Chapter 7: Memory
Chapter Review
What Are the Basic Stages of Memory?
1. Sensory memory is brief: Visual (iconic) and auditory (echoic) memories are maintained at the sensory memory stage long enough to ensure a continuous sensory experience.
2. Short-term memory is active: Immediate active memory is limited. Chunking reduces information into meaningful units that are easier to remember. The three components of working memory are the central executive, the phonological loop, and the visuospatial sketchpad.
3. Long-term memory is relatively permanent: Long-term memory (LTM) is the potentially indefinite storage of all memories. Meaningful memories are stored in LTM.
What Are the Different Memory Systems?
4. Explicit memory involves conscious effort: Explicit, declarative memories that we consciously remember include personal events (episodic memory) and knowledge (semantic memory).
5. Implicit memory occurs without deliberate effort: Procedural (motor) memories of how to do things automatically are implicit.
How Is Information Organized in Long-Term Memory? 6. Long-term memory is a temporal sequence: Memory processes include encoding, storage, and retrieval. Elaborate rehearsal involves encoding information in more meaningful ways, and results in better memory than maintenance (repetition) rehearsal.
7. Schemas provide an organizational framework: Cognitive structures of meaning (schemas) aid the organization of memories.
8. Information is stored in association networks: Networks of associations are formed by nodes of information, which are linked together and are activated by spreading activation.
9. Retrieval cues provide access to long-range storage: According to the encoding specificity principle, any stimulus that is encoded along with an experience can later trigger the memory of the experience. The context of the memory is also activated.
What Brain Processes Are Involved in Memory?
10. There has been intensive effort to identify the physical location of memory: Unable to locate a specific site of memory storage (engram), Lashley concluded, somewhat inaccurately, that memory is distributed throughout the brain (equipotentiality). Research has revealed that a number of specific brain regions contribute to learning and memory.
11. The medial temporal lobes are important for consolidation of declarative memories: The hypothetical process of consolidation of new memories involves changes in neural connections. The hippocampus and rhinal cortex are regions of the medial temporal lobe that are important for declarative memories. Hippocampal place cells aid spatial memory.
12. The frontal lobes are involved in many aspects of memory: Frontal lobes activation occurs with deep encoding tasks. The medial prefrontal region is active for memories about the self. The left frontal region is more active during encoding and the right more active during retrieval. The frontal lobes may be especially important for working memory.
13. Neurochemistry influences memory: A group of neurochemicals modulate the storage of memories. Epinephrine enhances memory. The amygdala is probably responsible for memory modulation through activity in its norepinephrine receptors.
When Do People Forget?
14. Transience is caused by interference: Forgetting over time occurs because of interference from both old and new information.
15. Blocking is temporary: The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon occurs when there is trouble retrieving the right word, usually from interference from a similar word.
16. Absentmindedness results from shallow encoding: Inattentive or shallow processing causes memory failure.
17. Amnesia is a deficit in long-term memory: Injury and disease can result in amnesia, the inability to recall past memories (retrograde amnesia) or the inability to form new memories (anterograde amnesia).
How Are Memories Distorted?
18. Flashbulb memories can be wrong: The strong emotional response that attends flashbulb memories may modulate the strength of a memory and affect accuracy.
19. People make source misattributions: People misremember the source of a memory (source misattributions).
Cryptomnesia refers to when people think a new idea is theirs, when they have only retrieved an old memory.
20. People make bad eyewitnesses: Poor eyewitness recall occurs particularly with regard to ethnic identification. Suggestibility leads to misinformation.
21. People have false memories: Immature frontal lobes cause childhood amnesia. False memories can be implanted. Confabulation can occur due to brain damage.
22. Repressed memories are controversial: Some therapeutic techniques can result in false repressed memories.
23. People reconstruct events to be consistent: People try to maintain a consistency between past memories and their current attitudes and knowledge.
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