Memory

Question 1

Who came up with the early distinctions of memory and what two types of memory did they say there were?

Answer 1

William James, primary and secondary memory

Question 2

Describe primary memory

Answer 2

Portion of present space of time, staying online, linked to conscious experience, retrieval is effortless

Question 3

Describe secondary memory

Answer 3

Genuine past, unconscious/permanent, retrieval is effortful

Question 4

Who came up with the modal model of memory?

Answer 4

Atkinson and Shiffrins

Question 5

Describe the stages of the modal model of memory

Answer 5

Stimulus enters sensory memory, is forgotten or is given attention to enter short-term memory, is forgotten or rehearsed to encode it into long term memory, from where it can be forgotten or retrieved into STM

Question 6

What is sensory memory?

Answer 6

Sensations persist after the stimulus has disappeared but are subject to very rapid decay

Question 7

What type of stores exist for sensory memories?

Answer 7

Iconic store for visual sensory information and echoic store for auditory sensory information

Question 8

Describe Sperling’s experiments and his findings

Answer 8

Presented matrix of letters for 1/20 seconds and asked subjects to report as many letters as possible, could only recall a few, not because they didn’t have time but because the memories decayed very quickly. Was easier when they were told to just remember a row. Showed that we take in a lot of information but most of it disappears very soon

Question 9

What is the working memory model?

Answer 9

Baddely & Hitch claimed that short-term memory is used for problem solving, reasoning and thinking about things rather than just information keeping. They demonstrated this by getting subjects to answer true/false Qs while they had to remember a few digits - found that reasoning time increased with digit load but error rate did not increase

Question 10

What are the parts of the working memory model?

Answer 10

The central executive which sends things to/controls the visuo-spatial sketch pad and the phonological store, which is strengthened by an articulatory loop

Question 11

What is the evidence for the phonological store?

Answer 11

Phonological similarity effect - showed lists of 5 words to write down in order, with one sounding similar, one random, one meaning similar things. People got confused when words sounded the same (rat, cat, mat etc), while semantic (meaning) similarity had no effect. The longer the words the harder it was to remember.
Patients with lesions in the left hemisphere affecting the parietal and temporal lobes have severely reduced verbal spans while they have intact word perception and no problems with speech production.

Question 12

What is the phonological store?

Answer 12

Acts like a tape recorder for a limited time, with the contents actively refreshed by an articulatory loop. Disrupting this loop results in poor retention in the phonological store

Question 13

What is the visuospatial sketchpad?

Answer 13

necessary for holding online a sequence of visually-guided actions and for seeing in the mind’s eye

Question 14

What is the evidence for the visuospatial sketchpad?

Answer 14

De Renzi and Nichelli showed some patients with brain damage had impaired digit spans and some had impaired spatial spans - double dissociation was evidence that these were separate problems.

Question 15

What parts can the visuospatial sketchpad be split into?

Answer 15

The visual cache - passively stores visual info about form and colour
The inner scribe - stores spatial and movement information and can rehearse contents of the visual cache

Question 16

How did Logie prove the existence of the visual cache and the inner scribe

Answer 16

Got healthy individuals to do a spatial task (block tapping task) and a visual task (remembering patterns) and found that viewing abstract pictures interfered with visual tasks whereas tracing the outline of a series of pegs on a board interfered with the spatial task

Question 17

What is encoding?

Answer 17

Changing information into a way which can be stored in the brain and recalled.

Question 18

Describe Craik and Lockhart’s level of processing concept

Answer 18

The basic idea is that memory is really just what happens as a result of processing information. Memory is just a by-product of the depth of processing of information, and there is no clear distinction between short term and long term memory.
The more you process information the better it sticks in your memory. The types of processing include orthographic (the way a word looks/is spelt), phonological (the way a word sounds), and semantic (the meaning)

Question 19

Which type of processing is shallowest and has the worst retention?

Answer 19

Orthographic

Question 20

Which type of processing is deep and has the best retention?

Answer 20

Semantic

Question 21

Describe Craik and Lockhart’s experiments about processing and recall

Answer 21

Participants were asked to make judgements about words - upper or lower case? rhyme with hat? does it fit into the sentence the cat sat on the…? then given a surprise memory test. Found that processing information, not encoding it, leads to durable memories

Question 22

Is repeated exposure of information enough to remember and recall it?

Answer 22

Repeated exposure of something is not enough to remember it e.g. the American coins. For information to stick it has to be processed

Question 23

What is the best way to learn new material?

Answer 23

Deep encoding or elaboration

Question 24

What did Roediger and Karpicke’s study show?

Answer 24

They showed that studying then testing the information led to better retention and recall than studying alone. Retrieval practice effect.

Question 25

What is the retrieval practice effect?

Answer 25

Retrieving information and putting it into practice makes for much better information retention.

Question 26

What did Morris show in his study on encoding and retrieval?

Answer 26

Gave evidence against the levels of processing. They said that it is possible that the better recall of meaningful material is due to the way the participants memories were tested. Morris et al (1977) found that if participants were given a rhyming recognition test they remembered the words which had received shallow processing better than the more deeply processed ones. A shallow task might be better if the retrieval uses the same type of processing as encoding

Question 27

Describe Godden Baddeley’s context dependent memory studies

Answer 27

Taught divers lists of words on land and sea and found that they recalled it better wherever they were taught it. Memory depends on context of learning and testing

Question 28

Describe state dependent memory

Answer 28

Recalling information is stronger when the mood they are in when recalling matches the mood they had when learning

Question 29

What is amnesia?

Answer 29

Intact intelligence, intact attentional span and short term memory, unaffected personality, but ability to take in new information is severely and usually permanently affected

Question 30

Describe Scoville and Milner’s studies

Answer 30

H.M. lost the ability to form new memories following a bilateal removal of his medial temporal lobes. He could do a task, and even comment that it seemed easier than he expected, without realising that he had done it hundreds of times before. His anterograde procedural memory was totally affected. He also lost his memory for events that had happened after his surgery: he could not remember moving house, nor that he had eaten a meal thirty minutes previously. He had also suffered some retrograde amnesia of events preceding the surgery, such as the death of his uncle three years before. However, his early childhood memories remained intact. His intelligence also remained as before, at slightly above average.

Question 31

What did HM’s surgery involve?

Answer 31

Bilateral removal of his medial temporal lobes including the hippocampus

Question 32

What is amnesia usually caused by?

Answer 32

Damage

Question 33

What is amnesia usually caused by?

Answer 33

Damage to the medial temporal love or anatomically connected regions. Can occur in head injuries, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy and stroke.

Question 34

What is anterograde amnesia?

Answer 34

Amnesia following brain injury, where episodic memories are severely affected

Question 35

What is declarative memory?

Answer 35

The conscious, intentional recollection of factual information, previous experiences and concepts

Question 36

What is implicit memory?

Answer 36

Unconscious memories such as skills (e.g. knowing how to get dressed, eat, drive, ride a bicycle without having to re-learn the skill each time).

Question 37

What is episodic memory

Answer 37

The memory of autobiographical events (times, places, associated emotions, and other contextual who, what, when, where, why knowledge) that can be explicitly stated or conjured. It is the collection of past personal experiences that occurred at a particular time and place. (time travel memory)

Question 38

What is semantic memory?

Answer 38

Factual information. General world knowledge that we have accumulated throughout our lives.

Question 39

What are priming effects?

Answer 39

A process whereby subjects are measured by how they have improved their performance on tasks for which they have been subconsciously prepared

Question 40

What is procedural memory?

Answer 40

A type of implicit memory (unconscious memory) and long-term memory which aids the performance of particular types of tasks without conscious awareness of these previous experiences. When a skill becomes automatic, it can operate in the absence of awareness

Question 41

How is the procedural memory of an amnesiac affected?

Answer 41

Amnesiacs can learn new skills even though they do not remember learning those skills (procedural memory but no episodic memory) e.g. mirror tracing (Corkin) and mirror reading (Cohen and Squire)

Question 42

What evidence is there for different types of memory systems?

Answer 42

Butters et al - pursuit-rotor task where healthy controls and patients with Alzheimer’s disease showed normal learning (implicit memory) whereas patients with Huntington’s disease were impaired, so can see that procedural memory is independent to other memory systems.

Question 43

Where is procedural memory in terms of anatomy and which disease is it impaired in?

Answer 43

Basal ganglia, so is impaired in Huntingdon’s disease.

Question 44

Describe Warrington & Weiskrant’z priming experiments

Answer 44

Got 5 amnesic participants to identify degraded pictures, showed long term memory improvement even though they had no idea they’d been tested previously

Question 45

How is an amnesic’s semantic memory compared to their episodic memory?

Answer 45

Intact semantic memory (what stuff is, facts, meanings) but bad episodic memory (memory of when and where and what events have taken place) - e.g. can’t remember what they had for breakfast but know what ‘breakfast’ is

Question 46

Where are declarative (episodic and semantic) memories acquired and retained short-term?

Answer 46

In the medial temporal lobes

Question 47

Can new semantic memories form despite amnesia?

Answer 47

Bayley et al - say NO, tested new vocab in 2 adult amnesics with fake words and new words, found that they couldn’t remember it

Vargha-Khadem say YES - three children with damage to hippocampus just after birth, have very poor episodic memories but have good knowledge, completed normal schooling, have good vocabularies

Sharon et al - when learning was incidental, yes. When explicitly asked to remember, no. Doesn’t support Squire’s declarative memory theory

Question 48

Anterograde amnesia explicit memory

Answer 48

New episodic memories always impaired
evidence for new semantic learning is mixed
Learning is limited to certain special situations

Question 49

What is retrograde amnesia?

Answer 49

Amnesia before brain injury. Some degree of retrograde amnesia is almost always present. Extent of retrograde amnesia for episodic memories is highly contested

Question 50

What is the standard model of consolidation?

Answer 50

All declarative memories (episodic and semantic) depend on the medial temporal lobes for acquisition and short-term retention but over time become consolidated to other brain regions

Question 51

Is episodic memory for the distant past intact in retrograde amnesia?

Answer 51

Bayley et al - yes, supports squire’s standard model of consolidation
Viskontas et al - no, does not support squires standard model of consolidation

Evidence for preserved remote episodic is mixed, some patients show very good recall - are these memories highly practiced and recalled by rote?

Question 52

What is semantic dementia?

Answer 52

• impairment of semantic memory
• usually lesion associated with lateral temporal cortex
• poor knowledge of meaning of words or concepts
• naming difficulties - including semantically related errors e.g. dog for rabbit
• not confined to one modality - deficits can include difficult recognising sounds e.g. doorbell or telephone

Question 53

Frontal lobes and memory

Answer 53

Janowsky - 7 patients with frontal lobe lesions, learned 20 trivial facts, then tested after 6-8 hours.

If correct, where did you learn this?

the patients were only impaired in their ability to identify where they had learnt information, not in the memory store per se but the control part of the memory, e.g. where it happened, when and where to store it etc

Question 54

Confabulation

Answer 54

patients remember things that don’t happen and don’t exist but are very sure of their beliefs

Question 55

Provoked confabulation

Answer 55

normal response to a demand for information which is not available e.g. saying that items in a test have been shown before when they weren’t

Question 56

Spontaneous confabulation

Answer 56

person acts on their erroneous memories e.g. tries to leave hospital because they have to go to work or cook a meal

usually a result of frontal lobe damage, not due to damage to memory storage

Caused by a breakdown in control processes e.g. monitoring whether retrieved memories are relevant now