Encoding failures: Things that never make it to LTM

Question 1

What was the procedure for Simon & Emmon’s (1956) sleep learning study?

Answer 1

During sleep, participants heard questions and answered every 5 minutes.
Their EEGs were recorded throughout the night to monitor their sleep.

Question 2

What were the percentage of learning for…
Awake but relaxed:
Drowsy:
Drowsiness/light sleep transition:
Asleep:

Answer 2

Awake but relaxed: 80%
Drowsy: 50%
Drowsiness/light sleep transition: 5%
Asleep: No effect

Question 3

How many patients produced almost verbatim reports of the anaesthetist’s comments in hyponosis?
How many produced partial reports?
How many had no recall?

Answer 3

Verbatim - 4
Partial - 4
No recall - 2

Question 4

What were some issues with Levinson’s (1965) anaesthesia study?

Answer 4

• Ethical questions
• No control
• Suggestibility under hypnosis
• Experimenter not blind to hypnosis
• No measure of degree of anaethesia

Question 5

What 2 issues are raised from the phenomenon of memory from anaesthesia?

Answer 5

1. Anaesthesia may not be total (cocktail issue)
   - Anaesthetic (hypnotic agent)
   - Analgesic (removes pain)
   - Muscle relaxant
2. Different tests of memory may reveal different evidence for memory from anaesthesia.

Question 6

What is explicit memory?

Answer 6

A memory that requires conscious recollection of prior experiences.

Question 7

What is implicit memory?

Answer 7

A memory that is revealed on tasks that do not require reference to a specific episode.

Question 8

What are 3 typical explicit memory tasks?

Answer 8

1. Free recall
2. Cued recall
3. Recognition

Question 9

What is a free recall task?

Answer 9

Subject attempts to remember target information without any assistance from the experimenter.

Question 10

What is a cued recall task?

Answer 10

Subject attempts to remember the target information in the presence of some specific cue.

Question 11

What is recognition?

Answer 11

Subject is presented with a stimulus and must decide whether it is one that he or she was asked to remember.

Question 12

What are 3 typical implicit memory tasks?

Answer 12

1. Word stem completion
2. Word fragment completion
3. Degraded picture naming

Question 13

What is ‘weapon focus’?

Answer 13

The idea that arousal (during a crime) causes attention focusing such that only ‘central information’ is attended to. For example, the attacker’s knife rather than face.