Lecture 7

Question 1

Explicit memory

Answer 1

Conscious/intentional retrieval of information

• Semantic: facts and general knowledge
• Episodic: personal information that allows for ‘mental’ time travel’ and helps construct cohesive narratives of our lives based on connecting past and present.

Question 2

Implicit memory

Answer 2

The information that we do not store purposely and is unintentionally memorised.

• Procedural: motor
• Priming: enhanced identification of objects or words.

Question 3

Autobiographical memory

Answer 3

Personal record of significant events in one’s life.

Question 4

Flashbulb memories

Answer 4

Detailed recollections of when/where you where when something significant occurred (e.g., knowing the colour of a pen on a desk when you hear about shocking news)

Question 5

Emotional arousal

Answer 5

• Emotions increase memory.

In emotional situations the amygdala modulates encoding and storage of hippo-campal dependent memories. The hippocampus can influence the amygdala response when emotional stimuli are encountered.

Question 6

Herman Ebbinghaus

Answer 6

First to conduct experimental studies on memory.

• If something cannot be remember, does it imply that the memory no longer exists (storage), or that it cannot be found (retreival)?

Question 7

Forgetting Curve (Ebbinghaus)

Answer 7

The saving of information declined the longer the time between initial learning and test.

• Memory is transient, rapidly declines right after learning, followed by a slower decline.

Question 8

Interference (memory)

Answer 8

An obstruction in the retrieval of a memory event that is stored in LTM. Usually one memory event interferes with the other because they are similar.

Question 9

Proactive interference

Answer 9

Information learned prior to the ‘target’ interferes with learning new information.

• A difficulty in remembering a friend’s new phone number after having previously learned the old number.

Question 10

Retroactive interference

Answer 10

When newer memories interfere with the retrieval of older memories

• Once you have learned a new mobile number, it is often very difficult to recall your old number.

Question 11

Blocking and tip of the tongue experience

Answer 11

Information cannot be retrieved despite conscious effort.

• Happens relatively more often for names of places or people because the link with related concepts and knowledge is rather week.

Question 12

Absentmindedness

Answer 12

A lapse in attention resulting in memory failure.

• Attention lapses often arise from dual task situations where attention needs to be divided.

Question 13

Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm

Answer 13

False memories/recognitions can be easily evoked if they fit into a certain scheme.

Question 14

Suggestibility

Answer 14

The tendency to incorporate misleading information into personal recollections.

Question 15

Schacter’s 7 sins of memory

Answer 15

1. Transcience
2. Absentmindedness
3. Blocking
4. Memory misattribution
5. Suggestibility
6. Bias
7. Persistence

Question 16

Transience

Answer 16

Forgetting what occurs with the passage of time.

• Occurs during the storage phase of memory, after an experience has been encoded and before it is retrieved.

Question 17

Memory misattribution

Answer 17

Assigning a recollection or an idea to the wrong source.

• More prone to those with damage to the frontal lobes.

Question 18

Bias + sub-biases (7 sins)

Answer 18

The distorting influences of present knowledge, beliefs, and feelings on recollection of previous experiences.

• Consistency bias: to reconstruct the past to fit the present.
• Change bias: to exaggerate differences between what we feel or believe now and what we felt or believed in the past.
• Egocentric bias: to exaggerate the change between the present and past in order to make ourselves look good in retrospect.

Question 19

Persistence

Answer 19

The intrusive recollection of events that we wish we could forget.

• Influenced by the amygdala.

Question 20

Retrograde amnesia

Answer 20

Inability to recall events or experiences that took place prior to the event that caused amnesia.

• Retrieval problem
• Often temporally graded: most recent memories are affected first whereas oldest memories are usually spared.

Question 21

Anterograde amnesia

Answer 21

Inability to create new memories after the event that caused amnesia (problem with transfer from STM to LTM).

Question 22

Childhood amnesia

Answer 22

The first few years of childhood are extremely important for development, but we barely remember anything explicitly from that period.

• Due to hippocampus not being fully developed at birth.
• Schemes have not yet been constructed.

Question 23

Transient global amnesia (TGA)

Answer 23

A sudden loss of memory with both an anterograde and retrograde component.

Question 24

Dissociative amnesia

Answer 24

Memory loss of significant information about one’s life caused by a traumatic or stressful event.

Question 25

Localised amnesia

Answer 25

Memory loss regarding specific areas/points in time.

• Someone doesn’t remember being robbed, but remembers information from that day.

Question 26

Generalised amnesia

Answer 26

Memory loss regarding major parts of a person’s life and/or identity.

Question 27

Fugue amnesia

Answer 27

Most or all personal information is forgotten.

Question 28

Learning definition

Answer 28

An experience driven, relatively permanent change in the state of the learner.

Question 29

Habituation

Answer 29

Repeated exposure to a stimulus leads to a gradual reduction in responding to that stimulus.

• Stimulus specific
• Not sensory adaptation

Question 30

Sensitisation

Answer 30

Exposure to a stimulus leads to an increased response.

• Can enhance responses to other stimuli as well.