Explicit(Declarative Memory)
memory for events and facts, both personal and general, to which have
conscious access and which we can verbally report
Two types of explicit memories
semantic memories: memories for factual knowledge that is true of
everyone(e.g. the current President of the US)
-episodic memories are memories for personal life experiences and
events(e.g. your senior prom night)
Episodic Memory
storage and retrieval of specific events, moments or episodes
occurring at a given time
-depends on conscious awareness of event
Autobiographical memories
a memory system consisting of episodes recollected from an
individual's life(personal history), based on a combination of
episodic(personal experiences and specific objects, people and events
experienced at particular time and place) and semantic(general
knowledge and facts about the world) memory
-5th grade experience
Episodic vs. Semantic Memory
are these systems really distinct?
-Spiers, Maguire and Burgess(2001)
-tested the ability of patients with amnesia to acquire semantic
and episodic memories AFTER the onset of amnesia
-147 patients had damage to hippocampus
How to Assess Episodic Memory
ask patients to recall past, researcher listening for gap or forgetting
-recall and recognition tasks about when, where and what, can be used
To Assess Semantic Memory
recall test: and explicit memory test that requires a person to
produce a required response with few, if any available cues or aids
-recognition task: explicit memory task that requires a person to
select the correct response from several alternative responses
Where is Explicit Memory in the Brain
explicit: declarative-memory system: hippocampus(temporal lobe) and
frontal lobes
-hippocampus: explicit memories for facts and episodes are
processed in the hippocampus and fed to other brain regions for storage(cortex)
Semantic Memory
LTM consisting of general knowledge, facts, events about the world
-most of our semantic memory is stored as "concepts"
-our semantic memory is highly organized and structured
Models of Semantic Knowledge
Collins and Quillian's Semantic Network(1969)
-hierarchical network model of semantic memory
-information stored in categories(higher->lower)
-categories are logically related to each other in a hierarchy:
broad categories of information like "animal" are subdivided
into narrower categories, like "bird" and "fish",
which in turn are subdivided into still narrower categories
Semantic network models
the major concepts are represented at "nodes"(animal, bird,
canary) and properties(has wings, can sing) are associated with each concept
-why is "can fly" stored with bird rather than canary?
because all birds can fly
Spreading Activation Model(Collins and Loftus, 1975)
an alternative to hierarchical network model
-semantic memory is organized on the basis of "semantic
relatedness" or "semantic distance"
-words are represented as a network of relationships organized in a
"web of interconnected nodes
Meyer and Schavaneveldt(1971, 1976)
lexical decision task and priming
-participants decided as rapidly as possible if a string of letters
formed a word
-in the key experimental condition given word was immediately
preceded by semanticly related word
-bread: butter
-nurse: butter
Schemas
organized packets of information about the world, events, or people
stored in your LTM:
-refers to a way we organized and store information in LTM
-mental representation of prior knowledge
Schema Theory(Bartlett, 1932)
a leading cognitive theory
-a mental representation of knowledge stored in the brain
-a reflection or network or "active organization of people's
past experience"..let us form expectations
Bartlett's War of the Ghosts
Bartlett had participants read and recall parts of folktales such as
"War of the Ghosts" often the title was left out
-aim: to determine whether a person's memory is impacted by the
knowledge(schemas) and the extent to which memory is reconstructive
-method: had British citizens read the story and then rewrite it
-finding/results: participants remembered the main ideas but
remembered it as shorter
Brewer and Treyens(1981)
aim: to investigate whether people's memory for objects in a room is
influenced by their existing schemas
-method: 30 university students were asked to wait in an office
before being called into a research study
-findings: most participants recalled the schematic objects(desk, typewriter)
-many participants recalled non-schematic items such as the skull
-conclusion: memory is better than just recalling what we believe
should be in the room
Levels of Processing`
Craik and Lockhart(1972) explains why some words are remembered
better than others
-he argued that the rehearsal is not enough for STM to move to LTM
-focuses on different types of cognitive processes
-shallow processing encodes on a very basic level(1. word's
letters/physical features of the word or a more 2. intermediate
level(word's sound)
-deep processing(better) encodes semantically based on word meaning
Levels of processing effort
deeper levels of processing(e.g. emphasizing meaning) tend to lead to
better recall
Levels of Processing Experiment
Craik and Tulving, (1975): compared processing words at different levels
-participants were presented words and asked questions in different ways
-shallow: decide whether each word is upper or lower case
-intermediate: decide whether the each word rhymes with a target word
-deep: decide whether each word fit a sentence with a blank
No one type of processing is good for all tests
the processing type has to be appropriate for the test
Encoding Safety Principle
recollection performance depends, not only on how the information was
encoded, but also how the way the information is retrieved at test
-encoding specificity principle: recollection depends on the
interaction between the properties of the encoded event and the
properties of the retrieval information
State(Context) Dependent Memory
information learned in a particular "context" is better
recalled if recall takes place in the same context
Role of Context
memory experiment with deep sea divers
-deep sea divers learned words either on land or underwater
-they then performed a recall test on land or underwater
Mood Dependent Memory
mood dependent memory effects attest to the fact that memory is
better when a person's mood is the same during encoding and retrieval
-mood congruence effect is the fact that memory is better for
experiences that are congruent with a person's current mood
-easier to remember happy memories in a happy state and sad memories
in a sad state