Lecture 1 - Intro to Learning & Memory

Question 1

What behaviour would demonstrate episodic memory?

Answer 1

Describing an event from your past

Question 2

What behaviour would demonstrate semantic memory?

Answer 2

Retrieving knowledge of the world

Question 3

What behaviour would demonstrate procedural memory?

Answer 3

Recalling how to carry out actions

Question 4

What behaviour would demonstrate working memory?

Answer 4

Remembering instructions and consulting LTM

Question 5

Give some examples of procedural memory (in terms of perceptual-motor skills)

Answer 5

Kicking a ball, opening a door, driving a car

Question 6

Outline the case of Clive Wearing

Answer 6

Contracted a herpes virus which caused a dense form of amnesia
He had no awareness of any past or future
Lost his episodic memory

Question 7

Give a cognitive psychological definition of memory (Baddeley et al)

Answer 7

“Memory does not comprise a single unitary system, but rather an array of interacting systems, each capable of encoding or registering information, storing it, and making it available by retrieval”

Question 8

Describe Ebbinghaus’ contributions to memory research

Answer 8

Considered the father of experimental memory research
Used nonsense trigrams to study forgetting
Discovered the forgetting function

Question 9

Describe Ebbinghaus’ forgetting function

Answer 9

Function is logarithmic (initially rapid then slows down)

i.e., forgetting is a function of time elapsed

Question 10

Describe Bahrick et al.’s (1975) study of memory

Answer 10

Found that people had extremely good recognition of yearbook photographs after 50 years
Recognition is much better than free recall (recognition shows very little forgetting)