Podcast
Questions and Answers
What is the primary purpose of sensory memory?
What is the primary purpose of sensory memory?
Which term best describes the ability to identify previously encountered information?
Which term best describes the ability to identify previously encountered information?
What does the 'magic number' refer to in the context of short-term memory?
What does the 'magic number' refer to in the context of short-term memory?
What strategy can enhance our ability to hold information in short-term memory?
What strategy can enhance our ability to hold information in short-term memory?
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Which memory model compares the mind's functions to those of a computer?
Which memory model compares the mind's functions to those of a computer?
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What type of memory is characterized by consciously retrieving past experiences?
What type of memory is characterized by consciously retrieving past experiences?
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Which effect describes the tendency to remember the first and last items in a list better than the middle items?
Which effect describes the tendency to remember the first and last items in a list better than the middle items?
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Which method aids memory by creating visual images to represent words or concepts?
Which method aids memory by creating visual images to represent words or concepts?
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Which type of memory involves knowledge of facts, rules, and concepts?
Which type of memory involves knowledge of facts, rules, and concepts?
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What type of memory is affected by the way information is worded, which can lead to suggestive inaccuracies?
What type of memory is affected by the way information is worded, which can lead to suggestive inaccuracies?
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Which mnemonic technique involves associating visual images with concepts?
Which mnemonic technique involves associating visual images with concepts?
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What is the term for memories that are vivid and detailed, often related to traumatic events?
What is the term for memories that are vivid and detailed, often related to traumatic events?
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What type of memory involves skills and tasks that are performed without thinking, such as riding a bike?
What type of memory involves skills and tasks that are performed without thinking, such as riding a bike?
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What does reality monitoring help us determine?
What does reality monitoring help us determine?
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What is a source monitoring error?
What is a source monitoring error?
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Which of the following describes retroactive interference?
Which of the following describes retroactive interference?
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What is an example of state-dependent memory?
What is an example of state-dependent memory?
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What characterizes anterograde amnesia?
What characterizes anterograde amnesia?
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What role does the hippocampus play in memory?
What role does the hippocampus play in memory?
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What does ineffective encoding entail?
What does ineffective encoding entail?
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What positive element is often highlighted in Clive Wearing's story?
What positive element is often highlighted in Clive Wearing's story?
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Study Notes
Memory Function
- Memory: the ability to retain & retrieve information
- How to measure memory:
- Recall: retrieving learned information
- Recognition: identifying previously encountered information
- Relearning: effort saved when learning something previously
Models of Memory
- Information Processing Model: memory like a computer
- Encoding: how to put information in, retain, store & retrieve
- Levels of Processing: different levels of processing impact memory encoding
Three Box Model of Memory
- Sensory Memory:
- Retains for 1-2 seconds
- Acts as a holding bin
- ~1/2 second for visual system
- ~Longer for auditory system
- Determines if the information is worth processing
Sensory Memory
- Iconic Memory: fast-decaying store of visual information
- Echoic Memory: fast-decaying store of auditory information
Short-Term Memory
- Holds a limited amount of information
- Working memory retains information for 15-20 seconds
- Pattern recognition: compares to information in LTM, goes to LTM, decays or is lost
Magic Number
- Number of items held in STM
- Historically: 7 +/- 2
- Recent research: closer to 4
- Digit Span Test: tests STM capacity
- Chunking: strategy to hold information, cultural variations
Long-Term Memory
- Longer storage from minutes to decades
- Depends on synaptic connections
- Strengthened by long-term potentiation (repeated communication across the synapse)
- Organized by schemas and semantic networks
- Contents of Long-Term Memory:
- Explicit & Implicit Memory
Explicit Memory
- Conscious & intentional retrieval of past experiences
- Semantic Memories: facts, rules, concepts, general information
- Episodic Memories: experienced events, personal recollections
Implicit Memory
- Past experiences influence later behavior & performance, people unaware of the memory.
- Procedural: motor skills "knowing how" to do things.
- Priming: increases object/word identification based on recent exposure to other stimuli.
Memory and Recall Tasks
- Serial Position Effect: More likely to remember the first and last few items on a list, not the middle.
- Primacy Effect: memory of beginning pieces of list
- Recency Effect: memory of end pieces of the list
- Frequency: Increased mentions increase memory
- Distinctiveness: Increases likelihood of memory
- Chunking: increases memory
- Reconstructed memory: reflects how schemas can affect memories
Memory Retrieval
- Maintenance Rehearsal: retain in STM (repeat phone number)
- Elaborative Rehearsal: know it, review, practice, give meaning
- Visual Imagery: create visual images to represent words/concepts
- Method of Loci: match up existing visual images with concepts
- Mnemonics: systematic strategies for remembering information, memory tricks or tools to aid memory (ex: ROY G BIV)
- Dual-Coding Theory: memory is enhanced by using semantic and visual codes, as either can lead to recall
- Chase & Simon chess player research: expert, intermediate, and novice players
- Expert knowledge helps memory of relevant information, but not irrelevant information
Special Memory Types
- Flashbulb Memories: dramatic positive or negative memories
- Traumatic events are more vivid than ordinary events
- Main aspects of trauma remembered
- Can distort details
- Accuracy fades over time
Eyewitness Testimony
- People’s memories are highly suggestible
- People tend to fill in missing information
- How one words things can also impact memories
- Errors are greater when the ethnicity of the subjects is different from the witness
Reality Monitoring
- Deciding whether memories are based on external or internal sources
- Source memory: recall of when, where and how information was acquired
- Source monitoring error or Memory misattribution: assigning a memory to the wrong source
Forgetting
- Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve for nonsensical syllables: steep but not generalizable to all forgetting.
- Ineffective encoding: information was not remembered in the first place
- Decay theories: memories fade with time
- New memories for old: the most recent version is "saved"
- Retroactive Interference: new information interferes with old
- Proactive Interference: old information interferes with new
- Motivated forgetting: painful memories blocked from consciousness (Freud)
- Retrieval cues: external information helps memory
Encoding specificity: a cue can help as a reminder when it recreates the specific way the information was encoded
- State dependent and context dependent: mental and physical states can enhance memory
- Memories created when drinking increased when drinking again
- Similar environment or setting can serve as a retrieval cue
- State dependent and context dependent: mental and physical states can enhance memory
Amnesia
- Memory deficit
- Retrograde amnesia: deficit in recalling events prior to the onset of amnesia.
- Anterograde amnesia: deficit in learning after the onset of the disorder
- Hippocampus: "index to put information into LTM, but evidence from amnesiacs indicates it is not the site of long-term memory storage" (Schacter, 2023)
- Think about Clive Wearings experiences in relation to this.
Clive Wearing Case Study
- Implications of using a case study like this to learn about memory.
- What is one thing learned from Clive's story?
- What is a specific example of an explicit and implicit memory ability Clive demonstrates?
- What is a specific example of an explicit or implicit memory deficit Clive demonstrates?
- Although there are challenges, what is a positive element of this story?
- Deborah (and Clive) allow for documenting his amnesia to better understand the disorder
- What are the implications of using a case study like this to learn about how our memories work?
- What is one thing you learned from Clive’s story?
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Description
Explore the functions and models of memory in this quiz, including the Information Processing Model and the Three Box Model of Memory. Test your understanding of concepts such as sensory memory, short-term memory, recall, and recognition. Enhance your knowledge about how we retain and retrieve information.
