Episodic and semantic memory

Question 1

What is episodic memory?

Answer 1

• Memory for specific events located at a specific point in time
• ‘mental time travel’
• Backward to relive earlier episodes
  Look forward to anticipate and plan future events (e.g. you would imagine what a Sunday meal with your family looks like based on previous memory)

Question 2

What is Semantic memory?

Answer 2

• Memory for fact
• No mental time travel
• E.g. word knowledge, vocabulary, rules etc.
• Short delay: information is recalled in episodes
  Long delay: the same information is integrated into semantic memory

Question 3

How are episodic and semantic memory functionally different?

Answer 3

• Different types of information

- Different experiences

Question 4

What is neuropsychological evidence for the difference between semantic and episodic memory

Answer 4

147 cases of amnesia

• Substantial or even dramatic loss of episodic memory
• Semantic memory effects more variable and generally smaller
• Damage to the hippocampus (and the MTL) affects episodic memory far more than semantic memory
• BUT: hippocampal amnesia may affect acquisition of new semantic memories more than retrieval of old ones.

Question 5

What are the different brain regions associated with episodic and semantic memory?

Answer 5

• Semantic memory: anterior frontal lobe, anterior temporal lobe
• Episodic deficit: amygdala, hippocampus

Question 6

What is the difference between Bartlett’s approach compared to Ebbinghaus?

Answer 6

he stressed participants’ effort after meaning

Question 7

What are Bartlett’s Schemas?

Answer 7

• Structured representation of knowledge about the world, events, people or actions
• Can be used to make sense of new material, to store and later recall them
• Are influenced/ determined by social and cultural factors

Question 8

What are scripts?

Answer 8

knowledge about events and sequence of events/ actions e.g. actions in a coffee shop

Question 9

What are frames?

Answer 9

fixed structural information e.g., how a coffee shop looks (organisation of the physical environment)

Question 10

What do schemas appear to be universal to

Answer 10

people of a similar background

Question 11

What was Bartlett’s ‘the war of the ghosts’ experiment?

Answer 11

• Native American folk tales shown to Western people
• People committed many errors and distortions when they asked to recall these
• In their recall they made the story more coherent and omitted details
• These distortions were more consistent with their own semantic knowledge
• Recalled stores were ‘westernised’
• Criticism: vague instructions

Question 12

What is the role of meaning in memory?

Answer 12

• Ascribing meaning to stimuli affects encoding and storage
• Carmichael et al. (1932)
  § Shown the same pictures but with different labels
  § When asked to draw it later they drew something that looks more like their label

Question 13

What is Paivio’s Dual-coding hypothesis?

Answer 13

• More imageable words (e.g. concrete nouns) are more memorable
• High imageability (church, beggar) have two routes of encoding:
  § Visual appearance
  § Verbal meaning
• Low imageability (virtue ect.) only has one route of encoding
  § Verbal meaning
• Multiple encoding routes improve the chance of successful recall

Question 14

What is levels of processing theory (LOP)

Answer 14

• Input is processed in a variety of levels going from most shallow to deepest:
  § Visual (structure)
  § Phonological (acoustic)
  § Semantic (meaning)
• Most information into long-term storage with deepest level of processing (semantic)
• deeper coding is better for memory

Question 15

What are the Levels of Processing pros?

Answer 15

• Replicated in numerous studies (various encoding tasks)
• Affects both recognition and recall
• Incidental or not memory test

Question 16

What are the Levels of Processing criticisms?

Answer 16

• Difficult to define and measure
  § Processing speed?
• Levels of processing (features) are not processed in a serial order but simultaneously
• Other studies have found deeper processing is not always more memorable

Question 17

What is the Transfer appropriate processing theory?

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Can the LOP effect be explained in terms of the transfer appropriate processing (TAP_ theory?

Answer 18

Yes: deep encoding is more similar to the way the memory is tested

Question 19

What is maintenance rehearsal and what is elaborative rehearsal?

Answer 19

• Maintenance rehearsal: as something was learned vs

Elaborative rehearsal: linking it to other material

Question 20

Why is elaborative rehearsal better for memory?

Answer 20

Richer and more elaborate encoding leads to better memory

- Elaborative rehearsal enhances delayed long-term learning more than maintenance rehearsal

Question 21

What is the hierarchical organisation theory?

Answer 21

Recall is better when words are organised rather than put in a random order

Question 22

When are items often chunked together?

Answer 22

§ Linked to a common associate (e.g. syringe, point, knitting are all linked to needle)
§ Come from the same semantic category
§ Form a logical hierarchical structure or matrix

Question 23

What are factors that aid encoding?

Answer 23

§ Create Connections (imagery, meaning)
§ Organisation (recall by groups, present in an organised way)
§ LOP/TAP (deeper processing, similar encoding – retrieval procedures)
Active creation (generate, test)

Question 24

What are concepts?

Answer 24

mental representations and the fundamental units of thought e.g., concept of bird, animal ect.

Question 25

What is the hierarchical network model and what is support for it?

Answer 25

• Semantic memory organised into a series of hierarchical networks
  § Major concepts are represented as nodes
  § Properties/ features are associated with each concept
• Cognitive economy: properties are stored higher up to minimise redundancy
• Support: sentence verification task
  § Ps presented with sentences and asked whether sentence is true or false (e.g. a canary is yellow, a canary can fly, a canary has skin, a canary is a fish)
  § The property ‘yellow’ Ps are quicker to identify as T because it is on the same hierarchy
  § Time taken to identify concepts as T/F became progressively slower as concept is further away in the hierarchy
  The more inferences we have to make in our thinking the slower the answer

Question 26

What are problems with the hierarchical model?

Answer 26

§ ‘A canary has skin’ is not a familiar sentence
§ When familiarity controlled the hierarchical distance effect is greatly reduced
- Typicality:
§ Verification is faster for more representative member categories, independent of hierarchical/ semantic distance
§ A penguin is a bird takes more time than a canary is a bird because we come across penguins being birds less often

Question 27

What is the spreading activation model?

Answer 27

• Semantic memory is organised by semantic relatedness/ distance
• Length of links indicates the degree of semantic relatedness
• Activity at one node causes activation at other nodes via links
• Spreading activation decreases as it gets further away from the original point of activation
• A PENGUIN is a bird (slow activation)
• A CANARY is a bird (strong activation)

Question 28

The spreading activation model is more flexible than the hierarchical network model. What are the pros and cons of this?

Answer 28

• Pros of flexibility:
  § The spreading activation model can account for more empirical findings
• Cons of flexibility:
  § The flexibility also reduces the specificity of the model’s predictions
  § More difficult to test

Question 29

What are the limitations of the spreading activation model?

Answer 29

§ The notion that each concept is represented by a single node is oversimplified
§ What about abstract concepts such as ‘justice’
§ Does each concept have a fixed mental representation?
Ø Situation/ context in which we encounter concepts changes the way we process them
Ø Do different people have similar representations of any given concept
§ No consensus on the most appropriate way to measure semantic difference.

Question 30

What is the situated simulation theory?

Answer 30

• Concepts are processed in different settings
• Their processing is influenced by the current context/ setting
• Concepts incorporate perceptual properties and motor or action-related properties
  § Processing of concepts depends on the situation and the perceptual + motor processes in a given task

Question 31

What are the limitations of the situated simulation theory?

Answer 31

§ How variable are concepts across situations?
Ø Concepts = stable core + context-dependent elements
§ Are these properties secondary – after concept meaning has been accessed?
· Concepts and the brain

Question 32

What is the Grandmother cell hypothesis?

Answer 32

§ Semantic memories are represented in the brain as whole objects
§ Each object/ concept has its own node or neuron
§ E.g. there is a special neuron representing your grandmother
§ Types of nodes are grouped together (e.g. all living things)
§ Most evidence suggests that this is not the case

Question 33

What is the feature based approach?

Answer 33

§ Different kinds of information about a given object are stored in separate brain regions
§ E.g. visual information is stored in one part of the brain, while the auditory linked with that object is stored in another
§ This view is becoming increasingly popular

Question 34

What is the hub and spoke model?

Answer 34

§ Hub: modality-independent conceptual representations (general representation)
§ Spokes: Modality-specific brain areas. Sensory and motor (perceptual features). Distributed across the cortical areas of the brain

Question 35

What is neuropsychological evidence for the hub and spokes model?

Answer 35

§ Semantic dementia:
§ General semantic deficits e.g. naming objects, sorting objects in categories ect
§ Category-specific deficits:
§ Greater difficulty identifying/ naming living than non-living objects
§ The fact that you can get different types of semantic amnesia shows that category specific is stored in the spokes (the cortical areas)

Question 36

What is the evaluation for the hub and spoke model including it’s limitations?

Answer 36

• Increasing evidence that concepts are organised in the hub (core) + spokes (modality-specific)
• Limitations (open issues)
  § The role of anterior temporal love may be more complex
  § Does familiarity with concepts affect their organisation in the hub?
  § How many ‘spokes?’
  How is information integrated between the spokes and the hub?

Question 37

Give a summary of semantic memory

Answer 37

· The distinction between episodic and semantic memory is supported by neuropsychological evidence
· Information within semantic memory is organised in various ways
· The hierarchical model suggests that concepts are organised in a hierarchical way with nodes and features along a hierarchy
· Spreading activation model stresses semantic relatedness and distance between concepts
· According to Barsalou concepts incorporate perceptual and motor features and their processing is affected by the context in which they are encountered
· Hub-and-spoke model provides a neurobiological way that concepts are organised incorporating modality-general (hub) and modality-specific (spokes) features.