Memory and forgetting

Question 1

single and double dissociations

Answer 1

1. single dissociation - damage to brain area 1 results in function A being disrupted, but related function B is intact - indicates functions A and B are at least partially different, but it could be function A is stronger so gets more affected by damage
2. double dissociation - need to find patients who show the exact opposite pattern, damage to area 2 which leaves function A intact but disrupts function - indicates function A and B are independent

Question 2

double dissociation of working and long term memory in brain damage

Answer 2

1. amnesic syndrome - normal working memory, little or no ability to convert facts/events to permanent memory - anterograde amnesia
2. HM - normal memory span of 7 digits but could not learn list of 8
3. normal recency effect in free recall, poor recall of earlier items
4. short term memory patients - selective impairments of working memory
5. KF - very poor immediate repetition of short sequences of words, able to learn such sequences if presented slowly (long term memory intact)
6. patients with anterograde amnesia have drastically impaired ability to form new memories for experienced events and facts but can exhibit normal learning rates in acquisition of perceptual skills and problem solving skills
7. can also be opposite, impaired procedural memory combined with unimpaired declarative memory
8. brain damage can also cause difficulties with procedural memory without affecting declarative memory

Question 3

episodic vs semantic

Answer 3

1. episodic - memory for individual autobiographical experience, reexperiencing
2. semantic - general and conceptual knowledge abstracted from experience
3. double dissociation between episodic and semantic - amnesic patients tend to have anterograde amnesia for both new personal episodes and new knowledgd
4. there are amnesic patients who cannot recollect any personally experienced events from birth but pre-trauma knowledge of maths
5. patients with semantic dementia show progressive loss of knowledge about the world which can be combines with well preserved autobiographical knowledge

Question 4

preserved episodic memory in semantic dementia

Answer 4

1. days 1&2 - tests of semantic memory, object and sound knowledge, pick out where iconic buildings are
2. day 3 - what, where, when questions on the day before

Question 5

stress and working memory

Answer 5

1. WM capacity is limited, worrying can act as a secondary task which competes for resources e.g. in an exam situation
2. Ramirez and Beilock - tested whether reducing/eliminating worrying could decrease the freezing under pressure effect
3. 2 groups of participants took a pre-test and post-test of high pressure maths problems, the control group sat quietly for 10 mins between tests, and the expressive writing group asked to write about their feelings on the math test
4. similar performance pre test but more accurate performance in writing group post test
5. writing about worries before a test could free up WM resources needed for the test

Question 6

measuring forgetting

Answer 6

1. recall test - recall of events, e.g. story recall, free recall of lists of nameable items, cued recall, serial recall
2. recognition test - ability to discriminate “old” from “new” items
3. Ebbinghaus - learned many lists of 13 nonsense syllables to criterion and then relearned each after a variable interval
4. so forgetting is orderly, forgetted measured appropriately can often be described by a simple mathematical function of the retention interval

Question 7

what causes forgetting

Answer 7

1. orderliness of forgetting might suggest some inevitable decay process - loss from storage
2. information not recalled now may be recalled later
3. further prompts or cues may succeed in eliciting recall
4. some cases of forgetting due to retrieval failure not loss
5. some memories show no loss over time

Question 8

longer retention interval does not increase forgetting

Answer 8

1. Bahrick - no forgetting of school class-mates over 30 years
2. Flashbulb memories
3. but forgetting of former students by teachers does increase with interval as teachers subsequently encounter many more students so forgetting attributable to interference from other similar memories

Question 9

testing interference versus decay theories

Answer 9

1. under normal circumstances, retention interval - time in storage - is confounded with the number of other experiences accumulated during interval
2. so control the interval, alter intervening experience
3. paired associate learning - participant must learn 10 arbitrary pairings between stimulus and response words
4. P learns list 1 and then list 2 and then is tested on either list 1 or 2
5. later recall of list 1 worse when list 2 was learned afterwards - retroactive interference
6. later recall of list 2 - worse when list 1 was learned before - proactive interference
7. retrieval difficulty increases when other similar material has been learnt, holding retention interval constant
8. ample evidence that retrieval failure is increased by interference from material

Question 10

factors influencing retrieval

Answer 10

1. processing at encoding/acquisition
2. consolidation after encoding
3. more on interference from other memory traces at retrieval
4. similarity of encoding and retrieval context
5. memory is an associative system not a container

Question 11

organisation at acquisition

Answer 11

1. deliberate rote rehearsal does increase later recall
2. hence the primary effect in free recall - first few items get more rehearsal
3. mere rote rehearsal is a relatively ineffective learning strategy
4. incidental memory experiments show processing the meaning of and actively organising the material are effective learning strategies
5. mandler - groups 1 and 2 sorted words on cards into 2-7 categories of their own devising, group 1 were also told to try to learn the words, no difference in later recall test even though group 1 were supposed to learn the words, group 3 who just placed the cards into two columns whilst trying to learn the list, remembered less than groups 1 and 2
6. organising the material is what produces effective acquisition, not effort to learn

Question 12

depth of processing at acquisition

Answer 12

1. Craik and Tulving - showed a series of unrelated words and gave 1/3 orienting tasks, is it written in upper/lower case, does it rhyme with …, dis it fit into a sentence, then unexpected recognition test - best recall when put into sentence
2. processing the meaning is better than processing surface form
3. Mnemonics and method of loci - show power of appropriate elaboration at acquisition, they bind ideas to a pre-established framework, which organises them, imagery encourages formation of rich nexus of associations between frame and concept attached to that hook
4. effectiveness of learning involves forming associations among representations that already exist in the mind, including representation of elements of the new experience, elements of the context and elements of prior knowledge

Question 13

retrograde memory loss after concussion

Answer 13

consolidation phase 1:
1. after traumatic brain injury or ECT there is often retrograde memory loss spanning many minutes, even hours
2. disruption of process of consolidation of memory trace in hippocampal/medial temporal cortex system
3. consolidation of novel traces suffers interference from consolidation of further novel traces
4. sleep improves memory for material learned in last few hours
5. alcohol and barbiturates impair learning (disrupt consolidation) but improve memory for material learned just before (retrograde facilitation)
consolidation phase 2:
1. over a longer timescale, recent LTM traces are more vulnerable to hippocampal damage than older traces
2. amnesic patients with damage to hippocampus/medial temporal cortex typically show gradient of retrograde amnesia over years, older memories better preserved more robust
3. over time, reactivation of traces makes them more robust, they are now stored elsewhere in the cortex, no longer dependent on hippocampus

Question 14

associative interference at retrieval

Answer 14

1. interference maximal when the same or similar stimulus items are used for each list, competition between two associative links from the same retrieval cue
2. fan effect - P learns 0-4 new “facts” about each of set of famous people, seems paradoxical - the more you know about the person the harder it is to retrieve any one fact about him
3. Lewis and Anderson experiment - facts learned were unrelated, claimed that if the facts are thematically related, fan effect is eliminated
4. thematic relationship enables the learner to form associations between the separate facts using pre-existing knowledge schemas which provides multiple retrieval paths
5. when studying, try to create multiple links among the facts you are learning about a topic and to prior knowledge

Question 15

remembering as reconstruction

Answer 15

1. we interpret what we see and hear via learned schemas or scripts - knowledge of typical patterns or event sequences
2. when we try to remember, we recover only fragmentary associations from which we reconstruct the event/fact, filling in the gaps using general knowledge schemas
3. easy to create false memories because of source amnesia is common, recall is constructive

Question 16

implanted false memories

Answer 16

1. Loftus and Palmer - eyewitness testimonies, witness film of car crash, then answer question with different severities of verbs, group 1 (smashed), group 2 (hit), more of group 1 said yes to seeing broken glass that didn’t exist than group 2
2. misinformation implied by the interrogation after the event is incorporated into the subject’s reconstruction of the event
3. eye witnesses can be asked to report anything they can remember providing them with multiple retrieval cues
4. false memories about emotional events that never happened - link to emotion

Question 17

context-content paradox

Answer 17

1. the way emotions affect false memories depends on whether the emotion is part of the to-be-remembered event or whether mood is the context in which something is remembered
2. negative valenced events are more prone to distortion, they affect the gist of events and heighten susceptibility to suggestion and misinformation
3. negative mood during the to-be-remembered event seems to protect against it
4. but enduring negative mood as in depression of PDSD facilitates mood congruent false memories
5. as a general rule, information is more easily retrieved if tested in the same context in which it was acquired
6. sensitivity of retrieval to congruence with the “internal” context at the time of learning is sometimes called state-dependent learning
7. similar effects of induced sad and euphoric moods
8. encoding-specificity is causal in the maintenance of depression, negative memories are more accessible in the depressed state, and their retrieval reinforces the depression

Question 18

motivation to learn

Answer 18

1. learning occurred naturally, driven by a desire to know and a rewarding feeling of learning something interesting
2. learning is easy when in this state of motivation and curiosity
3. Gruber et al - showed when people were curious about the answer to a question, they showed significantly better memory of that answer compared to material presented while they were waiting for the answer

Question 19

factors influencing retrieval

Answer 19

1. processing at encoding - elaboration and organisation, depth of processing
2. 2 stage consolidation process
3. interference from other memory traces at retrieval - associative interference, false memories and source amnesia
4. interaction between encoding and retrieval
5. motivation and curiosity increases the chances of memory retrieval