Final Exam Flashcards
1
Q
What is the modal model of memory by Atkinson and Schiffrin?
A
- Environmental input, goes into the sensory registers (visual, auditory, haptic)
- then short term store and temporary working memory (control processes of rehearsal, coding, decisions, retrieval strategies)
- there could be a response output or it goes in long term store or permanent memory store (interaction between STM and LTM)
2
Q
What is iconic memory?
A
- A temporary buffer that holds visual information for very brief periods of time
3
Q
- What is visual persisitence?
A
- The apparent persistence of a visual stimulus beyond its physical duration (lightning flash)
4
Q
What are the characteristics of visual sensory memory?
A
- The capacity, the duration, the representation
5
Q
What was Sperlings experiment for whole report?
A
- Used a tachistoscope to quickly present images to the eyes
- Subjects saw 3x4 grid of letters presented very briefly (50ms)
- In the whole report condition, SS had to free recall the letters (as many as possible) immediately after presentation
- Whole report performance was poor (37% accuracy or 4.5/12 avg)
6
Q
What was Sperlings experiment for partial report?
A
- A tone was sounded right after the letter grid disappeared
- High pitch tone for tope row, medium for middle and low for bottom
- Partial report accuracy was at 76% (3/4 items from cued row) immediately after presentation
- Performance dropped if the delay was greater than 250ms between presentation of array and tone cue = infer trace duration
- Duration of iconic memory = 250ms
7
Q
How is iconic memory represented?
A
- Pre-categorical coding = physical, looks like input in of itself (snapshot of image)
8
Q
What is echoic memory?
A
- Parallels visual sensory store (iconic memory) but for auditory information
- Capacity, duration and representation
9
Q
What is the sensory stores for both echoic and iconic memory?
A
- Echoic memory: veridical, 4s duration, large capacity
- Iconic memory: veridical, 250ms, large capacity
For both: partial report gives truer estimate of capacity
10
Q
What are the different aspects of STM?
A
- Follows attentional filtering stage
- Where immediately present moment is held in consciousness
- Active mental effort is expended
- Comprehension takes place
- Constant refreshing and integration of new information
11
Q
How did Miller describe chunking?
A
- Chunking: grouping a series of apparently random items into a smaller number of meaningful segments to enhance recall,
- Can be induced by altering prosody of the presentation list, random digits are often best chunked into groups of about 3 items
- Miller suggested that memory span is not limited to a certain number of items but by the number of chunks
12
Q
What is the difference between STM and WM?
A
- STM: performance on experimental tasks involving the capacity to store small amounts of information over brief intervals, tested either immediately or after short delay (digit span)
- WM: a system that allows for the temporary storage and manipulation of information to allow for reasoning, learning, and comprehension, higher level of cognition
13
Q
How is STM for consonants partially reliant on acoustic code even when letters are presented visualy?
A
- Memory is improved for lists of consonants with dissimilar sounds
- Acoustic information fades from short term store, items become confused for consonants sharing similar sounds rather than a similar visual form
14
Q
What is the difference between primacy and recency effect?
A
- Primacy effect: the first few items on a list have recall advantage
- Recency effect: the last few items on a list are very well recalled (eliminated by a brief delay filled with a distractor task)
15
Q
What is free recall and resutls?
A
- Involves asking SS to recall studied items in any order
- Recall probability for a given item declines as list length increases
- The absolute number of items recalled increases with list length
16
Q
What does the primacy effect depend on?
A
- LTM
- Related to tendency to rehearse first few items during initial presentation and throughout remainder of study list
- Rehearsed items have a better chance of entering LTM, making them available for later recall
17
Q
What are the factors that influence primacy effect?
A
- Affect LTM, affect recall of early and middle part of list
- Presentation rate (slower = more encoding), word frequency (more familiar = easier to recall), imageability (words more imaginable = easier recall), age (young = remember more), physiological state (drugs and alcohol= impair memory)
18
Q
What disrupts recency effects?
A
- Short distractor task disrupts short term store
- Interference is there bc of similar to be remembered material and suffix
19
Q
What is chaining?
A
- Method of remembering the order of items in which a person links each item to next in series
- Predicts that forgetting one link would prohibit any further recall in the chain (not well supported)
20
Q
What are the ordinal and positional models (inhibition and context)?
A
- Inhibition: inhibition of retrieved item leads to inhibition and activation of item
- Context: encoding of ordinal context that shifts over time as recall progresses
21
Q
What are the different working memory metaphors?
A
- Phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, central executive, episodic buffer
22
Q
What is Baddeley and Hitch multi component model?
A
- Central executive: an attentionally-limited system that selects and manipulates material in two slave systems:
- Phonological loop: holds sequences of acoustic/speech based items
- Visuo-spatial sketchpad: holds visually and/or spatially encoded items and arrays
- Episodic buffer added later
23
Q
What is the phonological loop?
A
- Speech and sound related component responsible for rehearsal of verbal info
Items rehearsed in articulatory loop and recoded if the presented info is in a visual format - Phonological store holds speech based info
24
Q
What are the different articulatory loop effects?
A
- Phonological similarity: similar sounding words are more confusable
- Word length effect: memory for multi-syllabic words is worse than single syllable words 9Welsh children with slow speech have lower WM)
- Irrelevant speech effect: involuntary access to the articulatory loop shown by comparing digits in silence vs digits with nonsense syllables vs digits with words (most interference)
25
What is articulatory suppression?
- A technique for occupying the vocal musculature
- During encoding of either visually or auditorily presented words, repeat nonsense item at the same time
- Suppression while encoding visually presented info wipes out recoding and wipes out phonologically similarity effect, unattended speech effect, and word length
- Auditory memory items, articulatory suppression does not abolish the phonologically similarity effect, no recode auditory items
26
What is the visuo-spatial sketch pad?
- A system specialized for visual and spatial information
- Distinction between spatial and visual information
- Double dissociation: two subsystems are being used for dual task, no interference
27
What did Logie (1995) suggest about the structure of the visuo-spatial sketchpad?
- Similar to the phonological loop and consists of visual cache and inner scribe
- Visual cache = a passive store, store visual info and holds info in VSSP
- Inner scribe: an active spatial rehearsal process
28
What is the central executive?
- An attentional controller with two main modes of operation
- Semi-automatic conflict resolution system based on existing habits and requiring little attention
- Function is to direct attention to the task at hand (planning next move or remembering position
29
What was the central executive inspired by?
- The supervisory attentional system
- Based on attentional limited executive
- Able to intervene when automatic conflict resolution is not possible or when a new situation arises
30
What are the problems of the three component model of WM?
- Cant explain why memory span can sometimes exceed the capacity of the subsystems (for words in a sentence, digit span),
- Cannot explain why images based on LTM do not depend on the sketchpad or phonological subsystems
31
What is the episodic buffer?
- Fourth component of WM system
| - Storage system with a capacity of around four chunks of info in a multidimensional code
32
How is the episodic buffer a solution to the problems with the WM model?
- Multiple dimension allow links between the subsystems as well as with LTM
- Info is retrieved through conscious awareness
- Allows for binding of previously unrelated concepts
33
What is episodic memory?
- System that can catalog unique
| - Method for storing the events durably ad searching and retrieving the events
34
Why does learning facilitate LTM?
- Levels of processing hypothesis
- Shallow to deep (visual form, phonology, semantics/meaning)
- The depths of processing helps determine durability in LTM
35
What is the difference between elaborative and maintenance rehearsal?
- Elaborative rehearsal: linking material being rehearsed to other material in memory
- Maintenance rehearsal: continuing to process an item at the same level at which it was encoded
36
What is the transfer appropriate processing (TAP)?
- Alternative view to LOP that considers both encoding and retrieval properties
- Processing requirements of test should match the processing conditions at encoding in order to reveal prior learning
37
What are context effects found for TAP?
- Mood dependent effects (happy vs sad retrieval)
| - Advantage as to where you learn info and where you get tested for info (matched vs mismatch scuba divers learning)
38
What did Tulving and Thompson find for encoding specificity?
- Anything present during learning a target can serve as an effective cue for later remembering that target
39
What is proactive interference?
- Earlier learned information negatively affects new learning
40
What is retroactive interference?
- New learned information negatively affects our ability to recall earlier learned information
41
Who was the most famous and earliest formal investigation of learning?
- Ebbinghaus
| - Researcher interested in technique of learning and wanted to understand what we were humanly capable of doing
42
What is distributed practice?
- Better to space out learning trials sparsely across a period of time than to mass them together into a single learning block
43
What is the spacing effect?
- Spaced presentation enhances memory for a variety of materials
44
What is the generation effect?
- Successfully testing yourself strengthens memories more than passively studying the items (the sooner the item is tested after initial presentation, the more likely it will be recalled and strengthened)
45
What is the expanding retrieval?
- When a new item is initially tested after a short delay to ensure that it is recallable
- As the item becomes better learned, the practice-test interval is gradually extended
- Recall failures shows that it should be presented after a shorter delay
- Successful recall indicates that the delay should be increased
46
What is subjective organization?
- Tulving found can learn verbal material spontaneously through subjective organization (how people customize their learning or way of organizing to be remembered info)
- chunking words together separate words for recall, even if those words weren't presented together
47
How are items chunked together?
- if items are linked toa common associate
| - If item come from same semantic category
48
What are the different strategies for improving memory?
- Creating a story involving all the studied items
| - Using visual imagery to have the studied items interact
49
What are the pros and cons of creating a story involving all the studied items?
- Pros: given enough time and imagination, its possible to create a story for early any set of items, promote elaborative encoding, building in links between items
- Cons: time intensive, risk of recalling part of the story that weren't actually studied
50
What are the pros and cons of using visual imagery to have the studied items interact?
- Pros: flexible and quick
| - Cons: best for concrete nouns
51
Who was the patient K.C?
- Survived motorcycle accident
- damaged hippocampus
- Impaired episodic memory
- Intact semantic and STM, procedural
52
What is implicit memory?
- Evident in changes of behavior rather than explicitly remembering information
53
What is procedural memory?
- LTM for skills and procedures that dont rely on conscious strategy
54
What is priming?
- implicitly influence the perception or processing of material caused by presenting it or a related stimulus beforehand
- Amnesic patients demonstrate normal susceptibility to priming
55
What are the two types of priming procedures?
- Stem completion
| - Word fragment completion
56
- What is the stem completion priming procedure?
- Provide first few letters of a previously seen word and ask them to come up with any word that fits
57
What is the word fragment priming procedure?
- Provide only some of the letters of a previously presented word and ask what might fit
58
What is the difference between perceptual and conceptual priming?
- Perceptual priming: the prime and the target share physical properties, sensitive to modality and form of the stimuli
- Conceptual priming: the prime and the target are related semantically
59
What is the priming method of lexical decision?
- Prime phase-exposure to memory items
- test phase-say yes if the letter string shown is a valid word
- Compare lexical decision RT for old versus new words
60
What is the priming method of perceptual identification?
- Prime phase-exposure to memory items
- Test phase-identify item
- Stimuli are partially obscured and gradually revealed
61
When is priming most effective?
- Short delays (1hr): explicit recall leads to better performance than word fragments completion
- Long delays (1 week): word fragment completion remains effective whereas free recall reveals substantial forgetting
62
Is semantic memory different from episodic memory?
- Different from episodic
- Left prefrontal cortex activated (right one is for episodic)
- Lesions in left pre frontal cortex has people forget definitions of words but they can recall episodes of their life or can learn new info
63
Does categorizing words help with recall?
- Mandler (1967) found that SS who were instructed to sort words into categories (no instruction to recall) were able to retain those words better
- Chunking improves memory
64
What is the hierarchical model of Collins and Quillan (1996)?
- Figure out how we store and organize information
| - Take common characteristic/attributes and link to a superordinate category
65
What is the prototype theory?
- Features which are typical for a category
- Prototype serves as a model instance
- typicality depends on overlap of features with prototype
- Core features are required whereas prototypical features are not
66
What is the spreading activation model by Collins and Loftus (1975)?
- Concepts are organized by their features rather than some existential quality
- Allows to account for close associates that don't fall in same category
- Activation of one node will spread to other associated nodes
67
What is the conceptual organization of the spreading activation model?
- Someone encounters of concept, node is activated
- Activation spreads to related concepts
- spreading activation decreases as it gets further away from original point of activation
- Explains typicality effect and explains semantic priming (fast to say butter after bread, than after nurse)
68
What are the pros and cons for spreading activation model?
- pro: more flexible than hierarchical network model, can account for more empirical findings
- Cons: flexibility reduces specificity of models prediction, making the spreading activation model difficult to test
69
What is the lexical decision task?
- SS are shown a letter string (series of letters) that could be a real word or non-word
- Respond yes if stimulus is word or no if it is not
- RT is primary index of performance
70
What are schemas?
- Well integrated chunks of knowledge about the world, events, people or action sequences, influence memory, allow to form expectations (violations = memorable/distinct)
71
How do schemas and semantic memory affect encoding?
- Selection: schema provide top down guidance of plausible events/details
- Abstraction: we drop the surface details and encode things that are consistent with schema
- Interpretation and integration: we piece together info and fill blanks using schema based knowledge
72
What are costs associated with use of schemas?
- Bartlett (1932) showed folk tales and ask SS to recall story
- Student recalled stories as shorter, more coherent, closely associated with own perspective (especially when expectation were
incompatible with story)
- intrusions of schematic knowledge caused systematic errors in recall
73
What was found for schemas and visual scenes?
- Palmer
- probability of identifying an object is facilitated when it is in an expected context and inhibited when context is inappropriate
74
What are scripts?
- They are within schemas
- Convey sequential info about common events
- Canonical (common) order is found across people
75
What are the successes related to schema theories that were evaluated?
- Explain why many memories become distorted
| - Strongly supported by evidence showing we possess schemas
76
What are the limitations of schema theories evaluated?
- Theories tend to be underspecified as are the schemas
- Cant predict when we invoke schemas to draw inferences
- Memory representations are more complex than simple schema theories predict
- predict that we make more mistakes than we actually do
77
What is retrieval?
- A progression from one or ore retrieval cues to a target memory trace through associative connections
- Aim is to make target available to influence cognition
78
What is content addressable memory?
- The ability to locate and access a complete memory using only a subset of the targets attributes as a cue
79
What are retrieval cues?
- bits of info about the target memory that guide the search
80
What is target memory trace?
- The particular memory were seeking
81
What are associations?
- Bonds that link together items in memory
| - Vary in strength as with spreading activation model
82
How does the factor of attention to cues help determine retrieval success?
- Reduced attention to a cue impairs its ability to guide retrieval effectively
- Evidence from divided attention
- encoding more disruptive than retrieval (retrieval requires less attention bc automatic spreading activation),
- for retrieval it reduces memory performance if secondary task is related to primary task and needs a lot of attention
83
How does the factor of relevance of cues help determine retrieval success?
- Retrieval cues are effective when they are strongly related to target
- Encoding specificity principle where retrieval cues are most useful if are present at encoding, explicitly encoded with target, maximally similar to original available encoding
84
How does the factor of cue target associative strength help determine retrieval success?
- Retrieval success depends on the strength of association between cue and target
- Determined by length and time and attention spent on encoding relationship
85
How does the factor of number of cues help determine retrieval success?
- Access to additional relevant cues facilitates retrieval
86
How does the factor of strength of target memory help determine retrieval success?
- Weakly encoded targets are more difficult to retrieve
| - high frequency encountered words are more easily recalled
87
How does the factor of retrieval strategy help determine retrieval success?
- Retrieval success is increased by taking advantage of the organization of the materials adopted at encoding and adopting a strategy that efficiency searchers through memory
88
How does the factor of retrieval mode help determine retrieval success?
- The frame of mind needed to interpret environmental stimuli as episodic memory, cues to guide retrieval
89
What are the different types of factors that help with retrieval success?
- attention to cues, relevance of cues, cue target associative strength, number of cues, strength of target memory, retrieval strategy, retrieval mode
90
What are the different context cues?
- Spatio-temporal: physical surrounding and time cues during event
- Mood: the emotional state during event
- Physiological: physical state during event
- Cognitive: collection of concepts that one has thought about around the event
91
what is the direct/explicit memory tests?
- Ask people to recall certain experience, require context as cue, tap contextual representations in hippocampus,
- Reveal impaired performance in amnesiacs
92
What is the indirect/implicit memory tests?
- Measure the unconscious influence of experience without asking to recall the past
- Context not used as cue
- No access to same memory traces as explicit tests
- normal performance in amnesiacs
93
What are roles of repetition priming and cryptomnesia in implicit memory tests?
- Repetition priming: recent experience with the stimulus improves performance
- Cryptomnesia: unintentional plagiarism due to failed source memory
94
What are the tests for direct explicit for retrieval tasks?
- Free recall, cued recall, forced-choice recognition, yes/no recognition
95
What are tests for implicit retrieval tasks?
- lexical decision, word fragment completion, word stem completion, conceptual fluency
96
What is environmental context dependent memory?
- Incidental context effects are reduced if SS focus inward rather than paying attention to environment
- Grows in magnitude with increasing delays b/t encoding and retrieval
- mentally reinstating the context reduces context dependent memory effects
97
What is state dependent memory?
- recall partially depends on match b/t learner environment at encoding and retrieval
disappears under recognition tests (cues are built in)
98
What is recognition memory?
- The ability to correctly decide whether one has previously encountered a stimulus in a certain context
- present intact stimulus,
- Requires discrimination between old and new stimuli (new = distractors)
99
What is the signal detection theory?
- Model for explaining recognition in memory
- Based on auditory perception experiments
- Typical tasks: as SS to detect faint tone presented against background noise, the tone loudness is manipulated
100
What does recognition accuracy depend on?
- Whether a signal was actually present
- Response of SS
Four possible outcomes (hits and correct rejections) that are correct and incorrect (false alarms and misses)
101
What are the assumptions of the signal detection theory in memory?
- Memory traces have strength values
- Activation levels dictate how familiar a stimulus feels
- new items less familiar than old items (new items may be similar to old items)
102
What is D prime?
- distance between distribution and SS ability to differentiate between new and old items
- Wider the D prime the less discriminable the items will be
103
What will a liberal versus a conservative guesser show for the signal detection theory in memory?
- Liberal guesser: response criterion shifted to left, accept more targets as old (hits), accept more lures as old (false alarms)
- Conservative guesser: shift beta to right, fewer hits, fewer false alarms
104
What are the pros of signal deteciton theory?
- Provide mathematical tool to estimate person ability to discriminate old from new items, bias to guess
- Corresponds with our intuition that we have a sense of item familiarity
105
What are the cons of signal detection theory?
- Fails to account for word frequency effect
- Low frequency words are better recognized, the theory incorrectly predicts low frequency items should be harder to recognize bc they are less familiar
106
What is the remember/know procedure?
- For each test items SS decide whether they recognize an item based on subjective feeling that they remember and know it being presented
107
What are the dual process accounts for recognition memory?
- Familiarity: sense of knowing something without being able to remember context, fast/automatic, perception of memory strength, signal detection theory
- Recognition: remembering contextual details about memory, slow and attention needed, cued recall
108
What is the difference between incidental forgetting an motivated forgetting?
- Incidental forgetting: occurs without intention to forget
- Motivated forgetting: occurs when purposely engage in processes/behaviors that intentionally diminish a memory's accessibility
109
What is the difference between a memory's availability and accessibility?
- Availability: whether or not an item is in the memory store
- Accessibility: whether the memory can be retrieved, given that it is stored
110
Can a memory be completely forgotten?
- No
- Be temporarily inaccessible bc it lacks appropriate cue
- Forgetting occurs in graded fashion
111
What are the factors that discourage forgetting?
- Better initial learning leads to better retention
- Repeated retrieval attempts builds up resistance to forgetting
- Jost Law: all else being equal, older memories are more durable and forgotten less rapidly than newer memories
112
What are factors that encourage incidental forgetting?
- Correlates of time
- Contextual fluctuation: mismatches b/t retrieval and encoding contexts encourages forgetting
- Interference: difficult to discriminate b/t similar memories
113
What is the competition assumption for interference?
- Cue activates all associates to some degree
| - Activated associates compete for access to awareness
114
What is retroactive interference?
- Forgetting caused by encoding a new traces into memory in b/t the initial encoding of the target and when it is tested
115
What is proactive interference?
- Older memories interfere with retrieval of more recent experiences and knowledge
116
What is part set cueing impairement?
- The tendency for target to be impaired by the provision of retrieval cues drawn from the same set of items in memory
- Worsens with number of cues ins et
117
What is associative blocking for the interference mechanisms proposed by the two factors model for retroactive interference from Melton et al?
- Cue fails to elicit target trace bc repeatedly elicits stronger competitor, abandon efforts to retrieve target
- Predictions: strength dependence and cue dependence
- E.I., tip of tongue, part set cueing, cue overload
118
What is associative unlearning for the interference mechanisms proposed by the two factors model for retroactive interference from Melton et al?
- When the associative bond linking to stimulus to a memory trace is punished by weakening it after being retrieved inappropriately
- Predictions: cue dependence
- E.i., retroactive interference
119
What is inhibition?
- Reduction in activity level of a contextually inappropriate response
- Allows an unwanted response to be stopped and an alternative response to be executed
120
What are the different predictions for inhibition in retroactive interference?
- Cue independence: forgetting caused by inhibiton should generalize to novel test cues
- Retrieval specificity: active retrieval from LTM needed to induce RIF of related info
- Interference dependence: interference from competitors during target retrieval is needed for RIF of related info
- Strength independence: degree competitors are strengthened by retrieval practice unrelated to size
of retrieval induced forgetting deficit
121
What is positivity bias?
- Tendency increasing over lifespan to recall more pleasant memories than either neutral or unpleasant ones
122
What does motivating forgetting encompass?
- Intentional forgetting: forgetting arising from processes initiated by a conscious goal to forget
123
What are methods of controlling unwanted thoughts?
- Limit encoding
- Prevent retrieval if its to late to stop encoding
- Stop retrieval in face of reminder
124
What is the difference between retrieval inhibition hypothesis and context shift hypothesis?
- Retrieval Inhibition: forget instructions inhibit list one items, reduces activation for unwanted memories and representing forgotten items restores their activation levels
- Context shift: forget instructions mentally separate list one from list two, context shift b/t lists, list two context lingers into final test and new context is poor retrieval cue for list one items
125
What is behavioral control?
- Ability to initiate discontinue or prevent motor actions based on goals
- Go/No-go task: press button whenever a letter appears on screen, if letter is X then withhold response
126
What is cognitive control?
- Ability to flexibly control thoughts in accordance with our goals to stop unwanted thoughts
- Think/No-think task: learn word pairs, retrieve target words, if cue is red avoid retrieval of learned target
127
What are different types of memory recovery?
- Passage of time
- Repeated retrieval attempts
- Cue reinstatement
128
Why do memories spontaneously recover?
- If RIF reflects inhibition for responses that had previously been relevant then forgotten memories recover when inhibition is gradually released
