Chapter 6 pt 2

Question 1

Sensory vs short term memory

Answer 1

sensory (what you see, hear, feel): Unattended
information is lost
* Limited in time (1-5s)
* Larger capacity than
short-term memory

short term (where info goes if you pay attention to it): unrehearsed
information is lost
* Limited in time (15-20s)
* Limited in capacity–can hold around 7 items at once (7 +/- 2)
depends heavily on circuits in the frontal lobe (pre-frontal cortex)

Question 2

Highly-Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM)

Answer 2

Ppl that can hold onto a lot of info (can remember almost every detail of their life)
HSAM is not driven by superior
encoding; must be something about
storage and/or retrieval (don’t learn info better than others, if given list of random words they’ll remember same amount as regular person right after seeing it and later on, but remember personal experiences for longer and more in detail)
HSAM do not exhibit higher IQ’s or
out-of-the ordinary memory networks
in the brain

Linked to OCD (replay their own personal memories over and over), however there’s benefit to not having this and not holding onto memories

Question 3

Implicit (non-declarative memory)

Answer 3

LONG TERM
Influence of past experiences on behavior even without conscious effort to remember

1. Procedural Memory
   -gradual acquisition of skills from practice
   -“Knowing how” to do things (tying shoes, playing guitar chords, riding bike, etc)
2. Priming
   -subconscious, enhanced ability to think of a stimulus (word, object) as result to previous exposure to the stimulus (ex: seeing yellow and thinking banana bc u were previously exposed, brain was “primed” by yellow)

Question 4

What are the two types of long term memory

Answer 4

Implicit Memory and Explicit Memory

Question 5

evidence from study of how priming is implicit and not explicit

Answer 5

Evidence that Priming is distinct from explicit memory: participants may exhibit
priming (faster with words on list) despite no explicit memory of those words

Question 6

Explicit Memory (Declarative Memory)

Answer 6

Episodic Memory: memory of past personal
experience at a particular time and place.
Example: What were you last Halloween?
Where were you last Halloween?

Semantic Memory: Semantic Memory: network of facts and
concepts; general world knowledge
Example: What date do we celebrate
Halloween? (you do not recall a specific episode
when you learned this information
(not linked to a specific episode))

Question 7

HM’s story

Answer 7

Surgery to remove parts of the medial temporal lobes (including
Hippocampus) at age 27 (1953)
* Primary impairment: inability to form new memories
* Many other cognitive abilities intact (language, non-verbal
intelligence, short-term memory)

Question 8

EP’s story

Answer 8

Had good memory of childhood neighborhood, had zero memory of current neighborhood

Question 9

What do EP and HM’s stories tell us abt the hippocampus

Answer 9

Hippocampus forms new memories but doesn’t maintain old ones, IS needed for explicit (especially episodic) memories, IS NOT needed for implicit memories (priming is largely supported by sensory areas throughout neocortex)

Healthy hippocampus is not
necessary for procedural memory (ex: mirror drawing task where HM had no memory of completing this task before but still got better at it each time)
* Procedural memory / learning
supported by Basal Ganglia and
Cerebellum

Question 10

Types of Amnesia

Answer 10

Anterograde amnesia: memory of events before the injury are ok, memory of event after are impaired (Hippocampus / Medial Temporal Lobe)

Retrograde amnesia: memory of events before the injury are impaired, memory of event after are ok (from traumatic brain injury)

Question 11

Two key ideas about retrieval

Answer 11

1. a) Encoding-Specificity: matching the context of encoding and retrieval helps with retrieval (studying and taking test in the same room)

b) State-Dependent Learning: matching the state that you’re in during encoding and retrieval helps w retrieval (drinking diet coke or beer before both)

2. Retrieving memories alters memories (can boost/improve memory or hurt other memories)
   -ex: test-enhanced learning
   -double-encoding (study + study) is less effective that encoding (study) + retrieval (test)
   -Retrieval-Induced Forgetting: remembering certain info makes you forget related info

Question 12

Retrieval-Induced Forgetting

Answer 12

remembering certain info makes you forget related info

Question 13

State-Dependent Learning

Answer 13

matching the state that you’re in during encoding and retrieval helps w retrieval (drinking diet coke or beer before both)

Question 14

Encoding-Specificity

Answer 14

matching the context of encoding and retrieval helps with retrieval (studying and taking test in the same room)

Question 15

The Seven Sins of Memory (types of memory failures)

Answer 15

1.Transience
2. Absentmindedness
3. Blocking
4. Misattribution
5. Suggestibility
6. Bias
7. Persistence

Question 16

Sins of Omission (forgetting)

Answer 16

1. Transience
   -forgetting what occurs with the passage of time (you forget a lot of stuff quickly, then slowly forget more and more)
2. Absent-mindedness
   -Lapse in attention that results in memory failure
   -may occur at retrieval stage (forgetting to retrieve/failure in prospective memory) OR at the encoding stage (forgetting to encode–never stored the info)
3. Blocking
   -failure to retrieve info that’s available in memory
   -“tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon”

Question 17

Sins of Commission (false memories)

Answer 17

4. Misattribution
   -assigning recollection to the wrong source
   -source of false memory usually internal
5. Suggestibility
   -tendency to incorporate misleading info from external sources into personal recollections
   -implanted memories; source of false memory in external
   -Neutral condition (“how fast were the cars going when they HIT each other”) vs leading condition (“how fast were the cars going when they SMASHED INTO each other”)
   -leading condition can impact your memory
6. Bias
   -distorting influences of present knowledge, beliefs and feelings on recollection of past
   -memories and predictions are more extreme than in-the-moment feelings

Question 18

Persistence

Answer 18

the intrusive recollection of events that we wish we could forget

-persistence of negative, salient memories most common in PTSD and clinical depression

non-clinical lab studies show emoitional experiences are easy to remember hard to forget – remembering emotionally laced memories is linked to heightened amygdala activation in memory process

during emotional events, amygdala upregulates hippocampus, leading to strengthened memories

Question 19

during emotional events, ____ upregulates _______, leading to _______.

Answer 19

during emotional events, amygdala upregulates hippocampus, leading to strengthened memories

Question 20

Flashbulb memories (persistence)

Answer 20

vivid memories of learning about shocking events

better than average memories

even these are error-prone despisite the feeling that they are much more accurate

over time, memory confidence stays relatively the same (report high levels of confidence even years later), memory consistency declines