PSYC2050 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Episodic Memory, Endel Tulving
Document Summary
Tasks for testing long term memory: recall and recognition, recognition is more flexible and sensitive than recall, can test all kinds of items that can"t easily be produced, more likely to detect memories that are weaker or incomplete. Interpreting accuracy scores is more complicated: episodic. If false alarm rate is low: hits are usually interpretable, groups in different conditions can be compared on hits if their false alarm rates are low and similar. Forgetting curve: ebbinghaus (~1885, curve that steadily drops off. Information is lost in an exponential manner: forgetting is systematic and lawful, one of the first robust findings of scientific psychology. Decay: memories fade, or connections between them fade if not used, problems, conceptual, decay = loss due to passage of time, forgetting = loss of knowledge over time, evidence, passage of time may affect mechanisms other than decay. Interference: two broad classes, proactive - old blocks new, retroactive - new blocks old.
