Memory 3

• Who conducted significant research on memory in 1885?

  Ebbinghaus
• What is the title of Ebbinghaus's 1913 translation?

  Memory: A contribution to experimental psychology
• What did Ebbinghaus's book describe?

  The results of two years of solid memory testing done on himself
• What method did Ebbinghaus use to measure memory retention?

  The method of savings

  
• What type of material did Ebbinghaus use for his memory tests?

  Lists of nonsense syllables
• What type of memory task is the method of savings considered?

  An implicit memory task
• What does the term "savings against time" refer to in Ebbinghaus's research?

  The ability to learn something faster after initial learning
• How did Ebbinghaus find the learning of nonsense syllables a month later?

  It was faster than learning a brand-new list for the first time
• What type of relationship did Ebbinghaus's third diagram illustrate?

  A power law relationship
• What did Wixted analyze in his research?

  A wide range of forgetting functions from Ebbinghaus onwards
• What conclusion did Wixted reach about forgetting functions?

  They are well described as a power function
• What does the power function suggest about memory performance over time?

  Memory performance reduces as a power function over time
• What is unusual about the method of savings according to the text?

  It can be an indirect test of implicit memory
• What did Bahrick test in his 1984 study?

  The memory of 733 people for Spanish taught at school up to 50 years ago
• How was performance related to initial learning level in Bahrick's study?

  Performance was closely related to initial learning level even 50 years later
• What did Bahrick find about memory decay over time?

  Memory decayed quickly over the first few years, then leveled off
• What was the chance of English-Spanish recall in controls according to Bahrick's findings?

  It was measured at close to 0
• What was noted about the participants' use of Spanish in Bahrick's study?

  There was virtually no use/rehearsal of Spanish
• What was the focus of Standing's 1973 study?

  The capacity of Long-Term Store (LTS)
• What was the procedure used in Standing's study?

  Participants watched slides for 5 seconds each and then had a recognition test 2 days later
• What was the performance level on the recognition test after learning 10,000 items in Standing's study?

  Performance was at 83%
• How did the recognition performance differ between vivid pictures and words in Standing's study?

  Performance was better with vivid pictures but slightly worse with words
• What do other studies support regarding visual memory?

  They support Standing's basic result of good recognition for large numbers of briefly presented pictures
• What is the contradiction in visual memory observations?

  People are very bad at spotting major changes in pictures
• What concept is related to the difficulty in remembering where we just looked?

  Change Blindness
• What did Horowitz and Wolfe (1998) conclude about visual search?

  Visual search has no memory
• What do the results from Konkle, Brady, Alvarez & Aude (2010) suggest about visual long-term storage?

  Results depend more on conceptual similarity than on perceptual similarity
• What do we seem to store in visual long-term memory?

  The gist of pictures, not the specific fine details
• Why is visual memory sometimes needed beyond recognition?

  To achieve identification of individuals
• What did Bahrick find about college teachers' recognition of previous students after 8 years?

  There was evidence for recognition but no identification
• What did Young, Hay & Ellis (1995) study regarding face processing?

  Errors in everyday face processing
• How many errors did participants report in Young, Hay & Ellis's study?

  1008 errors
• What type of error was most frequently reported in Young, Hay & Ellis's study?

  Mistakenly identifying a person
• What does "verbal overshadowing of memory" refer to?

  The impairment of face memory due to verbal description
• What did Schooler & Engstler-Schooler (1990) find about describing faces?

  It impairs subsequent memory for the face in a recognition test
• What are the implications of verbal overshadowing for eyewitness testimony?

  It suggests that verbal descriptions can impair memory accuracy
• What did Melcher & Schooler (1996) find about verbalization and memory?

  The value of verbalization can depend on expertise
• How did novice wine drinkers' memories respond to verbalization?

  Their memories were enhanced by verbalization
• What was the effect of verbalization on expert wine tasters' memories?

  Their memories were unaffected by verbalization
• What happens to long-term memory over time?

  It gets worse over time, but not catastrophically