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37 Cards in this Set
- Front
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What is the difference between a memory schema and a memory trace? |
Think of the mystic writing pad, a toy writing tablet that retains fragments of old messages even after they have been erased (like indents on a notepad). In time, these fragments accumulate and begin to overlap, so that they become increasingly hard to read. The first layer is like our perception of an event. Such perceptions are transitory, we pass from one experience to the next. Memory traces are like the indents of what we leave on the notepad, after effects of perception. The problem is that over time they tend to run together like all scribbles at the end of a notepad |
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For a long time it was assumed that memory traces were permanent and complete copies of past events, like a video recording that can be preserved indefinitely and replayed over and over. But what does Neisser's reappearance hypothesis say about this? |
Neisser's term for the now rejected idea that the same memory can reappear unchanged, again and again. Memory is schematic, relying on fragments to support a new construction. |
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Even as the idea of the schema was gaining ground, some psychologists argued that one particular type of memory was in fact permanent, the flashbulb memory |
They appear to be vivid, detailed memories of significant events and the more consequential they feel the event, the more often they rehearse it |
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Now Print Theory by Livingston was... |
This resembled the production of a photocopy, just press the print button and your brain will store a faithful reproduction of everything in the scene, including context |
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Brown and Kulik proposed five stages of the flashbulb memory. The first is surprisingness - if it is completely ordinary, we will pay no attention to it. If the event is extraordinary, then we will pay very close attention. |
The second stage is consequentiality, events that fail this test will be forgotten but those that we consider important as well as surprising will move on to the third stage, where flashbulb memories are formed. The fourth stage is rehearsal and the fifth stage we tell and retell those accounts to other people |
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Quite a bit of info had been lost over the interval and that the details were not always consistent. Another point is that both flashbulb and everyday memories show a decline in consistency and an increase in inconsistency over time. Actual content of flashbulb memories were no more accurate than ordinary memories |
But non of the accounts were wildly inconsistent with the earlier versions. Rather, the inconsistencies were the same sort of reconstructive errors that seem to occur frequently for "ordinary memories". Also, flashbulb memories do not need a special mechanism, they are only more vivid because we have replayed them so often and thought about them so much. |
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Consolidation Theory states.... |
memory traces of an event are not fully formed immediately after the event, but take some time to consolidate. This process of consolidation can be disrupted by events that occur after the event to be remembered, this disruption is called retroactive interference. |
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It is known that the hippocampus is a crucial site for the consolidation of memory traces, converting immediate memories into long-term memories |
"If the hippocampal formation is damaged before the consolidation process is complete, recently formed memories that are still undergoing the consolidation process will be impaired. It is likely that retroactive interference occurs because ordinary mental exertion and memory formation detract from an ongoing process of consolidation |
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When the stored memory trace is reactivated, it becomes changeable. Thus recalling a previous experience places it in working memory where it comes into contact with other experiences |
For example, the context in which you recall a flashbulb event may be quite different from the context in which you originally experienced it. This provided an opportunity for revision of the memory trace, although the extent of such revision is controversial. |
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A revised trace would undergo reconsolidation in the hippocampus. |
Nader believes that memories are fundamentally dynamic processes and are constructive in nature and always changing. |
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Bartlett made the schema concept central to psych. His experimental techniques were the method of repeated reproduction where one participant is given multiple opportunities to recall a story over time. The other other method of serial reproduction is when one participant writes down what he or she can recall of a previously read story. This participants version is given to a second participant who reads it and then tries to reproduce it and so on and so on like the game telephone/broken telephone |
Bartlett believed that his experiment showed what happens to memory over time. Several parts of the original story were dropped along the way so that the story was simplified. Participants tended to select some material to remember and omit other material, these omissions reflect a process of rationalizaiton as each participant tried to make the story as coherent and sensible as possible. Material that did not seem to fit tended to drop out of the narrative.
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Schema as proposed by Bartlett was an active mass of organized past reactions that provides a setting that guides our behavior. |
Reviews suggest that most schema theories discuss memory in terms of four processes: selection, abstraction, interpretation, and integration. |
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Selection is the hypothesis that we select info both as we receive it and as we recall it - consistent with our interests at the time. Abstraction is that we tend to remember only the gist, not the specifics, of what we experience |
Interpretation: we interpret info by making inferences and then remember the inferences as part of the original information Integration: we abstract the meaning of an event and then put that meaning together with the rest of our knowledge to form a coherent, consistent whole |
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Loftus and Palmer created the two tests of the car accidents "contact" vs "smashed" and which had broken glass, the video where they were "hit" or they "smashed" |
L and P concluded that two types of info go into one's memory for some complex occurrence. The first is info gleaned during the perception of the original event, the second is the external info supplied after the fact. Over time, info from these two sources may be integrated in such a way that we are unable to tell from which source some specific detail is recalled. |
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Misinforamtion effect is... |
the hypothesis that misleading post event info can become integrated with the original memory of the even, like a false memory or implanting a false memory |
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Lindsay and Johnson had an experiment of source monitoring and found that the recognition test results showed evidence of suggestibility whereas the source monitoring test resulted in fewer errors |
L and J argued that the mistakes people make when they try to recall an event are often due to faulty source monitoring - this is the source monitoring framework |
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Tulving and Thomas proposed the principle of encoding specificity: the way an item is retrieved from memory depends on the way it was stored in memory |
They used experiments like when one word was printed in all uppercase or lowercase and one set with strong association and another with weak association. Only on the recall of target words from the weak set were they able to recall almost all of them |
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Mood dependent recall |
the hypothesis that mood congruence between learning and recall sessions should facilitate recall |
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mood congruence |
the idea that mood might cause selective learning of affective material - if you are in a sad mood and hear a story with both happy and sad parts, you will remember more of the sad elements |
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Script. One feature that distinguishes a script from a schema is that a script refers to a particular sequence of events or actions. What is a script? |
A set of expectations concerning the actions and events that are appropriate in a particular situation |
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Autobiographical memories |
Episodic memories of events recalled in terms of the time in our life when they occurred |
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Crovitz and Schiffman found that the frequency of autobiographical memories declined steadily as the length of time since the remembered events increased |
Galton's number: the number of autobiographical episodes available to participants from the preceding 20 years
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Childhood amnesia
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the general inability to retrieve episodic memories from before the age of about 3 (due to hippocampus not formed yet) |
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Neisser suggested that any discontinuity in development will tend to produce amnesia for events prior to change. The rapid acquisition of language is surely a profound discontinuity, as memories formed before and after language should be expected to differ radically |
Shrauf and Rubin found that each language tended to elicit autobiographical memories originally experienced in the context of that language |
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Memory bump |
an increase in the number of memories between 10 and 30 years of age over what would be expected if memories decayed smoothly over time. One theory by Erikson says that people made their most important choices in the time of their twenties etc or distinctiveness, the notion that relatively novel events will tend to be remembered better than events that are similar |
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Proust effect
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The power of odours as autobiographical memory cues
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Levels of processing |
A continuum that ranges from registering an event purely in terms of its physical characteristics to analyzing it in terms of its relationship to other things that you know. For ex, TRAIN a shallow way of processing it would be to say it is in caps but a deeper way would be to observe that it refers to a form of transport |
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The more deeply we process an event, the more thoroughly we will comprehend it and thus the more likely we are to recall it accurately |
Elaboration and distinctiveness allow for better remembering |
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Specific and general levels of representation |
as people age they tend to forget specific details but to remember deeper, more general meanings |
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The experiment done about the dog and shown a pic or heard barking |
They found that the type of processing during test recruits the same brain regions as engaged during study - so if you heard the bark your auditory cortex was activated |
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Lab based approach to memory research |
emphasizes controlled lab research in the search for general principles |
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Forgetting curve |
rate at which info is forgotten is greatest immediately after the info has been acquired and declines more gradually over time |
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Jost's law of forgetting |
of two memory traces of equal strength, the younger trace will decay faster than the older one. This is likely due to consolidation |
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Ribot's law of retrograde amnesia |
older memories are less likely to be lost as a result of brain damage than are newer memories |
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law of progressions and pathologies |
a last in first out principle referring to the possibility that the last system to emerge is the first to show the effects of degeneration |
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ecological approach to study of memory |
an approach that emphasizes real world complexities in its investigations to discover general principles |
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Bahrick - the man who did the Spanish class studies - argued the existence of permastore |
The state of relative permanence in which he found that some kinds of memory can be retained over long periods of time. It does not matter about how much you rehearse this material but is determined at the time when the material is learned if it ends up here. |
