Feb 15 Memory 2

• Working Memory Components: the retention and manipulation of information with conscious awareness

  • Episodic buffer: access information from long-term memory
  • Visuospatial sketchpad: visual & spatial information (ex. imagine the layout)
  • Phonological loop: verbal and auditory information (ex. count the number of windows)
  • Central executive: guides the process
• Encoding Explicit Memory:

  • Deep encoding leads to better retrieval
  • Self-reference effect (link to identity): Do these adjectives describe you? Happy, Talkative
  • Generation effect (active rehearsal): Read these pairs: king - crown; horse - saddle & Generate the word: K___g - crown; H___e - saddle
• What Causes Forgetting:

  • Decay Theory: memories are lost over time due to disuse
  • Interference Theory: Encoded memories are labile and need to be consolidated into stable long-term memories
  • Proactive interference ('forward in time'): prior information interferes with encoding a new memory
  • Retroactive interference ('backward in time'): newly learned information overwrites or interferes with a prior encoded memory
• Interference Effects On Memory:

  • Proactive interference example: Trouble learning a new phone number because your old number keeps popping up in your memory
  • Retroactive interference example: Trouble remembering an older password after you formed a new password
• Testing for Proactive Interference:

  • Experimental group will remember fewer ingredients than the control group
  • Prior information, Mulligatawny Soup recipe, is interfering with the memory of the Broccoli Soup
• Testing for Retroactive Interference:

  • Experimental group will remember fewer ingredients than the control group
  • New information is interfering with forming a memory for the vanilla cupcake recipe
• Similarity Effects:

  • The more alike something is to what is already learned, the more it will mingle and interfere with memory
  • Group Dessert would remember fewer ingredients than Group Dessoup
• The Encoding Specificity Hypothesis:

  • Memory retrieval is better when there is overlap with encoding context
  • Context can act as a retrieval cue
  • Context can be internal state (e.g., mood) or external environment (e.g., room)
• State-Dependent Learning:

  • Alcohol dependent learning
• Episodic and Semantic Memory:

  • Episodic Memory:
  • Specific events and episodes
  • Retrieve encoding context (what, where, and when)
  • Semantic Memory:
  • Facts and general information
  • No retrieval of context of learning
• Children with hippocampal damage:

  • Episodic memory impairment; cannot copy images after a delay
  • Semantic memory preservation; normal factual knowledge
• Long Term Memory:

  • Anoetic Consciousness: No awareness or personal engagement - Implicit Memory
  • Noetic Consciousness: Awareness but no personal engagement - Semantic Memory
  • Autonoetic Consciousness: Awareness AND personal engagement (Mental time travel) - Episodic Memory
• Flashbulb Memories:

  • Vivid memories of significant events that are emotionally arousing or shocking
  • Flashbulb memories change over time and are not resistant to memory distortion
• Memory Consolidation:

  • Process through which short-term memories are converted into long-term memories
  • Experiences are encoded and then consolidated into a long-term memory trace
• Memory Reconsolidation:

  • Process by which previously consolidated memories are recalled and then actively stored again
  • Retrieval changes a memory trace
• Episodic Memories are Constructed:

  • Constructing memories at retrieval means these memories are susceptible to distortion
  • We may use general knowledge, semantic memory (schemas) to infer the way things "must have been" in a recalled memory
• Semantic Memory Affects Episodic Memory:

  • Semantic knowledge affects retrieving detailed memories
  • Semantic knowledge helps us contextualize and make sense of the details
• Schemas: organize and categorize information, provide expectations about how things should occur

  • Can lead to false memories
• The Misattribution Effect:

  • Memory error where a person remembers information correctly but attributes it to the wrong source or context
  • Leading questions can cause false memory formation
• Implanting Memories:

  • Process of creating false memories or altering existing ones through suggestion or misinformation
  • Participants recalled childhood experiences recounted by their parents, and false memories were implanted
• Virtues of Reconstructive Memory:

  • Processes that help us construct the past also help us imagine the future and plan for our lives
• The Rashomon Effect:

  • Different people have contradictory interpretations of the same event
  • Highlights how the same incident can be seen and remembered differently by various observers
• Episodic memory depends on the hippocampus
• Semantic Dementia: a progressive loss of the ability to understand and generate meaningful language, stemming from atrophy in the temporal lobes, particularly the anterior regions

  • Relatively spared at episodic memory tasks 
  • Impaired at word naming and picture matching tasks
• Flashbulb Memories Do NOT Reappear

  • Flashbulb memories are not recurrent recordings of events 
  • Flashbulb memory retrieval changes over time and are not resistant to memory distortion, even if memory feels strong 
• The War of Ghosts Experiment (Bartlett (1932)

  • Participants remembered a simplified version of the story and it became more conventional with repeated retrievals
  • Omissions and alterations to match Western schema
  • Excluded uncommon details; “a black thing rushed out of his mouth”
  • Changed uncommon activities to conventional activities, according to their schemas: Hunting seals became fishing
• False Memories:

  • A familiar feeling can lead to incorrect associations 
  • Details can be added to memories during retrieval
• You want to memorize the moves from a dance video. To do so, you watch the video repeatedly. Information regarding the dance moves is first held as an iconic memory, then passes to the inner scribe of working memory
• Memory loss is greatest early on and it slows down over time
• Amygdala is a brain region, important for implicit emotional memory