Remembering and Forgetting

Question 1

What are the different types of information we are able to store long term?

Answer 1

• Episodes: temporally distinct past experiences
• Knowledge: word meanings, facts, categories etc.
• Skills and abilities: effects of past experience demonstrated via performance

Question 2

What sort of information does our memory for episodes tend to contain?

Answer 2

spatial and temporal contextual information

Question 3

What does our memory for meanings of things not tend to include?

Answer 3

spatio-temporal context (you don’t remember the context in which you learnt it)

Question 4

What is Tulving (1980s) LTM model?

Answer 4

• Separates long term memory into different levels of consciousness:
• Episodic: autonoetic (self-aware, e.g. a memory from primary school)
• Semantic: Noetic (aware of info, not origin)
• Procedural: anoetic (unaware, e.g. riding a bike)
• Episodic, semantic and procedural memories are interactive and defined by levels of conscious awareness

Question 5

Why is the ability to disconnect information from the context in which it was learned a useful property for a memory system?

Answer 5

It saves on storage

Question 6

What does Tulving’s model distinguish between?

Answer 6

• distinguishes between memory systems and tests
   Episodic or ‘direct test (e.g. recognition memory for previously presented items) is intended to measure episodic memory system
   BUT some episodic tests can be influenced by non-episodic memory systems:
   You can ‘know’ that you have seen an item recently without consciously ‘remembering’ the encoding event (e.g. you find it familiar but don’t recollect it

Question 7

In episodic memory what is memory for events and experiences tied to?

Answer 7

A specific time and place

Question 8

What are the typical types of episodic memory tests?

Answer 8

 Free recall
 Cued recall
 Recognition

Question 9

How is episodic memory dissociated from other memory systems?

Answer 9

Impaired in amnesic syndrome: can’t store new episodic memories, but can learn new procedural skills

Question 10

what is semantic memory?

Answer 10

General knowledge of objects, word meanings, facts, people without connection to a specific time and place (generic memory)

Question 11

What are the typical types of semantic tests?

Answer 11

 Word definition
 Object naming/ definition
 Category fluency (animals: how many in 60 seconds)
 Matching tests

Question 12

How does semantic memory dissociate from other memory systems?

Answer 12

 Semantic dementia (progressive loss of semantic knowledge)
 In Semantic dementia Episodic memory less affected; procedural memory preserved

Question 13

What is procedural memory and how is it acquired?

Answer 13

• Knowledge of how to do things; skills; ‘blueprint’ for action
• Acquired through multiple trials, learning by doing

Question 14

What are the typical types of procedural memory tests?

Answer 14

Pursuit rotor (tracking); mirror drawing (tracing); skill learning

Question 15

How does procedural memory dissociate from other memory systems?

Answer 15

Largely preserved in amnesia and semantic dementia

Question 16

How does H.M’s mirror drawing task (Milner 1962) show that episodic and procedural memory are different?

Answer 16

• Amnesic patients can learn to perform ‘procedural’ tasks despite complete lack of (episodic) memory for training
• H.M learnt how to mirror draw
• he didn’t remember previously learning it
• but still had the skill
• his errors decreased exponentially each day

Question 17

What is priming?

Answer 17

Improvement (speed/accuracy) in processing a stimulus (identification/ production/ classification) as a result of a prior encounter with the same or a related stimulus

Question 18

What are the different types of test for priming?

Answer 18

 Perceptual identification (name an object from image obscured by noise)
- You will need to get rid of less of the noise if you have already seen the images
- Amnesics show this effect as well
 Word-stem/fragment completion (first word that comes to mind)
- People more likely to complete with words they have seen from the study faze
- Amnesics will also show this effect
 Sentence completion (‘conceptual’ priming)
- e.g. ‘the transplant surgeon removed the patient’s….’
- More likely to use a word you have heard recently

Question 19

How does priming dissociate from other memory systems?

Answer 19

Largely preserved in amnesia

Question 20

What is evidence for the fact the there are two different systems for priming and episodic memory?

Answer 20

• Amnesic patients generally show intact perceptual priming
   Perceptual identification: identify studied items faster/ better than unstudied items
   Recognition memory tests: perform better under indirect instructions (‘go with your gut feeling’)
• Right occipital lobe resection (patient MS, Gabrieli et al. 1995)
   Showed normal declarative memory (recall, cued recall, recognition), impaired perceptual priming
   Double dissociation: opposite to amnesic patients

Question 21

What is Squire’s contemporary model of LRM systems?

Answer 21

- Episodic and semantic memory = declarative (explicit) memory 
 Facts (semantic)
 Events (episodic)
 You can retrieve it 
- Procedural and priming = nondeclarative (implicit) 
 Procedural (skills and habits) 
 Priming
 Simple classic conditioning 
 Emotional responses 
 Skeletal musculature

Question 22

What was Penfield’s experiment (1958)about retrieval and what did this lead him to argue?

Answer 22

stimulating the temporal lobes of patients often elicited trivial ‘memories’
 He argues that the brain retains a permanent record of all experiences
 40 of 520 patients had ‘memories’ evoked, and most of these resembled dreams

Question 23

What is Ebbinghuas (1885) experiment for his forgetting curve?

Answer 23

• Learned 169 separate lists of nonsense syllables
• Relearned each list after an interval of 21 mins to 31 days
• Time required to relearn list (to 100%) = measure of forgetting
• Information of loss is rapid then levels off: a logarithmic function which holds for many different types of learned material

Question 24

What were the two early hypotheses about forgetting?

Answer 24

• Decay: memory simply fades with time

- Interference: memory traces disrupted or replaced by subsequent/ prior learning

Question 25

What was Minami and Dallenbach's Cockroach study (1946)?

Answer 25

- Cockroaches trained to avoid electric shock - 24 hours later (allowed to move freely): 70% forgetting - BUT cockroaches that were immobilised (crawl into dark cone, freeze) for 24 hours after learning: only 25% forgetting - evidence for interference

Question 26

What is retroactive interference?

Answer 26

- Later learning disrupts earlier learning | - Memory decreases as the number of intervening trials increases

Question 27

What is Slamecka (1980) experiment for retroactive interference?

Answer 27

read sentences 8 times followed by rest or 4 or 8 trials of equivalent sentences - Amount of original sentences forgotten as a function of number of intervening trials (RI) - Number of intervening trials critical - not just time

Question 28

What is proactive interference?

Answer 28

- Prior learning disrupts subsequent learning - Interference builds up over trials - with similar stimuli

Question 29

What Have Underwood, Keppel and Wickens found about retroactive interference?

Answer 29

- Performance declines over successive study-tests with similar stimuli - Performance recovers when switch to dissimilar stimuli: release from proactive interference (Wickens, 1970; MacLeod, 1975) - When category changed after interference builds up, performance jumps

Question 30

Why does proactive interference lead to forgetting?

Answer 30

 Assume a cue has a fixed capacity for activating memories – the more memories associated with that cue, the less well it can activate any of them  Or (flipside): if several possible memories share similar overlap with retrieval environment, successful recall less likely

Question 31

What did Tulving (1974) say were the two major reasons for forgetting?

Answer 31

- trace-dependent forgetting (= decay, deterioration) | - cue-dependent forgetting (failure of retrieval)

Question 32

What improves retrieval performance and makes retroactive interference weaker?

Answer 32

Cueing

Question 33

What was Tulving and Psotka's (1971) experiment about cued/ free recall and what did they find?

Answer 33

- Several word lists studied and tested one at a time - At end of experiment, memory for 1st list tested - Recall declines as the number of lists presented after original learning increases (retroactive interference) - RI selectively affects free recall (no cue) - Cued recall/ recognition less affected because context is (partly) reinstated during test

Question 34

What was Tulving's (1979( encoding-specificity principle?

Answer 34

- Retrieval success depends on ‘informational overlap’ between encoding (study) and retrieval (test) - Similar to transfer appropriate processing, but about context rather than processing - Context can be intrinsic or extrinsic

Question 35

What is intrinsic context?

Answer 35

Features that are an integral part of target stimulus

Question 36

what was Barclay et al (1974) experiment on intrinsic context?

Answer 36

- Effect of study-test congruence on memory for target words: - Study:  The man tuned the piano (vs the man lifted the piano) - Cued recall:  ‘something melodious’ (congruent with ‘man tuned piano) -> 4.6 words recalled  ‘Something heavy’ (incongruent with ‘man tuned piano’) -> 1.6 words recalled - Recognition cues were better if study and test intrinsic context were similar

Question 37

What is extrinsic context?

Answer 37

- Other features present at the time of encoding (time, place, cognitive state)

Question 38

What was Godden and Baddeley's (1975) Diver study experiment?

Answer 38

- Study: list of words  On land or  Underwater - Test free recall and recognition  On land or underwater - Significant test type x encoding context interaction (Study underwater lead to better recall underwater and vise versa) - However recognition doesn’t show that interaction: recognition always better for dry land. This is because recognition has strong intrinsic cues

Question 39

What did Freud (1901) believe in regards to forgetting?

Answer 39

People actively (/unconsciously) repress unpleasant memories

Question 40

What was Levinger and Clark's (1961) experiment to support Freud's forgetting theory?

Answer 40

- word association task with neutral and negative words. - Recall of association tested after 4-month delay:  Ss remember fewer negative word associations than neutral one  Evidence for repression of emotional memories?

Question 41

What is the contrary evidence to Freud's forgetting theory?

Answer 41

Parkin et al (1982) repeated word association study with immediate recall & 1-week delay:  Immediate: neutral > emotional; 1 week: emotional associations better remembered  Evidence against selective repression of emotional material? - Further contrary evidence  Memory of childhood abuse (Williams, 1994): those who suffered more abuse are most likely to remember

Question 42

What is Mike Anderson's 'think/no-think paradigm?

Answer 42

 Learning phase: participants learn cue-target pairs of words to criterion  Think/No-think (TNT) phase: cue words are shown one at a time, in either green or red font  Green = think (participants silently retrieve the target word and think about it)  Red = no-think (participants try to prevent the target word from coming to mind  Test phase: cue words presented, participants recall target word, regardless of whether cue was red or green or not shown in the T/NT phase  Found that recall is worse if item was suppressed in the no-think phase

Question 43

What was Emily Holme's Tetris studies?

Answer 43

Engaging in a visuospatial task (playing Tetris) after a traumatic event (in the lab: watching a traumatic film) can reduce ‘flashbacks’ (intrusive memories) over 1 week

Question 44

What is the physiological basis of memory?

Answer 44

glutamate release, protein synthesis, neural growth and rearrangement

Question 45

What does consolidation of memories do?

Answer 45

- ‘Fixes’ information in long-term memory, strengthens connections between cortical regions over hours, days, months (‘systems’ consolidation) - Over time, cortical components of memories become less dependent on hippocampus for retrieval (hence HM can retrieve old memories)

Question 46

Why can't HM recall events in the lead up to surgery?

Answer 46

New memories are initially labile (sensitive to disruption) before becoming progressively more stable as they are consolidated

Question 47

Will all memories be consolidated?

Answer 47

No. Consolidation is selective

Question 48

What is Nadet et al (2000) recent work on reconsolidation?

Answer 48

- Reconsolidation can be ‘blocked’ or altered to e.g. remove emotional association  Extinction  Pharmacological intervention - Possible use as a treatment for PTSD, phobias

Question 49

Give a summary of forgetting

Answer 49

• Forgetting can occur as a result of - Decay (maybe? – difficult to prove and explain) - Interference (pro – or retro-active) - Retrieval failure (context/ cue-dependent) - Repression (maybe?) or motivated forgetting - (Re-)consolidation failure (or non-selection) • Most ‘accepted’ idea is that some combination of these, mainly cue-dependent forgetting (retrieval failures and consolidation failure account for most forgetting

Question 50

Give a summary of memory

Answer 50

• Memory can be defined by store - Sensory stores - short-term stores - long-term store • by process - Short lasting effects of neural/perceptual/ informational processing - Medium-duration effects of ‘working’ memory - Long-term effects of processing at different depths • Or by content system: - Declarative: episodic, semantic - Non-declarative: procedural, priming, etc.