Introduction to Memory Chapter Quiz

Introduction to Memory

• Memory is the ability to store and retrieve information over time.
• Three key functions of memory include encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Chapter Outline

• What is memory?
• Encoding: Transforming perceptions into memories
• Storage: Maintaining memories over time
• Retrieval: Bringing memories to mind
• Forms of long-term memory: More than one kind
• Memory failures: The seven "sins" of memory

Encoding: Transforming Perceptions Into Memories

• Memories combine existing knowledge with new information.
• Memories are constructed.
• Three major ways to encode include semantic, visual imagery, and organizational encoding.

Semantic Encoding

• Relating new information to existing knowledge in a meaningful way
• Associated with increased activity in the lower left frontal lobe and the inner part of the left temporal lobe.

Visual Imagery Encoding

• Storing information by converting it into mental pictures.
• Produces neural changes in visual and memory networks that enhance memory performance.
• A smartphone app can be used to teach visual imagery to improve encoding of new information.

Organizational Encoding

• Categorizing information according to relationships among items.
• Organizing current experiences by segmenting events into meaningful units is effective in enhancing recall.
• Examples include hierarchies and mnemonics.

Encoding of Survival-Related Information

• Memory mechanisms that aid survival are passed down based on Darwinian principles.
• Experiments using survival encoding yield better memory (perhaps due to elaborative, visual imagery, and organizational encoding).
• Superior recall is observed in scenarios that involve planning, but not survival.

Storage: Maintaining Memories Over Time

• Sensory storage, holding sensory information for a few seconds or less, is distinguished
• Iconic memory: Fast-decaying store of visual information
• Echoic memory: Fast-decaying store of auditory information

Short-Term Storage and Working Memory

• Short-term memory: Holds nonsensory information for more than a few seconds, but less than a minute.
• Rehearsal is vital in maintaining short-term memories.
• Chunking is the process of combining small pieces of information into larger clusters to improve short-term memory.

Rehearsal and Chunking Strengthen Memory

• Rehearsal: Process of keeping information in short-term memory by mentally repeating it
• Serial position effect: Items at the beginning and end of a series are more easily recalled than those in the middle. Recency effect specifically deals with the items at the end of the list
• Chunking: Combining small pieces of information into larger units

The Decline of Short-Term Memory

• A 1959 experiment showed how quickly short-term memory fades without rehearsal.
• Memory for consonant strings declines rapidly, diminishing from about 80% after a 3-second delay to almost nothing after 20 seconds.
• Short-term memory holds information for about 15–20 seconds.

Working Memory Model

• Working memory stores and manipulates information.
• Includes a limited capacity memory system
• Refers to active maintenance of information in short term storage
• Involves two subsystems: Visio-spatial sketchpad and phonological loop. The episodic buffer serves as a connection between the two

Retrieval Cues

• Information is sometimes available in memory, even when not immediately accessible.
• Retrieval cues are external information that is associated with stored information to help retrieve it. Examples include encoding specificity principle, state-dependent retrieval, and transfer-appropriate processing.

Consequences of Retrieval (Part 1)

• Retrieval strengthens retrieved memories, particularly long-term memories.
• Retrieval-induced forgetting occurs when retrieving an item from long-term memory impairs subsequent recall of related items.

Memory Testing Benefits Long-Term Retention

• Study-study condition yields slightly better recall with a 5-minute retention interval.
• Results change dramatically at longer retention intervals. The study-test condition performed better at 2-day and 1-week retention intervals

Consequences of Retrieval (Part 2)

• Retrieval can improve subsequent memory.
• Retrieval can impair subsequent memory.
• Retrieval can change subsequent memory.

Forms of Long-Term Memory: More Than One Kind

• Explicit memories: Consciously retrieving past experiences (e.g., semantic and episodic memories)
• Implicit memories: Influence of past experiences on later behavior, even without awareness (e.g., procedural memory and priming).

Implicit Memory

• Procedural memory: Gradual acquisition of skills through practice or "knowing how" to do things.
• Priming: Enhanced ability to think of a stimulus as a result of recent exposure (perceptual and conceptual priming)

Long-Term Priming of Visual Objects

• Participants who viewed drawings of common objects and were tested for recognition of fragmented draws 17 years later showed priming effects.
• Priming effects were nonsignificant in participants who hadn't seen the drawings previously.

Procedural Memory and Priming Do Not Rely on the Hippocampus

• Priming is associated with reduced activity in various cortex regions when performing unprimed tasks.
• Neuroimaging studies show distinct brain systems for priming.

Explicit Memory: Semantic and Episodic

• Semantic memory: Network of associated facts and concepts that make up general knowledge.
• Episodic memory: Collection of past personal experiences at a particular time and place that involves mental time travel; contributes to imagination and creativity.

Episodic Memory

• Helps envision personal futures through divergent creative thinking.
• Allows combination of elements from past experiences to envision different future versions.
• Divergent creative thinking involves combining different types of information in new ways.
• TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) shows impaired performance on both tasks that involve envisioning the future and when considering past memories

Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future Depend on Common Brain Regions

• Remembering and imagining the future rely on a common core network in the brain

A World of Differences: Do We All Reexperience Our Personal Pasts?

• Severely deficient autobiographical memory: High functioning individuals struggle to vividly reexperience events from the past
• Reduced volume of the hippocampus in individuals with severely deficient autobiographical memory may be a contributing factor.
• Individual differences in the ability to recall episodic details related to volume of particular subregions

Collaborative Memory: Social Influences on Remembering

• Collaborative memory: How people remember in groups
• Collaborative recall is greater than any single individual but less than a nominal group of people recalling information individually.
• Retrieval induced forgetting occurs in groups setting
• Social learning inhibition has a role to play

The Real World: Is GPS Hurting Our Memories?

• Reliance on GPS results in impaired memory for routes during virtual navigation tasks.
• Increased reliance on GPS might lead to reduced brain volume in regions responsible for navigation and memory.
• People who rely on GPS might remember less detail about their tours.
• Increased GPS reliance results in a decrease in spatial memory abilities.

Memory Failures: Transience

• Transience: Forgetting that occurs with the passage of time.
• Memory fades more quickly at first, then more slowly over time and switching from specific to more general memories
• Common types of forgetting that are associated with transience include retroactive interference and proactive interference along with infantile or childhood amnesia.

The Curve of Forgetting

• Hermann Ebbinghaus measured retention at different delay intervals after studying nonsense syllables.
• Memory strength measured by the percentage of time needed to relearn a list compared to the time initially needed to memorize it.

Memory Failures: Absentmindedness

• Absentmindedness: A lapse in attention resulting in memory failures.
• Less activity in the left frontal lobe when attention is divided can lead to absentmindedness.
• We don't always remember to remember.
• External reminders and intention offloading methods help overcome this

Memory Failures: Blocking

• Blocking: Failure to retrieve information that's available in memory.
• Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: Inability to retrieve information despite knowing it exists in memory
• Frequency of blocking increases with age and injury

Memory Failures: Memory Misattribution

• Memory misattribution: Assigning a recollection or idea to the wrong source.
• Frontal lobe involved. Correct memories can be attributed to wrong sources.
• Source amnesia: Inability to recall when, where, or how information was acquired.
• Misattribution happens to all, and influenced by culture.
• False recognition: Experiencing an item as familiar even if not encountered before
• Culture contributes to how memories are constructed

Memory Failures: Suggestibility

• Suggestibility: Incorporating misleading information from external sources into personal recollections.
• People can develop false memories as a result of the suggestions
• Visual imagery influence, social pressures, recall of childhood memories contribute

Memory Failures: Bias

• Bias: Present knowledge, beliefs, and feelings distort recollections of previous events
• Consistency bias: Past memories reconstructed to fit present beliefs.
• Egocentric bias: Exaggerating change between present and past to appear favourable.
• Example of bias used is fake news.

Memory Failures: Persistence

• Persistence: Intrusive recollection of events that we wish we could forget.
• Persistence is frequently connected to upsetting or traumatic experiences
• Memories of emotionally charged events are more resistant to forgetting.
• Flashbulb memories: Detailed recollections of shocking events. Amygdala is involved in emotional memory

The Amygdala's Influence on Memory

• The amygdala, located near the hippocampus, responds strongly to emotional events.
• Damage to the amygdala can impair the recall of emotional events.

Are the Seven Sins Vices or Virtues?

• Each of the seven sins can cause trouble in our lives, but they also have an adaptive side.
• Sins viewed as the cost of having a memory that works well most of the time.

Associative Inference & Missing Pieces

• Associative inferences: Combining information from different episodes leads to new connections
• Adaptive process that uses stored memory in an inflexible way
• Makes correct associative inferences can lead to memory misattribution errors

Test your understanding of memory functions, including encoding, storage, and retrieval. Explore forms of long-term memory and learn about memory failures through this informative quiz. Perfect for students studying psychology or cognitive science.