lecture 7- the foundations of cognition

Question 1

Types of memory:

Answer 1

Episodic: describing an event/situation/experience in one’s memory
Semantic: memory of information which allows us to recognise objects, understand language and form concepts
Procedural: performing a skill, long term memory
Sensory/ short term: allows us to briefly retain sensory information and form a cognitive framework for new information
Working memory: temporarily holds recently access information for task performance, used in learning, problem solving and decision making.

Question 2

Example of the formation of procedural memory:

Answer 2

• Participants shown a series of flashing blue dots in a specific pattern which changes over time and participants must remember the sequence
  
  • They might not cognitively notice this change in sequence bit may learn the sequence, people get faster on the repeated sequence even if they don’t notice the repetition
  • This can also happen when you only observe someone doing the task (Heyes and Foster 2002)

Procedural memory also includes perceptual-motor skills such as
- Kicking a ball, opening a door and driving a car
○ Perceptual input guide motor output
○ Also applies to mental skills

Question 3

Clive wearing

Answer 3

• This case shows that different areas of the brain affect different types of memory
  
  • In this instance, the herpes virus crossed the brain barrier and caused inflammation, damaging the temporal cortex- hippocampus
  • Resulting in significant memory deficit and damage to frontal lobes resulted to repetition and extreme behaviour changes
  • Clive had no long-term memory but could still play the piano as his procedural memory was intact

Question 4

Memory is the fundamental basis of cognition:

Answer 4

• Perception involves memory, recognition- sensory input + prior knowledge
  ○ Memory underpins the purely internal mental processes
  
  • Also needed for internal mental processes such as problem solving, decision making and planning

Baddeley 1999 definition of memory
Memory works as a storehouse and has a specific set of contents. It works as a process, encoding, storing and retrieval

Question 5

Photographic memory

Answer 5

Known as eidetic memory
- It is tested by presenting individuals with images and asking them to recall them in detail
Brain imaging techniques can also be used to study the neural activity associated with eidetic memory and understand the mechanisms behind it

Question 6

Eidetic memory case studies

Answer 6

Stromeyer and Psotka 1970 claimed a Harvard student had photographic memory
She was able to mentally fuse 2 images seen on successive days into a 3d images

Merritt 1979: took out advertisements in magazines and newspapers and asked people can you see the hidden image when the two images are overlayed and only 30 people gave the correct answer. They visited half of the participants to see if they could do it again and none of could

Haber 1979: something like eidetic memory is sometimes found in young children but gradually disappears as one ages

Question 7

Measuring forgetting:

Answer 7

Using a retention interval to test memory after varying intervals, revealing how memory changes over time.
This can help us to identify patterns in the rate of forgetting and improve retention
By studying this, we can learn how memories are formed and stores and ultimately improve our ability to remember important facts

Question 8

Ebbinghaus;

Answer 8

• Studies forgetting using nonsense syllables like ROH and LEZ
  
  • Much of what we forget is lost relatively soon after we originally learn it
  • How quickly we forget material depends on how well the material was encoded, how meaningful the material was and how often it was rehearsed

Question 9

The method of savings:

Answer 9

A mnemonic technique used to measure the difference in retention between first time learning and re-learning a list of items.
- First learn a list of items until you can correctly recall them and count how many trial it took to reach this level and call this number t
- Wait for a period of time (retention interval) before re-learning the same list of items
- Re-learn the list and count the number of times, call it t2
- If it takes fewer trials to learn the second time, the difference in trials must be due to memory
○ You will have savings of a certain percent.

Question 10

Bahrick 1984 on forgetting

Answer 10

how much saving do people show for Spanish vocabulary learnt at high school- forgetting is initially rapid but if word is still accessible after 3 years, then likely to be well preserved 30 years later.
1975: people had extraordinarily good recognition of photographs of their classmates even after 50 years.

Question 11

Latent memory: Blodgett 1929:

Answer 11

The ability to remember information not immediately available to our awareness
- The experiment showed rats improved maze learning on the 3rd day, despite no external reinforcement, suggesting existence of latent memory
- Group 2’s performance did not improve on non-rewarded days.
- The initially non-rewarded group learned the maze but it was not immediately observable