Psyc7006 - Fluidity of memory - wk1 Flashcards
Describe the ‘schema’ model of memory (Barlett)
not very important
Schemata derived from past impressions (often not conscious) shape/modify the impressions produced by incoming sensory impulses in such a way that the final sensations of position or of locality rise into consciousness charged with a relation to something that has gone before.
i.e., present action is neither entirely new or old, but manufactured out of the living and postural ‘schemata’ of the moment and their interrelations.
What is “schema”?
not very important
An active organisation of past reactions or of past experience, which must always be supposed to be operating in any well-adapting organic response
When there is Order or regulation of behavior , a particular response is possible only because it is related to other similar responses which have been serially organised, yet which operate as a unitary mass,
What does it mean to say “memory is constructed”?
important
The reconstruction of memory is subject to CONTEXT (top-down processing)
It is neither reduplicative or reproductive (rote learned) - it is constructed in the moment, a fresh on the basis of immediately preceding events/needs (i.e., context).
Freely building together events, incidents and experiences - features include: condensation, elaboration, invention.
What is the “Forgot-it-all-along effect?
important
Forgetting that one had remembered something earlier/in the past - recollecting an event in manner X may cause one to forget having previously recollected in manner Y.
What is Tulvings concept of encoding specificity and how might it be related to the forget-it-all-along-effect?
(important)
The closer the match between encoding and retreval conditions, the more likely it is that the event will be successfully retrieved.
THUS memories of episodes of recollection share content with memories of the remembered event itself
What has ‘originally’ been thought to be the difference between remembering and knowing? (hint: not necessarily true!) (dual system model)
i.e., Previous theories said X
(not overly important)
THEORY 1: Gardiner 1988….”‘Remember’ and ‘Know’ are two different memory systems.”
- Remembering = actual call to mind memory, episodic memory, consciously controlled reflection. High level of processing
- Knowing = semantic (sensory) memory, efficient process, low level of processing
Therefore!: remember is higher in deeper LOP due to enhanced conceptual processing and/or episodic memory. but knowing the same for deeper and shallower items because semantic system activation and/or perceptual encoding is similar for both.
With reference to top-down and bottom-up processing describe how people hear messages in backwards rock music?
People are primed and thus hear messages due to active construction (i.e., context/ top-down processing.) But this still has to map/match somewhat with the physical properties of the backwards song (bottom-down/data-driven processing)
How can homographs (e.g., palm has two meanings, palm tree and palm hand) be used to create a lab analogue of the forgot-it-all-along effect?
List of homographs practised e.g palm-tree
Test: recall some items with same (palm-tree) context as on the list practiced and some with different (palm-hand) context
test 2: Recall items again but all in the context of the original list e.g., palm-tree”did you recall this item on test 1?” (follow up: why did you say yes/no?)
RESULTS: Items judged on test 2 as being recalled in test 1 same context: 80%, diff context: 50%
What is the knew-it-all-along effect?
Occurs when individuals report having known previously what they only just came to know.
What is bottom-up processing?
Data-driven - processing based on incoming data, the starting point for perception e.g., what information is actually present.
What is top-down processing?
Conceptual processing (processes of attribution), based on previous knowledge (can be aware or unaware use of knowledge). CONTEXT.
Needs (motivations), beliefs, comparisons/priming in current situation
How do both top-down and bottom-up processing apply to hearing messages in rock music? How do we know?
Although people are good at identifying physical characteristics of backwards rock music (e.g., gender of singer), they are unable/unlikely to detect phrases or words in backwards rock music unless they have been primed to hear it (i.e., told what to listen for). This suggests the the hearing of ‘messages’ in backwards rock music is due to an attribution process (top-down processing) whereby the context/knowledge (being told what to listen for) leads one to register a ‘message’. However, bottom-down processing is also important as the backwards music’s properties has to match somewhat with the apparent ‘message’.
Who is widely considered the ‘father’ of reconstrutive memory and when and what was his most influential paper in this regard?
Bartlett “War of the Ghosts”, 1932
How can the forgot-it-all-along effect be studied in an experimental setting? (also what paper, authors and year, did this). What doesn’t experiment 1 show?
(Arnold and Lindsay 2002) The FIA effect can be studied using homographs which are words that are spelled the same and whose meaning can be determined only through context (e.g., palm -> palm - hand, palm - tree).
All participants study a list of homographs presented in 1 of 2 contexts (e.g., they all study palm - tree). Then they are presented with a list of the homographs in either the SAME or DIFFERENT context and asked to recall which words were on the study list. Here, recall is more accurate when the homographs are presented in the same context, supporting Tulving’s (1984) notion of encoding specificity whereby recall is more accurate when items were studied in the same context they are recalled (reconstructive memory, top-down processes).
Then all participants are presented with homographs in the same context as the study list and asked to A. recall if they were on the study list and B. recall if they recalled this on the first test.
Remembering of prior recall was more accurate when the context was the same in both test 1 and test 2 (as the study list), and less accurate when the context was different in test 1 compared to the study list and test 2.
This suggests that memories of prior recall are subject to the same processes as memories of an original event. That is, they are also a reconstructive process that is influences by context - i.e., tulving’s encoding specificity principle also applies to recall of test 1 during test 2, if the context is different recall is less accurate.
These difference can also be found with subtler shifts in meaning.
e.g., “he swatted the fly with the palm of his hand” versus “the fortune teller traced the lifeline on the palm of his hand”.
What is “knowing” versus “remembering”?
To remember is the conscious recollection of many vivid contextual details, such as “when” and “how” the information was learned.
To know is a feeling (unconscious) of familiarity. It is the sensation that the item has been seen before, but not being able to pin down the reason why.
