Memory: contents of knowledge

Memory: contents of knowledge

1. Explicit/declarative memory

   • Can be verbalized
   • Can be recalled outside its original context
   • Tested by verbalization
   • Conscious
   • Types
     • Episodic memory
       • Own experience
       • Less stable
       • Develops after 4 years old
         • infantile amnesia
         • Explanation: lack of vocabulary at the moment living the experience
     • Semantic memory
       • Ideas, meaning of words, categories, images...
       • More stable
       • Formed by concepts more or less strongly associated
         • spreading-activation model
         • Neural explanations: related concept share neural circuits, activation of one activates the other one

2. Implicit/nondeclarative memory

   • Unconscious
   • Needs a certain context to be recalled
   • Can be verbalized
   • Test trhough implicit tasks
   • Types
     • Classical conditioning
     • Procedural memory
       • Motor abilities
       • Unconsciously learned rules
         • Being good at cambio
         • Exp: artificial grammar
       • Habits
     • Memory

3. Brain mechanism for different memory systems

   • Amnesia
     • Loss of long-term memory
     • Temporal lobe amnesia
       • Dammage to the hipocampus and near tissue
       • Loss ability to create new explicit long-term memory
       • Perfect performace in implicit memory
     • Developmental amnsia
       • Only hipocampus dammaged by lack of blood flow in early childhood
       • Only episodic memory dammaged