Psych 130 Notes PDF

Division and interaction in memory systems Division: distinguishing between different types of memory ○ Example: short term and long term memory ○ Example: episodic, semantic, and procedural long term memory Interaction: different types of memory interrelate and also sh...

Division and interaction in memory systems Division: distinguishing between different types of memory ○ Example: short term and long term memory ○ Example: episodic, semantic, and procedural long term memory Interaction: different types of memory interrelate and also share mechanisms ○ Example: episodic and semantic long term memory Long term memory “Archive” of information about past events and knowledge learned Works closely with working memory Storage stretches from a few moments ago to as far back as one can remember More recent memories are more detailed Types of long term memory Episodic: memory for specific personal experiences, involving mental time travel back in time to achieve a feeling of reliving the experience ○ Example: I remember going to get coffee at Le Buzz yesterday morning and talking with Gil and Mary about their bike trip Semantic: memory for facts ○ Example: there is a Starbucks down the road from Le Buzz Autobiographical: people’s memories for experiences from their own lives ○ These memories have both episodic components (relived specific events) and semantic components ( facts related to these events) ○ Example: I met Gil and Mary at Le Buzz yesterday morning. We sat at our favorite table near the window, which is often difficult to get in the morning when the coffee shop is busy. Long term memory can be divided explicit memory and implicit memory ○ Explicit memory - episodic and semantic ○ Implicit memory - procedural memory, priming, and conditioning Serial position Murdoch (1962): distinction between short term and long term memories using the serial position curve ○ Read stimulus list, write down all words remembered Primacy effect: things are remembered better when it is presented at the start ○ Due to having more time to rehearse information, making it more likely to enter LTM Recency effect: things are remembered between when it is presented at the end ○ Stimuli is still in STM  Coding in STM and LTM STM and LTM can also be distinguished by comparing the way information is coded by the 2 systems Coding: refers to the form in which stimuli are represented ○ Visual coding: coding in the form of a visual image ○ Auditory coding: coding in the form of a sound ○ Semantic coding: coding in terms of meaning Visual coding ○ Creating a picture in your mind ○ Example: recalling the wonderful view from your balcony during your last holidays ○ Occurs in STM and LTM Auditory coding ○ Occurs in LTM E.g playing a song in your head E.g hearing the next song on a playlist you’ve heard over and over ○ Occurs also in STM E.g phonological similarity effect Visual and auditory encoding in short and long term memory Semantic coding Semantic coding in STM ○ Release from proactive interference: The effect of an improvement in memory following a substantial change to the information being memorized Semantic coding in LTM ○ Recognition memory: identification of a previously encountered stimulus ○ Sachs (1967) - specific wording is forgotten but the general meaning can be remembered for a long time Examples of coding in STM and LTM Code STM LTM Visual Holding an image in the mind to reproduce Visualizing how your friend looked when a visual pattern that was just seen you surprised them at their birthday party Auditory Representing the sounds of letters in the Repeating a song you have heard many mind just after hearing them times before, over and over in your mind Semantic Placing words in an STM task into Recalling the general plot of a novel you categories based on their meaning read last week Locating memory in the brain Patient H.M had surgery that removed his hippocampus ○ Retained STM but unable to transfer information to LTM ○ Unable to form new LTM Patient K.F had an accident that damaged the parietal lobe Double dissociation: Occurs if damage to one area of the brain causes function A to be absent while function B is present, and damage to another area causes function B to be absent while function A is present If information is transferred to LTM via STM, how can someone have intact LTM if STM is impaired? ○ Baddeley and Hitch’s WM model can explain this - it could be that only the phonological loop was impaired, but the visuospatial sketchpad and episodic buffer were intact Brain imaging - is the hippocampus involved in STM? ○ Ranganath & D’ Esposito (2001) showed that the hippocampus is involved in maintaining novel information in memory during short delays Distinctions between episodic and semantic LTM Both are considered to be explicit/declarative memories ○ Can be consciously recalled or declared Episodic memory - memory for specific experiences in the past (episodes) Semantic memory - memory for facts (knowledge) Episodic memory involves mental time travel ○ Tied to personal experience/ remembering is reliving ○ “Self knowing” ○ E.g remembering standing at the Eiffel tower in Paris Semantic memory does not involve mental time travel ○ General knowledge & facts ○ “Knowing” ○ E.g knowing Paris is the capital of France Double dissociation: episodic and semantic LTM ○ Patient K.C - damaged hippocampus No episodic memory, cannot relive past events Semantic memory intact, can remember general information about the past ○ Italian woman - Encephalitis at 44 Impaired semantic memory Episodic memory intact, can remember past events and create new event memories Aging in episodic and semantic LTM  ○ For episodic memory, memory performance is constant until 60 years, where it declines ○ For semantic memory, it increases until 60 years, and then decreases Interactions between episodic and semantic LTM How knowledge affects experience Our knowledge (semantic memory) guides our experience ○ Thus, our knowledge influences the episodic memories that follow from our experience Individual differences ○ E.g knowledge about a certain sport will influence how we experience watching this sport Episodic and semantic memory interaction Episodic can be lost, leaving only semantic ○ Acquiring knowledge may start as episodic but then “fade” to semantic Semantic can be enhanced, if associated with episodic ○ Autobiographical memory: specific experiences, includes semantic and episodic ○ Personal semantic memory: semantic memories that have personal significance Autobiographically significant semantic memories Memories involving personal episodes Recall is better when memories are autobiographically significant ○ E.g: you would be more likely to recall the name of a popular singer in a memory test if you had attended one of their concerts than if you had just read about them online Episodic and semantic LTMs with the passage of time Forgetting increases with longer intervals after encoding Forgetting is not an “all or nothing” process ○ Familiarity: semantic memory ○ Recollection: episodic memory Remember/know procedure ○ Semanticization of remote memories Loss of episodic details for memories of long ago events ○ Semanticization of remote memories - memories for 40-50 year old events had lost much of their episodic character  Implicit memory Implicit memory Implicit memory: occurs when learning from experience is not accompanied by conscious remembering ○ Procedural memory ○ Priming ○ Conditioning Procedural memory Skill memory - memory for actions No memory of where or when learned Perform procedures without being consciously aware of how to do them People who cannot form new LTMs can still learn new skills (e.g patient HM) Patient HM was not good at mirror drawing at first, but with practice hsi ability improved ○ He always thought he was doing it for the 1st time because he couldn't form new LTMs ○ The fact that people with amnesia can retain skills from the past and learn new ones has led to a new approach in their rehabilitation (teaching them tasks) Procedural memory - cognition ○ We tend to associate procedural memory with motor skills (e.g riding a bike, tying your shoes, typing, etc) ○ We also have procedural memories related to cognition )e.g having a conversation without being able to describe the rules of grammar) Priming Priming: presentation of priming stimulus changes person’s response to a test stimulus Repetition priming: test stimulus the same or similar to priming stimulus ○ Called implicit memory - person may or may not remember original presentation of priming stimuli Graf et al. (1985) tested 3 group of participants ○ 1. Amnestic patients with Korsakoff’s syndrome (cannot form new LTM) ○ Patients without amnesia, but under treated for alcoholism ○ Patients without amnesia, and no history of alcoholism Graf et al. (1985) had participants read a 10 word list and rated each word for likeness ○ Followed by: Test of explicit memory (recall) Test of implicit memory (word completion) Findings of Graf et al. (1985) ○ Amnesiac patients (AMN) did poorly on the recall test compared to the medical inpatients (INPT) and the alcoholic controls (ALC)  Poor recall confirms the poor explicit memory associated with amnesia ○ Amnesiac patients did as well as the other patients on the implicit memory tests (completing 3 letter word stems) Incidental encoding tasks - how can we minimize the chances that a person with normal memory will remember the presentation of the priming stimulus? ○ One way is to present the priming stimulus in a task that does not appear to be a memory task E.g incidental encoding tasks Priming in everyday experience - Perfect and Askew (1994) ○ Propaganda effect: more likely to rate statements read or heard before as being true ○ Involves implicit memory because it can occur when people are not aware of previously seeing or hearing statements ○ Implications for advertisements Classical conditioning and implicit memory Classical conditioning: The process by which an organism learns a new associated between 2 stimuli - a neutral stimulus and one that already evokes a reflexive response ○ Conditioning in real life often linked to emotional reactions ○ Involves implicit memory when a person has forgotten about original pairing of the stimulus and the response Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in physiology for his work on digestion ○ Accidently noticed a dog’s salivation behavior in response to seeing someone who usually fed him (conditioned reflex) Classical conditioning terms ○ Neutral stimulus (NS): does not elicit any responses ○ Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): automatically elicits an unconditioned response ○ Unconditioned response (UCR): action that the unconditioned stimulus elicits ○ Conditioned stimulus (CS): a response to it depends on the preceding conditions, the pairing of the CS with the UCS ○ Conditioned response (CR): response the conditioned stimulus elicits as a result of the conditioning (training) procedure Summary of process ○ At first, a neutral stimulus does not elicit a response ○ Then, a conditioned stimulus is presented and paired with an unconditioned stimulus ○ After sufficient pairings, the conditioned stimulus elicits a conditioned response, which can resemble the unconditioned response The future Patients that have lost their episodic memory as a result of brain damage are also unable to imagine personal future events Addis et al. (2007) tested participants using fMRI ○ Participants silently thought about events from the past or events that might happen in the future ○ The brain regions that were active during events from the past were also active during imaging future events ○ These regions were not as active when imaging events that involved a famous person Schacter and Addis (2007, 2009) ○ Constructive episodic simulation hypothesis Episodic memories are extracted and recombined to create simulations of future events Helps us to anticipate future needs and guide future behaviors