What is tip of the tongue state? and ‘tip of the finger’?
- Tip-of-the-tongue state: a feeling that one knows a response yet is unable to produce it
A similar phenomenon (‘tip of the finger’) has also been reported in sign language users
What is retrieval?
- A progression from one or more retrieval cues to a target memory trace through associative connections
- The aim is to make the target available
What is the target memory trace?
The particular memory we are searching for
What are retrieval cues?
Bits of information about the target memory that guide the search
What are associations?
- Bonds that link together items in memory
- Vary in strength (e.g. banana would be more likely to have a stronger association with ‘fruit’ than ‘guava’)
What is the activation level?
- The internal state of a memory, reflecting its level of excitement
- Determines accessibility of the item
- Increases when
§ Something related to the memory is encountered - Persists for some time
What is spreading activation?
- The automatic transmission of ‘energy’ from one memory to related items via associations
- Proportional to the strength of connections
What is pattern completion?
- Retrieval: reinstatement (via spreading activation) of features that represent a memory
- Features, provided as cues, will spread activation to other features, completing the missing components
Pattern completion = the process by which spreading activation from a set of cues leads to the reinstatement of a memory
What sort of mechanism is pattern completion regarded as?
Pattern completion is regarded as a hippocampal mechanism
What are factors determining retrieval success?
- Attention to cues
- Relevance of cues
- Cue-target associative strength
- Number of cues
- Strength of target memory
- Retrieval strategy
- Retrieval mode
What does reduced attention to a cue do in terms of retrieval?
Reduced attention to a cue impairs its ability to guide retrieval
When does a secondary task reduce memory performance during retrieval?
Ø Related to the primary task
Ø Demands a lot of attention
This is called dividing attention
Does divided attention have a larger effect when tested with recall or recognition?
§ Larger effect when tested with recall than recognition
When are retrieval cues most useful?
§ Retrieval cues are most useful if:
§ Present at encoding
§ Encoded with the target
§ Similar to the original cue available at encoding
Having the right cue enhances retrieval – the best cues are the ones present at encoding -> encoding specificity
What is cue-target associative strength?
- Retrieval success depends on the strength of cue target association
- Determined by the length of time and attention spent on encoding the relationship
- Encoding the cue and the target separately is unhelpful
They need to be associated with each-other
Does more cues aid retrieval?
- Access to additional, relevant cues facilitates retrieval
§ Activation spreads from both cues to the target, facilitating retrieval
§ Cueing multiple access routes to a target (extra cues) can provide a super-additive recall benefit
Elaborative encoding maximizes the number of retrieval routes
Explain the effect of the strength of the target memory on retrieval
- Weakly encoded targets are more difficult to retrieve
§ The targets start at a lower activation level
§ Require a greater boost in activation to be retrieved - Explains the word frequency effect on recall
More frequent target words start with higher activation level -> more easily retrieve
What is retrieval success increased by?
§ The organisation of materials at encoding
§ Adopting efficient strategies of memory search
- Adopting a new perspective/ strategy can facilitate recall of different objects previously forgotten
Does completing multiple episodic tasks in a row improve retrieval performance and why?
yes because episodic retrieval is implicated in different brain regions (the prefrontal cortex) than semantic judgements
What are direct/ explicit memory tests?
- Ask people to recall particular experiences
- Require a contextual cue
- Reveal impaired performance in amnesiacs
In many cases rely on hippocampus
What are indirect/ implicit memory tests?
- Measure the unconscious influence of experience without asking the subject to recall the past
- Priming: recent experience with the stimulus improves performance
- Reveals normal performance in amnesics
What is a free recall task?
Explicit
‘recall studied items’
What is a cued recall task?
Explicit
‘What word was presented with DOG’
What is a yes/no recognition task?
Did you study: Dog…apple…monk?
