer 19

memory retrieval is best when the cues available at testing are similar to those available at encoding

Question 20

How can the LOP effect be explained in terms of TAP?

Answer 20

deep encoding more similar to the way memory is tested

Question 21

According to TAP when is learning most efficient?

Answer 21

when tested the same way as learned

Question 22

Why is deep coding better?

Answer 22

elaborative rehearsal enhances delayed LT learning more than maintenance rehearsal

Question 23

What is elaborative rehearsal?

Answer 23

linking it to other material

Question 24

What is maintenance rehearsal?

Answer 24

as something was learned

Question 25

Is recall better when words are presented in an organised or scattered order?

Answer 25

organised

Question 26

What type of organisation did Tulving believe that memory benefitted from?

Answer 26

subjective organisation e.g., chunking

Question 27

When are items chunked together?

Answer 27

if they are:
- linked to a common associate
- come from the same semantic category
- form a logical hierarchical structure or matrix

Question 28

What is the hierarchical network model?

Answer 28

• semantic memory organised into a series of hierarchical networks
• major concepts represented as nodes
• properties/ features are associated with each concept

Question 29

What is cognitive economy?

Answer 29

properties are stored higher up to minimise redundancy

Question 30

How do sentence verification tasks support the hierarchical network model?

Answer 30

unless info is directly linked/stored with a concept in semantic memory, we infer the answer from properties of higher nodes

making more inferences slows verification

Question 31

What are some problems with the sentence verification tasks?

Answer 31

• familiarity –> not all sentences were familiar
  –> when controlled reduces the hierarchical distance effect
  typicality –> verification is faster for more representative member categories, independent of hierarchical/semantic distance

Question 32

What is the spreading activation model?

Answer 32

• semantic memory is organised by semantic relatedness/distance
• length of links indicated the degree of semantic relatedness
• activity at one node causes activation at other nodes via links
• SA decreases as it gets further away from original point of activation

Question 33

What is some support for the spreading activation model?

Answer 33

• Semantic priming tasks
  when presenting 1 stimulus that is semantically related makes subsequent processing more efficient
• (Deese–Roediger–McDermott) DRM Paradigm
  activation should spread from all presented words to related word

Question 34

The Spreading Activation model is more flexible, what are some pros and cons of this?

Answer 34

Pros - can account for more empirical findings

Cons - reduces specificity of models predictions
- more difficult to test

Question 35

What are some limitations of the spreading activation model?

Answer 35

• concept represented by single node = oversimplified
• does each concept have a fixed mental representation?
• no consensus on the most appropriate way to measure semantic distance

Question 36

What is the Situated Simulation Theory?

Answer 36

• concept are processed in different settings
• processing influenced by current context
• concepts incorporate perceptual properties and motor or action related properties

Question 37

What are some limitations of the Situated Simulation Theory?

Answer 37

• How variable are concepts across situations?
  concepts = stable core and context-dependent elements
• are these properties secondary - after concept memory has been accessed?