Episodic Memory: Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Episodic Memory

• Episodic memory pertains to specific, tied events.

Episodic Memory Contents

• Event content is intrinsic while event context involves circumstances.

Mental Time Travel

• Autonoetic consciousness is the awareness that allows individuals to relive/replay events, imagine fictional worlds, think about future events, and also take the other perspectives.

Serial Position Curves

• Primacy and recency effects occur

Levels of Representation

• Surface form is verbatim memory, forgotten quickly.
• Textbase is abstract memory/underlying meaning, remembered longer, but still soon forgotten.
• Mental model is referential memory, remembered longest.

Retrieval Cues

• Sounds or odors present at learning improve later memory by acting as cues.
• Cued memories are remembered better later and also serve as memory test.
• Odor cues elicit better memory recall than most other cues.

Types of Cues

• Feature cues are components of the memory or related information.
• Context cues are selected based on learning context.
• The self-reference effect indicates information related to the self is better remembered.
• Sense of ownership or agency improves memory as well.

Context and Memory

Types of Cue Contexts

• Linguistic context, for instance, the sentence a word was read in.
• Internal context includes state or mood-dependent learning.
• Environmental context means encoding specificity.
• Both feature and context cues are often used together.

Encoding Specificity

• Better memory occurs when the encoding and retrieval contexts match.
• Context incorporates into a memory trace.
• Context is larger for self-related information.
• Context can prime similar memories, in other words, remembering one painting seen in a room primes memory for another in the same room.

Reinstating Context

• When retrieving information, people perform better in the original spatial location.
• Eyes may move to where previously seen information was.

Related Concepts

• State-dependent learning which indicates better memory if internal state is the same.
• Mood-dependent learning which means better memory occurs when the mood is the same.
• Mood-congruent memory means there is better retrieval if the mood matches memory content.

Retrieval Cues

• People with more working memory are more sensitive to context changes.
• Extra capacity enables to encode and be affected by context.

Transfer Appropriate Processing

• Memory is enhanced when retrieval resembles encoding.
• Deep encoding causes better memory for meaning-based tasks, while shallow encoding leads to better memory for surface-based tasks.
• Explicit memory is aided by conceptual encoding, but implicit memory by perceptual encoding.
• Memory can be assisted if the response movement matched what was needed to recall the item, for instance, the action of pressing is connected to piano, doorbell, stapler, etc., whereas twisting is associated with key, jar, and screwdriver.

Repetition and Practice

Types of Practice

• Massed practice involves studying everything at once.
• Distributed practice means studying across several events. As learning time remains constant, memory improves with distributed practice.

Repetition and Practice

• Consolidation account indicates there isn't sufficient time for consolidation to occur during massed practice.

Deficient Processing

• Insufficient processing occurs in massed practice, habituation to information along with more mind wandering.

Contextual Variability

• Context changes in distributed and not massed practice.

Schedules of Practice

Uniform

• Sessions are evenly spaced, for example, every 3 days.

Expanding

• Involves increasing delays, such as 1 day, 3 days, 5 days.

Contracting

• Involves decreasing delays, for example, 5 days, 3 days, 1 day.

Interleaved Practice

• Alternating topics, which improves memory and also deepens comprehension.

Overlearning

• Overlearning occurs after perfect retrieval and practice continues.
• Retrieval time decreases and forgetting is less pronounced.

Permastore

• Harry Bahrick's forgetting curve suggests memory loss throughout life.
• Bahrick studied very long-term memories which ranged from 3 months to 50 years.
• Some memories decline, others do not.
• Memories that reach a stable state are in permastore.

To Study or To Test

• Memory improves in people who take a test as opposed to simply studying; also called retrieval practice effect or the testing effect.
• Testing reduces the rate of forgetting, reduces prior study experiences' proactive interference, and forces increased organization and elaborative processing.

Forward Testing Effect

• Testing after mastering the test can help to learn things afterwards.
• It may reduce the impact of proactive interference.

Testing Effect Theories

Elaborative Retrieval Hypothesis

• People engage in deeper processing during testing which leads to increased mental reasoning.
• Testing can reduce proactive interference and is also less likely to be applied to complex materials.
• Memories generated at test differ from those built during retrieval meaning there are multiple traces.

Episodic Context Account

• Context is encoded.
• If retrieval proves to be successful, testing context is connected to content as well.
• Both contexts can be applied to aid retrieval.

Relational Processing Hypothesis

• There is a larger testing effect for recall.
• The recall test puts emphasis on relational processing.
• This supports connections among items, which improves memory.

Organization and Distinctiveness

Organization

• Memory improves when people organize information, while organization enables chunking which helps retrieval.

Event segmentation

• Is aided by event structure.

• If people clearly segment events, memory is improved.

• Benefit not seen immediately, only after a delay.

• Memory works better when people organize or make information distinct.

Material Appropriate Processing

• Organization equals relational processing while distinction equals item specific processing.
• Memory improves by the type of missing processing in a given instance.
• Narrative memory is better with item specific processing, while expository text memory works better with relational processing.

Distinction

• Von Restorff Effect indicates distinctive items are remembered better from differentiation from other items. Also better for Bizarre imagery.

Resolution

• When half or fewer of the items are bizarre.
• This does not occur between groups.

Fuzzy Trace Memory

• Memory retrieval involves different memory representations such as episodic details and gists.
• Detail is associated with parahippocampal gyrus and the visual cortex
• Gist is associated with the inferior frontal gyrus.

Adaptive Memory

• Memory did not evolve in a vacuum, but was driven by evolutionary pressures.
• Memory improves for items related to survival, those that are dangerous or very useful.
• Thinking about personal mortality can create a benefit.
• People recall information that is closely linked to danger, either objects or possible locations.
• The Animacy Effect means people remember animate (living) things better than inanimate information.

Memory for the Future

• Prospective memory is about remembering to do something in the future.

Three Types

• Event-based means doing something when a particular event occurs.
• Time-based means doing something at a point in time or after elapsed time.
• Location-based means to complete an action in a certain venue.

Ongoing Tasks

• Focal is a part of the current task, whereas non-focal is not related to current task.

Episodic Future Thinking

• Encompasses with imagining future events.
• Which are recombinations of past episodes that are less vivid, more positive, and related to major life events.
• Follows a temporal gradient, with earlier events remembered better than later events.

Constructive Simulation Hypothesis

• A prior experience guides imagining of the future.
• Easier when imagined future is like the past. Imagining talking with 2 friends from school is easier than talking with a friend from school and a friend from work.
• This is imagining the future more difficult than remembering in the past.
• Anterior hippocampus, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and precuneus are heavily involved.
• Episodic future thinking is active thinking.

Chapter 8: Forgetting

The Seven Sins of Memory

Transience

• Memories can degrade over time, prior knowledge goes back to working memory.
• Reconstructive means gaps created by forgetting get filled in.
• One may remember features of a memory, but not the object in question.

Absent-Mindedness

• If attention is not paid, learning cannot occur.
• If people are taking pictures, they will remember less.
• Availability: Does memory trace exist?

Accessibility

• Can the memory be reached?

Blocking

• Other memories can get in the way.
• Cue-overload happens when too many associations make a cue less effective.

Misattribution

• Knowing memory content, but misattribute the source.

Suggestibility

• Outside sources can intentionally, or unintentionally, affect memory.

Bias

• Memory is distorted toward current knowledge, "I always knew that".

Persistence

• Incorrect and unwanted knowledge may not be forgotten, this can affect decision making.
• Forgetting isn't always negative; it’s valuable.
• Transience and absent-mindedness indicate we don't need to remember everything.
• Blocking helps efficiency and generalization.
• Misattribution and suggestibility allows for memories to be corrected and updated; persistence indicates some things don't change and also can be problematic when inaccuracies persist.

The Forgetting Curve

Accelerated Long-Term Forgetting

• When forgetting is more rapid, this isn't initially seen and only occurs after a delay.
• It is an indicator of neurological issues like Alzheimer's Disease, Epilepsy or TBI.

Linear Forgetting

• Memories are composed components.
• Components are forgotten at different rates, which commonly follows Ebbinghaus function.
• Lineal forgetting emerges when memories are partially reconstructed.

Phases of Memory

• The rate of forgetting can vary.
• WM lasts up to 60 seconds and is relatively rapid.
• Early long-term memory lasts from 60 seconds to 12 hours and the rate of forgetting decreases.
• Transient long-term memory lasts from 12 hours to 7 days, where stable memory is achieved.
• Lasting long term memory lasts more than 7 days, where forgetting increases again.

Decay and Disuse

• Law of Disuse says unused memories decay over time; the theory isn't accepted by everyone and that time itself doesn't cause rust.

New Theory of Disuse

• Over time, memories are less accessible as they are no longer needed.

Storage Strength

• Is about how well information has been encoded, while retrieval strength concerns how easily information can be accessed.

Neurobiological Decay

• Neurogenesis happens when new neurons disrupt old patterns.
• The decay of LTM means memories are lost from the hippocampus because of "forgetting cells" that actively remove memories.

Interference

• Is a mechanism of forgetting that is frequently tested with paired-associates.

Proactive Interference

• Old memories impair new memories (interference forward in time), this is because more related information produces greater interference.
• Release from proactive interference happens if meaning has been changed; it can occur with both news stories, and if someone follows politics.
• PI follows continuous, unsegmented learning of similar information.
• Learning is better when topics are interleaved.

Retroactive Interference

• New memories make it harder to remember old memories (interference backward in time).
• Can be reduced by sleep with the effect reduced by fewer new memories.

Associative Interference

• Caused by the number of associations with a concept (fan effect), interference increases with the number of associations as well as response time.
• Can be reduced through chunking with spatial location chunking as an example.

A Common Object

• Could be ‘the potted palm’ that is in the airport, barber shop and hotel, or the common location of ‘the pay phone’ and ‘waste basket’ in the library.

Event Model

• Is a mental representation of an event.

Event Boundary

• Is a meaningful change in an on-going event and separates successive events from each other.

Walking Through Doorways Causes Forgetting

• Increase hippocampal activity occurs at event boundaries.
• Cells are remapped to accommodate the new event.

General Interference and Consolidation

• Interference can generally arise from daily activities, which consolidation can later counteract.
• Jost's Law states old memories are lost more slowly than new ones and can improved through retroactive facilitation.
• Older memories can be remembered better through general interference and consolidation.
• Interference effects can also be improved through taking a nap, sleep or even a 10 minute break!

Inhibition

• Information may be inhibited and accessibility is actively improved.

Part-Set Cuing

• Ability to remember a piece if a subset is given as retrieval cues
• Disrupted plans, retrieval competition occur from more highly activated provided items, and there is inhibition of non-cued concepts by cued concepts, all of which make memory worse.

Negative Priming

• Memory traces only suppressed are harder to retrieve.

Retrieval Practice

• It follows the paradigm: when some concepts are practiced, related ones are inhibited.
• Remembering causes more forgetting (Anderson & Spellman).

Intentional Forgetting

Directed Forgettng

• People are explicitly instructed to forget some items while remembering others.

Item Method

• Instruction to remember or forget is given after each item.
• Only TBR (to be remembered) items are rehearsed leaving people to look away from TBF location.

List Method

• Instruction is given after a series of items (before the series).
• TBF (to-be-forgotten) items are suppressed, but suppression can be disrupted if TMS is applied or through rest/sleep.

Selective Directed Forgetting

• An instruction is given which is only applicable a subset of what has been presented; another list is soon presented.
• Very difficult to replicate this effect.

Retraction

• Persistence means that even well-learned knowledge can show resistance.
• Some people may not believe the retraction.
• There may be a "backfire effect" where someone believes original point more strongly.

Knowledge Revision Components Framework (KREC)

• Proposes five mental processes can affect memory change.
• Information in LTM is permanent, even if later corrected with passive retrieval.
• Priming happens when memories are passively activated with related information.
• When someone misunderstands, they can only correct this error by reactivating older incorrect memories and along with new information (reconsolidation).

New Information

• Is integrated with older incorrect information (reconsolidation).
• Over time, newer information will dominate one's thinking.

Social Influences

Collaborative Inhibition

• Memory is often worse when recalling as a group because each person employs their unique retrieval plan that is disrupted others.
• Dissipates over time.

Collaborative Facilitation

• Memory can improve in groups when recognition is used alone, as reliance on familiarity is used rather than pure retrieval.

Other's People's Memories

• False Consensus Bias is that other recognize what we know.
• People will anticipate others to remember better with less pressure.

Drugs and Alcohol

Drugs

• Many drugs can impact memory (benzodiazepines).
• Increased GABA-related processes will follow
• Antegrade Amnesia will occur.
• Which hurts declarative memory encoding, though non-declarative memory will be less significantly affected.
• There will also be diminished retroactive interference effects and reduced emotion on memory.

Alcohol

• Will lead to worse memory capacity due to poorer prospective memory and metamemory in a person which results in amnesia.
• Broad degradation of cognitive process occurs, interference effects may be lessened.
• Memory deficits only present when the subject thinks they are being affected due to alcohol.

Chapter 9: Semantic Memory

• General knowledge of the world that is stable knowledge that many others have.

Semantic Priming

• Invokes concepts tied to whatever is being though about, these concepts are easier to remember.

Repeating an Idea

• Has been shown to increase priming over the short term, but not in the long run.

Priming

• Control is used to compares boats–dogs.
• Shared category level compares apples–oranges, while dresser–drawers are used to compare different categories.
• Priming observed at the shared category level, but not different category levels. Mediated Priming: Lion > Tiger > Stripes has extent but, is to a lessened, direct extent.

Semantic Interconnectivity

• The faster retrieval, the more associations in the connection, this is observed in horse racing.
• Inhibition indicates only related, but unwanted concepts, may be suppressed.

Taxonomic and Thematic Relations

• Taxonomic pertains to features that are shared (i.e both the horse and cow are farm animals), which results in slower activation.
• Thematic is that themes that frequently co-occur (i.e. dog and leash go together), this results in faster activation.

Nature of Semantic Information

• Focuses on how we interact with the world (semantic).

Concrete

• Is that nouns active more sensory cortex, more thematic relations.

Embodied Semantics

• Pertains to abstract concepts.

• Heavily related to thematic relations along with visually larger elements being easier to identify.

• With left-and right-handed thinking, positive and negative concept easier to identify with a word.

Semantic Stability

• Concepts in semantic memory are changing where Semantic memory is developed, and it is emerging.

Context and Categories

• We know a lot about the world and we group it together

• Different items match on the same form, hence, forming categorization. Two are equated, forming feature assumptions.

• Concepts: Holds Information is contained in an idea.

Categories

• Applies to how the sets are asserted.

Why Categorize?

• Allows more to Predict, Spend Time, and make Human decisions.

Levels

• Are Superordinate, basic, and sub levels that people prefer.
• The basic attributes are listed quite often, and details will cause less information.

Artifact and Kinds

• Seems stored differently in Semantic, and Kinds will result into forms.

Classical View

• Centers of basic categorization, where category will share the ones with deviations and fundamentals if present.

Problems

• Problems will result in Chair grading within an "ambiguous" form, resulting in questionability.
• If there are co-occurrences in the Probabilistic, results in family problems.

Prototype View

• Is based on of average which will have non-real views.
• Has problems that will only transfer aspects.

Exemplar View

• All forms stored in memory, which are found on the central base, creating lots of difficulties in the system.
• Explanation-Based Categorization - Provides people needs because similarity is not a category.
• Relations come will with high-order.

Psychological

• Act will have common essences and surface features
• View world or how view.

Ordered Relations

• Semantic Distance effects will separate from the continuity, being hard to understand.

Semantic Congruity Effect

• If one item is on.

Problems

• Serial Position effects can be easy.

SNARC Effect

Schemas and Scripts

• If we associate, knowing is easier.

Scripts

• Operation:
  • Organization is a huge framework.
  • Select relevant.
  • Has basic Schema.
  • With integration, it fills to the data.
    • The "von Restorff" effect.
• Temporally:
  • Are people in the scheme separate.

Limit Data Data Issues

• Only can be accurate if there is data on a problem
• With illusion and what is known cause errors, and the "Galileo Bias"

Physics

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