Memory

Question 1

What is the definition of learning?

Answer 1

A relatively permanent change in the reaction to a situation - Domjan 1998.

Question 2

How does Pearce (2008) define learning?

Answer 2

Long lasting change in behaviour as a result of previous experience.

Question 3

Why is the focus on behavior considered simplistic for humans?

Answer 3

Because it does not encompass the internal representation of relationships between events in the environment.

Question 4

What is memory?

Answer 4

The mental process of acquiring and retaining info for later retrieval.

Question 5

What are the three focuses of memory?

Answer 5

Encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Question 6

What must happen for memory to be retrieved?

Answer 6

It must have been previously stored.

Question 7

What must happen for memory to be stored?

Answer 7

It must have been previously encoded.

Question 8

Who conducted the first study of memory and when?

Answer 8

Ebbinghaus conducted the first study of memory in 1885.

Question 9

What did Ebbinghaus use in his memory studies?

Answer 9

Lists of CVC trigrams (meaningless consonant-vowel-consonant syllables).

Question 10

What is the forgetting curve?

Answer 10

An exponential loss of information, with the sharpest decline in memory occurring in the first 20 minutes.

Question 11

What does the Atkinson & Shiffrin model (1968) describe?

Answer 11

The Multi-Store Model (MSM) which includes sensory memory, short-term memory (STM), and long-term memory (LTM).

Question 12

What is sensory memory?

Answer 12

Stimuli in the environment are detected and initially encoded in sensory memory.

Question 13

What is the duration of STM?

Answer 13

Thought to be relatively brief, lasting seconds to minutes.

Question 14

What is the role of rehearsal in STM?

Answer 14

Rehearsal increases the duration of STM and the likelihood that info will be transferred to LTM.

Question 15

What is the serial position curve?

Answer 15

A phenomenon where people tend to remember the first and last items in a list better than the middle items.

Question 16

What is the digit span test?

Answer 16

A test of immediate verbal recall from STM where participants repeat back a list of numbers.

Question 17

What is chunking?

Answer 17

A strategy to fit more information into STM by grouping items together.

Question 18

Who is Clive Wearing?

Answer 18

A case study of amnesia who struggles to maintain information in STM but can remember some LTM.

Question 19

What is the role of the central executive in working memory?

Answer 19

It controls attention and processes information from the slave systems.

Question 20

What is the phonological loop?

Answer 20

A subsystem of working memory that processes verbal information based on sounds.

Question 21

What is the word length effect?

Answer 21

Recall is poorer for longer words because they are harder to rehearse.

Question 22

What is boundary extension?

Answer 22

A phenomenon where people draw more of a scene than what was presented, adding details based on prior knowledge.

Question 23

What are the two types of long-term memory?

Answer 23

Implicit and explicit memory.

Question 24

What is implicit memory?

Answer 24

Unconscious memory that is hard to verbalize, such as procedural memory for skills.

Question 25

What is explicit memory?

Answer 25

Conscious memory that can be verbalized, including declarative memories.

Question 26

What is episodic memory?

Answer 26

Personal memory for events that happened in the past.

Question 27

What is semantic memory?

Answer 27

Abstract knowledge about the world, such as facts and general knowledge.

Question 28

What are the three distinct categories of long-term memory (LTM)?

Answer 28

The three distinct categories of LTM are episodic memory, semantic memory, and procedural memory.

Question 29

What is episodic memory?

Answer 29

Episodic memory is the memory for personal events that happened in the past, allowing us to remember what, where, and when things happened.

Question 30

What is semantic memory?

Answer 30

Semantic memory is the abstract knowledge about the world, including names of things, people, and places.

Question 31

What is procedural memory?

Answer 31

Procedural memory is the memory of how to do things.

Question 32

What did Loftus and Palmer's 1974 experiment demonstrate about semantic memory?

Answer 32

It demonstrated that the wording of questions can bias eyewitness testimony, affecting the estimated speed of cars in a video based on the verbs used.

Question 33

What was the finding of Bower et al. (1969) regarding structured hierarchies?

Answer 33

Participants presented with words in structured hierarchies remembered significantly more words than those with randomly inserted words.

Question 34

What is the Collins and Quillian model of semantic memory?

Answer 34

It is a hierarchically structured model where concepts are stored as nodes connected by pathways, with properties associated with each concept.

Question 35

What is a major flaw of the original Collins and Quillian model?

Answer 35

It cannot account for typicality effects, where some category members are more typical than others.

Question 36

What is the spreading activation model?

Answer 36

The revised model of semantic memory where typical category members are connected via shorter links and atypical members via longer links.

Question 37

What did Meyer and Schveneveldt's experiment demonstrate?

Answer 37

It showed that activation spreads through connected nodes in memory, leading to faster reaction times for associated words.

Question 38

What is episodic memory according to Tulving?

Answer 38

Episodic memory is the event engram, requiring the binding of separate presentations into a single unit, with the hippocampus being crucial for this binding.

Question 39

What did Miller et al. (2020) find regarding hippocampal damage?

Answer 39

Participants with hippocampal damage recalled less episodic detail about events compared to controls, except for childhood memories.

Question 40

What is the Levels of Processing theory?

Answer 40

It suggests that the strength of memory depends on the depth of processing during encoding, with deeper processing leading to stronger memory traces.

Question 41

What does Consolidation Theory propose?

Answer 41

It proposes that memory is encoded in the brain as engrams formed through biological changes, with connections between neurons strengthening over time.

Question 42

What did Jenkins & Dallenbach (1924) find about memory retention?

Answer 42

They found that memory performance was better after sleep than when awake, indicating that activity during the retention interval influences memory.

Question 43

What are the stages of memory?

Answer 43

Memory processes can be split into three components: encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Question 44

What is proactive interference?

Answer 44

Proactive interference occurs when previously learned information interferes with the memory of newer information.

Question 45

What is retroactive interference?

Answer 45

Retroactive interference occurs when newly learned information interferes with the memory of previously learned information.