BHS 49907 Memory and Amnesia

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BHS 499-07Memory and Amnesia

• Methods and Principles

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Experiments

• Memory is studied two ways
• Experimentally most research
• Observationally Neissers Challenger study

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Two Kinds of Studies

• Incidental vs. intentional
• Incidental
• The person is unaware that memory will be tested
  later
• An orienting task directs attention to stimuli.
• Intentional
• The person is aware of an upcoming memory test
• May lead to more elaborate processing.

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Levels of Processing

• Craik Lockhart (1972
• The more deeply information is processed, the
  more likely it is to be remembered
• Memory retrieval can be predicted based on the
  depth of processing
• Rote rehearsal leads to shallow processing
• Elaborative rehearsal leads to deep processing

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Ways of Assessing Memory

• Recall
• Free vs forced (number of items is specified)
• Cued recall
• Self-cueing is part of meta-memory
• Recognition
• Inference and reconstruction are important to
  recognition

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Common Learning Effects

• Generation effect material that is
  self-generated (created by the subject) tends to
  be better remembered.
• aha effect a self-generated explanation is
  better remembered
• Enactment effect performing a related action
  tends to enhance memory (as opposed to watching
  someone do it)
• Automaticity of encoding some learning is
  automatic, some takes effort.

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Stimulus Characteristics

• Nominal stimulus (what is presented) vs
  functional stimulus (what is in persons mind)
• Picture superiority and concreteness effects
  words associated with images are better
  remembered than abstracts.
• Pollyanna principle positive words more readily
  learned than negative ones.

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Frequency Effects

• Frequency has a different impact on recall tasks
  than on recognition tasks.
• For recall, an item that is more frequently
  encountered is better remembered because there
  are more associations.
• For recongition, an item that is less frequently
  encountered is better remembered because it is
  novel.
• Novelty means fewer competitor memory traces.

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Concerns with Recognition

• Recognition is a matching process the nominal
  stimulus is compared with the content of memory.
• A match can be made based on familiarity.
• Old/new recognition
• A familiar item is old
• An unfamiliar item is new
• Forced choice an answer is required.

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Correction for Guessing

• Discrimination telling old items from new ones.
• Hit a correct judgment
• Miss calling an old item new
• False Alarm calling a new item old
• Bias willingness to guess old vs new.
• Strictness (unwillingness) to guess old is a
  conservative bias.
• Signal detection theory a method for measuring
  and adjusting for a persons guessing bias.

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Social Influences

• Collaborative inhibition people working in a
  group remember less on recall tasks than if they
  were working alone.
• Social loafing?
• Different ways of organizing info disrupt recall.
• Fewer errors when people work in groups.
• Collaborative facilitation when the task is a
  recognition task, people do better in groups than
  working alone.

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Assessing Memory Structure

• Memory structure is the way items are organized,
  connected (associated) in memory.
• Response times are faster for associated items,
  so RTs can reveal links in memory.
• Priming the name for the speeded response that
  occurs for items that are associated.
• Cluster analysis items that are linked are
  recalled together (inter-item delays).

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Metamemory Measures

• Metamemory awareness of ones own memory
  processes.
• Verbal reports drawing on introspection.
• Remember vs know judgments.
• You remember an item when you can recall when and
  where you first learned it.
• Hindsight bias a tendency to distort memory to
  conform to current knowledge

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Implicit Memory Measures

• Implicit memory is not conscious, so tasks used
  do not mention memory.
• Later people may be asked to remember without any
  reference to the previous task.
• Implicit and explicit memory are difficult to
  dissociate because there are no true process
  pure tasks.
• Inclusion condition use words seen before
• Exclusion condition do not use words seen before