PSY 305 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Long-Term Memory, Anterograde Amnesia, Psychogenic Amnesia
29 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
26 Oct and 31 Oct Notes
Entering Long-Term Storage
● Encoding:
● Two types of rehearsal
○Maintenance rehearsal - reciting
○Relational or elaborative rehearsal - linking
● Deeper processing ensures better recall
○ Study about depth of processing: activity during first exposure
■ Upper case or lower case?
■ Does it rhyme…?
■ Fit in this sentence…?
○ % of words recalled increases with deeper levels of processing
● The need for active encoding
○ If we compare the brain activity for remembered and forgotten items at the time
of encoding
, activity in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex predicts later
retention
○ In temporal lobe we see a slight activation for remembered and forgotten words
(a little bit more for remembered words)
○ In frontal areas (left inferior prefrontal cortex) there is a significant increase in
activity levels for remembered words
■ Remembered > forgotten
Study: Entering long-term storage
● Imagine an experiment in which you cross depth of processing
(three levels)
○ Typeface task (shallow)
○ Phonological task (intermediate)
○ Semantic task (deep)
● An intention to learn
(two levels)
○ Incidental learning
○ Intentional learning
● What would you predict:
○ Least remembered → shallow processing and incidental learning
○ Most remembered → deep processing and intentional learning
○ NOT WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED
● Finding:
○ Dept of processing is strong
■ Depth of processing promotes recall by facilitating later retrieval
■ Connections between items to be remembered facilitates retrieval
○ Intention to learn has no effect
■ Intention to learn can lead you to choose a deeper strategy
Organizing and Memorizing
● Mnemonics improve memory through organization
○ Roy G. Biv
○ Mnemonic to remember sensory nerves: Some say marry money but my brother
says big brains matter more
●Peg-word systems: items are “hung” on a system of already well known “pegs”
○ “One is a bun, two is a shoe…..”
Links among acquisition, storage, and retrieval
● Memory is facilitated by organizing and understanding
○What the memorizer
was doing at the time of exposure matters
○ The background knowledge
of the memorizer matters
● Acquisition, storage, and retrieval are not easily separable
○ New learning is grounded in previously learned (stored) knowledge
○ Effective learning depends on how the information will later be retrieved
Learning as preparation for retrieval
● Learning connects new material with existing memory
● These retrieval paths help us learn new material
● Context-dependent learning is dependent on the state one is in during acquisition
●Context reinstatement, or re-creating the context present during learning, improves
memory performance
●Encoding specificity refers to remembering something within a specific context
Memory acquisition
● Effect of context on acquisition:
○ Ambiguous pictures are understood and remembered better if they are identified
○ Memory is better for info that relates to prior knowledge
■ Why you should read/skim class notes before coming to class
○ 20% recall without context
■ Attending to info complements exposure in memory tests
Memory, errors, memory gaps
● However, schemata can also cause us to make errors when remembering an event
● Brewer and Treyens found that participants who had been asked to wait in an office
recalled seeing books and other items typical of an office, even though these items had
not been present
● People can confidently remember things that never happened
●False memories: context and cues that help consolidation can result in false
memories
Forgetting
● Three hypotheses for why representations weaken with time:
○Decay - representations may fade or erode
○Interference - newer learning may disrupt older memories
○Retrieval failure - the memory is intact but cannot be accessed
● There is some truth to all three hypotheses
● Related to interference is destructive updating
○ When new learning on a topic replaces old knowledge in memory, so that the old
information is destroyed by newer input
Decay
Document Summary
Study about depth of processing : activity during first exposure. % of words recalled increases with deeper levels of processing. If we compare the brain activity for remembered and forgotten items at the time. In temporal lobe we see a slight activation for remembered and forgotten words. , activity in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex predicts later of encoding retention (a little bit more for remembered words) In frontal areas (left inferior prefrontal cortex) there is a significant increase in activity levels for remembered words. Imagine an experiment in which you cross depth of processing (three levels) Least remembered shallow processing and incidental learning. Most remembered deep processing and intentional learning. Depth of processing promotes recall by facilitating later retrieval. Connections between items to be remembered facilitates retrieval. Intention to learn can lead you to choose a deeper strategy. Mnemonic to remember sensory nerves: some say marry money but my brother says big brains matter more.
