Long Term Memory Impairment and Systems

Long Term Memory Impairment

• Amnesia is a type of long-term memory impairment.
• There are two types of amnesia: anterograde amnesia (inability to form new memories) and retrograde amnesia (inability to retrieve old memories)
• Retrograde amnesia is the inability to remember the past.
• Anterograde amnesia is the inability to create new memories.
• Patient H.M. had surgery to remove the hippocampus and medial temporal lobes.
• H.M. had severe anterograde amnesia but very little retrograde amnesia.
• Clive Wearing suffered near-total anterograde and retrograde amnesia.
• Hippocampal damage can lead to anterograde amnesia.

Multiple Long Term Memory Systems

• There are two main categories of long-term memory: implicit and explicit (declarative) memory.
• Explicit memory includes episodic and semantic memory.
• Episodic memory is our memory of personal life experiences.
• Semantic memory is our memory for facts and information.
• Implicit memory includes procedural memory, classical conditioning, and priming.
• Procedural memory is our memory of skills or habits.
• Classical conditioning is a type of learning where a neutral stimulus comes to evoke a response.
• Priming is a type of implicit memory that occurs when exposure to a stimulus influences responses to a later stimulus.

Mirror Drawing Task

• Amnesics improve normally at mirror drawing with practice but do not explicitly remember having done the task.
• Amnesics show impaired declarative memory for having done the task, but their non-declarative memory for the learned skill is normal.

Tower of Hanoi Task

• Amnesics improve normally at the Tower of Hanoi task with practice but do not explicitly remember having done the task.
• Amnesics show impaired declarative memory for having done the task, but their non-declarative memory for the learned skill is normal.

Word Puzzles

• Priming is a type of implicit memory that occurs when exposure to a stimulus influences responses to a later stimulus.

Encoding: Depth of Processing

• Shallow processing is attention to surface features (sound, appearance).
• Deep processing is attention to meaning.
• Deeper processing leads to better memory storage.

Encoding: Imagery

• The method of loci is a memory technique that imagines encountering items in well-known locations to improve recollection.

Retrieval: Encoding Specificity

• Memory is better when conditions at retrieval match conditions at study.
• Context-dependent memory is the theory that memory is better when conditions at retrieval match the environmental context at encoding.
• State-dependent memory is the theory that memory is better when conditions at retrieval match the internal state at encoding.

Retrieval: Reconstruction

• Memories are reconstructions of events, not simple reproductions.
• Leading questions can make memory reconstruction inaccurate.
• Memory reconstruction is influenced by suggestions and prior knowledge.

False Memories

• False memories are extremely common and normal.
• The misinformation effect can cause inaccurate information to be added to a memory through suggestions.
• Source monitoring confusion occurs when we lose track of where a memory came from.
• Cryptomnesia is a type of source monitoring confusion where we incorrectly attribute memories to our own experiences.
• Imagination inflation is a type of source monitoring confusion where we falsely believe that we have experienced something simply by imagining it.
• The false fame effect is a type of source monitoring confusion where we incorrectly believe that someone is famous simply because we have heard their name.
• Memory retrieval is more like reconstruction than reproduction.