Lecture 7 Flashcards
long-term memory (38 cards)
What is autobiographical memory (AM)?
Memory for personal life events that supports the sense of self and identity.
What is Conway’s Self-Memory System (SMS)?
A model in which autobiographical memory is organized around a working self, with memories supporting identity, goals, and coherence.
What is the Diary Method in memory research?
A method where participants record daily events to study real-world memory retention over time.
What did Linton (1975) find using the Diary Method?
Memory declined over time, but retesting events improved long-term recall.
In Wagenaar’s study, which memory cue was least effective?
The “when” cue (time-related information).
What is the cue-word technique?
Participants are given a cue (e.g., “river”) to retrieve a related autobiographical memory.
What is the associative deficit in aging?
Older adults have more difficulty remembering associations (e.g., name–face pairs) than remembering individual items.
What’s the difference between recollection and familiarity?
Recollection: Detailed memory of an event (declines with age)
Familiarity: Feeling of knowing something without specific details (often preserved in aging)
Who was Patient H.M., and what was his condition?
A man with anterograde amnesia after removal of medial temporal lobes; preserved STM and procedural learning, but no new episodic memories.
Which brain structures are critical for episodic memory?
Hippocampus
Mamillary bodies
Anterior thalamus
Posterior cingulate (part of the Papez circuit)
What is declarative memory?
Conscious memory of facts and events, including episodic and semantic memory.
What is procedural memory?
Unconscious memory for skills and habits (e.g., riding a bike), often preserved in amnesia.
What is episodic memory?
Memory for specific events, including what, when, and where something happened.
What is semantic memory?
Memory for general knowledge and facts about the world.
What cognitive ability depends on episodic memory beyond remembering the past?
Imagining future events (episodic future thinking or mental time travel).
What did Cohen & Squire (1980) find in amnesic patients?
Amnesics could learn tasks like mirror reading, showing procedural learning remained intact.
What did Graf, Squire & Mandler (1984) show about implicit memory in amnesia?
Amnesic patients performed well on priming tasks (e.g., word completion) despite poor recall or recognition.
What does the dissociation between declarative and procedural memory suggest?
Different brain systems support these types of memory, and they can function independently.
Which of the following statements represents a fundamental problem for diary studies of autobiographical memory?
(d) The recorded diary entries are likely to suffer from a selection bias, and so tend to be more memorable than events that were randomly sampled.
Rubin and colleagues examined the distribution of autobiographical memories recalled by older participants. Which statement most accurately describes the recall of autobiographical memories experienced when the participant was 2-6 years old.
(d) Fewer memories are remembered in these pre-school years, with the phenomenon known as infantile amnesia.
. Uitvlugt and Healey (2019) examined the free recall of news stories concerning U. S., President Trump. Which statement most accurately describes their main findings?
(a) They found that participants remembered more recent news events and recalled successive events that were close in time to each other.
Which of the following memory test might one expect the greatest decline as one ages?
(d) Performance on a free recall test.
Which of the following types of test might amnesic patients show relatively preserved abilities?
(b) Procedural information, e.g., Remembering how to play the piano.
Which statement most accurately describes the proposed role of rehearsal in the Phonological Loop model of Working Memory (Baddeley, 1986)?
(a) Rehearsal offsets the negative effects of trace decay.
