Short Answer Questions

Question 1

Long- Term Potentiation

Answer 1

laboratory finding in which brain slices from the hippocampus are activated with high-frequency stimulation in the dendrite leading to the firing of connected neurons

Question 2

What are the features of Long-Term Potentiation

Answer 2

LTP is associative: one weak input, which wouldn’t normally produce LTP, when combines with strong input, which would produce LTP, will yield LTP for the weak input

Question 3

Broadbent’s Sensory Filter

Answer 3

physical characteristics (e.g., pitch, loudness) of an auditory message were used to focus attention to only a single message.

Question 4

What are the features of Broadbent’s Sensory Filter

Answer 4

early selection model because irrelevant messages are filtered out before the stimulus information is processed for meaning.

Question 5

Reminesence Bump

Answer 5

The spike in autobiographical memory recall occuring between the ages of 18-30; additionally they have no recall during the period of infantile amnesia and have a similar spike in recall in the most recent years of thier life due to the Recency Effect

Question 6

Experimental evidence for the Reminesence Bump?

Answer 6

Crovitz technique: P’s asked to remember the first autobiographical memory that comes to their mind when they are prompted with a word

Question 7

Explanations for the Reminensence Bump?

Answer 7

(1) cognitive (novelty; it also explains why immigrants get a second reminiscence bump); (2) identity formation coincides with that time (Erickson); (3) genetic fitness (that period corresponds to the time when people are in their best biological shape), and (4) life scripts (most frequently cited life events are in early 20’s and late teens)

Question 8

Amygdala’s involvement in memory?

Answer 8

emotional learning, more percisely fear conditioning

Question 9

Experimental evidence for amygdala’s involvement in memory

Answer 9

Fear conditioning: 3 successive sequences: (1) Unconditioned Stimulus (e.g. shocks) produces an Unconditioned Response (e.g. Fear); (2) Unconditioned Stimulus (shocks) is then paired with a Conditioned Stimulus (e.g. a neutral tone) and produces the Unconditioned Response (e.g. Fear); (3) Conditioned stimulus (neutral tone) produces the Conditioned Response (e.g. Fear)

Mechanism of fear conditioning doesn’t work if the Amygdala is damaged

Question 10

Fear conditioning and Galvanic Skin Response

Answer 10

GSR in conditioned responses is correlated with amygdala activity

Question 11

Case study reguarding amydala involvement in memory

Answer 11

SP: bilateral amygdala damage: unable to experience fear response

Question 12

Amygdala and retrieval

Answer 12

Patients with MTL damage limited to amygdala damage recalled fewer negative memories and rated their memories as less intense, novel and vivid.

Question 13

fMRI studies on amygdala and retrieval

Answer 13

P’s given autobiographical memory task in which they were asked to recall autobiographical events by self generated memory cues; during task amygdala and hippocampus were activated

Question 14

Retrieval Induced Forgetting

Answer 14

(1) P’s study a series of paired associates, comprising different category-target pairs. (2) P’s get selective retrieval practice on half of the targets from half of the categories. (3) P’s have a final recall task on all the paired associates.

Results: Retrieval of certain items induces inhibition for related, unpracticed items from the same category of knowledge

Question 15

Social Contagion

Answer 15

new or misleading memories can be implanted into the already established memories of the group

Question 16

Implicit Theory of Stability

Answer 16

we have implicit theories about ways in which we expect to have remained the same over time, and ways in which we expect to have changed over time.

Question 17

Experimental evidence for the Implicit Theory of Stability

Answer 17

Dating Experiment: P’s asked what they thought of present partner; in 6mo follow-up P’s asked what they thought of same partner: (broken-up) reported not liking partner, but did like partner at initial time; (together) reported liking partner at both times.

Conclusion: People expect their opinion of their partner to have remained stable over time, so they remember their past opinion as being consistent with their current opinion.

Question 18

Attentional Resource Pool

Answer 18

multiple resource pools for each sense (visual, auditory, etc.)

Question 19

Experimental evidence for the multiple Attentional Resources Pools

Answer 19

P’s improvement on 2 tasks (reading and writing; reading/processing at meaning level and writing) improved with practice.

With training, participants are able to divide their attention very effectively so that they can do two things simultaneously.

Question 20

Illusory Conjunction

Answer 20

P’s presented with three letters in different colors really fast (e.g. blue G; red B; green S): (condition 1), P’s asked to focus their attention in the middle of the screen; (condition 2) P’s instructed to shift their attention across the screen; then P’s asked to report which letter was which color.

Results: P’s made more illusory conjunctions (saying blue B, green G) in condition 2 than in condition 1. Focusing attention on a specific point on the screen helped participants from condition 1 to integrate stimulus characteristics.

Question 21

What are the conclusion of the Illusory Conjection experiment

Answer 21

provides evidence for Treisman’s Feature Integration Theory, which proposes that objects are processed pre-attentively at a feature level first and can only be combined into objects by focusing attention. Illusory conjunctions therefore occur because attention can’t be focused during the rapid visual presentation of objects, and so their features become confused

Question 22

Schacter-Singer Theory of Emotion

Answer 22

emotions involve both arousal and appraisal and are experienced at the cortical level because people interpret their physiological states

Question 23

Experimental evidence for Schacter-Singer Theory of Emotion

Answer 23

P’s in experimental condition: injected with Adrenaline ((1) informed: told the effects of adrenaline; (2) misinformed: told the injections caused headache and numbness; or (3) ignorant: told nothing) or P’s in control group: injected with Placebo; P’s asked to fill out questionnaires with a confederate (behaving either euphoric or angry).

Results: P’s misinformed and ignorant: behaved like the confederate because they couldn’t interpret their own physiological state; P’s informed: not influenced by confederate because their physiological states match the information provided and could correctly interpret their physiological effects according to their expectations

Question 24

Verbal Access Memory

Answer 24

This system processes conscious & voluntarily retained information that can be later on accessed through verbal cues. Corresponds to ordinary autobiographical memories that we can encode and access by using verbal cues. When you encode normal events you encode them around a narrative to make sense of it

Question 25

Life Scripts

Answer 25

semantic knowledge about expectations in a given culture about life events.

Question 26

Dichotic Listening Paradigm

Answer 26

a procedure commonly used to investigate selective attention. P’s are presented two different auditory stimuli (usually speech) simultaneously, one to each ear, normally using a set of headphones. P’s asked to attend to one (in a selective-attention experiment) or (in a divided-attention experiment) both of the messages. They may later be asked about the content of either message.

Question 27

Socially Shared Retrieval Induced Forgetting

Answer 27

Occurs when listeners concurrently retrieve, what the speaker says or, more typically, doesn’t say, induces forgetting in the listener—selective remembering induces forgetting.

Question 28

Experimental evidence for Socially Shared Retrieval Induced Forgetting

Answer 28

using the Anderson (RIF) paradigm, except that they had a Listener look on as the Speaker performed the retrieval practice: (condition 1) the Listener was instructed to monitor the Speaker’s retrieval practice for accuracy; (condition 2), they were instructed to monitor whether the speaker’s response was fluid Results: they got SS-RIF when the Listener was monitoring for accuracy, but not when they were monitoring for fluidity. They got WI-RIF in both conditions.

Question 29

Experimental evidence for Socially Shared Retrieval Induced Forgetting in conversation

Answer 29

created an analogue version of the Anderson paradigm, using episode-event pairs and paired P’s had a conversation about what they remembered from the story Results: on the recall task at the end, they found the same Rp-

Question 30

Temporal Self-Appraisal Theory

Answer 30

People hold the view that they continuously improve over time and appraise their past selves, compared to their current selves, consistent with this.