Unit 1 Flashcards
(82 cards)
What is memory mainly understood as?
2 things
the ability to recollect past events and to bring learned facts and ideas back to mind
what must a full understanding of memory and related functions involve?
an understanding of the brain mechanism of:
- Acquisition
- Storage
- Retrieval
What does memory include?
- Happenings re-experienced concsiously
- Behavior in the absence of conscious awareness
- The mental activities of learning and memory that clearly have their neural counterparts in brain activities
What is memory by association?
Memory that event A was experienced either together with or immediately preceding event B
-> event B is recorded in the memory bank as an association from idea A to idea B
How do past experiences influence the progression of thoughts from one idea to the next?
By reviving associative sequences from memory, where event A triggers the recollection of event B.
what are theories about memory and other constructs essentially like?
like maps
-> they summarize our knowledge in a simple and structured way that helps us to understand what is known
what do our memories compromise?
not one but several interrelated memory systems
How did Ebbinghaus begin his studies regarding memory?
by simplifying the experimental situation and study memory using controlled systematic experiments with careful measurements of his own learning
What did Ebbinghaus measure?
the difficulty of learning a list by the number of study trials required for him to attain one errorless recitation of it
What did Ebbinghaus tought himself while serving as his own subject?
- Studying serial lists of 6 to 20 syllables (zug, pij, tev)
- Reading them aloud in sequence in pace with a metronome
- Trying to recite the series from memory.
What is verbal learning?
A term applied to an approach to memory that relies principally on the learning of lists of words and nonsense syllables
regarding what did ebbinghaus have strict controls?
- The timing
- Number of study trials
- Recall time permitted
- Retention Interval
- Learning materials of homogeneous difficulty
- The room in which he learned
- The time of day in every trial
Ebbinghaus - stages of acquisition of knowledge
What is Initial learning?
- The individual is exposed to the information to be learned for the first time.
- Retention is usually low, and the forgetting curve accelerates quickly
Ebbinghaus - stages of acquisition of knowledge
What is Consolidated learning?
- With practice and repetition, the information is consolidated in short- term memory and moves into long-term memory.
- Retention improves, and the forgetting curve becomes less pronounced.
Ebbinghaus - stages of acquisition of knowledge
What is sustained learning?
- As the information is continued to be repeated and reinforced over time, learning becomes more sustained.
- The information is retained for a longer period and is less susceptible to forgetting.
Ebbinghaus - stages of acquisition of knowledge
What is Mastery learning?
- The information has been learned so solidly that it is highly unlikely to be forgotten.
- Learning has become ingrained and enduring knowledge.
What is Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve characterized by?
A rapid and pronounced loss of information in the first hours or days after learning it
-> after that, forgetting rate gradually decreased as time passed
Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve
When do we forget most?
We forget most of what we learn in the initial hours after learning, and then we forget less as time goes on.
When studying a list of many pairs, each stimulus word initially shows what two effects?
- Generalization
- Confusion
-> based on the similarities (appearance or meanings) to other stimuli in the list
What is more effective, widely distributed study trials (1 per hour) or closely packed trials (1 per minute) for long-term retention?
widely distributed study trials (1 per hour)
What did Bartlett explicitly reject?
the learning of meaningless material as an appropriate way to study memory
What importance did Bartlett stress?
the importance of the rememberer’s “effort after meaning”
What can recall be substantially increased by?
using words in the list that have strong prior connections
-> subjects are likely to discover these inter-item relationships and use them for organizing their recall
e.g. consider -> considerar
What did Bartlett claim the study of memory errors could be explained by?
What did he propose?
study of the memory errors could be explained in the terms of the participants cultural assumptions about the world
-> he proposed that these depended on internal representations (schemas)