Anderson Ch.7 Human Memory: Retention And Retrieval

Question 1

Norman 2009

Answer 1

Participants were show a list of words and asked to either imagine how and artist would draw the item, or imagine the functional use of the item. They trained a pattern analyzer to recognize the brain activity of both. The classifier recognized the activity when people remembered and when they forgot. Evidence that even though we can’t consciously remember, some remanent of activity remains.

Question 2

Interference

Answer 2

In addition to the passing of time, interference also contributes to memory loss. One experiment that shows the effect of interference on memory- experimental group and control group learn the same listA of paired associations following this the experimental group learns another list where one the associations is the same as the ones in listA. The control group learns a list with all new associations. After a delay, the groups are tested on the memory of ListA. The control groups out performs the experimental group.

Question 3

The Fan Effect

Answer 3

Explanation for interference effect. When participants are presented with a stimulus such a, cat, activation will spread from its source stimulus to all of its associated memory structures. The amount of activation from a source is limited, so the greater number of associated memory structure the less activation that will spread to any one structure.

Question 4

Nelson (1971)

Answer 4

Indicated that forgotten material still existed. Participants learn a list of 20 aired association, each with a number and a noun. They were tested until they could recall without error. 2 weeks later they could recall 75%. Participants were given new trails with 20 paired associations. The association were either kept the same or changed. With the unchanged pairs they recalled 78% of the item, but only 43% the changed. The large advantage of the original paired items indicates some retained memory.