Flashcards
Fanny Adrian CP 7
Cards in this deck (34)
- 17.1 For his exams, a student always studies in a quiet study cabinet that has a calming impact on him. The exam takes place in a large exam hall with many students sitting close to each other. The student notices the uneasy atmosphere in the exam hall and also the construction work that takes place in front of the windows. Explain the effect that this context in which the exam takes place probably has on the student's performance.Studies on context-dependent learning found that context reinstatement improves recall performance on a test. Crucially, the psychological context of the learning situation needs to be re-created, in order to provide recall cues that facilitate the retrieval of the learned material. Therefore, the student will probably have problems to recall the material during the exam, as he learned that material in a calm and focused state.
- 27.2 Explain which of the following is a more effective method of context reinstatement, in order to facilitate recall in a testing situation: A) re-creating the context of the study environment only, or B) re-creating the psychological state during studying only.The reinstatement of the psychological context of the learning situation matters, not the physical context. Therefore, re-creating the psychological context only (B) is a more effective method of context reinstatement for better recall on a test. This was shown in a study that compared learning and testing that took place in the same room or different rooms. The best results were produced when learning and testing were done in the same room. Yet, asking participants, for whom learning and testing took place in different rooms, to think about the context of the learning, led to the same performance level as if no change of room had taken place.
- 37.3 For her exams, a student always studies in a quiet study cabinet that has a calming impact on her. Right before the exam, while waiting outside the exam hall, the student listens to the latest album of her favorite band. She had seen this band on a rock festival the weekend before and now remembers the excitement she had felt; energized she enters the exam hall. Explain the effect that this context of the exam probably has on the student's performance.Studies on context-dependent learning found out context reinstatement improves recall performance on a test. Crucially, physical context reinstatement is not sufficient, but the psychological context of the learning situation needs to be re-created, in order to provide recall cues that facilitate the retrieval of the learned material.
Therefore, if the student feels agitated and energized in the exam situation, she will probably have problems to recall the material that she learned in a calm and focused state. - 4A study compared the recall of words that were processed differently and for which different hints were given in the testing phase. The results are listed in the table below (to avoid confusion, note that the rightmost column “Both combined” simply lists the average across the two types of hint). Explain how the results illustrate both the effects of deep processing and the operation of the transfer-appropriate-processing (TAP) principle.Words that were processed with a focus on meaning during study were better recalled when the hint for recall was aimed at the meaning rather than at the sound. The opposite relation was found for words that were processed with a focus on sound during study. These results illustrate the TAP principle, according to which memory performance benefits when mental operations used during study and those used during retrieval overlap.
Overall, performance was better when words were processed with a focus on meaning during study, illustrating the beneficial effects of deep processing on memory performance. The fact that a focus on meaning during study actually resulted in worse performance when the recall hint was aimed at sound, illustrates that such beneficial effects of deep processing can be strongly modulated and even overpowered by the TAP principle. - 57.5 Explain the impact that context has on the encoding of a stimulus.The stimulus itself is encoded together with the context as an integrated whole. This automatic mechanism is called encoding specificity. For example, a piano that is lifted is encoded in the context of it being a large and heavy item. Therefore, a hint aimed at the musical characteristics of the piano is less likely to be an effective retrieval cue here as compared to a cue aimed at the piano's size or weight. Thus, the context of a stimulus influences the connections made with other knowledge and, therefore, the connected retrieval cues.
- 67.6 Explain the function of hints in recall with regard to the memory network (i.e. the finding that recall for question-plus-hint is generally better than for the question by itself).Hints activate some nodes in the memory network, from where activation spreads. This spreading activation raises the activation of connected nodes. If the hint is useful and relevant, it will facilitate recall or reactivation of the relevant nodes, as these are now activated by spreading activation from both the hint and the retrieval cues provided by the question.
- 77.7 Explain why people react faster in a lexical decision task to the word pair 'bread - butter', than to the word pair 'shoe - lake'.In the first word pair, the word bread causes spreading activation of related concepts. Thus, the word 'butter' already receives subthreshold activation from 'bread' via associative links. This semantic priming facilitates the correct recognition as a word of the subsequently presented 'butter'. In contrast, 'shoe' and 'lake' are semantically unrelated. Therefore recognition of 'shoe' will not facilitate the subsequent recognition of 'lake' as a word, because 'lake' has not been pre-activated or primed by ‘shoe’ .
- 87.8 Does a double dissociation exist between familiarity and source memory? Explain why or why not.Yes, familiarity and source memory seem to be completely independent types of memory. An example for familiarity is the feeling that one has met a certain person before, but one cannot recall the situation in which the encounter took place. This demonstrates the absence of source memory, while an implicit feeling of familiarity suggests that the person has been encountered before. In contrast, people with the Capgras syndrome, for example, have concrete memory of some people, without a feeling of familiarity. Here, source memory is intact, but the stimulus does not feel familiar.
- 97.9 Describe what the false fame effect illustrates in relation to memory.The false fame effect represents a misinterpretation or misattribution of the feeling of familiarity with regard to a certain person in the absence of explicit memory about specific earlier encounters. Due to the feeling of familiarity together with a lack of any explicit recollection of earlier encounters (no source memory), people assume or infer that this person must be famous.
- 107.10 State what effect familiarity has on the judged credibility of a statement. Describe also what effect the addition of a warning about the falsity of the statement has.Sentences, which have been encountered in a previous and unrelated situation, are subsequently more likely to be accepted as true. Thus, familiarity influences and promotes judgments of credibility. This is true even when explicit warnings are given not to believe the statements during the previous encounter. This type of misattribution of the feeling of familiarity is called the illusion of truth, and it is being exploited more and more often in modern politics and in advertising .
- 117.11 Describe an example of source confusion.A typical example of source confusion can be found in the identification of criminals. People often correctly identify that they have encountered a person before, but they confuse seeing a picture of a certain person earlier with that person being the actual offender.
- 127.12 What is memory without awareness called?Implicit memory.
- 137.13 Explain the mechanism underlying implicit memory effects.Previous encounters with a stimulus will leave this stimulus more highly activated and strengthen the connections and pathways that were involved in processing it. The next time this stimulus is encountered and processed, the processing fluency will be higher than for new stimuli, and people are assumed to be sensitive to the degree of processing fluency. Higher than expected processing fluency may make a stimulus seem special, and people will often interpret that specialness as familiarity. When that interpretation is incorrect, as when higher processing fluency is caused by other factors, it is called an illusion of familiarity.
- 147.14 How may an illusion of familiarity be elicited?The illusion of familiarity can occur when presentation of a specific stimulus is manipulated to make perception easier, i.e. more fluent, than for other stimuli (for instance, by presenting it for a few milliseconds longer or at a slightly higher intensity). People are assumed to be sensitive to the degree of processing fluency. Higher than expected processing fluency may make a stimulus seem special, and people will often interpret that specialness as familiarity. When the enhanced processing fluency is actually caused by manipulation of the quality of stimulus presentation, as in the example above, the result is called an illusion of familiarity.
- 157.15 Name all subcategories of implicit memory.Procedural memory, priming, perceptual learning, classical conditioning
- 167.16 Name the subcategories of explicit memory.Episodic memory and semantic memory.
- 177.17 What types of evidence support the division of memory into different types and systems?Functional and biological evidence support the existence of different types of memory.
- 18(7.18 State the name of the type of amnesia where memory for experiences before the injury is affected.)Retrograde amnesia.
- 197.19 Does a double dissociation between semantic and episodic memory exist? Explain how it is evident that this exists or not.There is a double dissociation between semantic and episodic memory. Evidence comes, for example, from clinical observations and studies. While some patients show disrupted semantic memory and entirely intact episodic memory, this pattern can be reversed for others. Thus, semantic and episodic memory are independent from each other.
- 207.20 Name the disorder that is marked by symptoms that are very similar to the amnesia suffered by the patient H.M.. Describe in what way these two conditions are similar.Korsakoff's syndrome is a disorder that is marked by similar symptoms as H.M.'s amnesia. In both conditions, memory of the past is more or less intact, while the formation of new memories is disrupted. Moreover, people with either one of the two conditions can maintain current topics in mind, as long as there is no interruption. Thus, in both conditions, people display fairly selective symptoms of anterograde amnesia.
- 217.21 Explain the functioning of implicit and explicit memory in patients with anterograde amnesia.Patients with anterograde amnesia cannot form new episodic memories. However, their implicit memory does not differ from people without explicit-memory impairments. In fact, people with anterograde amnesia seem to be able to learn implicitly. For example, one patient with anterograde amnesia did not remember having met her psychologist before, but she implicitly remembered that he had hidden a pin in his hand when shaking her hand the day before. The memory of this incident was evident in her pulling her hand away just before the hand shake, with the explanation that some people hide pins in their hands, but she did not directly link this experience to her psychologist. Thus, with anterograde amnesia, explicit memory is impaired while implicit memory seems to be largely intact.
- 22Amnesic patients engaged in a mirror-drawing task and the results are displayed below. Using the results, answer the following questions: a. Which type of memory is disrupted in amnesic patients and which type is intact? b. What do the results tell us about the conceptualization of memory in general?a. Amnesic patients’ explicit memory is disrupted while their implicit memory remains intact. The results illustrate that amnesic patients improved on the mirror-drawing task gradually, resembling the pattern of results from healthy participants. While amnesic patients could not remember having practiced the task before, they nonetheless improved on it. Hence, the results indicate an unimpaired implicit memory.
b. The results suggest that one must consider different types of memory.
- 23(7.23 You are sitting in the exam hall and struggling with an exam question which asks for the different types of memory. You close your eyes and imagine yourself sitting in the library with your textbook in front of you, sensing the fuss of the exam period. How is the process called you are engaging in?)Answer: Context reinstatement.
- 247.24 Below the results of Godden and Baddeley’s (1975) study are shown. Label the two conditions and explain what the results reveal about memory.Condition A represents materials studied on land, whereas condition B represents materials studied underwater. As can be seen from the mean number of words recalled, materials studied and tested on land and materials studied and tested underwater were remembered best by the scuba divers. There is a retrieval advantage when learning and testing circumstances match since the respective circumstance is triggering certain thoughts which act as retrieval pathways for the target material. Hence, not only the target material is stored in memory, but also connections established during learning.
- 257.25 Using the concept of a memory network, explain the context reinstatement effect.The sought information is probably tied to a provided retrieval cue (e.g. “What word was on the list?”), but it might be that the desired information receives insufficient activation from this source. Nonetheless, the sought information is tied in memory to thoughts that had been triggered by the learning context (e.g., thoughts about what the room looked like etc.).If one is back in that context at the time of recall (or re-creates it), the target nodes can receive a double input, and this will help activate them.
- 267.26 On which key assumption does context reinstatement rest?Context reinstatement rests on the assumption of summation of subthreshold activation. This means that the activation received from two different sources, each of which is by itself too weak to activate target nodes above threshold, when combined or summed may well suffice to activate the target nodes sufficiently strongly. Thus, context reinstatement, even if it would contribute only a modest amount of activation to retrieval, this contribution can make a lot of difference with respect to overall retrieval success (as attested by often surprisingly strong contextual effects on memory reported in the literature)..
- 277.27 In the book the concept of spreading activation, one node activating nearby nodes, was introduced. Name two complications related to spreading activation and memory search.One complication consists of people’s degree of control over the starting points for the memory search.
Another complication is people’s ability to “shut down” some of the spreading activation when they think that the wrong nodes are being activated. - 287.28 Participants are exposed to a list of words. Four days later, they are tested in one of two ways: A second word list is provided and they have to indicate which words were also on the initial list. The second test consists of a lexical-decision task, requiring a specification of letter strings as words or non-words, occasionally involving words from the initial list. At testing, participants showed a random performance on the first test, apparently not able to remembering the words on the initial list. However, a clear priming effect for words from the initial list was found in the lexical-decision task. a. What is the name of the first type of memory testing? b. What is the second type of memory testing called? c. Which phenomenon do the researchers observe when participants are coming back to the laboratory after four days?a. The first type of testing is referred to as direct memory testing.
b. The second type of testing is called indirect memory testing.
c. The observed phenomenon is called “memory without awareness”/implicit memory. Even though participants are not able to remember the words consciously, they are still influenced by them. - 297.29 You are not sure how to spell a specific word. After having written the word down on a piece of paper in two versions, you ask yourself: “Which one does look right?”. On what are you relying when employing this strategy?When employing the strategy, you are relying on processing fluency. Having encountered the correctly spelled version very often, the processing of the correct version will be fluent. Hence, the correct spelling “looks or feels right”.
- 30Using the figure below, fill in the missing steps leading to a judgment of familiarity and explain why “familiarity” is more like a conclusion one draws rather than a feeling triggered by a stimulus.The prior exposure to a stimulus, which can be viewed as a practice in perceiving (step 2), leads to a higher processing fluency on subsequent encounters. When the heightened processing fluency is detected (step 3), it will result in registering the stimulus as somehow “special” (step 4). What follows is the attribution of fluency (step 5), with one of the possible outcomes the attributing it to a specific prior event, in which case the experience of familiarity is elicited.
The described steps can be viewed as a list of requirements which need to be fulfilled in order to elicit the sensation of familiarity. Hence, familiarity can be regarded as an inference or conclusion. Importantly though, none of these steps are executed consciously, only the “conclusion” manifests itself as a feeling of familiarity. Moreover, concluding familiarity will only happen when information/circumstances support it (e.g. “I remember seeing it yesterday.”, “I’m pretty sure the word was on the earlier list?”).
- 317.31 According to the standard theory of consolidation in episodic memory, discussed in class, the hippocampus plays a very specific role in the encoding and retrieval of episodic memories. Briefly describe that role.Events are typically associated with a highly distributed pattern of activation at the level of neocortex, with different aspects of the event being represented in different subsystems. For the entire event to be retrieved or re-activated based on spreading activation from initial retrieval cues, the various aspects need to be interconnected. However, the neocortex can change connections only on the basis of many repetitions (slow learning), and is thus incapable of one-shot learning that is required for new episodic learning. The theory suggests that an event will activate a so-called hippocampal link. By means of LTP this link can instantly establish connections with all parts of the neocortical pattern of activation that represents the event. Thus, the various aspects of the neocortical representation are not directly interconnected but indirectly via the shared hippocampal link. Retrieval cues can activate this link and from there re-activate, through spreading activation, the neocortical representation. For old events that have been retrieved many times, each successful retrieva
- 327.32 Deep processing may lead to improved memory performance because it facilitates retrieval. How exactly does this happen?Deeper and more elaborate encoding gives rise to richer and more richly connected representations. Such representations offer more retrieval paths – connections to retrieval cues that can be used to re-activate (recollect) the memory representation by means of spreading activation.
- 337.33 According to the standard theory of consolidation in episodic memory, discussed in class, the hippocampus plays an important role in the encoding and retrieval of episodic memories. Discuss the way in which, according to this theory, damage to the hippocampus leads to anterograde amnesia.According to the theory, the hippocampus is essential for acquiring/encoding new episodic memories. By means of LTP the various aspects of the neocortical activation pattern associated with an event are linked to an integrated hippocampal representation of that event (link). Through this link the various aspects of the neocortical activation pattern become indirectly interconnected, enabling retrieval (reactivation of the original pattern) through spreading activation. With a severely damaged hippocampus, no such links can be formed and thus encoding and retrieval of new episodic memories will be severely compromised anterograde amnesia.
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- Psychologie Flashcards on Fanny Adrian CP 7, created by Adrian Mayer on 16/11/2017.
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